Chương 12: Fighting Poison with Poison — Psychopath vs. System

System The civilian crowd rendered on the monitors. Every single one of them was garbed in identical attire. The fabric was dyed in stark shades of white or muted beige, tailored into a featureless, uninspired silhouette. They looked less like citizens and more like inmates in a penitentiary, or factory laborers bound to a assembly line. They walked at an identical, hard-coded velocity. Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot.

Thousands of pedestrian signatures moved in flawless, terrifying synchronization, like cells comprising a single, titanic organism. Yet, the true horror lay localized within their faces.

"Th-They're... smiling...?" Every single entity was smiling. The corners of their mouths were curled upward at a precise, calculated thirty-degree angle. Their eyes, however, remained entirely stagnant—dead pools of jelly resting above a frozen, plastered archaic smile. The elderly, the youth, even the children. Not a single soul exhibited anger. None wept. None furrowed their brows. They simply drifted forward, wearing that perpetually serene, hollow grin. 『Zero anomalies detected in today's ideological consensus.

』 An anchor's synthesized cadence drifted from a monolithic street-side billboard array. 『Thanks to the unbroken Spirit of Harmony cultivated by our citizenry, zero societal disruptions have materialized today. It is a beautiful, optimized day. Express gratitude to your neighbors. Express gratitude to the Administration. May eternal tranquility preserve the hearts that do not disrupt the collective Peace. 』 The citizens navigating past the display halted in perfect, synchronized unison.

Facing the screen, they delivered a rigid, forty-five-degree bow—an unyielding, mechanical salute. Then, without exchanging a single syllable, they resumed their rhythmic march.

"Hieee...!" I stumbled backward, my knees flatly giving out beneath me.

"This is psychological horror! What the hell is that?! They're literally behaving like automated bots! There's no humanity left in them... they don't even feel alive!"

"This is the optimized output of our parameters," Yari announced with chilling neutrality.

"The 'Harmony OS' Prince Shōtoku compiled and deployed was simply... too efficient." Yari swiped his hand, projecting a localized data graph into the empty air. Crime Matrix: 0 Civil Unrest Frequency: 0 Psychological Inquiries: 0 Every single negative performance metric had registered a miraculous, absolute zero.

"On the surface layer, it mirrors a flawless Utopia. But a foundational asset was liquidated to balance the ledger." Yari slid his fingers across the interface, populating a secondary dataset. Patent Applications: 0 New Business Startups: 0% Artistic Publications: 0 Romance-Driven Marriage Rates: ~0%"By absolute-indexing the concept of 'Harmony,' the populace developed a pathological dread of divergence. Debates were deprecated, flagged as disruptions to the peace.

Competition was purged, categorized as an existential threat to tranquility." Yari looked down at the smiling horde navigating the concrete grid below.

"The finalized deliverable is this: [The Smiling Totalitarian State]. No one engages in conflict, but conversely, no one attempts innovation. It is an architecture of cognitive stasis—thirty million automated bots simply monitoring the ambient air, terrified of stepping out of alignment." A horde of bots. The terminology punched a hole directly through my chest. In our frantic attempt to salvage a stagnant, listless Japan, had we systematically executed the nation's very soul?

『Whoa, whoa, this is a critical runtime failure, Boss, 』 Gennai's voice chimed, his grimy visage appearing as he tapped his electronic pipe against the frame of the monitor. 『Take a look at the localized maritime radar. Over toward the bay. 』 Directing my gaze toward Tokyo Bay, my pupils instantly dilated. A monolithic fleet of armored warships sat anchored in the harbor. Painted across their steel hulls was an unfamiliar insignia—the flag of a massive, hostile continental hyper-power.

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"Wait, what is that...?" 『They're calling themselves a 'Peacekeeping Garrison,'』 Gennai spat the words out with visible disgust. 『The domestic population became so aggressively passive they entirely dismantled their own self-defense forces.

'Weaponry is an anomaly that disrupts Harmony,' or some garbage like that. As a result, foreign empires have moved in to handle 'security optimization.' It's a corporate restructuring disguised as a protectorate. We're a literal colony. 』"No... No way...!" I was utterly paralyzed. Domestically, the nation was a breeding ground for smiling, brain-dead bots. Externally, it was ringed by apex predators waiting for the perfect microsecond to liquidate the territory. This wasn't an act of peaceful euthanasia.

This was a hollowed-out Zombie State.

