[447] Mental Armament (2)
The Sun-Moon Halo that rose at the heart of Babel's system transmitted all information to Sein.
It was as if Sein's consciousness had flowed into the system itself, and there he found a single streak of blue light piercing circuits tangled like a web of light.
'This is…'
The Ultima System was nothing more than a single signal, yet Sein could extract no information from it.
Not complexity or obscurity, but a highly condensed concept.
An insight so vast that a human mind could not contain it all at once.
'Who the hell made something like this?'
Sein followed the Ultima System upward without end.
Where the blue streak passed, an angelic magic circle—an arrangement of angelic systems—blocked the center as if sealing the passage.
The magic circle's concept was also arcane beyond human reading, but to Sein that was actually fortunate—if it were merely complex, at least he could analyze it.
Using the Sun-Moon Halo's equalizing function to analyze the magic circle's signal, Sein's eyes snapped open in shock.
"Damn. So that's it."
From what he confirmed, even an angelic magic circle could not disrupt this perfect unified signal.
The only thing the magic circle's algorithm had changed was one: the metallic angel's mission parameter.
'Someone tampered with the enemy-detection setting. It's not the rebels. This is…'
A weapon to kill angels.
That left Sein with one task: disable the angel's magic circle and restore its settings.
If he could do that, he could strike back at Heaven.
The Sun-Moon Halo.
So vivid that it hardly seemed to be spinning, the halo began dismantling the angelic magic circle.
"Grrrr!"
The data volume was far greater than expected, and Sein was overwhelmed.
'For fuck's sake. All this information just to change one enemy-detection setting.'
He felt, to the bone, how magnificent that blue streak penetrating the system truly was.
'No. This will be too slow.'
Even with equalizing applied to his servant, Sein estimated it would take at least two hundred hours to fully dismantle the magic circle.
'We don't stand a chance this way. We have to destroy it from the inside.'
The moment the Sun-Moon Halo was placed at the center of the angelic magic circle, the halo's rotation stopped.
The abrupt halt sent a shock so forceful it felt like Sein's skull was being smashed.
"Ugh!"
The core logic of the magic circle overwhelmed Sein's own reasoning.
Then the magic circle flared brilliantly and, in reverse, attacked Sein's logic.
The Sun-Moon Halo's rotation reversed, and the shock applied in the opposite direction made blood trickle from Sein's nose.
'This can't be. How can such a proposition hold?'
The angelic magic circle outright denied the modes of thought humanity had developed for thousands of years.
A nasty crack appeared across the Sun-Moon Halo.
Sein's eyes rolled back, and blood seeped from between his clenched teeth.
'Is this the end…?'
Sein's consciousness tumbled toward the abyss.
At that instant, the Ultima System expanded its flare and seeped into the magic circle.
The Sun-Moon Halo's reverse rotation stopped.
Sein, awakening from the brink of death, shuddered at the phenomenon beyond imagination.
'Impossible.'
A single signal was rapidly cutting the connections of the complex angelic magic circle like light slicing threads.
'What is this system?'
A single signal that perfectly condensed the entire cosmos.
Before the sole insight that could rival the Akashic Records, even the angels' grand logic was nothing but a fool's muttering.
- Ultima System reconnecting.
- Babel primal system activating.
The small change Sein had created made Cariel's logical framework slightly inaccurate—as small as a speck of dust—and Babel began to initialize.
As the magic circle shattered into fragments, Sein activated Equilibrium.
Two gears meshed and ground Cariel's destroyed logic down, returning it to the world of nothingness.
The Ultima System remained simple, but it had grown monumental.
Light expanded until, at last, everything integrated into one.
Wooooong!
Babel's photonic cannon vanished as if someone had shut a faucet.
Then the legs and arms stuck in the ground rose, the torso straightened, and it reverted to its pre-transformation form.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
As the pilot's tension eased, the force channeled through the Pipers decreased, and dozens of Kuroi units went down on their knees.
"What happened? Is it over?"
During the twenty seconds the photonic cannon had been firing in volleys, the rebel headquarters had been utterly razed.
The Titan Crud had been driving was damaged, and half the command's forces lay dead.
- Babel program initializing.
Babel, which had been in combat posture, lowered its hands.
Electrical wings dissolved into points, and its head and knees slowly lowered.
- No signal.
- Waiting for user registration.
Babel knelt, as it had slept in the ancient ruins, and waited for the next user to appear.
An image the rebels found unbearably contemptible.
A hatch in a Kuroi cockpit opened and Kanya came rushing out with Signa in hand.
"Arghhhh!"
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Every time she struck Babel's face with the sword, a powerful explosion occurred, but the metal's surface did not even blacken.
If it had the durability to withstand thermal-flash cannons, it was not something Signa could wound.
That made Kanya even angrier.
Babel's unmoving stance—as if prepared to accept punishment—drove Kanya into despair.
"Sis, stop!"
Rena ran over crying and pulled Kanya back.
If you vent on a lump of metal, you're the one who'll get hurt.
"Let go! I'm going to kill it! Let go!"
"What if it starts up again? It's just a machine!"
"Arghhhh!"
Kanya hurled Signa aside and screamed to the sky.
Even having lost her father, she had no way to take revenge—and that injustice tore at her.
"Humph!"
Sein wiped the blood from his nose and rose slowly.
