Chapter 217: The Viper's Wager and the Six-Tusked Phantom
Owari Province, Kiyosu Castle.
To call the structure a castle bordered on a severe exaggeration.
The outer ramparts were heavily mottled with age and neglect, the stone walls crumbling at the corners to expose packed earth beneath. Its defensive moat was so pitifully narrow a grown man could clear it in a single, determined stride. Rising above the decay, the Tenshukaku stood a mere two and a half stories tall. The third floor, abandoned midway through construction due to a severe lack of funds, was simply boarded over with flat timber, making the central keep look like a decapitated watchtower from a distance.
Yet, this dilapidated fortress served as the absolute headquarters of the Oda Clan.
It represented the entirety of their power in Owari, a province that had already bled out half of its former territory.
By the time Shibata Katsuie led her battered, surviving troops back through the gates of Kiyosu Castle, the sky had already bruised into a deep, twilight purple. She rode a borrowed piebald horse, her posture rigid.
Her dismount lacked its usual explosive grace. The vicious gash torn open by the demonic blade, Onikiri, still marred the side of her heavy breastplate. Beneath the sundered armor, her battle skirt was hastily bound with torn cloth strips, the seeped blood having long since oxidized into stiff, dark brown scabs.
The tall, imposing Hime-musha strode through the main gate, her heavy boots thudding against the wooden floorboards. She handled a corridor so narrow that two people would brush shoulders walking abreast, finally sliding open the shoji door leading into the inner citadel.
The room was not empty.
Oda Nobuna was not alone. Three figures knelt in a neat row across the tatami mats of the main keep's hall.
At the very front sat a slender woman draped in a light grey Kosode kimono, a dark blue haori resting carefully over her shoulders. Her deep blue hair was gathered into a low, elegant bun at the nape of her neck, with a few stray strands framing her delicate features. Her eyes held a deep, quiet steadiness that vastly exceeded her apparent age.
Niwa Nagahide.
The grand strategist of the Oda Clan.
Her role under Nobuna mirrored that of Taigen Sessai under Imagawa Yoshimoto. While her seniority and overall prestige across the land fell short of the legendary Black-Robed Prime Minister, she possessed the distinct advantage of youth and ruthless adaptability.
To Nagahide's right sat an even younger girl, perhaps fourteen or fifteen. She wore a tiger-shaped hat over short, choppy hair. Though dressed in standard Ashigaru attire, the weave of the fabric was noticeably finer than a common foot soldier's. A short sword—almost comically undersized for a proper duel—hung at her waist. With her round face and wide, innocent eyes, she looked far too honest to survive as a military commander. Yet, she was exactly that.
Maeda Toshiie.
Katsuie's direct deputy, and Nobuna's childhood attendant.
Directly in front of the pair, Oda Nobuna sat cross-legged on the floor, utterly ignoring formal posture.
Golden hair cascaded wildly over her shoulders. The collar of her deep red Kosode was left open, exposing a wide expanse of pale skin just below her collarbone. The horrific, fatal wound that had once cleaved from her left shoulder down to her right waist—inflicted during the chaotic blood-demon fusion—had vanished entirely. The skin was flawless, smooth as porcelain, leaving not even a phantom scar behind.
A massive map lay spread across the floorboards before her.
It did not depict the meager borders of Owari Province. It detailed the entirety of Eastern Japan.
From Kyushu to Mutsu, from the Kinai region stretching out to the Kanto plains—every mountain range, river, fortress, and strategic pass was carefully inked onto the parchment. Over a dozen specific choke points were heavily circled in wet, vermilion ink.
"Is Katsuie back?"
Nagahide spoke first. Her voice carried no booming authority, nor any frantic urgency. It was light, swaying gently through the tense air like the casual greeting of an older sister from next door.
She turned her steady gaze toward the doorway. "How are the injuries?"
"Superficial wounds," Katsuie grunted.
She stepped into the room, the floorboards groaning under her weight, and dropped heavily onto one knee. She propped the haft of her massive battle-axe against the floor beside her. Her amber eyes swept over the strategist and the young deputy before locking onto the golden-haired clan head.
"My lord, I—"
"I know." Nobuna raised a single, pale hand, cutting the warrior off instantly. Her tone was breezy, as if they were debating what to eat for dinner rather than discussing a crushing military defeat. "That demon was indeed strong. This wasn't your fault."
