[405] The Final Decision (5)
"Move aside. Still hopeless with machines, huh."
Sein shoved Gaold's chest away and inspected the console himself.
It was an extremely unfamiliar sight to Shirone—to see the former head of the Mage Association pushed like that.
But Shirone's expression soon softened into a distant look.
Ah, I see.
Nade and Iruki.
If Shirone ever ended up in a situation like Miro's, would those two look like that decades from now?
Gaold, Miro, Sein—the founding members of the Paranormal Psychoscience Research Society who had been caught up in the world's most horrific incident. Even though twenty years had passed and their paths had completely diverged, their personal time seemed frozen.
Gaold stuck his middle finger up behind Sein's head.
Even a world-renowned archmage couldn't help acting petty when he ran into an old classmate, apparently.
Unable to let go of old habits, he kept peeking at the instruments over Sein's shoulder.
To him, a machine was just some unknown thing you strapped metal onto and chanted a spell over.
Then, as if struck by a suddenly amusing thought, he smiled wickedly. "Heh heh, you know that casting a mental spell on a national intelligence agent is a capital offense. If you want to live long, you'd better pray I get reinstated."
Sein manipulated the controls quickly. "What do I care about the Red Line's laws, you fool. Once someone's under mind control, they won't remember what happened here. You look pretty rattled—maybe we should just bury you alive."
Ethella frowned.
As a bishop of the Carcis Order, she could not tolerate Black Line mages who muddied the world. Still, she took no action. She trusted Alpheas.
Even for the plea of a cherished disciple, she was not someone to be asked to break the Carcis Order's convictions.
There must be a reason.
When she first heard talk of Heaven, the first thought that crossed her mind was that she must not judge. This was no matter light enough to be weighed by personal belief.
What moved her was only the duty to witness, with her own eyes, the true outcome of the enormous current that likely began twenty years ago—or much earlier.
Sein switched Istas into master mode.
Green letters blinked on the panel and he combined several symbols to input data rapidly.
Shiina, who had been waiting with patience, couldn't hold back her curiosity. "But does Istas really have an upper layer? From what I heard, even the intelligence agents found nothing and left."
"There is an upper layer. There's just no way in. It was designed that way from the start. I made it so even I, who analyzed all of Istas's patterns, couldn't access it."
Shirone looked over the warehouses spread around them.
He wondered if a room truly inaccessible could exist when every warehouse had already been dismantled individually.
"How is that possible? Right now all the warehouses are accessible. That's why you made Istas's master key, Sein."
Sein studied Shirone carefully for the first time since they'd arrived.
He'd known Shirone was part of the project from when Gaold had specially introduced him, but no matter how he looked at him he still seemed like a soft, inexperienced kid.
"How do you know the master key?"
"I'm a member of the Paranormal Psychoscience Research Society. One of my friends is a servant, and he said the same. Whoever touches Istas's master equation can't make it any more beautiful than it already is."
Sein didn't smile, but he went into more detail. "Probably true. It's an equation that maps a complex four-dimensional schema into three dimensions."
Mathematically eliminating a dimension is about as hard as teaching ants to understand human language. That's why anyone with the master equation can find the research society.
A map that looks three-dimensional but actually guides you to four-dimensional coordinates.
"So the upper layer isn't limited to space."
Sein nodded.
Shirone's insight was considerable; if he couldn't grasp this, he wouldn't have qualified to join Gaold's project in the first place.
"Right. From a three-dimensional perspective, Istas is just eighty-nine warehouse buildings. But the upper layer exists in a higher dimension. That's why the agents couldn't find it."
"On top of a specific space, does it require a specific time as well?"
"Exactly. Take the 333-cube as an example: if you move the cube at coordinate 1.1.1 to 3.1.3, what's changed is not only space but time. No matter how fast you turn it, it takes at least 0.1 seconds. That's what we call spacetime. From that idea I found a method no one could use to approach Miro—by hiding Miro's spacetime at the cube's origin."
By now everyone was listening to Sein.
Even Alpheas, who had once been Sein's master, was in the position of learner twenty years later.
"No matter how you rotate the cubes or alter Istas's pattern, the origin in the cube's spacetime never moves, so the upper layer can be perfectly concealed. The master equation for Istas that you're using now is what I created to calculate that."
Shirone swallowed hard.
He hadn't expected the master equation, which he'd dismissed as the research society's shadowy prank, to have such grave purpose.
Shiina asked, "But we gathered today to go to the upper layer, didn't we? If no one can enter, then what are we waiting for here?"
"Another master key."
The word dropped like a keyword. There was a fizz and the sound of electricity snapping across the clearing—the familiar noise of flicker magic.
Through the scale mage's trademark appeared a pair: one smaller, one taller.
