[466] The Outbreak of War (2)
Silence lingered for a moment.
It wasn't necessarily the final chance, but everyone knew that if this failed here, they would be the ones defeated.
Would it even work?
Half of it was a gamble.
Above all, the problem was that the space they stood in had been created by an extrarule ritual.
How far apart was the Orga in front of them and the real fairy Orga?
If the shock hit her even slightly indirectly, the plan would fail.
'An enormously complex and delicate extrarule ritual.'
An entire building had been instantiated, with countless extrarule rituals set room by room.
Could any human distort so many things at once? No.
If it were possible, then—
'A flow of consciousness.'
Shirone recalled his experience with Drimo.
Only the space he stood in was fully actualized; the other rooms existed in a quasi-empty state. It was like picturing your house—you don't survey the whole at once; your thought moves through it as if you were walking.
If it worked that way, you could nest extrarule rituals inside other extrarule rituals.
'That's not easy either…'
So Orga's consciousness had to be concentrated in this room. That was Shirone's hypothesis.
After sorting his thoughts, Shirone made an offer.
"Don't take your eyes off me for one minute."
It was a strange demand. But Orga had no right to alter the terms.
"All right. Let's do that."
Shirone stared at Orga without blinking.
When this minute ended, it would be Orga's turn. The outcome would be decided there.
'Valhalla Action.'
In a situation bound by extrarule rituals, actions outside the rules were likely forbidden. But Valhalla Action might make it possible: equivalence exchange of cause and effect takes the cause—the prohibition itself—and converts it wholesale into the effect.
So the important thing was computation time.
Even with Ataraxia's accumulation time forced below thirty seconds, Shirone had asked for a minute to buy a bit of slack.
When Shirone carried out his offer, Orga fixed him with her gaze—her mind fully focused on him.
Clang!
A Valhalla Action magic circle appeared above her head. The computation was instantaneous.
'It works!'
Exactly fifty-seven seconds.
That was the time until Ataraxia reached critical buildup while Shirone was under mirroring.
Before Orga could even speak in surprise, cause and effect inverted and a dazzling Ataraxia bloomed before them.
"Kyaaaa!"
Even the chief of Shehakim couldn't withstand the magic circle of the great archangel Ikael, the highest authority in Heaven.
No—paradoxically, because she was such a powerful fairy, the shock was even greater.
Cracks ran across Orga's body as light seeped out.
The seal of light swelled, then engulfed her and burned with fierce intensity.
Rumble!
As Paradise collapsed, the original scenery was revealed.
It was still Paradise, but the plaster that had lined the walls lay shattered on the floor, its fragments painted with complex red designs.
'She designed the space and controlled it with her mind.'
Plu felt oddly relieved. If a fairy could instantiate an entire building through mental control, humans would have had no chance in this war.
"Kugh!"
Orga lay on the ground, small and frail, groaning.
The sudden Ataraxia strike had hit like a blade to a fairy specialized in spirit and mind.
"Chief! Are you all right?"
Dozens of fairies who assisted Orga swarmed over with worried faces, then turned and glared at Shirone's party with murderous eyes.
"Traitors of the rebels! Kill them!"
As the fairies swooped in, Plu put herself between them and Shirone.
She didn't know how long Valhalla Action would hold, but until Shirone could move, she had to fight.
"Phoenix Formation!"
Plu lofted a firebird and activated the Dokin Algorithm to face the fairies.
Shehakim's fairies—mid-ranked among the seventy-two—pressed down with the weight of human professional mages fighting as one.
Flames erupted and the fairies' disparate concepts shook Paradise.
'I can't hold out long!'
The Dokin Algorithm was limited by the mage's physical endurance.
No matter how automatic the responses, sustained volleys exhaust the body.
'Fifty-four seconds.'
The combination of the brute fairy and the unpredictable fairy was the worst.
As overwhelming force pinned Plu, the unpredictable fairy thrust a barbed spear along an utterly unforeseen trajectory.
'Fifty-five seconds.'
Each hit twisted Plu's body grotesquely; her joints screamed.
"Kill them! If we take these ones out, the war's over!"
The rebels' firepower would make even Heaven tremble, but if they captured Shirone—the light of Sector 73—the enemy's morale would collapse. Orga's tactical reading of the Shehakim outskirts proved she was a strategist to be reckoned with.
'Fifty-six seconds.'
When the roar fairy fired a sonic pulse, a sound like hundreds of tons of rebar being shoved aside shredded Plu's concentration.
"Kugh!"
The Dokin Algorithm broke and dozens of fairies surged from every direction.
Exactly fifty-seven seconds!
At the same moment, Shirone pushed off the floor and charged.
Just as the brute fairy grabbed Plu's head to crush it, something blurred past and the brute's body detonated instead.
Then the nearby fairies began to shatter into fragments.
Orga, barely regaining consciousness, stared at Shirone with eyes revealed beneath heavy makeup.
Her tendrils had been whipping so fast they were nearly invisible.
