[513] The Question Left Behind (3)
Having learned the truth of the incident, Gando fell into thought.
It made sense that Anke Ra, upon realizing the existence of Satan, had used the reset to give humanity another chance.
But one question still remained.
"Why… would he try to erase himself?"
Anke Ra's erasure.
If Satan disappeared, Ra could once again conquer the human world through a final war. There was no reason for him to erase himself.
Woorin, who had answered every question plainly before, was uncharacteristically silent this time.
From that silence, Gando understood.
There was no déjà vu about Geffin's erasure, but a reasonable inference could be drawn.
Teraze had met Ra.
Otherwise, such a compromise made no sense.
"Right. Teraze Mistra confronted Ra alone at the end of the final war. But the person he truly wanted to face wasn't Teraze. The reason Mistra could foresee Ra's erasure, and why the empress was replaced sooner than expected, was because of that child."
"That child?"
"Arian Shirone."
Gando pictured Shirone's face — the bold boy who had offered Gaold a deal at the Magic Association.
Gaold probably intended to use him in the Heaven Project, but it was surprising to hear Shirone's name even from Teraze.
"Why did Ra seek Shirone?"
"To hear the answer to one remaining question."
When Gando cocked his head, Woorin added an explanation.
"Satan—absolute chaos—was a concept Anke Ra could never comprehend. He is the totality, but chaos lies outside that totality. The fear of that unknown stirred Anke Ra's ancient memories."
Woorin's expression briefly distorted as she drew on memories that felt almost primordial.
"Geffin was likely someone who existed until recently. It's just that we forgot."
McClain Geffin erased his existence from the Akashic Record.
A few still spoke his name, but what kind of man he'd been could only be inferred from fragments tied to that name.
"The cause of Geffin's erasure is unclear. For now, all we can suppose is some connection to Shirone. In any case, it seems certain Geffin consulted with Ra before the erasure. And during that consultation, Geffin posed a single koan to Ra."
"A koan?"
"Ra is the incarnation of the Akashic Record. He is everything in this world, the totality. When Mistra faced Ra, the question he wanted Shirone to answer was this."
Woorin straightened her long neck and tilted her head toward Gando.
"Why can I not…."
"become a god?"
Ra asked, but Shirone still had no answer.
His incarnation, bankrupt from Valhalla Action's debts, was confined within a prison of spacetime.
Even knowing that, Ra asked again.
It was the promise made between Geffin and Shirone before Geffin's erasure, and the one question Anke Ra could not understand.
"I am the total. The beginning and the end of this world. So why can I not become a god? Why is chaos outside of me?"
"...."
Even the brief silence felt like a loss to Anke Ra.
A blinding flash packed with tremendous energy was crashing toward the Arabot's spire — more precisely, toward himself.
If Shirone could not answer, Ra had only one choice left.
"If I cannot ask humans for the answer…."
Anke Ra's eyes snapped open.
"I will become human myself."
"Wooooo!"
Yuriel pushed Miro to the limit.
There were twenty-three seconds left until Heaven was destroyed.
But until the reset was attempted, until Divine Punishment tore Heaven apart, Miro had to be killed at all costs.
"Guuuuuh!"
Sein clung to Yuriel despite his broken jaw and cast the Sun–Moon Radiant Wheel.
Ikael amplified its power, but Yuriel, burning outright, still dashed in front of Miro and swung the Paradise Fist.
Kuuuuuuuung!
Miro's pupils, bound by hand signs, trembled from the shock.
A great angel whose force could tear Miro's spacetime with Divine Thunder. She'd entered a meditative state to mend the cracks, but in hindsight Yuriel was the root cause of all this chaos.
"What's happening, Miro? That mouth of yours has finally stopped moving, hasn't it?"
"Krrgh!"
Miro pushed her concentration to the limit.
Jjeojeojeok.
Still, small cracks spidered across the miniature shield she'd raised.
19 seconds.
"Victory is at hand!"
"Run toward death! Life lies beyond death!"
The rebels rushed desperately for the spire.
The moment they entered Arabot, thought burned away and only an instinctive obsession with victory remained.
17 seconds.
"Kieek! Kiek!"
Garas tore through the ruins of Jebul like wind, hunting angels.
The angels — exalted mental beings — had a single predator: a simple life form specialized only for propagation.
Even as the world ended, Garas's animal instinct was singular: to spread his kind.
15 seconds.
"No! Don't leave us!"
Kanya hugged the shattered Babel and wailed.
Transparent droplets rolled down the cold metal surface like Babel's tears.
13 seconds.
"Sir! Sir!"
"...."
Gaold was like a living corpse.
Where did his soul, dragged down into Hell, wander now?
Kangnan buried his head in Gaold's chest, thinking that if he could, he would walk that Hell with him.
A flower that blooms in Hell.
That is why love is beautiful.
11 seconds.
Rumble!
Buildings collapsed all around.
A large rock slammed down beside Kwan's face as he looked up at the indifferent sky.
