[489] A New Variable (2)
Six hours before Shirone entered Arabot.
Ethella arrived at the deep forest of First Heaven Shamain on Sein's special orders.
'Too late. If they don't show—'
Gaold had asked Yamang's leader Frankwine to fetch an item, and in return Yamang was granted free access to the Second Rebel Headquarters where Laisis had once commanded.
The item Gaold wanted through Yamang was an ancient relic called the Disc.
When Miro's space-time vanished, the coordinates shifted too.
The old metagate became useless, so Gaold planned to extract new coordinates from the Akashic Record.
A part may change, but the whole remains perfect.
So when Miro's space-time disappeared, new, precise coordinates should have been written in the Akashic Record.
The Disc—an artifact called Geopin's relic—was what could extract those coordinates and feed them into a new metagate.
After Geopin's erasure, no Geopin ruins remained in Heaven.
But several relics once used in those ruins were still scattered across Purgatory.
'If we can't get the Disc, we'll be stuck in Heaven until humanity intervenes.'
Ethella had hunted throughout Purgatory many times; she knew how difficult the task would be.
Still, Gaold had made the offer because Yamang was the top organization in the Purgatory community.
If they couldn't do it, no one could.
"So I wondered who'd come to greet me, and they send such a beauty. Gaold knows how to do business," a voice called from deep in the woods.
When Ethella turned, the underbrush opened like a door and Frankwine and Mitgun stepped out side by side.
Time was short, so Ethella got straight to the point.
"Did you get it?"
Mitgun produced a palm-sized square stone tablet from an inner pocket and held it out.
There was no way to verify it on the spot, but henna markings were carved into the tablet and it gave off a faint red glow.
'No reason to fake it now—he already got what he wanted. I have to get this to Jebul quickly.'
By now Armin, Shiina, and Kuan were probably heading toward Jebul's Inglis.
Delivering the Disc there was Ethella's mission from Sein.
"Thank you. Because of you, the—"
Ethella, moving toward Mitgun, suddenly froze.
A chilling killing intent pierced her chest.
With a gust, Frankwine's fist sliced across Ethella's temple.
Leaving an afterimage, she bent at the waist, lost her footing, and staggered backwards.
"What the—"
The moment she looked at Frankwine's face, instinct flared.
"Who are you?"
"Kukuku, who might I be?" he replied.
Frankwine's temperament had shifted.
She'd suspected from their first meeting that he leaned toward villainy, but this was different—so sharply one-sided it felt clinical. A cold, clean malice radiated from him.
'How could a human—?'
Seeing a tiny dot moving in one of Frankwine's pupils, Ethella dropped into combat readiness.
A fly.
A single fly circled inside Frankwine's eye as if trapped in glass.
"You're not human."
"Kukuku, consider it an honor. I chose you as the signal flare of my resurrection."
With a thud the earth exploded and Frankwine lunged at Ethella.
'Skima?'
It felt different.
Yamang's people came from a world unlike Shirone's, and their methods of wielding power differed. If Mitgun distorted fields of time, space, and mind to activate special abilities, Frankwine was the kind of warrior who simply amplified his physicality.
Blunt and direct, he aimed only for vital points; Ethella could not find an opening to counter and was forced to defend.
Even the techniques that led to her Yin-Yang Wave Fist—laden with destructive intent—were being crushed beneath Frankwine's momentum.
Retreating down a slope, Frankwine closed the distance with ruthless speed.
Ethella crossed her arms to raise her guard.
At the same time Frankwine grabbed her wrists, flung them wide, and shoved his face close.
Seeing his wickedly torn mouth and the fly clinging to one pupil sent a chill down her spine.
"Kukuku, what should I do with our little beauty?"
Ethella narrowed her eyes and swung her shin, striking Frankwine's groin.
Something crushed with a sick sound and Frankwine's brows twitched.
They both froze like that for a long moment, then Frankwine's head slowly dropped.
A dark wetness seeped between his legs.
'It's over.'
She'd shattered the most vital of vitals—no matter how strong, he should black out or die.
But to her surprise, Frankwine's head began to lift again.
"Kukuku, rougher than he looks. I don't hate this at all."
Ethella, still staring ahead unaware that Frankwine had let go of her wrists, froze.
He'd only turned halfway, but the way his torso arched was like a whirlpool.
'I have to stop him—'
She realized too late and dropped her arms toward his abdomen, but Frankwine's fist had already broken through her guard and pressed as if to pierce her stomach.
"Gah!"
A wet, choked cry escaped Ethella as her body blasted backward like a cannon.
She smashed through several thick trees and kept flying until a dull thud sounded out of sight.
"You all right?" Mitgun cocked his head as he approached.
It was presumptuous to show concern for Frankwine—the kind of leader whose command demanded absolute obedience—but the location of the blow inspired a shred of human sympathy.
"Like I care. Burst for all I care," Frankwine snapped, clutching his groin, damp as if he'd wet himself, and turning away.
