The battlefield of the modern era is not a muddy plain stained with the blood of fallen samurai. It is a glowing rectangle, a prison of endless green lines.

  I sat rigidly at my assigned desk on the 50th floor of Fuma Industries. Before me sat the Luminous Scroll—the computer monitor. Upon its surface was the most terrifying tactical formation I had ever witnessed.

  "Hattori," the Demon Lord Kotaro had commanded an hour prior, casually tossing a thick dossier of regional logistics onto my desk. "I need you to organize the tactical data for the Kanto sector. Input the raw numbers, calculate the regional variances, and project the Q4 totals. Use Excel. Have it on my desk before lunch."

  Excel. The very name sounded like a high-level spell of binding.

  I stared into the abyss of the screen. It was a grid of infinite proportions. The vanguard was marked with letters—A, B, C—stretching into the unknown. The flanks were numbered into the thousands. Each tiny white box was a cell, a holding pen demanding absolute mathematical perfection. If I inputted the wrong rune into the wrong cell, the entire fortress would calculate its own doom. An error in the grain supply lines could starve a thousand phantom troops.

  But I am Hattori Masanari. A shinobi does not retreat from a challenge, even one forged of light and logic.

  However, I would not trust the spirit of the machine to perform the calculations. To rely on the invisible demons inside the box was to invite sabotage. I reached into my briefcase and withdrew a weapon of unquestionable reliability.

  The Soroban. The ancient wooden abacus.

  It was an artifact of mahogany and bamboo, its beads worn smooth by the thumbs of my ancestors. While the modern foot soldiers of Fuma pecked lazily at their "NumPads" like blind chickens, I prepared to execute the true martial art of mathematics.

  I cracked my knuckles. I lowered my center of gravity, anchoring my hips to the Black Leather Glider (my office chair).

  "Begin," I whispered.

  I looked at the first page of Kotaro’s dossier. Tokyo Ward: 45,200 units. My right hand shot out. Using the Senju Kannon (Thousand Armed Kannon) rapid-strike technique, my fingers became a blur. Clack-clack-clack-clack! The wooden beads of the Soroban flew up and down their bamboo rails with the ferocity of a cavalry charge. I calculated the regional tax variance in a fraction of a second.

  Result: 49,720.

  My left hand struck the keyboard. Clack-clack-clack-clack-Enter!

  "Next!" I growled.

  Kanagawa Ward: 89,000 units. Minus 12% operational loss.

  Clack-clack-clack! The Soroban sang the song of war. The friction of my calloused fingertips against the wooden beads began to generate actual heat. A thin wisp of smoke curled from the mahogany frame, but I ignored it. I was in the zone. I was a god of logistics, translating the chaos of commerce into the rigid discipline of the green grid.

  For forty-five minutes, I was a machine of flesh and wood. I inputted thousands of runes. The cells filled. The grid was bending to my will.

  And then, I reached the Saitama sector.

  Projected Growth: Divide Q3 total by Q2 total. I looked at the Q2 total for the newly established outpost. It was empty. The outpost had not existed in Q2. The number was zero.

  "Zero," I muttered. "The concept of the Void. To divide a physical supply by the Void..."

  I struck the beads of the Soroban. But how does one move a bead to represent nothingness? How does one divide a mountain by a shadow? My fingers faltered. The wooden beads clicked weakly, offering no answer.

  "If the wooden brain cannot process the Void," I reasoned, "I must force the glass brain to do it. Let the Excel spell handle the dark arts."

  I selected the cell. I typed the forbidden equation. I commanded the machine to divide the number by zero. I struck the Enter key with the force of a hammer blow.

  The screen flashed.

  In the cell where a number should have been, a terrifying curse appeared in bold, jagged characters.

  #DIV/0!

  I gasped, pushing my Black Leather Glider back so violently I nearly tipped over.

  "What is this?!" I hissed, my hand flying to the plastic spoon hidden in my breast pocket.

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  I analyzed the rune.

  The hash mark (#) was clearly a cage—a prison of intersecting iron bars.

  DIV. A demonic incantation. The True Name of a digital Yokai.

  The zero (0). The Void.

  And the exclamation mark (!). A spear, thrust into the earth, warning of imminent destruction.

  "The Void Curse!" I whispered, my heart pounding against my ribs. "I have broken the laws of the universe! I have asked the machine to gaze into the abyss, and the abyss has screamed back!"

  I scrambled forward, grabbing the 'Mouse' to try and delete the cell. But in my panic, my finger slipped. I clicked and dragged the corner of the cursed cell downward, unleashing the 'Fill' command.

  Instantly, the curse multiplied.

  #DIV/0!

  #DIV/0!

  #DIV/0!

  #DIV/0!

  A cascade of demonic runes flooded the green grid. The plague was spreading! It was infecting the projected totals, corrupting the regional variances, turning the entire tactical map into a graveyard of errors!

  "It consumes the data!" I roared, standing up from my chair. "The spreadsheet is falling! The fortress is compromised!"

  The salarymen in the adjacent cubicles stopped their typing. They peeked over their partitions, their dead eyes wide with alarm as I began to form the Kuji-in hand seals at blinding speed.

  Rin! Pyo! Toh! Sha! Kai! Jin! Retsu! Zai! Zen!

  "Foul spirit of the Excel!" I bellowed, pressing my palms flat against the glowing monitor. "I banish thee back to the silicon underworld! Purify this grid! PURIFY IT!"

