Chapter 215: Oda Nobuna: I Stood Up, and I Was Instantly Killed
Although she had long anticipated that Kishin Hikaru—the demon she had strived to cooperate with and win over—was the ultimate trump card her teacher left behind, the reality of his arrival still struck her breathless.
Imagawa Yoshimoto knelt on the muddy ground. She tilted her head up, her gaze fixed entirely on that grey-robed back.
Her heartbeat hammered against her ribs. It was the frantic rhythm of finding survival in a desperate situation, the sudden burst of a solitary spark in pitch-black darkness. More than that, an inexplicable wave of deep satisfaction and joy washed over her.
He had come.
He had actually come to save her.
She watched him, completely frozen.
The lingering lightning dissipated, leaving a hot wind to gently flutter his grey robes. His pale hair cascaded down to his waist. In his right hand, he casually held a pale giant sword, a weapon as tall as a grown man.
His shoulders were broad and thick, yet his figure wasn't overly burly—just incredibly tall and unyielding.
That single back separated her from death. An absolute, impenetrable wall.
The feeling was deeply, deeply reassuring.
A short distance away, Shibata Katsuie finally managed to steady her startled warhorse.
The black steed trotted in anxious circles over the churned mud. Katsuie pulled the reins tight with one hand and hoisted her massive great axe back onto her shoulder with the other. Her amber eyes locked onto the sudden intruder.
Dark purple Yao Qi faintly oozed from the pale blade of Banryu, reflecting clearly in Katsuie's pupils.
She saw exactly what flowed across that sword.
It was Yao Qi so dense it practically condensed into a physical substance. It carried a suffocating Turbid Qi, a dread so heavy it felt as though an entire mountain had been violently thrust into the earth.
That weight far exceeded the divine power of gods and buddhas currently blessing her great axe.
"Who are you..."
Before Katsuie could finish her demand, Kobe Hikaru moved.
He offered no preamble.
Thunder Muscle activated at maximum output. The mud beneath his feet detonated into a shower of debris. His entire figure blurred into an interlaced afterimage of purple and white lightning, hurtling directly toward the mounted warrior.
Banryu dragged across the ground during his explosive acceleration. The pale blade plowed through the earth like wet paper, carving a trench three feet wide in its wake.
Katsuie reacted with terrifying speed. The great axe swung down from her shoulder, its blade sweeping in a brutal horizontal arc. The sheer force crushed the air within a thirty-foot radius, generating visible, distorted ripples.
It was a strike blessed by divine power. A blow capable of shattering solid iron, splitting the earth, and cleaving an armored samurai cleanly in half.
Banryu met it head-on.
The pale giant sword and the grey iron axe collided in mid-air.
This time, a sound erupted.
A dull, deafening roar echoed across the battlefield, mimicking the collision of two mountains.
A shockwave exploded outward from the point of impact. The muddy ground beneath them fractured into a massive spiderweb pattern. Gravel, dirt, and withered grass within a ten-step radius were blasted into the sky.
The divine weight of faith clashed against the absolute mass of Banryu's condensed Yao Qi.
Faith naturally suppressed the extraordinary. However, Banryu carried more than just demonic energy—it possessed pure, unadulterated physical weight.
The raw strength granted by Hikaru's thirty points of favorability, multiplied by his Courageous Strength talent, combined with the massive weight amplification born from the death qi and resentment of Banryu's hundred-man and hundred-demon slaughters.
The result of these two immense forces colliding was immediate and absolute.
Katsuie's great axe was violently deflected.
It was forced backward, overpowered by a vastly superior weight.
The grey iron axe slid harshly across Banryu's pale edge, shrieking with the sound of tearing metal. The violent shock sent a paralyzing numbness shooting up Katsuie's arm. The webbing between her thumb and forefinger split open, spraying blood. The great axe ripped itself from her grip, tumbling wildly into the air.
She and her warhorse were nearly thrown backward by the sheer kinetic force.
Yet Banryu's residual momentum had not even stopped.
And this was merely the result of Hikaru holding back.
The moment he deflected the axe, his left hand moved. Onikiri unsheathed with a vicious hiss.
A dark red arc of light sliced upward, radiating the scorching heat of the Blood-Fire Transformation, aiming directly for Katsuie's exposed ribs.
She desperately tried to block with her bare hands, but she was a fraction of a second too slow.
Onikiri's tip grazed the side of her breastplate. The silver armor tore open like fragile parchment, slicing right through her battle skirt beneath.
Blood sprayed into the air.
The wound wasn't deep, but the searing pain was intense. Katsuie let out a muffled groan, her body jerking backward in the saddle.
Hikaru gave her absolutely no room to breathe.
Banryu swept horizontally in a brutal backhand. The pale blade, dripping with Yao Qi so heavy it warped the air, clipped the warhorse's front hooves.
