[509] The Backlash of Evil (3)
The look of disgust on Erga's face as she glared at Julu faded into heavy silence.
Kirrurururu.
The little monster vanished with a cute chirp, and Julu rose from her seat.
Keep it going.
If she halted even for a moment, she would be pulled back into the endless abyss, so she poured out the surging malice in her heart again and again.
Plop.
She popped the hollow pacifier that had fallen to the floor back into her mouth and took in Sion's scene.
Most of the devices had been destroyed in the fight with Kali, but there were countless metagates.
Julu gripped one of them and checked the time.
Maybe it was already too late.
Had Etella, who was searching for the disk, and Armin's party, who needed to extract the return coordinates in Inglis, completed their missions?
She wouldn't know until she went to see, so she hurried toward the surface.
"...."
But just before leaving Sion, she stopped.
It was right to assume it was already too late.
For some missions, it's better to prepare for the worst-case scenario than to chase a slim chance.
Julu glanced at the metagate in her hand for a moment, then turned back toward Sion.
It was time to choose.
* * *
Thousand-Hand Kannon Thunderclap.
The endless barrage of strikes was a thousand arms purging the world's evil, and the final thunderclap was the single awakening that would destroy the wicked.
That was the secret art of the Yin-Yang Wave Fist, Thousand-Hand Kannon Thunderclap—but the more Etella struck Satan, the more doubts piled up in her heart.
"Ughhhhh!"
A groan slipped past Etella's clenched teeth.
How could this be?
No matter how many waves she pushed in, as Satan's body grew, interference kept occurring and the attacks failed to take hold.
"Just a little more, just a little more!"
In theory, the Yin-Yang Wave Fist could destroy anything from the inside out.
But it wasn't an especially efficient technique against humans.
There's no need to cause internal destruction to smooth, soft human flesh.
It was a technique designed solely to annihilate evil.
If it couldn't affect Satan—the embodiment of evil—it felt like even the Karsis Order's faith might break, so she redoubled her efforts and hammered the strikes.
"Krrrgh!"
As she increased the speed of blows on his hardened muscles, an expression of shock finally began to etch itself onto Satan's face.
'Almost there. If I can push it to the point that ruptures the Final Thunderclap—'
"Kukuku. Kukukukuku."
Etella, seeing a glimmer of hope, heard Satan's laughter.
She didn't need to look up to know what it meant.
Once again Satan's body began to balloon at a terrifying rate, and the waves she had poured in with all her might were fading.
"It has tipped perfectly."
Satan spread his arms wide and leaned back as if there was nothing left to fear.
It was a gesture that dared her to keep striking.
'A colossal power is surging in.'
With Kariel gone in Arabot, only four archangels remained.
And the Garas continued to humiliate the angels, whittling down their numbers.
The scales of the Law tilted toward Satan for the first time, and his body began to grow with no limit.
"Ooooo! Ooooo!"
Etella wept before the swelling body of evil.
"Why, whyyyyy!"
Since joining the Karsis Order she'd fought countless evils.
But she had never felt so utterly crushed.
"Ahh, I feel delightful. Hit me more. Entertain me further."
Satan kept growing.
At twenty meters, thirty meters, fifty meters, beyond a hundred—the surrounding buildings collapsed as he swelled.
"Kukukuku, pitiable human."
Dududududu!
Etella did not stop attacking.
As her faith—built over a lifetime—crumbled, the voice of the master who had taught her the true meaning of the Yin-Yang Wave Fist sustained her.
—Etella, believe. Believe that goodness exists.
* * *
Swordsmanship.
The art of wielding the blade.
Against a scarecrow, a single, simple motion is often enough.
But a swordfight is a game of tag played with lives at stake.
From then on the situation becomes serious.
Movement matchups, trajectory matchups, judgment matchups—countless compatibilities mesh together to produce an immediate result, which then becomes the cause of another judgment, writhing to strike the opponent.
The duel between Kuan and the Nameless felt like serpents of murderous intent writhing freely, moving to sink their fangs into each other's throats.
The Nameless was almost perfect; Kuan was unstable.
The two swordpaths, racing toward opposite extremes, awakened something beyond their minds, and the higher they rose, the more sublime it became.
I am getting stronger.
In a realm where life was disregarded and thought alone mattered, Kuan expressed chaos with his whole body.
Like a ship struck by a storm, as his legs twisted and his torso lurched, the Nameless's sword wavered.
He toyed with the blade.
As new patterns seeped into his body one after another, Kuan's thoughts actually simplified.
It was a journey toward the essence of the sword—an inevitability that needed no certainty because it neared the truth.
'So easy. Swordsmanship… was it really this simple?'
Kuan's blade cut into the Nameless's blind spots with chilling precision.
As wounds spread across his body, the Nameless finally realized.
'How tragic to have to die.'
Truly.
'To leave such a beautiful world without passing anything on—how unbearably wrong.'
Kuan sliced across the Nameless's waist and spun like a top, flanking to his rear.
The Nameless scrambled to change direction, but Kuan could no longer be found.
'Kuku, I knew it. He wouldn't be here.'
