[432] A Chance for Revenge (4)
The Fifth Heaven—Matei.
Giants born of the Wine of Birth returned to Matei from Jotunheim after grasping the Law through a sacred rite.
As those who keep the Law, their chief duty was to maintain heaven's order and repel outside forces.
Kariel, accompanied by Uriel, looked up at the colossal fortress that dominated Matei.
At the arrival of the noble archangel, giants fifteen meters tall who had reached the fourth stage of the Wine of Birth bowed their heads.
They bent at the waist as much as they could, but their enormous bodies still couldn't reach Kariel's crown—some two meters thirty centimeters above them.
Kariel snorted and strode through the main gate.
His temper was already foul.
It could be said King Imir of the giants had eradicated the "Parts" and gone into hibernation, so there was nothing to be done about that.
Still—shouldn't at least the legion commander Girsin have run out barefoot and bowed his head?
"These things are real...!"
Heaven's state of affairs was in shambles.
Ever since Shirone, the Light of District 73, broke the Wine of Birth, the populace had begun to doubt Anke Ra, and everything had started to shift.
Kariel wanted to fly straight to Purgatory and crush the rebels, but in his current condition he couldn't even defend himself without Uriel at his side.
"Just wait. I'll put an end to this soon."
If Jebul's structures embodied perfection, Matei's castle relied on sheer grandeur.
No trace of Mecha, Nor, or Kergo hues mixed in—only raw natural materials piled skyward by the giants' strength.
Even the sight of pillars that only giants could move revealed their whole mindset.
They passed through the hall and climbed a central stair that rose like a wall; giant guards stood in formation, their heads nearly brushing the ceiling.
Force enough to split the world.
But they would not move—at least not until Imir's command was given.
"What business does the great archangel have in such a lowly place?"
A giant three meters tall—perhaps the smallest among them—approached, a black cloak trailing behind him.
He wasn't massive, but each step hit with a weight that made the floor reverberate.
Girsin, the giant legion commander who had reached the seventh stage of the Wine of Birth.
If Imir was raw, unworked rock, Girsin was a blade honed a thousand times.
"Legion Commander Girsin greets the angel."
Girsin, standing before Kariel, immediately dropped to one knee and bowed his head.
Even a weapon said to cleave mountains in a single strike could not transcend the rank the Law prescribed.
Kariel found that intolerable.
Among the eight archangels he had little to boast of in raw martial power, so he felt he could see right through those who worshipped strength alone.
"Do you grow sluggish at the seventh stage? While I came all this way, you moved only a hundred meters."
Girsin tugged one corner of his mouth.
"Giants do not possess the infinite spirit of angels. Had we known in advance, we would have come out to meet you."
Girsin's answer was clearly unlike Imir's.
A giant who could exercise a bit of cunning knew that quibbling over the past was a waste of time.
"I came personally to give you an order."
"An order?"
"Lead the giant army now and wipe out the rebels."
Girsin's brow tightened.
He had heard rumors of divisions among the angels within Jebul.
But ignoring Ra's prohibition on angelic activity and acting unilaterally was tantamount to a second rebellion.
"However, Lord Ra—"
"That is precisely why I sought you. Ra's decree applies only to angels. Besides, the rebels are currently slaughtering giants born of the Wine of Birth the moment they are found. The giant army has more than enough reason to move, does it not?"
Girsin realized the situation was inescapable.
Still, he had absolutely no intention of mobilizing the giant host.
They followed only Imir.
They obeyed Anke Ra's orders only because Imir himself obeyed.
"I'm sorry. I cannot follow that will."
Kariel's face twisted into something vicious.
A throat-clearing from the guards sounded like a drumbeat, but Girsin remained composed.
"You refuse? Do you mean that?"
Kariel opened the Grand Codex, the sacred relic unique to the archangel of Birth.
It was an explicit threat—what came next would be a life-or-death matter.
"You know as well as I. The giant army will not move without King Imir's command—"
"Argh! Worthless giants!"
Kariel slammed the Grand Codex shut and, as if maddened, began ramming it into Girsin's crown.
There was nothing angelic in the wildness of his face as he thrashed and howled.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Even weakened, blows from an archangel were not to be dismissed.
Blood ran down Girsin's forehead as he stood mute, taking blow after blow.
Uriel, arms folded, watched and thought of how the angel he'd known had changed.
"This is not like you, Kariel."
Kariel Arian, the archangel of Birth—he was smashing Girsin's skull with the Grand Codex.
"Is your hatred of humans so complete? No... you must know by now. Right now you look like—"
Uriel broke off his thought.
A murderous intent rose from the guards flanking them.
Giants might rank lower under the Law, but their species' pride matched any angel's.
Their legion commander being humiliated like this before his troops naturally kindled fury.
Thud.
One giant readied himself to step forward, and Uriel's holy radiance expanded into a halo.
Girsin, seeing this, broke his calm and snapped a fierce glare at his men.
"Ugh..."
A guard, cowed by the commander's eyes, slunk back into place as if ashamed of his impulse.
Each time the Codex struck, cracks opened in the floor and the ground sank, yet Girsin took no action.
"Now is not the time to act. Even if we rushed him, the angel of destruction, Uriel, cannot be beaten."
Among the archangels, Uriel—the incarnation of destruction—was said to rival Ikael at his peak in combat prowess.
"We must hold. Until our king, Lord Imir, arrives."
Kariel backed away, his hands trembling with exhaustion.
His holy radiance dimmed and he felt as if his thought circuits were melting.
"Hah, hah."
