Singularity (4)
While evacuating people through the capital, Rian suddenly felt a shift.
At some point the number of demons had begun to dwindle, and now there wasn't a trace of them left.
"What's going on?"
"A temporary truce, for now."
An old man leaning on a cane stepped out from a side alley.
He was slight and gaunt, cheekbones jutting, skin pulled tight over his face and crisscrossed with wrinkles. His hands, gripping the cane as if ready to hold a funeral tomorrow, trembled, but Rian kept his distance.
"Who are you?"
He was a demon, and his magic ranked among the few that stood out even in the battles so far.
"Are you asking my name? Call me Gaitan."
Gaitan, commander of the Hell Army's Tenth Legion — in the demon world a scourge, in the otherworld the ruler of filthy pests.
"So you're a legion commander."
"Something like that."
Gaitan peered past the air, propped on his cane.
"Seems your lord made a pact with another commander. The demons won't be attacking for a while."
Rian lowered his sword.
"What do you want?"
"You heard I cut down the demon lord Argantis, didn't you? I have something to ask you."
Gaitan fixed his gaze on Rian.
"What do you think lies at the end of the world?"
"I don't know."
Rian lived in the moment.
"Demons are different from living things. They're like a system error. I don't know why beings like us are needed. Maybe we weren't born out of necessity at all."
"If you and your kind torment anything other than yourselves, you have no right to exist."
A crooked smile tugged at Gaitan's mouth.
"I intend to open the demon realm."
"If you open the demon realm you'll never return to what you were. I'm not afraid of death. What truly terrifies is emptiness. Humans don't seem to understand that."
"Is that a threat?"
Gaitan shook his head.
"No. Consider it a request. I hear your swordsmanship can cut even the meaning of things."
He spoke of cutting information itself.
"Won't you cut open my realm for me? I have absorbed all the wisdom of this world. Therefore I fear nothing. All that remains is the sole unknown — what lies beyond emptiness."
Rian's hand tightened on the Great Straight Sword.
Danger flared.
The safest course was to cut him down before he could open the demon realm.
"You call it a request, but I suppose I can't leave it be. Fine, call it another of my pieces of wisdom."
No sooner had the words left him than Rian twisted at the waist and swung the Great Straight Sword.
In a single stroke Gaitan's head was severed, and the buildings behind him were sliced clean through with a thunderous roar.
Gaitan's head tumbled across the ground and, upside down, still spoke.
"What on earth is there…?"
Gaitan's eyes went blank white.
"You lock us in this stifling illusion?"
The demon realm — Palaphinas.
Gaitan's face corroded, collapsing into a cloud of black specks. His body blackened as if charred, then dissolved into smoke that expanded across hundreds of meters.
"Ugh!"
It wasn't smoke.
Whine! Whine! Whine! Whine!
They looked like flies, but the way they latched onto Rian and drew blood had the bite of snakes.
"Aaaah!"
Although the arc of the Great Straight Sword had opened the view, countless insect-forms were already swarming over the capital.
"Damn it!"
This was a different kind of aggravation from Argantis.
? * ?
"Ozent Gai."
As Rian's eldest brother, the name sent a tremor through Shirone. But the man he had met earlier had already been swallowed by madness; Shirone did not soften his cold gaze.
"What's this? Are they—lovers?" Gai chuckled, slinging his sword across his shoulder at the strange sight of a legion commander and Shirone together.
"I hear you have authority over Siok."
Gai glanced at Merania.
"Hmm."
He didn't know the circumstances. But from Merania's unmoving silence, Gai read what he needed to do.
"Right, you do. So?"
"Call Siok."
"Why would I do that?"
Shirone ground his teeth.
"You know. A human fell into hell. You must save her."
Hoping for a sliver of humanity from Rian's brother, Shirone appealed to his emotions.
"A woman who sealed her Spiritual Authority? I've heard of her. But aren't you asking the wrong person? Do you really think I'll release an enemy who weakened our forces?"
"You're… human too."
Shirone's eyes flared fiercely.
"Why side with the demons? Rian is fighting to save humans even now! Why are you—"
"Shut up."
Gai cut him off.
"What, you resort to family sentiment? Poor Rian, to have someone like you as kin."
"You could die."
At last Shirone's killing intent was freed.
"Ha! Of course you could die—this is war. Fine, I'll tell you how. If you can kill me, or at least drive me to the brink of death…"
Gai leveled his sheathed sword at Shirone.
"Siok will appear."
'Rian, sorry.'
Shirone closed his eyes.
'I might even end up hurting you.'
No sooner had the thought finished than dozens of photon cannons fired at Gai.
KRAAARRR!
The room was shattered in an instant, and Shirone teleported beyond the castle walls.
Gai, already launched into the air, drew his sword and spread his arms.
"You do have learning ability."
