[742] The Great Purifier (2)
* * *
The planet that Taeseong and Shirone looked down on was divided into five great continents.
At the top was the Arctic, where the Ivory Tower stood.
Below that lay a continent that contained more than half of the world's seventy nations.
That continent was split into north, central, south, and mid-east regions. In the north, the Tri-Imperial powers Kashan and the Gustaf Empire stood opposite each other, holding the west and east respectively.
The central continent, the most densely populated, contained twenty-one kingdoms, including Shirone's homeland, the Kingdom of Tormia.
The southern continent covered a broader territory than the central one, but its overall power lagged behind the central states.
Still, the Iron Kingdom at the southern tip was one of the Seven Kings—a strong state that represented the south.
Pharas, the sole kingdom on the mid-east continent, was also one of the Seven Kings, sharing control of the Akad Desert with Kashan.
Cross the sea from the mid-east and you reach the world's second-largest landmass, called the East.
In the north of the East stood the Tri-Imperial Jincheon Empire, and beneath it six kingdoms waged a fierce struggle for second place.
Beyond the island nations south of the East and across the equator lay the Southern lands, the homeland of Gangnan.
Fourteen kingdoms existed there, but their rule was weak; instead, thousands of tribes preserved their own customs and lived independently.
Finally, the coldest place on the planet: a mysterious Antarctic continent where no life could exist.
And now.
The great undertaking Anke Ra had set in motion when she opened the Great Purification Device was nearing its final moment.
The 3,600 altars installed across sixty-nine countries of the world—excluding the Corona Kingdom in the Arctic—were about to open.
* * *
The Iron Kingdom.
Once, the Parrot Mercenary Company led by Marsha had fallen into a band of thieves—an ugly wound in the kingdom's history.
But that was in the past.
After rescuing Shirone in the Under Code, Marsha activated her contract with Uorin. The company had since risen to S-rank and enjoyed special treatment in the Iron Kingdom.
"What on earth are they doing?" Freeman muttered, propping his chin as he stared down at the altar from the cliff.
He was no longer the second in skill, but he still served as Marsha's deputy commander.
A lean man named Jungki reported, "Our investigation found over a thousand altars worldwide, and more than two hundred just in the Iron Kingdom."
Many had only just been completed.
"Is that possible?" Freeman asked. A project of that scale—one that would take a kingdom at least a year—couldn't be built simultaneously everywhere. Even the earthworks to shave a mountain flat were beyond mere manpower.
"By magic… perhaps?" someone offered.
It was the closest answer, yet Freeman couldn't accept it outright.
"If it's a god, maybe." Marsha's pale face—her eyebrows seeming almost to have vanished—twitched. The members tightened their grips on their weapons.
"Shall we infiltrate?" they asked. It was an order she had given; even if a god resided there, they should investigate.
"We go in." At Freeman's command, the mercenaries dropped low like birds and dashed toward the cliff.
"Stop."
The voice was small, but the twenty soldiers—each with superhuman senses—halted without error.
"Commander." Clay Marsha, captain of the Parrot Mercenary Company, emerged from the trees with a pipe in her mouth.
"What's the sudden matter?" Freeman asked, but Marsha only narrowed her eyes and stared down at the altar.
"That was short-sighted. This is not something we can take on." Rumors from high society had driven the Iron Kingdom into an apocalyptic mood, but a mercenary company's value was ultimately measured in coin.
A soldier asked, "Commander, what do you mean? Is there anything in the world we can't handle?"
It was unusual for Marsha—the consummate planner—to abandon a mission midway.
"Urgent intelligence came in. The Iron Kingdom's special forces investigating altars in another region were annihilated."
"Annihilated?" Outside wars aside, it was extremely rare for a unit to be wiped out inside their own kingdom.
"Who could possibly—" Freeman began, but Marsha frowned and pointed down the cliff.
On the cleared path below, a stooped old man with a cane was walking toward the altar.
Freeman studied him, then looked back at Marsha. She was swallowing; the pale nape of her neck showed.
"Withdraw immediately."
"What's wrong?"
"There's no time to explain. That is not a human."
"If it's not human, then what is it?"
"I don't know." It was an honest appraisal. When Marsha had seen Miro's power in the Under Code, she'd thought no human could reach a deeper realm than that.
'But this…' This surpassed Miro.
She was certain because being near that gaunt old man felt as if all the world's scenery were being pulled into him.
'No matter how great Miro is…' he could not be heavier than that old man.
"An unwelcome guest has arrived." Number one of the Council of Ten: Beron.
When Amita Banya's glossy eyes turned to the cliff, the mercenaries understood at once.
'We're dead.'
There was no falsehood in Marsha's words.
"Run!" In an instant the Parrot Mercenary Company vanished from the cliff, and Beron clicked his tongue.
