[303] The Secret of the Abyss (4)
Amy's eyes went blood-red as she shouted.
"You bastard! You thief, using someone else's property as a barricade? If you're a mage, fight properly! Are you afraid you'll lose to me?"
"Haha! Why bother when the skill gap is obvious? Besides, Armin, I know you're not in your right state."
Arius laid a hand on the statue.
"The rehearsal is over. I had you all wait before the main act because I wanted to share this historic moment. It's a spectacle you won't see again—enjoy the show."
He cast Scale Magic: Resizing, and the eight-meter statue of Ataraxia shrank to the size of a chess piece.
Zion's eyes lit up when the archangel statue became a figurine.
At that size you could slip it into your pocket. You could wield Ataraxia anytime, anywhere.
"Hmm, this will do nicely. Now then—"
"That thing's Shirone's! If you so much as touch it I won't forgive you!"
Amy's teeth chattered and Zion felt elated.
"Haha! What are you going to do? You can't do anything anyway. Just watch while Ataraxia becomes mine."
Arius gripped the archangel figurine and heaved.
But it didn't budge.
He strained until his face flushed, but nothing happened.
"..."
Arius set the figurine down and stepped back.
He looked at the watching crowd and, somehow embarrassed, burst into loud laughter.
"Hahahahaha!"
Why wouldn't it move?
Resizing reduces the scale of space; it doesn't change mass. A pebble to a human is a mountain to an ant.
'Still—it can't be lifted. A mass that transcends dimensions? No, there can't be a dimension beyond scale magic. Then what's the problem?'
Unable to stand it, Zion shoved Arius aside and took his place.
"Move. Don't tell me something like this has you stumped?"
Arius let him try. The kid's raw strength wasn't remarkable, but if Armand were involved he could produce power comparable to a Schema-level output.
"Mages, honestly—"
Zion clicked his tongue and crouched.
He grabbed the archangel figurine with one hand and clamped his other hand over his wrist. Armand responded instantly.
- Strength augmentation system activated. Energy metabolism increased. Muscle fiber reinforcement. Joint flexibility engaged. Ligament tensile strength reinforced. Center-of-force recalibration.
"Grrrrr!"
Zion straightened his back, clutching Ataraxia, and flinched at the weight that far exceeded expectation.
Still, Armand's strength program flooded him with power. He felt as if he could move a house-sized boulder.
Zion extended his bent knees and pulled his torso upward.
At last the archangel figurine rose by about a finger's breadth.
"I won't leave it like this! I'm going in and getting it back!"
Amy yelled, but Armin only watched Zion.
As a Scale Mage himself, he could tell: it wasn't that Ataraxia was too heavy to lift. Some rule other than mass was clearly at work.
'What on earth is happening?'
Zion managed to lift Ataraxia to his waist.
"Got it! Th-this is mine now—!"
At that moment a metallic scream rang out and the air flooded red. The once-peaceful temple turned ominous in an instant.
When the archangel figurine unleashed a shockwave, Zion and Arius were thrown against the far wall. Armin's group, however, remained safe because their psychic barrier fractured and absorbed much of the impact.
Zion steadied himself by borrowing Armand's strength.
Just as his pride pushed him to rush back at Ataraxia, Arius, propped against the wall, shouted.
"No! Don't get close!"
A magic circle burned into the floor and a cylindrical curtain of light shot up to shield the figurine. Golden ancient script began etching itself rapidly across the barrier's surface.
"Get back and retrieve Ataraxia quickly!"
Rena nocked an arrow and readied to run, but Armin reached out and stopped her charge.
"Wait! That's a binding seal."
If alchemy is the engineering advancement of magic, a binding array is magic's spiritual engineering.
Mages don't divide everything neatly into good and evil, but the religious world has long used binding arrays to imprison countless beings it deems malevolent.
Arius tensed as he realized it was the process of unsealing a binding array.
'Why is there a binding array on Shirone's ritual?'
You can't inscribe something into the in‑womb psyche without leaving traces.
Even in cases of possession, you'd expect at least a statue like Ataraxia to serve as a vessel. Maybe it was a mutation from when Shirone was an embryo.
But a binding array—an engineered construct—manifesting at Mental Level 1 was less likely than stray parts in the wind assembling themselves into a carriage.
The golden script climbed the light curtain and finished the procedure. As the programming dissolved, a phrase was inscribed at the cylinder's center.
Arius read the heavenly tongue at speed.
'La hadamah jadran arab, ya ahud min alfwud. O lord of Chaos, tear down the boundary's wall.' Whatever it is, nothing cute is coming out. Right?
Beneath the phrase, another line filled in.
Binding arrays require the sealer's signature. Like an exorcist's "I command in the name of so‑and‑so," this confirmed Shirone's security was an artificial design.
"What...?"
Armin and Arius—both able to read the ancient script—went rigid.
