[443] The Day of the Full Moon (7)
The First Command went into emergency mode.
Kuroi units, their headlights lined up in the warehouse, flared and began to mobilize one after another.
Infantry equipped with pipers took up arcs and covered the Kuroi as they filed out of the warehouse.
Amid the chaos on the battlefield, only Babel and Sein stood motionless, staring each other down.
By any physical standard, Sein was no match for Babel.
That was the conclusion she reached after seeing Babel's first strike.
'Algorithm.'
But her movements were not human.
If the enemy ran on probabilistic algorithms, it wasn't impossible to beat—just difficult.
'There is a gap. It's just hard to find in the realm of humans.'
- Babel program: anti-personnel combat system engaged.
Panels shielding Babel's lenses glowed red as every function focused on analyzing Sein.
Target: programmer.
Combat pattern: unrecognizable.
Finisher response: Infinity.
Babel turned its neck below the jaw as if its joints moved independently, keeping its gaze fixed on Sein.
That single motion sent the number of possible finisher responses tumbling from Infinity down to roughly 3.2×10^17 — around 320 quadrillion.
In practice, a human facing on the order of hundreds of quadrillions of guaranteed-kill patterns might as well be facing infinity.
The fight would progress by moves that cut off future probabilities, and Sein had prepared counters for that.
'He'll probably opt for the optimal moves.'
But what was an optimal move?
The outcome would hinge on a difference in value judgment there.
Babel moved first; Sein reacted.
As teleportation flashes spun through three-dimensional space, Babel's iron-gold form spread cold and bright like moonlight.
- Finisher response: 2,780,003,643 patterns.
It had fallen into a human-scale figure, but Babel still had more than enough ways to kill her.
Sein's face twisted as she used rapid physical motion to block with the Iron Wheel Eye, cutting off his trajectories.
The computation was far faster than she had expected.
Whenever Babel made a judgment, Sein had to issue a new one to neutralize it.
Time and space, environment and condition—every variable lent meaning to each coordinate on the battlefield, and Babel computed them all.
Sein, however, abandoned calculation.
Responding to a machine that computed by the second with the same method would be madness.
From a tangle of coordinates like knotted thread, she found the point of greatest aesthetic perfection—an insight.
A judgment of "it'll probably be like this," born of experience and intuition, densely filled the gaps in Babel's algorithms.
"Damn it! What do you want us to do?"
Two hundred Kuroi circled the battlefield.
All the troops could see were flashes and the iron afterimages they left behind.
Even a layman could feel the trajectories were eerie; an engineer could tell exactly what was happening.
"Hold your positions. If we interfere, that man dies."
Sein was desperate in reality.
One mistake and her head would be separated from her body.
Every time Babel's movements cut off paths like a net, her vision swam.
A finisher response was an algorithm that acted to eliminate the enemy with 100 percent certainty.
If Babel's program allowed even the slightest gamble, the match might already have ended in Sein's defeat.
But conversely, that meant Sein was buying time against a situation in which Babel could still remove her with absolute certainty.
'He's only attacking under perfect conditions. So he still has a means to remove me with 100 percent certainty?'
A chill crawled up her spine.
Is this how an ant feels trapped in quicksand?
Excitement tugged at the corners of Sein's mouth.
She had defeated countless strong opponents and failed against others. But she had never been overwhelmed by someone using the same style as her.
'Interesting.'
The Iron Wheel Eye spun, drawing two luminous rings.
The realm of intuition—the domain of feeling—and the realm of calculation—the domain of reason.
As the two rings overlapped perfectly, Babel and the world it constituted began to shimmer.
Iron Wheel Eye — Sun-Moon Radiant Rings.
* * *
Psychic Transcendence: All Is Mind.
Shirone implemented Armand—linked through the Ultima System—into the domain of his avatar and equipped it on his incarnation.
Just as the real Armand had enhanced Shirone's body, the ideal Armand strengthened his mind.
As the limit of his psychic transcendence soared and his avatar radiated blinding light, Satan's avatar disintegrated.
At the same time, the Reysis who had been clutching Shirone's neck in the real world let go and was hurled back like a cannonball.
"Ugh! Ugh!"
Shirone gasped.
Armand drew oxygen from the air and rapidly restored his saturation.
Regaining his senses, Shirone stroked Armand's neck and glared at Reysis.
Flames and electricity leaked alternately from Reysis's teeth.
"Arrrgh!"
Reysis writhed in pain.
Her avatar—an amalgam of countless lifeforms—was collapsing under the impact of Shirone's avatar.
"Arrgh! Arrgh!"
Red flesh ran like blood and grotesque features began to melt away.
The pooled blood that had spread across the floor surged as if defying gravity and reformed into a sturdy two-meter-tall body.
Its blood-red flesh bore sharp fingertips and thick horns curved from its temples, aimed forward.
What caught Shirone's eye, though, was the red triangle floating above the monster's head.
It resembled the Mara sigil, but there were four of them.
'A four-triangle Mara?'
The law of evil: Satan.
If an angel's radiant ring meant endless perfection, a Mara's triangles meant perfection within imperfection.
Thus the highest Mara bore three triangles—the Triangular Mara.