Fairies were vulnerable to attacks that carried physical force, not just spells.
"Kugh!"
"Chief! You can't move yet!"
"Call… call for support!"
Meanwhile Shirone was cutting down every fairy in sight.
"There—!"
Before the fairies could call for backup, a squad of giants charged in. Among them were Kergo who had achieved immortality.
Once members of hunting packs themselves, their combat ability was overwhelming even among their own kind.
"Shirone! For now, fall back!"
Given that the stealth necessary for infiltration had been lost, following Plu's command would have been sensible, but escape was impossible. They'd already felt the Kergo's tracking skill in Heaven.
"Hrrrp!"
Shirone flared his eyes and fixed his gaze on the enemy ranks.
Eyes formed beyond his artificial brain and Akamai's Antithesis bound them.
"Krrr!"
Under immense constraint, both giants and fairies trembled in shock.
Even Ikasa—the fallen angel with angelic status—was held immobile; mere giants could not break those bindings.
With the mana-amplifying trait of the Galtomic, a true demonic line, Shirone's front sprouted a photon cannon many times larger than before.
The photon cannon multiplied like a clone technique, increasing in number until twelve colossal spheres of light glared white and quivered.
"Now!"
Shirone fired every photon cannon and twisted his body.
As the Antithesis released, the enemies began to move—but the photon cannons had already been loosed and were nearly upon them.
Kaboom!
Thunder rolled through Shehakim Sector 12 as blinding light flashed.
Nearby enemy forces would likely converge; that would, paradoxically, work in Shirone's favor.
"Hurry!"
Shirone and Plu vaulted over Paradise's ruined buildings and fled.
"Pursue them! Don't let them escape!"
Kergo who survived the blast launched themselves in pursuit.
The chase lasted thirty minutes.
The schema's mobility shone in close-quarters movement, and Shirone and Plu wove the most convoluted routes they could to barely shake off their pursuers.
"Hah! Hah!"
They leaned back-to-back against a wall, gasping.
Arman boosted their oxygen saturation and stabilized their breathing in an instant; by then the broken sword had already healed.
'Still, to heal a fracture in a few hours…'
That was Kenser's infinite cell-proliferation trait at work.
"What now?"
"Head for Arabot."
"But we don't even know where we are. We're lost. Besides—"
The enemies already knew Shirone had infiltrated. The mission's difficulty had shot up by orders of magnitude.
"First, get some clothes."
They'd been harshly handled by Orga's extrarule ritual, but they couldn't wander the streets like this.
"I found you, Shirone."
At the voice from above, Shirone and Plu went pale.
At the same instant the voice reached them, a small object entered their Spirit Zone.
A tiny creature. A fairy.
'We have to kill it!'
Plu spun, and Shirone lashed his tendril even faster.
The fairy flinched at the sudden attack.
Shirone was able to stop the tendril because Arman had driven his visual acuity to the limit.
The tendril's sharp needle froze upright right in front of the fairy's face.
Seeing the fairy trembling with tightly shut eyes, Shirone took off his hood in a daze.
"You—you…?"
It was Peope, the spiral fairy who had helped Shirone to the end on their last trip to Heaven, slowly opening her eyes.
"Eek!"
Peope recoiled at the needle hovering before her, then blushed and cried out at Shirone.
"What the hell! Were you trying to kill me?"
Shirone hastily withdrew the tendril.
Peope—above all else—brought him relief.
On a battlefield, lonely as he'd been, tears sprang to his eyes when he saw her face.
As Shirone moved as if to embrace her, Peope quickly put a hand out, feigning modesty.
"W-what? Why are you acting like this all of a sudden?"
"What happened? How did you know I was here and come? Is this really okay?"
A mage's cold reason still allowed for the possibility that Peope might be an enemy. But Shirone set that thought aside for the moment.
If the alternative were true, he couldn't bear the cost no matter what.
Peope looked at Shirone with kind eyes and a gentle smile.
Not much time had passed, but an intelligent composure had settled over her expression.
"I'm glad you came, Shirone. I missed you."
Peope grabbed Shirone's cheek and kissed his forehead.
When the warmth of her lips reached him, the voice he'd heard before drifted faintly into his mind.
I love you.
Even if it was the confession of an immature fairy whose concepts hadn't fully differentiated, the sincerity was unmistakable.
'Peope. It really is Peope.'
Shirone cupped Peope in both hands and held her like a delicate thing in his palm.
Even if everyone else wanted to harm him, she did not. That was faith, not reason.
"Peope."
"Mm?"
"I have to fight Heaven."
Peope blinked and waited.
"Can you take me—no, us—to Arabot?"
He said nothing more.
No matter what they talked about, it would come down to this question, and he knew the answer would soon come from Peope.
She considered it for a long moment but never once looked away from Shirone.
Something like resignation darkened her eyes with sorrow, and yet the corners of her mouth lifted as if a new excitement was beginning.
With that expression, Peope nodded to Shirone.
"All right. I'll take you."