A line of light, written as if by a human hand, slowly traced and placed a period beside the designer's name.
The name of the one who had been lost was engraved.
McClain Gorphin
Owner of the Incarnation (1)
'No way! No way! No way!'
Arius's thoughts whirled at record speed—eighty percent exhilaration, nineteen percent fear, one percent denial.
Gorphin's binding arrays were clearly security devices to prevent tomb‑robbing of the in‑womb psyche. Otherwise, they wouldn't have stayed silent all this time.
'But why—why would he do this?'
Mental Level 1 is the realm of genes. Could Gorphin's relics be hidden that deep?
Gorphin's works ended around eighteen years ago. So when was this binding array created?
Arius thought of Shirone's age.
'Eighteen. But which eighteen? Before the reset? After the reset?'
There was no way to know. Still, a blind kind of conviction gripped him.
'Could it be from the reset itself?'
The Crack Sword verification experiment proved discrepancies in time and energy. Even if only for an instant, that disparity can leave the universe with a fracture.
There was no proof Shirone was born from such a fissure. No likelihood, no supporting evidence.
Yet Arius felt a fierce certainty.
If Gorphin truly designed the security, no living mage could unseal it.
Then why not install it at Level 11, where interference from others is strongest?
'They had no choice.'
It was installed while in the fetal or embryonic state.
'From the start, tomb‑robbing was impossible.'
No diver but Arius could breach Gorphin's binding array.
Still, he hadn't given up hope.
'It depends on what comes out of there.'
A head pushed through the sealed array.
It resembled a rhinoceros; its skin was gray and its hide studded with bumps so tough a sword would shatter. Seven eyes stared—one central, three on each side.
A leg that burst through the seal touched the floor.
When the beast drew up its other leg and hauled its torso free, the temple floor collapsed and sank into the earth with a roar.
Judging its size from its face had been a mistake. Its torso was a hundred times larger than its head. Its belly was grotesquely swollen, and thousands of horns, twisted like lightning, studded its back.
It looked as if the Egoist's enraged form from Level 7 had been given flesh.
"Damn it!"
Arius swore and backed away.
The Demon God Behemoth.
A king of beasts that roamed before humanity's history.
'Even if you like antiques, how ancient is this?'
Behemoth appears in cosmogonies even in Heaven. Even powerful Mara would bow to Behemoth—hence the title Demon God.
Awakened from a long slumber, Behemoth remained still for a moment. Then it turned its head, stretched, and looked down at the people with its seven eyes.
"Foolish humans, by the contract of the bound demon I shall destroy you."
Declaring a slaughter, Behemoth gathered electricity at the tip of every horn on its back.
When thousands of lightning bolts ignited at once, every face went pale.
"Damn! We have to get out."
Arius flung the door open and fled.
Zion, meanwhile, glared longingly at the archangel figurine. But when Behemoth's electric field began to scorch the space, he screamed without realizing it and sprinted for the door.
"Get out too! Follow me!"
Armin shouted to the two women.
There was no time to deliberate.
By mage society standards, the Demon God was Double‑S rank. That meant, arithmetically, power on the order of 370 ninth‑grade combat mages.
Practically speaking, it would take at least twenty sixth‑grade mages—assuming they knew the tactics—to handle it.
And in actual combat, traits and synergies introduce so many variables that you'd need at least 1.8 times that operational strength for a stable suppression.
In short, this party couldn't even scratch it.
Amy and Rena hurled themselves for the door without looking back; Armin immediately cast Flicker magic and followed.
Thousands of lightning bolts braided into chains, forming a web‑like electric field. Bolts beyond saturation fanned out and seared the space.
The door, having absorbed the immense energy, popped and vanished.
* * *
Armin's group was flung out of the doorway like cannon fire. Amy and Rena rolled on the ground, coughing; only Armin managed to land upright.
"Are you all right?"
Amy kept coughing.
"Suddenly I couldn't breathe. Cough, cough!"
As soon as they bolted through, a fierce blast had rushed from Shirone's mental world. If they'd been even a moment slower, they'd have been roasted by Behemoth's bolts.
Arius had already fled; Zion was left behind, dazed and motionless even as Armin's group landed.
Amy spotted Shirone hanging upside down in a web.
The time‑reversal field hadn't released yet, but he couldn't hold that posture for long. Eventually the field would have to drop—and what happened next was anyone's guess.
"Looks like his blood vessels are already cut. What do we do?"
"What did you imprint on Shirone's consciousness?"
Amy shook her head in despair.
"I couldn't think of anything. I had no choice but to write 'Shirone.'"
"You did well. If you can't form a concrete strategy, something abstract can help. We can use Shirone's consciousness. We're going to release the field now. Brace yourselves."
"B‑but—!"
Amy wasn't ready.
They'd altered the flow of Shirone's consciousness; instinctively he might find a way. But if he failed, the next instant his throat would be cut.