[435] A Chance for Revenge (7)
Back in her room, Raesis unclipped her cloak.
The red cloth flowed off her shoulders like liquid and pooled on the floor.
Through the clothing torn by the photon cannon, wounds scorched as if by fire showed themselves.
Annoyed, she tore off the rest of her clothes and stood before the mirror to examine herself.
What a grotesque body.
Nothing about it matched any standard of beauty; no one could look at it and call it beautiful. That monstrosity hung exposed beneath her neck.
Shriveled, warped, the coloring dull—yet even this had been the result of desperate effort.
"Disgusting…"
Raesis was a faithful of the Church. An outstanding one.
But because she had accessed the Creation Myth—research forbidden in Heaven—she had been listed as a subject of the Ilhwa Ritual.
Melting away. Becoming a terrible giant.
Though showing fear before a sacred rite was itself a sin, she knew the truth.
The Ilhwa Ritual was the most horrible tragedy a human could face, a fate more miserable than death.
Like some other subjects of the Ilhwa Ritual, Raesis had secretly bought the stimulant Epiness through a clandestine channel.
No one could guarantee its effect, but for someone backed into a corner, even that was precious.
Clutching Epiness like a sacrament, Raesis sat on a bench in the plaza and prayed fervently.
"Please, let my mind dwell within a giant's body."
"Do you want to live?"
A voice answered as if called.
A middle-aged man with a kindly face and a tasteful beard stood before her.
She had heard rumors that while everyone treated the Ilhwa Ritual as sacred, some approached it academically. The man was one of them, and he taught Raesis one clandestine trick.
"If you want to live, take this before entering the Ilhwa Ritual."
He produced a tiny phial no bigger than a fingertip.
"What's in it?"
"A fly."
"Ugh!"
Raesis grimaced, but the man spoke with the gravity of someone revealing an important fact.
"Swallow it alive. Do that and you will survive."
The thought alone was repulsive, but her life was at stake, so she could not throw the phial away.
When the Ilhwa Ritual was performed, with nothing to lose, Raesis opened the vial.
She pressed the neck of the bottle to her lips and tilted her head back. Something hard rolled over her tongue. Nausea surged.
Holding back the urge to vomit, Raesis swallowed the fly.
Kergorin attendants stripped her and led her to one of the eight glass spheres set beside the giant statue.
"Please, please let me live."
As plasm filled, Raesis—too terrified even to open her eyes—prayed with all her might.
Black liquid filled the glass sphere, and her body unraveled and mixed with the others.
Where countless rituals converged, she felt as if submerged in sleep.
It was not the death she had expected, nor could she say she felt truly alive—only a hopeless void.
Giants born in each sector gathered and began a march toward Jotunheim.
A day passed, and just before dawn, one of the countless giants howled and dropped to its knees.
The giant's body split into flesh and bone and melted away like porridge.
Only Raesis remained at that spot, on her knees and curled into herself amid the reeking stench.
"Hah! Hah!"
When consciousness returned, the first thing she felt was the joy of being alive.
The man had been right.
After swallowing the fly, she had actually come back alive from within a giant's body.
"I did it! I'm alive!"
Thud! Thud!
The giants—far taller than she—stomped the ground, and for a moment she stashed her joy and ran.
She felt much lighter than before; everything felt good.
Only, she was thirsty.
At that thought, astonishingly, she sensed a spring several kilometers away.
"My senses are sharp. Is this a giant's ability?"
She ran and ran without getting winded.
When she finally reached the spring and bent to drink—
"Kyaaaaaah!"
Raesis's desperate scream shredded the forest as she caught sight of her reflection.
More cruel than the shock of the monstrous face was that it was hers.
Like a madwoman, Raesis screamed.
"No! Give me back my body! Put it back the way it was!"
The man who had taught her the clandestine trick cut through the trees and approached slowly.
He was the one who had turned her into this monster.
Yet after all this time, she suddenly remembered that perhaps he had been the only one to accept her as she was.
"Why? Why did you make me like this? Why did you do this to me?"
"Because you wanted to live. What else matters more to a living thing?"
"Don't be ridiculous! Could you—could you live like this?"
The man sneered.
"You are you regardless. By destroying form, you have gained infinite forms."
Raesis watched him walk away with a stunned expression.
In the terrible certainty that nothing could restore her, one question rose.
"Who are you… exactly?"
He stopped, turned his head slightly, and said his name was Satan.
Raesis fixed her reflection with cold eyes.
How many humans had she fused with just to keep any semblance of human shape?
Norin, Kergorin, Mekain, even traits from those of the Land Nations—she had absorbed them all.
It had given her great strength and vast knowledge, but it had also produced severe side effects.
At the slightest lapse, strange changes flared up across her body and acted beyond her will.
"Shirone… my savior."
Shirone's spirit could contain every attribute, and she had planned to blend it with the most beautiful form imaginable: an angel's body.
* * *
The Second Heaven, Lakia. The city of fallen angels.
Since ancient times, angels who neglected their duties and indulged in their power—wielding the Law as they pleased—were confined there.
