[421] In Heaven (3)
A desperate death-rattle echoed through the Great World Engine.
Arius, blasted by the current, flew ten meters and tumbled across the floor.
The spell that dove into his thoughts—Apoptosis—had trapped him in an ageless concept of timelessness where time did not exist.
It was a kind of mental death, and the shock of coming back was incomparable to the terror of a newborn.
"Uaaagh! Uaaaah!"
Arius couldn't stop screaming.
Everything was confused, and everything felt wrong.
Only faint afterimages in his memory vaguely told him who he had been.
Along the edge of that oblivion, a thin thread of reason flowed in and connected to his memories.
The memory of casting a spell to dive into his thoughts to avoid Captain Walker's sword at Kazra Palace surfaced, and only then did his screams begin to subside.
'Damn, I can't keep doing this.'
Wiping drool from under his chin, Arius rose and stared at the unfamiliar scene with suspicion.
"Where is this...?"
If whoever had pulled him out of Apoptosis was one of the Seven Great Mages, it should be some hideout only they knew. But the sight before him was nothing like that.
Everything gleamed in a silvery-lilac metal, and bizarre mechanical devices hummed and glowed.
"Are you the tomb raider?"
Arius turned with an annoyed look.
He had to look up, though, and his pupils narrowed in surprise.
A halo-like luminous body hovered above—wings of light many times larger than a human's.
An angel.
'Why is an angel—?'
Before the question could reach the top of his head, he was crushed by the all-seeing field of Flicker magic.
Run.
The thought came next.
The instant his body flashed and began to turn to light, Uriel's hand shot in faster than a blink.
"Kugh!"
Arius, grabbed by the throat, flailed three meters above the ground.
It didn't feel like his throat being squeezed so much as his cervical spine being seized.
"L-leave me—!"
When Uriel hurled Arius down, he slammed into the floor and arched up like a bow, groaning in pain.
Struggling, he dropped to one knee and looked up at the angels.
"Damn you, what the hell are you?"
"I am Uriel, Angel of Destruction."
"U-Uriel?"
One of the eight great archangels of Heaven.
Arius' gaze swept the area quickly.
He cataloged the devices, the mechanisms, even the galaxy mirror, and realized this was the Great World Engine.
'Then the one beside him is Kariel...'
If two archangels were present, even a Seven Great Mage like Arius had virtually no chance of getting out alive on his own.
"I want to show you something."
Kariel, who had levitated Arius, flew up to the galaxy mirror and hurled him at it again.
"Kugh!"
He landed hard, the breath knocked out of him. Gasping, he realized someone sat directly in front of him and forced himself to lift his head.
A woman sat cross-legged.
"Human?" Uriel said.
"Adrias Miro," Kariel replied.
Arius' eyes widened in shock.
"M-Miro? This woman?"
To a Scale mage, the name Miro was unforgettable.
But even a tomb raider like Arius had never seen her face.
So this was what she looked like.
A plain girl, the kind you might pass on the street and glance at for a moment.
Yet every epithet attached to her was a superlative—greatest, final, ultimate, strongest.
Arius found himself staring, almost hypnotized, at the face of the barely twenty-year-old girl with her eyes closed.
Beautiful—simply by existing.
Snapping back to reality, Arius analyzed the situation with the information he knew.
Archangels, Great World Engine, Miro.
'Damn. So it came to this.'
Miro being in Heaven could mean the final war was near.
'What the hell is going on? Does the world already know?'
He wanted to talk to Miro, but she showed no sign of waking.
Arius looked to Kariel and asked, "Did you put her to sleep?"
"No. Miro is inside a void-dimension. You should be able to restore her to how she was."
'Void-dimension...'
Arius' face twisted.
'Damn it! It's samadhi.'
Finally the pieces began to fit.
If she was in samadhi, they couldn't kill Miro—and that was precisely why they'd summoned a tomb raider here.
"Destroy Miro's void."
Arius snorted.
When Uriel had grabbed him, he'd reflexively begged for his life, but now that reason had returned, death was no longer his priority.
If Miro were pulled from the void, her timestream would be shattered—and what remained would be humanity's extinction.
'I don't particularly care, but I won't let them make this go their way.'
Still, he had no intention of surrendering.
He'd come to explore the mind of one of the greatest mages in human history.
He wanted to know what was inside this woman's head.
What she loved, what she hated, what shamed her, and which secrets she'd take to her grave.
"Destroy the samadhi?" Arius frowned. "Are you kidding me right now?"
"If you refuse, you will die."
"You don't actually think that's a credible threat, do you? This woman is humanity's strongest Scale mage. Whoever dives in will be crushed by the Egoist."
"Then you will have no choice but to die."
Kariel extended a hand. Arius raised both hands as if to calm the situation.
"Wait. I'm not saying I won't do it. I'm saying we need a detour."
"A detour? Into her mind?"
