The northern border of Musashi Province. The southern high ground.
Half a day had passed since the three hundred Uesugi elites and the two thousand Hōjō soldiers had merged. The northern army had not immediately launched a full assault. They, too, were waiting—waiting for the flanking forces on both wings to complete their encirclement.
Kenshin saw it clearly.
From the high ground, the formation of the three thousand northern rabble to the north was loose, their banners chaotic. Clearly, they were a motley coalition cobbled together from multiple provinces.
In purely infantry combat, her three hundred could devour any single contingent among them.
The problem was in the sky.
Four hundred moth demons circled above the northern army. Golden scale-powder rained down like a curtain, withering and curling every blade of grass and leaf it touched. Occasionally, a few would dive down to probe, only to be driven back by the divine-artifact fragment light of the warrior maidens, yet they would quickly circle back.
As demons, they were in no hurry.
They only needed to wait for the humans to tire.
"The eastern wing has arrived," a warrior maiden beside her warned in a low voice.
Kenshin turned her head.
On the eastern ridge, roughly fifteen hundred soldiers from the Shimotsuke direction had already crossed the ridgeline and were maneuvering southward along the mountain paths.
There was also movement to the west.
A force of similar scale from the Kōzuke direction had appeared at the other end of the hills.
A three-pronged encirclement.
Three thousand in the front to pin them down.
Fifteen hundred on each wing to circle behind.
Simple, direct, and the most effective form of envelopment, forcing the enemy to fight on two fronts, unable to defend both head and tail.
"Can the Hōjō hold the flanks?" Kenshin asked.
Ujiyasu's two thousand Sagami soldiers had detached five hundred to block the eastern wing's flanking route. Using the narrow mountain terrain, layered spear formations plugged the Shimotsuke force at the pass.
It was an ugly fight.
But they had, indeed, held.
Hōjō Ujiyasu sat upon the command platform at the rear. Her deep purple kosode wrapped around her delicate frame. She clutched a round fan in her hand, slapping it rhythmically against her palm.
"What about the western wing?!"
"Eight hundred have already been sent to intercept—"
"Not enough. Add another five… three hundred."
Ujiyasu's teeth ground audibly.
She was not skilled at war. She had never been.
Her strengths lay in defense and administration. On the battlefield, matters of blade against blade and spear against spear, she was far inferior to the Uesugi.
But she had come anyway.
Because if she didn't, Musashi would fall.
And if Musashi fell, Sagami could not be held.
Of course, more importantly, he was here.
This was a rare opportunity to prove herself.
No matter what, Hōjō Ujiyasu could never sit idly by and watch that Demon God be stolen away by someone else, especially by Uesugi Kenshin!
Meanwhile at the front.
Kenshin drew her blade.
The northern army's first wave had finally launched.
Three hundred ashigaru surged up the slope with bamboo spears, their battle cries shaking the heavens.
Kenshin did not use the military-momentum entwining.
That was the ultimate technique, but it was also a duelist's skill, meant for one-on-one combat against a single champion.
As a human, Uesugi Kenshin's individual combat power could match demons. With military momentum entwined, she could even contend against extremely high-ranking demons.
Yet she lacked a grand, wide-scale power capable of destroying an entire army in a single blow.
Three hundred against three hundred.
She used only the most basic crescent-wheel rotation.
Front rank engaged.
Flanks enveloped.
Rear rank filled the gaps.
Cycle and repeat.
Six minutes.
The northern army's first wave was crushed, leaving over seventy corpses as they retreated.
Zero casualties for the Uesugi.
That was the difference between the elites of Echigo and a rabble of conscripts.
But the second wave came immediately after.
This time, it was not three hundred.
It was eight hundred.
The moths overhead dove simultaneously.
Golden scale-powder mixed with shrieking cries poured down from the sky.
Kenshin lifted her head.
Her violet pupils reflected the shadows of countless moth wings.
The warrior maidens raised their weapons and unleashed the power of their divine-artifact fragments.
A golden curtain of light spread open, blocking the scale-powder of demonic energy, yet it could not block the physical impact of the moth demons.
Several ox-sized moths shattered the edge of the light curtain and dove straight for the rear ranks of the spear formation.
Kenshin's blade swept from her left hip in a horizontal slash.
A golden arc flashed.
Two giant moths had their wings severed at the root, their bodies crashing to the ground and tumbling twice before being stabbed to death by the rear-rank spearmen.
But more moths poured through the gap.
Ten.
Twenty.
Thirty—
Human momentum could suppress demons.
Military spirit could counter demonic energy.
Faith could pin down the very bodies of demons.
However, that was something achieved through numbers.
Ten hunters to slay.
A hundred to encircle and kill.
A thousand in formation to cut down…
First suppress the demonic energy with military momentum, only then could one kill.
And now, the number of demons even exceeded the Uesugi army.
They, too, were a swarm.
They had demonic energy.
And they had osore!
A hundred thousand banners could slay even the King of Hell, but they could not extinguish a hundred thousand, or several hundred thousand, ghost soldiers.
The spear formation finally began to waver.
Some ashigaru had their arms seared by the scale-powder, screaming as they dropped their spears. Others were bowled over by the air currents from beating moth wings, tumbling down the slope.
Kenshin stood at the center of the formation, cutting down diving moth after diving moth.
But she was only one person.
A three-hundred-sixty-degree sky, she could not seal it all.
"Lady Kenshin! The western wing has been broken through!"
The messenger's voice was thick with tears.
The flanking force from the Kōzuke direction had bypassed the Hōjō interception line and was now driving into the rear from the southwest.
The three-pronged encirclement was nearly complete.
Kenshin's violet pupils swept across the battlefield.
She was calm.
But she truly could not find a way to break the situation.
Purely human against human, she could win.
