Shibata Katsuie's cavalry unit punched straight through the fourth defensive line. The Imagawa main camp's defenses had been arranged with meticulous rigor, a grand encampment of seven thousand was protected by more than three layers of sentry posts and five rows of anti-cavalry barricades, all executed according to the marching protocols Taigen Sessai had established for the campaign to the capital.
But those defenses had been designed to stop men. Not divine artifacts. Every time that terrifying, blazing great axe swept outward, the very air within a 10-metres radius shuddered.
That shuddering was different from the oppression of yōki or reiryoku. It was simply weight. Weight so absolute that even the air itself was crushed beneath it. Against ordinary mortals, this alone was an unstoppable, inexorable force.
Though the wielder herself was still mortal, even the mightiest of mortals could tire; her stamina was finite; if she were truly surrounded and overwhelmed, she could still die, a single, devastating raid was absolutely within her power.
Shibata Katsuie rode atop her black warhorse. Her great axe swept horizontally. The wooden stakes of the fifth anti-cavalry barricade, directly in her path, shattered from the center the instant the axe-blade swept past, their cross-sections pulverized.
The dozens of cavalry behind her charged on. Though they bore no divine artifacts, the sheer impact force of their galloping horses was like iron hammers smashing into walls. Thirty paces ahead lay the great tent of the Imagawa main camp.
The guards before the tent had already fallen into chaos. Forty ashigaru had formed a desperate battle line. Six mounted samurai reined in their horses, their spears leveled. But their hands were trembling. From the fear of death. And from the instinctive cowering before the power of gods and buddhas.
At that very moment, the tent flap was suddenly flung open. Imagawa Yoshimoto walked out. Not carried out under guard. She walked out on her own.
The young daimyō of sixteen or seventeen was not tall. She wore that layered, deep purple twelve-layered kimono threaded with gold, utterly incongruous on this battlefield.
Even wrapped in those resplendent robes, her frame still seemed terribly slight. Now, she stood before her tent. The wind whipped at her hems. In her hand, she still clutched the folding fan painted with pine and crane.
Her face was white. Truly white. Not the pallor of Shinji, who never saw sunlight, but the ghastly white of blood drained dry by terror. Her lips were trembling. Her knees were trembling.
She was still afraid. More afraid than anyone. But she still stepped forward. Because she was, after all, the head of the Imagawa clan. The daimyō who commanded three provinces.
She understood, with absolute clarity, at a time like this, she could not flee. If she fled, everything was lost. At a time like this, she had to step forward and do something. To fight with her back to the water. To stake everything on a single throw.
"Imagawa—" Her voice trembled too. She nearly bit her tongue on the first syllable. But the second was steadier than the first. The third was steadier than the second. "SOLDIERS OF THE IMAGAWA!" Her voice exploded into the midday air.
It was not loud, even carrying the crisp, clear strain of a young girl. But in the chaos of the battlefield, that voice rang clearly in the ears of every single Imagawa soldier.
They recognized it. It was their lord's voice. The voice of that young daimyō who usually shrank inside her palanquin, who, they said, was even afraid of insects. She had stepped forward. She stood before her tent. She stood directly in the path of the charging armored cavalry.
"Your liege stands here!" Imagawa Yoshimoto raised her fan and thrust it forward. The pine and crane upon its face flashed once in the sunlight. "Together, with all of you!" The words were stiff. They were naive. But they were impassioned. It was enough. One signal was all they needed. Even if that signal came from a girl trembling from head to toe, as long as she stood, her soldiers could stand.
In the feudal era, if a commander could face the enemy alongside her warriors, standing at the front without retreat, it was enough to rouse morale to its highest pitch. This was the very essence of how human spirit coalesced into momentum.
The leader's will was the core. The soldiers' conviction was the fuel. The spirits of hundreds, thousands, converged, forming an intangible force-field. No supernatural power was visible.
It was simply humanity.
A great, vast multitude of people, all directing their intent toward a single point, granting immense, invisible reinforcement.
In that instant, the hands of the forty ashigaru before the tent stopped trembling. Their spearpoints leveled true. The six mounted samurai around them tightened their reins.
Warhorses screamed and pawed the earth, shattering the soil beneath their hooves. Further out, the ashigaru of the second and third ranks heard their lord's voice. The chaotic formations began to coalesce once more. Though they would never regain their original order, they physically blocked the flanking paths of the armored cavalry.
Shibata Katsuie narrowed her eyes. She saw the girl standing before the tent. Not tall. Clothes gaudy and ostentatious. Holding a fan. On a battlefield, it looked like a pretentious affectation. Utterly out of place. Yet she stood there. Facing her onslaught. Not a single step back. Unflinching in the face of death.
"Interesting," Katsuie declared, her voice ringing out. Her great axe rose once more. The next instant, the axe-light slashed down.
The bamboo-spear formation of the forty ashigaru before the tent shattered the moment that blade of light swept past. Wood splinters flew. The front three men were hurled backward by the shockwave.