Girsin said nothing, merely watching his blood drip to the floor.
The sight revolted Kariel, who hungered to create.
"Let us go!"
When Kariel turned and left, Uriel at last showed something like feeling as he regarded the giants.
The presence of an angel bound by the Law made the giants' massive legs tremble like mountains.
Uriel spread his wings of light, rose beautifully, and became a flash as he flew toward the main gate.
* * *
Gaold's hair had gone completely white; his face contorted into something terrifying.
His powerful air guns sprayed like buckshot, tearing through all forty Grim Reapers.
The ice shuddered, and the Reapers' forms dissolved into smoke like furious flames.
Woooooo!
As their hoods fell away, grotesque skulls were revealed.
A scream so piercing it could unnerve the soul exploded; the guide clutched his head and collapsed.
"Arrgh!"
She had never intended to come here in the first place.
The Black Elixir, the luxurious life—those dreams were fantasy to anyone who heard that sound.
"P-please... stop!"
At the guide's cry, Gangnan pushed off and ran.
Her expression was still unsteady; the events from ten years ago had frozen her mind.
"That idiot!"
A Grim Reaper glowed with a vivid pale-purple aura and swung its scythe at Gangnan with brutal force.
Each strike was a slash beyond Mach speed.
Though composed of some kind of "substance," they seemed governed by principles utterly unlike the physical world.
Gangnan dodged with movements as nimble as a bouncing ping-pong ball, then charged at a Black Fiend and delivered a kick.
The fiend's thick leg snapped with a crack, and black smoke rose as if it were aflame.
Screeeeeech!
The fiend's wail pierced her eardrums, but Gangnan gritted her teeth and held her ground.
She scanned for Gaold through the chaos, but the rampaging fiends made the world feel swathed in a black curtain.
"I really can't live like this!"
Gangnan sat and shoved off with force; the stocking at her thigh split with a rip, leaving holes in a droplet pattern.
The moment a Grim Reaper's scythe fell vertically, her body shot up as if freed from gravity—twenty meters into the air.
Gaold lay buried among countless Grim Reapers. Every time a Reaper dissolved into smoke, a flash of iron-colored light slashed across wherever Gaold crouched.
The magic protecting Gaold now was little more than an air shield any novice could cast, yet no attack could penetrate the spherical barrier he had formed.
"Grrr!"
As Gaold's face began to contort like a goblin's, Gangnan felt her heart drop.
"No!"
The air pressure centered on Gaold spiked suddenly.
Pain multiplied a hundred thousandfold—Air Pressing.
Kugugugugugugug!
The ice shook like an earthquake and the Grim Reapers' black smoky bodies were flattened like rubber.
"Fuuuu!"
Gaold puffed his cheeks and exhaled sharply.
The crushed Grim Reapers slithered away along the ground and, once at a distance, snapped back to their original forms.
Niflheim's trait was instant regeneration given the slightest opening.
Now inside the Reapers' encirclement, Gangnan quickened her steps and shouted in fury.
"You're insane! You want to die for real—?!"
Gaold's vacant eyes stretched into a faint grin.
In that face, Gangnan couldn't bring herself to scold him.
There was nothing remotely amusing.
"I told you not to come. You made it impossible to finish."
"Don't talk nonsense. Don't you know that if you die here, everything's over?"
"Don't worry. It's not like ten years ago."
Gangnan couldn't hold back and shouted.
"It was dangerous even now!"
Self-replicating mutation.
That was the affliction Gaold had gained on the Day of the Twenty Judgments.
A creature's functional limits are usually set by its environment.
Humans burn because they're born where fire is absent; salamanders don't burn because they're born in fire.
If the environment defines a living thing's limits, Gaold had severed his link to the environment through horrific asceticism.
With no environment to bind him, the limits on mutations arising at the stem-cell stage no longer applied.
Gaold's nervous system was at least a thousand times more sensitive than a normal person's; his world was completely unlike ordinary life.
It was, quite literally, hell.
Merely breathing felt like glass shards in his lungs; a breeze felt like skin being torn.
But in return he had gained discipline none could imitate and a mental strength beyond imagination.
"You know how dangerous it gets from ten-thousandfold pain onward! Even now my head's gone white and my memories are slipping—if you push it higher, you'll actually die!"
"You will not die."
Gaold turned away coldly and walked off.
"Pain will not kill me."
Gangnan clenched her fists and bit her lip.
In the end she bowed her head as if resigned and stepped back slowly.
She knew the truth: it wasn't that he would die from pain, but that he could not die—therefore he had to endure pain.
Why this curse had fallen on Gaold she didn't know.
One thing was certain: no one else could instantly annihilate forty of the most powerful fiends.
Gaold's slack gaze gradually returned to normal.
Restoring his smile, he twitched a finger and taunted the Grim Reapers.
"Come, you half-witted skull-buckets."
Woooooo!
Whether or not they understood human words, it was as if a signal had been given; every Grim Reaper expanded its aura.
The wails of countless restless souls shook the snowy plain as pale-purple auras swirled into a vortex.
The vortex soon became thousands of skulls, all launched at Gaold in unison.
The sky darkened and the sun was obscured; from that gloom, thousands of skull-bombs descended on Gaold.
"Kekeke. Kekekeke!"
Gaold ground his teeth and dropped into a lower stance.
The pupils vanished from his eyes; the corners of his mouth split into a cruel grin.
Pain ×100,000—Air Pressing.
Paaaaaaoooooom!
Everything poured downward; a vast darkness crushed with a deafening roar.