Singularity (2)
"What?"
Rian's expression hardened.
Clearly, the reason he'd awakened was that Ozent and Smille's genes had been passed down.
'My brother too…?'
Higher up the line, their grandfather Ozent Klump had pulled the 〈Idea〉 out of his heart.
Gai lifted one corner of his mouth.
"You're not thinking you were the chosen one, are you?"
"Not at all. But… just because a memory remains in the genes doesn't mean anyone can reach that realm. The 〈Idea〉 is the divine's ultimate transcendence."
"How far up did you go?"
"Who knows. You'll find out if you get close."
Rian glanced at the thick, bloody smoke rising beyond Hwangseong Marsak.
Shirone was still far off, but close enough to see with the naked eye—he was nearing the capital.
Rian leveled the Great Upright Sword.
"Hurry. There's no time."
"You're mistaken."
Gai pushed off the ground and charged.
"This is where your time ends."
The instant Gai's blade struck the Great Upright Sword, Rian's right arm twisted grotesquely.
"The body of a Yaksha."
Functionally, it was a body that wielded the mind.
"You make it sound too easy."
Gai's jacket popped and tore, revealing rock-hard muscles.
Crack. Crack.
Like fuel catching fire, heat shimmered behind him and his form took on the unmistakable shape of a Yaksha.
"Argh!"
With brutal force Gai shoved Rian back and unleashed a flurry whose pattern couldn't be read.
True to his name as a berserker, it was nothing but offense, and Rian couldn't follow the sword's trajectories.
"Ugh!"
A Mach-speed strike split the world horizontally; countless afterimages dissolved like mirages.
Gai's side was sliced roughly in half, and blood spurted simultaneously from both of Rian's shoulders.
"Heh heh. Heh heh heh." Watching their wounds regenerate, the two men's expressions were opposites.
"Want me to tell you something?"
Gai slashed his sword diagonally. "Just because the Akashic Record restores information doesn't make you immortal."
Rian listened.
"Physics is merely representation—outcomes realized by signals. When you cut a human and they die, you might think it's because the body was severed, but behind that is the information that constitutes the body being instantiated."
That is what life is.
"The 〈Idea〉 restores information, not flesh. So even if the head is severed, one can come back. But—"
Gai lowered his stance and gripped the sword in reverse.
"What if you cut the information?"
He swung the sword broadly. Gai's arm popped and burst outward as if torn, and the world cleaved into top and bottom.
"Ugh!"
Gai's blade had already atomized into powder, and Rian, with no time to evade, planted the Great Upright Sword to block.
It didn't shatter.
Of course, the 〈Idea〉 stood firm even as it cleaved the world's information, but the vibration in the blade was enough to pulverize every bone in Rian's fingers.
"Gah!"
The moment the Great Upright Sword struck the ground, Gai stomped.
"Information is physical force too."
Rian stared at his crushed palm and ground his teeth.
'It won't regenerate.'
The information in Gai's blade had destroyed the information that represented Rian, the version stored in the Akashic Record.
"How's that? Pretty cool, right?"
Rian lunged in panic; Gai followed and cleaved through his body.
"Called Ozent a genius, huh."
Rian had avoided losing his torso, but his body was a ruin where Gai's blade had passed.
'Pretty?'
Rian remembered. It wasn't a memory with images, but a sensation transmitted through genes—Ozent had been…
'Not cool at all.'
Just a man fighting to survive.
"Ughhh!"
Breathing was the hardest thing. Even after crossing the line between life and death, drawing one more breath was the most difficult act.
'Move.'
Rian let his hands fall limp. The 〈Idea〉 flew in and blocked before him.
The shockwave was tremendous, but the Great Upright Sword held Gai's force until the end.
"So that's how it is?"
He'd always been the cool-headed, clear-sighted brother.
"So that's why you went mad? All that for wanting to be the best with a sword?"
"I'm the strongest!"
As Gai raised both arms to strike again, Rian's finger bones regenerated.
Grasping the Great Upright Sword's hilt with both hands, he spun his body with enormous force.
"You abandoned your conviction!"
Both the vertical and horizontal strikes were faster than the eye could follow, but—
"Gahk!"
Rian's speed was far greater.
Kurrurrrrung!
Buildings across a wide radius collapsed, and Gai—whose upper and lower halves had been separated—crashed to the ground.
"Tsk tsk. Figures. I thought you might have grown a bit, but you still act like the youngest."
Gai's lower body began to regenerate below his waist.
"What good is cutting only the flesh? I taught you how to kill."
Rian leveled the Great Upright Sword at Gai's jaw.
"Come back. Last chance. I don't care what I did—live with me, and I'll take responsibility for the rest of your life."
Whole again, Gai leapt away from where Rian pointed.
"Responsibility, huh…"
Gai snorted and smiled, as if indulging a thought.
"So, what've you been up to lately?"
Moments ago they'd fought like enemies trying to kill each other, yet Rian answered simply.
They were family, after all.
"A knight. I'm Shirone's sword. As long as my lord seeks to save the world, my brother is my enemy."
