Sagami Province, the main castle of the Hōjō clan.
Odawara Castle.
This was the most impregnable stronghold in the entire Kantō region, bar none.
Ever since the first-generation Hōjō Sōun, the Hōjō had governed it through three generations, forging this castle that leaned against the mountains and faced the sea into a fortress as solid as a wall of iron.
Towering stone ramparts rose in tier upon tier, the heavy castle gates were a full three chi thick, and the densely arrayed arrow towers could make any attacking foe pay a grievous price.
In years past—or perhaps in a later age—when Uesugi Kenshin, who ruled the land of Echigo, came to attack with a host of a hundred thousand, he too could only cry out in vain helplessness beneath the castle walls.
The title of "foremost impregnable castle of the Kantō" was by no means undeserved.
Compared with the home stronghold of the Imagawa clan, this place was, without question, far more formidable.
And yet, at this moment.
Kōbe Hikaru stood on a hillside outside the castle, looking down upon this fabled fortress. Under the moonlight, the castle's outline was clearly visible.
But all he felt was that everything was utterly intact, and everything was utterly quiet.
Too quiet.
No patrolling soldiers, no burning torches, no sign of any human activity at all.
The vast Odawara Castle was like an enormous tomb.
The yōkai aura here was very thick—thicker even than over at the Imagawa's.
"And what's more, it isn't only yōkai aura."
Kōbe Hikaru narrowed his eyes.
He could see it.
The entire castle was shrouded in a faint golden mist, that mist glimmering with fine, scattered points of light under the moon, like countless fireflies dancing in flight.
But those were not fireflies.
It was scale-powder.
Gakimaru's scale-powder.
"It has already made its move."
Sakagami Ketsura's voice came out.
"Made its move?"
Kōbe Hikaru understood in an instant as well: "You mean… the people of the whole castle?"
"They're all dreaming."
Sakagami Ketsura's voice was muffled and low, and she seemed quite wary too: "Every single one of them has been caught by its scale-powder."
Several thousand people had all sunk into deep slumber.
Their breathing was steady, their heartbeats normal, but their consciousness had already been trapped in another world.
Gakimaru's illusory realm.
"This thing really is more troublesome than the Thunder Beast."
Kōbe Hikaru frowned.
Sakagami Ketsura was right.
Strong as the Thunder Beast had been, it was a frontal-assault type of yōkai, hiding underground to unleash its lightning—as long as you forced it out, it could be dealt with.
But Gakimaru was different.
It was a being of the mental-attack type.
The Thunder Beast was Thunder Metamorphosis—fierce and swift, yet in the end it left traces that could be followed.
Gakimaru, though it too could be classed under elemental metamorphosis, was even more ethereal and intangible than thunder, belonging to the metamorphosis of the mind.
Its scale-powder could invade human dreams and breed terror within them.
Kōbe Hikaru stepped toward the castle gate; that heavy wooden door stood wide open, with no guards at all.
He simply walked straight in.
What met his eyes was a broad street, lined on both sides with orderly dwellings and shops.
As the Hōjō clan's home base, the castle town of Odawara should ordinarily have been exceedingly bustling, with merchants gathering in droves and crowds streaming endlessly.
But now, every door was shut.
Every window was dark.
Now and then he could see one or two people lying on the ground, holding the very posture in which they had collapsed, utterly motionless.
Kōbe Hikaru crouched down and examined one of them.
It was a middle-aged man dressed in a merchant's garb, an expression of terror upon his face.
His eyes were closed, but the eyeballs beneath the lids were rolling about wildly.
He was dreaming.
And it was a nightmare.
There were even wounds on his body, spreading and surfacing.
It seemed that the nightmare he was having was being reflected, in truth, into reality.
"The situation here really is far more severe than over at the Imagawa's."
Kōbe Hikaru rose to his feet.
The Imagawa clan had merely been harassed by the Thunder Beast for three days, with no more than a few dozen dead and wounded.
Compared to the casualties, the panic had been the greater part.
But here on the Hōjō clan's side, the people of the entire castle had fallen into the illusory realm; if they could not be rescued in time, these people would die one after another within their nightmares.
The grudge-aura brought by death would pile up more and more.
Gakimaru would grow stronger and stronger.
A vicious cycle.
He continued forward, his blood-mist spreading out, perceiving the entire castle.
Where was Gakimaru?
He didn't know.
That damnable moth was hidden far too deep.
