The Tomb of Information (2)
It was a nightmare from the start.
'Is it the Dream Star's influence?'
It was unusual for unease to settle into Shirone's mind—probably just a chemical reaction in the brain.
"No matter how you look at it, this is a bit…"
When he sat up, countless corpses were advancing from the horizon, forming a wall.
"Uooooo!"
They dragged their dried entrails and moaned in unison as they came.
"Shirone, do you know those who died because of you? Do you know those you failed to save?"
Shirone's guilt.
Behind the lofty ideal of saving humanity were people dying right now.
–All life ends in death.
Fermi's words from before Shirone ate the Dream Star had lodged in his subconscious.
"May you suffer too. Feel our pain, our rage!"
Even as the corpses closed in, baring hostile teeth, Shirone did not move.
'This kind of dream.'
He wanted them to tear him to pieces—anything to dull his guilt, even a little.
"What are you doing?"
Fermi, appearing among the rotten bodies, inspected Shirone's dream with interest.
"Hmm. I thought you were always just glaring around like some pious old man, but you've got a surprisingly soft spot, huh?"
"Don't talk nonsense. You set this up. What did you feed me?"
"Even if you say that, it's the next-generation Dream Star, optimized by the best pharmacologist. Fear and eros have clear targets, so address-matching is easy."
The moment Shirone registered Fermi's words, the corpses' forms grew sharper.
They hadn't been completely vague before, but everything here was a projection of the mind.
"Waaaa… wooooooo!"
Through ragged clothes, bits of ribs and organs flashed now and then.
When Shirone made a disgusted face, Fermi shrugged as if he understood.
"When the two mixes, it looks like this." Shirone averted his gaze.
"So… what are we supposed to do now? The Under Coder is outside Drimo's boundary."
"Nothing. Wait until the Dream Star is fully absorbed. Once the brain is half-awake, the dream will collapse—then you go to the Under Coder." Simple enough, but the problem was that the place to wait was a nightmare.
The corpses, now within striking distance, bared their teeth and watched for an opening.
They couldn't strike immediately because Shirone's mind was holding the scene back.
Stopping the progress of a dream was something even pro divers couldn't do.
Fermi gave a teasing wink.
"You've changed a lot, rookie."
Back in magic school days.
"We fought a lot. Back then you reeked of provincialness—now you're the messiah who'll save humanity."
"I don't want to talk to you about that."
"Well, there's nothing else to do, right? Time gets all scrambled in dreams. If you immerse yourself it speeds up compared to reality, but like this, you never know how long you'll have to wait."
Fermi glanced aside.
"This reminds me of the graduation survival test—trapped in ice water, cut by blades… Did we make it to level seven? Ah, I bowed out at six."
"Grrrr!"
The corpses took another step forward.
"Honestly, I thought you'd die at level seven. If I'd known you'd pass, I'd've chased you to the end."
"What are you getting at?"
"Just that… I feel a little wronged, I guess. Anyway, I'm the loser, but this is a dream."
Fermi reached out his hand.
"Thought maybe we could undo it." As a cold menace slid over Shirone, the corpses lunged.
"Kraaaa!"
Their paths were in the air, but Fermi's sudden interceptions would catch them.
'Berserk.'
The corpses caught in the blast of light were torn apart, chunks of flesh flying dozens of meters.
In Shirone's field of vision, Fermi snatched a chip he'd gotten in a salvage deal and popped it into his mouth.
"Let's enjoy this." Unauthorized—unmanned sniping. The next instant, hundreds of rounds fired from 374 points in the void, all converging on Shirone.
'A railgun, then.'
Projectile speed, accelerated by electromagnetic fields, would be too fast even for an archmage to react to.
"Ugh!"
As Hand of God scooped Shirone up, the bullets slammed into the ground.
The shockwave shook the earth.
"Kraaa!"
Where the corpses' flesh had rained down like hail, Shirone stood unscathed.
"Hmm, haven't seen this before. Some kind of… mind technique?"
Fermi smiled, looking up at the gigantic luminous hand suspended in the air.
His expression was almost admiring.
"It tricks the mind like law. A useful ability. But it won't work twice."
"Is that so?"
Sensing genuine hostility, Shirone responded in kind.
"Wanna try it?"
When Hand of God spread its palm toward the void, a colossal photon cannon formed.
Hypersonic rounds and a devastating cannon.
Even in that brink-of-disaster moment, Fermi calmly inspected Hand of God.
'He used scale to push the power beyond normal limits. Very Shirone-like…'
Fermi turned back to face him.
"If it were me, I'd have developed the trick you just used. No matter how strong the force, there's always an opening. That technique can subdue a target one hundred percent if conditions fit. Its weakness is it weakens on the second use, but that's the beauty of a trick, isn't it?"
Shirone frowned.
"What business is it of yours what magic I research? Mind your own magic."
"Heh heh, fair enough."
Fermi turned away, and moments later the ground trembled and cracks appeared across the landscape.
The dream was collapsing.
"Time flows faster when you're immersed. Looks like the drug's kicking in. Time to move."
