Within the dream.
Flames.
Boundless, endless flames.
The figure of a young woman stood atop a stretch of ruins, watching her own castle crumble into ashes.
She wore a deep-purple kosode kimono, her long black hair loose across her shoulders, stained all over with dust and bloodstains.
Her petite frame looked especially frail amid the firelight, and that exquisite yet somewhat gloomy face was, at this moment, brimming with despair.
Hōjō Ujiyasu.
The third-generation lord of the Hōjō clan, known to the world as the Lion of Sagami.
Though she was a woman, she was renowned throughout the world for her cunning.
But compared with Imagawa Yoshimoto, she in fact harbored no ambition to unify all under heaven—she wished only to become the master of the Kantō, to carve out and hold her own domain, and to that end she would stop at nothing.
It was said she was extremely fond of defending castles—standing atop the ramparts watching the enemies outside starve and freeze, she would feel a heartfelt delight.
It was said she was the most unreliable of allies—when a friendly force was pursuing the enemy, she might suddenly stab them in the back.
It was said she fought only the battles she was certain to win; any campaign that carried risk, she would abandon without the slightest hesitation.
But at this moment—
"No…"
She murmured in a low voice, watching the castle before her burn, watching her people die.
And she could do nothing at all.
This was the scene she feared most.
Not defeat, nor death.
But to watch, wide-eyed, as everything she had protected was reduced to nothing, and yet be powerless to act.
The thing she, Hōjō Ujiyasu, had taken the greatest pride in all her life was the impregnability of Odawara Castle.
But now, that castle was collapsing before her very eyes.
"Odawara Castle… my castle…"
She knelt upon the ground, plunging both hands into the ashes.
The flames blazed ever fiercer, the wave of heat rushing at her face, scorching her skin.
Pain.
Real pain.
Not like a dream.
"Damn it…"
She clenched her teeth.
Hōjō Ujiyasu was no ordinary person.
She knew this was an illusory realm; she knew there was a yōkai working its mischief.
But she—could not break free.
Those golden scales of powder coiled around her consciousness like chains, leaving her unable to wake, able only to relive despair over and over within this endlessly looping nightmare.
"My lord——"
Screams came from nearby.
Her retainers fell one after another, devoured by flames, buried beneath the ruins.
She wanted to save them.
But her body would not move, as though she had been nailed in place by something.
"If that stinking woman Takeda were to see me looking like this…"
Takeda Shingen, whose real name was Takeda Harunobu, the Tiger of Kai—her ally in name, but in truth her mortal foe.
If she were to let her see this wretched, sorry state of hers…
"Absolutely not."
Hōjō Ujiyasu clenched her teeth.
She tried to stand, but her legs remained as heavy as if they had been filled with lead.
And just then——
"So this is…"
An unfamiliar voice came from within the flames: "the thing you fear most?"
Hōjō Ujiyasu jerked her head up.
Amid the flames, a figure was walking toward her.
Gray robes, pale long hair.
Lit by the firelight, that face was pale to the point of being almost sickly, the brows and eyes handsome yet utterly cold and stern, carrying an indescribable bleak chill.
But what drew the eye most were those eyes.
Crimson-red, inhuman eyes.
"You… who are you…"
Hōjō Ujiyasu's voice carried wariness.
"I came to save you, since I was passing by."
That figure put it very simply.
"Save me?"
Hōjō Ujiyasu sneered, clearly disbelieving: "In my dream, you say something like that?"
"Why don't you go ahead and say you're a god descended into the mortal world?"
That figure seemed to ponder for an instant, then said: "More or less."
"Though not a god—an oni."
Hōjō Ujiyasu was taken aback for a moment.
This fellow… was he serious?
"My name is Kōbe Hikaru."
That figure went on: "I've just come over from the Imagawa's side, where I cut down a Thunder Beast along the way."
"Now I've come to kill this moth that has trapped all of you."
Hōjō Ujiyasu's expression changed.
Imagawa.
Thunder Beast.
Imagawa Yoshimoto, that woman she went to war with now and again.
These past few days, she had indeed faintly heard some news—that the Imagawa clan had come under attack by a yōkai, lightning running rampant within their castle, the hearts of the people gripped by panic.
She had even mocked that woman before, never imagining that tonight she herself would fall victim.
And now, by the look of it.
Over on the Imagawa's side, they had, on the contrary, escaped their predicament?
"You—"
"Enough idle talk."
Kōbe Hikaru cut her off: "Do you want to wake up?"
Hōjō Ujiyasu looked at him.
Those crimson eyes of his were especially piercing in the firelight.
"Of course I do."
She said—and she could not lie about it, either.
"Then get ready."
The corner of Kōbe Hikaru's mouth curled up: "What comes next will be a little loud."
As his words fell, he raised his hand.
In his hand there had appeared a single purple horn.
That was the Thunder Beast's horn, the core of the power of thunder.
