[406] The Final Decision (6)
Rumble. Thud thud.
Istas's structure stacked block by block until it became a massive, monolithic construct—like a giant planting two thick legs into the earth.
Sein, having opened the warehouse on the giant's right leg, spoke to Alpheas.
"If we go in, please reactivate Istas."
Those who hadn't been to Heaven had no right to verify Miro's spacetime.
At least Alpheas agreed, and he intended to do what he could.
"Begin."
The mischief had gone from Gaold's face.
Finally, he would meet Miro.
It was for the best that she was lost in samadhi—otherwise the twenty years of suppressed rage he'd been carrying might have erupted.
Once everyone entered the warehouse, Alpheas reactivated Istas.
Following the pattern Sein had set, cube-shaped buildings began to couple and decouple in complex cycles.
Thud. Thump. Thud.
They heard Istas's heartbeat.
With every step, Sein's amber irises clicked and turned.
The left iris bobbed side to side at about fifteen degrees, while the right rotated with different accelerations across segments.
Instead of changing his walking speed, Sein altered his stride—controlling space in order to manipulate time.
"This way."
Sein turned ninety degrees from the warehouse's center and opened a door; another warehouse rose, doors linked into a corridor.
The instant they crossed the boundary, the warehouse they'd been in dropped away and was overtaken by another block, receding into the distance.
The process repeated without end.
'Amazing. Only a Servant could even mimic this.'
Warehouses moved, Sein moved, time moved.
It felt like everything they knew about space was collapsing. Shirone was truly walking through four-dimensional spacetime.
When Sein's steps stopped before the final destination, something wistful clouded Shirone's eyes.
Supernatural Psychical Science Research Association.
A familiar sign hung there.
Always set back in place, yet crooked as if deliberately ignoring balance.
When they opened the door, the traces of agents ransacking the room were plain to see.
Formulas Iruki had written on the blackboard had been partially erased, and the picture books Nade had been so reluctant to abandon lay shredded and discarded.
Sein walked over to the sofa.
"Twelve seconds ahead—this is the Supernatural Psychical Science Research Association twelve seconds into the future. The upper level of Istas exists at those spacetime coordinates. From here on, Armin, it's your turn."
Armin stepped past Sein and moved forward.
As a scale mage who manipulated time and space, he didn't need a long explanation to understand what the upper level of Istas meant.
"Seven. Six. Five."
As Sein began his count, a fierce wind roared as if they'd been caught in a storm's current.
It was the effect of the coordinates containing the upper level approaching them.
The research association's equipment blurred, as if dissolved into the gust's air density, and a stone gate—reminiscent of the Gaphin gate they'd seen in Galiant—overlaid the table in front of the sofa like an afterimage.
Wooooo!
"Four. Three."
As the seconds passed, the surroundings faded while the stone gate's colors sharpened.
Objects winked out, becoming transparent as the receding spacetime coordinates pulled away.
"Two. One."
All scenery vanished; only the stone gate reached full materialization.
"Now."
Armin cast his spell.
Stop.
"Good heavens…"
Something flashed in Shiina's eyes.
Etella and Shirone felt the same thing.
The upper level of Istas, hidden in a specific place and time, had been caught by Stop magic and revealed.
Twenty years ago, a genius girl had appeared and stunned the world. Humanity had imprisoned that girl at a coordinate within spacetime no one could reach.
This was the truth behind the upper level of Istas that had only been rumor at Alpheas School of Magic.
'So that's what it was.'
Shirone finally understood what Sein had meant: the origin point of the cubes—the place countless agents had searched for and failed to find.
Armin turned from the stone gate and said, "Time is stopped, so the gate will hold. But we should be quick. If the magic breaks, we'll be trapped in Miro's spacetime."
It seemed unlikely the magic would fail, but with lives on the line, caution wasn't bad.
Shirone had once escaped Miro's spacetime, but that was only possible because he was an unlocker.
And Miro was currently in samadhi, so they couldn't rely on her help.
Gaold wasn't thinking about anything that came after.
Despite his title as a first-rank archmage, his heart pounded and his face was flushed more than usual.
"Let's go, Sein."
"Mm."
Sein's irises rotated in opposite directions as he followed.
A sign of coolheadedness and excitement operating at the same time.
His ability to separate emotion from reason perfectly was part of why he ranked among the strongest in anti-magic.
"You're Shirone, right? This should be yours."
Like the Gaphin gate, the passage to the upper level would be unsealed by an Immortal Function.
There were two unlockers on the team anyway. Armin would concentrate on the Stop magic, so opening it would fall to Shirone.
When Shirone activated the Immortal Function, the characters on the stone gate lit up and broke into small cubes that scattered into a sphere.
As the matter melted away, a massive black hole formed.
"Um… who goes in first?"
For some reason it felt like they should decide the order.
It didn't matter now, but later it could be recorded as a meaningful historical moment.