A man born without even a name, fighting for the first and last time in his life.
Were there swordsmen in the world stronger than this man?
The Nameless wanted Kuan to become the strongest swordsman.
If he didn't, it would be too unfair for his own buried talent to remain unrecognized.
'No—that's not it.'
The Nameless searched everywhere for Kuan but could not find even an afterimage; it was as if he had vanished.
'But you must be watching me, right?'
A life that wouldn't last another day, yet such a splendid life.
'Because I met you.'
The Nameless slowly lowered his sword.
Movement Zero.
No matter where he turned his gaze, he wouldn't find Kuan, so further movement was meaningless.
"Because there are two, it is infinite."
Slash!
With a clean sound, the Nameless's neck was severed from behind.
Kuan, having struck in a diagonal in line with the ground, planted his intact foot and rotated as if to gather the remaining inertia of his outward momentum.
Tok tok, derururu.
Only when the rotation stopped did the Nameless's head roll across the ground, and blood gushed from the still-standing body like a fountain.
"Yes."
Kuan murmured with indifferent eyes.
"Because there are two, it is infinite."
When a perfect one meets another perfect one, the future opens and all possibilities spread into infinity.
That was swordsmanship, that was the law of the world.
Blood spurted from the stump at Kuan's shoulder where his arm had been severed.
He had driven himself to the absolute limit in the fight, and he could no longer maintain his schema.
"Damn!"
Armin pushed off the ground and ran.
But Shiina reached them first and caught Kuan's collapsing upper body with her whole being.
"Kuan! Are you okay? Snap out of it!"
Kuan simply wanted to sleep.
But at the sound of the voice calling him, he lifted his trembling eyelids.
'Women really do smell… so good.'
Having lived his whole life surrounded by the scent of blood and sweat, the fragrance hit him like a fresh shock.
'But that scent isn't for me.'
Right—it's a scent you earn only by giving your life.
"I'll be fine. Go to Inglis."
Etella and Julu hadn't been heard from, but following the original mission to extract coordinates would buy time later.
Kukukukukukuku!
At that moment, the building shook as if an earthquake had struck.
"What's that?"
Armin looked up at the ceiling and shouted.
"Get out!"
The building was collapsing.
As Shiina strained to carry Kuan, Armin grabbed both of them and cast a Flicker spell.
At the same time, a huge chunk of rock slammed down where they had just been.
Urururururung!
When Armin reached the outside, he realized the nature of the quake, and Shiina, stunned, also looked up at the sky.
"What on earth is that?"
A gigantic monster, beyond human comprehension, continued to grow even now.
As the beast bent its waist, its wicked face suddenly dropped below the clouds.
Wahahahahahaha!
A feral laugh burst from a maw that seemed capable of swallowing the world, shaking the ground.
Armin said with a grave expression, "We'd better go."
The building collapse had blocked the path to Inglis, and judging by what was happening now, this was no time to be searching for return coordinates.
"I don't know what that monster is, but things have clearly gone wrong. Etella might be there too."
From their distance the humans fighting the monster were tiny dots, but Armin's sight could make them out clearly.
Armin moved immediately, but Shiina hesitated and couldn't leave at once.
She couldn't abandon Kuan, who had saved her life.
"Go."
Kuan, staring at the sky with an indifferent face, said, "Leave."
"But Kuan—"
"Compassion for a swordsman is shameful. I'm not dying, so don't worry."
That didn't mean there was any real certainty he would survive.
In truth, someone who had never died could not know how much injury would be fatal.
'Shiina….'
Armin waited a short distance away.
The mission was the highest priority.
But he was the one who had already abandoned Kuan to save Shiina, so he had no right to persuade her now.
'Yes, there's no time.'
Shiina decided to go.
Though worry for Kuan overflowed, if she couldn't solve the immediate problem they'd all be annihilated.
"I'll come back quickly."
You don't have to come back.
The words rose in Kuan's throat and died there; he swallowed them because they would only become a burden.
Shiina turned once more and asked, "Until then—you'll stay alive, right?"
Kuan felt no worth in answering.
With his whole body butchered, staying alive wasn't simply a matter of will.
"If you come back alive, then…."
Shiina hesitated over the next words, then blushed and said quietly, "Let's eat together again."
Leaving those words behind, Shiina fled with Armin toward where Satan was.
Alone, Kuan showed no change in emotion and only stared up at the sky.
"Puu!"
Then he suddenly burst into laughter.
The pain stung, his face twisted in self-pity, but his lungs still wheezed as if itchy.
'Kukuku, what, asking me out? This woman— with this body I can't even slice a steak anymore.'
By sparring with the Nameless, Kuan had pushed through a probability smaller than the eye of a needle to reach his current level.
But as a one-armed, one-legged man, he felt ashamed to play the part of any woman's man.
'Yeah, it's all over. This is my grave.'
A wave of melancholy that wanted to make him give up everything rose, and the bleeding he'd been staving off opened again.
—Let's eat together again.
"Haah."
Kuan sighed, something like a groan.
"Really… I'm going crazy."