Kōbe Hikaru had always understood one thing.
The humans of this world were not weak.
The turbid vapors of heaven and earth sank and congealed into yōkai; monsters and demons infested the mountains and wilds, and for centuries they had waxed and waned. By ordinary reasoning, humans—beings with no yōkai aura, no power of transformation—should have been shoved to the very bottom of the food chain.
But the truth was precisely the opposite.
The castles were in their hands. The land was in their hands. Order—even the broken, fractured order of the Warring States chaos—was still in their hands.
Since crossing over into this world, he had seen far too many beings that proved this point.
Kikyō needed no elaboration. When her Sacred Arrow flew loose from a fully drawn bow, even a high-tier yōkai of the Qualitative Transformation level—one bordering on great yōkai rank, like the twelve-mutation Kibōmaru—would, if not for dodging and weaving on pure speed, almost certainly have been blasted apart in a single strike had it been squarely hit.
She was, in name and in truth, the strongest shrine maiden of the Warring States era, wielding spiritual power fearsome enough to rival a great yōkai.
And beyond that.
Bankotsu of the Band of Seven cut across the killing fields with his Savage Dragon Greatsword slung on his back. That was nothing but a mortal frame, yet in raw strength alone he was fierce enough to hold his own against a Six Mutations yōkai.
Those sorcerers, onmyōji, and demon-slayers scattered across the land varied wildly in quality, but so long as they gathered in numbers, they too could pose enough of a threat to ordinary demons.
All of this was within his expectations.
Human sorcerers capable of contending with yōkai were not rare, and mortal warriors who could cut down monsters with flesh-and-blood bodies were not rare either.
Otherwise, humanity would have gone extinct long ago.
But—
this business of gods and buddhas descending into the world.
That still exceeded what he had anticipated.
Uesugi Kenshin proclaimed herself the incarnation of Bishamonten, and the tachi wielded by her maiden warrior Kakizaki Kageie could weaken and suppress anything extraordinary.
Takeda Shingen proclaimed herself the reincarnation of Fudō Myō-ō, and the stone hammer swung by her subordinate Yamagata Masakage could bind anything that was not human.
Both harbored within their bodies a special power that his System could detect as a "conquerable target."
That was not yōkai aura, nor spiritual power.
They called it the power of a divine artifact.
If all of this were true—
if this world truly had precedents of gods and buddhas descending in the flesh—
then wasn't it rather hard to explain how great yōkai who had lived for centuries could still run rampant everywhere?
Fortunately.
Judging from the exchange just now, the situation was not so hopeless.
Kakizaki Kageie's tachi could indeed suppress everything extraordinary, yet her very existence had still been cut down by a single stroke of Kōbe Hikaru's blade.
Yamagata Masakage's stone hammer could indeed nail a target in place, yet that immovable binding had still been forcibly torn free by his Thunder-Sinew Razor-Body.
If the divine artifact in Bishamonten's hand had truly manifested, if the implement gripped by Fudō Myō-ō had personally descended and taken form—he probably wouldn't have been able to muster even the thought of resistance.
But those maiden warriors were clearly not the gods themselves, nor the divine artifacts themselves.
Merely incarnations.
Constructs no better than fragments.
Splinters of the power of a god-buddha's vessel, lodged within a human body.
Strong—but with a ceiling.
Knowing that much was enough.
The forest of bone still stood.
White bone spikes towered over the plain, splitting the battlefield in two.
Dusk was thickening, and the afterglow on the horizon had dwindled to a single streak of dim gold, spilling across the charred grass and the scattered fragments of iron armor.
To the north.
The Hōjō army, having lost its commander, did not collapse.
A few remaining generals and the Hōjō clan's chief retainer swiftly took over command, and the ranks drew in and pulled back in orderly fashion. Spearmen in front, archers bringing up the rear, cavalry fanning out on both wings to guard the flanks.
Unhurried, unpanicked.
The Hōjō clan's military discipline was solid indeed.
Even with their commander carried off tucked under the arm of a woman in red armor, these soldiers still maintained their formation.
The triple-scale banner receded gradually into the dusk, until at last it vanished behind the ridgeline of the northern hills.
They were going to retrieve their lord.
The Takeda Red Guard had vanished even earlier.
Not even a shadow of that great Fūrinkazan banner remained to be seen.
The Imagawa clan's line had likewise contracted by more than half—stabbed in the rear. Although the Takeda cavalry had gone, the rearguard defending the back had taken heavy losses, and morale had slipped along with them.
But Imagawa Yoshimoto herself had not withdrawn.
She dismounted once more at the edge of the forest of bone, her movements a touch crisper than before.
Probably because, having weathered the Takeda Red Guard's ambush, that pampered, effortless composure had been shaken loose somewhat, replaced by a more practical sense of urgency.
But the smile on her face had not changed.
And on the whole battlefield, the only two left who could still hold a conversation were the pair of them.
"Gone, aren't they."
Imagawa Yoshimoto watched those banners receding to the north, her voice still carrying the lingering trace of that great laugh from before.
"Ujiyasu got carried off tucked under someone's arm… ah, that scene… I really should have brought a painter along—"
She wanted to laugh again, but held it back.