The smaller was compact, a short permed bob giving a cute impression; the other was tall, with long blond hair down to the waist and a bandage over the eyes.
What mattered was that both of them were acquaintances of Shirone. Probably.
If there can't be two identical people in the world, the blond figure with a bandage over her eyes could only be one person.
The eternal contemplator, Armin of the Radiant Eye, walked forward.
"A-Armin?" Shiina couldn't believe what she was seeing.
Why was Armin—who should be wandering the world and painting landscapes—standing at the center of humanity's worst crisis?
"R-Really Armin?"
Shiina stepped forward, but Armin coldly ignored her and kept walking.
Her wife, Keira, also didn't spare them a glance and headed straight for Istas.
Shiina froze in shock; her thoughts tangled and nothing came to mind.
"You arrived at the exact time. Maybe it was rude to doubt the world's greatest time mage?"
World's greatest time mage.
Shirone felt the title fit: she was a mage who had mastered speeds approaching light—so the epithet wasn't odd at all. For Shiina, who knew nothing of such things, bewilderment only deepened.
"A time mage? What do you mean, Armin?"
Armin remained silent.
Sein judged that confusion would be bad before the operation and introduced Armin. It was ironic for Shiina, who thought she knew Armin best.
"To reach Istas's upper layer, we absolutely need the help of a powerful time mage. Armin of the Radiant Eye couldn't be more suitable."
Shiina shook her head.
The more explanations she heard, the more confused she became.
"Keira, what is this? Are you kidding? Is this some kind of prank?"
Keira—usually cheerful and sometimes annoyingly witty—didn't smile this time.
She looked so cold and stern it was hard to believe it was the same person, and spoke in a high-handed tone. "Choose your words carefully, Olifer Shiina. We are White Line—the Ivory Tower's Human Safety Enforcement Division: mages Armin and Keira."
"White Line..."
Even Shirone, who already knew Armin's identity, couldn't hide his surprise this time.
If the Association belonged to the Red Line and factions to the Black Line, the White Line led to the Ivory Tower—a perfectly independent institution.
Magic that would never be abused.
Purity not swayed by the ruler's convictions.
The Ivory Tower's mages pursued magic's extremes purely. Their power was such that even ordinary staff were said to rival a nation's archmage; a single kingdom couldn't hope to challenge them.
Presenting credentials from the Ivory Tower could make royalty tremble—they were absolute rulers of mage society.
And yet Armin had come as a member of the Ivory Tower—specifically, as a mage of the Human Safety Enforcement Division.
Although the Ivory Tower doesn't discriminate between departments, from the Red Line's perspective the Human Safety Enforcement Division is the one most conscious of society. Thirty-two years ago, when Igor, the dictator of the Kon Kingdom, dabbled in necromancy, a mage from that division went in alone and made him kneel and crawl; it was a famous incident.
Keira stepped up to Gaold and shoved her face close to his.
Armin had been stubborn and forced into this, but if they were going to stir things up they might as well make it count, right?
Armin was not the sort to care about practical gains.
"Since you've brought Armin, keep your promise. First, the Ivory Tower retains the right to record and disseminate information obtained from Miro's spacetime. Second, Olifer Shiina's trip to Heaven is prohibited. You know Armin came here because of that second clause, don't you?"
"Of course. But let's make one thing clear. That's only if Shiina consents. I really hate having to persuade someone—especially a woman."
"Fine. Armin already knows that. But later you must tell Armin that I made sure to press the second condition on you."
"Heh heh heh, you really do live a hard life."
Keira twisted her mouth as if asking why bother saying such a thing.
Stubborn Armin.
In truth, the Ivory Tower had not reached any definitive judgment about Heaven. So far they considered it a problem humanity could solve. But Armin had fallen for Gaold's ruse.
To open Istas's upper layer required the highest-ranking time mage, and Gaold, intent on reclaiming Miro, certainly knew that.
The trail they traced of Armin's actions led them to the same reason the Ivory Tower had for detaining her.
Olifer Shiina.
A woman Armin cherished as dearly as her own life.
That was why Keira disliked Shiina even more.
"Tch, you like that woman that much? Can't see an ounce of charm—what a dreary, stuck-up woman."
When Sein released the mental control, ten agents collapsed to the ground like puppets with their strings cut. They'd done it to ensure no variable would disturb the operation at this crucial moment.
"We'll finish before the agents regain consciousness. We're going in now."
Sein pressed a button on the console as he spoke.
The eighty-nine warehouses began to mesh together in a precise formation.
For this moment, Shirone set aside thoughts of Armin and watched Istas.
A time mage from the Ivory Tower's White Line, a first-rank archmage of the Red Line, and the Black Line's top mental mage.
Three archmages who had reached the pinnacle of their respective fields had gathered here, and for the first time in twenty years, Istas's upper layer was about to be opened.