[507] The Backlash of Evil (1)
Ikael, having seen Satiel fly off, turned to check on Shirone.
Shirone was hunched over, his arms hanging limply at his sides.
His body stood, but his mind looked as if it were already lying down; there wasn't a trace of sharpness in his eyes.
"Shirone."
Ikael flew slowly toward the man who was about to collapse.
Before he could reach him, someone ran up and grabbed Shirone.
It was Plu, who had been unable to step forward against a battle that exceeded human limits.
"Shirone! Snap out of it, Shirone!"
Plu laid Shirone's face in her lap and slapped his cheek, but he didn't so much as twitch—like a corpse.
The massive flash of the Photon Cannon had been so intense that even Plu, who had been off the battlefield, felt it as though it had happened right before her eyes.
How its power had been pushed to that level no one knew, but one thing was certain: in the world of magic, there is no reward without a price.
When Shirone showed no sign of regaining consciousness, Plu finally turned and glared at Ikael.
"What's happened? Why won't he wake up?"
Plu showed no fear even in front of an archangel.
Partly because her mind had already reached its limit and turned to pure malice, and partly because she could find no hint of evil in Ikael's aura.
If anything, Ikael looked at Shirone with more worry than anyone.
'Shirone…'
From the moment he cast Ataraxia on the corporeal plane, his mind had already been shattered to pieces.
But by reaching the realm of Banya, he had postponed the mental explosion.
If it had stopped there, perhaps there might have been a sliver of hope.
"Shirone defeated Faiel using Ikasa's judicial radiance—Valhalla Action. Now he's paying the price."
"Valhalla Action?"
Plu looked at Shirone with astonished eyes.
Judging from the scale of that final Photon Cannon, the price Shirone must pay was something she didn't even want to imagine.
"How long… does he have to stay like this?"
Ikael shook his head.
Unless one understood the computation trigger called Valhalla Action, no one could say.
"I can't tell you precisely, but it will be far longer than you expect. Fifty years, a hundred—perhaps two hundred."
Annoyance colored Plu's glare at Ikael.
An angel, and that's what you say now?
"Two hundred years? Shirone's human. Humans can't live that long. If that's the case, the magic shouldn't even have happened in the first place!"
That was indeed true.
If a result cannot be reached, the cause should never arise.
But conversely, because the computation determined the result was achievable, the cause must have been established.
"Valhalla Action is just a trigger that intermediates the Akashic Record. By human reasoning a cause should precede an effect, but Valhalla Action reverses that logic. In such cases, since the result has occurred, the cause must be considered possible."
It was maddening to hear, but Plu was no fool.
"So what if Shirone dies of old age? Or if he's murdered before then? The result's already happened—how can the cause change?"
"That's unknown. But that is the Akashic Record. For the whole, changes in the parts are meaningless. No matter how the parts shift, the whole remains perfect. If Shirone dies, some change will occur in some way. But even that would be meaningless to the whole."
"Are you saying God is indifferent?"
The angels' concept of deity and Plu's idea of god might differ, but Ikael nodded.
Only living beings assign meaning to a lover's death, an incurable disease, or a brutal crime.
To the whole, Shirone's death is just another pebble making one circuit down a mountainside—an event of precisely equal weight.
"That's right. And perhaps… that might even be one way to get Shirone back."
Plu's eyes snapped wide.
"What do you mean by that?"
Ikael again shook his head.
Even an archangel couldn't know what computation Valhalla Action had performed.
He only wanted to convey the scale of the matter.
"Regrettably, it's beyond my ability. But Shirone is human, so ultimately humans must find the answer. Isn't it characteristic of humans to keep searching for answers even in despair?"
Plu opened her mouth as if to shout, then shut it, and looked down at Shirone's face with a sullen expression.
Ikael felt the same sorrow.
'Truly regrettable.'
Perhaps—had he been able to train in ordinary time—Shirone might have found a way to subdue Faiel within ten years.
The Shirone Ikael saw held that much potential.
But there are no hypotheticals in the Akashic Record.
Valhalla Action must have calculated the absolute time Shirone would need to reach that state and demanded it as the price.
A human lifespan rarely exceeds a hundred years, but it isn't impossible.
After all, in Shehakim there are countless beings over a thousand years old.
"For now, there's no need to worry. He reached the realm of Banya and averted the mental explosion. Valhalla Action cannot force a debtor of desire into permanent default."
At least Plu could set aside the fear that Shirone would simply die.
It wasn't an easy situation, but there were other, more pressing worries.
"Gah!"
A thought struck her and she turned to Ikael.
By sensation, quite a lot of time seemed to have passed.
With the dread that it might already be too late, she shouted.
"This is bad! God's punishment—!"
Ikael, who had all his attention on Shirone, looked up at the sky in alarm as well.
His eyes, scanning the firmament, froze in shock.
"Oh no…."
