[340] Waves of Law (5)
"Fire Call?"
Jokre's eyes tracked the direction the rock had come from. Amy stood so close she almost blended into the scenery.
"How dare you look down on us?"
Jokre cast teleportation and flipped his Speed Gear to level 10. Amy hurriedly fired a Fire Call, but because he could compensate for inertia, he shrugged it off with ease.
"Hahaha! Is that all you've got?"
Amy's mouth tilted up in a faint smirk. The instant Jokre felt puzzled, dozens of Fire Calls rained down from the sky like a storm and pounded him.
"Ugh!"
A skewed shot at 88.97 degrees.
A Fire Call that had been lingering out of perception suddenly plunged in from an angle the Speed Gear couldn't counter.
Amy didn't stop; she charged at Vivian. The Spirit's radius created favorable conditions for allies, but it came with the fatal drawback of petrifying its caster. Vivian couldn't do anything and took a belly blow from Amy, lifting a handspan off the ground.
"Ugh! Ugh!"
Vivian vomited what was in her belly while lying prone. Amy sniffed and smacked her hand, mocking.
"Hmph. You should be thankful it ended at that."
She wanted to teach them a lesson, but there was no time for that. Explosive booms were tearing through the sky as they fought Jokre's group: Shirone's specialty—firepower—had begun in earnest.
"Shirone?"
Shirone hovered in the western sky. The Ice Queen herself wasn't visible; instead, a mass of freezing clouds had gathered opposite them.
"Huh? That is—"
Shock froze Amy's face. The Ice Queen's form that showed through the mist far exceeded anything she could have imagined.
Trinity (1)
Shirone swallowed hard, his expression hard as stone.
As the freezing cloud cleared, he could see the Ice Queen's enormous eye rolling about.
It would probably be hard to spot. Even humans struggle to pick out objects smaller than their own pupils.
Dust. Mosquitoes. Hairs.
Honestly, he didn't know.
No—he didn't want to know.
Seeing an eyeball larger than a human, a pupil and an iris moving at the same speed as a human eye, made his head go blank.
If the Ice Queen's pupil was the size of a person, her face would be the size of a house. Cold seeped from between rows of teeth aligned for tens of meters.
The strangest thing was that only the face had grown.
A tiny body was attached to a gargantuan face. If this were a dream, it would be the worst kind of nightmare.
Why make that choice?
If the goal were to frighten and stop hearts, it was a fine tactic, but that primal intent didn't capture the whole purpose.
She had increased brain capacity.
That was the only explanation he could come up with.
For the first time, emotion—real emotion—washed over the Ice Queen's usually expressionless face.
Fear and rage.
Only after experiencing annihilation under the Photon Cannon's barrage did she reach the most intense emotions a human could feel.
'Humans are strong.'
The Ice Queen realized that through Shirone.
'Then I will become stronger.'
Shirone's strength came from his brain. So she simply made her brain bigger than Shirone's. Crude in a way, but also the most intuitive and decisive solution.
"Ooooooooo!"
Cold poured from the Ice Queen's mouth. As the air contracted, it felt as if the whole sky were being squeezed shut.
The aftershock reached the ground. The earth froze; the air chilled so much breathing became difficult.
Dante and Lilia trembled in the brutal cold. Even armored fiends were losing mobility. Amy, who had Vivian twisted behind her back, ran forward shouting.
"Dante! What happened to Park Yojin? If you don't do something fast, we'll all freeze to death!"
Lilia shook her head miserably. The Ice Queen's transformation was grotesque. Setting power aside, it didn't look like anything could beat that monster. If so, it might be better to lock the Ice Queen away here even if it cost them their lives.
"Amy! Let Vivian go!"
Jokre and Ludvans, snapping back from the cold, ran up. But even they stopped dumbfounded when they saw the Ice Queen's alteration in the sky.
"Wh—what is that?"
The Ice Queen Jokre knew was gone. Only a monster with a gigantic face floated above them.
Amy pressed Vivian forward as a hostage and cried out.
"Now do you get it? Do you know what kind of monster you woke? So surrender and help us!"
Vivian struggled and spat, "Why should we care! Jokre, attack!"
Jokre didn't move. No—he couldn't. The temperature was plunging to lethal levels. Attack or not, at this rate they'd all freeze to death.
"Hey! Stay still!"
"Kyah! Hey! Take it easy!"
Unable to bear it, Amy hurled Vivian aside and moved into the group's center. She cast a Fire Wall, wrapping the area in a ring of flame; for an instant warmth spread.
"Jokre! Do something! We're going to die like this!"
Jokre was a fire mage too. Coming to his senses, he drew another barrier just inside Amy's Fire Wall.
But it was futile. Fire produced by Omnipotence has an ignition point far lower than ordinary fire, yet even that could not resist and was snuffed out.
Extreme cold swept over them. Lungs froze and vision blurred. It felt like the world was rushing toward its end—like the day 800 years ago when the Ice Queen froze herself.
For the first time, Jokre felt the terror of death. His face crumpled and a deathly scream tore out of him.
"Sa—save me! I can't die like this!"
Ludvans clutched his throat and dropped to his knees.
"Ugh! I can't breathe!"
The current ground temperature: minus 120 degrees.
