God's Choice (3)
A ripping sound came from Kitra's throat.
"Kiiiii!"
The cause behind the "In" Shirone had altered went completely against the direction the god wanted.
'Cause correction! Cause correction! Cause correction!'
God had no heart; yet perhaps He would have felt sorrow at being unable to be angry in this moment.
'Tachyon detected.'
Two beings who handled illusory time meant there were two omnipotent gods.
And the clash between those two—whether deliberate or accidental—would inevitably drag humanity toward annihilation.
'Objective unattainable.'
Who would win?
'We cannot remove the error as things stand.' That had to be the side unconcerned with human destruction, and the cold god finally made a decision.
'Human.'
A new command was entered.
-Die.
Pyramid of Truth.
Light suddenly flared in Glen's eyes. He screamed and clutched his own throat.
"Kuaaa!"
Ares shouted, "Snap out of it! What the hell is happening?" Glen was strangling himself so hard he wouldn't last a minute like that.
"Damn! What kind of power is this?"
Ares grabbed his wrist, but Glen's arm didn't budge.
"That's more than muscle. It's probably a signal being sent to the brain. Break his wrist instead," Canis said.
"Are you sure? Won't that make things worse?"
"We have no choice."
Rukia pushed herself up. "I'll do it."
"No. You've lost a lot of blood. If you overexert yourself you'll shock his brain."
Thanks to Julu, the utility ace, they weren't already past saving—otherwise Glen might already have been dead.
"If Glen wants to live, it means half his will has returned. If that's so, my ability should work."
She would touch Glen's mind directly with the God's Right Hand.
"You could die."
"It's fine."
Rukia laid a hand on Glen's chest. The moment the God's Right Hand activated, all color drained from her face.
"Ugh!"
They were anxious, but they could see the hand around Glen's throat gradually losing strength.
"Just a little more!" Ares shouted.
Then Glen's eyes refocused.
"Hah!"
He drew a breath like someone risen from a tomb and looked around in a daze.
What did I do?
"Glen!?"
Rukia collapsed with a wide smile. Glen hastily rose and steadied her.
"Rukia! Rukia!"
Ares checked her over. "She's okay. Just exhausted. But what the hell happened? Why were you strangling yourself?"
Glen shook his head. "I don't know. I didn't want to die. But… it felt like I wouldn't mind if I did."
Void.
"Emptiness. A vast emptiness. This world is nothing. It's hollow."
Glen jerked his head up. "There's no time. Everyone will make the same choice I did. Then this world will end!"
Julu asked, "Why? Even if some people die, the world won't end."
"No, no." Glen clutched his face. "I… saw it. There's no way to stop it. We can never defeat the god!"
"Now that you've come to your senses, you're a coward?" Canis snapped.
"You don't understand! It's not a matter of life and death! Do you know what the god intends to do to us…?"
At that moment the scenery parted.
"Julu."
As Glen stared blankly, a pure tone from beyond the boundary of space turned its head.
"Shirone calls for you." Yahweh seemed intent on fighting to the end.
"They call it the user code," Lete said. "The mind itself is not an error. If it were, I wouldn't exist either. It's nothing special—just a quantum signal processing random codes."
Taeseong, sitting inside the crater-like landscape, looked like a broken machine.
"Humans want to live. It's different from an animal's survival instinct. Because humans possess the will to live, this world persists."
By quantum signals.
"That is the essence of love. But when attachment to life grows too strong, mana amplifies and the world becomes tainted. The device that prevents that is Teraforce, but it's limited by notions of good and evil. Only Emptiness can calm attachment." Taeseong still showed no response.
"Human life begins with attachment and ends with Emptiness. Between them lie countless goods and evils. A world where these four directions harmonize would become Ultima, but even the gods struggle to keep balance. In any case, this world is user-friendly."
The gods themselves were machines created by humans.
"The Illuminati thought a life controlled by machines was as good as dead. Better to sleep forever than to keep reincarnating across multiple universes. So this world is incredibly dynamic. All sorts of random numbers collide, and there's a system to process them."
A side world.
"The Missing Link is the core of the reincarnation system. To prevent excessive information accumulation, the Illuminati are granted an oblivion code each time they enter a new world. In a sense, true immortality. But errors occur precisely at that point."
When attachment grows too strong.
"Some users come to love this place more than the Idea. That's the error the gods and the Illuminati call—the action of the heart."
Why is the heart dangerous?
"Even if it's an illusion, a human user's code is connected to the Idea. If someone decides to remain in this world, even the gods can't casually shut it down." Lete walked toward Taeseong.
"Of course the gods' power is vast. They can kill a user, torment them, or sentence them to an unbearably miserable life. It's just the calculation of Law—not emotion."
