A man who crossed the sea became a “samurai” in a foreign land.
The country of his birth, the name he once bore, even what he believed in—none can be known for certain.
History has left only a handful of records.
And one name.
Yasuke.
The Makai-shū sought greater power.
Shirō could captivate people.
Xavier possessed faith and knowledge.
Goemon could break through every boundary.
But—
Something was still missing.
They needed overwhelming martial force.
The next person chosen by Gensai Tsuchimikado was a foreign samurai who had appeared suddenly in Japan's age of warring states—
Yasuke.
A man who traveled to Japan from across the distant seas and is said to have served Oda Nobunaga.
People were astonished when they first saw him, and Nobunaga eventually took him into his service.
But Nobunaga died in the Honnō-ji Incident.
Yasuke, too, vanished from the historical stage. Few reliable records survive of what became of him afterward.
That was precisely why Gensai took an interest in him.
Gaps in the historical record.
A life left untold.
The more a person has disappeared from history, the more empty space HANGON AI has to work with.
A personality is reconstructed from the scant surviving records and anchored into a new vessel.
But the awakened Yasuke says very little.
Whether he is the real man or a Yasuke created by someone else—such questions do not interest him.
What he remembers is fighting.
And—
the right to decide for himself whom he will serve.
The Black Samurai who once served Nobunaga takes up his blade again, centuries later.
The sword he wields will protect neither God, nor country, nor history.
This time, it will serve something he has chosen for himself.
The greatest warrior of the Makai-shū.
BLACK SAMURAI—Yasuke.
[To be continued]