[719] The Key to Liberation (3)
* * *
Maze Jessica.
In the giant city divided into ten final stages, Jin Seongeum had reached the boundary of the sixth level.
It was a feat no prominent organization had achieved in ten years, and the 200 members of the Volcano expedition who had preemptively taken this area felt their pride wounded.
"Form a perimeter! Don't give them an opening for a counterattack!"
Their skill—holding the human record for exploring Jessica, one of the world's three great mazes—was indisputably the best in the business.
"Princess! Danger… ugh!"
Flaming beam cannons slammed down from the sky, scattering Volcano's troopers in all directions.
'Damn! Ancient weapons!'
The shoulder armor Volcano had equipped was an ancient war device called a Kit, a weapon that fired heat-beam barrages from a central lens.
'Even worse is the gravitational collapse.'
Nearly a hundred of Volcano's forces flew and bombarded from the air, turning the area into a wasteland.
'I have to find the princess! I must protect her!'
The ancient devices buried here weren't primitive tricks used by the denizens of Heaven—things like Signa or Exd.
Phenomena modern technology couldn't reproduce threatened Seongeum, and Mun-gyeong's heart hammered in her chest.
She'd been rated the strongest fighter among Ivory Tower candidates, yet her real combat experience was severely lacking.
Having spent most of her life in the imperial city, whether she could stand against seasoned battlefield professionals was uncertain.
"Princess!"
Pushing through the haze, Mun-gyeong found Seongeum standing alone in the very center of Volcano's formation.
'How did she get all the way over there…?'
She had clearly thrown herself into it—an obvious mistake.
"Now! Finish this!"
Two hundred members launched in unison and unleashed their heat-beam barrages at Seongeum, leaving Mun-gyeong dizzy enough to nearly black out.
'No! That—!'
Mun-gyeong, who had shadowed Seongeum her whole life, knew the princess had never faced an attack faster than her senses.
"It's over!"
At the shout from one of Volcano's officers, a calm light shimmered in Seongeum's eyes.
Ether Wave—Daenagok.
"What… what is that?"
Like projectiles on rails, the beams curved naturally, wrapping around Seongeum and rotating about her.
Seongeum faintly lifted one corner of her mouth.
"...I'll allow two steps."
She extended both hands, and the sweeping beams all gathered between her palms.
The world's landscape twisted like tangled thread, then shimmered in unnatural hues.
"Ahhhh."
Caught in spatial knots no human mind could parse, Mun-gyeong felt as if even the direction of her life had been lost.
'This is exactly… the princess's, Seongeum's second step.'
No one could ever enter it.
'No — not me, not anyone. It's not a domain for human feet to tread.'
"Daenagok's tremor."
As Seongeum spread her arms, the particles of the heat beams began to seep into the scenery like an osmotic effect.
"Evade! Get out of the way!"
Volcano's leader shouted, but he and his troopers already sensed the truth.
'You can't avoid it.'
There is no directionality within Seongeum's space.
"Kugh!"
When the intense heat struck, the 200 troopers evaporated in an instant without a drop of blood left.
"I suppose I should spare one."
Seongeum reached toward the leader, who'd lost control of his Kit and was flitting about, snatched his ankle across space, and dragged him down until his body slammed into the ground at tremendous speed.
"Aaaaargh!"
Approaching the man writhing with a broken leg, Seongeum hid her expression and asked.
"Tell me everything you know."
The leader glared at her, blood tears streaming from his eyes.
* * *
Maze Paitaros.
In the maze where the seven laws of sin layered in differing densities, Nane arrived at the final level.
"Hungry! Hungry! Hungry!"
Any human who listened to the hungers' wails would lose their mind, but…
'Why do we suffer?'
They had once been human too.
'If pain and happiness can't be exchanged, what reason is there to exist at all?'
Nane never hurried, yet she reached the maze's terminus before any other candidate.
The only exit of Paitaros: the Gate of Annihilation.
The moment one crossed that door, time would stop and only the eternal persistence of nothingness would remain.
"Take us too! Please cut the suffering of this pitiable being! I beg you!"
Still, countless hungers crawled across the floor, bowed their heads at Nane's feet and pleaded.
They had all descended through the seven floors of hell, so they understood what Nane was.
"Poor sentient beings…"
Nane looked at them with pity.
"Human?"
The masters of the inner world guarding the Gate of Annihilation approached, stamping iron plates with enormous feet.
Horns jutted like gnarled vines, and their muscles bulged reddish, stoking the hungers' lust.
"Remarkable. You've traversed all seven hells and yet you haven't lost yourself."
Nane extended a hand and gave an order.
"Demons, open the gate and save these beings."
Passing through the Gate of Annihilation into the world of nothingness was the hungers' final rest.
"This gate was not made by you."
The demons exhaled sparks of flame as they drew near.
"But isn't this hell your own creation?"
Startled, the hungers fled, and dozens of demons surrounded Nane.
