Shadow of God (1)
When Amy reached the mountain, she found a spot still marked by the traces of a battle.
"Not here."
Maya was gone, and from the distance of crossing an entire mountain came a booming detonation.
"Pretty fast, aren't you?"
A flash of tension passed through Amy's eyes as she prepared to cast spatial teleportation.
Twisting her body, she saw a hooded man already at arm's reach, throwing a punch.
"Ugh!"
The moment she raised both arms to block, it felt like her solar plexus ignited and the pain seared through to her back.
"Hah!"
"Giorgi, really…"
The one who had pierced through Amy muttered as he tossed his hood back over his shoulders.
"You can obsess over Yahweh all you like, but you can't just send off a comrade."
While he spoke, Amy tore at her collar and examined the wounded spot with trembling fingers.
"What the—?"
Between her breasts was a blackened, charred mark that faded bit by bit as time passed.
Amy turned around.
"Who are you?"
Red skin, pointed ears, a bumpy forehead—his look was oddly like a fire ant.
"Gultan. An assassin specialized for the Great Yahweh Operation. Honestly, I'd prefer not to fight anyone but Yahweh… but the Catacomb's selection demanded people who can achieve at least 6.8 times their base efficiency in combat against Yahweh."
"You're still a commander, though."
Gultan took a wide arc to close in, and Amy followed his movement with her eyes. Watching him pass through the thick trees revealed why her earlier defense had failed.
"He passes through matter."
Gultan's fist sped past Amy as she jerked her torso back in alarm.
"Oh?"
A spark of interest lit in Gultan's eyes.
"Your physique is impressive."
Amy's schema had reached a high level through the war with the demons.
"Hwain."
A towering fire-giant rose from her body and roared flame at Gultan.
Dozens of meters of the surrounding area scorched, but laughter came from behind Amy.
"Kukuku!"
At that same moment, a blast of heat struck her back.
"Hah!"
Because the blow came from behind, all that could be seen was black smoke pouring out through her chest.
"No time to dodge. What the hell—?"
He phases through matter.
"It's the ground."
"Yes. Physical barriers don't matter. Also, this makes it the second touch."
A bad feeling crawled through her.
"What do you mean?"
"I touched your heart twice. Ah, don't worry. It won't kill you."
Gultan's ability was Mental Craft.
He converts the body into a quantum state to pass through it and sculpts the target's heart.
"My heart… what are you talking about?"
"Crafting is delicate work. To shape something into the form you want, you have to touch it repeatedly."
Amy just listened.
"But a skilled crafter can rough out a shape with only a few touches. In other words, two touches are enough to set the basic form."
"A mold?"
Gultan spread his arms and laughed.
"I guarantee it. When this fight is over, you'll love me to the point of madness."
That was precisely the Catacomb's core tactic to weaken Yahweh's power.
"Damn it!"
Her dread came from noticing that her hostility toward Gultan had already lessened after allowing the second strike.
"These people aren't kidding."
They were the sort who had analyzed Yahweh down to the last detail.
"We know you have an ability called the Crimson Eye. Investigating a target's associates is basic assassination tradecraft. But it won't help. The heart I touch is far deeper than the mind."
Amy tried to reject it in her head.
"No—there's no way. I wouldn't love some ant-looking demon like that."
"What a disgusting reaction. I don't particularly like you, either. Human women are fun to torment, but they're not my type."
"…Restoration is possible, right?"
"There's no fixed form stamped into the heart from the start. It will change over time, but can you really free yourself? The third touch will be very detailed."
"No."
Amy's eyes flared red.
"Try whatever you want. You'll never touch my body again."
"I'll have to fix that mindset first."
Gultan sank into the ground and reappeared behind Amy, raising his fist.
"You'll never dodge it."
The reason Amy had allowed a strike earlier wasn't slow reflexes.
"Quantization."
While Gultan phased into a quantum state, time and distance became irrelevant.
There were conditions and constraints, but under Amy's current state they weren't the main problem.
"I'll touch it for you—your heart."
Just before his fist reached Amy's back—
"What the—?"
Her body scattered into flame, and Gultan stumbled forward as if pushed.
A voice came from behind.
"Spontaneous ignition."
Seeing Amy standing there with one hand wrapped in flame, Gultan's expression shifted.
"Fire mobility? I've never seen this." He attacked again to test it, but all he could catch were the remnants of heat.
"I see."
Where she turned, flames bloomed and Amy shimmered like a heat haze.
"Her movement speed isn't high. The real problem is her reaction speed."
The gust Gultan pushed through snuffed Amy's flame like a candle.
"And she sparks a new flame to relight. Movement resembles convection, but—
while moving she's almost invulnerable."
"What, aren't you going to attack?"
When Amy flicked her hand, Gultan ground his teeth.
"There must be specific phases that correspond to air movement. So either she moves very slowly… or—
she moves so fast she cuts through the wind."
