[478] Her Name Is Gangnan (2)
Gaold looked up at the sky and waited.
The drawbridge, tilted far higher than when Kangnan had left, now formed an almost vertical cliff.
Its height was a full two kilometers.
Perfect for a warrior like Kangnan—or a non-mage like Miro—to fall to their death.
But that would have been true before the drawbridge swung back.
Yuriel still hadn't acted, and that fact worried Gaold all the more.
"Damn it."
Yuriel paid Gaold's party no attention at all.
The only human he cared about in the whole of humanity was one person—Miro.
And when Miro finally crossed the bridge and reappeared, Yuriel reacted.
If Miro was recovered, everything would be back to square one.
Gaold didn't know how Kariel would have judged it, but this time he trusted that his own reason and Yuriel's instincts would agree.
Kuuung!
As the drawbridge shuddered and Yuriel shot up vertically, Gaold followed.
A new glimmer of hope sprouted as Miro crossed back, but the bud was rotten from the inside.
'Stinking mutt...'
Kangnan hadn't crossed the bridge.
She had completed her mission by sending Miro flying away.
His heart thudded and a strange flame rose within him.
Not desire.
Not anger or hatred either—another kind of hell Gaold had never known in his life.
"Waaaaaah!"
With Air Press crushing the atmosphere, Yuriel—who had been soaring with wings of light—suddenly lost speed.
Chiiiiing!
Yuriel drew a halo of destruction and swung his body toward Gaold.
To be honest, Gaold was an annoyance.
If an opponent could match him, he could relish the duel; if they were weak, he would simply destroy them.
That ambiguous in-between.
A creature you could trample who would nonetheless keep getting up, yet who could never truly harm you.
Yuriel thought.
Perhaps that was the baffling essence of humans.
Good and evil, life and death, strength and weakness all tangled together—an insoluble contradiction.
'I see.'
Yuriel suddenly understood why he hadn't opened his full power to finish them all.
'He was afraid.'
He found it unsettling that even by pouring all his might into these weak creatures, he might still fail to produce a decisive result.
'Anke Ra—this was why you warned against humanity...'
Gaold's air gun struck Yuriel squarely.
A blow that could pierce steel barely stung the archangel of destruction.
In that slight irritation, Yuriel dug deeper into thought.
Excite Kariel—the pinnacle of intellect—and make even himself, the embodiment of destruction, hesitate to destroy.
'Human chaos...'
At last Yuriel reached a conclusion.
'...undermines the absoluteness of the world.'
"Krrraaaah!"
Gaold's barrage beat at Yuriel faster and harder.
When a sensation that could finally be called pain—though angels had no such word for it—reached him, Yuriel's halo of radiance swelled to an enormous size.
"I am absolute."
Infinite Judicial Halo—Ragnarok.
As the concept of destruction concentrated in the halo, white lightning fanned out in every direction.
'Can't stop it.'
The thought flashed through Gaold's mind like lightning, and before he knew it his hand was already reaching for Miro.
Gaold pulled her with Air Net and, with all his strength, surged toward the ground.
Yuriel annihilated the Geukrak-gon.
His body, wrapped only in the concept of destruction, required no tool—he himself was the weapon.
"Wooooaaaah!"
Yuriel fell straight down.
His body, wreathed in white electricity, became a streak of light that smashed into the bridge, and Zulu's summoning spell triggered.
Space-time Se-Posmeteri.
The frictional heat from Yuriel's fall produced an immense blaze that vaporized everything made of matter.
Where the brief sphere of light had been born and died, only a hemispherical crater five kilometers across remained.
Complete annihilation, in the truest sense.
Standing at the center of the crater, Yuriel slowly lifted his head and looked up at the sky.
This was why he hadn't wanted to do it.
"Humans..."
He had been taken aback once more.
What had that been?
The great bird of light that had appeared to Gaold's party at the moment of destruction.
When that bird wrapped around them, it was as if they slipped into another dimension; the concept of destruction simply didn't carry through.
"Kariel?"
Yuriel shot upward and in an instant arrived at the ramparts of the Hall of Corruption.
Kariel still stood trapped in the stop field, utterly motionless.
All the fallen angels had flown to him and dropped to their knees.
They trembled with guilt for failing to retrieve Miro, but Yuriel, appearing almost unconcerned, asked bluntly, "What happened to that woman?"
A fallen angel at the rear let the fainted Kangnan fall to the ground and said, "We've taken her captive for now. We thought it better to take her alive..."
If it had been Kariel, he would have praised them.
Kariel believed everything could be used and could yield new value.
Yuriel, the archangel of destruction, disliked that approach.
Not because it was crude.
He was absolute destruction; before him, any supposed value was meaningless.
"What shall we do?"
Yuriel turned his body.
"I will go to Reaiel."
He would bring the archangel of light and set Kariel right.
"Handle the humans as you see fit."
With those words, Yuriel vanished into the heavens.
The fallen angels, their commander gone, slumped with sullen faces.
If they had distinguished themselves in this battle, reinstatement as pure angels might have been possible, but in the end everything had failed.