"A demon that can take your full-force axe head-on... there probably aren't many entities in the entire Kanto region capable of such a feat," Nagahide murmured, her eyes dropping back to her notes. "This time, it truly wasn't your fault. I simply didn't anticipate that such a mythical being would actually step onto a human battlefield."
The strategist flipped open several pages resting on her lap—a dense summary of intelligence she had frantically compiled overnight following Katsuie's disastrous sortie.
"Kishin Hikaru," Nagahide read aloud, her finger tracing the fresh ink. "Master of the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons. The true god of Musashi and Sagami provinces. The newly enshrined guardian deity of the Imagawa Clan."
She recited each impossible title with chilling clarity. "We stand absolutely no chance in a direct, frontal confrontation with such a being, do we?"
If it were merely a powerful demon, they could devise a trap. But the enemy was classified as a 'god'.
Toshiie shrank her neck into her collar, her wide eyes darting between the adults. "Then... what should we do?" she muttered under her breath, her fingers nervously twisting the fabric of her hakama.
"Our provisions will last exactly seven more days," Nagahide stated, looking up at Nobuna. "If we cannot achieve a decisive result in seven days, our forces will starve and shatter from within, without the enemy ever needing to draw a blade."
"Who said anything about a direct confrontation?"
Nobuna smirked. Without looking away from her strategist, she casually twirled the calligraphy brush in her hand and stamped a thick vermilion circle directly over the map's depiction of Suruga Province.
The room fell into a stunned silence.
"My lord means..." Nagahide's eyes widened slightly, the gears turning rapidly behind her calm facade.
Before she could finish the thought, hurried, heavy footsteps thundered down the wooden corridor outside.
A breathless guard slammed the shoji door open and threw himself onto one knee, his head bowed low.
"Report, my lord! An army has arrived outside the castle gates! They are flying the crests of the Saito clan of Mino. The watchtower guards confirm it is the ruler of Mino Province himself—the Viper of Mino, Saito Dosan! He leads a force of roughly two thousand strong!"
Nagahide, Katsuie, and Toshiie all frowned in unison, the temperature in the room dropping.
Mino Province. Owari's immediate northern neighbor.
The daimyo ruling that territory was Saito Dosan, universally feared as the Viper of Mino. His legendary, blood-soaked rise to power was known throughout the land—starting as a lowly oil merchant, he had systematically assassinated two successive lords, manipulating his way to the absolute pinnacle of Mino Province.
Deceitful, endlessly cunning, and violently fickle, he was the living embodiment of a gekokujō daimyo—a man who overthrew his superiors to seize power in the chaotic Sengoku Period.
His reputation was pure poison. But the mere fact that he had survived to old age in this era proved he was ruthless enough, and clever enough, to back up the venom.
"And also—" The guard swallowed hard, his voice trembling slightly. "Lord Saito sent a message ahead. He claims... he sensed an overwhelmingly powerful Yao Qi enveloping the Imagawa army near the Mino borders. To prevent this demonic presence from spilling over and ravaging his own lands, he has come specifically to join forces. He is willing to assist you, my lord, in repelling the enemy."
Nobuna did not respond immediately.
Her golden, vertical pupils narrowed into dangerous slits. She stared at the inked borders of Mino Province on the map, the silence stretching for three agonizing seconds.
"The viper slithers out of his hole on his own accord..." she muttered, a dark amusement coloring her tone.
She lifted her chin, locking eyes with the sweating guard.
"Invite him in."
Half an incense stick's time later.
In the dimly lit hall of the main keep, Saito Dosan knelt directly opposite Oda Nobuna.
He was a man deep into his fifties, possessing a lean, almost skeletal face dominated by prominent cheekbones. His triangular eyes were perpetually half-squinted, and a thin, unreadable smile lingered at the corners of his mouth—a smile that made it entirely impossible to discern whether he was offering a gift or a poisoned dagger.
He wore a dark grey Kosode beneath a dark green haori, an inconspicuous, unadorned short sword tucked casually into his sash.
"Lord Nobuna. It has been quite a long time," Dosan drawled, his voice stretched out and oily, leaving an inexplicably slippery sensation in the air.
"Cut the nonsense. What are you actually here for?" Nobuna leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Her golden hair spilled over her shoulders, and her vertical pupils bored directly into the old fox's face. "I don't recall any warm friendship existing between our Oda Clan and your Saito Clan."
Although historical records from entirely different timelines would boldly claim Oda Nobunaga was Saito Dosan's son-in-law, in this specific reality—where the warlord was the golden-haired Nobuna—such a matrimonial alliance was physically impossible.
