[320] A Fleeting Rift (2)
Kariel wore a ferocious expression unbecoming of an archangel. His eyes flashed with murderous intent as if he had suffered an intolerable humiliation.
"How can the head of the archangels do this? By human standards, what's the difference between this and mating with a dog? And you tell me to forgive them? How could you?"
Uriel could not answer.
In a sense Kariel was almost Ikael's twin—born from Ikael's primal source knowledge. But their personalities differed as much as the source concepts they embodied. And above all, Kariel… truly loved Ikael.
Kariel folded the radiant ring back into his holy light-body. Yet his demeanor had already gone cold, as if wounded.
"If you don't intend to help, leave. I will pierce Miro's space-time. I will annihilate every arrogant, insolent human who defies the will of God!"
'…timid, aren't you.'
Uriel watched his back with something like pity.
The wings of light—the archangel's symbol—spread brilliantly, but in some ways he resembled a human.
Much like Ikael.
'I'm sorry, Ikael. But we need you—no, Kariel still needs you.'
Uriel laid a hand on Kariel's shoulder and said,
"All right. I misspoke. I'll join you. So, we just need to smash this… Cheonpok thing?"
Kariel pretended to yield and turned back slyly. He quickly recovered a bright expression and continued.
"Yes. But it won't be easy. Even you will have to use your utmost power to crack it, if that will even do. It was made from a substance far harder than any material in this world."
Uriel nodded, passed Kariel, and approached the Cheonpok.
Up close there was nothing but a black barrier. Examining its molecular structure, it wasn't something born of heat or pressure—probably the product of an explosion. This would certainly not be easy.
"You remember, don't you, Kariel? From a very long time ago."
Uriel shifted his holy light-body into a halo.
Information concentrated into a four-meter-diameter wheel of light, and a club of light formed at his side. Four meters in total, the shaft was only one meter long; the remaining length was filled by pyramidal club heads on each end. A celestial weapon—the Geukrak-gon.
"There's nothing you made that I couldn't destroy."
Uriel took a cavalry stance and forced motion; the Geukrak-gon spun rapidly, leaving a wheel-like afterimage. When its rotation exceeded Mach speed, the air screamed as if being cut by metal.
Geukrak-gon Destructive Technique—Cheonboryun.
"Woooooo!"
Archangel Uriel was the angel of destruction—Kariel, by contrast, was the angel of birth.
At the beginning, something amplified and the world was born. Birth and destruction locked together and created all things.
Kariel ceaselessly made; Uriel destroyed what Kariel made. It was the fate of the two brothers born from Ikael, the archangel of amplification.
"Goooaaaah!"
Uriel twisted his torso and swung; the Cheonboryun expanded to a ten-meter diameter and trailed along his forearm. As he launched himself and threw the blow, a vast wheel of light shot forward and struck the Cheonpok.
Kuuuuuuuuung!
A tremendous reverberation filled the Great World Field.
But the Cheonpok did not budge. Only the Geukrak-gon, knocked away, flew to the edge of the Great World Field and returned.
"Ha! Taha! Wooooo!"
Uriel kept battering the Cheonpok with the spinning Cheonboryun.
Kariel, who knew its power better than anyone, winced at every impact.
'Tsk, how ignorant…'
After a dozen strikes, Uriel stopped throwing the returning Geukrak-gon. No matter how he hit it, there was no sign of it breaking.
"Hmm, this one's certainly something."
Kariel smiled broadly and soothed him.
"No need to overdo it. Even this will deliver an enormous shock to Miro's space-time. It's a pity I couldn't see that terrified woman's face in person."
His words were meant to calm, but they only stoked Uriel's stubbornness.
Uriel whipped his wings forward and stepped back. After briefly checking the distance, he said, "Stand back. This time will be different."
Kariel shrugged as if to say 'go ahead' and flew to the side of the Cheonpok.
"Huuuu."
Uriel took the stance of a heavy infantryman about to charge and exhaled deeply.
The tidal halo expanded to a twenty-meter diameter as destructive information accumulated. Golden sparks danced around the radiant wheel and the Great World Field trembled faintly.
Even Kariel, who usually cracked jokes, watched his laboratory with worry this time.
"Wooooooo!"
Uriel surged at the Cheonpok.
The Cheonboryun, now twenty-five meters wide, followed and increased its rotational speed. The air of the Great World Field was sucked into the wheel's center and a violent wind blew.
Uriel swung his torso with all his might ten meters from the Cheonpok.
The wheel traced a curve and struck the Cheonpok. The disc's afterimage vanished in an instant as the Geukrak-gon, now solid, lodged itself into the surface.
But the rotational inertia was fully contained in the Geukrak-gon. The massive Cheonpok shook violently and white cracks began to spider across its inky surface.
KWAANG!
With a thunderous blast the Cheonpok shattered.
Kariel had lost the wager again, but his face shone with exultation. For him, having Uriel destroy what he painstakingly created was the fate of their source concepts. Kariel had only applied that fate constructively.
In any case, the important thing was that it had broken.
And by Kariel's calculations, the force was sufficient to destroy Miro's space-time.
* * *
Miro's space-time.
Miro had erected her temple within an endless, meaningless expanse. It was an act of gathering vast nothingness and squeezing a single meaning from it.
