[449] The Beginning of Change (1)
Drimo.
A multidimensional space into which all the world's psychic energy flows.
With countless consciousnesses tangled together here, there are no clear rules to define the world.
Anything can be realized, and anything can be denied.
Sometimes a sword will follow a severed throat, and sometimes a throat will be severed though no sword ever appears.
That is why for a distinct consciousness to walk Drimo is nothing short of suicide.
Without an extremely refined mental comprehension to support them, everything here is a trap.
He couldn't say how much time had passed, but to Arius it felt like ten years had already aged him.
Brahma—his brain-matter hanging long like hair—never left Arius's side for a moment, offering solutions.
Even he, who could in a second make judgments that ten thousand cautious humans would only reach by compromise, had arrived here after several brushes with death.
"Huff. Huff."
Arius dragged his exhausted body slowly into the temple.
If there were no keyword here either...
Miro might not be human.
He'd pulled every scrap of information tied to the name Miro.
Traumas that must exist because one is a living, human being.
The original plan had been to strike Miro with that trauma and force her awake from the Void dimension, but even that chance now seemed slim.
A temple floating on a cloud.
Would Miro's real temple look like this?
Arius opened the neat, old-fashioned door and stepped inside, harboring the smallest hope as he looked around.
He soon scowled.
There was nothing to inspect. There was nothing to see.
Only the immaculate temple floor stretched out without a speck of dust.
"Damn it! How... how can there be no trauma? How!"
Arius ground his teeth.
As a tomb-robber he'd entered countless minds.
Even the most virtuous of people harbored murky corners and traumas they could never reveal.
That's what being human meant, and that's what kept the world intact.
But Miro seemed to be completely outside that rule.
'This can't be. She's human too.'
Nothingness did not mean having done nothing.
She had lived as a human: loved, erred, desired, hated.
Only those feelings had not connected into remorse, shame, denial, or self-loathing.
Literally the pinnacle of nobility. No taboos, no obsessions—an infinitely free spirit.
"So what now? We couldn't find the keyword you said."
Brahma asked.
Arius didn't care that his answer might cost him his life.
He'd long believed no human was perfect. That belief still stood, but now a choice had to be made.
'Did I misunderstand humans? Were they not inherently imperfect?'
"Arius, can you find it?"
When he didn't answer the second time, Brahma's brain-matter fluttered and he floated up.
Whether he noticed it or not, Arius propped his chin on his hand and paced in a small circle.
Miro.
A genius of magic on a scale without precedent in history.
'Maybe I took it too simply. I need to examine more closely.'
Miro had prospered her whole life. For someone like her, the most shocking thing would be the Judgment of the Twenty.
'I see.'
Arius stopped and circled the temple's pillars, then raised a finger and began counting.
One, two, three. He stood before the twentieth pillar and checked for anything different.
'Nothing?'
Numbers were major keywords that helped form a mind.
If a keyword existed, it should be here.
'Should I search under the name "Judgment"? But there's nothing here to symbolize a judgment...'
"Arius, time's up."
Brahma, approaching from behind, glowed a pale violet and wore a wicked expression.
Kariel's allotted time had already passed. He'd come this far by his own judgment, but he couldn't stall any longer.
The arm of Brahma, transformed into blades, swung fast to sever Arius's neck.
"Ah!"
A cry burst from Arius.
Two blades had his neck in their grip and then froze. Blood seeped through split skin, but Arius had no mind to feel pain.
"Ah... aaah..."
When Arius stepped closer to the pillar, Brahma sheathed his blades and watched a moment more.
"There. It's here."
Across the evenly ridged grid ran a hairline fissure so faint one would miss it without looking closely.
'The Judgment of the Twenty! Something happened that day.'
Arius's fingertip trembled as it reached for the fissure.
Brahma activated his ability.
The fissure's trauma amplified and the landscape shifted.
A black space stretched with a single small well, but the setting no longer mattered.
Arius hurried over and peered inside.
A single, threadlike wound remained in Miro's mind.
The scene of that wound played like a recording.
"This—this is...!"
Shock shook Arius's eyes.
It was nothing like he'd expected; it was a plainly human scene.
"Kukuku. Kukukuku."
A thrill ran through every cell of his body, and raucous laughter burst out.
"Khahahaha! Khahahaha!"
The greatest thrill and ecstasy of his life.
He had conquered Miro.
He had found the only weakness engraved in the mind of a mage who appeared to have no gaps.
'Only I know this. Miro is mine now.'
Brahma spoke in a cold voice.
"If you've found it, begin at once. Lord Kariel awaits."
Arius had been planning to do exactly that.
He was dying to see her face when she was forcibly pulled out of the Void dimension.
"Then... shall we begin?"
Because Miro's mind was linked to the well, Arius dove in immediately.
Brahma followed, and using Miro's single trauma they wove a net and cast it into the Void.
Miro's spirit, lost in trance, contorted.
"Ugh!"
