[444] The Day of the Full Moon (8)
"Kikiki! Humans are amusing. Their emotions show right on their faces."
Garas, pressed down on Plu, stuck his tongue out.
Born late and having had all the breeding opportunities stolen by his siblings, the human before him was perfect prey.
As Garas said, fear was plain in Plu's eyes. But it wasn't fear of the horrible things about to happen.
She vaguely suspected the truth already.
The constant headache and the sense that something in her mind had been severed—if she'd been the original, she would have reached the same conclusion.
Death is an intensely personal thing. Whether original or copy, the fear of ceasing is the same.
That was the only reason Plu could wear a dry smile as death approached: the satisfaction of having done her duty as a mage.
"Eat this."
Garas didn't understand the meaning of the human's raised middle finger.
In that brief pause, Plu's eyes slowly closed.
'Shirone, you must become a great mage.'
The document Shirone had seen probably contained proof that she was a clone.
'Thank you for saying that.'
He had said he would come to rescue her.
She was glad that, to the end, he had recognized her as Plu—the one Plu—not as a replicated life-form.
A clone's lifespan was only a week.
Still, it had been a fine life.
Plu's hand fell limply to the floor, and only then did Garas realize the body beneath him had become an object.
Breeding is, after all, the urge to preserve the species. A being that couldn't produce offspring held no interest.
What irritated him unbearably was the emotional plunge—the drop from peak excitement down to nothing.
"Kraaahhh!"
Garas grabbed Plu's neck, hurled her against the wall, then threw his head back and roared.
A living creature! He needed a living creature!
His sense of smell—extremely honed when it came to breeding—caught another organism far away.
"This time I won't miss!"
The afterimage of Garas, chasing the scent of life, stretched down the corridor like a black wind.
* * *
Reysis fought with everything she had.
But as her muscle fibers were steadily broken down into plasm, her limbs moved in directions beyond her will.
"No! I have to reverse this!"
Shirone, trapped in Glass Sphere No. 1, was a Type B equipped with the Ultima system.
With the main type already set, if the Rite of Anecdote continued, all organic matter would converge around Shirone.
How was he still alive?
Even after seeing Plu with her own eyes, Reysis could not accept the situation.
Could Shirone get out of the sphere? Why had things turned out like this? Was the woman in front of her really Plu?
She tried to think, but only a few looping questions circled in her head like vultures, dragging her into a quagmire.
Plu, who had modified the physics machine, turned slowly. Almost at once the plasm filled to the brim and coated Reysis.
Calmly stepping toward the glass sphere, there was a dull thud as Reysis's palm struck the inside.
Reysis shoved her face forward. Her eyelids were gone; her expression was one of startled puzzlement, her irises still clouded by unresolved questions.
Plu raised the ring finger of her right hand. The spot where a Cubric should have been was much paler than the surrounding skin.
'Then she's the original? But since when…'
Plu had removed the Cubric a week earlier, when she spied on the underground lab while Shirone was absent.
Peering into the clone isolation room, she had intuited why Reysis had accepted Shirone into headquarters.
To mass-produce Shirone's clones, they would use Plu, who shared genes from the same world.
Add Garas's traits and they could grow clones rapidly to adulthood.
After examining the physics machine, the memory transfer device, and the traits of various organisms, Plu began one plan.
Transfer the original's memories into a clone locked in the isolation room.
Cut out only the final memories, hand the drones and the Cubric to the clone, then enter the isolation room herself and wait for a counterattack—physically and mentally brutal, but highly effective.
The perfect way to defeat an enemy was to stab them in the back.
As the assassin's adage said—that even gods could be killed given a blind spot—her tactic exploited the psychological blind spot across headquarters.
"Stop that idiotic look and disappear, you demon."
Submerged in liquid, Reysis could not hear Plu's words clearly. But far stronger emotions surged up than the words conveyed.
"How dare you…!"
Reysis ground her teeth; teeth, soft like rubber, crumbled in an instant.
"It won't change anything! Everything will become one anyway! I will have perfect beauty! I win!"
Leaving Reysis's cries swallowed by the fluid, Plu ran to the glass sphere holding Shirone and pounded the wall.
"Shirone, snap out of it! Shirone!"
When Plu had escaped the isolation room and reached here, the Rite of Anecdote was already well underway.
Her first thought was to cancel it, but that would be an emotional reaction.
If she canceled and found Shirone more than half dissolved by plasm, there would be nothing to gain.
Better to let it proceed and switch the main type to Shirone. Even if it became a monster, the project could continue.
Shirone would understand.
He was a mage, after all.
"Shirone! Shirone!"
Still, her heart begged for him to wake and do something right now.
The instant Plu's voice traveled through the liquid medium, Shirone's stalled heartbeat fluttered.
Unlike Reysis, who was seventy percent dissolved, Shirone's body—protected by Armin—was not yet damaged.
Armin, fused with Shirone through the Ultima system, attempted a last-ditch instinct to preserve life.
A shock strong enough to burst his heart made Shirone's body jerk violently underwater.
