[549] Code Decomposition (2)
There was no choice but to pick one: left or right.
The reason even grotesque sense couldn't catch it was that Rian's movement was split exactly in half — left and right.
To exist with exactly a fifty-percent probability on either side was a motion that couldn't be done without borrowing the power of the Law.
And that movement pushed Baknyeo into a life-or-death gamble.
"Left!"
The moment the ground's explosive shock rushed at her, Baknyeo twisted and brought up her Bakdo.
Rian's greatsword slammed into it with a thud.
There was no time to measure the blow's force, so Baknyeo sprang away the instant they collided, creating distance.
"Ughhh!"
Rian staggered after swinging the greatsword in a wide arc.
A sickening sound followed as the muscles in his thigh and calf tore.
Pain crawled along the remaining nerves, but Baknyeo was flustered too.
"Blocked. Did I block it?"
She'd turned left and managed to parry Rian's blade, but honestly she'd left it to luck.
Faced with danger, she judged it better to trust a fifty-percent chance and act than to hesitate — a judgment that showed how drilled she was as a swordswoman.
But flip it around—
"I almost died."
A fifty-percent chance.
Someone who'd lived over ten thousand years had nearly been cut down by the sword of someone who hadn't yet seen twenty.
Attachments to life were a long-ago feeling for a yaksha, but that made the humiliation sting all the more.
"Slash!"
Baknyeo detonated her Nirvana power to the limit and lunged at Rian.
"Just watch that."
Dinai fused with ultra-regeneration, and its power outstripped any other technique, so she never gave him an opening to launch an all-out strike.
Rian moved the arm that was little more than bone with the Law's power and parried.
If Baknyeo was acceleration, Rian was steady velocity.
The gap in technique and experience was absolute, but he held on by making up ground with speed.
"Rian…"
Shirone, dazed as he watched the fight, murmured.
"You've gotten stronger."
Though his memories were a chaotic tangle, watching Rian's mercilessly beautiful skill filled him with a deep, rising joy.
"Consul."
Shirone's heart dropped.
He knew that voice immediately because it reeked of death.
Where he looked, a wisp of desire had been expelled, and Yo knelt there, spent.
"Yo—"
"Consul, the colony's sun—"
Before the words finished, Fermi's air-cut sliced Yo's throat.
"Yo!"
Shirone's heart hammered.
She'd been a woman who looked like a single Shining spell had given her the world — a former slave who'd been the first to believe in Shirone and follow him.
"They're all dead."
Under the pyramid, the guardians' corpses were piled; beyond those bodies, Fermi and Marsha were climbing up.
"Consul."
Shirone cursed having ears as words he didn't want to hear reached him, but his head turned involuntarily.
The priest Bebeto wore an indulgent, smiling laugh.
"Consul, you are one who carries the language of the gods. That is why I proposed a confrontation."
Because of that, Shirone had been allowed to cling to life.
"Please, make a better world."
"No!"
The instant Shirone shouted, Bebeto connected a code and vanished.
All the man who'd appeared before Fermi and Marsha could do was use his body as a meat shield to buy time.
Shirone watched Bebeto flayed by the dagger of sacrilege.
Please make a better world.
Someone had said it. Bebeto had said it.
Even if all of this were a lie, could one call their suffering false?
—It can be undone, human.
When Digital Ra's voice seeped in, Shirone looked down at his feet.
A new slime-like substance was already creeping up over him.
"Undo it?"
—I can bring them back. I can erase all the suffering of the world.
The slime rose to his waist.
—Accept me. Become a god and remake this world.
"Rian…"
Rian, still locked in mortal struggle with Baknyeo, seemed to be saying with his whole body: You mustn't.
"Sorry."
Shirone closed his eyes calmly and accepted Digital Ra.
"Ugh!"
As the union completed and the Immortal Function opened, the avatar born from Shirone's body spread wings of light.
As if flying toward the sun, Mukus pushed Shirone high above the pyramid.
"It's begun!"
Shura, who'd been fighting Miro, opened his eyes wide and looked around the pyramid.
When a light more intense than the sun spread across the ground, everyone stared up at the sky.
Shirone and Ra became one and seized absolute control of Apocalypse's time and space.
"Ah."
Viewed through Digital Ra, human afflictions were a combination of countless random numbers.
In those combinations unfolded war, famine, torture — every kind of suffering humans could imagine.
—What do you see?
A voice he'd heard somewhere rose from the bottom of his memory and pierced his mind — the voice of a Gaian.
'Suffering.'
—What do you see?
'Death. The vanishing of life.'
—What do you see!
Shirone's eyes snapped open.
'The Ultimate!'
When the Ultima System, Elysion, activated, another voice carved into the farthest reaches of human history reached Shirone.
—What do you see at the end of the Ultimate?
Shirone answered.
"...Emptiness (form is emptiness, emptiness is form)."
Kukukukukuku!
As the world trembled, Shura activated the pyramid.
'Show me—what do you have?'
Miro also needed to know what Shirone had staked to make Valhalla Actions balance by equivalent exchange.
'Yes—what on earth was there?'
