Chương 54: Worldline α: The Demon King of the Sixth Heaven Returns

The moment our feet touched back down in the real world, a dramatic transformation was already underway. The viscous "black mud" that had thoroughly blanketed Kyoto was rapidly drying up, crumbling into pristine white sand before scattering into the wind. The fractured fabric of space mended itself, the heavy static in the sky cleared away, and the beautiful, deep indigo of the pre-dawn sky expanded across the horizon.

"Guaaaaaaargh...?! No...!" The one letting out that agonized, desperate roar was Hijikata Toshizo—the manifestation of the Spatio-Temporal Immune System's ravenous "Wolf." Now that the historical error (the deep-seated hostility between Satsuma and Choshu) had been compiled and resolved, his entire reason for existence—the system's corrective drive—had been completely deleted. One after another, the surrounding Shinsengumi squad members transformed into floating particles of light, dissolving into nothingness.

"This is absurd...! The glitch was successfully patched...?! We... we were supposed to be the hand of justice here!" Dragging his rapidly fading lower torso across the dirt, Hijikata stubbornly leveled his katana regardless. Behind his back, the spectral phantom of the wolf expanded, darkening into a bloated, corrupted mass of pure desperation.

"Not yet...! I will not disappear! I am the pride of the Shogunate, the unyielding will of the samurai! Even if history deems me obsolete, I will never grant you my forgiveness!" Pure obsession. A catastrophic system runaway. Absorbing every single leftover scrap of the black mud remaining in the zone, Hijikata began to mutate into a colossal, misshapen monstrosity.

"You really don't know when to quit, Hijikata!" RYOMA yelled, but his Irohamaru had already reached its operational limit. Jet-black smoke poured from its main thrusters, and the ship was on the absolute verge of a crash landing.

"Kataru! Run! The bastard's planning to self-detonate and take us all down with him!" The other heroes had hit their thresholds as well. USHIWAKA's silhouette was rapidly losing its density. HIMIKO's levitating mirrors shattered into digital shards. MURASAKI dropped heavily to her knees, and PRINCE was overwhelmed by systemic noise. Not a single person had enough juice left in their parameters to fire a finishing strike.

"... Die!!" The mutated Hijikata monster unhinged its gargantuan jaws, moving to swallow all of us whole in a localized data wipe. It's over. We finally managed to tie the threads together... and we're going to get wiped right at the finish line. In that split second of absolute despair, an incredibly arrogant, larger-than-life voice thundered down from the fracturing space-time Trash Bin high above. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. 『...

Zehi mo nashi. Argument is futile. 』 CRASH—BOOOOOOM!! A torrential bolt of crimson lightning slammed directly into the apex of the Hijikata monster. No, that wasn't lightning. It was the hyper-velocity kinetic projectile of a massive cybernetic [Railgun].

"Gyaaaaaaargh?!" Hijikata's colossal frame was violently blasted backward, skidding through the dirt. Out from the billowing curtain of dust, a lone silhouette slowly materialized. A flowing crimson cape. A slick suit of obsidian nano-armor. And a pair of burning, blood-red cybernetic camera eyes.

"N-Nobunaga...?! NOBUNAGA?!" I screamed. It was him. The Demon King who was supposed to have been thoroughly deleted back at Mount Hiei. 『... What a pathetic, noisy racket you mongrels are making, 』 NOBUNAGA muttered, casually brushing the venting heat-smoke from his arm-cannon before casting a freezing glance over our battered group. 『I was enjoying a perfectly fine slumber at the absolute bottom of hell, only for your absurd "laundry" routine to wake me up with all its damn racket. 』"You...!

You're alive, you magnificent bastard?!" RYOMA let out a wild, fierce laugh.

"Ah, I get it! When I threw down my anchor to fish this kid out of the recycling bin, your data must've gotten tangled up in the mesh!" 『Hmph. Your netting parameters were simply crude and unrefined, laundryman, 』 NOBUNAGA scoffed arrogantly. 『Though... I suppose I am in a rather acceptable mood. It seems the mud caking my data has been thoroughly scrubbed away. 』 His chassis was no longer painted entirely in that grim, destructive pitch-black of his corrupted state.

Thanks to the purifying resonance of RYOMA's Grand Wash, sleek, brilliant lines of gold pulsed through his armor, cloaking him in a strangely clean, majestic aura. [NOBUNAGA Ver. Clean (Laundered)]"Y-You...!" Hijikata roared from the dirt, his monstrous form twitching in absolute rage.

"Why?! How can this be?! You are supposed to be the ultimate Destroyer of History!" 『A destroyer? How foolishly short-sighted, 』 NOBUNAGA declared, slowly raising his right hand toward the beast. Within that palm, it looked as though the very "Hope for the Future" he had once tried to violently rip from me was now pulsing under his own conscious will. 『I am an Innovator.... I can respect your stubborn pride in trying to protect the ancient, fading remnants of the past.

But the river of time flows forward, Hijikata Toshizo. 』 CLICK-SNAP-LOCK! Behind NOBUNAGA's back, an infinite swarm of floating funnel turrets locked into a geometric firing formation. It was a terrifying, ultimate weapon of absolute annihilation—fusing his own catastrophic firepower with the mirror-funnel architecture of HIMIKO. 『Begone, ghost of a bygone era.... There is no seat reserved for you at the dawn of this nation. 』 [Omnidirectional Full-Burst: TENKA FUBU (Overload)] ZUGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAAANG!!

Thousands of hyper-concentrated laser beams perforated the Hijikata monster, turning its massive frame into a literal sieve. Without even being granted the time to scream a final death rattle, the black mud was entirely vaporized, compiled back into pristine particles of light.

"... Magnificent," Hijikata's spectral form murmured. For a single, fleeting fraction of a second, his avatar reverted back into his organic human self, a faint, peaceful smile playing on his lips.

"... The rest... is in your hands." The light violently burst wide open. The Spatio-Temporal Immune System fell into absolute, permanent silence. The Shinsengumi—the beautiful, tragic "ephemeral flowers of an era"—had officially scattered into the wind.