[213] 5. An Angel's Formula (3)
"I'll trust you. I won't feel any unease."
Ikael smiled. She was relieved Shirone caught on quickly.
"That's exactly it. Then we'll begin now."
Ikael closed her eyes and performed the possession.
Her sacred halo slid into Shirone's mind, and he opened his eyes wide.
A flash burst from his pupils, and a weird sensation of two minds merging spread through him.
- Shirone, how do you feel?
- Huh, huh? This is...
Shirone, experiencing possession for the first time, was bewildered.
He couldn't tell whether the thoughts that rose were his or Ikael's.
It felt like playing both parts alone, like a madman acting as two people at once.
- Don't be confused. I am Ikael, and Shirone is me. Just think the thoughts.
He understood the method in theory, but even the thoughts that came felt like his own delusions, and it gave him goosebumps.
Did she really have to put it that way? He could have thought of anything else if he wanted.
- Don't doubt! Once you start doubting, everything that makes up Shirone will collapse. Possession is a delicate art. Just accept it.
Shirone chose to trust her. Even if the thoughts in his head were nothing but his own fantasies, he decided they were true.
His mind calmed and his heartbeat steadied.
There had been a hiccup, but the angelic magic ritual hadn't even properly started yet.
Ikael decided to push past the first obstacle.
- Now I'm going to form the halo of sacred light. Pull your mind outward.
Shirone transformed his Spirit Zone into an external form.
An angel's halo normally sits above the crown, but Shirone extended his Spirit Zone straight in front of him.
It felt like the most familiar direction to a human.
- Like this?
- Yes. No — well done. Whatever you do, Shirone's decisions matter. You must find the most efficient method yourself. Now we'll create the ring that becomes the frame of the magic circle. Draw a perfect circle out of light.
Shirone waited without thinking. No guiding voice came.
- Um... you want me to do it now?
- Yes. Do it now.
Shirone had expected at least some instruction and was taken aback. Still, assuming there was a reason, he expanded the light into a ring.
A one-meter-diameter ring of radiance formed before him.
At first glance it looked impressive.
A clean circle with a comfortable brightness. It could hold its own next to an angel's halo.
- It's woefully insufficient. With such a warped circle you can't compute massive amounts of information.
As expected, Ikael criticized it. Once the scale went into units the human eye couldn't perceive, it apparently fell apart.
There was no other way. The perfect circle was only a concept. How could he realize something that didn't exist anywhere in the world?
- A perfect circle?
Shirone had a sudden realization. There was one perfect circle that uniquely existed in this world.
- That's right, Shirone. The Immortal Function. That's why the Nephilim are called the heirs of angels.
Open the Immortal Function and expand your mind to its limits. That alone is the perfect circle.
The whole is always perfect.
- But if I do that...
He would cease to exist as an individual. Hadn't he experienced that in Miro's timestream already?
- You must run the Immortal Function at one hundred percent. Then catch it and reconsolidate it into a form. I'll control it, but it's definitely dangerous. Can you do it?
He had to return from the realm of infinity. This was the first gate to mastering an archangel's power.
- I'll try. I did it once, so the second time should be easier.
He didn't truly expect it to be easy, but if he didn't say something he might go to pieces from the tension.
Shirone opened the Immortal Function.
It was a release with no brakes and no hesitation. His consciousness disintegrated and spread into infinity.
Shirone's consciousness became an Akashic Record. But because it was already perfect in itself, it yielded no new information.
- Shirone! Shirone! Hear my voice! Do not let yourself go! Engrave this sensation in your heart! Pull it back with adamantine fortitude!
Shirone drew his minutely disassembled mind into the boundary of adamantine fortitude.
A massive ring of light swept everything in and surged into Shirone's head.
There was a cold, glass-cutting sound. Then a flawless halo formed before his eyes with not an inch of error.
The speed of the light rotating along that halo was literally the speed of light. Even though he'd externalized the Spirit Zone, it remained a mage's mind. Having motion like that inside his head nearly paralyzed his thoughts.
In short, Shirone had implemented the concept of the Immortal Function in the real world.
Ikael's voice sharpened.
- Shirone! From now on I'll engrave the archangel's unique omniscience into your halo! Do not let go of the adamantine fortitude. You must hold on to survive!
A red flash shot from the front and struck the halo's center.
A red ripple spread and birthed the simplest computational magic circle distinguishing 1 from 0.
From there the formulas grew steadily more complex.
Multicolored sparks rained down on the halo like a storm, carving magic circles into it from directions Shirone couldn't track.
Countless circles meshed together like gears and spun.
Circles of different sizes, speeds, and directions rotated like the inner workings of a clock.
Shirone's head was about to explode.
The first gear turned a few gears, and those gears in turn drove hundreds more.
The scale of computation kept swelling.
At some point Shirone gave up trying to calculate.
He couldn't fathom the meanings encoded in the halo.
What could 170,000 computational circuits and 4,800 magic circles be trying to express? How could he possibly know?