Another shock, another crushing squeeze on his heart, and his pupils snapped wide as air escaped his mouth.
"Guhk! Gahk!"
Pulled back from death by the shock, Shirone flailed his limbs.
A dull thud against the glass wall, and Plu's voice faintly reached him.
'Senpai?'
He was alive. Reaching that single fact, his reason returned swiftly.
Without having passed the second-stage survival test, Ice Jade, such rapid mental recovery would have been impossible.
"Keep cool. Think with the coldest mind."
He felt Armin melting into him. That meant he was still inside the glass sphere, and if the Rite continued he would be absorbed by Reysis.
"Should I cast Rampage…?"
He almost shattered the glass to escape, but the memory from just before death linked in and he hurriedly reversed his decision.
Reysis had performed a fourfold Mara unlike any Shirone had heard of.
Having already suffered a defeat, escaping now would only make him Reysis's even more powerful prey.
Reaching the same conclusion as Plu through different means, Shirone withdrew the Spirit Zone and instead reinforced Armin.
"Hold on. Just hold on!"
He didn't know which consciousness would be dominant when the Rite ended, but with Armin equipped with the Ultima system, it was worth challenging a fourfold Mara.
Armin's organic tissue regenerated to its limits, shielding Shirone's body from the plasm.
And finally, after enduring one minute, the plasm began to recede to the bottom of the glass sphere.
"Krrrrgh!"
Breaking his shell and pulling Armin down like a metamorphosis, Shirone rose to the surface.
He'd kept his life, but the outcome was uncertain.
If Armin lost initiative to Reysis, what formed in the central glass tube would be not a magic sword but a demon itself.
Kuuuuuu!
At a sound like air burning, Reysis opened her eyes. Everything was clear in the liquid state.
The sloshing fluidity, the electrical stimuli that spark life, Ikasa's Valhalla Action, the mana of the true-plant hybrid Galtomic, and Ringer's hard armor—all integrated and flooded in at once.
Everything in the world became one.
Beautiful things, ugly things—didn't everything begin from one?
A blue light descended and bathed the world in silver. Reysis smiled with happiness.
In the reflected light she saw herself before meeting Satan.
Pure white skin, breasts a little more developed than others, firm thighs…
"Hoho. Still ugly feet, though."
Clear tears streamed down Reysis's face.
The form she had wanted so desperately—the most beautiful form in the world—was finally hers.
"Now… it's done."
The blue light flared like a flash and everything returned to one.
"Gahk! Gahk!"
Thanks to Plu's help, Shirone vomited the murky liquid as he escaped the glass sphere.
The pain was intense; his stomach felt as if it had melted.
"Shirone, are you okay?"
"No. It hurts so much. But Senpai, how did you—?"
At that moment the central glass tube flashed and the Rite of Anecdote ended.
Shirone and Plu, who had fallen silent, watched tensely as the glass tube clanked open.
Armin, radiating every color of the spectrum, revealed her form.
"Success, success."
With Armin's Ultima system acting as the main type, it was clear she had integrated the other traits.
There was no time to celebrate; Shirone moved. With his stomach ruined, he had to activate Adamantine Armament as soon as possible.
Kraaaang!
The lab door was smashed inward and all manner of Garas poured in. With no more breeding targets left in the underground lab, they all flowed here.
"Kiiik! Kiiiiiik!"
Hundreds of Garas, driven mad by pent-up desire, were at the height of excitement.
As Shirone grabbed Armin, Plu activated the Phoenix Formation.
Even without a phoenix, the formation's power was immense, but the burning Garas threw themselves at them, fearing nothing—not even death.
"Kikiki! Found you."
Plu, holding back the Garas with all her strength, turned her gaze to the door.
All the Garas ceased their attack and parted to make way for a single Garas that had just arrived.
Plu's upper body was rocked back by the Dawkins algorithm, an enormous force transmitted through her.
All she saw was a passing black afterimage—its speed alone surpassed hers.
"Kikiki! This is fun after all!"
Seeing a human making the same middle-finger gesture as the dead human earlier, the Garas's excitement surged higher, activating their cells.
The evolution happening in real time transcended the missing-link gap and reached final evolution.
Its crooked spine straightened; its face resembled a bald man—almost human.
Sensing the air ripple, Plu erected an air shield; the air expanded like an explosion, throwing her back.
'Ugh! Spirit Force…!'
A righteousness-affinity power only the Nor people could wield. Though born from a bald man, this Garas's strength far exceeded his progenitor.
"Better to tear off the limbs first!"
As the Garas turned into a black afterimage and charged, Plu ground her molars and braced for impact.
The Dawkins algorithm might let her dodge, but she had to be ready for her spine to be snapped.
"Kraaaak!"
In that instant the Garas froze. Its shoulders pinched in as if tied by a string; it threw its chest up and let out an agonized scream. Plu whirled around in alarm.
Shirone, having activated his Adamantine Armament, glared at the Garas with a terrifying stare.
"Antithesis?"
It was an Adamantine Armament unlike any form she had seen before.