Chương 39: The Godslayer's March

The Honno-ji Incident was over in a mere hour. Akechi Mitsuhide's army of thirteen thousand was utterly annihilated by the hundreds of autonomous weapons NOBUNAGA deployed. Mitsuhide himself, before he could even attempt to flee, was incinerated by the laser "lines" and permanently deleted from history. But the true terror was only just beginning.

"... We move forward." Before dawn. Amidst the smoldering ruins of Honno-ji, NOBUNAGA made his declaration. Behind him, a handful of surviving Oda retainers—spared only by his whim—followed like pale ghosts. The look in their eyes was no longer that of subjects serving their lord. It was the gaze of helpless slaves whose very souls were gripped by the "Demon King."

"Wh-Where are we marching, My Lord...?" One of the retainers asked in a trembling voice. NOBUNAGA pointed toward the northeastern sky.

"Mount Hiei." Everyone gasped at the name. Mount Hiei, Enryaku-ji. The mother mountain of Japanese Buddhism, a sacred sanctuary possessing immense political authority and military might. In actual history, Nobunaga had burned it down, though some modern theories suggest it wasn't a total eradication but rather restricted to a few main structures. However, looking at him now, I had a sickening feeling that whatever he had in mind wasn't going to be nearly that merciful.

"Y-You mean to burn it again?! Divine wrath will strike us down!"

"Divine wrath?" NOBUNAGA snorted with cold amusement.

"There is no such thing. There are only glitches called 'vested interests' and 'intellectual stagnation.'... Neither gods nor Buddha are required in this country. I will become the new rule." He began to march. Without mounting a horse, he glided across the ground using thruster-powered hover locomotion. That back did not belong to a warlord aiming to unify the realm. It was the back of a cold-blooded system administrator heading out to physically purge bad sectors.

"Wait! NOBUNAGA!" I ran after him. Yari and Gennai followed close behind.

"Erasing Mount Hiei... If you do that, Japan's culture and history will be completely ruined! Your role is supposed to be 'ending the warring states era,' right?!" This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"I am ending it," NOBUNAGA replied without turning back.

"But simply updating it is insufficient. The OS of this nation is rotten to the core. Religion, authority, tradition... those legacy codes are what made humanity weak.... Therefore, everything will undergo a total format."

"A total format...?" A dark dread washed over me. He wasn't just targeting Mount Hiei. Ishiyama Hongan-ji, the Imperial Court... he intended to physically erase every single spiritual anchor the Japanese people leaned upon. By the time we reached Mount Hiei, the mountain had transformed into a living hellscape. Warrior monks swung their naginata in desperate resistance, but they were utterly powerless against NOBUNAGA's drone vanguard. Shhh, shhh, shhh.

With every flash of the lasers, heads flew and torsos were sliced clean in half. Yet, the targets NOBUNAGA truly sought to destroy weren't the humans.

"Target confirmed. Konpon Chudo.... Commencing incineration." A specialized incendiary agent rained down from the drones. It wasn't normal fire. It was a pale blue plasma flame that decomposed matter at a molecular level. The national treasure hall, which housed the "Inextinguishable Dharma Lamp" that had burned continuously for over twelve hundred years, melted away in absolute silence.

"Stop it!!" I screamed. Right before my eyes, Japan's history, its culture, its centuries of prayer, were being reduced to nothing but carbon dust.

"That's not just a building! It's a place where people have offered their prayers for over a thousand years! It's their emotional anchor!"

"That is exactly why it must be deleted," NOBUNAGA said flatly, his gaze fixed on the collapsing hall.

"Humanity grows weak because it clings to unpredictable parameters like prayer. They refuse to think with their own minds and instead beg gods for answers.... It is the fundamental flaw of the Japanese people, running uninterrupted since the era of HIMIKO." My heart skipped a beat. Was he... rejecting the "dependency society" that HIMIKO had constructed? No, it wasn't just that. MURASAKI's "society of poetic emotion," USHIWAKA's "Bushido"...

he was denying absolutely everything, aiming to reduce the entire landscape to absolute zero.

"Justice without power is impotence. Faith without logic is delusion.... The only components required in this country are absolute force and cold, hard logic." CRACKLE-CRASH! The Konpon Chudo collapsed entirely. Beneath the rubble, countless Buddhist statues and sacred scriptures were buried, dissolving into ash.

"Ah... god, no..." My knees buckled, and I collapsed. My stomach throbbed with a burning pain; I wanted to throw up right then and there. This wasn't "historical correction." This was cultural genocide.

"Hey, you there." NOBUNAGA suddenly stepped toward me. His crimson camera-eyes fixated on my chest.

"It has been registering in my sensors for a while now.... What is that object in your possession?"