  The screen did not purify. The #DIV/0! runes remained, mocking my spiritual pressure.

  I had no choice. The corruption would soon reach the central servers. It would infect the entire Fuma Clan. To save the castle, one must sometimes burn the infected wing. I raised my fist, preparing to execute a Koppojutsu armor-breaking strike directly into the center of the monitor.

  "Hattori."

  A voice, cold and dry as winter bark, cut through my battle cry.

  I froze, my fist trembling an inch from the glass. I turned my head.

  CEO Fuma Kotaro stood at the entrance of my cubicle. He held his customary green smoothie in one hand. He looked at my raised fist. He looked at the smoking wooden abacus on my desk. He looked at the monitor covered in handprints and error codes.

  He let out a sigh so profound I felt it vibrate in my own chest.

  Kotaro calmly walked past me. He placed a single finger on my mouse. He highlighted the corrupted column. He pressed the 'Delete' key. The Void Curses vanished, returning the grid to its pristine, empty state.

  Then, he highlighted the raw data columns. He moved the cursor to the top ribbon of the screen, to a symbol that looked like a jagged, sideways 'M'.

  "Just use the AutoSum button, Hattori," Kotaro said, his voice devoid of all life. He clicked the symbol. Instantly, perfectly, without a single wooden bead being flicked, the bottom row populated with the exact, flawless totals.

  My jaw dropped. "Sorcery..." I breathed. "You summoned the answer from the ether without effort? What is this 'AutoSum'? A pact with a calculation deity?!"

  Kotaro picked up my smoking Soroban by the corner, inspecting the friction burns on the bamboo.

  "Stop doing the math on an abacus and typing it in," he ordered, dropping the artifact back onto my desk. "And you can't divide by zero. It breaks the formula. Put a conditional IF statement in there if the denominator is blank. I expect this done in ten minutes."

  He turned and walked away, sipping his green sludge.

  I collapsed back into my chair, staring at the AutoSum button. The power of the modern world was terrifying. They did not need warriors. They needed wizards.

  Location: The Fortress of Aoi (The Apartment)

  Time: 20:00

  I knelt before the low table, my head bowed in absolute defeat.

  Lady Aoi sat across from me, using a pair of scissors to carefully open a plastic packet of discounted bean sprouts.

  "And then," I reported, my voice hollow, "the Void screamed back at me. The rune of DIV appeared. It threatened to consume the entire regional budget. I nearly had to destroy the terminal to save the clan."

  Aoi didn't even blink. She dumped the sprouts into a frying pan.

  "You divided by zero, Masa."

  "I divided by the infinite emptiness!" I corrected her, raising my head. "It is a paradox! The machine’s mind snapped under the weight of the philosophical impossibility!"

  "It's not a paradox, it's just basic math," she sighed, turning on the portable gas stove. "You can't split a pizza into zero slices. The computer just throws an error because it doesn't know what you want it to do. It's a #DIV/0! error. Literally everyone who has ever used Excel has seen it."

  "The Fuma Lord vanquished it with a single keystroke," I murmured, staring at my calloused hands. "He wields the 'AutoSum'. A technique of instantaneous aggregation. My Soroban is... obsolete."

  "Your abacus was obsolete before my parents were born," Aoi deadpanned. "Look, if you're going to survive in an office, you need to learn shortcut keys. Tomorrow, I'll teach you CTRL+Z. It's the only real magic in this world."

  "Control... Z?" I repeated the incantation, committing it to memory. "Does it control the zombies? The zephyrs?"

  "It undoes your mistakes," she said, tossing soy sauce into the pan. "Something you desperately need."

  I nodded solemnly. The path to becoming a modern warrior was steep, and the labyrinth of the green grid was fraught with perils. But I would master the AutoSum. I would conquer the Void. I am Hattori Hanzo, and I will not be defeated by a spreadsheet.

  Masanari’s Cultural Notes (Glossary)

  ? Excel (The Grid of Agony): A digital torture device used to imprison numbers. It demands absolute perfection and punishes the slightest hesitation with cascades of terrifying red and green runes.

  ? Soroban (The Wooden Calculator): A noble instrument of the old world. While its tactile feedback is superior for maintaining a warrior's grip strength, it lacks the dark magic necessary to instantly aggregate a thousand cells of data.

  ? #DIV/0! (The Void Curse): A demonic ward that appears when one attempts to force the machine to comprehend the concept of nothingness. Do not engage it in hand-to-hand combat; it must be deleted.

  ? AutoSum (The Instantaneous Aggregation Jutsu): A terrifying spell wielded by the Fuma Lord. It bypassed hours of grueling labor in a single click. I must learn to harness this power.

  Countdown Update: Day 44 completed. 56 Days Remaining.

  Next Episode Preview:

  Episode 45: The Blueprints of the Chronos and the Door of No Return!

  Masanari: "Aoi-dono! I have discovered a hidden vault within the Fuma Tower! Inside, there are no spreadsheets, no financial scrolls—only diagrams of gears, copper coils, and temporal mechanics! The Demon Lord is building a chariot to conquer the heavens themselves!"

  Aoi: "Those look like engineering schematics for a giant centrifuge, Masa. Why are you snooping in the R&D department? You're going to get fired."

  Next Time: The Infiltration deepens, and the true purpose of Fuma Industries is unveiled!

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