Chapter 112: Chapter 19.5 unedited
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### **Chapter 17: The Immortal Contract**
The four Hurlers were unleashed. Hundreds of sharp, four-pronged spikes flew through the air in a wide, deadly arc, raining down on the struggling infantry and the remnants of the cavalry. Men screamed as the spikes punched through the leather soles of their sandals, piercing their feet. Horses, already maddened with pain, shrieked as the spikes embedded in their legs, sending them crashing to the ground. The entire forward third of the Lotus army was a writhing, screaming mess of broken men and dying animals.
"Crossbows," I commanded.
The rotating crossbows on the walls opened up. It was not a volley; it was a continuous, metallic storm. Heavy bolts ripped into the disordered ranks of the infantry, punching through armor, shattering bone, tearing through flesh. The sound was a relentless thump-thump-thump, a brutal, industrial heartbeat of death.
General Takeda watched in disbelief from the rear, his face a mask of fury and horror. He had prepared for a siege, for a heroic defense. He had not prepared for this. This was not war. It was butchery.
"Forward!" he screamed, his voice nearly lost in the din. "The siege towers! Take the walls! Show these demons the courage of the Lotus!"
The siege towers, pushed by hundreds of screaming men, began to lumber forward. The archers within them fired up at the walls, but their arrows clattered harmlessly against the stone and the thick wooden mantlets.
"Ren," I said. "The Grinders."
Two of Ren’s newest creations were wheeled out. They were larger, heavier crossbows, designed to fire not bolts, but large, heavy iron discs, sharpened on the edges. They were loaded with a winch system, the tension immense.
"Target the towers," I commanded.
The first Grinder fired with a sound like a cannonball being launched. The huge iron disc spun through the air and slammed into the base of the first siege tower. The wood splintered and cracked. The second shot hit higher, and the entire structure groaned, listing to one side. A third shot, and the tower collapsed, crashing to the ground in a cloud of dust and screaming men.
The second tower made it to the wall. A massive grappling hook slammed into the parapets, and a drawbridge crashed down onto the wall. A dozen of the Lotus elite, their armor gleaming, their faces masks of determination, charged across the bridge.
This was the moment Kenjiro’s men had been waiting for.
They rose from behind their barricades, their Pulse Gauntlets humming with contained energy. They met the Lotus samurai head-on. The first samurai swung his katana in a perfect, graceful arc. A stonemason caught the blade on his armored forearm, the screech of metal on metal echoing across the battlefield. Before the samurai could recover, the stonemason drove his gauntleted fist into the man’s chest. There was a sickening crunch, and the samurai’s breastplate caved in, his heart pulverized.
It was not a fight. It was a demolition. The samurai, masters of a dozen schools of swordsmanship, were utterly useless against this. They were trained to parry, to dodge, to find openings. You cannot parry a fist that moves with the speed of a crossbow bolt. You cannot dodge an attack that shatters stone. One by one, the elite samurai were torn apart, their bodies broken, their fine armor reduced to so much scrap metal.
I moved through the battle, a calm presence in the heart of the storm. I wasn’t fighting. I was observing. Adjusting.
"Ren, angle the scythes lower. They’re digging into the dirt too soon."
"Kenjiro, third squad, on the left. They’re trying to regroup at the rocks."
My voice was the cold, central intelligence of the war machine. I saw the battle not as a whole, but as a series of individual problems, each with a brutal, mechanical solution.
By dusk, the main assault had broken. The Lotus army, shattered and broken, retreated back to their camp, leaving the field before the fortress a charnel house. The ground was littered with the dead and dying, a carpet of broken bodies and shattered armor. The air was thick with the stench of blood, bowels, and death.
I stood on the wall, looking out at the enemy’s campfires, a sea of flickering lights in the darkness. We had held. We had won the day. But as I looked down at the faces of my own people—covered in blood and grime, their eyes wide with the horror of what they had done—I felt not triumph, but a profound, chilling emptiness.
I had protected them. I had given them the means to survive. But in doing so, I had fed the beast. I had shown them that with the right machines, they could become gods of death. And I knew, with a certainty that felt like a physical weight in my chest, that this was only the beginning. The war was not over. It had just begun. And I was no longer just an observer. I was the architect of the hell to come.
The week after the final retreat of the Lotus army was a season of quiet horror. The war was over, but the valley was a tomb. The air, thick with the sweet, cloying stench of rot, was a constant reminder of the price of their survival. The townspeople worked with a grim, mechanical efficiency, burying their dead in mass graves on the far side of the hill and burning the bodies of the Lotus soldiers in massive pyres that smoked for days.
There were no celebrations. There were no songs. The people of the Tsurugi Domain moved like ghosts, their faces pale and streaked with grime. They had won, but they had looked into the abyss, and the abyss had looked back, wearing a face of iron and springs. They had become death’s artisans, and the knowledge had hollowed them out.
I watched them from my rock, a silent observer of their quiet misery. I saw a young woman, a weaver, who now flinched at the sound of a hammer. I saw a farmer, who had once sung while he worked, now staring at his hands as if they belonged to someone else. They were safe, but they were broken.
The stories, however, were not broken. They were growing.
A young man who had been on the wall during the night raid, his arm in a sling, sat by the fire and told a rapt audience of newcomers about the fight with Jiro the Oni.
