[736] Two Perspectives (5)
"Really…."
Was that an attainable realm?
Geopin had already been erased; his name existed only as a hypothesis among countless mages.
Infinite Mage.
No one could guess what that meant, but the head of the True-Heaven Astral Bureau held proof that it had actually existed.
"Have you encompassed the entire universe?"
Nane's question sounded indifferent, but there was an odd thread of expectation in his eyes.
"What did you realize?"
Shirone spread his arms.
"Life."
All life that exists in the universe.
"Existence is not a sin, Nane."
Even in the same words, Shirone's carried a different depth—and Nane was the one to understand it.
"If merely being born means suffering, if our fate is to eternally reincarnate within the wheel of the cosmic void…."
Shirone wept.
"That would be unbearably sad."
A flash of disappointment crossed Nane's face.
"Is all you gained by encompassing the universe merely a heart? Isn't that heart itself the root of suffering?"
"It's not something we can change. No matter how vast the universe, it is not greater than a mother's love for her child."
Could that be denied?
"The heart transcends the universe."
Having nearly grasped all principles, Nane chewed over Shirone's words as best he could.
"If the universe disappears, the heart disappears too."
The heart exists because there is existence.
"You may be right at first glance, but you're almost entirely mistaken, Shirone."
Nane's sermon's sword—the concept of ending the universe—still pointed at the ground, and another sword was born.
"God is heartless."
The iron-colored blade that stripped every emotion from this world, Heartless, rose overhead and was absorbed into the sword of annihilation.
As Nane's will strengthened, the ground trembled; the sense of the world's end slammed into their skin.
Mungyeong ground their teeth.
"Damn it! How are we supposed to stop that?"
Nane's sword-formation pressed on the world from the realm of concepts beyond phenomena.
"My refusal is not stubbornness. Do you know how many lives that love you've realized will push into suffering from now on? Suffering without recompense. Aren't they pitiable?"
Distance to universal annihilation: 0.00001 nanometers.
"There's no beginning, no end—just reincarnation. Are you saying ending the eternally repeating pain is irrational?"
Nane's exact kar value raced at 99.9999... percent, stretching eighteen thousand four hundred decimal places beyond the point.
Shirone said, "It's not our sin."
Even if good and evil were made by humans, even if pain were made by humans, existence itself carries no original sin.
So Shirone, whose cause was absence itself, said—
"I love."
He refused to deny Nane's merit by forgiving the sins of all who exist.
"That, too, is hollow."
Dozens of swords unfolded behind Nane and surged at Shirone.
Destruction, annihilation, dissolution… every concept needed to erase an existence was fired.
At the same time, the gateway to World No. 1 exploded.
"Ugh!"
As a quantum information tunnel spanning spacetime opened, the realization of universal love rushed in.
Shirone's kar value, which had been over ninety percent, began to plummet rapidly.
kar value 86.24 percent.
Having sacrificed everything, he had no purpose left; what remained was one pure emotion.
Love.
The gateway to World No. 283 exploded and the kar value plunged to 74.31 percent.
Toward future lives, toward good and evil, toward absolute universal love that discriminated neither trivial nor grand.
The gateway to World No. 847 exploded.
"Aaaah!"
kar value 49.24 percent.
Shirone's mind degraded to the level of an animal, yet precisely because of that, what they had to hold until the end became clear.
kar value 24.11 percent.
To achieve perfect love required a supremely unprejudiced feeling that distinguished no being.
"It's not hollow, Nane!"
Nane was almost right, but even if a world were nothing but pain, the reason we must exist is—
"The heart is larger than the universe."
Because we ourselves are precious to us.
kar value 1.4 percent.
"Shi, Shirone…."
Everyone wore a terrified expression as they looked at Shirone—eyes bloodshot, tears of blood falling. No one could understand the Infinite Mage, nor did anyone know what was happening to Shirone now, but one thing was certain.
"He bears… an enormous burden."
kar value 0.24 percent.
"Uaaaaah!"
From animal to plant, from plant to vermin, sinking to the lowest possible state with nowhere lower to go.
But because of that, he could love.
Everything.
kar value 0.0000017 percent.
"This is bad! Andre is going to collapse!"
After passing World No. 9,999, worlds in the tens of thousands began exploding in succession and the ceiling started to cave in.
"Why give false hope?"
Nane's sermon of termination advanced toward the ground, unleashing a brutal gust.
"Do you not see that the hope you give is the seed of suffering?"
"That suffering…."
kar value 0.0000000000000001 percent.
"is proof of existence."
As the kar value plunged toward zero, the reference points of Shirone's mind vanished.
There was no subjectivity left.
For him, who distributed equal love to all things, sensation could no longer serve as a standard of judgment.
"They merge."
Time and space, the sense of temporal span and the sense of spatial intensity combined, and a new sense seized his mind completely.
The eighth sense a living being could have: Superqualia.
All information conveyed through this super-sense seemed to lay bare the reality of the world.