"You young folk have no guts these days." His cane struck the ground as he stepped forward. "How long will you keep leeching off old men's backs?"
When Beron reached the altar, he sat on the lowest tier and fanned himself with his hand.
"Why, I've lived a very long time." All the Council of Ten's elders had lived over ten thousand years, but no one knew the length of Beron's life.
'Why can't I go anywhere?' What remained of this world?
As Beron closed his mouth like a clam and fell into thought, a red light flared before him like a flame.
"Chairman." Seventh-ranked of the Council of Ten, Apostle Banya Shura, appeared. Her body was sinuous like a snake; when she dealt in falsehoods, her black eyes grew long and cold.
"The altar is ready to be opened."
"..." Beron said nothing.
"We built the altars as Anke Ra instructed, but even among the Immortals there is much talk." To become a god, Anke Ra had embraced others to save sentient beings.
"For Ra to become a god and make this world the only one—that was our desire. But now…" A vast emptiness rolled in. "Some will attain liberation, some will reincarnate, and now someone seeks to shut it all down."
To Beron, this world was everything.
"As always, we must seek meaning. For the Immortals, life's meaning is akin to the lives of mortals."
"And what meaning is there in Nane's merit?"
"...None." Beron rose, leaning on his cane. "So now I intend to make one." He climbed the altar steps and asked Shura, who followed, "What do you think of fate?"
"A delusion woven by the harmony of time… perhaps. Nothing defies causality."
Beron nodded. "The human mind is no more than grains of sand swept by the flow of time. Even if fish swim upstream, the ocean's current doesn't change."
Shura listened intently. "If you plant a seed in the present, a sprout will rise in the future. Humans mistake that for a great power…"
Beron paused halfway up the altar. "In truth, the moment you plant the seed the outcome is already decided. It's not changing anything. It simply flows that way."
We do not create the future; the already-made future crashes upon us.
"If human free will truly had any power to change something…" Beron turned his head before the summit. "Then rather than clinging to the illusion of changing the future, wouldn't you need the ability to destroy the future itself?"
A seed must be planted without any guarantee it will sprout.
"That is what it truly means to live into the future."
"Chairman." Even as an Apostle Banya, Shura could not grasp Amita's intent.
"If the master of this world decides to close it, then that is to be accepted." Beron looked up. "But it is still a matter of human will." Attachment to the present life—the Immortals. Perhaps this was the meaning he had embodied across ages.
"Jeong." Beron thought—the Amita incarnation technique: Steel Spike.
"Guhk!" Feeling the Law concentrate, Shura leapt from the top of the high altar and landed on the ground below.
'An incredible concentration of thought.' Beron's jaw trembled and a hoarse sound escaped him. "Gaaaaah!"
As the world's Laws twisted, they began to converge toward the apex where Beron drove his cane down. His will would be implanted here with a binding force strong enough to resist the waves of time.
—Foolish Amita. A vast voice echoed from the heavens. Clouds condensed and formed the likeness of Nane's face.
"Guhk!" When Shura activated Apostle Banya's incarnation, countless crosses formed a spherical shield.
Gestalt of Union—God's Strangulation.
Like seeing a meaningful shape in a blot on wallpaper, her Law assembled falsehoods into phenomena that approximated reality.
"It will never be destroyed! Not even Miro could break it!" Even if this were the Under Code, where her powers were specialized.
—Do not be afraid. Dharma—Jin. From Nane's brow, a white blade like a sheet of paper plunged into the God's Strangulation at lightning speed.
"What—!" The meticulously assembled crosses separated as if by a chemical reaction, and Shura's face was laid bare.
'This is Nane.' She was the one who had swallowed Anke Ra's dream to approach the universe's righteousness—the nemesis of Shura.
"Ahhh…" Shura fell hard and shuddered; Nane's gaze shifted to Beron.
There was no visible sign, yet the Steel Spike had already been completed and hammered into spacetime.
—Do you think I cannot break you? Beron's eyes, fixed on the sky, held both pride and awe. "It may be your world, but even you cannot deny the existence of just one of me." Nane's Kar score was not perfect.
—One day it will be swept away. No matter how many resets it could endure, the law of things dictated that it would eventually fall to the waves of time.
Only Hexa could withstand it.
"Then accept it. I merely wish to know—was the human spirit always so insignificant?" It was Beron's last question to the world. "Even if everything returns to nothing and no record remains, the Immortal's life is to fight until the end."
Shura suddenly realized. 'So before the altars open…' He had driven the Steel Spike into the only point where reversal remained possible, creating an immutable anchor.
'Even if hundreds of futures are mixed together, the beginning is always here.' Shirone's Nane at one-tenth of a percent—Beron had pierced that acute gap precisely.
Perhaps nothing had yet been decided, Shura thought, as the idea brushed through her mind.