[195] 6. Ilhwa's Liquor (4)
Peope's face froze when she heard Shirone.
She couldn't comprehend what was happening inside her. The fierce emotions that had dominated her began to dissolve like bubbles as the hope of survival appeared.
"Are you mocking me? What could you possibly gain by humiliating me?"
"Mocking? Don't be ridiculous. It's only natural to save someone who begs to be saved. Because I want to live too. My life is precious, so I know how precious someone else's life is."
Shirone hadn't decided to let Peope go for good. It was still uncertain what judgment he would make at the last moment.
He was thinking of Kanya and Rena. He couldn't leave those two to die.
"I'll count to three. One."
The hand gripping Peope tightened.
"Two."
"Sa—save me."
Peope whispered.
Shirone didn't loosen his grip, as if he hadn't heard. Just as he was about to say three, Peope squeezed her eyes shut and screamed.
"Save me! I'm begging you! I don't want to die!"
Shirone released her.
Free, she fluttered her wings and shot upward. Her face flushed crimson like a sunset as she panted and snapped at him.
"Do you think you can get away with doing something like that?"
"What did I do?"
"You tried to kill me!"
"You did. And that's exactly what you did to Kanya and Rena."
Peope had no answer.
Raised from birth as an enforcer of the Law, she had never given much thought to the lifespans of her subjects.
But handing one's life over to another made it complicated.
Death is terrifying and life is sweet. Even for a fairy who lives ten thousand years, it was the same.
"What you did to Kanya's mother was wrong. Give her years back too."
Peope bristled as Shirone pressed the issue before she could even gather her thoughts.
"I already told you! Only the upper ranks of the seventy-two fairy grades can touch the Lifespan Register. You can't reverse a decision that's already been made."
"Then at least redo the judgments for Kanya and Rena first. You can do that, right?"
Peope propped her chin on her hand and fell into thought.
"Well… fine. I'll shave one year off each of their lifespans."
Shirone scoffed.
He was glad the sentences were lightened, but the gulf between judgments infuriated him. It felt like there had never been any standard to begin with.
"Since when do you hand down rulings like a junk dealer?"
"You're making a fuss even when I reduce it! Should I bump it up to twenty years then?"
"That's not the point. Isn't it strange? There should be criteria for applying punishment."
"That's why I am the standard. I'm the Law's enforcer! Seeing you now, you're really ignorant, huh?"
Shirone fell silent. He had to accept that fairies diverged from humans in fundamental ways.
A fairy's thinking was broader than a human's. While humans could split love into countless concepts, for fairies love was simply love.
Peope was an enforcer of the Law, and she therefore never doubted her own judgment. Because she understood how terrifying death was, she reduced the penalty by a year.
He could also understand why she couldn't make fine-grained rulings of two years and three months, or seven years and six months.
She might sharpen her judgment after thousands of years, but she was only one year old now.
"Is that enough? I'm leaving. Fairies have lots of duties."
"Where are you going? You still have to fix Kanya's mother."
Peope turned and glared at Shirone with her axe-like eyes.
"How am I supposed to fix that? I wasn't even born back then. Besides, my position is the lowest of the seventy-two ranks—I don't have the authority to edit the Lifespan Register."
"Then at least tell me how. You're a fairy—you must know something. I won't let you leave until you tell me."
Peope had the prickly temperament of a spiral spirit, but because she was young she wasn't hard to handle. If they could pry information from her, they might find a way to save Kanya's mother.
"Hah. You think stopping me will keep me here? And nobody can meddle in fairy affairs. It's written in the Law."
"You may not know what that law is, but you know it's unfair, right? Life is precious. Do you really think you can cut someone's lifespan by twenty years whenever you feel like it?"
Peope's eyes filled with tears.
The truth was she didn't know either. To judge the Law's rightness by personal standards probably required living at least six hundred years.
"Why do you keep coming at me? I'm just doing what I'm told!"
"Weren't you boasting about being the Law's enforcer? So confident before, and now you're running away?"
"Aah, really! What do you want me to do? What do you want to know?"
"First, tell me what the Ilhwa Ritual actually is."
"The Ilhwa Ritual? It's a sacred rite. It refines the subjects' Laws and rebirths them as new life."
Peope answered smoothly, as if relieved to finally speak of something she knew.
But Shirone felt nothing from her words beyond that packaged definition.
"How am I supposed to understand it if you say it like that? Be specific. What does it exist for, how is it carried out, what's written in the ritual notes—things like that."
"Ugh, you're really annoying…"
Peope buried her head in her hands.
The Ilhwa Ritual was simply the Ilhwa Ritual. She had never revisited the source knowledge or carefully reviewed the information she knew.
There was only one option left.
She brightened as she remembered memory transfer.
"If you really want to know, there's a proper way to explain it. Use mental resonance. Fairies can transfer memories to others. I'll show you the memory I experienced about the Ilhwa Ritual. Will that do?"
Mental resonance was dangerous. Peope didn't seem likely to act maliciously, but she wasn't an ally either.
Arin spoke through the mental channel.
-It's fine. I can control someone like Peope.
-Are you sure? Even with strong defenses, there are irregular rites to consider.
-Peope is emotionally immature, so she should register the unique pattern of an irregular rite with the primal sight. If that happens, we can knock her out with a mental shock before it triggers.
Kanya's group had apparently experienced an irregular rite too.
Thinking how formidable the primal sight was, Shirone consented.
"Fine. Show us the memory about the Ilhwa Ritual."
"Okay. Then I'll begin."