Unconscious, she tried only to hold her mind together by inertia.
But the more she resisted, the more a single thought flooded in and refused to leave.
Her heart hammered, and nothing but that thought thudded against her brain in a muddy emotion.
"Hah!"
Miro's eyes snapped open, the trance broken.
As the infinity of the Void collapsed, murky thoughts surged like rapids and swept Arius and Brahma away with them.
When he came to, the sight was not Drimo but Miro's own temple—only hers.
Miro sat cross-legged and glared with a sharp eye. Arius, trembling with elation, opened his lips.
Miro shifted her gaze to Brahma without answering.
A triangular Mara—clearly the angels had found some method.
'Using trauma...'
It had always bothered him, but who would have thought it would trip her up.
"Vile Miro."
Brahma hovered in the air.
"Everything is over. Serving the will of Anke Ra is humanity's only fate. From now on I'll tear your bones apart."
'Where is my body? Has it already been moved to heaven? If so, it's irreversible.'
Arius added aloud.
"If you're thinking of slipping back into trance, forget it. You know why, of course."
He swaggered up to Miro, triumphant, and shoved his face toward hers.
"You were quite the shock. I never expected you to have such a side."
Miro's eyes trembled.
For someone to know thoughts no one should know—even thoughts she herself turned away from—was devastating.
But that was from the perspective of an ordinary human.
In the end, Arius had chosen the wrong opponent.
"A pathetic mage like you—"
"Hahaha! Who are you to say that? To have my true feelings seen by such a—"
Arius stopped.
Before him, Miro's eyes had grown larger than the temple itself.
As the tightly contracted irises widened to the size they had just been, Brahma lunged.
"Vile Miro!"
It was Brahma's last cry.
Snap!
A hand descended from the ceiling and crushed Brahma like an ant. Arius watched Brahma's body get crushed, then slowly turned his head again.
There was nothing to see. The relativity of scale stretched toward infinity.
Arius shuddered as if struck by lightning.
Perfect grandeur.
So vast and enormous that the supreme dignity of the universe—beyond the perception of a mere little creature—stood before him.
Aaaaaahhhh.
A sound of ecstasy burst from him.
The greatest feeling of his life filled his mind, and his heart pounded as if it would burst.
Driven mad with emotion, Arius threw himself at her.
He crossed dense forests, waded lakes, leapt over two bulging mountains—after countless ages he arrived at the world's edge where giant pillars stood.
'Ah, aaahhh...!'
Arius propped himself on a crutch and struggled to lift his head.
When he saw Miro's gigantic face floating in the sky, tears fell.
"Finally, finally we've met."
Kneeling in the palm of her hand, he spread his arms wide with the happiest expression in the world.
There was nothing lovelier in this universe than Miro. Nothing more precious.
This was so beautiful.
Therefore it had to be perfect, and therefore could have no flaw.
Before the greatest feeling of his life, the wrinkled-faced man tilted his head and kissed her palm.
"Wol! Wolwolwol!"
Then he wagged his hips like a dog.
He humbled himself into the most servile creature he could imagine.
To think he could possess Miro—what blasphemy.
She was absolute. An absolute being must be without blemish.
So the most wretched treatment should fall upon his two eyes—eyes that had seen what they should not have seen!
Plop!
Arius's hands plunged deep into his eye sockets.
'You must not exist!'
With all his strength he tore his eyeballs out, then raised his trembling hands as an offering to Miro.
"O Absolute One, please accept this humble servant."
Miro looked down at Arius impassively.
He'd felt the dimensional wall; he would never cross it again.
To Arius, Miro was a god.
'The dimensional wall is already broken. We should get out for now.'
When Miro closed her eyes, the world went dark.
At the same time, the door installed during the Great World War exploded, and two people tumbled out of the real-world Miro, who sat cross-legged in reality.
One was the now-blind Arius, and the other was the crushed Brahma.
Kariel crossed hundreds of meters in an instant and arrived before Miro.
"At last, to see you again."
Miro's eyelids slowly lifted as she came out of trance.
"Wolwol! Krrr!"
At the same moment Arius flung himself to the floor and barked like a dog.
In his mind, now a servant of Miro, there was only the desire to protect his mistress.
But when Kariel kicked his face, he yelped and scrambled behind Miro, rubbing his cheek.
Seeing the angel's face, Miro spoke.
"Kariel, it's been a long time."
"Heh heh, still arrogant as ever. Well, among humans you're probably the only one who can casually use an archangel's name. In any case, Miro's spatiotemporal field is gone."
"It turned out as you wanted. But humans won't be so easy."
"That I don't know, but it's certainly interesting."
Miro's eyebrows twitched.
"...What do you mean?"
Kariel opened the Great Codex.
With Miro's spatiotemporal field gone, it would be best to kill her immediately, but a better solution currently existed in Purgatory.
"A human named Gauld. He seems to have come looking for you."
Miro's brow narrowed a fraction.
'This idiot...'