"Even if you dive now, you'll be swept away by the samadhi. But what about Drimo? In Drimo, every stray thought flows. We'll collect Miro's mind there. From that we can find a keyword strong enough to break the samadhi."
"A keyword?"
"Every human has trauma. A trauma that makes your breath stop the moment you recall it. We weave a powerful net from those, throw it into the abyss, and then pull. What would be caught? A great fish named Miro."
Kariel stared at the excited rambling of Arius.
Is he sane? So eager about a plan that ends humanity.
'I can't understand humans at all,' Kariel thought.
Arius set a condition.
"But Drimo is multi-dimensional; you can't just investigate it freely. So give me information. You must know something."
"Hmm."
Suddenly Kariel's halo expanded into a luminous ring.
A black sphere tore through space and was born as Arius' face went pale.
"Come forth, Brahma."
"Kiiiii!"
A hooked nose appeared first, then a red-skinned face.
The eyes were cruelly slanted and the teeth irregular.
Three glowing triangles hovered at its forehead, and beyond the crown the brain extended and connected; instead of being contained in a skull like a human's, the brain trailed down like hair to the tips of its small feet.
Kariel's familiar: the triangular Mara, Brahma.
In some parts of the human world that being was called the god of creation.
"Lowly Brahma, I greet Archangel Kariel."
"Follow that human into Drimo. Cooperate with whatever he intends to investigate."
Arius wore an incredulous expression.
'Damn, Brahma?'
That the intelligence god of myth looked like this shocked him as a mage.
But he quickly regained composure.
This was an opportunity.
If he borrowed the knowledge of a triangular Mara, he could reach the deepest parts of Drimo that humanity could not touch.
'Heh. The god of magic smiles on me.'
Arius approached Miro.
He would strip everything from her mind.
And when he returned, he would be a god of the world.
"Let us go. Heaven seems quite busy."
Brahma extended a filament of brain-matter and pushed it through Miro's mouth into her brain.
As the brain-domain governing Drimo activated, a small tunnel of space-time opened before Arius' eyes.
He plunged through without hesitation, Brahma following behind.
"Phew."
Only after the space-time tunnel closed did Kariel sit down.
Summoning a triangular Mara had nearly exhausted him.
"Are you all right?"
"Strength returns with time. Once Miro awakens, humanity is finished. There will be a motion at the Archangel Council."
"They may not succeed. By the Law of the Retainers, Brahma is not even in a normal state."
The combined power of the three Maras an angel commands can never exceed the angel's own power.
Secondary concepts cannot appear without a preceding primary concept—this was the Law of the Retainers.
With Kariel's presence weakened, Brahma could not exert his full strength either.
"It doesn't matter. Brahma was born mimicking my intelligence. He can make in a second the kind of judgment that ten thousand prudent humans would reach by compromise. It will take time, but he can do it."
It would take time. But what did that matter?
If this was humanity's last chance.
* * *
The strategy room fell silent.
Niflheim.
A place even the mainland's border guards were forbidden to approach; the beings that dwelled there were once malicious specters that terrorized humanity.
Krud offered practical advice again.
"Let me be clear: it's extraordinarily dangerous. Given the value of the Black Elixir, many should challenge it, but people have stopped going there for thousands of years. One reason: you will die. So choose carefully."
Sain asked, "Do we even have a choice? In this situation?"
"Even if we don't go to Niflheim, we can maintain alliances. Opportunities are not only now. But if the First Command launches a full-scale war, these three conditions must be met."
Choosing the safe way would take a long time. The quick way was too risky.
"Gaold, what will you do?"
Sain deferred the decision to the commander.
But the question was perfunctory. With Miro's fate unknown, there was only one feasible choice.
"We go to Niflheim."
"Hmm."
A long sigh escaped Krud.
"I hold you in high regard. That's why I want to stop you. Using the light of District 73 to grow the rebels' numbers is a good option. Why the rush? Is there a special reason?"
Haste breeds mistakes.
Gaold himself kept his composure desperately for that reason.
But objectively, time was short.
They couldn't kill Miro in samadhi in Heaven, but they weren't the sort to attempt something like this without plans.
"That's none of your business. Get those three conditions met as fast as you can. Then you won't have my complaints."
"Of course. But if possible—"
Krud remained skeptical to the end.
"We'll split into teams. I, Kangnan, and Zulu will go into Niflheim."
Sain asked, "And the rest?"
"Armin, Shiina, Etella, and Kuan handle logistics. Shirone and Plu will persuade the Second Command. For now, that's the only way."
Sain's personnel distribution took mission difficulty into account and split the team as finely as possible.
"Then I'll stay here and plan strategy. I also need to calculate planetary motion."
A precise forecast of the drop point was necessary for the divine punishment to strike Arabot properly. For that they needed to understand planetary movement first.
"Are you really going to Niflheim?"
Krud couldn't understand Shirone's group.
Even with ten people attacking at once—or calling in rebel support—dividing the team now seemed reckless.
"Are you sane?"
Gaold stood and said, "No."
(End of Volume 17)