"There is no exit for you. You too shall fade here across ages and become hungers."
Nane curled his index finger and thumb into a circle as he raised his hand.
"Erase malice and save sentience."
The sword tattoo on Nane's tongue flared golden, and countless blades of light manifested around him.
Sermon—Tongue of Truth.
Nane was almost right.
Thus the sound produced by his tongue—with a Khar score of 99.999 percent—became truth.
"Form is emptiness; emptiness is form."
The swords of light, rendered through sword-transformation, struck the opponents' essence with the force of an answered koan.
"Kraaaaa!"
As the surrounding blades pierced the demons, red skin turned to ash and burned away in an instant.
"The boundary between being and non-being ends when you close your eyes."
Nane was almost right.
"Follow me, pitiable ones."
When Nane opened the Gate of Annihilation, a space of pitch-black nothingness—without sound or feeling—revealed itself.
"Master… seeker."
The hungers, moved to tears, fell to their knees and called him.
"If we go in there, everything disappears, right?"
"Yes. You'll be freed from the pain of existence."
The hungers clasped their hands and pleaded.
"If it's the end anyway, could you let us taste flesh one last time? Just once more… since it's the final thing…"
Sadness filled Nane's eyes.
'Attachment. Attachment to life.'
The fleeting memory that remains after pleasure, and the sensory void that makes it feel like nothing ever happened—that gap is the burden of living things.
'Can it not be severed?'
Realizing the hungers would not be able to pass the gate, Nane sat down and held out his hand.
"Eat."
One hunger, already drooling, trembled and bit down hard on Nane's finger.
"I—since it's the end anyway. This is the last time…"
They all lunged, tearing Nane's body apart.
"Delicious! Delicious! This is the best!"
The frenzied hungers quickly digested his flesh; when there was nothing left to eat, they clawed at their throats.
"Hungry, hungry! We want more! Hungry!"
No one leapt through the Gate of Annihilation.
'And with that, I give it all and depart.'
Having lost his bodily form in the inner world, Nane crossed the Gate of Annihilation in spirit.
Waiting for him in the realm without time or space was the only being that could be born from nothing—the one who dreamed this world: Ra Enemi.
"...."
Reborn into human form but without muscle, blind-eyed and with a crushed nose, unable to speak or hear, the withered body held Ra Enemi as a past event, and that presence entered Nane's memory.
"Do you resent me?"
Ra Enemi smiled beautifully.
"Anyone can dream."
Even if not Ra Enemi, someone would dream—and if that dreaming is all our world is, nothing changes.
"So… what did you realize?"
Nane hesitated a moment.
For someone whose thoughts moved fast enough to stop time, this was a contemplation bordering on eternity.
"One thing only."
Nane raised his index finger and said,
"Emptiness."
* * *
Maze Andre—World No. 9999.
Skyscrapers rose like spears, made of something neither stone nor metal.
Not a speck of dust floated in the air, and despite having no power lines, a perfect power network bathed the city in light.
"Still… no one awake."
According to information from the Ultima System, this place lay unimaginably further in the future than where Shirone had lived.
In days of exploration, Shirone had found that every human here was inside a person-sized glass tube.
'They're all dead, or asleep.'
As she pondered, a small sphere silently flew down from the sky, opened at the center, and a lens popped out.
A laser scanned Shirone's retina, and a voice came from a speaker on the side.
-Non-biological organism detected. Unable to locate registration code. Risk rating zero. Would you like to reincarnate?
Shirone answered cheerfully.
"Are you a human? Where is this? Where can I meet someone who's awake?"
The sphere tilted.
-Temporary amnesia suspected due to postmortem stress. Would you like a thorough examination at the center?
"I'm not amnesiac or anything, but… fine."
Shirone stopped speaking and nodded.
"Yes, I'll take the test. Anywhere is fine—please, take me somewhere I can talk to people."
-Transferring unregistered code to the center.
Hundreds of identical spheres flew in from beyond the buildings and wrapped around Shirone's limbs and torso.
"Oh?"
Shirone's body floated up with a whoosh as the sphere drones swiftly carried her through the air.
-Arrived at the center.
Turning gracefully, the drones took Shirone to the first floor of the city's tallest tower.
-A thorough examination will be performed. Wait time: 3 minutes 2 seconds.
Shirone looked around the exam room and found nothing but rows of machines designed for a person to lie down on.
"Wait! Are there really no people awake here?"
She shouted in frustration, but the sphere drones ignored her and left the room.
"What am I supposed to do in a place like this?"
-Please lie down on table number one.
A voice came from the ceiling; she knew now it wasn't human.
'I should check it out myself.'
As Shirone tried to leave, another drone flew in to block her path.
"Sorry, just let me pass. I'm not amnesiac—"
A light shot from the drone's lower lens, and a hologram appeared.
"Amy?"
It was Amy—every feature perfectly in place.
-Hello. I am Administrator Argo.