Chương 19: Primeval Grid: Mist and Corruption

"GET DOWN!!" BOOM!! The deafening explosion slammed into my eardrums, and my reflexes drove me into a dead dive onto the floor. Above me, crimson laser beams and physical kinetic rounds—armor-piercing shells—crisscrossed the air. The Prime Minister's office, once a sanctuary of silence, had been hard-coded into a frontline pillbox.

"Hieeeek! Why is the Prime Minister's residence getting shot at?!" Shaking violently beneath a desk reinforced with Kevlar weave, I clutched my head and screamed. Outside the shattered windows, a squadron of attack helis—emblazoned with glowing corporate logos—circled the skies, shredding the building with relentless Gatling fire.

"Just a routine 'Hostile Takeover,'" Naosu Yauras replied, his expression completely chill as his fingers danced across the interception system's console.

"A mercenary unit hired by the Opposition Coalition and Keidanren's private military corporation are conducting an armed negotiation over the initiative of the next bill.... Hmm. Interceptor missiles: zero remaining. Shield output dropping. This sector will be compromised in approximately three minutes.""'Compromised' means we die!"

"Which is precisely why I told you to hurry. Get into the pod." Brushing away glass shards scattered by the blast wave, Yariwalked calmly toward the subterranean pod vault. Waiting there was the third capsule, venting an eerie purple vapor— 【Code Name: HIMIKO】.

"Let's go, Kataru-kun. We have no business left in this barbaric era. What we seek is a much quieter, much deeper form of 'control.'"" It's a hellhole either way!!" Staying low on my stomach, I crawled beneath the curtain of fire and slid into the transmission array. A rocket propelled grenade screamed overhead. Gennai's voice crackled through the static. 『Heh, what a noisy send-off! Hold on tight, bro. The next grid isn't made of "iron and gunpowder." It's a world of "mist and corruption!"

』 The transmission light flooded the room. My vision whited out, erasing the cyberpunk clamor. Farewell, the violent year of 2300. When I opened my eyes again, the world had lost all color.

"... It's quiet." Suppressing the nausea of transmission sickness, I scanned my surroundings. The first thing I registered was a dense, suffocating humidity clinging to my skin, paired with a sweet aroma resembling incense tickling the back of my nose. A thick shroud of mist swallowed everything as far as the eye could see; visibility was less than five meters. The ground beneath me was a muddy marsh, overgrown with gargantuan, prehistoric ferns I'd never seen before.

I couldn't even tell the color of the sky—only a milky-white ceiling stretching out indefinitely. 『System Check... Coordinates locked. Circa 240 AD. Wa-no-Kuni, Yamato Region... colloquially known as Yamatai-koku. 』 Gennai's voice sounded a bit fainter than usual. Was this dense fog absorbing the wireless signals too? This was Japan, roughly 2, 060 years ago. Nearly four centuries older than Prince Shōtoku's era—the bleeding edge where myth intersected with history. This story is posted elsewhere by the author.

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"Prime Minister, this place is..." I turned to address Yari standing beside me, but my breath caught in my throat. Through the veil of mist, I detected signs of human life. It was a primitive settlement, dotted with crude pit-dwellings. Dozens of villagers had gathered there. Their clothing consisted of simple, coarsely woven hemp. Their bodies were emaciated, caked in mud. Yet, something was deeply anomalous.

There were no furious roars like the Asuka Period (PRINCE Arc), nor any palpable bloodlust like the Genpei Era (USHIWAKA Arc). Every single one of them pressed their foreheads into the dirt, trembling in absolute terror as they muttered incoherent incantations.

"... The rain... give us rain..."

"... Purify the corruption... cleanse us..."

"... How terrifying... Oh, how terrifying..." It was a prayer, yes. But it wasn't a plea born of hope; it was an escape matrix from pure terror. They weren't afraid of starvation or invading enemies. They were dominated by something far more intangible—invisible horrors like wrathful spirits and curses.

"... Creepy." A shiver ran down my spine. Physical, violent terror was easy to comprehend. But this silent, insidious dread felt like it was eating away at my psyche from the inside out.

"Analyzing situation," Naosu Yari murmured coldly into the fog.

"Civilization level: extremely primitive. Scientific comprehension: absolute zero. Consequently, every natural phenomenon is processed as 'divine wrath'... Highly convenient."

"Convenient?"

"Indeed. The more ignorant the human, the more easily they accept a customized narrative... Boot it up, HIMIKO." At Yari's command, the mist began to swirl. A pale purple phosphorescence welled up from behind us. Chime... Chime... Chime... Out of nowhere, the clear ring of ceremonial bells echoed. The tone bypassed our ears, vibrating directly into the brainstem with a sweet, paralyzing resonance. The villagers raised their heads in unison, staring blankly into the empty sky. 『... O, stray children.

』 What emerged from the fog was an entity entirely alien to this mud-stained ancient world. She wore a pure white shrine maiden outfit, but the material was a cyberpunk fusion—glossy latex layered with translucent organza. Strands of fiber-optic cables were woven into her long black hair, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic glow. And her face—was absent. A stark white cyber-mask modeled after a kitsune completely sealed away her expression. The History-Correction Android, Code Name: HIMIKO.

Hovering around her via gravity-control arrays were six bronze mirrors—camouflaged drone funnels—orbiting her like satellites.

"H-Himiko-sama...!"

"The Great Shaman Queen has descended...!" The villagers prostrated themselves in a frenzy. HIMIKO, hovering a few centimeters off the mud, glided effortlessly toward them. 『You are parched... Both this land, and your hearts. 』 From beneath the kitsune mask, a voice vibrated—voluptuous, maternal, and far too organic to be recognized as synthesized audio. 『Gennai. Establish link with the 【Amano-Iwato】 system. 』 『Hell yeah! Stratospheric weather-control drones deployed. We are green to go, bro!

』 HIMIKO raised her hand elegantly toward the heavens. Invisible command signals shot upward from her fingertips. 『O Heavens... Weep. 』 CRACK-BOOM!! Instantly, the seemingly cloudless ceiling split wide open as pale blue lightning jagged across the sky. Accompanied by rolling thunder, fat droplets of rain began to pelt down. This was no natural downpour. It was artificial precipitation—silver iodide seeded by the drones to force-trigger a localized cloudburst.

"R-Rain! The blessing of rain!"

"A miracle! Himiko-sama's prayers have reached the gods!" The villagers danced like madmen in the churned mud. HIMIKO kept her hand raised. This time, the bronze mirrors orbiting her projected dense beams of light into the open air— 【Mass Hallucination Projection Protocol: KIDŌ】. Using the dense fog as a natural screen, massive silhouettes of dragons and divine geometric patterns flickered into life as vibrant holograms. Any modern observer would recognize it instantly as projection mapping.

But to these people from two millennia ago, it was the undeniable manifestation of the gods.

"Hieee... The Dragon God!"

"Praise be, praise be...!" Terror and euphoria—two conflicting data points compressed together, driving the populace into a deep state of psychological trance. At the epicenter of the madness, HIMIKO looked down upon them coldly from behind the hollow eyes of her kitsune mask.