Dosan's smile didn't waver. He seemed utterly unbothered by her hostility.
"I heard Imagawa Yoshimoto's massive army of twenty thousand is pressing down upon your throat," Dosan chuckled softly. "This old man, though lacking in grand military talent, has brought two thousand fresh men to lend a hand. also, this old man can help the head of the Oda Clan deal with that demon. That so-called 'Thunder-slaying Demon God', the Great Yokai who supposedly overpowered the Dragon of Echigo."
Ordinary humans rarely understood the true, terrifying hierarchy of the demonic realm. In their limited perception, any demon with a recognizable name was simply lumped into the category of 'Great Yokai'.
"What are your conditions?" Nobuna asked flatly.
"No conditions."
"Don't give me that rot." Nobuna rolled her eyes, her expression dripping with disdain.
Dosan's smile widened, crinkling the skin around his triangular eyes.
"Then... just a small, insignificant request. If the Oda Clan manages to one day unify the various warring provinces of Kanto, this old man merely hopes the Saito Clan will be permitted to retain its current territory in Mino."
Nagahide remained entirely silent. Her expression did not shift, maintaining her polite, slight smile throughout the exchange—yet behind her eyes, she had instantly dissected the old man's true intention.
He was placing a bet.
It was textbook viper behavior. The Imagawa Clan was pressing forward with overwhelming force. Owari appeared entirely doomed to the outside world.
But Saito Dosan had sniffed out a hidden variable. He had caught wind that this new, young head of the Oda Clan possessed the reality-bending power of a divine artifact. He had heard the terrifying rumors of her retainer, Shibata Katsuie's, martial prowess.
He was betting his chips that the Oda Clan would not lose. Or, at the very least, they wouldn't die easily, and could successfully drag the Imagawa Clan into a bloody, grinding stalemate.
Nobuna did not agree on the spot. Nor did she refuse.
She tilted her head, studying Dosan's skeletal face. "You brought two thousand men to my doorstep. How many did you leave behind to guard Mino?"
Dosan chuckled, his triangular eyes revealing absolutely nothing. "Enough to defend our home."
It was then that Nagahide finally spoke.
Her voice remained soft, yet it cut clearly through the heavy tension, reaching everyone's ears. "My lord, with two thousand reinforcements added to our main force, the disparity in numbers remains vast. But it can, at the very least, buy us the time we desperately need."
Concise. Pragmatic. To the point.
Nobuna shot her strategist a sidelong glance, the corner of her mouth quirking upward.
"...Fine."
Her vertical pupils shifted back to the old viper. "Then we will cooperate. For now."
The smirk on her lips deepened.
It was a curve that sent a sudden jolt of recognition through Shibata Katsuie. She knew that exact expression. It was the identical, predatory smile Nobuna had worn the moment she decided to launch the suicidal surprise attack at Okehazama.
"However—" Nobuna leaned back, crossing her arms. "You are the one who will deal with that Kishin. If anything goes wrong and he slaughters your men, don't come crying to me."
At the exact same time.
Okehazama, Imagawa Main Camp.
After the chaotic afternoon skirmish finally drew to a close, Imagawa Yoshimoto made a swift, tactical decision.
She ordered the immediate splitting of her forces. The original seven thousand main troops and the thirteen thousand auxiliary support units—previously crammed shoulder-to-shoulder into the western choke point of the valley—were divided into three separate, fortified camps. They were deployed in a strict triangular formation across three elevated high grounds west of Okehazama, forming mutually supportive horns that overlooked the valley floor.
This was not her own invention. It was a standard, flawless deployment method drilled into her by Taigen Sessai before his passing. The Black-Robed Prime Minister had always warned her: When encamping in the field, never concentrate your entire force in a single basket. Divide into three. Support each other. Deny the enemy a total wipeout.
As the supreme head of the Imagawa Clan, Yoshimoto understood military theory perfectly, even if she rarely dirtied her own boots on the front lines.
She just hadn't bothered to use these tactics until today.
Because, until today, she had genuinely believed a pathetic, backwater clan like the Oda wasn't worth the effort of a serious formation.
Now, she knew better.
The terrifying realization that the Oda Clan possessed individual monsters with martial prowess rivaling the legendary Takeda and Uesugi clans left Yoshimoto grinding her teeth. Even now, sitting safely in her camp, she cursed the sheer, absurd unfairness of the world.