A temperature that would kill everyone within three minutes.
'Shirone, please...!'
Amy looked at Shirone with pleading eyes.
Only Shirone, protected by the Vajra Armor, could hope to endure such extreme cold.
"Shirone! Everyone will die like this!"
Armand's auditory organs picked up Amy's shouts and relayed them to Shirone's mind.
But even without hearing, Shirone already knew.
It was a cold Armand could not counter even while maximizing heat generation.
Heat consumption per second had climbed to a full kilocalorie.
Even the organic robe optimized for cold protection had begun to stiffen; the people on the ground would no longer have the strength to move.
'So there's no choice but to charge in.'
Shirone swept his radiant wings back and surged at the Queen.
The added headwind dropped the felt temperature even further.
It was a suicidal attempt, but Armand, silent and without complaint, used every available resource to keep Shirone's body warm.
In the end, even that reached its limit.
- Biological tissue necrosis. Organic regeneration impossible. Estimated survivable time: 4 seconds. 3 seconds. 2 seconds.
"Graaaah!"
Shirone gritted his teeth and drove on, feeling his whole body turning into a cold stone.
And just as he was about to meet the last moment, he dove into the Ice Queen's mouth—the very source of the cold.
Amy cried out, stunned, "Are you crazy, Shirone!"
Entering the Ice Queen's body was more reckless than facing the cold outside. It wasn't just dying—who could say what lay in there?
Dante exhaled and said, "Amy. The temperature is rising. Cast a Fire Wall."
The Ice Queen that had swallowed Shirone didn't even blink. For reasons unknown, she seemed temporarily inert.
In result, Shirone's decision was brilliant—except that he was willing to risk his life to save them all.
Amy's face as she cast the Fire Wall was grim. Already she felt as if Shirone had drifted away from the world.
"He will come back. Shirone will definitely come back."
Dante's tone was not hopeful. The odds that someone thrown into the unknown would return were incalculable.
"For now we've bought time. I don't know how much, but we have to do something in there too. Gather—let's make a plan."
While Dante's group discussed strategy, Jokre stared blankly at the sky.
'That is the Ice Queen's true form.'
The Ice Queen's enormous face was hideous—like someone outside the world was using a magnifying glass to focus only on her face.
And Shirone had thrown himself into that place.
Maybe he could have held on longer. No—he had incredible flight ability; in the worst case he could have taken his friends and fled.
Yet he leapt into death.
To save the world? To be a hero? If not, was this another act of arrogance?
"Why?"
Jokre asked sincerely, but the one who should have answered had already vanished into the Ice Queen's Law.
* * *
Shirone drifted through the world of the Law.
Countless stars, their distances impossible to gauge, twinkled without pause, exchanging signals.
Light and darkness reduced to ones and zeros. A binary signal system executed the Ice Queen's Law.
But that information wasn't what mattered.
What mattered most was that there was no air here.
- Remaining oxygen consumption time: 2 minutes 37 seconds.
A chill ran through Shirone. The time Armand transmitted was literally the remainder of his life.
'Stay calm. If you get excited you'll burn more oxygen.'
He forced himself to be composed, but nothing would change.
There was nothing here but ones and zeros. There were no variables he could create to turn things around.
Was he going to run out of oxygen and die? Become a corpse and drift forever in this cold world?
Then the stars began to twinkle much faster.
Like ants that suddenly go berserk when food drops to the ground.
Shirone felt his senses grow hazy. The faster the stars flashed, the farther his perception slipped.
'Oh, I see.'
This place was the Law's digestive tract.
Had Armand's Law not been protecting him, he would already have been broken down and absorbed into the Ice Queen's Law.
Every time his mind wavered, Armand readjusted the focus to keep him conscious.
It felt like bait thrown into the sea.
'Please hold on.'
Shirone prayed to Armand. He knew Armand was just a tool, but right now it was his only lifeline.
Armand held firm.
He hadn't told Shirone exactly how much oxygen remained because he judged fear would only make things worse.
Armand likely thought he was helping, but Shirone only found it more terrifying.
'Oxygen consumption. I should just know it.'
- Remaining oxygen consumption time: 2 minutes 1 second. 2 minutes. 1 minute 59 seconds.
'Two minutes left, huh. My life.'
He forced himself to think lightly. Panic would easily double his oxygen use.
He could hold his breath to stretch it a bit, but that would be stepping into truly desperate territory.
He had to find a way while he still had slack.
"Hah!"
Shirone expelled precious oxygen.
A sudden enormous sound—no, more precisely a signal composed of enormous sounds—reached him.
Quiver.
Like bait soaked in water loosening in a storm, Shirone's consciousness began to unravel rapidly.
Be broken down.
"Uuuuuugh!"
Everything that had formed one was waving flags of independence and drifting apart.
Consciousness receded. Armand fought desperately, but the Ice Queen's Law began to devour his mind.
"Graaaah!"
Shirone winced. The nerves around his eyes tautened and his pupils began to darken.
A massive explosion at Deep Layer 1 blasted the Ice Queen's Law outward.
To resist the invader in his mind, Gaphen's sealing talisman opened and drew the Ma-shin back out.
- Multiple mental entities detected. Overdrive engaged.
Armand found the only hope to save his master and immediately connected to Behemoth.