Striking first at a swordsman had been sensible.
"But a little weak!"
Shirone hadn't witnessed Gai's fights directly, but he knew how many demons had died after Gai's arrival.
Two hundred million in a single night. That was not the work of ordinary magic. A woman had sacrificed herself for the world; the price was an eternity in a helllike void, a timeless purgatory.
'He must be furious.'
Gai also guessed that Rian held the key to saving her. So why, despite the fury that would have made him abandon everything he'd built, was he unable to kill...?
'What a good man.'
Because he was Rian's brother.
"Ha."
Rian had every reason to take a knight's vow to Shirone, and that thought kindled his anger.
"Fools!"
As he fell toward the ground, Gai twisted and unleashed a powerful single slash.
'This is…!'
Shirone's eyes widened at the spectacle tearing the landscape apart.
KRAAAANG!
The castle's spire was ripped away and Merania, holding her ground, was hurled into the air.
"Is it starting?"
A streak of light curved like a torrent and chased Gai at terrifying speed.
"Ha ha! Surprised?"
Gai hit the ground and swung his sword with such velocity the air itself warped.
'That's Rian's technique.'
The sword's edge was about to take his throat when space warped and Shirone's body vanished.
"A teleport?"
With a screech like metal being torn, a streak of light laced the sky like a net.
"Not a bad idea, but…"
Had he not abandoned the Yahweh realm, he would have manipulated time through incarnation technique.
"That's as far as you go."
The ground where he stood detonated and Gai moved with horrific speed.
He closed the wide radius of Shirone's teleport in an instant, and a brutal shockwave followed.
KRRRRRR!
Watching the capital's buildings collapse from the sky, Merania frowned.
"What is he doing?"
A single photon cannon blast should have been enough to obliterate a block, but the power wasn't manifesting as expected.
'He doesn't want to kill him.'
Merania reached that thought and tears gathered on her sad face.
"Look."
Hadn't he already spared two hundred million demons?
"You always hate only us."
"Ha ha ha! Is that all?"
Gai raised his sword and struck; a mountain of shockwave rose and slammed into Shirone.
"Graaah!"
Shirone, defending desperately, teleported and landed five hundred meters away.
"Too slow!"
Gai was already upon him.
'Get a grip.'
To draw out Siok, he had to at least drive Gai to the brink of death.
'I have no choice!'
A photon cannon packed with blinding acceleration hummed in Shirone's palm.
The moment the flare left his hand, Gai felt time slow for the first time.
Could he evade…?
The friction of particles ignited a massive explosion; Shirone squeezed his eyes shut.
In the last sight before he blinked, the blast seemed to swallow Gai's body.
If Siok had activated, that could not have happened.
"Heh heh."
A laugh came from the haze; Shirone hurriedly opened his eyes.
Gai, armor ragged, advanced with a mad smile.
"No way…"
Watching his severed left arm slowly regenerate, a thought flashed through Shirone's head.
"Right, you can't kill me that way. But can you? It'll be pretty hard."
The Idean realm was something Rian understood.
"I'm not trying to kill you."
Shirone's expression shifted.
"I made a mistake."
Hundreds of spheres rose around Shirone, poised to burst outward.
Gai's face paled as photon cannons all sprang forth and struck him.
BWOOOOOM!
The central radius of the capital collapsed, and Merania's eyes sharpened.
"That's it! That's it!" If he poured out everything until he had nothing left, victory would swing back toward the demons.
"Ha ha ha! Not happening!"
Even as the ground crumbled, Gai endlessly reconstructed information and pressed Shirone onward.
Finally his sword pierced Shirone's solar plexus.
"Ugh!"
The cold steel cutting through flesh was an unbearably awful sensation.
"A pity."
Beating a half-mage who had lost Banya's power brought him little joy.
"If it had been incarnation technique, it would've been a good fight."
Then the weight on Gai's blade vanished.
"Huh?"
Gai looked down — the area around the wound where his blade had pierced bloomed with white light.
'What is—?'
When Shirone glanced frantically again, his pupils were gone; his entire body had become light.
"Argh!"
Even as Gai drew his sword free and staggered back, there was no resistance at all from Shirone's body.
What had happened…?
Gai's face drained of color and his head lifted toward the heavens.
"What on earth is that?"
A colossal incarnation loomed over Gai.
Nane spoke.
"What is rooted in the heart cannot be destroyed. Therefore love is the antithesis of emptiness."
Shura listened.
"Conversely, what can be destroyed has no heart. Then what is a Buddha?"
Nane raised a finger.
"The one who steps on love to attain emptiness — the one who destroys what they love most — that is a Buddha."
That would be true emptiness.
"But Shirone…"
"He walked a path opposite to mine. Yet nothing is easy."
Nane gave a sad smile.
"How can one who realizes futility then truly love?"
That, perhaps, would be true love.