More, Shibata Katsuie had literally carved a bloody path right to the entrance of her command tent. The wind from that massive axe blade had nearly shaved Yoshimoto's face off.
That lesson was deep enough to cure her of any lingering arrogance.
The three camps were now separated by heavily guarded ravines. The main headquarters remained perched on the tallest of the three low hills. It retained the grand, opulent display Yoshimoto so deeply loved—conspicuous enough to project absolute authority, but thanks to the new formation, secure enough to prevent another near-decapitation.
Night fell over the valley. Thousands of campfires flared to life.
From the surrounding ridges, the fires of the seven-thousand-strong main force dotted the darkened landscape, looking like a sprawling sea of fallen stars trapped within the valley.
Matsudaira Motoyasu, the young hostage responsible for escorting the vital rear provisions, finally arrived just as the last light bled from the sky.
She was a ten-year-old girl, her round face still clinging to soft baby fat. She wore thick, round-framed wooden crystal glasses that constantly slipped down her nose. Dressed in a plain grey Kosode beneath an oversized, dark brown haori with the sleeves hastily rolled up, she looked entirely out of place in a war camp.
She was also exactly half a day late.
"Motoyasu."
Yoshimoto sat elegantly by the roaring central campfire just outside the main command tent. She rhythmically tapped her knee with a closed folding fan, her eyes cold.
Motoyasu knelt three paces away. Her forehead was pressed flat against the dirt, her small shoulders trembling violently.
"I... I am guilty—"
"You are indeed guilty," Yoshimoto sneered, the firelight catching the gold threads of her Junihitoe kimono. "Half a day late."
"It's... the main road in Mikawa was completely washed out by a sudden flash flood! We were forced to take a massive detour through the mud—"
"Then why didn't your scouts verify the road conditions in advance?" Yoshimoto's voice never raised to a shout, but the sheer, oppressive weight behind every syllable pressed down on the girl's neck like a physical blade.
Having just crawled back from the absolute brink of death that afternoon, Yoshimoto's nerves were frayed to the breaking point. Her temper was currently resting at its absolute worst.
Matsudaira Motoyasu had unwittingly walked straight into an active volcano.
"If we had lost the battle this afternoon," Yoshimoto continued, her tone dropping to a dangerous whisper, "your precious supplies arriving half a day late would have meant arriving a lifetime too late."
Motoyasu's round-rimmed glasses slid down to the very tip of her nose. Cold sweat beaded across her forehead, dripping into the dirt.
She dared not look up. The most critical survival skill of a hostage was learning how to keep their mouth shut and absorb the blame. This was the iron rule the Matsudaira Clan had beaten into her. But an even more important rule was delivering results, and she had utterly failed.
She braced herself for the punishment.
Fortunately, while Yoshimoto's tongue was coated in venom, her actual disposition as a ruler leaned toward pragmatic magnanimity.
"Let this be the absolute last time."
Yoshimoto snapped her folding fan open, turning her head away to stare into the flames.
Motoyasu felt as though a literal executioner's blade had been lifted from her neck. She scrambled backward on her hands and knees, tiptoeing behind the safety of a supply tent. She frantically wiped the sweat from her face and shoved her glasses back up her nose.
"That was terrifying..." she whimpered to herself, her knees knocking together.
The crackling light from the central campfire danced across Yoshimoto's face. She didn't continue to vent her anger.
Her attention had already drifted elsewhere.
On the far eastern edge of the main camp's firelight, near the perimeter shadows, two figures sat closely side by side.
A dark gray robe and a crisp white-and-red hakama outlined two distinct, yet incredibly intimate silhouettes against the glowing embers.
Kobe Hikaru leaned casually against a large boulder, his right hand resting loosely at his side. The demonic blades, Onikiri and Yomikiri, hung quietly at his waist. His Crimson Demon Eyes were half-closed, his breathing slow and steady, giving the illusion that the undead Oni Samurai was simply resting.
Kikyo sat immediately to his right. Her massive longbow rested against her knee, always within arm's reach. Her pristine black hair cascaded over her shoulder, catching the orange light of the fire. The sleeves of her white-and-red hakama were slightly rolled up, revealing her pale, slender wrists.
Neither of them spoke a word.
Yet, hidden in the deep shadows beside their knees, their hands were firmly clasped together.
Fingers perfectly interlaced. Quiet. Grounded.
It looked as though it were the most natural, obvious truth in the world.
Yoshimoto stared at those interlaced fingers for a long, agonizing moment.