Shirone deactivated Hand of God but couldn't shake the unpleasant feeling.
"So you picked a fight on purpose?"
"Well, incidental." He was a man whose true intentions were impossible to read.
The two, released from the Under Coder into light, followed a blue line to the middle layer.
In a chamber full of countless mirrors, Shirone asked, "Where are we going?"
"The Abyss. The grave of information and the end of the world. That's why some call it the Apocalypse. Familiar, right?"
Shirone had heard that discarded data used to forge his signature had been recovered.
After leaving the middle layer, they placed their hands on the mirror leading to the Abyss.
As the boundary inverted, the world of the Apocalypse rushed into Shirone's view.
"This is…?"
Shirone stared blankly from a high point, and Fermi asked, "What, surprised it's different from what you expected?" It really was different.
'Miro said the Apocalypse was an implementation of a ruined future world. But this is…'
The entire visible landscape was coated in an unknown slime.
"Is that Mucus?"
"Yeah. Since the photon realm detached, the Apocalypse has been completely covered with Mucus. Investigations show over ninety-eight percent of the surface is slime."
Fermi gestured around.
"As you know, the Abyss is the terminus of information. It's the implemented scene of the end based on the real world. I think this is a prelude to a cell-buster in reality."
Shirone was genuinely surprised.
"How do you know all this? The Omega logs are records from ages ago."
"When time passes, even a king's private diary ends up in a bookstore. You're telling me things now too, aren't you? Won't many more people know in the future?"
"Future?"
He realized in that instant.
"Don't tell me… you—"
A bold thought.
"Yeah. Endless futures are deposited in the Abyss. The longer an item has been here, the closer its future is to our reality. If so, you can predict events that haven't happened yet. I call it mining time."
Shirone blinked.
"Since then, I've scoured the Apocalypse. I've picked up scraps of paper buried deep in the mountains. But those were information about futures that haven't happened in reality yet."
The irony of trash here turning into gold in the real world.
"I collected all that information to predict and prepare for future events. Emotion Sickness was one of them. Of course, your decision to make a deal with me came after you heard this explanation."
"I understand."
Shirone felt certain of his choice back then.
"I won't ask about the terms. But how did you gather so much data? Even if it's trash, near-future info must be hard to find."
Fermi blew his bangs back with a puff.
"It was a real pain. Doing it alone wasn't getting me anywhere. So I hired them—the whole Parrot Mercenary Company."
"Marsha's here?"
Fermi smiled and thumbed toward the lowlands glazed with Mucus.
"Wanna go see?"
They flew and arrived at the center of a city where a massive excavator stood.
Mercenary lieutenants sat on steel crates drinking, and Marsha stood by the excavator.
Fermi walked up with his hands behind his back.
"How's it looking?"
"Oh? Fermi, what are you doing here…?"
When Marsha spotted Shirone, she cut off mid-sentence, then brightened and shouted.
"Wow, Shirone! Guys! Come see. A celebrity's here!"
Now that they were a mercenary company dealing with the world, Shirone's arrival still caused a stir.
"If that's Shirone, that's Yahweh, right? Vice-captain, didn't you say you'd fought him before?"
Freeman, still eyebrowless, leaned on a crate with a bottle in his mouth.
"…Not with me, though."
Marsha welcomed Shirone by ruffling his hair.
"You! Somehow you look cooler than before. A man's gotta have power, after all. Right?"
Marsha had a gift for making anyone feel at ease.
"You're the same as always. How've you been?"
"Hit1! Me? I'm dying doing work I'd never expected—detective work, tomb-raiding, and now construction. Who knew singing a mining song would get me actual mining?"
Marsha looked more haggard than before, but her eyes sparkled like a child's.
"Is this machine supposed to pierce the Mucus?"
"Yeah. It's resting for now, though. Probably pointless—if you break through, it just regenerates."
Fermi asked, "If it's thick enough to erase even the tallest buildings, it must be substantial. How far down did you go?"
"There's a record of hitting a solid layer at dawn. Looks like around 480 meters."
Shirone's eyes widened.
"Four hundred eighty meters?"
Marsha thumped the excavator.
"It's piled up insanely. Even if you bored down, you couldn't really search. More than that—"
The Mucus beneath their feet writhed, extended like a tentacle, and curled around Marsha's leg.
As the tip hardened into a needle-like spike and shot up, Marsha yanked it off roughly.
"This glue is so annoying. Still, I'll admit it's pretty. This one's definitely male."
Freeman stepped forward.
"That's because it's by the excavator. It seems to instinctively detect targets that would attack it."
"Freeman."
Before Shirone could exchange greetings, Marsha flung the tentacle onto the ground and snapped at him.
"Shut up. Then you should be nearby. You've been drinking all day. Curse yourself."
"Curse yourself?"
Freeman explained, "My mouth's so foul the men voted. Marsha's been banned from swearing for a while."
"Ha! Think that'll stop me? You little swearer! I'll just tear you apart with curses."
"?… ha ha."
Shirone made a bewildered face.
'They sure know how to live amusing lives.'