[671] Lord of Fear (2)
* * *
"Fire! It's at the Full-Leaf Circus!"
Shagal, who had been buying things at the market, dropped his bags and sprinted for the circus tents.
"You rotten bastards!"
Even though the Märchen troupe toured the whole kingdom, Shagal hated this place more than any other—the very spot where he first met Raiden.
For years the trio of troublemakers had bullied the circus; they'd grown into gang leaders and were always eyeing Tia.
"No!"
He scaled the slope with uncanny athleticism, but the flames were already leaping up.
"If anything's happened to Tia—"
He shook his head.
"Just stay alive!"
From outside the tent he could see corpses, and the fact that Raiden of the Sok-sword had broken the taboo on killing was, in a way, hopeful.
"Boss! Tia!"
He yanked the tent flap aside and found a scene of blood-drenched hell.
"T-Tia…."
Among dozens of corpses, Shagal spotted Tia at once.
Her body was scored with dozens of slashes, and beside her the three loathsome gang leaders lay dead, tongues lolling.
Everyone was dead.
Only one person remained: Raiden of the Sok-sword, standing atop a high crate with his head bowed.
If his legs hadn't been motionless, he might have looked like a corpse.
His face was smeared with blood; the life had drained from his eyes.
"Ra Enemi."
"Boss… why?"
Had he killed Tia too?
"Boss!"
As Shagal cried out, Raiden seemed to come to. He lifted his head.
"Ra Enemi!"
He leapt from the crate and charged Shagal. Blades rose as if called by the wind and settled in his hands.
Dozens of blades simultaneously aimed for vital points; Shagal's reflexes mirrored the exact same technique.
Ownership of the short swords shifted in real time as master and student unleashed a brutal hand technique.
As they'd said Raiden was a genius, yet Shagal—who wielded seven schemas—already outshone him.
When ownership of the daggers fully swung to Shagal, dozens of holes opened in Raiden's body.
"Hah! Hah!"
He couldn't even remember what had happened.
Only the terror circled his mind—that Tia was dead, and that he had killed the troupe leader who'd killed her.
"Ughhh!"
Just as he felt himself slipping, Raiden spoke.
"Forgive me."
Shagal's head snapped.
"Why did you kill them? Why—"
"Forgive me."
Once Shagal's creed, that word now meant nothing—left only as the leader's dying utterance.
"Whyyyyyy!"
* * *
While everyone else wrestled with Igor's terror, Shirone stood in a dark space.
Fear is the emotion born when you imagine what hasn't happened or cannot face what already has.
For Shirone, whose Kar gauge neared ninety percent, neither applied.
So what appeared before him was fear itself—Igor.
"Kar, de sumahom?"
The Ultima System translated Igor's meaning: Are you the only one?
"You cannot subdue me. Now, send us away."
"No."
Igor raised his spear.
A spear of blue flame flew and struck where Shirone had been; a concentric ring of azure electricity rippled outward.
That would have been dangerous to take head-on.
He teleported in a wide arc and fired the Photon Cannon in rapid bursts. The body hit by the flash dissolved like smoke and quickly reformed.
'Fear. It doesn't disappear just because you ignore it.'
Igor already held another spear. When he swung his arm at incredible speed, blue flames filled Shirone's vision.
'Bring it on!'
Shirone vaulted into the air, manifested the Radiant Archangel, and cast Angel's Punishment.
Light and blue spears crossed in a blinding storm.
The angelic barrage should have shattered Igor outright, but each time his body restored itself without end.
'How do I finish him?'
His right arm—the first to restore—kept spearing without cease.
'Sibulsangpokmae!'
Thousands of spears surged like a tidal wave; Shirone dodged while Igor's head tilted slightly.
"You've gained a little insight."
"What?"
Igor's form trembled like a plucked string and swelled until it filled the horizon.
"Fear is inside you!"
Igor's domain filled with blue spears.
With nowhere left to dodge, a single spear struck Shirone square in the body.
"Ughh!"
Electricity spread, and the will of fear bypassed Shirone's ninety percent Kar to act upon the remaining ten percent of his humanity.
That fear was—astonishingly—an ancient memory of Shirone's death.
'Ikael?'
On Arabot, where Anke Ra resided, Ikael knelt while countless subjects cast blame at her.
The memory held no sound because its bearer couldn't hear. Shirone had never seen her cry like that.
It wasn't because she was being scolded.
Even an archangel should not fear death.
'Why are you crying?'
Her face, racked with sobs, showed an emotion hardly fitting an archangel—utterly human.
Maternal love.
Shirone's eyes welled.
'Why are you crying!'
Though Shirone was the subject of the memory, it contained things his own mind never had.
'Kariel!'
