Story:

And at that final proximity, Nobunaga's left hand moved.

It darted into the void—into the shimmering fold of space his wives had taught him to open—and drew forth his other weapon from his armory vault stored in the nothing between worlds.

The husband of two powerful witches had been taught an adequate level of magic as well; and in his vault, racked and charged and waiting in the hundreds, stood the weapons of a new age: matchlock rifles—Tanegashima—standing by ready for their master's hand.

Nobunaga's left hand leveled a Tanegashima directly at Yoshiro's incoming, charging, roaring face.

The demon's eyes had time to track it. Time to understand, one heartbeat too late, what the little black tube pointed at his forehead was.

"Bang," said Nobunaga.

BANG!!

The explosion occurred right at the middle of Yoshiro's forehead—powder-flash and lead arriving together, and the demon's skull caving at its center like a temple bell struck by a cannon.

Yoshiro fell off backwards from the full, massive force of the explosive shot, axe spinning from his hand, great body crashing down through a ruined wall behind him—

—and the tentacles around his corpse shivered, twitched, and shook one last time—their master already dead before his body finished falling, killed in the space between two heartbeats by an old master's new trick.

Nobunaga threw away the smoking Tanegashima, twirled the Heshikiri once through the red air, and stepped forward over the demon's ruin without pausing, already sweeping the field for the next enemy.