The Ugly One (3)
The elite 200,000-strong army of Jincheon stared across the vast boundary line at the Gustav Empire.
'I can't believe this is really happening.'
The two empires, linked by the spatial distortion of Gwangcheon Fortress, were the pinnacle of magic.
'Princess…'
Rumors had spread through the Jincheon ranks.
Everyone knew Seongeum had sacrificed herself to create this opportunity.
'Not even death is frightening.'
The reason demons fought without sparing their bodies was that they'd be reborn in the fires of hell.
But Seongeum had cut that off.
And her sacrifice beyond death lifted the Jincheon soldiers' morale into the demons' realm.
Rian wasn't attached to any unit; he stayed at Shirone's side.
'This will be a battle to write into history.'
From now on, every demon they killed would count as an objective measure of their strength.
'But Shirone…?'
Rian watched Shirone glare at Gustav with murderous eyes.
'Are you really all right?'
The person Rian saw now was no savior Yahweh but a single mage consumed by vengeance.
His rage was, fittingly for a mage, cold—but it wasn't entirely rational.
"Go."
Before Jincheon's Grand General Oryongjang could order an advance, Shirone stepped across the boundary alone.
One stride that leapt across a vast sea.
Shirone cast teleportation and streaked forward; Rian followed him.
"Hoo! Hoo!"
Their charge, under Maha's law, moved at a speed that was like flight.
The two vanished in an instant. Watching them go, Oryongjang barked to his troops.
"All units, advance!"
With a thunderous roar, two hundred thousand soldiers surged toward the Gustav Empire.
"Shirone! You're too fast!"
Rian, keeping up at a speed rivaling linked teleportations, shouted as he glanced back.
"Damn it!"
He hadn't expected an answer, but the moment he saw Shirone's face, Rian was certain.
'This isn't Shirone.'
To be precise, it seemed like two Shirones of different natures were overlapping.
Yahweh—who lived out love for all things.
And the boundless fury one human had to accept to contain that impossible state.
'Splitting of the mind.'
It might not be pathology, but unless one mind had split into two, Yahweh could be lost.
'I can see it.'
From a point a hundred kilometers from Gustav's imperial capital Marsak, the demon forces were arrayed.
A demon scout that spotted Shirone and Rian arced through the air and fell toward its unit.
Then, as if a vast ice sheet boiled in an instant, the demon army began to scatter.
I am...
Another voice of himself spoke inside Shirone's head as he surveyed the enemy.
'I wanted to be a mage.'
I thought I was doing my best.
'I loved it. I was happy.'
Of course there were dreams of succeeding as a mage, making money, and saving my family from hardship.
'I'm human too.'
But I knew what really mattered.
'Purity.'
Magic itself.
Other than wanting to be the best at what I loved, I wanted nothing.
'But when I stepped into the world... breathing, just living, was the hardest thing of all.'
Responsibilities piled up, things to bear.
Choices to make—countless cards where you couldn't discard any.
'The only thing I could throw away—'
was myself.
'No matter how hard it got.'
Truly, among the cards I held, the only one I could discard was me.
'I just had to endure.'
Responsibilities stacked endlessly on my shoulders, burdens grew like mountains...
'And when I finally came to my senses...' I found myself carrying all of humanity on my back.
"Shirone! Get ready!"
When the demons came within a hundred meters, Rian shouted, but Shirone didn't react.
"Shirone!"
He only cast teleportation and moved forward.
'I don't want anyone to suffer.' Of course the world had people I hated, but I wanted them to be happy too.
I'm sincere.
'Where did this cycle of passing the bomb start?'
Why couldn't I beat myself?
Honestly, deep down, maybe I wanted it desperately.
'If that's how it's going to be, then end it all.' Blow it up.
'There's nothing to be wronged about. If the world closes, that's it. If everyone disappears, there won't be suffering. Yes—end it here.' End it.
"Shirone!"
At Rian's shout, Shirone's face twisted horribly.
"Uaaaah!"
A globe of light rose in his right hand, throbbing fiercely and pouring white brilliance.
"Die! Human!"
The faces of the spearman demons charging weren't visible to Shirone.
There were only feelings—one overwhelming sensation.
"Uaaaaa!"
A murderous, hateful urge to smash everything.
'Purity?'
The initial compassion was gone.
'I feel like I'm in the middle of the universe.'
The planet he'd left looked small as a star; he wondered if that place had truly been his starting point.
'I've even lost my sense of direction.'
All that remained was the faint inertia from the first step he took.
'I can do nothing.'
That inertia could only hope to carry him to his goal.
The moment a beam of light struck a demon, an explosion sent a blast dozens of meters out.
"Ugh..."
Rian, hit by the shockwave, stopped and raised his arm to shield his face.
"An explosion?"
A photon cannon isn't a bomb.