The world began to collapse into digital code and fall away.
It was normal for an Under Coder to watch unique codes and numbers stream down like rain, but the shocking thing came next.
'The codes are simplifying.'
The unique codes — composed of infinite digits — simplified, passing from astronomical radices down to base ten.
'Base-5. Base-3. Base-2.'
Shura analyzed up to there and felt his face go pale.
"Base-1..."
One.
Every code converted into a single one.
Up to binary, Shura could still infer the sun's information and the clouds' information, but now it was impossible.
Even if the sun's data were 11 and the clouds' 111, you can't separate them inside a stream of 11111.
'There are no boundaries. This is—'
The Gaian insight: Elysion.
Miro realized further.
'Because it's the simplest, it can reach the Ultimate.'
Beyond that lay only the realm of Infinity.
Elysion was the only key that could open the door from the closed state and let it escape into the open state.
When the guardians' corpses and the underground-dwellers' bodies were swallowed by the vast flow of ones, Shura snapped back to his senses and hurled himself at Baknyeo.
'Emptiness is surging in!'
Grabbing Baknyeo's trailing coat as the world collapsed, she dodged Rian's blade and shouted.
"We have to get out! It's resetting!"
"Wait! The match isn't—!"
Following Shirone's protocol, Shura disassembled his and Baknyeo's bodies into a code of ones.
Rian watched the assemblage of ones soak into the waterfall of code and rise like a countercurrent.
For a moment a border appeared like an optical illusion, but it soon lost distinction from the other codes.
Meanwhile, Shirone remained in the dark space of his microcosm, still gazing beyond the Ultimate.
"Why do you leave?"
A Mukus man appeared behind Shirone.
Unable to connect digitally with Shirone, he had borrowed a human form to chase him down in person.
But he could not touch Shirone.
Though the distance was less than a meter, to Ra it was an impassable boundary of ones.
"Have you forgotten the worth of this world? After seeing countless sufferings, the entanglements of life — will you still leave?"
"There is neither falsehood nor truth."
Shirone turned and said, "It's all nothing but a dream that arose from nonexistence."
With those words, Shirone slowly turned and drifted into the darkness.
"Wait, Shirone! You have an obligation to answer me. Why—!"
Ra could not grasp Shirone.
That was the gulf between the universe's end and an even farther divide — the aperture between the closed state and the open state.
"Shironeee!"
Apocalypse Reset.
Shirone erased (departure from the Information Plane).
* * *
"What happened?"
Miro and the others were left alone in a pale space where the codes had vanished and nothing remained.
While Marsha and Fermi looked around, a drained Rian slumped down.
Only Miro knew it was a spot.
"Rian."
Shirone appeared, cutting through the white landscape, and Rian pushed himself up and limped over despite his pain.
"Shirone, you—"
"Yes. Everything came back. Sorry for worrying you."
Rian bit his lip.
Saying everything came back meant Shirone himself had realized he was nothing but information.
"Sorry. But to save you—"
"Rian, I'm fine."
Shirone was sincere.
"Thank you for coming all this way to save me."
He looked at the others.
"Miro, Marsha — thank you. Fermi, you too."
That he felt no hostility even toward Fermi hinted at Shirone's current state.
"Well, you didn't have to do that for me."
Fermi shrugged and approached, manifesting a depreciation trading contract in his right hand.
"I'd like you to sign this first."
Shirone stared at the contract but saw nothing. He took the pen and wrote his name.
"Is it done now?"
Fermi said nothing. He twisted and walked off, staring fixedly at a place others couldn't see, his shoulders trembling slightly.
'Kukuku, kukukuku.'
Although the signature had to be transferred into reality to complete the forgery, Fermi's face was already warped with ecstatic laughter.
'I finally got it! 190 billion gold!'
Watching Fermi's retreating back, Shirone smiled — a smile at once futile and beautiful.
He hoped reality wouldn't trouble him too much, but now it no longer mattered.
"Well then, goodbye, everyone."
"Shirone, wait a moment!"
Before Rian's shout finished, the scenery shifted into the mirror room that had been the Under Coder's last exit.
"Shirone—."
Miro stepped forward and laid a hand on Rian's shoulder.
"Don't be resentful. For the Shirone we just saw, this was natural. The real problem is the Shirone in reality."
"What do you mean?"
"The Ultima System unifies all information. So Shirone's Elysion has no boundaries. In other words, there's now a possibility he could exert extreme control over the Immortal Function."
Fermi's expression crumpled.
He'd already been a difficult opponent even before going to heaven; now he had a far bigger headache.
"Whatever it is, Shirone getting stronger isn't a bad thing, right?"
Miro shook her head.
"No. Elysion is a double-edged sword. Beyond the Ultimate is nothingness. I suspect it's not a void a human could withstand. Facing that emptiness, is there any chance Shirone will return to reality?"
Rian's face went blank.
"But that—"
"I know. The Apocalypse world can't surpass the limits humans imagine. So I can't guarantee anything for reality. But if a situation like today happens again—"
Miro hesitated, then said, "Shirone will never come back."