"The person who broke the seal should enter first. Shirone, you're the first."
Armin smiled kindly and gave Shirone a gentle shove.
Watching that, Shiina's thoughts tangled—suddenly she felt like she couldn't even remember who Armin was.
"All right. I'll go in."
For a moment the world dimmed, then a scene opened from the center of a colossal temple.
Pillars two kilometers high held up the ceiling—there was no doubt this was Miro's spacetime.
'To think I'd come back here.'
One by one, people spilled out of the black hole.
As when Shirone first came, everyone stood speechless at the temple's scale that defied human comprehension.
"Huh? But…."
Shirone hurriedly looked back. Everyone else, thinking the same, glanced around.
"What the—what happened?"
Miro was nowhere to be seen.
"Shirone, could this be…?"
"No. It's Miro's spacetime. It's exactly the same as when we came a year ago."
Gaold cast Fly.
With a pop, he shot from one end of the temple to the other.
It wasn't lifted by ordinary lift—this was a jet-type spell that detonated air pressure to propel flight.
Gaold traversed the vast temple at incredible speed.
His movement resembled Shirone's winged flight, but the level of movement was on a different plane.
When he returned, Gaold's face contorted horribly, as if the gates of hell might open at any moment.
"Those damn bastards…"
"Calm down. Nothing's happened yet. It's just that Miro isn't in Miro's spacetime."
Miro wasn't in Miro's spacetime.
Factually true—she wasn't there—but it was an impossibility.
First, no one should be able to enter Miro's spacetime. And if she was in samadhi, she couldn't leave on her own.
No—if that had been possible, Gaold wouldn't have had to wait twenty years.
"Hijacking."
Sein drew the conclusion.
"Maybe they stole Miro from Heaven."
Gaold asked, "Is that even possible? Not a single molecule has ever passed from Heaven until now."
"No, there is precedent."
Armin bent to pick up debris from the floor.
It was rubble that had fallen from the ceiling when Miro's spacetime had been struck.
Rubbing the material between his fingers to check it, he said, "I heard Miro's spacetime cracked not long ago. A Lawbearer crossed into the Tormia Kingdom too. As I understand it, a mage from the Akeanis shrine handled it and reported back."
"But that was just a spirit-body. To kidnap a whole human, a mere crack wouldn't be enough."
"The Ivory Tower thinks the same. But that's human logic. If it's Heaven—especially the archangels—they might have found a special method."
Sein propped his chin and asked himself, "Why would they take Miro?"
It was an odd question on the surface.
Heaven had been preparing for the final war and had shown intent to invade ever since Miro's spacetime formed.
Shirone asked, "Wouldn't they do it to invade this world?"
Etella said, "No. I don't think that would work."
Sein agreed.
"Just taking Miro does nothing. Even if they killed her, Miro's spacetime wouldn't be destroyed."
Shirone asked, bewildered, "It wouldn't be destroyed?"
"Miro's spacetime is fundamentally a dimension built on the void. It keeps creating new dimensions within itself, using that infinity to form boundaries in spacetime. And through samadhi, Miro increased the void's rate. Even if Miro dies, the inertia of her samadhi would continue to strengthen Miro's spacetime. That's the theory. It may be hard to grasp."
The deeper one went into the post-crisis mental world, the weaker conscious control became and the more one was influenced by the strongest inertia of their life.
Even if the virtual zone turns off, if you can't escape the void, you're buried forever within your mind—that's why.
"No. I think I understand."
Sein didn't scoff.
"That's only an illusion. It's the mistake of a beginner to think that understanding the words means grasping the intent."
How many people in this world truly understood Miro's spacetime?
Probably very few—certainly not a raw student at the School of Magic.
Shiina said, "Shirone passed through the void."
Sein's eyebrow muscles twitched—the greatest surprise he could show.
At Alpheas School of Magic, the only person who'd passed through the void had been Miro. He remembered vividly the uproar when that world-class genius appeared.
'Hmm. Indeed, Gaold was right to bring him.'
Gaold summed it up simply.
"In any case, they can't kill Miro. The fact they took her means they found a way. We don't have much time. Once the team's ready, we'll go to Heaven."
Sein had no objection. He'd been tearing through the Black Line for twenty years for this day.
'But… is any of this normal?'
The feeling was strange.
It was literally just a feeling.
Could today's outcome be nothing more than a stack of small coincidences—an unlucky mishap anyone could suffer?
If so, what was the identity of this nagging dissonance that wouldn't leave my head?
If things were going to go wrong like this, they should have gone wrong sometime in those nineteen years—an irrational thought.
'Why now? No, why would this happen at all? Is thinking this reasonable? The world doesn't flow how we want. It's superstition to give transcendent meaning to chance.'
He wanted to conclude that way.
But in the end, Sein couldn't shake it.
It wasn't an illogical thought. It was a subtle irritation from intuition beyond logic.
'Surely….'
Something was wrong.