'It's like being dropped into the middle of the ocean.'
If you can't push the water away you'll drown, and there's no one to help.
'Do you know what's truly terrifying?' Being alone.
The fact that no one is there is so plain that no cry for help comes.
'When you know there's no one... your face doesn't even change.'
A terrified expression or a scream is meaningless.
You just flop quietly in the silence.
Pupils dilate, the face freezes, yet the mind remains eerily lucid.
'The flailing to do something...'
That was Yahweh.
Like space melting, spheres of fire bloomed in every direction.
"Kraaaa!"
Hundreds of photon cannon shots per second.
The difference was that Shirone's photon cannons detonated before their flashes even reached the targets.
'Light?'
You can't tell four different speeds of light with the human eye in a world of magic.
But Rian intuited that Shirone's photon cannons had become closer to light itself than before.
"Uaaa!"
Every cry from the fragile mage's body sent demons burning in the flames.
Another photon cannon rose in Shirone's hand.
"Die!"
The mass-bearing flash streaked out at speeds beyond relativistic—reaching superluminal.
"Die!"
Compared to the photon cannon, the particles of the air were effectively motionless.
Kraaang!
No demon remained standing on ground melted by the intense heat.
Realizing how dangerous a faster-than-light photon cannon was, Rian gritted his teeth.
'This isn't a spell aimed at a specific target.'
If it strikes an entire space outright, the civilians of the imperial capital would be no exception.
'Damn it!'
Rian tore away from Shirone and hurled himself toward Gustav's capital.
'Shirone, are you really sure you won't regret this?' If he's not going to stay mad forever, this worst-case mass casualty has to be avoided, doesn't it?
'I won't regret it.'
Even as he mercilessly trampled the surging demon army, his heart did not waver.
'I'll end this war.'
Everything was a mess now; he couldn't gauge position with his senses anymore.
'But I can feel it.'
The feeling from the moment he took his first step still glittered deep in his heart.
'I'll go back.'
When this terrible war ends, he can return to that place of purity.
"Ataraxia."
Physical domain.
Shirone's mental power swelled as if it would explode after passing through a riotously colored magic circle.
Thinking of how many demons fell per unit area, he felt a thrilling exhilaration.
'The demons are decreasing.'
If you kill them, they die.
The crucial hope Seongeum brought to this world was that they would no longer be replenished.
"Huu..."
Shirone's face twisted with grief at the thought of Seongeum.
"What is this?"
Would that bring Seongeum back?
"What the hell is this?!"
With a cry of rage, a wave of destruction spread, breaching a two-hundred-meter diameter in an instant.
Poooom!
An explosion spanning kilometers detonated.
Marsak, the imperial capital.
"Commander! Two hundred thousand troops of the Jincheon Empire are charging toward the capital!"
"What?"
Gustav's First Commander—and Rian's eldest brother—Ozent Gai furrowed his brow.
"What nonsense is this? The infernal army has taken Jincheon Sea, so how—"
Gai trailed off and grew thoughtful.
'There's no point in asking why something already happened.'
He changed expression at once, snatched the report from the messenger, and read it.
"Spatial manipulation?"
But how?
He wasn't deeply versed in magic, but he'd never heard of a mage who could fold up the sea.
'Seongeum.'
If anyone could possibly do it, it would be her.
"How long until they reach the capital?"
"If the infernal army mobilizes fully, we can hold them for at least three days."
Half of the infernal army was stationed in Gustav's capital.
Above all, several corps commanders capable of opening gates to the Demon Realm were deployed—a formidable force.
"Good. Send a dispatch to His Majesty. Hold the line with everything you've got until we receive the supreme military order."
"Urgent dispatch! Urgent dispatch!"
A second messenger burst in.
"A mage—presumed to be a mage—has been annihilating demon units and is approaching ahead of the Jincheon army."
"A mage? How many?"
"The report says... one."
Gai's eyes lit up.
'That must be him.'
Yahweh.
Even if it was the Jincheon army, Yahweh's arrival would force them to prepare against corps commanders.
"Good, now—" As Gai turned, a third messenger barged in.
"Report! A single swordsman has leaped over the demon army and is approaching the imperial capital."
"A swordsman this time?"
"He hasn't dealt heavy damage yet, but his approach speed is the fastest. At this rate he'll arrive within an hour."
The fact he leapt over the infernal army meant he wasn't ordinary.
"Oh? Who is it?"
"Um..."
The messenger hesitated after reading the name on his report.
"A knight of Maha."
Gai's brow twitched.
"Ozent Rian, apparently." Even after hearing the report, Gai's face didn't change.
"Hmm."
He paused, lost briefly in thought as he had while wandering the civil war, then stopped and looked up.
"My brother has come."
For a moment, tenderness warmed Gai's eyes that had been flickering with madness.