Because Kōbe Hikaru was looking at her.
The gaze beneath the crimson oni mask had settled upon her.
But it was not looking at her face.
Nor at the figure faintly visible beneath the layer upon layer of her jūnihitoe—though that slender waist and the silhouette wrapped in sumptuous fabric were indeed hard to overlook.
It merely traveled from top to bottom, then from bottom to top.
No gaze of admiration.
No hostility either.
…only a gaze of "confirmation."
Imagawa Yoshimoto noticed his gaze.
Her smile stiffened for a moment.
For a daimyō to be sized up like this—whether the other party was human or yōkai—was not a pleasant experience.
Especially when, after that gaze swept over her, what it revealed was neither awe nor covetousness, but—
disappointment.
Disappointment, brimming and full.
The corner of Imagawa Yoshimoto's mouth twitched.
She was no fool either.
When the Takeda Red Guard had charged the ranks just now, she had seen with perfect clarity the power of the stone hammer in that red-haired maiden warrior's hand.
And she was fully aware of the many reports of the Uesugi clan marching south to purge yōkai.
Now Kōbe Hikaru was looking at her with that kind of gaze—
"Stop looking."
The hem of her jūnihitoe kimono trailed in the evening wind, her dark long hair blown against the side of her face. She reached up and swept it aside, revealing eyes that no longer smiled.
"On my side, I don't have that monster from Kai and Echigo."
Kōbe Hikaru withdrew his gaze.
Indeed, she did not.
There was not a trace of any extraordinary aura about Imagawa Yoshimoto.
Not spiritual power, not yōkai aura, and no so-called power of a divine artifact anywhere around her.
She was thoroughly, utterly, ordinarily human.
A commonplace daimyō with no extraordinary power whatsoever beyond scheming and ambition.
So against the monster's night raid from the Takeda side, she could not hold.
So if she met the Uesugi's yōkai-purging army bearing down on her, she would in all likelihood have no choice but to take a detour around it.
So all the more, she would not shrink from raising an army of two thousand and pushing deep into another domain's territory, all just to pull him—this yōkai—under her banner.
Because in this Warring States era, where the incarnations of gods and buddhas walked the earth—
a daimyō with no maiden warrior born of a divine artifact under her command, facing an opponent who possessed one, was exactly this powerless.
No matter how many soldiers, no matter how deep the strategy—it could not fill in that chasm.
So…
You have no divine artifact.
No wonder you'd lose to that Oda Nobunaga.
Kōbe Hikaru grumbled inwardly to himself.
Granted, that should be a matter for later, and granted, this world's history had already been rendered utterly unrecognizable—but if that being who styled himself "the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven" also possessed some kind of extraordinary power, just like the Takeda and the Uesugi—
then Imagawa Yoshimoto's downfall at Okehazama would be far more than a simple matter of overwhelming numbers or tactical blunders.
It would be the fundamental gap between "having" and "not having."
Of course, these words he would not say aloud.
Because the expression on the face of this lord of Suruga Province before him was already ugly enough.
With Hōjō Ujiyasu already carried off by the Takeda, there was no need for him to fall out with yet another Warring States daimyō.
Not that he feared it, mind you.
After all, this one had no power to keep him in check… wait. No power to keep him in check?
Something stirred inexplicably in Kōbe Hikaru's heart.
Compared to the Hōjō, who were allied with the Takeda—the Imagawa side seemed rather more… suitable?
"So then."
Imagawa Yoshimoto spoke up at once as well, lowering her voice further.
She lifted her head, gazing at that crimson oni mask.
Her petite, slender figure stood in the dusk, the hem of her jūnihitoe kimono dragging across the charred grass, the golden butterfly ornament in her hair glinting faintly in the last of the daylight.
There was no more languor in her eyes.
Only earnestness.
"This is the very reason I need you."
"The Takeda have Fudō Myō-ō. The Uesugi have Bishamonten."
"And I, Imagawa—"
She paused for a beat, then drew a deep breath, forcing down the displeasure within her, yet still gritting her teeth somewhat as she continued: "—have Nothing at All."
The words were spoken with candor.
Candor enough to be somewhat surprising.
A daimyō, in front of an outsider, admitting that she had nothing.
That took nerve, and it took clear-sightedness enough.
"But I have castles, I have soldiers and horses, I have provisions, I have the three richest provinces of the Tōkaidō in the whole Kantō region."
Imagawa Yoshimoto took a step forward.
Her petite figure reached only to Kōbe Hikaru's chest, and she tilted her face up to look at him, yet the momentum in those eyes seemed not to yield an inch to that hammer-swinging Takeda fierce general of moments ago.
"What I lack is only a single blade—a blade that can cut open a god."
Her slender fingers lifted, pointing at him.
Steady, without the slightest tremble.
"And you—you are that blade. You are a god who can stand against the gods."
Kōbe Hikaru looked at her.
Silent for an instant.
The Sakagami Ketsura in his arms gave a shudder, as though wanting to offer a comment, and he pressed it back down with his yōkai power.
"Benefits. I want more specific terms."
He spoke up.
Rather blunt and rude.
But Imagawa Yoshimoto smiled instead.
This was exactly the line she had been waiting for.
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