She slowly spun the folding fan in her palm, the bamboo ribs clicking softly. She let out a quiet, cold snort. Her heart still harbored a lingering, icy dread toward that priestess.
She vividly remembered the sheer terror of Kikyo's arrow tearing past her cheek earlier that day. The residual spiritual power of the Sacred Arrow had clung to her skin, stinging like a swarm of angry wasps for a full hour before finally dissipating.
The priestess had offered a serene smile and claimed she was merely 'purifying' her.
Purify my foot! Yoshimoto thought bitterly.
But beneath the fear and the annoyance, a much darker, heavier emotion gnawed at the young provincial lord's chest.
Envy.
She watched Kikyo lean the side of her head against Kobe Hikaru's armored shoulder. The priestess's face still maintained that cold, detached elegance that defined her aura. But as a ruler who had been forced to ascend to the bloody seat of Suruga Province at a terrifyingly young age, Yoshimoto could read the subtle shifts in human posture.
She saw the total relaxation in Kikyo's shoulders. The absolute, unshakeable sense of peace.
Yoshimoto wanted that. She wanted it so badly her chest ached.
She had never known a single day of peace since childhood. Her father had died early, leaving her to be raised by Taigen Sessai. But Sessai was a ruthless strategist, not a father. He taught her the cold calculus of political maneuvering, the art of statecraft, and how to crush rebellions. He never taught her how to find a place to rest.
And now, that elusive, quiet sanctuary belonged entirely to Kikyo.
Yoshimoto violently withdrew her gaze, snapping her folding fan open to cover the lower half of her face.
"...What's so great about it anyway," she muttered. Her voice was so soft it was instantly swallowed by the crackling fire.
Beneath the painted silk of the fan, the corners of her mouth twitched downward. She was incredibly annoyed.
Across the campfire, however, Kobe Hikaru was not actually resting.
Though his Crimson Demon Eyes appeared half-closed, his gaze was locked dead onto Imagawa Yoshimoto.
It wasn't because he noticed the young lord's petty, envious glaring. It was because his vision had fundamentally altered.
Beneath the fabric of his gray robe, resting against his chest, hung the Black Pearl Agate.
Ever since his favorability with the artifact had breached the thirty-point threshold, unlocking his very first talent—'Truth-Seeing'—the pitch-black bead, no larger than a fingernail, had been passively rewriting the way he perceived the world.
It granted him the ability to see through reality and illusion, piercing the veil of all phantasms.
Until tonight, the talent had been utterly useless. He didn't exactly surround himself with illusionists, nor had anyone attempted to trap his mind in a genjutsu. Illusions were born of the spirit. Even among demons, who relied heavily on visceral, physical mutations, or among human mages and priestesses who manipulated pure spiritual power, true illusionists were exceedingly rare. Thus far, Hikaru had only encountered Gakimaru who possessed such a trick.
But at this exact moment, Hikaru realized the visual enhancement of 'Truth-Seeing' went far beyond merely shattering fake imagery.
It allowed him to perceive things that did not exist in the physical plane.
For instance, right now.
Imagawa Yoshimoto sat by the campfire, her face hidden behind her fan, her purple and gold Junihitoe glowing warmly in the mundane firelight.
But directly behind her—hovering just above her head—something massive was slowly bleeding into existence.
It was an illusory, translucent outline, appearing as though it were sculpted from thick, swirling incense smoke.
From the churning mass of vapor, six distinct, curved shapes extended outward.
Tusks.
Six massive elephant tusks.
The smoke rapidly condensed, forming the vague but obvious silhouette of a colossal elephant. It was a majestic, overwhelming image that exuded an impossibly steady, ancient aura. It didn't feel like a demonic threat; rather, it felt like a surging torrent of condensed Qi, an invisible spiritual entity gathering its immense weight over the young lord.
Hikaru's Crimson Demon Eyes widened fractionally.
Beside him, Kikyo's posture shifted. She seemed to instantly sense the subtle change in his breathing.
She didn't turn her head, but her fingers tightened their grip around his hand.
"You see it too?"
Her voice was a mere breath, audible only to the two of them.
Hikaru shifted his gaze down to the priestess.
Kikyo's cold, detached features were softened by the campfire's glow. In the depths of her pitch-black pupils, he could clearly see the reflection of Yoshimoto sitting in the distance—and hovering perfectly above her, the reflection of the massive, six-tusked spiritual phantom.
Hikaru blinked, genuine surprise flickering through his deadpan demeanor.
That thing... Kikyo could see it too?
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