The Horrible Truth (4)
Anchal spoke.
"Your Majesty the Emperor, Pama Radiant Star: ten minutes remain until the power transmission completes."
His tone was more reverent than usual because Jin-gang stood at death's door.
"Gurgle!"
Jin-gang spat blood.
"Heh heh."
Half-mad, a lunatic.
He admitted it himself, and yet he was oddly enjoying the moment.
"Seongeum."
It seemed he would not get a chance to see his daughter's face.
"Would you ask for such a luxury?"
"Your Majesty, please give your command." Anchal forced back the tears welling in his one eye and fixed Jin-gang with a resolute look. "Once transmitted, the information cannot be retrieved. This is your only chance to undo it."
Even bearing that weight, Jin-gang looked at Anchal with soft eyes.
"Thank you."
He hoped there would be no trace of regret.
"Your Majesty."
Anchal swallowed the tears and held a firm expression.
"Command, Your Majesty."
Jin-gang's face twisted into something demonic.
"Kill them."
All of them.
Rian ran and ran.
"Clear the way!"
Shirone's body was as light as a feather, but the value of his life outweighed Rian's by far.
"Yaaaah!"
The yaksha's blade guarding his lord cleaved a Heukseung in two.
There was no end to them.
Outside the wide-open sight, even more Heukseung poured in.
"The remaining distance... about forty kilometers."
It was a distance he could reach in an instant if he ran flat out, but getting through the Heukseung was the problem.
"No—if I get there it's still a problem. While purifying the chains of Jin Seongeum, Shirone will be defenseless."
Rian decided.
"I'll protect him." He made no judgments; in any situation Shirone's life was his top priority.
The Heukseung dove in again.
- Foolish sinners, why do you refuse purification and profane the Laws of Hell?
A countless mass spun like a whirlwind and focused its power.
"Huuuuu!"
Rian grabbed the great halberd in reverse and charged.
"Don't worry, Shirone."
The moment he clenched his teeth the world trembled and tremendous force surged into his right arm.
"Yaaaaaah!"
As he rotated his shoulder, the forearm's muscles vaporized and the swarm of Heukseung detonated with a pop.
- Oooooooo...
Amid faint screams, Rian inspected the right arm that remained as bare bone.
Smille. Smille.
Ozent's bloodline began restoring the flesh, but the recovery was noticeably slow.
"Not much longer."
Even the Idea of Divine Transcendence had limits against a living body's regenerative capacity.
"It's fine."
Rian poured strength into the barely recovered arm, gripped the halberd, and kept going.
"Even if I shatter... the 〈Idea〉 will not be destroyed."
Shirone, having left the Pyramid of Truth, stood before a vast hole torn in the sky.
Jeonsian watched him.
"What are you thinking?"
Shirone asked, but his eyes showed no reaction, as before.
"Do you think you're judging me?" He wasn't afraid.
He simply wanted to do everything he could here before departing into the unknown.
"Is Gaphin there?" The reaction back at the Maika ruins—what had that incident been? Jeonsian did not move.
"Answer me..."
A photon cannon sprang into being in Shirone's hand.
"Answer me!"
As one beam shot toward the hole, a matching flash returned from beyond—like throwing a ball at a mirror.
"All right."
Apparently gods in their respective worlds didn't like to make civil compromises.
"If that's what you want, I'll go in." After a breath, Shirone wrapped himself in Miracle Stream and flew into the hole.
As the boundary where the two flashes met passed over his head, Jeonsian vanished and a black space opened.
'Yania Idumeo.'
If everything were simply devoid of light, his hands would not be visible.
Nothingness, or something like it.
'Reversal of thought.'
Having already experienced High Gear, Shirone quickly recovered his frame of mind.
"Will anything be different?"
High Gear was a lower level of reality, but the outside world itself had shown nothing special.
'It's all just a gigantic illusion.'
Just by thinking of it he was back in an integrated Class Five lecture at his alma mater.
Etella spoke.
"Okay. Who among you has ever counted from one to a hundred—either in your head or aloud? Raise your hand."
Students at Alpheas Mage School raised their hands while Shirone watched with detached eyes.
'Everything is just a vast delusion.'
By merely recalling it, he returned to that class session.
Etella continued.
"All right then. Who's ever counted from one to one thousand?"
Students glanced about nervously; Shirone studied familiar faces.
Nade, likely still awkward, and Iruki, who'd clashed with him from their first meeting, were there.
'Ha! You young ones were so naive.'
Of course he had been, too.
A faint smile flickered, then he turned away with sad eyes.
'This isn't my world.'
It was only one of countless universes endlessly bubbling into being.
"Sequential counting is literally a technique for listing numbers. Unlike language, numbers—"
Etella stopped.
"Shirone?"
When Shirone met her gaze, Etella fell silent and wore a serious expression.
"You..."
She asked, "Who are you?"
All the students in the advanced class turned to Shirone, but none had an answer.
"No—who are you? You're not Shirone."
Etella was certain.
A moment ago her eyes had glittered with curiosity, but now they were entirely different.
'Not a student. No—comparison is meaningless; eyes that have reached the end of the world.'
Her instincts blurted it out.
"God?"
The students murmured.