"There's still a chance."
A fallen angel whose blond hair fell to her chest said, "Take this woman hostage and negotiate."
A fang-toothed fallen angel sneered, "Is that really possible? What matters to them is Miro. This woman has no value as a hostage. Better to torment her for our amusement—that at least gives us some delight."
"That's not a bad idea either," a burly fallen angel chimed in. "But we shouldn't dismiss even the slightest possibility. Maybe the solution lies here."
"What do you mean?"
"Humans have attachment. They tend to take another's pain as their own."
"I see."
The blond fallen angel nodded and looked down at Kangnan with cold eyes.
"In short: don't kill her, got it?"
Kangnan still slept deeply.
* * *
A flash of spatial teleportation landed with a roar in the forest.
Casting teleport without fully understanding the terrain was nearly suicidal, but Gaold's party had no time to be picky.
"Krrrgh!"
They hit the ground and rolled at incredible speed, but none of them lay sprawled.
They righted themselves instantly and teleported again, burrowing deeper into the forest.
They had to put more distance between them—just a little more.
The power they had faced was terrifying enough to burn into the deepest part of the mind the truth that being caught meant death.
If not for the Forcemetry they'd been saving for the end, none of them would still be alive.
"Gaold! We have to go back!"
Miro, gripped by Gaold, thrashed and shouted. "We have to go back, you idiot!"
"Shut up. Stay still."
Gaold's voice was sharp.
For twenty years he had lived with only one thing fixed in his mind: saving Miro.
And now Miro was in his arms.
The stopped clock began to tick again, and everything from here on looked to Gaold like a stark, bone-chillingly white future.
He was, in every sense, lost.
He could judge nothing; he couldn't even name the fear swelling inside him.
"I can still save her now! As long as I'm here they can't kill her at will!"
"Shut your mouth."
Miro felt suffocated.
She couldn't possibly be unaware. That was why Gaold was making the wrong decision.
"You fool, that woman—"
Gaold's eyes flashed and he shouted so loudly his jaw seemed to drop.
"Shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!"
The party's steps halted.
Gaold, eyes wild and confused, roughly threw Miro to the ground and turned away.
"Damn it!"
He punched a tree trunk; bark cracked and flew, and searing pain shot through his hand.
Still, one thought would not leave his head.
Kangnan. Kangnan had been captured.
What tormented him most was the certainty that she was still alive at that very moment.
To the others, Kangnan had been only a brief ally for this project—but Gaold was different.
When she was suddenly not by his side, he realized for the first time that Kangnan had always been beside him.
"She's a warrior of the Wolf Clan. She acted on conviction. She chose that, and we must respect it."
"Don't talk nonsense."
Miro sprang up from where she'd fallen, gripped Gaold by the collar and shook him. "Pull yourself together! We can still save her! This isn't about me!"
Everyone except Gaold felt the same as Miro.
If she could be saved, they had to try.
But no one dared voice it.
After twenty years in hell, Gaold's judgment was absolute unless they could share even a tenth of his pain.
Sein, for the first time, lied for his friend.
"When we came here, we pledged that the project comes first no matter what. Miro, we would risk death to save you. Breaking that rule now—that's not easy."
Miro glared at Sein and then turned back to Gaold. "Do you feel the same? Is this really what you want? You want to have me and drive that child to death—this is your choice?"
Gaold remained silent.
As if his mind had been newborn, it reached nowhere.
Seeing that pathetic blankness, Miro seized Gaold's jaw, turned his face and shouted, "Look at me! Look me in the eyes!"
Gaold's gaze slowly moved to her.
Something had emptied out of him, leaving only hollow pupils.
"Are you that afraid? That twenty years of work will be for nothing, so you'll abandon that child?"
"I—"
Before he could finish, Miro pulled Gaold in and kissed him.
Shaken, Gaold reflexively shoved her away.
"What the hell are you doing! Does this look like the time for jokes?"
Miro didn't give up. She came back, gripped Gaold's wrist and pressed his hand to her chest.
"Just do it right here. Take me! Then go save her, you idiot!"
Gaold scowled.
Everyone—every single one of them—was making him a fool.
"Are you trying to—"
At that moment, many beautiful voices rose from the sky, blending into a single sound.
It was the gospel—the angels' collective voice.
—To the human holding Miro: We have one of your kind in our custody. Bring Miro by noon tomorrow, or we will kill her. Remember that the sooner you comply, the less pain she will suffer. This is our final warning. We...
The gospel repeated the same words and then faded away.
It had been a tremendous sound, but its ending was clean and final.
Gaold staggered and sat on a rock, biting his thumbnail as he sank into thought.
Noon tomorrow.
'Time is short.'
Fallen angels had broken taboos, and the maras they commanded were savage.
Even now, anything could be happening to Kangnan.
Grit. Gnash.
Gaold bit off his thumbnail in an instant and began to gnaw down to the bone of his thumb.
Grit. Gnash.
None of them spoke to the grotesque self-harm of a man whose basic sense of pain had been multiplied a thousandfold.