Because the temple existed, she existed; on that basis she raised a great barrier between heaven and humanity.
In that enormous temple, Miro existed alone.
Sitting cross-legged in meditation, her biological clock had long since stopped. In this new time and space she had inherited the fate of endlessly maintaining the dimensional wall.
'What are they plotting, Kariel?'
Attempts to bypass Miro's space-time had existed for a long time, but lately the approaches had grown blunt and direct. She felt cornered.
If heaven attacked, Miro would block it. That had been no problem so far. But now she had a foreboding sense that something was aiming at her.
'What on earth are they thinking?'
A powerful impact struck Miro's space-time. Electromagnetic waves formed and hardened the dimensional barrier. Miro's eyes snapped open.
Second and third shocks followed.
As Miro's space-time trembled, identical shockwaves struck Miro's mind.
'They are directly striking space-time. A new technique?'
No matter how much humanity advanced, they still could not match heaven's technology. If it wasn't magic, they must have found a mech system to breach dimensional walls.
Miro hastily knelt and formed a complex sequence of seals. She crossed the index and thumb of her left hand and pressed the middle and ring fingers of her right hand down with the thumb, forming a cross.
She reinforced the dimension with Scale Magic and the wall began to thicken.
'This power… is it Uriel?'
Miro's face contorted. Cold sweat ran down and the arms locked in a cross trembled.
How long she'd been at it she did not know. Then, abruptly, the shocks ceased.
Breathing harshly, she collapsed forward. Even having reinforced the dimension, she could not hold out much longer in this state. She needed another method.
"Ack!"
When the Cheonboryun struck the Cheonpok, an unprecedented shockwave compressed through Miro's space-time.
The blow felt as if it hit her directly and she was thrown dozens of meters.
Sliding across the floor, she gritted her teeth and endured. Her pupils quivered with panic.
This strike had cracked Miro's space-time.
'If this continues it will be pierced. No—it's already been pierced.'
Miro decided to use her last resort.
Cross-legged, she floated a fist above her palm and closed her eyes. There was no time to deliberate. If a dimensional void formed for just ten more seconds, heaven's forces would charge in with no time to prepare.
'I will enter samadhi.'
Once in samadhi, one cannot escape by will. It is a state of single-mindedness in which no thought arises.
As the sole master of this space-time she must always be awake, but now it was time to sink into a deep sleep.
She concentrated her focus. From that focus she focused again. Repeating the process until the self faded, until no thoughts emerged at all—only the inertia of descending into the abyss remained.
The reward was an immense store of mental energy. The dimensional wall thickened without limit and the cracks vanished. This time even Uriel would be unable to break it.
The temple's shaking subsided, but Miro remained immobile and stone-still.
Fallen into infinite concentration, she forgot her own existence. Unless someone came to wake her, she would remain in that state forever.
* * *
"How did it go?"
From the top of the central control system, Kariel and Uriel analyzed the experiment's results. Kariel watched the screen with a fascinated expression.
A crack had opened in Miro's space-time. But it recovered so quickly there was no time for heaven to act. The speed of Miro's response was plain.
Above all, what was astonishing was that Miro's space-time grew vastly stronger as it repaired. The durability readings on the screen were enough to make even the archangel Kariel understand what it meant to shudder.
"It's still getting stronger. What did she do? Can a single human really produce numbers like this?"
Uriel drew a blunt conclusion from the complex data.
"Did we fail?"
Kariel gave a bitter smile.
"There was still a useful result. By earthly standards, roughly three seconds. If we'd delayed three seconds more, we would've completely smashed it."
"I see."
Uriel didn't feel particular regret. In truth, he wasn't sure—perhaps even a little relieved.
"The Cheonpok technique itself can be called a success. We simply underestimated Miro. Truly befitting a Nephilim representing the people of the land. How did she reinforce it? From now on no ordinary sky-rupture will touch it."
"Humans are strange. They can seem infinitely weak and yet become unexpectedly strong. Gagin was like that. Miro is no meek human. Maybe that's why Ra blocked access."
"Hah. Even so, they're still only humans."
Kariel refused to acknowledge humanity.
They are undefined, chaos itself. That was why Ra controlled their lifespans under the name of immortality.
"So what now? The strategy to break the dimensional wall failed. It'll be harder to conquer from now on."
Kariel did not worry.
"We'll find another way. More importantly, there was a crack in Miro's space-time. Something interesting will happen. This will be a good experiment."
Kariel pointed at the monitor. The Cheonpok experiment had been rendered as a 3D image.
A reference line marked a specific point on the large sphere and durability values appeared numerically. When the Cheonboryun's impact struck, a fissure formed and was visible.
A crack of that size couldn't be traversed by heaven's armies or by any living creature. But that's within the category of biological beings.
Outside heaven's perimeter lived all manner of strange entities that could not be defined by human standards. And at that very moment, something had squeezed through the fissure into the earthly realm—and been detected.
"What in the world is that…?"
Kariel had no answer.
Not for lack of knowledge, but because whatever had entered the land existed in an 'unknown state.'
* * *
After the magic school's graduation ceremony, Shirone returned home in a carriage sent by the Ozent family.
Looking back, he realized a year had already passed since he had enrolled. Short if judged by time alone, but so many events had occurred.