But Satan had added an extra triangle, making herself the only Mara to escape the Akashic Record.
Because of that, even Anke Ra could not erase the law of evil seeping through the universe.
Just as Shirone had once temporarily integrated with Behemoth's avatar at Kazra Castle, Reysis currently housed an extreme form of the law of evil.
"A Nephilim dared to summon me. Has the law of evil weakened so much?"
Shirone gritted his teeth and suppressed a groan.
Even Armand had taken a step back after gauging the opponent's power.
It was a presence he had known before.
The aura radiating from Reysis now approached that of the archangel Kariel.
'I can't lose! If I die, everything ends!'
Compressing photons before him, Shirone birthed a massive sphere of light that exploded into being.
Bound with Armand and in the All-Is-Mind state, Shirone's psychic transcendence limit far exceeded human levels.
Even as a power capable of piercing all obstructions gathered, Reysis merely lifted her red eyes arrogantly and watched.
Photon Cannon!
Shirone clenched his teeth and cast the spell; a roaring boom split the air and charged forward.
At the same moment, Reysis's form vanished.
* * *
"Hah, hah."
Plu was drenched in sweat.
Leaning her back against the wall and staring at the ceiling, she crouched with her knees bent as if she might collapse.
Blood trickled from her shoulders and calves.
Beyond the bleeding, her muscles were so exhausted they barely functioned.
She had already blocked four Garas waves.
But the Dawkins algorithm's forced movements were a double-edged sword—overuse could wreck the body.
'Is this... the end?'
"Keek! Keek!"
Ten small crab-like Garas formed a semicircle around Plu.
They were probably an unlucky species fused with weaker lifeforms, but their urge to reproduce was no different from any other.
'I want to stop now.'
Spotting relatively weak creatures, Plu was seized by an intense desire to give up.
She knew this was her last chance to die as humanly as possible.
"Kiii!"
The Garas leapt and attacked Plu.
Ponyfar algorithm.
With the counterattack algorithm engaged, Plu's body shook as she swung the Phoenix and smashed the Garas aside.
Shell-like fragments scattered as her knee slammed into the floor with a thud.
The attack left the muscles of her whole body shredded.
She knew killing these Garas wouldn't improve the situation.
A mage could only do what she could do.
"Heh. Now I can't even kill myself."
Plu squeezed out her remaining strength and arched her upper body.
Thud! Her skull struck the wall and she slumped back, her pupils gradually glazing over.
"Ki, kikiki."
A grotesque, ear-splitting laugh.
Plu had no strength to turn her head; she moved only her gaze.
A one-meter-long eerie creature approached slowly, crossing its four legs rhythmically.
All-black, its facial features were indistinct, but the sense of a smile came through clearly.
"Human... female..."
Garas were more intelligent than many creatures, but Plu had never seen one speak.
The Garas that approached the panting mage observed her for a moment, then tore its mouth open.
"Found you."
* * *
Shirone had been dragged across the floor by Satan's hand and thrown into a glass orb.
His heart wasn't beating; his robe was flipped back and his eyes were rolled.
"Phew."
Satan—Reysis—finally felt everything was complete and exhaled lightly.
Muscles had ruptured in places, and smoke still rose from the temple where she had taken the last blow.
It was the price of underestimating a Nephilim.
"Truly impressive."
Reysis curled the corner of her mouth in satisfaction.
Now everything was in place.
A Nephilim to integrate forms, an angel to provide a beautiful body, and the creatures to fuse them perfectly.
"Today, I become a god."
She stepped over the corpses of her slain subordinates and approached the Fuzix Machine, activating it.
The engine spun and the central glass tube lit up.
It was time to begin the unification ritual.
Reysis entered the last remaining glass orb, closed the door, and seated herself in meditation.
Soon plasm began to fill the eight glass orbs.
Reysis closed her eyes.
The Great Unification. The journey toward completion.
When everything melted into one and was reborn in the central glass chamber, she would be the most perfect being in the world.
The black liquid rose rapidly, covering her chin and then her face.
The shattered Ikasa and the fallen Shirone were submerged and no longer visible.
'It's over. With this...'
Wiiiing!
A siren sounded from the ceiling.
The faint sound penetrating the surface of the plasm snapped Reysis's eyes open.
'What is that?'
She tried to flex her legs, but her body's durability had already been rapidly degraded in the plasm like bait dissolving in water.
That made it all the more ominous.
"Arrrgh!"
Reysis forced herself upright.
Only after reaching the top of the orb could she get a few centimeters of view.
'T-that...!'
Reysis's eyes trembled with shock.
Plu, wearing a Norin uniform, was manipulating the Fuzix Machine's controls.
'Why is she here?'
If she had stolen the troops' clothes, she might be a clone from the isolation room, but those clones had no intelligence.
'No, I already ordered them to gas her to death.'
Nothing made sense.
Was the Plu inside really a clone? Or the real Plu?
The siren sounded again.
- Warning! Warning! Main type initialization! Switching main type from Glass Orb 1 to Glass Orb 8!
Gurgle!
A bubble rose from Reysis's mouth.
The creature inside Glass Orb 8 was none other than Shirone.