The black steed let out a miserable neigh as its front legs buckled completely.
Katsuie plummeted from the saddle. She slammed her bare hands into the gravel to stop herself from eating dirt, ending up kneeling on one knee. Her amber eyes glared fiercely at the grey figure looming above her.
Before she could spit out a single curse.
Onikiri pressed flush against her neck.
One rise, one fall. It didn't even constitute a full exchange of blows.
The dark red edge rested less than an inch from her skin. The blistering heat of the Blood-Fire Transformation caused the fine hairs on her neck to curl and singe instantly.
She felt the terrifying presence radiating from that blade.
More Yao Qi.
Yao Qi so dense it felt like liquid lead.
Just a few feet away, the pale giant sword he had casually stabbed into the earth continued to hum. A heavy, low-frequency vibration that sounded like a mountain drawing breath.
That monstrous weapon had just smashed through her divine artifact power through sheer, brute force.
There was no trickery involved. It wasn't some elemental counter.
He had used pure, overwhelming physical weight to crush the weight of her faith.
"What a... strong demon..." Katsuie ground her teeth together. A bead of sweat rolled down her temple, dropping onto the scorching blade and evaporating with a sharp hiss.
From Banryu deflecting her great axe head-on, to Onikiri tearing through her armor.
Three seconds.
In a genuine life-or-death struggle, this didn't even count as half a clash.
It was a crushing defeat. An absolute, obvious annihilation.
Her divine artifact power was not weak. Even among the elite forces of the various daimyo, including the heavyweights of the Takeda and Uesugi clans, she stood near the apex.
Even across the entire Sengoku Period, demons included, Shibata Katsuie was a force to be reckoned with.
The problem was simply the man standing in front of her.
An undead samurai with the body of a demon, wielding demonic swords, using raw weight to shatter her defenses. He had broken her head-on.
With Onikiri resting against her throat, Katsuie clenched her fists. She was entirely unwilling to accept this, yet she remained perfectly still.
She knew moving meant instant death.
Hikaru lowered his demonic eyes, his jaw parting slightly to speak.
Hoofbeats.
From behind the northeastern hills, the dense, rhythmic thud of galloping hooves echoed across the battlefield.
Another troop was approaching.
It was a small detachment, no more than a dozen riders.
But the aura radiating from the lead rider caused Hikaru's pupils to constrict violently.
It wasn't the power of a divine artifact.
It wasn't Yao Qi, nor was it standard spiritual power.
It was an energy he had personally encountered before, yet fundamentally different. It felt similar to the divine power of Bishamonten wielded by Uesugi Kenshin, yet twisted... a divine Buddhist power originating from a sacred artifact, but inverted.
What flooded his vision was karma fire.
Lotus-shaped karma fire cascaded down the hillside, expanding outward like a waking leviathan unhinging its jaws.
The very air appeared to ignite.
Appeared to. The flames were not real. They emitted no heat and produced no smoke, yet they triggered the absolute highest level of alarm across all five of Hikaru's senses.
Calling it an illusion felt entirely wrong.
Because his Asura heart skipped a beat.
It genuinely, physically skipped a beat.
The projection of his heart, forged from the fusion of blood-fire and Asura energy, throbbed violently the instant it detected the lotus karma fire.
It reacted like it had found a kindred spirit, yet simultaneously recognized a natural enemy.
That was...
The power of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven.
Hikaru had done his research. He knew exactly who Yoshimoto was facing in this conflict. It was the figure who would later become the legendary Oda Nobunaga—known in this specific world as the girl named Oda Nobuna.
The protagonist of Ambition of Oda Nobuna.
And Oda Nobuna proclaimed herself the living incarnation of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven.
She was Papiyas.
The absolute ruler of the Paranimmita-vasavatti Heaven.
In Buddhist lore, Papiyas was the antithesis of Shakyamuni. The literal incarnation of desire, the origin point of destruction, the sovereign of the highest demonic realm within the three realms and six paths.
This was an entity entirely distinct from, and diametrically opposed to, Bishamonten.
It was pure, unadulterated demonic divinity.
An existence that resided in the same celestial sphere as gods and Buddhas, yet stood in direct opposition to them. A power born from and sustained by raw, condensed desire.
In that split second, Hikaru abandoned all hesitation.
He instantly pulled Onikiri away from Katsuie's neck.
He had fought Uesugi Kenshin, the incarnation of Bishamonten, and had barely survived the overwhelming power of the Dragon of Echigo.
Even ignoring the natural suppression effect, that kind of opponent was easily comparable to an Eighth Transformation demon.
Add the holy suppression into the mix... even with his current upgraded strength, he had to go all out and treat this as a lethal threat.
And so, right then and there.
