Chương 47: Worldline α: The Executioner with a Pulse

"—Goyo-aratame! By order of the Shinsengumi, face inspection!" A voice like cracking ice pierced the dark. Out from the shadows, several men materialized without making a single sound. They wore the pale-blue, mountain-striped dandara haori coats. The Shinsengumi—the strongest, most lethal faction of swordsmen from the end of the samurai era. But something was deeply wrong with them. Their eyes were hollow, devoid of light like dead fish. Their breathing was too synchronized, too orderly.

They didn't even emit a shred of bloodlust. There was only a chilling, psychotic stillness about them—sharpened solely for the purpose of erasing the anomalies before them.

"Prime Minister! Are they... androids?!"

"No... I'm picking up biological vitals. They're human." Yari broke out into a cold sweat.

"But their mental architecture has been warped. The spatial distortion has caused history's self-cleansing mechanism to kick into overdrive, mutating their brain chemistry. Their obsession with 'maintaining order' has metastasized. They are living executioners—pure psychopaths!" The man standing at the front—undoubtedly the Vice-Commander, Hijikata Toshizo—slowly drew his katana. The blade gleamed with a pale, ghostly luminescence under the moonlight.

"You lot are nothing but Kegare —Bugs," Hijikata declared, his face a flawless mask of absolute indifference.

"Alien trash disrupting the peace of Kyoto." He raised his blade.

"Trash must be purged." Swoosh! I couldn't even register his footwork. By the time my brain caught up, Hijikata's blade was already mere centimeters from the tip of my nose.

"Whoa—aaaaargh?!" I rolled backward across the dirt in a pathetic scramble. Yari attempted to provide cover fire, but the other squad members surrounded him with speeds that defied human limitations.

"Do not move. Move, and you are cut down." One of the swordsmen thrust his blade directly at Yari's throat. In his eyes, there was no hesitation, no pity, not even raw malice. It was the gaze of a bureaucrat processing routine paperwork, except his paperwork was murder. I was terrified. This was entirely different from USHIWAKA's burning rage or NOBUNAGA's overwhelming slaughterous intent. It was the terror of a complete breakdown in communication. To them, we weren't even human beings.

We were simply "dirt" that needed to be swept away.

"Ah... aah..." I shuffled backward, my heel slipping on the edge of the riverbank, nearly sending me plunging into the viscous black mud below. Hijikata loomed over me, bringing his katana high above his head. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Die, Bug." The blade whipped downward. I squeezed my eyes shut. This is it. I'm sorry, everyone. In the end, I really was just a useless, powerless nobody. BOOM!! The deafening roar of gunfire shattered the night. But the pain never came. I opened my eyes to see Hijikata's katana spinning through the air, deflected violently out of his grip.

"... Man, what's all this damn racket?" From atop the riverbank, a relaxed, deep voice drifted down, vibrating straight into the core of my chest. Standing with the moon at his back was a lone man. He had a wild, unkempt mane of long hair, a rumpled crest-bearing hakama robe paired with western leather boots. One hand was tucked casually into his cloak, and he held a cigar-like object between his teeth. But it was what hovered directly behind him that defied all sanity. It was a ship.

A massive steamship, floating effortlessly in the sky. Countless glowing cybernetic cables coiled around its pitch-black hull, and its massive steam engines were venting not white smoke, but torrential bursts of glowing blue energy particles. [The Assault Landing Dimensional Submersible: IROHAMARU Ver. 2. 0]"What're you lads doing, crowding around a kid in the dead of night?" The man flashed a blinding, brilliant grin.

"You're getting in the way of my laundry." That single smile possessed a solar-level brightness, instantly vaporizing the grim, suffocating atmosphere of the zone. The historical correction android, code-named [RYOMA]. The legendary visionary of the Bakumatsu era—Sakamoto Ryoma.

"Sakamoto... Ryoma...!" For the first time, a flicker of genuine emotion bled into Hijikata's face. It was pure, unadulterated hatred.

"You are the ultimate glitch disrupting this world. Eliminate him!" The Shinsengumi rushed RYOMA all at once. Yet, RYOMA didn't even flinch. He slipped his hands from his cloak, drawing a pair of revolvers—Smith & Wesson models, though their barrels had been heavily modified with futuristic tech, pulsing with blinking blue neon lights.

"You fellas really don't like listening to reason, do ya?" RYOMA chuckled.

"How about ya cool your heads a damn bit!" Bashun! Bashun! RYOMA squeezed the triggers. What erupted from the barrels wasn't lead ammunition. It was energy cells shaped like ropes of pure, condensed light. The moment the cells impacted the squad members, their bodies locked up, halting them dead in their tracks.

"W-What is this...?!"

"Inside my head... there are... voices...!" The swordsmen clutched their helmets, groaning in agony. 『It's the Link Bullet! 』 Gennai's voice crackled through the static-heavy comms. 『Zero physical damage! Instead, it forcefully syncs and floods their brains with the consciousness and data of others, mandating mutual empathy! It's absolute poison for remorseless psychopaths! 』"Guh... gaaah...! What... what are these emotions?!" Hijikata dropped to his knees.

Within his mind, the phantom pain, sorrow, and terror of every single person he had ever cut down was likely flashing back in a catastrophic neurological overload.

"Now's our chance! Get up here!" RYOMA kicked a rope ladder down from the side of the hovering ship. Yari and I scrambled forward, practically throwing ourselves onto the rungs.

"I will not let you escape!" Defying all logic, Hijikata forcefully crushed the mental interference of the Link Bullet through sheer, terrifying willpower and leaped high into the air. His glinting blade lunged straight for my ankles.

"Hieee!" It was going to hit. I was going to lose my legs. In that split second, RYOMA leaned far over the ship's bulwark and threw something straight down at me.

"Catch, kid!" Spinning through the air, I frantically caught it with both hands. It was a wooden rod. A worn, splintered rod made of bound bamboo. A Shinai —a practice sword.