"What's going on? Why is the teacher acting like that all of a sudden?"
It looked like a commotion might break out, and ashamed at the idea of causing trouble in this world Shirone stood.
"Teacher Etella."
The person he respected most.
"Thank you."
Etella, feeling a farewell, reached out her hand.
"W-wait—!"
Then it was dark again.
"Phew."
He wondered what might be happening in that universe he'd mistaken moments ago.
'Meaningless speculation.'
Literally—such universes were infinite.
'I can't return from here.'
Based on his High Gear experience, Shirone could find where his heart had nested, but—
"God of the outside world."
It was time to settle matters.
'Nane must have come here too.'
What had he realized, and where was he now?
'No way...'
Shirone stopped walking.
If this space truly consisted only of illusions, there would be only one way to meet a god.
'The sole illusion.'
He turned and his reflection appeared like in a mirror.
'But there's no mirror.'
As Shirone approached slowly, the self across from him closed the distance in exactly the same posture.
His hand extended slowly.
Imir's black hole.
Awakening within an overwhelming sense of unity, Shirone arrived in the dark space.
He had paused when a thought of Nane surfaced while testing the world of illusions.
'The sole illusion.'
A god is a result, unique and solitary—so whatever illusion you reach, there is only one destination.
Shirone turned his head.
'But there's no mirror.'
The two Shirones advanced in perfect synchronicity and touched hands.
For a moment Shirone savored it; then as he lowered his hand the mirror phenomenon reverted to nothingness.
Which Shirone was this?
Was he the Shirone who received Yorahan's transmission-dream, or the Shirone who had not?
'No contradiction.'
He understood why the Shirone in Imir's dream had been severed from reality.
'He was blocked by the barrier of logic.' This place had no contradictions.
An infinite freedom where anything becomes right—this was the true nature of the Ultima system.
'You must have been lonely, Nane.'
In a vast emptiness too immense for even the extremes of the sphere to contain, did he howl in despair?
'I should meet him too.'
Extracting the Ultima was the priority.
But within infinite illusions, the concept of a sole god made causality irreversible.
'You can't return by a mere reversal of thought. Even if I obtain an Ultima, I can't bring it back to reality—'
Resolved, Shirone called out.
"God."
Countless humans might imagine countless gods, but however many they imagined, there was only one.
That single illusion finally drew Shirone to the place where the god resided.
The material there was too smooth to be stone and too soft to be metal.
Everything was white.
'Is this the highest-level universe humanity can reach?'
No. Not at all.
'It only clings to outcomes using the time of nothingness. Humanity's potential doesn't end here.'
If the chain of causality woven by the god were severed, humanity would stretch far into the future.
Perhaps that was the message Gaphin left—
'Beyond Infinity.' Shirone took a calm first step and walked down a corridor devoid of personality.
The first other thing he saw was absurd.
"Heeheehee! Heeheeheehee!"
Arius lay on the floor like a dog and spun in circles.
"Uhihehe! Woof! Woof! Heeheeheehee!"
Shirone reversed his thought and called.
"Mr. Arius."
He abruptly stopped, turned, and crawled over to Shirone.
"Uh, uh? Hahaha! You've come! Finally you've come! Shirone!"
"What on earth happened to you?"
Arius kept bowing repeatedly.
"Oho! Our god! Save humanity! Take this miserable vessel! Puhahaha!"
He was half-mad.
"How many universes have you wandered through?"
Everything passed in an instant; wandering through so many illusions would drive anyone like that.
"Huu, huuuh!"
Arius wept.
"It's all meaningless. You can go anywhere, become anything. Dog, insect, air. The god is immeasurably vast... infinitely expansive... No one could endure it. From the start we couldn't even be trivial beings!"
That was infinity.
"Aaaargh! I am nothing! Kill me! This damned place where even death becomes an illusion...!"
"Mr. Arius!"
At Shirone's command Arius fell silent.
"Pull yourself together. That's just a property of the god. You know that. If there's an Ultima, humans can gain the strength to fight. Can it be extracted? Miro said she worked out a method."
"Miro."
My lord's mistress.
"Extraction is simple."
Arius spread his arms.
"Here—everything is Ultima. Take it. Break the wall, inhale the air—every concept that makes up this place is Ultima. It's the exact opposite of reality. Integration here is natural. There's no contradiction. If you simply force an outcome, the cause lines itself up to match."
He covered his face with both hands.
"Sigh. The problem is we can't go back. We're trapped here. It was a mistake to come."
Having assessed the situation, Shirone stood.
"Where is the god?" Arius trembled.
"Have you met it?"
No. That silence felt maddening.
"I... don't want to go."
"Then think for me. Where is the god?"
We must find a way.
"Where?"
Arius snorted.
"Of course—the place where the god is."
For a moment electricity seemed to flow through them, and an unbounded white space unfolded.
Three meters above their sight hovered glass spheres the size of human heads—nothing else.
Strictly speaking, that wasn't entirely accurate.
He inferred it from the way various spectra of electricity spread like a spherical membrane trapped within a shell.
"Are you it?"
The glass sphere answered with silence, but Shirone sensed the electrical pattern shift.
'That is...'
The ultra-high-intelligence computational device—the god.