[490] A New Variable (3)
Metiel fell silent.
Satiel had not always been so cruel and cold.
At the very beginning of her birth, she had been the most delicate and pure of the eight archangels.
McKlein Guffin.
Though he had already departed from the world, his presence still rooted itself deep in this realm and continued to exert influence.
Even into Archangel Satiel's mind.
"They're approaching fast."
Metiel looked over the battlefield and changed the subject.
It wasn't that Satiel's madness was terrifying—Ra's will might be at work here, so it was better to keep their mouths shut for now.
When Metiel diverted the conversation, Satiel deactivated her judicial halo and scanned the battlefield again.
The rebels surged like a tide and Heaven's forces followed, but control was breaking down.
Even within a single Heaven, each had its own sky. Taking advantage of the paralysis in Aegis's interception system and combining it with an unfamiliar strategy of breaching the walls and flanking, the rebels used the lack of angelic command as an opportunity.
"Shouldn't we step in? If they actually reach Arabot—"
"I've already sent Mara in full. We have to restrain our actions for now—"
Rooooaaaaar!
Before Metiel could finish, a thunderous roar shook the world from the east of Jebul.
A massive black sphere—two hundred meters across—expanded, sweeping everything aside and then sucking everything around it inward.
If Jebul's landscape were a painting, this was a stamped blot of an alien image; tons of rock orbited the sphere so slowly that, against such scale, even their motion seemed sluggish.
"That's Metatron's gravity well. What's going on?"
It was hard to imagine an archangel violating Ra's orders and personally entering a battle.
All the more so for Metatron, whose mouth had been obliterated for defying Ra; caution was the least he should have shown.
Metiel and Satiel simultaneously extended their halos and peered into the gravity well.
At first the force swallowed even light and nothing could be seen, but as Metatron's power gradually waned a scene came into view.
"That is…."
Both archangels' pupils trembled in shock.
'Angel abilities… aren't working.'
Metatron murmured with the mouth of his mind.
If Ra had not erased his mouth, he would probably be staring dumbfounded at the figure before him.
"Kuh kuh kuh, is that supposed to be archangel power?"
Frankwine, caught in the gravity well, stood naked and flexed his muscular body.
His skin was mottled and the wounds Etella had given him marred his flesh, yet his face was still grinning.
"Not much to it."
As Frankwine pushed off the ground, Metatron raised hundreds of gravity orbs, trapping him in a maze of attraction from which there was no escape.
But astonishingly, Frankwine ignored every force and strode straight in, punching Metatron.
Metatron's massive body rolled across the ground and he collapsed, disbelief written on his face.
"...."
Without a mouth, not even a groan could escape.
'The source concepts aren't applying. Which means—'
Metatron reached a single conclusion and, incredulous, opened his eyes wide and turned his head.
Frankwine, four triangles hovering above his head, swaggered forward, flicking his shoulder with arrogance.
'A four-cornered Mara. It's Satan!'
If an angel's halo symbolized eternity, Mara's triangles symbolized absoluteness.
All those concepts integrate to form the Akashic Record.
But Satan bears four horns.
That was a concept the Law could not reach, and thus Satan was unaffected by any Law.
'The reason the angels were ordered to halt wasn't the Nephilim. Ra—'
Ra had evacuated the angels out of fear of Satan's descent.
It had been the right choice.
Satan exists outside the Law; he is the only concept that the Akashic Record cannot erase.
Therefore, the most dangerous variable in Heaven right now was not the rebels or the Nephilim, but Satan.
'He must be eliminated now. If the angels fall, nothing will be able to stop what follows.'
The Akashic Record was perfect; the count of Laws was always one.
But by exploiting special circumstances, it was possible to reduce that immutable status to an ordinary concept.
In other words, assume there is "something" outside the concept of the whole that nonetheless refers to the whole.
No one could know what that "something" was, but the moment you presupposed its existence, the concept came into being.
From that point, the Akashic Record would be demoted to two Laws, each referring to the other, and the zero-sum game mages call the seesaw of Law would begin.
A being born from hypothesis without substantive reality—that was Satan.
Perfect imperfection was paradoxically the only concept capable of allowing the Akashic Record to be annihilated by the Law.
"Angels are so proud. Why not just give up now? Before you end up even worse."
Metatron trembled as he forced himself up.
His thunderous cry was gone, but his will still rippled through the air.
'This ends now!'
His judicial halo activated, and the area around Frankwine bent toward a single point like transparent water funneling into a drain.
Compressing gravity and tearing a hole in spacetime, Metatron warped the world around Frankwine.
"Urrgh!"
Frankwine's body contorted as if rotating around that point and tightened toward the hole.
"Kuh kuh kuh, what is this… this isn't child's play."
Frankwine's smile split into something vicious, and his body vanished from the air as if evaporating.
"...!"
Metatron's eyes widened in shock.
Frankwine's fist cleanly punched through the thick chest, and the aureole above Metatron's head dimmed like a wick burned out.
'Still no use….'
Angels were powerful because they wielded concepts of the deep principles of this world that no creature could approach.