It should already have sensed the Thunder Beast's death—the thunder horn was still on his back, and that thing gave off a rich aura of thunder and lightning; any yōkai connected to the Thunder Beast could detect it.
So it had hidden itself away.
Most likely, it was hiding within this very illusory realm woven from scale-powder, showing neither face nor form.
Sakagami Ketsura's voice was not the least bit surprised; she had said as much long ago.
She spoke again: "It has hidden itself within the scale-powder's illusory realm—that is precisely why it's so hard to find."
Kōbe Hikaru frowned.
This was troublesome.
Gakimaru did not have a fixed lair the way the Thunder Beast did; it was a being fused as one with the illusory realm. As long as the realm remained, it was everywhere at once, and yet leaving not a trace to be found.
Still…
"It's not as though there's no way at all."
Kōbe Hikaru raised his head and looked at the golden mist suffusing the air.
Sakagami Ketsura was taken aback.
"The whole castle, the nightmares of every single person—it's all its domain. To find its true body within that is like fishing a needle out of the sea."
"Can you really find it?"
To this.
Kōbe Hikaru did not answer at once.
He halted his steps and stood before a tall building.
That was the inner-keep main castle of Odawara—the castle keep.
The dwelling of the successive lords of the Hōjō clan.
"Head-on, of course, it can't be found…"
He lifted his hand, and the blood-mist seeped out from beneath his skin in ever greater amounts, beginning to spread in every direction.
"I need to change the approach."
Sakagami Ketsura was startled: "What are you going to do?"
"I am going to enter the dream."
Kōbe Hikaru's voice was very calm.
"Have you gone mad?"
Sakagami Ketsura found it hard to believe: "You can enter dreams? And that is Gakimaru's illusory realm—to walk into it of your own accord is to throw your life away!"
"Who said I was going to enter its illusory realm?"
Kōbe Hikaru smiled.
That smile looked somewhat eerie in the moonlight.
"What I'm going to enter… is the dream of every single person in this castle."
The blood-mist began to spread faster.
Starting from the inner keep, it crept outward in every direction, covering the streets, covering the houses, covering each and every slumbering person.
That blood-mist seeped into their skin, merged with their breath, and formed a connection with their dreams.
Gakimaru's scale-powder was one great net, trapping everyone within nightmares.
And Kōbe Hikaru's blood-mist was another net.
A net that eroded the first net.
Resonance with blood.
His blood-mist was, likewise, his 'eyes.'
When all was said and done, the so-called dream was in essence nothing more than the neural-link activity of the brain, the conduction and transmission of electrical signals. Although this was a worldview brimming with demons and goblins of every kind, just like the existence of mutual restraint between physical properties, certain axioms were still held in common.
So, as long as he invaded with blood and went to touch those signals.
Kōbe Hikaru truly could do it—could, by this means, enter the dream.
To see. To feel.
The compulsory education Kōbe Hikaru had received in his former life had not been wasted!
"You…"
Sakagami Ketsura's voice trembled a little: "You mean to use this blood-mist of yours to enter dreams?"
"More or less."
Kōbe Hikaru closed his eyes.
His consciousness began to disperse.
One part remained in reality.
The greater part, following the blood-mist, entered the dreams of countless people.
And then, he truly did it—and saw.
Nightmares.
Countless nightmares.
Some were being devoured by flames, some were being hunted down by monsters, some were watching their own kin die off one by one.
Every dream was filled with terror.
Every terror was being harvested by Gakimaru, converted into grudge-aura.
"What an enormous appetite."
Kōbe Hikaru murmured.
"An entire castle of people, all having nightmares at the same time…"
"Is this thing trying to grow fat in a single bite?"
His consciousness threaded through the countless dreams, searching for a certain special existence.
Not Gakimaru.
It was the master of this castle.
The lord of the Hōjō clan.
If he was going to do something within the dreams…
Starting from scratch would be too slow.
Better to go straight to that one person at the very core.
And then——
give every person in this castle a reason to 'wake with a start.'
ps: Originally I'd thought to design it so that the original work's Gatenmaru wasn't yet so strong fifty years ago, but after thinking it over, I felt that yōkai are unlike humans—their growth wouldn't be that fast, and their abilities are somewhat different too. So here I've changed the yōkai's name to a similar moth-yōkai of the same kind, Gakimaru—just like the Thunder Beast over there is likewise only of the same kind—only the name is changed, everything else stays the same.
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