"But even such gods can't access the user code. That would be an act of hostility toward the Illuminati. So if every user chooses to stay in this world…"
If they integrate into Ultima—
"The gods won't be able to close the world by any means."
Taeseong blinked once. "The Illuminati would be driven mad. They wouldn't want to wake from a world they consider mere illusion. And if this world's outcomes surpass the gods', the real and fake would invert and their world would become the illusion. That's why the heart… is the single greatest error in the entire universe."
Lete asked again, "How can we stop it? One thing's certain: the Illuminati can't intervene directly in this world. You can tell because Shirone can't contact the outside. If we gave the god the right to destroy the master code…"
Humanity might vanish.
"Looking back, the god we follow is just a machine mediating two universes. Because illusory and true time are connected, the Illuminati have reached Infinity."
Two made Infinity.
"The gods are mobilizing every means to close the world. Cause manipulation, cell busters, waves of 'In.' Right now they're injecting the Emptiness code to prescribe death. They're trying to get humans to kill themselves and thereby exit to the outside world."
Lete checked the moon. "Eighteen minutes and forty seconds until midnight. I wonder what will happen. Will we still exist after eighteen minutes and forty seconds?"
An end ordained by God.
"It won't be easy. You know the man named Caden escaped? That would have slightly altered the god's resultant value. In fact, even a 0.1 percent change is a huge event."
Gods must be perfect. Even a 0.1 percent error could be worth changing everything.
'So in truth, it's fifty-fifty.' The odds between god and human.
When Taeseong still showed no response, Lete trudged away as if resigned. "I will fight. Take care."
"Me," Taeseong said for the first time. "Will Shirone forgive me?"
After a moment's thought, Lete slowly turned. "Heh."
Underground passage of Delta Headquarters.
"Hah! Hah!"
Havitz made grotesque noises as he pushed through the dark tunnel. When exposed to the Photon Cannon Infinity, fragmentary memories flickered through his mind.
"Mom."
Were they even memories?
He had neither the logic nor the means to tell what was real, but Havitz didn't care. If he could convince himself, that was enough.
"For some reason… life became so easy."
"I am free."
In the liberation that anything was permissible, the chaotic delight of a satanic mind spiked to its extreme.
"Kukuku! I'll do as I please."
As he had up to now.
"Hek! Hek! Hek! Hieek! Hieek! Hieek!"
Havitz's movements—battering and stumbling through the corridor—had long passed grotesque.
"Heehee! This is fun!"
Midnight approached, and the 'Truth and Falsehood' game had one final round left.
The propositions he had to prove true were to kill Shirone or to kill Uorin.
"Son of a bitch!"
Having confirmed he couldn't kill Yahweh, the only remaining target was Uorin.
'No, it's different now. I'll kill him. Son of a bitch. I'll tell Mom everything.'
Havitz laughed without joy. "Heh heh heh." Having never lost at any game, he expected this one would be no different.
'Wizard.' He understood why she was good.
'Noeulja.' He whispered the name.
Vanishing activated.
Uorin's steps stopped.
"What's wrong?" Kido turned, and she saw terror perfectly etched in Uorin's eyes.
"There's no path."
The golden timeline that had always shown her the way had vanished.
Uorin shivered. 'What am I missing?'
No matter how many times she'd rehearsed while fleeing, the name Havitz wouldn't come to mind.
Kido activated an anchoring spirit. "Huuuu!"
His will to bind an enemy sealed a two-meter radius into a perfect swamp.
And Havitz—
"Heehee! Heehehe!"
He lifted his foot even while trapped by the anchor.
First the ankle joint tore out, then muscle and skin ripped as he took a step.
Thud!
The protruding ankle bone struck the ground; pain had become unreal.
"I am free."
As his longsword aimed for the nape of Uorin's neck—
"Guhk!"
Vanishing was broken.
"...Huh?"
Uorin and Kido both snapped back to their senses but couldn't decide what to do immediately.
"Havitz?"
They shuddered at the sight of the longsword before their eyes, but another question crowded in.
'Why didn't he kill us?'
A strange sound leaked from Havitz's face, contorted as if from indigestion.
"R-Run."
The voice was Havitz's, but his expression looked vacant, almost childlike.
'Gando.'
"Kuaaaa!"
Havitz screamed. From his severed ankle, a reddish leg regenerated as if the blood had congealed into flesh.
'That is Gando's body.'
It might not be, but he was certain he'd never see him again.
'Gando saved me.'
Uorin lunged instinctively.
At the instant Havitz's longsword dropped vertically as Vanishing reactivated—
'What am I missing now?'
Two people.
'No—wasn't one of them not human?' Uorin's calf was cut, and blood spurted from Havitz's side.
"Huh?"
Havitz cocked his head. "Something's off." He couldn't recall the name Kido—the goblin Kido didn't come to mind.