"Shirone? Oh—Shirone." One of the Ivory Tower's five great stars.
"Go. I'll let you go today. It's embarrassing to fight with your lower half flapping around."
"Come with me."
Gai pointed behind him. "You don't have time to worry about me, do you?"
Smoke from Shirone's destruction filled the sky.
Rian knew this wasn't anger that would be soothed by slaughtering a few million—no, by tens of millions—of demons.
'Damn,' he muttered, scanning the city.
"I'll save the people for now. You stay put and don't do anything. Once this is cleaned up, we'll talk again."
"Boring. If you're always so serious, how're you ever going to get a girlfriend?"
Rian turned his back.
"…Just stay alive."
What was left in the place Rian walked away from wasn't only the cold air after a fierce fight.
"Family, huh."
He realized he'd once had a family.
"Run! Run!"
In the distance, the dazzling, massive wall encircling Gustav's capital came into view.
From a hundred kilometers away, Shirone's face—walking across the land, cutting down demons—was pale.
He had fought without rest for more than twenty-four hours, and the aftershock of Ataraxia's corporal-tier impact was tremendous.
When the waves of light dissipated, the demons that had been scattering turned and glanced back.
"Are you satisfied now?"
The commanders' order was simple: 'Just die' until Shirone's fury was exhausted.
"Ataraxia…"
Tears of blood poured from Shirone's eyes as he formed an enormous magic circle.
"Corporal-tier."
The demons' eyes widened.
"Arrrghhh!"
Another tremendous veil of light spread, and an ultralight onslaught detonated everything outside the capital.
At that moment, the demon death toll surpassed two hundred million—twenty percent of Hell's army.
'So satisfying.'
Feeling the world being purified, Shirone looked up at the sky and wept.
'If it had been like this from the start… Seong-eum might not have had to be sacrificed.'
What was love worth, anyway?
How monstrous must that place be? Was she now trapped in hell's horrors, enduring endless pain?
'She's strong. Stronger than anyone I know…'
He pictured Seong-eum standing tall, bravely bearing the pain.
The image quickly twisted into Seong-eum screaming in agony.
"Dieeee!"
Particles of light radiated outward around Shirone, and once more, in that nearly frozen time, demons dissolved into smoke. A demon watching from high above reported to Second Legion Commander Merania.
"This is bad. There's no sign her wrath will let up. At this rate, the world will be finished."
If this continued, it was only a matter of time.
"Then I have no choice."
Merania, who had been lying in the air scanning the ground, twisted her axis and rose.
The demons were stunned.
"No! She can't! Why must the most beautiful, pure commander go? Aren't there others? Besides, isn't she even second in rank?"
"What can be done. If it's to kill Yahweh that's one thing, but if we're the ones on the receiving end, then I'm the right one."
Her domain was the demon realm's darkness.
Who could know how great Yahweh's wrath would be? Merania was the one fit to endure it until the anger subsided.
A demon wailed.
"Waaah! Merania! Nooo!"
"Don't come. It won't be pretty to see."
Leaving them behind, Merania shot downward.
As blinding light pummeled the ground, she extended a white hand.
A disc-shaped black veil spun and absorbed every photon cannon.
"Commander!"
Sensing the shift, the demons halted and swarmed toward her.
"The commander has arrived! Now we're half-safe!"
The moment she opened the demon realm, Shirone would no longer rampage like this.
"Who are you?"
Shirone, still amplified in spirit power, approached. Merania's pupils trembled.
'A Buddha.'
If the future was fixed, would Yahweh inevitably become a Buddha at some point in history?
"Please let your wrath subside. No matter how much we may be hated, this is excessive. You were originally—"
"Shut up."
Shirone bared his eyes and stepped forward.
"You filthy demons."
The brigade leaders beside Merania grimaced and leveled their weapons.
"How dare you—!"
Merania raised a hand to stop them.
"The veils over the spirit realm closed and the demons lost their homeland. Your anger is not our fault. Why take out on us what she brought upon herself?"
"So you call that unfair?"
"Demons are what they are. Why force repentance? The ones who should repent are humans, not us."
A photon cannon struck.
The black veil reflexively unfurled, but the blast pierced it and slammed into Merania's face.
"Commander!"
Merania, who had lain back motionless, slowly regained posture.
Blood ran down her beautiful face.
"I'll tell you."
Shirone stepped forward.
"Whether humans commit evil or not, whether demons came from humans or not… there is no universal love.
"Repent."
As the demons' eyes flared red, Merania spoke before they could act.
"Demons do not repent."
"Then die."
When Shirone stepped even closer, every demon readied themselves to fight to the death.
A massive sphere of light rose above Shirone's head, and the moment it began to tremble fiercely—
"Commander!"
Merania dropped to her knees and prostrated on the ground.
The demons were shocked to see the second greatest in Hell suffer humiliation in human fashion.
"Stand! We will fight!"
Merania lifted her head.
"Do whatever torments you like until your wrath is spent. I will not refuse any punishment you give."
Becoming a Buddha must be stopped at all costs.
Her face was so pure and radiant it moved anyone who saw it, but Shirone only looked down, cold as ever.