"Ughhh!"
A nosebleed trickled down. He gritted his teeth and endured, but equations numbering in the hundreds of millions kept spiraling upward without end. This exceeded human limits.
- Shirone! Don't try to understand! I'm understanding it! Accept it through the circuit of insight!
Shirone grasped Ikael's intent.
He didn't need to compute. She meant to simplify the complex concepts into truths and stamp them directly into Shirone's brain.
When the number of magic circles engraved on the halo surpassed forty thousand, Shirone tasted the realm of gods.
It was the computation at the speed of light.
Still, the fact it took time meant the concepts stored in the halo exceeded human capacity.
He couldn't know what they were yet, but it was undoubtedly a magnitude beyond imagination.
- I can't hold on. Not any more...
Cracks began to form in the adamantine fortitude.
It was inevitable; a human being was being forced to accept the attribute of a higher-dimensional, archangelic existence.
This was the third hurdle Ikael had warned about.
- You're almost there, Shirone! Hold on just a bit longer...!
Shirone's strain began to affect Ikael.
As the computation passed ninety percent, the magic circles automatically drove toward completion.
Shirone's mind was oversaturated. It felt as if a bomb planted in his head had detonated.
He sensed countless fissures in the adamantine fortitude. His mind was breaking—he was going insane.
In truth, Shirone's psyche was hurtling toward severe ruin.
Ikael watched with pity. She knew that even if the magic circle completed, he wouldn't be able to endure it. If the information reached one hundred percent, the adamantine fortitude would explode.
At that moment a peculiar change occurred in Shirone's mind.
The adamantine fortitude went beyond cracking and shattered into countless pieces. If that was the current state of Shirone's mind...
The thought made Ikael's skin crawl.
Yet an unexpected result appeared.
Even as the adamantine fortitude's durability converged to zero, the form of his consciousness did not change.
If the adamantine fortitude were a metal sphere filled with water, Shirone's state now was like water freezing.
When water freezes, the metal sphere would shatter.
But if it were a rubber ball, the ball would simply expand as the ice's volume increased.
So Shirone pulverized the fortitude's durability down to microparticles and added flexibility.
Softness overcame hardness.
Shirone's metal sphere had splintered, but the frozen form inside still held.
Warmth rose in Ikael's chest. Was this the latent power of a human? Even after his mind had been ground to powder and subjected to unbearable mental torment, Shirone had preserved his consciousness to the end.
That will propelled Shirone's mind to the next step. It was the evolved form of adamantine fortitude—the adamantine form.
He had broken the frame. Only the content remained.
With no frame left to shatter, Shirone could not be shaken in any situation.
If adamantine fortitude was the extreme of durability, then the frame-less adamantine form was the ultimate flexibility a human could achieve.
The information density engraved in the halo exceeded ninety-five percent. It was an immense volume.
But as the adamantine fortitude had done, the increased volume was accommodated by expanding in size. Then it tightened again, locking in the angelic information.
- Congratulations, Shirone.
Ikael offered wholehearted praise. Could a human swing so far to both extremes?
Shirone had gained both strength and flexibility at once. It was an undeniable leap.
Buried under angelic information, Shirone could think of nothing. He only tried to endure and realized, faintly, that it felt easier than before.
When the angelic magic circle completed, consciousness finally returned.
A ring with dozens of magic circles spinning at different speeds came into view. Inside there were probably hundreds of times more circles working away.
It was a truly beautiful magic circle.
The halo Ikael had cast became Shirone's lived experience. He couldn't grasp the principles, but he could imprint the completed concept like a seal.
- We did it, Ikael...
After saying that, Shirone closed his eyes. As his consciousness dimmed, the world sank into darkness.
@
A sharp light made Shirone wince. When he opened his eyes, Ikael was looking down at him with a worried expression.
"Are you okay, Shirone? How do you feel?"
Shirone sat up. He felt oddly embarrassed.
He'd lost consciousness twice since meeting Ikael. Associating with higher-dimensional beings was proving to be more exhausting than he'd thought.
He clutched his throbbing head and asked, "How long was I out this time?"
"A little long. About twenty minutes."
"What? Why...?"
If it were Ikael, she could have woken him sooner.
When Shirone looked at her incredulously, Ikael answered apologetically.
"You were in shock. Even if I had forced you awake, you wouldn't have been able to fight at your best. Especially when using the angelic magic circle—you'll have to pour out all your mental strength."
Ikael was right. But the delay still worried him.
"Don't worry. This has strengthened your mental power. And you've had enough recovery, so you'll reach the destination faster than before."
Shirone checked himself for changes. A far more potent process was happening in his body than when he'd reached adamantine fortitude.
As his mind was drawn deeper than before, Shirone's confidence returned.
If he moved at maximum speed he could make up the time. Rian and Canis—what would have become of them?
By rough estimate they had arrived or were nearly arriving. In that case there was still a chance to make up for lost time.