[472] The Birth of Humanity (2)
Plu, sprinting down an alley to shake off the Kergo hunters, flinched as a powerful blow struck her from the side.
The Signa—the Mecha people's weapon—slam‑struck the ground and sent a shockwave soaring several meters into the air.
The force shoved Plu against a building wall.
"Ugh! What the—?"
"Damn. Am I out of luck?"
Clang. Clang.
Metallic sounds cut through her ears like blades.
A man equipped with a Piper stepped into view, sword and shield in hand.
The Immortal Raun.
Now one thousand and ten years old, he had attained divine transcendence at four hundred and fifty and, at nine hundred, achieved perfect bodily integration with machines.
"No, you know, this has its perks. Lucky it's a woman."
Raun examined Plu deliberately and a slick smile crossed his face.
After ages of indulgence in every amusement, the strongest instinct that remained for him in living beings was reproduction. Love and affection had long since faded; what lingered were only dry memories of sensation lodged deep in his mind.
"What are you babbling about?"
At Plu's sharp reply, Raun cocked his head and pressed a button on the Piper mounted to his head.
His Mecha-grade equipment was personalized to him, and its translation and interpretation far outclassed the crude models the Yamang had.
"Ah, I see. A prickly woman—one who won't meekly give herself to a man's touch."
Raun's words came through in mechanical tones, and Plu's face soured.
Dropping whatever airs of decorum he'd been keeping, Raun revealed the face of pure, vicious appetite.
"That's my specialty."
A chill crawled across Plu's skin as Raun's intent washed over her—and with a crack, the ground split and Raun's body rocketed upward.
Plu looked up reflexively. He was floating far higher than she expected, and something felt terribly wrong.
'How is that possible?'
Serving at the rebel command had given her a decent grasp of Mecha combat systems.
No Piper could be tuned like that.
It wasn't a question of raw output; the human body simply couldn't handle it. A Piper is at most a strength‑assist device. If it operated faster than nerve transmission, joints would be torn out by the simplest punch.
Yet Raun's motions defied every assumption.
He had a perfect understanding of the machine.
In fact, Raun's Piper held magic power thirty times stronger than the devices the rebels used. It was the kind of gear that could only be handled with nerves and mind perfectly fused to the machine.
Mega Smash!
The Piper's brutal drive, Raun's divine transcendence, and the Signa—whose force amplified with his power—hit in concert, detonating a shockwave that felt as if it could blow the building apart.
Plu, having read her opponent, drew out the Phoenix and met him with everything she had.
Raun's acrobatics were so dazzling their trajectories were unpredictable, but Plu, a seasoned combatant, wouldn't be bullied.
She assumed the Phoenix stance and countered with the Dawkins Algorithm. Buildings around them fractured into fragments as the clash unfolded.
'I won't lose here…!'
Plu gritted her teeth and scrambled to evade with everything she had.
Both Piper and Dawkins Algorithm are driven by external systems, but Raun's comprehension of machinery surpassed human bounds.
Each time the Signa's shockwave swept through, Plu staggered.
'He's using some interesting techniques.'
Raun quickly sized up Plu's skillset.
Her abilities were built on the Nor people's foundation, but the principles within were Mecha.
'No wonder they're such a mixed mess—impostors, perhaps.'
He licked his lips.
"This should be fun."
Raun sheathed the Signa at his hip and raised his fist.
Electricity coursed down his spine and a blue glow shimmered around his knuckles.
Electric Shockwave!
Driving his fist into the ground near Plu, a wave of electric energy radiated out in a twenty‑meter radius.
"Ugh!"
Faced with an area attack the Dawkins Algorithm couldn't handle, Plu immediately released the algorithm and shifted into a defensive posture.
Raun surged forward with explosive thrust, fist poised.
Plu stacked Air Shields to their limit in front of her and covered her face with both arms.
Pffffft!
Raun's fist punched through the heavy air barrier as if it were paper and slammed into Plu's guard.
Plu's vision rattled with the impact—and the sickening snap of her outer left arm breaking sounded.
Kraaaang!
When she came to, she was rolling on the ground, unsure how far she'd been hurled.
"Hngh!"
Plu let the dangling left arm hang and forced herself up.
Raun entered the building with a meaningful smile.
"If I'd hit your gut, your insides would have burst and you'd be dead."
Her body shaking, Plu glared at him.
"Why did you strike the guard? Do you even know?"
A gleam of anticipated pleasure spread across Raun's face.
"Now I'll teach you."
* * *
Inside Paradise, the three combatants were laying waste to everything.
In full Diamond Armor, Shirone was a different force from his unarmored self, but the coordinated assault of the Immortals Murka and Deina was formidable.
Murka's divine transcendence reached levels beyond mortal ken, and the magical power from Deina's mental transcendence was enough to unsettle even Shirone, a veteran of many battles.
"Hahaha! What, so easy?"
