Story:

Nobunaga came back into the main square like a red avalanche.

Heshikiri raised high, still smoking Tanegashima holstered in the void, he rushed the flank of the dueling pairs—

Angling to come up behind Bel and Black Rose, to close the circle his wives and the twins had opened, to add a mortal's sword to a battle of monsters and see what a demon lord's neck thought of it.

And Black Rose saw him coming.

Her whip faltered half a beat against Kicho's katana—her red eyes flicking sideways, tallying: the Fairy Princess pressing her blade.

The Violet Witch dueling her lord to a standstill in the sky. A red-armored samurai charging her unguarded flank with a mountain-splitting sword.

Surrounded, she thought, and the word tasted like vinegar. The level of power had tipped—tipped hard—to the enemy side, and she was the one standing in the spill zone.

"My lord—Bel—"

But Vampire Lord Bel had seen it too—and Bel, ancient and patient, was not panicking.

He was smirking.

Because he had done the arithmetic, and the arithmetic was his. The war's true objective—the goal—was already achieved.

The great protection Torii: rubble. The main ward of the Yamato leyline: annihilated. Ten years of obstruction on the dragon's vein, ended in a single night.

The witches could chase him, wound him, even hurt him—the shrine was already broken, and a broken shrine did not grow back before an army marched through it.

Everything else was merely... profit-taking.