* * *
Gaold was surrounded by fallen angels and being attacked like prey.
Already unconscious and flailing, he was being slowly strangled by angels who alternated between strike and retreat, tightening the noose around his breath.
This wasn't merely a tactic to torment Gaold.
It was meant to instill terror—memories of their incursion into Rakia and how he had slaughtered countless fallen angels and marae—enough to make anyone hesitate to approach him.
But from the wall, Gangnan watched as if her heart were being torn into a thousand pieces.
"Uaaaaaah!"
The more wrenching the scene, the harder she drove herself to break her own wrists.
Krrk! Krrrk!
With each swing she uttered a scream-like grunt as the bones in her palms crushed bit by bit.
Divine Transcendence—Yacha.
Uriel had defined Gangnan's state that way.
Those who burn their will with the power of rage and alter the laws of the flesh.
Gaold's suffering soaked into Gangnan's rage and strengthened her will.
Krrrk! Krrrk!
At last, with every palm bone crushed, Gangnan's shattered fists tore free of their self-made trap.
Her body, racked from a night of agony, made even a single step difficult, but Gangnan collapsed on the battlements and wept.
In that ambiguous state between landing and falling, she lay for a long while, then crawled before forcing herself up and walking toward Gaold.
"Uncle… uncle…."
"Kraaaak! Kraaaak!"
Gaold flailed without noticing Gangnan approaching.
His consciousness, memory, thought—everything had fled.
All that moved him now were flashes of pain that cut through the dark.
Watching him spin and snatch as if chasing that light made her stomach turn.
"Uncleeeeee…."
Gangnan let her broken fists hang uselessly and stepped closer.
'It's okay to love Miro. You don't have to come to me.'
She knew why he was fighting.
'It's okay even if you don't know how hard I've had it. So…'
Gangnan wrapped her arms around Gaold's waist.
Amazingly, the flailing of the deranged Gaold stopped.
"So…."
Tears burning, Gangnan lifted her face.
"Don't hurt. I'll fight it all for you—please, don't hurt."
"Now!"
As Gaold's excitement ebbed, the fallen angels took heart and surged in.
If they didn't finish him now, they didn't know how long this blood-draining standoff would last.
As Gangnan trembled and glared at the enemies closing in, a weak but clear voice rang above them—Gaold's voice.
"You mangy dog…."
"Uncle!"
Gangnan turned in surprise.
Though his face was gaunt enough to pass for a corpse compared to before he came to Heaven, he still wore that handsome smile.
"You alright? Come to?"
"…Keeping the house well."
Gangnan broke into sobs.
Even with his mind fallen into hell, he had crawled up to deliver those words.
From that deep, deep abyss he had pulled himself up one last time to see her.
"No, Uncle! Don't go! Don't leave me!"
"Exterminate Heaven's enemies! Finish them at once!"
Gaold turned his head and grinned grotesquely at the fallen angels surging toward him.
"Kukuku."
A billionfold pain? Ten billion? A hundred billion? A trillion?
'Who cares?'
"No! Uncle! Don't do it!"
"Pain is nothing but…."
Gaold stroked Gangnan's head as he looked down at her, as if to carve his voice directly into her mind.
"Only sensation."
Air Pressing.
Pshhhhh—!
A full, weighty sound without form erupted, and the ground trembled as if from an earthquake.
Then there was nothing.
"Waaaaah! Waaaaah!"
Gangnan threw herself into Gaold's arms and wailed as he sank to his knees after casting the spell.
Gaold, smiling with his eyes closed, appeared peaceful, but the price he paid to show that single smile was a plunge into the deepest pits of hellfire.
"Waaaaaaah! Uncle!"
Uriel stood on the battlements, arms folded, watching.
Like a duty, she had followed Kariel to gain one last understanding of humans.
'Is that… a human?'
In the end, Gaold erased Rakia.
One human had swept away the fallen angels and their marae entirely.
'A human's boundless, maddened obsession.'
Gaold was neither Banya nor Yacha.
So he could not be the whole of humanity.
But he was clearly an extreme of something humans could possess.
'Should we eliminate him now?'
Uriel summoned the Bliss Rod.
"...."
She had taken in the wretched visage of someone who had lost everything after fighting countless powerful foes.
—Angels' activities are prohibited.
At first, Ra's command had been incomprehensible.
Now Uriel understood exactly how things were unfolding.
'Preferably… it should be eliminated.'
And yet part of her felt she wanted to leave it be.
This was the finishing opportunity the troops gathered in Rakia had won.
But that method did not suit Uriel, the archangel of destruction.
Kukukukukuku!
Uriel spread her wings of light and the battlements shook.
"Satan."
The strongest enemy in Heaven at this moment.
Slowly rising above the wall, Uriel turned into a flash and flew toward the center of Jebul.
"Waaaaaah! Waaaaaah!"
Gangnan's cries seeped into Rakia's silence.