Inside the top-floor banquet hall of Shogun Castle's Tenshu Pavilion.
The air was so stagnant it felt as though water could be wrung from it.
Outside the windows, five eerie green pillars of light pierced heaven and earth.
Like grotesque wounds exposed when the colossal pillars holding up the sky in myth collapsed.
They continuously spewed the energy of the planet's life source into the heavens.
That light was not warm.
It was a cold, tyrannical brilliance carrying primal destructive force.
It cast Edo Castle's daylight in a bizarre and terrifying hue.
Commotion and cries of alarm began rising from the districts beyond the castle.
Panic spread like a plague through the streets and along the rivers.
Vice Admiral Momonga stared at those pillars of light.
His gaze swept across their approximate locations one by one.
Matching them against the map of Edo he had memorized.
"Couldn't hold them all after all?"
A low sigh echoed through the hall.
It was not a question, but a weighty statement.
Vice Admiral Momonga's sigh contained complicated emotions.
There was a trace of regret at having failed to see the task through completely.
But there was also a calm assessment of the established facts, as well as the focus of someone rapidly considering the next countermeasures.
In truth.
For them to successfully retake control of seven Dragon Holes from Tenshouin Naraku in such a short time.
And secure Edo Airport at the first opportunity was already a textbook-level emergency response.
At the time, their greatest challenge had been the precise locations of the Dragon Holes.
As mentioned before.
That was top-secret information known only to the former Tendoshu.
Fortunately, after the relevant officials at the World Government branch in Kyoto learned the details.
They immediately convened a brief but intense discussion.
Less than