"I'll be at Jebul. Finish it up and come. If we're going to seize Heaven, we have to move fast."
Mitgun kept his head lowered until Frankwine left, then watched his retreating figure.
'Satan—'
After much trouble, when Frankwine arrived at the Second Headquarters with the Disc, someone was already waiting.
A middle-aged man in a bowler hat, wearing a monocle and leaning on a cane with both hands, introduced himself as Satan and proposed a bargain to Frankwine.
"Will you be satisfied ruling Purgatory? Sell me your soul, and I'll give you Heaven whole."
Selling one's soul or devouring Heaven were big decisions, but Frankwine didn't hesitate for a moment.
In the old world he would sell anything for profit; a soul was worthless currency to him.
Satan produced a tiny vial containing a fly and fused it with Frankwine using the headquarters' Physics Machine.
Mitgun knew Ilhwa's liquor usually worked by melting several organisms together and rebirthing them with entirely new traits, but strangely the fly didn't melt into Frankwine; it nested in his pupil.
'It simply didn't mix…' he thought.
But precisely that was the core concept and the enormous potential for devouring Heaven whole.
'I follow the boss's will. The fate of a second-in-command is only that.'
With the thought, Mitgun walked slowly to where Ethella had been hurled.
She lay sprawled beneath a gaping fissure in the cliff.
She didn't move; she was most likely dead, but per Frankwine's orders the job had to be finished.
"Don't resent me. Everyone dies," Mitgun said, sitting beside her as he drew a dagger and aimed it at the delicate nape of her neck.
"Life's like that."
As he drove the blade straight down with all his strength, Ethella's hands shot up and clamped his wrists from both sides.
* * *
The 5,000th — Matei.
The rebels pushed fiercely through a city of towering giants that made one's legs tremble at a glance.
Crud, piloting Titan No. 1, leveled the wall with ten beam cannons while covered by numerous Kuroi units.
They couldn't enter Arabot by tightening a siege.
The key was to forge a bypass and gather the rebels. Realizing that, the giant forces were slaughtering the rebels more brutally than before.
The giants fighting the rebels had reached Stage 4 of Ilhwa's liquor—immense warriors fifteen meters tall.
Even large Kuroi-class machines looked like toys before them; the iron plates their great swords struck shredded like paper.
'Still hard to break through. We can't go any deeper.'
Having made that call, Crud swung the Titan sharply to the side and advanced toward the wall.
"We'll open a path here! All forces, follow me!"
Troops receiving the broadcast surged toward the wall like a torrent.
"Damn it! Damn it!" Crud ground his teeth.
The rebels threw everything into battle at his single command to win—to win and return home.
But Crud couldn't promise them a future.
The closer they drew to Arabot, the nearer came the end for tens of thousands of lives and the infinite possibilities they carried.
"Pluuuuuu!" Unable to bear his swelling rage, Crud cried out her name.
Mage? Cold reason?
His belated fury at having once given her his heart—even for a moment—flooded him.
She was a witch.
A witch without blood or tears.
Did Crud know?
In Plu's old world, mages had once been called witches.
"I won't forgive you! When this war's over—!"
He wasn't afraid to die.
But whatever death came, he swore he would take her life with it.
A magnificent sight unfolded as the giant mechanical host poured through the breached wall into Jebul.
The Sixth Thousand — Jebul.
Despite the name Angel City, not a single ordinary angel wandered Jebul.
At the gateway to Arabot, the archangels Metiel and Satiel hovered side by side, watching the battlefield.
The walls had collapsed and the rebels poured in, but there were no forces in Jebul to stop them.
The absence of angels was the greatest factor that stalled a war that should have been decided quickly.
The two beautiful archangels with loose golden hair did not look at each other.
Their concepts were Strength and Weakness.
Their source concepts—core forces—were so massive they formed the basis of all matter in the universe.
Thus they were two and yet one.
Their relationship, unlike the birth-and-destruction bond of Kariel and Yuriel, had never been good.
"Arrogant humans…" Satiel's face twisted.
Metiel's temperament wasn't kind either, but Satiel was far more ferocious and cruel.
"I don't understand. Why ban angelic activity? If we lose this war, we might end up having to submit to humans."
"I think it's related to Ikael. They forbade angels' activity, then suddenly reinstated her—why? And Ikael is deeply connected to Shirone."
"Hmph, Shirone? What would one of the Nephilim fear?" Metiel's gaze calmed.
Satiel was like a twin who had been with her since birth.
So Metiel knew exactly when Satiel had grown colder and crossed into cruelty.
"Not jealous, are you?" Satiel turned to Metiel for the first time; her eyes trembled with killing intent.
"What?"
"Don't get rattled. It's already over. Geopin chose Ikael, not you—"
KRAAAANG!
Satiel's judicial halo unfurled with a frenzied roar.
"Say that again. I'll erase you right now."
There was no hint of an archangel's sanctity in the wide-eyed fury of her expression.