Kariel looked down over Lakia from above.
The decadent fallen angels still idled away lives approaching eternity in lazy grace.
"Hmph. Useless things."
Having asked the giant legion commander Girsin for support and been refused, Kariel turned his gaze to Lakia.
Even fallen angels were still angels, and they could not completely ignore Anke Ra's command, but he was confident one would be an exception.
The angel of desire, Ikasa.
When the incident occurred in Sector 73, Ikasa had captured Amy and her companions and offered them to Jebul. She had hoped to be reinstated as a lesser angel for delivering three virgins to Kariel, but when Shirone returned to the original world, she instead received a harsher punishment.
So while many fallen angels idled away their time, Ikasa alone was bound to a massive iron ball three hundred meters underground, endlessly circling an infinite track.
"Haah. Haah."
The twenty-meter-diameter iron sphere rumbled and rolled with terrifying speed.
Through the blurring rotation, Ikasa's pitiful face—blindfolded, gagged—fleetingly slid by.
Kariel watched the sphere complete a turn, then reached out toward the returning iron ball.
A holy radiance flashed, unfurled into a ring, and the advancing ball slammed to a halt with a deafening clang.
"Hngh, hngh."
Ikasa, her back bowed like a bow and bound to the sphere, let out a pained groan.
Kariel cut away the blindfold. Ikasa, exhausted, raised her eyelids and immediately burst into tears.
"Ha-hi-hehi… Hah-hu…"
At last he had come.
The Archangel Kariel—the one she had believed would surely recognize her even if all others turned away—had come.
"Ikasa, you have a task."
Ikasa nodded repeatedly.
"Shirone has returned. That should be a delight for you."
"Heh! Hehhee!"
A cry of hatred tore from Ikasa.
Kariel nodded, satisfied, and dismantled her bindings.
Ikasa collapsed to the floor, then raised her head in formal posture before she could even tend to herself.
"Please use me, Archangel of Birth."
"Kill Shirone. Make it as agonizing as possible. Bring his tortured face to me. There's an angel I must show."
"That would be my joy. But I, insignificant as I am, have no way to know where that despicable Shirone is."
Kariel spread the grand codex and checked the status of Jebul's central processing device.
A map showing all of Purgatory had been overrun by red. Judging by the area, it moved at an extraordinary speed.
"Babel is scanning the skies above Purgatory. By the Full Moon it will have checked every coordinate. When that time comes, an opportunity will come to you as well."
Ikasa's eyes flashed.
Indeed, the Full Moon was approaching.
The time when the Law of Yin is strongest in Purgatory—and when a fallen angel like her could be at her most powerful.
"Wait, Shirone."
Vengeance surged in Ikasa's pupils.
* * *
Shortly after midnight, Plu's door opened.
Because she was a Jonar, there was no need for her to show her face.
After confirming the corridor was empty, she shut the door with a quick motion and slipped deep into headquarters.
One is better than two for a covert search, and the risk of being caught is lower.
With Shirone dispatched to subordinate units under the Second Command to unify the rebel forces, now was the right moment.
"This is suspicious no matter how you look at it. What are they up to?"
Moving along the wall, Plu rounded a corner and abruptly recoiled.
Two sentries were walking toward her from the end of the corridor, chatting.
"Argh, I'm sleepy. Do those guys never sleep? Who's supposed to eat at this hour?"
"Heh heh, tell 'em to eat up. They're livestock anyway."
One sentry turned the corner with a tray piled with food and suddenly stopped.
"What's wrong? Why'd you stop?"
"I thought something moved over there."
The sentry handed the tray to his comrade and walked over to a shadow on the wall.
There was nothing obviously suspicious.
"Weird. I definitely saw something wriggle."
"Probably just your torchlight."
"Ah, maybe."
Plu, who had descended from the ceiling, landed where the sentries had passed. A drone silently flew and clung to her shoulder.
"Phew, harder to control than I thought. Almost got caught."
Still, she'd overheard their words.
"Food at this hour? For whom?"
Plu followed them.
When the sentry at the wall touched a torch bracket, the wall opened and a hidden stairway revealed itself.
Plu waited about a minute, then opened the wall the same way and descended.
A space far larger than she'd expected unfolded. Corridors led off in every direction and dozens of laboratories lined the halls.
"What about the sentries?"
Plu expanded her Spirit Zone to the max and ran a sound-collecting algorithm; their voices came through.
"They eat like pigs. Well, who else gets a life like theirs? I envy them."
"Heh heh, if you envy them, go on in."
The voices stopped for a moment.
"Ugh, this stuff creeps me out. It's literally livestock, you know?"
As the sentries moved on, Plu—watching from a distance—approached an iron door.
It could only be opened from the outside.
"What on earth is in here?"
Plu pressed her ear to the iron and listened, her brow knitting.
A sudden sense that she shouldn't look inside washed over her, but she opened Pandora's box anyway.
"This…it's—!"
Peering through the gap in the unlocked iron door, shock seized Plu's eyes.