But Satan ignored every one of those concepts—he was, for all intents and purposes, the natural enemy of every angel, archangels included.
The aureole flared in a final burst, shattered like glass, and Metatron's heavy body fell.
"You damned fool."
Frankwine watched the archangel oxidize into light and vanish with casual disinterest, unclenching his fist.
"Now then, what will happen?"
When Satan had offered a bargain, the thing that most excited Frankwine was this: the seesaw of Law.
Each time an angel was annihilated, Frankwine's Law strengthened.
And now one of the eight source concepts was gone.
One-eighth of the principles governing the world had been removed.
Pssssss.
When Metatron's corpse dissolved into motes of light and dispersed, Frankwine's eyes snapped open.
The fly-like pattern in his pupil spun wildly, and his body began to convulse.
"Oh! Ohhhhh!"
A colossal power surged into him.
His muscles ballooned, his height climbed to two meters, his skin flushed blood-red.
His eyes slanted wickedly upward, jagged teeth jutted out, and his thick neck flowed like a mountain into his shoulders.
"Wahahaha! Wahahahahaha!"
Frankwine's laugh, a raw sound squeezed from muscle, burst toward the sky.
He craned his head at Jebul's building—its cross-section rent open by the gravity well—and leapt off the ground with a powerful thrust.
Entering the 23rd floor within the building's 43-floor cross-section, Yamang underlings lined up in formation.
"You've returned, Captain!"
Frankwine smiled with a face already unrecognizable.
With each step he took, the pale walls—once an angelic symbol—quivered with an ominous red shadow.
"Now, shall we begin the real fun?"
Satan's hunt for angels had begun.
Jebul, thirteenth floor.
Armin, Shiina, and Kuan moved as a team toward Ingris, where the Akashic Record was kept.
With the angels still inactive, infiltrating Jebul wasn't difficult, but the problem was that arrival didn't change much—there were no obvious options waiting for them.
"I hope Etella manages to get the disk back safely. Even during the negotiations, those Yamang felt suspicious."
Shiina shared Armin's concerns.
Especially the Yamang leaders—Frankwine and Mitgun—each gave off a peculiar temperament unlike their rank-and-file.
"Etella-sensei will be fine. I know her skill better than anyone."
Having lived as peers and teachers at the Alpheas School of Magic, Armin had never quite closed the distance with her; his reverence played a part.
Beyond the bishop title of the Karsis Order, she genuinely cared for the world.
"Yeah. Julu's strong too."
Julu was on a solo mission to find the metagate.
He was presumed to be in the armaments factory beneath Jebul, but in wartime the outcome was uncertain.
Everything was precarious, but Armin steeled himself.
With the angels' powers freed, Armin's own timeline had begun to refill.
What worried him most, though, was Miro.
Was she safe?
Or had she failed to synchronize and died when Kariel's magic circle detonated?
'Well, she isn't the sort of mage I should be fretting over. I'll protect Shiina. That's all I need to think about.'
Armin stopped and looked back at Shiina.
"If something you can't handle happens, get behind me. I can block it once."
"Okay."
Armin's Stop would certainly help, but for Shiina accepting help was a tactical matter.
"One thing—if you cast Stop merely to save me, I'll never respect you again, got it?"
"Fine. I promise."
Armin answered without hesitation.
If she feared earning his hatred, she wouldn't have left the Ivory Tower and flown to Heaven in the first place.
Whether she knew that or not, Shiina snorted and quickened her pace.
Kuan watched the two from the rear with a sour expression.
What had he been expecting?
If they shared life and death together, did he imagine something new would spring from the nothing between them?
Had Shiina come to propose this herself, perhaps he dared hope she had expectations too?
'Idiot.'
Shiina had Armin.
The war was coming to its climax, and no matter who won, this place would be her grave.
"Only death will save me."
"Hm?"
Hearing Kuan murmur under his breath, Shiina finally looked back.
He never showed emotion, but since entering Jebul he hadn't offered tactical opinions either.
He simply fixed his eyes as if he could barely restrain the urge to strike someone, radiating a murderous intent.
'In this way, he's like a child…'
He'd been the first to send congratulations when she reached public rank five and had rushed to send funds to propose a trip to Heaven.
It made no sense to say he didn't know Kuan's true feelings.
He still didn't show emotion, but beneath his icy chill there was a trace of disappointment.
Shiina smiled and tossed a teasing remark his way.
"Kuan, it's the same for you. No matter what happens, your mission comes before me, right?"
Her words subtly revealed that she guessed Kuan's feelings—an act that took courage.
But Kuan passed by without a change in expression and replied curtly.
"Do not worry. I have no ability to protect anyone, after all."
A mage from the Ivory Tower who had mastered time magic was protecting her.
Shiina appreciated his concern, but she hated being pitied under any circumstances.
'Did I say something wrong?'
It was a joke she would never have made before; perhaps, since this might be the last place, she'd plucked up courage.
Pouting, Shiina watched Kuan walk away.
Fatigue made him limp more than usual, and his retreating figure looked lonelier for it.