"He was a giant," the young man whispered, his eyes wide with the memory. "A demon in black armor. But our lord... our lord didn’t even draw his sword at first. He moved like smoke. The Oni’s naginata, it should have cut him in half, but our lord just... wasn’t there. He moved inside the Oni’s guard, like a ghost, and struck him once, in the throat. The Oni, the terror of the Lotus Kingdom, he fell to his knees, gurgling like a stuck pig. And our lord... he just looked down at him, not with anger, but with disappointment. Like a master correcting a clumsy student."
They weren’t telling the story of a fight. They were telling the story of a god putting a mortal in his place. And with each telling, the legend grew, the truth replaced by something more potent, more comforting: the myth of their invincible, indifferent protector.
The influx of new followers was overwhelming. They weren’t just the desperate and the dispossessed anymore. They were skilled artisans, minor nobles who had lost their lands, even entire merchant caravans seeking the protection of the "Red-Eyed Demon." They came with tribute, with oaths, with a desperate need to be part of something real, something powerful.
Taro was drowning. He had invented a system of wooden tags to track resources and a ledger to record names, but it was not enough. The town was bursting at the seams. The forge was working at full capacity, but it couldn’t produce enough tools, let alone weapons, to meet the demand.
One evening, as I sat watching the sun set over the valley, casting long shadows from the new, hastily constructed buildings, Taro approached me. He was not alone. He was flanked by Kenjiro and Ren. They looked like a delegation.
"My lord," Taro began, his voice formal but strained. "We... the domain... is growing. Too fast. We cannot manage it with goodwill and hammers alone. We need a system. A structure."
Kenjiro stepped forward. "We need to organize the people into work crews. Masons, smiths, farmers, a militia. We need to ration food and iron. We need laws."
Ren held up a rolled-up scroll. "I have drafted a preliminary charter. A set of basic principles for governance, based on the principles of efficiency and collective security. We propose a council to oversee the daily operations of the domain. A Council of Steel."
I looked at the three of them. The terrified cook, the pragmatic stonemason, the brilliant, fanatical scholar. They were not asking for my permission. They were asking for my blessing. They were asking me to become the king they had already decided I was.
For a moment, I felt the old urge to dismiss them. To tell them to leave me alone. But the hunger was still there, a low, dull ache in the pit of my stomach. The chaos of their growth, the inefficiency, the messiness of it all... it grated on me. It was like a poorly designed machine, grinding and screeching, threatening to fly apart at any moment.
"Show me," I said.
Ren unrolled the scroll. It was covered in neat, precise characters. It was not a document of honor or glory. It was a document of logistics. A schedule for forge production. A roster for militia training. A standardized set of punishments for theft, insubordination, and waste. It was a system for turning a chaotic mob of terrified humans into a well-oiled machine.
It was the most interesting thing I had ever seen.
"This section on training," I said, pointing to a passage. "It’s inadequate. Two hours a day is not enough. Every citizen, regardless of age or gender, will train for four hours a day. Two hours with a weapon, two hours with a tool. They will all be soldiers and all be builders."
Ren’s eyes widened. "My lord, the people... they are exhausted. The war—"
"The war is over," I said, my voice cold. "The next war is coming. We will be ready."
I took the charcoal from Ren’s hand. I began to write on the scroll, crossing out his cautious suggestions and replacing them with my own brutal, uncompromising directives. I reorganized their entire society. I redesigned their training regimen. I created a new legal code, one with only three punishments: fines, forced labor, and execution.
I didn’t look up. I just wrote. "The forge will operate in three shifts, twenty-four hours a day. All iron ore from the surrounding mines will be claimed by the domain. Food will be distributed based on work output, not need. The Council of Steel will be formed. You three will be its first members. You will report to me at dawn and dusk. Your only purpose is to implement my will. Is that clear?"
They stared at the scroll, at my scrawling, decisive handwriting, at the sheer, terrifying scope of the system I had just designed. They looked at each other, a shared, silent understanding passing between them. They had come seeking a leader. They had found a tyrant.
"Yes, my lord," they said in unison.
That night, for the first time, I did not sleep. I stood on the wall, looking out over the valley. The hunger was stronger now, a sharp, insistent craving. I had tasted order. I had imposed my will upon the chaos, and it had felt... good. Better than good. It had felt right.
I was no longer just an observer. I was an architect. And this world, this flawed, chaotic, beautiful world, was my canvas.
In his workshop, long after the others had gone to bed, Ren pored over the ancient scrolls he had inherited from his grandmother, Yukiko. He was not looking for designs for new machines. He was looking for something else. He was looking for a way to make it last.
He found it in a dusty, forgotten text on spirit alchemy. A passage that spoke of the binding of powerful spirits to physical objects, of creating vessels that could hold a consciousness, ensuring that a being’s wisdom and power could guide a people for eternity.
He read the words, his heart pounding in his chest. *The vessel must be forged in the crucible of the being’s own will. The seal must be a symbol of their essence, a mark they have made themselves.*
He looked up from the scroll, his eyes falling on the crude banner that flew over the fortress. The simple, angular characters of my name, drawn in red ink.
*Tsurugi.*
A new, terrifying idea began to form in his mind. A way to ensure that their demon, their god, their reluctant architect, could never leave them. A way to turn a man into a monument.
The seed of the Immortal Contract was sown.