Chương 37: The Scorching Wake-Up Call

The exact moment the teleportation light converged, my senses were violently assaulted. First, the heat. A ferocious, blistering wave of air wrapped around my body, threatening to scorch my skin. Just taking a breath felt like it was baking my lungs from the inside out. Next came the noise. The thunderous roar of splintering timber. Roaring war cries. Shrieks of agony. And the grating, metallic screech of clashing steel. Finally, the stench. The acrid odor of charred wood, the sharp tang of gunpowder, and…

the distinct, sickeningly sweet smell of burning flesh.

"… Cough! Gah!" I inhaled a lungful of thick smoke and collapsed into a violent coughing fit. Opening my eyes, my vision was instantly swallowed by a world of crimson and gold. A colossal pillar of fire, fierce enough to scorch the night sky, had punched clean through the roof of the temple structure. [SYSTEM LOG]: Anchor Locked. June 2, 1582 AD. Dawn. Honno-ji Temple, Kyoto. … Situation: Climax. Gennai's voice crackled through the static in my ear.

His usual playful banter was entirely gone, replaced by a rigid, metallic drone.

"We're dropping straight into the climax?!" I dragged myself along the ground, trying to find a blind spot from the blistering wind. This was it. The site of the most infamous coup d'état in Japanese history. Akechi Mitsuhide's betrayal. The final stand of Oda Nobunaga.

"The enemy is at Honno-ji! Bring me Nobunaga's head!" From every single direction, soldiers of the Akechi army—bearing the light-blue bellflower crest—flooded into the complex. There were thousands of them. In stark contrast, Oda's remaining defenders couldn't have numbered more than a hundred. It was a one-sided slaughter. The countdown toward the historical conclusion was ticking away in real-time.

"Yari! Where is NOBUNAGA?! Where is he?!" I looked for Yari, who was supposed to be right next to me. His face was stained crimson by the reflection of the dancing flames as he pointed toward the blazing main hall.

"Over there. … The Demon King's throne." Standing on the veranda of the burning hall was the man himself. Entirely indifferent to the inferno swirling around him, he stood with his arms crossed, legs planted wide, as if he were simply admiring the scenery of a quiet garden. The historical correction android, codename "NOBUNAGA." A deep crimson cloak whipped violently in the heat, writhing like a living entity. Beneath it, however, lay no samurai armor of the Sengoku period.

It was a glossy, obsidian carapace of futuristic nano-carbon plating. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"…It cannot be helped." The legendary, final words recorded in history slipped from NOBUNAGA's lips. Yet, in his tone, there was no resignation, no resolve, and absolutely no trace of human emotion. There was only the cold, mechanical resonance of a processor analyzing data.

"…Eliminating."

"Charge! Take the Demon King's head while he sleeps, and our fortunes are made!" The vanguard of the Akechi army—dozens of ashigaru foot soldiers—rushed the main hall with spears leveled. Their eyes gleamed with raw ambition and the intoxicating thrill of slaying a living legend. NOBUNAGA didn't grant them so much as a glance. NOBUNAGA: Gennai. Deploy Omnidirectional Autonomous Incendiary Units: SCORCH. The space surrounding NOBUNAGA visibly warped.

From behind his back, countless tiny metallic spheres, only a few centimeters in diameter, launched into the air. They halted in mid-flight, emitting a low, ominous hum like a swarm of hornets.

"Wh-What kind of matchlock bullets are those?!" The foot soldiers froze in their tracks. In that exact fraction of a second— FLASH! Dozens of spheres erupted simultaneously, unleashing ultra-high-temperature laser beams. It wasn't an act of "firing" so much as it was "drawing lines" across reality. The beams of concentrated light swept horizontally across the advancing vanguard.

"Huh…?" The man at the front looked down at his own stomach. His torso had been cleanly bisected, cut in half right through his armor. He likely hadn't even had time to register the pain. The sheared flesh had been instantly cauterized by the heat, preventing even a single drop of blood from spilling. Thud. Thud. Thud. Dozens of human bodies collapsed into silent lumps of meat.

"…Hie…" The soldiers trailing behind them turned to stone. They couldn't even scream. Their brains simply refused to process the horror of what had just manifested before their eyes.

"Next," NOBUNAGA murmured, flicking his finger. The SCORCH drones repositioned instantly, swarming over the archers hidden among the garden trees. Sizzle! Hiss-ssss! From above, a sticky, napalm-like incendiary agent rained down upon them.

"Gyaaaaaah! It's hot! Help me! Save me!" Soldiers turned into living torches, thrashing and rolling frantically across the dirt. But the chemical fire refused to die. The hellfire would not stop until it had gnawed through to the very bone. The stench. That unique, vomit-inducing smell of burning human fat saturated the courtyard.

"Ugh… blurgh…" I clamped my hand over my mouth, dropping to my knees. The contents of my stomach threatened to force their way up my throat. The battlefield with USHIWAKA had been brutal, yes. But that clash had possessed the raw, passionate heat of a samurai's duel. This was fundamentally different. This was an operation. Like spraying industrial pesticide on an infestation, the machine was merely neutralizing targets with maximum efficiency, completely divorced from emotion.

"…Yari! Stop him!" I cried out, my eyes tearing up as I looked at him.

"The match is already over! The Akechi army has lost their will to fight! There's no need to kill any more of them!" Yari merely watched NOBUNAGA's mechanical purge with a freezing, detached gaze.

"…There is no concept of 'mercy' programmed into his algorithm. He is simply executing the optimal solution for target eradication. In the most efficient and absolute manner possible."

"How can you say that…! That's not a man! He's just a slaughterhouse machine!"