[492] A New Variable (5)
Thud! Thud!
Giant guards who had reached the sixth stage of Ilhwa's Sul from Matei's castle began to move out.
Their heads, nearly eighty meters high, brushed the sky, and in their view humans and machines looked like insects.
When the giants' enormous feet struck the ground, countless rebels and Gurois were flattened at once.
Only pilots inside the Grade-3 mecha system Titan could still make out the giants' faces.
Krude swallowed as he watched twenty giants stride in past the rebels sprawled like grains of sand.
Giants among giants he had never even been allowed to glimpse when he was a civilian.
When their forms finally registered, he realized something for the first time.
This was a war that could never be won from the start.
"Don't be ridiculous!"
Krude forced down the fear swelling in his chest and pushed the Titan forward.
The immense giants moved with unnerving agility toward the Titan, using the power of their schema as if they were small men.
KRAAAANG!
A giant's fist slammed into the Titan's hull, spinning all the joints in its waist as the machine staggered.
"Ugh!"
Krude caught the center of gravity for a moment, but the Titan slid back a few steps and crushed his comrades beneath it.
He didn't even register their deaths.
Whether the casualties were the rebels or the giants, both were dying in the close-quarters clash between colossal beasts and machines.
"Damn it!"
Krude used the machine's recoil to deliver a powerful blow to a giant.
The Titan's output was beyond imagination, but the schema of the sixth-stage Ilhwa giants, stacked upon stack, produced a force no living creature should be able to wield.
BRAAAANG!
A heat-flash cannon fired at point-blank range grazed a giant's shoulder.
The giant screamed as if the heavens were tearing apart; chunks of shoulder flesh were torn away—only for the wound to immediately knit closed.
Nerves and muscles as thick as tree trunks rose and entwined like vines; the process resembled the birth of nature itself.
When the enraged giants slammed into the Titan, the rebels on the ground felt as if thunder had erupted from a clear sky.
Mechanical parts from the Titan burst, tons of shrapnel raining down to strike the Gurois and the giants.
PFOOOOOM!
Finally, an engine exploded, controls failed, and the Titan began to topple to the side.
"Huff! Huff! Huff!"
Krude felt himself plummeting tens of meters and timed it.
Just before the hull struck the ground, he hit the emergency escape button.
The cockpit opened; one Guroi popped out with a thunk and then plunged vertically.
Krude lost consciousness for a moment, then came to.
The Grade-2 mecha system Guroi was also inoperable from the impact.
He sat in the cockpit and looked up at the sky.
It was only the sky as shown through the vision system, but the sun climbing toward noon was unbearably bright.
Under that sun, endless giants were destroying another Titan.
"This place... is hell."
A giant's foot fell from dozens of meters up toward the ground.
It wasn't aimed specifically at Krude, but lying there would have been fatal.
He pressed the emergency escape again, vaulted from the Guroi, and used the Grade-1 mecha system Piper to land on the ground.
There was no turning back now.
All the rebels could do was advance, and advance alone.
"We go all the way."
Toward the Arabot where Anke Ra waited.
Krude set his jaw and lifted his head—but then his eyes went wide with fear.
"What... the—?"
A horribly ominous aura shimmered over the Arabot beyond the giant's castle.
It looked as if the whole Arabot were burning with black flames, and in that dreadful scene a strange wind sighed like a summons to death.
Hwoooooooo!
Krude's face crumpled.
Only death.
The aura was so overpowering that he was certain anyone who entered the Arabot would die—that conviction melted his iron will like molten metal.
What on earth could be in there?
The fleeting question vanished instantly before the terror of annihilation.
'We have to retreat. Everyone must run. That's the only way we survive.'
Krude touched his personal comm and decided to admit defeat in the battle.
"All units—!"
Once the words were spoken, they could not be taken back.
Even if he could rescind the order afterward, the moment he confessed defeat the collapsed will would never rise again.
'There's no way we can win!'
Krude drew a deep breath to issue the order to the entire rebel force, when a woman finally appeared in his sight.
Plu had broken through the giants' assault and was running headlong for the Arabot, staring straight at its terrifying blaze.
So she had come this far after all.
"This was a war that could never be won from the start."
Then why was she heading into the center of annihilation, where only death awaited?
"Damn it! I won't be pushed around by trash like you!"
Krude snapped, glaring, and thrust the Piper to its maximum, stamping the ground.
* * *
Basement Level 11 of Jebul.
Deep under Jebul sat a masterpiece born from the minds of countless angels.
Sion, Heaven's armory.
Everything produced in Heaven came from here; Kariel's Great Codex and Yuriel's Paradise Wheel were no exception.
Beneath the endlessly stretching steel girders, countless machines—whose very functions were beyond guess—clanged and spat molten metal as they whirred.
"The layout is complicated."
Julu studied the labyrinth of steel girders from afar and searched for a way down.
A small, broad-billed black bird perched on his shoulder.
Erga, the Tier-10 monster he had first successfully summoned when he was three.
She had no abilities beyond mimicking human speech, but whenever he walked a dark path alone, he liked to keep Erga at his side.
"Chik. Chik. Chik. Chik."
Erga hopped from Julu's shoulder, passed beneath the steel girders, and imitated the sucking sound of a pacifier.
"Right, it's here."
Julu chose the third of the six-way splitting girders.
A stairway leading down was hidden behind a railing.
- Why does she want to go alone?
When Julu insisted on finding the meta gate by herself, Sein couldn't understand her decision.
Ethyla had to meet Frankwein and so stayed separate, but Inglis and Sion were both here in Jebul.