"Idea."
One who senses truth cannot harbor subjectivity.
"Get out! If you don't get out now…!"
At last the explosions reached World No. 19,000, and the spacetime that had trapped Andre was completely liberated.
As spacetime twisted and threatened to swallow them all, Seongeum cast an ether-wave.
"I'll hold it."
Beyond the spatial barrier she unfolded, countless events that transcended spacetime began to overlap.
"Damn! This is total hell, isn't it?"
No one could predict what would happen if swept into a storm of spacetime.
At the moment when no one dared leave Seongeum's sheltered space, a fleeting image flashed within the jumble of events: Shirone and Nane meeting each other with calm dignity.
"Can you hold out?"
Nane, whose kar value was almost perfect, guessed why Shirone did not get swept up by the storm.
Bathed in light, Shirone spoke.
"Is this the answer you wanted?"
The light that blocked spacetime expanded into a vast sphere and the storm was torn to pieces.
"Your Highness! It's disappearing!"
Within the burst of light, the sermon blade disintegrated into ash and the landscape of reality finally came into focus.
"He blew everything away."
André's cavern showed no trace; the structures once made into tourist attractions were gone.
The lights that had spread toward Shirone, standing amid the boundless desert, began to be drawn in.
"Th-that's…."
The light enveloped the brain—the source of consciousness—and pale, not-cold droplets of light blinked without end.
Watching the sermon blade disintegrate, Nane slowly turned his gaze to Shirone.
"Is that Yahweh?"
The special light born from a sense beyond cognition—the name of that light was omnipotence, wieldable only by the Infinite Mage who contained all the world's information.
"It cannot be denied."
There was no one in the world with a higher kar value than Nane, so there was no one who could deny him.
"But you cannot be denied, either."
The sole truth had not yet been established in this world.
"Now I understand why I cannot become a god."
Geopin hadn't been asking a question.
"Arian Shirone."
No—the very existence called Hexa had been the final barrier that blocked perfect truth.
Shirone and Nane, Nane and Shirone.
"I think it's merit."
The universe is full of nothingness.
"Love," Shirone said.
The heart transcends the universe.
Both knew that it was nothing but a dream, yet the two gazes looking at the same truth were so extreme.
"Contradiction. No one can obtain the right answer."
Shirone's kar, cleansed of bias, was extremely faint, but it was also the one point Nane could never reach.
"I can never be absolutely right."
Nane's fingertip pointed at Shirone.
"And you can never be absolutely wrong?"
Thus living beings must continue to agonize over the value of existence from the universe's lowest plane.
"But two standards cannot both stand. If you and I coexist, countless lives will suffer."
"I have no intention of stepping back."
"...."
Mahaguruta had called Nane's realization the ultimate synthesis that swallowed his own insight. But Shirone's realm shone from the exact opposite place Nane could never reach.
"Shirone, just as you pity life, I too sympathize with them."
It was true.
"That's why neither of us can yield. As long as one side doesn't vanish, the suffering of this world will continue."
When Nane spread his arms as if drawing a bow, a gigantic sword of tremendous power was born.
"So then…."
Turning his body, Nane spread his arms and an iron-colored blade arced into being as if bending.
"I will see it through."
Nane's sermon Break snapped off in a warped shape and lunged at Shirone.
It was a straight, bone-deep strike—perhaps the most powerful blow in the world—and in an instant it pierced the space between Shirone's brows.
Stop.
The Break that had been about to cleave Shirone froze in space, and Seongeum's eyes trembled in shock.
"He stopped time."
A magic called Stop.
If the ether-wave was the spatial pinnacle among scale magics, Stop was the apex of the time series.
"Is that how you interpreted it?"
Nane was the only one calm faced with such supreme magic.
"Then how will you answer this question?"
On Nane's left, the coldest concept, and on his right, the hottest concept, sprang forth as dozens of swords.
Doctrinal antithesis.
Sand froze solid along the swords' paths while flames roared up on the opposite side.
Origin.
Yahweh's light, containing all the universe's information, expanded along the Spirit Zone and two small spheres of light rose in his hands.
Mental manifestation—spherification.
Shirone, who sensed super-cognition, controlled phenomena like matter, and those concepts manifested through spheres, the universe's basic form.
"I'll spin it from the start of cause and effect."
As the two Yahweh spheres combined and began to rotate at tremendous speed, the concept of taiji set the world spinning.
"Urrrrgh!"
Heat and cold mixed, and for a moment a horrific event that violated the laws of the universe seemed to occur—then it instantly unraveled into nothingness.
Kido's mouth hung open.
"What kind of fight is that supposed to be?"
No one could answer because it was a clash of concepts that transcended phenomena.
Nane had no choice but to admit that the kar realm converging on absolute zero was equal to his own.
The sword etched on Nane's tongue lost its light.
"…I can't force this through here."
It looked like it would be a distant, drawn-out battle.