Perhaps next time an even larger rock would crush him, and yet he only stared at the sky.
'It's ending.'
The clown's exit time had come.
9 seconds.
Arius, knocked back by Yuriel's strike, dropped to his knees like a straggler and lifted his face to the heavens.
Perhaps losing his sight made him notice sooner than others.
"Eee. Eee."
A massive light descended from the sky.
8 seconds.
Plu staggered to her feet beside the unconscious Shirone.
Without dividing into sides, everyone had fought, staking everything on what they believed was right.
"What is this…."
Tears streamed down Plu's face.
Desire always shatters like a mirage before reality.
"Whaaaat!"
In the warped recesses of an unknowable future, where on earth is humanity flowing?
7 seconds.
"Shirone..."
Etella, drained of strength from her demon-slaying shout, straightened her back like a bow while kneeling and looked up.
"Well done, Shirone."
She had given everything she had.
"Myths are just myths."
Animalistic desire and exalted spirit, good and evil — everything you can throw your heart into.
All the myths humanity created were racing toward destruction because of a cold thought that flashed through one boy's mind.
6 seconds.
'Parka Kwan, huh.'
Armin let out a bitter smile, swallowed by defeat.
'If it's that man….'
He could protect the woman he loved most for the rest of his life.
"Shiina, be happy."
"Ss—sis?"
Armin gave a beautiful smile and cast a Flicker spell into the sky.
Shiina, realizing too late, clutched her chest and cried out.
"Noooo!"
The terminal speed of Divine Punishment was an astonishing Mach 41 — forty-one times the speed of sound.
Stopping it at that speed, even as a gamble for a Skima master, was almost impossible.
5 seconds.
'I'm sorry, Keira. I don't think I can keep my promise.'
She had seen him leave the Ivory Tower and not triggered the treaty vow.
Had she seen Kwan's sincerity? For once, the face of Keira in his memory felt a little dearer.
4 seconds.
'Incredible.'
In Armin's wide field of vision, which gave him far greater sight than others, Divine Punishment was finally caught.
A speed beyond his experience — an afterimage of arrival that felt like it was already there even though the distance remained.
3 seconds.
"This is…!"
Even with only three seconds left, Divine Punishment still hung at tremendous altitude.
'I can't climb any higher!'
As that thought ended, the black sky twinkled and a massive flash pierced Armin.
"Hah!"
In an instant, like a hundredth of a second, Armin saw clearly.
A golden bird surrounded him.
'Force Meterie?'
Divine Punishment pierced the spacetime bird and surged toward the ground.
2 seconds.
"Zulu?"
Plu looked back at Zulu, who had reached the Arabot's spire.
By her mission, she should have been searching for the metagate beneath Jebul.
'Why is she here?'
Zulu, who had deactivated the Force Meterie, raised her hand to the sky.
The 10-tier monster Erga, the first boss she'd successfully subordinated, clutched the metagate and began to fly upward.
"For a new beginning."
Plu's gaze followed Erga as it rose.
1 second.
The metagate opened, and from the dizzying heights Divine Punishment shook the air and revealed itself.
It was the last sight humans would see.
A long streak of light, drawn from sky to ground like a ruler's stroke, was sucked into the metagate's black sphere.
Beeyoung.
Then, twisting spacetime, it plunged into another sphere at the same coordinates — Zion beneath Jebul — where Divine Punishment struck.
* * *
"I will understand!"
Anke Ra's pupils flitted at the speed of light.
Now that Satan was gone, the time to reset had come.
Reset.
The world switched off.
An absolute nothingness beyond concept — in that state without time or space, something suddenly amplified and the world opened.
Countless events unfolded as birth and destruction interlocked, but all probabilities had already been set in that first amplification.
The universe repeated the events before the reset and drifted again through billions of years.
Only one thing had changed.
Twenty-three seconds before Heaven's destruction, Anke Ra did not summon Shirone; he erased himself immediately.
A true erasure of Anke Ra.
Thus the universe's clock passed the zero mark — the moment Anke Ra executed the reset and Heaven was destroyed.
"Ugh!"
Woorin bowed her head as if struck by a shock to the heart.
"Your Majesty!"
When Gando sprang up, she raised a hand to stop him.
When a strong déjà vu washed over her, every cell in her body felt as if it froze.
'So this was the moment.'
Woorin intuited.
'The moment the third reset began. Which means Anke Ra is now erased.'
Collecting herself, Woorin rose.
"Follow me. From now on there's something you must do."
When Gando stepped into the corridor, she was already standing in front of the room at its end.
She knocked, and the thirty guards stationed there saluted and streamed out.
Though invisible, her appendage Crouch would be hiding somewhere as well, on guard for intruders.
"Only you and I will remain in this room."
The room Gando entered was wide and bare of furniture.
A red carpet with golden patterns lay spread, and Woorin sat cross-legged at its center.
"Listen carefully now, Gando. The reset has already begun. And from now on I will—"
Woorin tightened the focus in her eyes and spoke.
"find Anke Ra."