The Asura Transformation violently erupted around his body. Massive bone spikes tore through his elbows, shoulders, and spine. Crackling thunder filled the empty spaces, weaving together a structure of phantom flesh and blood. A dense film of Yao Qi enveloped the outer shell.
A towering, six-meter-tall Bone-Thunder Giant Body rose from the shattered earth.
Inside the skeletal frame, his four viscera connected in perfect unison.
Heart fire soared. Kidney water settled. Lung metal purified. Liver wood spread.
The fourfold elemental circulation formed a near-perfect closed circuit within the Asura construct. Although it lacked the spleen earth component, causing some Yao Qi to leak, the sheer volume of demonic energy generated in that single instant spiked massively. It rapidly approached, and perhaps even rivaled, the terrifying threshold of the Twelfth Transformation.
Yao Qi was demonic power. It was the Turbid Qi precipitated by a demon's physical form, the absolute origin of their strength.
The sudden, suffocating explosion of Turbid Qi caused everyone on the battlefield to freeze in sheer horror.
The right hand of the Asura construct projected and magnified Onikiri, forming a massive dark red blade within its skeletal grip.
The left hand projected Yomikiri, solidifying an eerie purple Nichirin Blade infused with roaring thunder.
Both blades unleashed their power simultaneously.
The giant Onikiri wrapped itself in the scorching heat of the Blood-Fire Transformation. The giant Yomikiri coated its edge in the Breath of the Demon.
Dark red flames and eerie purple lightning converged directly in front of the Asura construct's chest. Guided by his ultimate martial intent, the two opposing forces compressed, twisted, and merged until they reached a volatile breaking point.
At that exact moment.
The sea of lotus karma fire swept down the hillside. The lead rider charged directly into his line of sight.
She wasn't tall. She rode a fiery red warhorse, dressed in a loose-fitting dark red Kosode kimono layered under a black short haori. Her brilliant golden hair caught the light of the karma fire, burning brightly like a war banner.
Her features were incredibly young, belonging to a girl no older than fifteen or sixteen, with a remarkably delicate face.
But her eyes were wrong.
They were a piercing gold, burning with literal fire. A real flame that shared the exact same origin as the surrounding lotus karma fire.
Hikaru saw her face clearly.
He identified the absolute source of the terrifying karma fire cascading down the hill.
The transmigrator knowledge buried in his mind perfectly overlapped with the scene playing out before him.
But he had absolutely no time to second-guess himself. The karma fire was already breathing down his neck.
The Asura construct crossed its massive arms. The volatile fusion of Sun and Moon blossomed across the twin giant blades.
He unleashed a single, devastating vertical slash.
It carried his ultimate intent: Cloud Cutter.
A strike meant to split the earth and divide the clouds in the sky.
A colossal blade of light, interwoven with dark red fire and silvery-purple lightning, cleaved downward from the front of the Bone-Thunder Giant Body. It effortlessly tore open the curtain of lotus karma fire, the edge angling directly toward the golden-haired girl on horseback.
It struck.
Cleanly, decisively, and without an ounce of resistance.
The blade light entered through her left shoulder and exited cleanly through her right waist.
The golden-haired figure, along with her fiery red warhorse, was violently blasted from the saddle by the sheer kinetic force of the Sun-Moon merging slash.
A mist of blood exploded into the air.
Her body tumbled wildly, flipping twice before violently crashing into the rocky slope of the hill, carving out a deep, bloody trench in the dirt.
The terrifying karma fire completely dissipated the exact instant she was severed.
It popped like a soap bubble.
Like an illusory nightmare vanishing the moment one opens their eyes.
The Asura construct stood frozen in place. The massive arms of the six-meter Bone-Thunder Giant Body remained locked in the follow-through posture of the slash.
Inside the skeletal frame, Hikaru blinked, pausing in complete bewilderment.
That karma fire...
Just seconds ago, the sheer oppressive dread it radiated was so utterly terrifying that his survival instincts had hijacked his brain. He had reflexively deployed the Asura Transformation, redlined his four viscera, and even burned his energy on a Sun-Moon merging strike.
And the result?
She got felled with a single slash?
Even though he considered that strike to be his full strength under normal parameters, it wasn't even his absolute limit.
Slowly, Hikaru looked down.
He stared at the end of the long trench carved into the hillside. The golden-haired girl's body lay twisted and broken, lodged awkwardly in a pile of rubble. Blood gushed freely from the massive diagonal wound running from her left shoulder to her right waist, dyeing her dark red kimono an even darker, wetter crimson.
The lotus karma fire was truly, completely gone.
The air pressure returned to normal.
His Asura heart stopped its frantic connecting.
Dead silence blanketed the battlefield.
The enemy, it seemed, was very much dead.
Hikaru: "...?"
That's it?
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