Peope cast the memory-transfer spell.
Their minds were drawn into the memory, and a scene from a year ago opened before them: a plaza with the statue of a giant standing in its center, the citizens holding their breath.
Shirone called the friends who had arrived at other points, and they slid through the crowd like phantoms.
Though it was someone else's memory, it was as vivid as reality.
Existing as a memory, Shirone could inspect anything he wanted. He could press his face up close to the citizens—none of them noticed him, which was eerie.
They moved toward the statue.
As the crowd barrier fell away, an astonishing sight was revealed.
Several hoses were attached to the giant's statue, each connected to one of eight glass spheres arranged around it. The spheres were large enough for a person to fit inside.
The citizens were silent, though a few were weeping. Reverence and despair mingled in the air.
Kergoine ran around the statue preparing the ritual. Eight citizens stepped forward from the crowd. They were mostly in their fifties or sixties, except for one young woman.
Shirone saw tears hidden in their smiles.
Shaking pupils, trembling lips, cold sweat on their brows.
They were clearly thinking about death.
The subjects entered the glass spheres wearing almost nothing.
As black liquid filled the spheres, their families rushed forward wailing. The other citizens prostrated themselves and began shouting "Anke Ra."
Kergoine dragged away the mothers, fathers, and grandparents pounding on the glass.
The subjects submerged in the rising liquid smiled.
Drowning?
It was a cruel thought.
Shirone peered into a sphere and stepped back in horror.
They weren't drowning. Their bodies were dissolving in the liquid.
It was the most grotesque thing he had ever seen.
He was curious about the liquid's composition; he could imagine why it was black. If the families had witnessed the process, they might have gone mad.
The liquid from the spheres was sucked through the hoses. A sickening sound like intestines being emptied echoed.
The citizens' cries of "Anke Ra" grew louder.
As the liquid in the spheres receded, their interiors—now perfectly transparent—were revealed.
There was nothing left.
Moments before, people had been there, smiling; now their bodies had been siphoned away through the hoses.
Shirone turned his gaze to where the hoses led. His body trembled, but he had to see.
The giant's statue.
Eight people were being poured into the statue's base.
What, then, was filling the statue at that moment?
"The immortal Ra," voices praising Anke Ra rose toward the sky.
Suddenly the giant's statue shook violently.
At that moment, the citizens fell silent.
Not a drop remained in the glass spheres. It had all filled the giant's statue.
Like a casting mold.
Shirone shook his head. It couldn't be. But once the thought took hold, he couldn't stop it.
A mold filled with liquefied humans. If that were true, then what was being formed inside—
The giant's statue split open along a seam.
A massive foot pushed out and struck the ground.
Shirone shuddered at the sight of the giant, its flesh like congealed jelly. Its expression was not what one could call human.
Arin murmured through the mental channel: the reason they couldn't attune to the giant mentally was simple—the body contained many blended minds.
So what state were the minds inside that body?
Were there eight minds, or something entirely different?
The citizens begged for mercy.
Born by the Law, and keeping the Law: the Giant.
Thus the giant had the right to execute those who broke the Law.
At that moment, if someone were trampled under the giant's foot, it wouldn't be the giant's fault.
Those who met the giant's gaze foamed at the mouth and collapsed. It was the eye technique called Pressing.
Ah.
Shirone trembled.
The origin of Skima. The primordial Skima was the phenomenon of human-body schematics overlapping—bodies interlaced through the Ilhwa Ritual.
Following the giant, he eavesdropped on the citizens' whispers.
The giant would now leave Heaven and enter Purgatory. There it would purge the heresy that threatened Heaven, and then be recalled by Ra's summons to return to the Fifth Heavenly Matei.
Families wept and cried out.
"Mother! Father! Grandfather!"
The giant flinched as if moved by their voices. It did not look back, though, and continued walking toward the outer gate as if nothing had happened.
@
Peope's memory burned away like paper and the present returned.
Shirone and the others looked around.
Peope was gone. She had apparently fled while the memory played.
But knowing what the Ilhwa Ritual was, they had no time to worry about her.
The ritual's subjects were dissolved in the liquid. They were then poured into a mold and underwent a special transformation before being reborn as giants. People's minds were mixed together, and Skima arose in that process.
The awakening agent Kanya had bought meant exactly that.
It was intended to keep someone partially conscious in that alien darkness.
Gadrak had been right. It was no different from giving an anesthetic to a patient dying in pain.
"This can't be…"
Tess's face went pale and bloodless.
The giant ability, Skima. And her own ability, Skima.
When that thought landed, she ran to a corner and vomited. The food she had just eaten spilled out.
No one scolded Tess.
They all felt nauseous.
Rian approached, and Tess raised a hand to stop him.
Peope's memory wasn't more grotesque than a battlefield, but it produced a mental retch.
Skima was the giant's technique. So why could she open Skima? Did Nephilim carry a separate giant lineage? But the giant had no reproductive organs.
"Now you see why I didn't tell you, right?" Kanya murmured with a sad face.
Some called it a blessing; others called it a curse.
No one wanted to speak openly about this ceremony that divided opinion even between citizens and heretics.
"According to the Law, humans were born from giants. So returning to being a giant—that's the Ilhwa Ritual."
Even if Kanya's words were true, Shirone couldn't accept it. The Ilhwa Ritual he had witnessed in Heaven was a rite that could not be hidden by any burial—what it made was a monster.
He finally understood.
The Ilhwa Ritual carried out in Heaven was a rite that used human flesh and entrails as raw materials to mold giants.
(End of Volume 8)