Blacker than pitch, a deep darkness of boundless nothingness.
It begins within this vortex.
A sinister presence quickens within its womb.
Its pulsing beat becomes an invisible, intangible wave drifting in the darkness,
and at the end of its roaming it reaches Japan.…
The year is 1786.
A time known to subsequent generations as the great famine of Tenmei.
Its vestiges still remain and the starving regions show no sign of relief.
In every region insurrection and destruction break out, spurring increasing ruin.
The people tormented by unprecedented misfortune scrape by, knowing not when it will all end. Today? Tomorrow?
The Shogunate's response to this crisis was nowhere near effective.
Before his country, buried in heaps of corpses and slowly dying away,
a noted general turns toward the heavens and roars:
"Oh, listen to my country's lamentations...You!
You Tokugawa trolls, enemies of my land-your folly ends here!
The time for action has come!
I, as a patriot, will reduce all you Tokugawa traitors to ash!"
This general assuming this fated role is named Gaoh Kyogoku Hinowanokami.
"Oh, brave warriors!
Follow your patriotic souls, you true soldiers of courage!
From the North's Ezo to the South's Ryukyu, come to me! Reveal your true mettle!"
Was it the result of Gaoh's aspirations, or mere coincidence-?
Entrusting their souls to their sword, devoting their lives to the way of the warrior, 24 warriors simultaneously clash in the turmoil of battle.
What will they finally master in the end?
The code of the samurai? Or the way of Asura?
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