But the combination of humans and demons, two thousand three hundred soldiers against a coalition of hundreds of demons, was too much to bear.
Yet Uesugi Kenshin was still not panicking.
Just as Hōjō Ujiyasu, sitting in the rear camp, though visibly flustered, showed not the slightest intention of fleeing.
Because there was no need to panic.
Because they knew, the situation still held a turning point.
And sure enough, at that very moment, the sky split.
From the southern horizon, a bolt of violet-white lightning cleaved through the gray clouds.
The rift tore from south to north.
Majestic demonic energy and thunder intertwined, pouring down from the fissure.
Everyone looked up.
The northern ashigaru froze in their tracks.
The cries of the moth demons changed, from the shrieks of attack to the trembling quavers of terror.
Beneath the sundered sky, black clouds rolled in.
But they were not true clouds.
They were demonic clouds, formed purely by an excess of demonic energy condensing into shape.
Within the black clouds, countless silhouettes emerged.
Large and small.
Tall and short.
Scaled, furred, horned, winged.
Nearly a thousand demons surged forth from the black clouds, spreading across the entire sky in a fan-shaped formation.
At the front, the Yuki-onna, Oikawa, rode the wind.
Her long hair, under the influence of demonic power, had been dyed a pale blue, the lower ends entwined with the black of osore. Her ice-blue pupils, ringed with black, swept across the ground below.
Under the blessing of osore, Oikawa had undergone a "transformation" compared to her original self.
Her plain kimono billowed.
Everywhere she passed, the temperature plummeted.
The wings of the moth demons froze with frost, and they plummeted from the sky.
Behind her, demons of the snowfields clustered thickly.
On the right wing, the kamaitachi's silver-white silhouette was faster than the wind.
Silver arcs of light swept through the air almost simultaneously, countless moth demons were sliced into fragments.
Blood rained from the heavens.
The messengers of the wind flanked him on either side.
On the left wing, the great kappa emerged from beneath the black clouds, its two-to-three-meter-tall jade-green scaled body towering in the sky.
Its mouth opened, and a jet of water wrapped in demonic energy blasted forth, scattering an entire row of moth demons.
Mist spread around him.
Countless aquatic demons floated in the sky as though swimming through a river, pushing waves of vapor forward.
At the rear, Tanuki Jūsaburō led over thirty mid-tier demons to finish the job.
The Fourth and Fifth Transformation lesser demons pounced upon the falling moth demons, tearing and rending.
The Hyakki Yakō.
One hundred and three named demons with their own osore, leading the several hundred demons they themselves had gathered or drawn in through osore, nearly a thousand in total.
Sallied forth in full force.
And at the very front of the black clouds, a figure stood.
Gray robes.
Flowing hair.
Three blades at his waist and a greatsword upon his back.
Faint bone markings at his temples.
Crimson demon eyes gazing down upon the earth.
That, without question, was Shinji.
It was the Demon God of the East.
The Lord of a Hundred Demons.
He had led his Hyakki Yakō, a thousand demons strong, here under the cover of night.
They did not linger.
His gaze merely swept across the battlefield, over the northern army, the moth legion, the three-pronged encirclement.
One glance, and he had seen it all.
What followed next was—
"The human army at the front, leave it to Kenshin and the Hōjō."
Shinji's voice fell from above, carrying across the entire battlefield.
"The demons...."
The skeletal frame of the Shura Form extended from his back.
White bone and violet thunder wove together amidst the black clouds, forming a colossal silhouette.
"....are mine!"
The words rose.
The words fell.
The blade came forth.
Kyokui: Hagun.
Extreme Will: Army Breaker.
A single horizontal slash.
An arc of crimson and white light swept across the sky like spreading dusk.
Of the four hundred moth demons, fewer than three hundred remained, scattered across several meters of sky.
Beneath that single slash, their wings ignited.
Their bodies froze and shattered.
Like paper ash, they drifted down from the heavens.
The sky cleared.
The northern army's morale shattered in that single instant.
Soldiers without demons to shield them, most of those men were nothing more than farmers holding weapons.
Of the six thousand, only a third could be called true soldiers.
Only one in ten were professional warriors, low-ranking samurai.
Kenshin's crescent-wheel formation began to turn once more.
The Hōjō spear formations closed ranks once more.
The war of humans, returned to humans.
Kenshin lifted her head, watching the gray-and-white figure streak past through the black clouds.
Her violet pupils reflected the lightning.
The sound of her heartbeat drowned out the battle cries of the field.
Her lips moved, but no sound emerged, as though chanting sutras, yet the words came out so faint she could not even hear them herself.
The girl's heart pounded like a war drum.
Too loud.
Too heavy.
Far, far too heavy.
Ujiyasu stood at the rear, her round fan frozen midair.
Her deep purple kimono snapped in the wind.
Her expression shifted as well, into blankness.
And from blankness into something indescribable.
"Demon God… Mikoto-no-Mitama…" she murmured, reciting that divine title, the one she herself had created.
Yet though she had named it, though she had been the one to submit the "petition" to Kyōto, Hōjō Ujiyasu had always understood: the one before her could claim such a title not because of her, but because of his own strength.
It had never been a mere title.
It was fact.
The fact of one who commanded a hundred demons.
The Lord of Specters, sovereign over wandering souls.
It was truly… "Stirring."
No wonder that shrewd Imagawa had thrown herself at him of her own accord.
And she herself, having been one step too late back then, was she doomed to be forever late?
Though so much time had passed, Hōjō Ujiyasu once again felt that inexplicable, unwilling resentment.
The black clouds continued northward.
The Hyakki Yakō crossed the northern border of Musashi.
Crossed into Shimotsuke.
And drove straight into Mutsu.
Their objective....
Kurokawa Castle.