But the rear ranks filled the gap. They shattered again. They filled the gap again. Like waves crashing against a reef. One wave broke, the next surged forward. Relentless. Unending. Every shattering brought screams and the snapping of spears.
Every filling of the gap brought fresh battle cries. The formation of seven thousand, commanded by the folding fan of that young girl, at the cost of flesh and blood, stopped Shibata Katsuie's advance.
For a fleeting moment. Just a fleeting moment.
Then the bamboo-spear formation collapsed. Again. Completely. Utterly. The six mounted samurai spurred their horses forward, and were scattered in a single clash by the armored cavalry behind Katsuie.
The space before the tent was empty. Shibata Katsuie's black horse stepped over the shattered spears and fallen ashigaru. The gray-iron great axe rose above her head. Her target, Imagawa Yoshimoto. Thirty paces. Twenty paces. Ten paces. Yoshimoto's legs could no longer hold her. Her knees had utterly given way.
But her eyes did not close. They remained wide open. She clenched her teeth. Her entire body trembled violently. She did not understand. She could not comprehend. But even more, she refused to accept it. She stared at that axe raised above the rider's head. She stared at that blade-light descending from the heavens.
And then....
BOOM.
The sky detonated. It could not have been war drums. The drummers had long since scattered. It could not have been a war-horn. The signal corps were nowhere to be seen. It was thunder.
In a cloudless midday sky, lightning split the heavens and struck the earth. It fell directly between Shibata Katsuie and Imagawa Yoshimoto.
The ground exploded. Mud and debris flew. The shockwave blasted away every last fragment of wood before the tent. Shibata Katsuie's black horse shrieked and reared, its front hooves lashing the air. She wrenched the reins with all her strength just to keep from being thrown.
From within the dust and dissipating lightning, something descended.
A sword. A greatsword so massive it seemed impossible for any human to wield. Its blade was nearly the height of a man.
Its thickness was nearly two fingers wide. Its entire body was a pale, ghastly white. The edge was blunt and thick. It was not made for cutting. It was made for crushing.
A crystallization of pure, absolute violence. That colossal blade plummeted from the heavens, its tip driving into the mud directly between Shibata Katsuie and Imagawa Yoshimoto.
It sank three shaku into the earth with a thunderous crash. The shockwave sent shattered stone and withered grass flying for several meters in every direction.
Banryū. The newborn demon artifact. The giant war-blade. Tempered through the Hundred-Man Slaying and the Thousand-Demon Slaying. Its mundane iron body had metamorphosed under the relentless saturation of yōki and death-energy. It was as heavy as a mountain.
A hand closed around its hilt. A pale hand. The hand's owner walked out from the dust where the lightning had faded. Gray robes. Flowing white hair. Crimson demon eyes. Onikiri at his left hip. Yomi-giri at his right hip. In his right hand, Banryū. That greatsword, which matched his entire height from blade to pommel, was lifted single-handedly as though it were a mere tree branch.
The Talent [Valor] activated the moment he gripped the blade. His strength doubled and soared. And the intrinsic weight that Banryū itself carried, under the infusion of his yōki, was amplified more than double again.
What was the essence of the power of gods and buddhas? It was weight. The weight of condensed faith, that could crush all things supernatural into nothing. The reason Shibata Katsuie's great axe had swept aside everything in its path, was because it was heavy.
So heavy that even the air itself was crushed beneath it. But, Banryū was heavier. This greatsword, even before it had become a demon artifact, had required three fully grown, powerfully built men just to lift it.
Now, laden with accumulated grudges, yōki, and osore, and with the doubled amplification of the Valor Talent, it was no longer the weight of a single mountain.
It was the weight of ten. The power of gods and buddhas suppressed all things supernatural through the weight of faith. But Banryū, with the sheer, physical, absolute mass condensed from yōki, could, in turn, suppress that very weight. Countering weight with weight. Crashing mountain against mountain.
Shinji stood between Imagawa Yoshimoto and Shibata Katsuie. The demon mask coalesced upon his face. The crimson light seeping through its gaps intertwined with the dark violet yōki faintly bleeding from Banryū's pale blade.
He did not look at Yoshimoto. He only looked at the mounted Shibata Katsuie. The corner of his mouth beneath the half-demon mask shifted slightly. He did not speak. Yet the world around him was already frozen in shock and terror.
Yoshimoto knelt on the ground. She lifted her head and stared at that gray silhouette that had suddenly appeared before her.
His white, flowing hair drifted faintly in the lingering aftermath of the lightning. His broad shoulders blocked her entire field of vision. And the greatsword gripped in his right hand, its blade nearly matched his own height, pale and impossibly thick, like a broken rampart torn from the depths of the earth.
Yet he held it single-handed, as light as though it weighed nothing at all. Her hands were still trembling. But her heart, had suddenly grown still. She knew, of course, whose silhouette that was.
She also remembered what Taigen Sessai had once said. At the most perilous moment, someone will pull you back.
She knew exactly who Taigen Sessai had meant. And now, that person had come. He had truly come.