The one who'd tormented Shirone in heaven looked down with an arrogant gaze and then turned away in disgust.
Suddenly Shirone wondered,
'What state am I in?'
What kind of state left him unable to hear, with his sight entirely open and his lips unable to move?
A moment later a triangular Mara shoved its face into view.
Red skin, reptilian features, nostrils slit wide enough to breathe flame—yet he felt nothing.
'What am I?'
He could not see his own form.
The three-cornered Mara slowly raised its torso; the massive axe in its hands reared to the sky.
'Is this my death?'
A death he'd never known seeped into memory, and fear pressed in.
'I'm dying!'
The Mara's axe fell, and Shirone's life ended.
At the same instant, the body impaled by Igor's spear convulsed and blue electricity scattered.
"Arghhh!"
Fear!
Igor's ability created the cause by resurrecting a death from another life within Shirone's own existence.
This was precisely what Ra Enemi wanted, and his incident tried to invade Shirone's mind.
—Finally caught you!
Just as the sensory memory tried to rewrite Shirone's past, spikes burst from Armand's robe.
Small World Creation!
All sensory memory was cut off and Shirone's body collapsed into a dark space lit by a single torch.
"Ugh… ugh…"
He trembled with lingering terror when the rasp of a blade being honed reached his ears.
Wiping his eyes, he looked up and saw a woman sharpening a sword on a whetstone, her canines jutting past her lips.
"What a pity, my lord. Truly a pity."
'Lord?'
The torch's warmth and the return of sensation were a relief in themselves.
"Who are you?"
He had an inkling, but had to ask.
"I'm sharpening the blade."
Her answer felt evasive, and Shirone stepped closer—then stopped.
Only her face was lit; the rest of her body, lost in darkness, was a conglomeration of countless creatures tens of meters tall.
From that chilling mass Shirone recognized familiar things: a Jinmai-type hybrid Galtomic, a shell-type mineral Ringer, Akamai clinging on, and the fallen, unconscious archangel Ikasa.
"I can be anyone."
She sat up and her face rose ten meters high; the only distinctly human form—her right arm—leveled the sword.
"Countless beings bore me and ravaged me. You're no different, Shirone."
She achieved a kind of mental symbiosis, but Shirone still held the initiative.
If this had been a human-to-human fusion, the pain would have been unimaginable.
"Still, it doesn't matter. I'd resigned myself. That's why I accepted so many things being thrust into my body."
"Uh… that's—"
"It's fine. It's fate. This too is fate."
"What do you mean?"
"I call a master only once in my life—when I take the master's mind and body."
Shirone stepped back slowly.
"You mean you'll kill me?"
"There's nowhere to run. This is me, and you are me."
Somehow, it made sense.
"Tell me why."
"You were broken by fear. All the masters I took were like that."
"I didn't break! I can still fight!"
"You'll die anyway if I let you go, Shirone."
She gave a faint, slightly hurt smile, then revealed killing intent and surged at him.
"It was brief, but enjoyable."
Understanding her sincerity, Shirone fired a Photon Cannon, but she easily parried and deflected every blast with her sword.
"Useless. You and I are one."
Through shared perception he felt past and future in the same second—but there was no woman anywhere inside them.
'She's sharing my time exactly.'
A second ago and a second hence, the blade would strike the crown of Shirone's head and split his body in two.
Facing absolute death inside unified cognition, Shirone couldn't even dare to move.
'This is how it ends.'
There was no room for denial; acceptance came oddly easily.
Shirone Arian.
The phrase haphazardly etched on her body flared, and another name carved inside sprang to mind.
'I can't die like this!'
Because Shirone Arian existed, the concept of Karmis Amy could be recalled.
'Because I exist, Armand exists.'
As the concept corresponding to Law number two struck along the path of insight, lightning split the dark space.
"...."
The sword the woman swung passed clean through Shirone, and she turned to him without emotion.
"Was it me that was cut?"
A blade of sensation.
Through the Ultima System's integration, Shirone and Armand were cleaved into existence and nonexistence by that cut.
The woman who'd pierced Shirone walked back to the torch and resumed sharpening her sword.
"Go. You might live a little longer."
"How do I get out of here?"
"You're lying. You already know."
Shirone understood why he'd hesitated to leave.
"Um… thank you. And I'm sorry."
He meant it.
"I'm not a being. I'm a concept."
She turned and gave a wry smile.
"I'll swallow whatever of you I need. Grow strong."
Asking her identity felt like it would only hurt, so Shirone bowed and turned away.
Beyond this place a terrible fear awaited, but he no longer felt afraid.
'Wait!'
Shirone's determined gaze pierced the thin membrane toward the Lord of Fear.
Park Ji (薄知).