"Extending a punch past the speed of sound is beyond me. At least I can take solace in that she can't ignite before I make my move."
That was his thought.
"If you won't attack, may I?"
Until he remembered Amy was a mage.
"Crimson Flame."
The fire climbing her body condensed into a massive sphere in the sky.
Gultan gaped, stunned by a size that erased distance, and snapped back to his senses.
"Wait! Negotiate—let's negotiate!"
Before any answer came, a fireball whose temperature reached six thousand degrees Celsius smashed into the summit.
In an instant, the mountain erupted in flame.
"Waaaaa!"
The blast was powerful enough to burn the caster too, but Amy smiled.
"To put out the fire…"
The flames ran along the ridge like molten rivers, spiraled into a colossal vortex, and pierced the sky.
"What is that?"
Shirone, who with Giorgi formed the Taeguk, watched a pillar of fire shoot from the mountain.
"Amy's complete combustion."
To use the pinnacle of flame arts meant the opponent was a practitioner of comparable skill.
"Don't think. Just trust." After all, they were comrades.
"But more than that…"
Among the many voices the Taeguk domain carried across the land, one in particular grated on Shirone's mind.
Ultima rearranged the syllables and Shirone analyzed them in reverse; the result read:
"They are watching you. Trust nothing. Save yourself from a terrible truth."
It wasn't the voices of citizens.
"It wasn't Giorgi either."
Then who would say such a thing?
Shirone concluded that no one within the city would voice such words.
"Not a being of this world?"
If someone had extracted specific signals and recombined them like cutting words from a newspaper to form a sentence—
"It's a message sent to me."
The fact it was delivered when the Law collapsed lent weight to the hypothesis.
"All right, think. First: they're watching me. Who are they? Why won't they reveal themselves?"
Is it a form of censorship?
"And trust nothing. If that means this world is fake, it's almost like Thing's philosophy." She thought she alone was human.
"No, I'm right. Whatever this world is, the place where you throw your heart is the real thing. That is absolutely undeniable…"
A chill ran over her.
"Save yourself from a terrible truth."
What truth could be so horrific that the sender used that phrasing?
She didn't know.
Only one thing was clear: the message pierced to the deepest parts of this world.
"Such insight."
The Taeguk space was swallowing the plains beyond the city.
Severely wounded, Kaiden lay in the bushes and screamed.
"Stop! Stop it!"
Watching Miyo relentlessly torment Maya was hell even to witness.
"Hohoho! Then why did you resist?"
"Kaiden."
Maya's eyes were unfocused, but she kept her wits and her personality to the end.
"Run. I… I'm fine."
"Waaaaa!"
Kaiden, made even more miserable by those words, buried his face in the dirt and howled.
"Move! I said move!"
As long as he couldn't excise Maya from his heart, he had no strength.
"Die for all I care! No—give her up! Give her up! Just give up! Give up!"
He could live without ever meeting her again.
"Give up, give up…"
But the heart doesn't obey will alone, so it was only thrashing.
"Damn it! Why won't it work? Why… I can't blame anyone."
"Kakakaka! You're hilarious, huh? You're so weak—what can you even do…"
Then, as the distant mountain suddenly caught fire, Miyo's laughter vanished in an instant.
"What's that?"
Taken aback, Miyo finally decided to carry out the Catacomb's strategy.
"All right, I'll free you from your suffering."
Miyo opened Maya's mouth wide and shoved her hand inside.
"Ugh! Ugh!"
Watching Maya's agony, she said, "But I'll have to steal her voice." That would drive Yahweh mad.
"No, no!"
Kaiden snapped out of his stupor and shouted, but he had no way to stop her.
"I'll tear out the uvula and present it to Yahweh as a gift."
"Ugh! Ugh!"
With Maya's tears streaming, Kaiden slammed his fists into the ground.
"Move! I said move!" There was nowhere left to retreat, and he had no clue how to turn her heart back.
As Kaiden shoved the earth with all his strength, red veins webbed across his eyes.
"Give up! I said give up!"
He couldn't give up—Maya might die, or rather she had to be saved; impossible, what could he do, damned fate, loving, Maya, Maya, Maya dying…
Miyo, with her fist lodged in Maya's mouth, turned to Kaiden with a bright smile.
"Now, ready for opening!"
"Aaaah!"
Terrified to the point of losing his mind, Kaiden's vision blurred and Miyo's voice faded to a distance.
"Hoho! This beautiful voice is mine…"
Crack.
A tearing sound echoed in Kaiden's head.
"Huh?"
In the next instant, Miyo looked at her own state with a baffled expression.
"What the—?"
Her arm had been cleanly severed.
"Hah. Hah."
Panting, Kaiden replayed the moments before.
"What happened?"
When he turned his tense face to the side, he saw the sword that had cut Miyo's arm.
"Did I… cut it?"
It was clearly her arm, and she still felt its sensation, but she was completely freed from mental domination.