Hōjō Ujiyasu's pupils abruptly contracted.
She felt it.
The power contained within that horn—violent, blazing, like thunder that meant to tear everything apart.
"You——"
BOOM!!!
Thunder erupted from the horn.
Not within the dream—in reality.
In that instant, Kōbe Hikaru's consciousness returned to his true body.
He stood within the main keep of Odawara Castle, holding the thunder horn, raised high overhead.
And all around him——
Countless black threads had already spread across the entire great hall.
Those were Sakagami Ketsura's hairs.
Just as it had been at the Imagawa castle.
Blood-mist as the medium, hair as the conductor.
And still, with the thunder horn as the source.
Used to conduct the electricity.
"Come."
Kōbe Hikaru said in a low voice: "Let me see just where you're hiding."
Thunder surged out from the horn, coursing along those black hairs, spreading in every direction.
Zzzt, zzzt, zzzt—
Arcs of electricity leapt through the air, lighting up the entire castle.
Those golden scales of powder suffusing the air began to burn under the impact of the lightning.
Crackling, popping sounds rose one after another.
Like fireworks.
And also like—the howling of a yōkai being driven out.
The sound thundered like a quake, and moreover, from reality, along the countless threads, it passed into Hōjō Ujiyasu's dream, setting her dream to trembling, and setting the dreams of the countless people within the castle to wavering as well.
They had not yet awoken.
But that dream-realm had already been torn open—from the outside in, and then from the inside out.
Dreams are electricity.
And so, a more powerful electricity could naturally rip them open, tear them to shreds.
This was the very reason Kōbe Hikaru had entered the dreams.
What he had entered was never merely Hōjō Ujiyasu's dream, but the dreams of everyone.
He meant to shatter the dream-realm, and moreover to harm no one, and to leave behind no grudge-aura.
By this means—it was most fitting of all!
"Jiii——!!"
A sharp, shrill cry came at once from on high.
Kōbe Hikaru turned his head.
And at last he saw it too.
An enormous moth surfaced in the vast night sky, its golden wings spreading a full ten zhang wide, covered all over with eerie eye-shaped patterns.
Those patterns glimmered with a bewitching, demonic light under the moon, like countless eyes gazing down upon the mortal world.
Gakimaru.
With the dream-realm shaken, it had at last been forced out.
And without the slightest hesitation, it sought to flee.
But—
"Why do you think I spent the time entering dreams to lure you out?"
Kōbe Hikaru smiled: "It was precisely to set this up for you."
Those black hairs were not only within the main keep.
They had already spread across the entire castle.
Spread beyond the castle, spread across every single path by which Gakimaru might flee.
"Sakagami Ketsura."
Kōbe Hikaru called out.
"Got it!"
A reply came from within his robes, and those hairs tightened all at once.
Like countless hands, they seized—up in the vault of heaven—Gakimaru's wings, antennae, and abdomen.
"Aaangh——!"
Gakimaru struggled, golden scale-powder gushing out frantically, but the moment that powder spurted forth, it was burned to ash by the lightning.
Thunder followed the hairs, pouring into its body.
"Jiii——!!"
Gakimaru shrieked.
Kōbe Hikaru had already leapt up, arriving right before it.
Muramasa left its sheath, the blade's gleam like a streak of white silk.
"Troublesome as its abilities are, in terms of physical constitution it's far weaker than the Thunder Beast."
He said.
Each has their own field of specialty—and so it is even for yōkai.
Above all, Gakimaru was in essence a yōkai transformed from a moth; its physical constitution could by no means be called strong!
As long as its scale-powder was countered.
As long as, with the Thunder Beast's thunder—in no way inferior to its own essence—he scorched its mental illusory realm.
The rest would no longer be a problem.
This was, fundamentally, not Kōbe Hikaru crossing blades with it by his own strength alone.
He was borrowing power.
Borrowing the Thunder Beast's power, after its death!
This, too, was something that only Kōbe Hikaru, who possessed the favourability system, could accomplish: as long as there was even a little favourability, then the dead objects in his hand would cooperate with his actions to a minimal degree—at the very least, would not resist his control.
And so, with that.
Another stroke of the blade.
Gakimaru's head flew off.
The golden scale-powder burst apart in the air, like a belated display of fireworks.
And then it went out.
Within the castle.
Countless slumbering people opened their eyes at the same moment.
The nightmare was over.
The inner-keep castle keep.
Hōjō Ujiyasu jolted upright from the tatami, gasping for breath in great gulps.
Cold sweat had soaked through her garments, her long hair clinging in disarray to her face.
She had had a dream.
But.
Was that a dream?
Rumble!
Outside the window, thunder came crashing down.
Blood-mist hung vast and hazy, and within the mist there seemed to stand a figure upon a high place.
Like a god, like a demon.
And more than that—an oni of the all-encompassing void.
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