It would have been more likely to succeed if she joined Armin's group and moved with them, but Julu adamantly wanted to go alone.
- It's better that way for me.
Sein, chewing on Julu's words, no longer objected, and so she found the meta gate production plant at the southern edge of Sion.
Trailers, linked like belts, carried countless meta gates.
If not for the special circumstances of wartime, no human would have been allowed into such a place.
Just thinking of the value of meta gates in the Land of Earth was enough to make anyone's head spin, yet Julu's expression remained as calm as ever.
"Stir up all the trouble, then try to slink off, huh?"
A woman's voice from across the trailer halted Julu's hand reaching for the meta gate and made her turn.
A four-armed, nude woman stood there; her skin black, her slitted eyes like a snake's, the pupils sucking in light so that from a distance she looked like a living shadow.
Julu counted the red glowing triangles floating above the woman's head.
Three-triangle Mara Kali.
A direct subordinate of Paiel, the Archangel of Annihilation.
'Strong.'
Julu's eyes narrowed coldly.
She had already felt the power of a three-triangle Mara in Heaven, but the Mara before her radiated an alien aura, different from the others, beyond mere strength.
"When something comes, it also goes. I only follow the proper course. Do not interfere."
Her voice was neither the clumsy continental tongue nor one that soothed the heart.
"Interfere?"
Kali spread her four arms and opened her palms; in each hand appeared a weapon—sword and shield, whip and skull.
"No living being can stand against the god of death."
When Kali slashed, a black line cleaved the space and surged toward Julu.
Julu teleported to evade, erased Erga, and summoned a Tier-3 monster, Cougar.
KRAAAAH!
The massive beast lunged as if it would tear Kali apart, claws flashing.
KRAAANG!
Kali's shield blocked the claws, and a black smoke rose to enshroud Cougar.
"Raaa!"
Cougar's fur vaporized, black fungal growths erupted across its skin, and pus swelled as if it were rotting.
Kali's four implements each embodied concepts of death; the shield in particular induced the fastest-acting diseases, so no being could survive its touch.
"All living things shall bow before my feet."
Kali sheathed the shield and swung the sword; Cougar's massive body was severed cleanly in half.
Cougar was a top-tier summoned monster and, among the creatures Julu could command, the strongest in raw physical force.
Chik-chik-chik-chik-chik.
Julu's pacifier-sucking sound quickened as she had defeated Cougar in a single blow.
"Now, choose. What manner of death suits you?"
Kali leaned back, smiling wickedly, and her body rose as black legs of smoke unfurled.
"...This is dangerous."
Julu truly believed that.
* * *
"Hoo... hoo..."
Along Jebul's corridors, countless angels clutched their bellies and whimpered.
At the end of that humiliating procession stood Frankwein, who had made a pact with Satan, wearing a haughty expression.
Behind him, the minions of Yameng—transformed into grotesque forms—scanned the area for other angels with vicious eyes.
"Kikiki! More, more angels..."
Satan was freed from angelic abilities, but everyone knew from primeval history how powerful angels were.
Even if one could bypass the concept of an angel, if they united and attacked with pure physical might, the outcome was uncertain.
So Satan sought the easiest and most convenient way to kill angels.
The result was Garas-fused minions of Yameng.
"Hrrgh! I'd rather not exist like this..."
One angel, feeling Garas' seed grow inside, squeezed its eyes shut and reversed its halo.
With a pop, the angel's body transformed into light and vanished.
Shame.
For angels who prided themselves on noble spirits, shame was worse than annihilation.
After the first angel self-erased, every angel collapsed along the corridor, spun their halos, and wiped themselves from existence.
"Heh heh heh, Reysis was foolish."
Using Garas' nature to seize power?
"No, you just become Garas."
With every angel's suicide, Satan's presence was bolstered into ever mightier power by the seesaw of the Law.
"Uoooooo!"
His size swelled, horns thrust and curled from his temples.
Thick, glove-like chest muscles writhed as he clenched his fist and flames of combustion flared.
"Not yet. Need a bit more."
Satan, his fangs descending to his jaw, stared at his fist and shot the flames down the corridor.
"Go! Find every single angel without fail! Ravage them! From now on, Heaven is our world!"
"KIAAAAA!"
Dozens of minions transformed into Garas' form and leapt into the blazing flames at the corridor's end.
The Angelic Banquet Hall.
"Huk. Huk huk."
While the angels who had been taken by Garas erased themselves, one angel escaped and slipped into the empty banquet hall.
But even she could not break the Law, and her belly swelled.
Adio, the Angel of Fulfillment.
She had been so glad to exist in this world that she could not bear to leave, even knowing the outcome.
"I don't want to vanish. I have so much to do."
"Great angel."
Three Maras from first to third triangle guarded Adio, and their leader, the Mara of Attachment, Rubel, spoke.
"Please hold on."
It was the only comfort they could offer.
Even if Garas' seed took root, an angel's durability would likely prevent full annihilation.
But what did that even mean?
Beyond bodily damage, the mental shock to a concept-wielding angel of bearing a monster's child would be immense.
"No! Nooo!"
As Adio screamed, her belly burst with a pop.
Her radiance convulsed wildly, and in accordance with the Law of Dominion, three Maras vanished from reality.
"Huk, hrrrgh!"
Adio collapsed to the floor, shedding miserable tears.
Her belated realization: she should have chosen self-erasure like the other angels from the start.
Gluk. Gluk.
Something slid from Adio's body and, ignoring its mother, slithered out through the banquet hall door.
Unwanted by everyone—this was the birth of a Nephilim.