Crud, who had dismounted from the Titan, approached with a composed manner.
"You did it after all. Thanks. You reduced the damage."
There had already been tremendous losses, but Crud's assessment of Babel's inactivity was accurate.
"No—the system corrected its own error. I only unlocked the lock."
Crud regarded Babel with a grave expression.
"I've met many Nor, but I've never seen anyone as skilled as you. And yet you say that—what on earth is that machine?"
"I don't know the details either. The only thing I know is that it wasn't made to deal with subjects. It's an ancient weapon made for archangels."
"An ancient weapon…"
Crud approached the deactivated Babel.
Looking down at the bowed figure, he confirmed that the panel's red light still flickered.
"So it's not without power. Just in sleep mode?"
"Probably. It seems the system initialized when the angelic magic circle was destroyed."
"I see, hm."
Crud's eyes gleamed as he stood.
"Then… how about we use this?"
Sein had considered it before, but as the one who had directly explored Babel's system, he could almost certainly dismiss the idea.
"Babel's system is composed of an integrated signal beyond human domain. We can't decode it."
Babel's functions transcended the Titan.
If they could bring it into their forces, it would massively help their power—but what human could decode that signal?
'How can we use this?'
The cries of the victims seeped into Sein's cold calculations.
* * *
It was not darkness that covered the sun. It was the aura of death that had accumulated over countless ages.
As Hel, ruler of Niflheim, expanded to display his presence, Gaold and his companions trembled.
The thing that most resembled death might be cold.
A deathly aura, not expressible by temperature, seeped to the bones and suppressed life.
"Huuu—!"
Kangnan widened his eyes and filled his body with strength.
He had to overcome it with life.
If he couldn't activate each cell and prove he was alive, he would become like a guide lost to death.
Then Gaold's face contorted into that of an evil spirit, and a tremendous air pressure struck the ground.
Tactile sensitivity amplified a hundred thousandfold.
Kuuuuuuung!
Darkness swept down like peeling wallpaper, but the aura of death soon re-asserted itself in the space.
Still, it was a strange phenomenon even to Hel.
He could not simply erase a force that had even blocked the sun with mere air pressure.
'The will to live?'
It was a will beyond imagination.
"O arrogant one, why do you refuse death?"
Hel raised his form and spoke solemnly, but Gaold ignored him, lost in thought.
'This one is troublesome indeed.'
Gaold gauged the threshold of perception required to suppress an aura stronger than a Grim Reaper, and it was no easy matter.
When Hel received no answer, he spoke again.
"Did you come to this vile maze to walk into death? Yet before you waits only the god of the dead."
Maze.
At that word, Gaold became a different person.
His pupils convulsed and the veins in his eyes stood out.
"How… did you know?"
"For the dead, nothing is unknown; they simply choose not to interfere."
"Kukukuku! I see."
The whites showed in Gaold's eyes.
As a haze of ascetic fervor rolled off him, even the aura of death seemed to recoil in fear.
Sensing danger, Kangnan moved closer.
He didn't know the exact limit of perception, but the old limit had already been exceeded.
"Don't you know how to listen to people? I clearly said not to…!"
"Shut up."
Kangnan's mouth snapped shut.
There was no stopping this now. Gaold's mind contained nothing but the maze.
"Where is the maze? You'd better tell it nicely. If you don't want to die again—"
"The maze is—!"
Hel shouted.
"Kieeeeeeeee!"
What followed was a fierce deathly cry that could stop a heart.
As the robe was stripped away, Hel's face appeared as if all the deaths in the world had been combined into one.
The aura of death sharpened like blades and rushed forward; Julu, who had stepped in front of Kangnan, cast an upper-tier spell.
"Phosmetery."
Kaooooooool!
A gigantic bird of light wrapped around the two of them.
The dark aura hit them the next moment but could not land any effect—it merely passed by.
The space-time bird, Phosmetery.
Though Julu was famous as a lich summoner, Phosmetery was a 2-tier monster only she could command.
Phosmetery appears on the island of Kanarika in enemy territory every four years and flies for three seconds before disappearing—presumably because it resides in another dimension.
Julu gathered records of all Phosmetery sightings from thousands of years ago; it took her twelve years to successfully summon one.
Considering it appears once every four years for only three seconds, the actual control time across those attempts was a mere nine seconds, and people praise Julu's genius second only to the lich.
Kwak kwak kwak kwak kwak!
Phosmetery transported the two into another spacetime for three seconds, and whatever happened during that time had no effect on them.
Kangnan was able, for the first time, to clearly see the deathly aura passing before his eyes.
What he had thought of as darkness was actually an infinite overlapping pattern of the dead's faces screaming.
"Three seconds. I can't hold longer than that."
He didn't need to hear Julu say it.
The moment Hel showed his true colors, Gaold had already charged forward with a demonic visage.
Maze! Maze! Maze! Maze! Maze! Maze!
Only one word raced through his head with the speed of lightning, and that blind conviction drew in even greater pain.
"God of the dead? A mere shell…!"
Gaold raised his right hand high and struck downward, invoking a spell.
Tactile sensitivity amplified five hundred thousandfold—Air Pressing.
Hel's form unraveled and was trampled downward like tens of thousands of droplets.
Kuuuuuuuuuuuuung!
The delayed impact followed, and the entire landscape trembled up and down as if the planet itself had shaken.