"A failed compilation," Naosu Yari summarized flatly. Gazing down at the quiet, living graveyard that Japan had mutated into, he acknowledged the catastrophic outcome without a single flicker of frustration. His analytical processing loops were already compiling the next sequence.

"The 'Wa' coefficient was over-indexed. While discipline and cooperative alignment achieved maximum values, the biological drive for survival—the instinct to fight, break barriers, and destroy obstacles—was entirely de-allocated. …An emergency patch is required."

"A patch?! H-How?!" I barked, grabbing him by the lapels of his pristine suit.

"Are we leaping backward down the timeline again?! Even if we jump before the Prince, we're just going to land in a lawless, tribal wilderness!"

"We are not rolling back the architecture. We are accelerating it." Yari's leather dress shoes ticked against the metallic floor as he migrated toward the secondary chamber of the subterranean repository capsule array.

"To shatter a stasis of this magnitude, we require a highly unstable neuro-toxin. An unbridled mechanism of raw violence that operates entirely outside the boundaries of established logic, ignores social alignment, and twists the very laws of physics to atomize the opposition." 『Heh. I knew we were going to pull 'that guy' out of deep storage, 』 Gennai grinned, a feral glint returning to his eyes. 『Fighting poison with poison.

To remind these polite little bots what wild fangs feel like, he's the absolute ultimate loose cannon. 』"A loose cannon...?" Snagged by a sudden, sickening omen, my eyes locked onto the alphanumeric identification plate stamped across the secondary capsule. The moniker etched into the metal was a legendary sequence recognized by every citizen of Japan—yet it was a name intrinsically bound to tragedy, betrayal, and absolute devastation. [Code Name: USHIWAKA / Minamoto no Yoshitsune]"Minamoto no... Yoshitsuneーー?!"

I shrieked.

"Are you completely insane?! Yes, he's a legendary icon, but he was a pathological tactician! A weaponized savant so terrifyingly lethal that even his own flesh and blood executed him out of pure paranoia! If you drop an entity like that into a hyper-regulated system, the entire server is going to explode!"

"Then let it detonate," Yari commanded with frozen indifference.

"What this territory requires is not an orderly expiration. It demands a chaotic resurrection." His thumb descended upon the secondary initialization terminal. Within his pupils, the cold, unyielding light of an absolute executive decision flared to life.

"Authorization granted. ─ Recompiling history."

"Gennai, initialize [USHIWAKA]. Detail the integrated payload." 『 [Gravity Manipulation Module: Eight-Boat Leap (Hasso-Leap)] and the [High-Output Plasma Tachi: Usumidori] are online. System standby achieved. 』"You literally just called him a weapon!" Yari's voice bellowed across the chamber, an absolute declaration:"Project Re-JAPAN, Phase Two. ─ Deploying entity: [USHIWAKA]!" BOOM! With a heavy, pressurized decompression hiss, the secondary capsule split open.

Emerging from the venting nitrogen fog was a youthful silhouette clad in a hyper-stylized, cyberpunk variant of traditional samurai armor, his ocular array completely obscured by a sharp, glowing visor. The exact millisecond his consciousness initialized, a low, predatory growl vibrated from his chest, causing the very atmosphere within the lab to violently resonate. 『… Where is the target matrix? 』 It wasn't a synthesized voice loop.

It was a primal, starved frequency echoing from the depths of an abyss—the voice of a rabid wolf. 『Is it my brother, Yoritomo? Is it the Heike swine? … Identify them. Let me reap them. Let me taste their blood. 』"Hieee!" Still collapsed on my rear, I frantically scrambled backward away from the glass. He was fundamentally separated from PRINCE. Rational protocols were entirely offline here. This entity wasn't an Administrator. He was a [Slaughter Engine].

"We move, Kataru-kun," Yari announced, entirely brushing past my existential dread as he mapped the next destination coordinates.

"Target Year: A. D. 1185. ─ Go convert this tedious, peaceful Utopia into an absolute slaughterhouse." The metallic tiles beneath my feet erupted into a blinding sheet of translocation light. Engulfed within the raging tempest of the transit beam, I unleashed a final, desperate scream toward the ceiling.

"I can't take this anymoreーー! My stomach! Someone give me my stomach medicineーー!!" My visual field suffered an absolute whiteout. The coordinate sector awaiting my re-entry wasn't the elegant, courtly landscape of Asuka. It was a meat-grinder of shifting iron, blood, and burning timber—the absolute apex of the Genpei War.