Deina scattered gusts of wind as if she had become one with the air.
Whether visible or not, they moved so fast that even if one could see them, they would be meaningless blurs.
Murka rode the gaps in that wind and swung his sword.
There seemed nothing his divine transcendence couldn't cut, and Shirone was shoved a hundred meters in an instant.
Buildings collapsed where they passed, a grim testament to their destructive power.
'This is combat based on Avatar Art.'
Shirone understood something new in this fight.
He had met many strong opponents, but never one wielding Avatar Art.
They manifest power through will.
It's not merely amplification; it's a force that overturns the very rank or posture of existence.
Humans are born human and make all decisions within that category. But those who master Avatar Art transcend the limits of what a human can realize. If humans had been born with twelve fingers, the world would have been utterly different—similarly, those who master Avatar Art have a fundamentally different sense for combat.
Countless variables arise from that, and how one manipulates them determines practical combat ability.
"Hahaha! You're cowed. Did you really think a mortal could beat us? Experience and skill set us apart!"
Murka threw his arms wide and charged like a man already certain of victory.
In the moment he imagined severing Shirone's neck, the seat on the Ten Elders' Council flashed before his eyes.
The council was a gathering only the strongest Immortals could join—a league of monsters compared to these two.
The ten leaders had each lived at least ten thousand years; even the executives' average age exceeded three thousand.
And he—only a thousand years old—would become one of them.
All Immortals would look up to him; he would live a grander, more splendid life and exist in this world forever.
'It's not over yet!'
Shirone narrowed his eyes at Murka and Deina rushing from both sides.
He bound Deina with Akamai and then poured Photon Cannons into Murka.
The flash, far beyond anything before, left Murka's face pale.
'Mental transcendence?'
Even a Schema master couldn't track the beams cleanly; they left afterimages.
It was as if Shirone had detonated an explosion and everything around had been blown apart.
He swept the area with buckshot movement and then fired lasers, producing a massive detonation.
Yet what unnerved the two wasn't the blast but the searing heat that seemed to melt flesh.
'What is this?'
Shirone noticed their counterattacks slackening and studied them in puzzlement.
Unlike when they wore the playful air of sparring practice, their expressions were grave.
The biggest difference lay in their movement paths.
A battle that should have become ever fiercer had grown oddly less active.
'I see now.'
As if he had found the solution, Shirone intensified his assault.
His prediction proved correct: Murka and Deina were reduced to evasive moves, unable to counter.
When Shirone's Photon Cannon struck Murka's flank, Murka flew with a look of his eyes about to pop.
Bang!
He slammed into a wall, unable to check Shirone's position, and invoked Schema regeneration to heal his wound.
Deina had retreated toward an exit at the periphery of the fight, only rolling her eyes, unsure what to do.
"Now I understand."
Akamai floating around him, Shirone walked slowly forward.
He looked down at Murka, who was grinding his teeth, and said, "You're weak."
* * *
Smoke rose across every sky except Rakia, where Shehakim and Gaold's party—into which Shirone had infiltrated—were located.
The Unified Rebel Headquarters was pushing into Arabot, breaking through Heaven's army, and the closer they got the more the casualties mounted.
Gigantic Titans tore down Heaven's walls, and the Guroi units surged forward, unleashing bullets on everything in sight.
Giants of Ilhwa's Brew above Level 7 charged in to topple the Titans, and fairies smashed the Guroi with every manner of spell.
But the greatest losses were among the infantry.
Relying solely on Pipers and magic, they made up the bulk of the force—and their mortality rate was correspondingly high.
"Advance! Advance! Never fall back!"
Fueled by rage at comrades' deaths, their momentum would not be broken.
Kanya and Rena, with nowhere left to retreat, pressed forward without pause.
Tens of thousands died. Those deaths—vanishings beyond any calculation—drove everyone to madness.
Madness became battle fervor and was hurled back at the enemy; enemy corpses, in turn, fed the rebels' zeal, stoking still greater fury.
Whenever archangels or angelic legions appeared, the units stationed there were annihilated.
Only Babel could claim superiority in close combat, but even she had limits to how much ground she could cover; eventually, half the rebel force lay dead.
"Advance! Advance!"
All the soldiers shouted in one voice and surged forward.
Whether they truly wanted to fight or could reach the objective no longer mattered—the thought had evaporated; they shouted mechanically.
It was mechanical, yet in a broader sense profoundly biological.
Like ants, individuality evaporated and they merged into a unified mental system with a single purpose, becoming a single organism.
"Advance! Advance!"
For the first time, Heaven's army trembled.
How could this be? What was welding them together?
By the numbers that line should never have been slipping—but it was retreating, bit by bit.
'They're strong. Those people are strong.'
Those commanding Heaven finally realized.
They were not fighting Rena, Kanya, or Crud.
They were fighting a perfectly integrated organism—a human collective.