Confrontation (1)
"Nice cut."
Even with blood pouring from her throat, Yujeong simply stared at Balkan.
"I—!"
Wind hissed out of the hole in her neck, and her words could not be heard.
"What was that?"
Balkan frowned, but even he—normally the voice of reason—couldn't deny what he saw.
Havitz's gaze sank into an abyss.
"If you want to go to Hell, I'll send you." Havitz said it flatly. Yujeong kept mouthing words driven by feeling, but no sound came from her moving lips.
And then, at some moment—
What is this?
Her wild senses picked up a wrongness.
Something felt off.
Even though nothing had changed, a foreboding filled her head.
This is definitely... the smell of death.
I'm dying now. But how?
The enemies were still far away; nothing near her could have caused this.
"Go on then."
Havitz leaned in, mocking.
"You're still just a monkey."
"Who called me a monkey?"
Yujeong turned her head slowly and locked eyes with Havitz.
Her irises glowed a golden yellow.
Golden, fiery eyes—the Huo-Yan Jinjing, the truth-seeing gaze that ran in Sun Wukong's bloodline.
Meeting Yujeong's gaze, Havitz murmured, "Do you see spirits?"
"My body—"
The Idea's signal reconnected to Yujeong, and the cut in her throat ceased to be severed.
"What are you doing?!"
She spun like a whirlwind and slammed the Ruyi staff through the air; a red afterimage struck Havitz's temple.
Kwaaaaang!
A shockwave spread into a violent storm, and Balkan snapped back to his senses.
"Havitz!"
As the smoke rising from the ground cleared, Yujeong stumbled forward clutching her neck.
"You're annoying."
More than the wound, what pissed her off was that she hadn't felt the staff touch anything she should have hit.
Phew!
Her vision fully cleared and she saw Havitz standing unsteadily behind her.
Around him, twelve black traces formed a ring like shadows.
Balkan let out a relieved breath.
'Siok can't be broken,' he thought.
But the mere fact that Havitz had noticed her made Yujeong dangerous enough.
"You use strange sorcery," Havitz said.
Blood oozed between Yujeong's fingers as she glanced between the hellish army and Havitz.
Damn archangel.
No wonder Ikael had so readily handed her to Satan.
'Even if we'd tried to stop it, it would've happened anyway.'
Havitz sniffed and moved closer.
"Why resist? Didn't you say you wanted to meet a friend? If you die, you'll go to Hell."
"Hmph! Why would I die? I'll beat you senseless and drag Mortasinger back."
Havitz raised his index and middle fingers.
"There are two ways." The hell army stirred.
Havitz negotiating...?
For Satan to show his hand meant the Huo-Yan Jinjing was that threatening.
"Contract and sin. If you make a pact with Satan, you can go to Hell in a living body."
That was Mortasinger's case.
"And sin is following my path. If you desire it enough, I'll escort you to Hell."
Yujeong hated long explanations, but Havitz's words were slippery.
"If you can take me there, then just take me. Why should I trust you?"
Balkan thought the same.
'I never gave the Otherworld much thought, but I can't anymore.'
This had ceased to be a war of humans alone.
"What do you think Hell is?" Havitz asked; there was no answer.
"A place for evildoers? Where all the world's wickedness flows and suffers forever?"
Havitz's mouth twitched.
Nonsense.
Good and evil are human constructs.
"What God wants isn't that. Of course—God wouldn't concern himself with such things."
Balkan asked, "Then what does God want?"
"A perfect world."
Havitz's violet avatar rose like wildfire.
"It's why God made me."
Yujeong leaped back and twelve black shadows bloomed where she stood.
Siok.
The world went gray...
Time stopped.
Twelve priests in black robes rose from the ground and sang a funeral march.
Aaaaaaaa!
The music was vast enough to make the world wail, but only Yujeong could hear it.
Ugh!
The ground sagged like a swamp, and her body began sinking slowly downward.
"I'll send you—to Hell." Havitz struck out with the Ruyi staff in every direction, but trapped within Siok she was powerless.
"What the hell is this! That's not what you said!"
She felt it matched neither the pact nor the sin Havitz had offered.
"I told you."
Havitz strolled through the gray landscape and said, "You yourself are evil."
You corrupt God's perfection.
Aaaaaaah!
With her golden eyes flaring, Yujeong sank past her torso to below her chin.
Some point in Omega—
This place...
Countless years had passed since the Gaians resolved to transcend Infinity.
Most of those who'd joined them back then had died of old age; only a few remained now...
Hell.
Only McClain Geffin was left.
"Ah, it's hot."
In the furnace-hell engulfed by flames, Geffin sat cross-legged and felt the pain.
When can I get out?
A voice echoed from the flame-covered ceiling.
"Time remaining until purification: 664 gyeong, 3,943 jo, 302 eok, 3,924 man, and 68 hours."
By the photon-realm's standard.
"I see."
Shirone watched Geffin with a bitter expression.
Even if this whole process finished, almost no time would have passed in reality.
A 0.666-second interval outside the Law.
In the end, the time prison was a blank necessary to keep this world's signal functioning normally.
This Law was never meant for us.
The world Shirone lived in was instantiated by combining a specific signal with a quantum signal called the mind.
Hell was nothing but the information dump that processed that quantum signal.
Because there's that 0.666-second gap, the external signal transmits stably; because Hell exists, minds don't run wild.
The world is perfect.
Is the creator smiling?
The chilling question brushed Shirone's thoughts.
Is the person who made this world pleased as they watch such a Hell, thinking, "Behold, I made this"?
"That I don't know."
Geffin muttered, but Shirone felt as if he'd answered her directly.
According to Omega's records, it was merely a coincidence.
"So let's go see."
It would be rather dull, though.
Kiaaaa!
Severed-headed fiends scuttled up the cliff, long arms reaching over the edge.
"Eat! Eat!"
The denizens of the Otherworld inflicted pain-based acts on those who entered Hell.
That's their nature. In reality, the mind used here becomes drimo, while emotions flow into the Otherworld and are decomposed into a purer state.
For recycling information.
It had always been that system.
Not bad.
As Geffin rose, sparks fell from his gold-heated hair.
"I'll eat you!"
As the fiends lunged, Yahweh's radiance flared from Geffin's body.
Kreeaaah!
The fiends' bodies swallowed by light turned to dust, and even the flames were wholly quelled.
Shirone admired it.
Infinite Mage.
Even before the concept of magic took shape, Gaians could command phenomena.
But only Geffin had reached the Yahweh level through endless cycles of reincarnation.
He'd become special—a heretic.
Any phenomenon that broke the world's balance could be dragged into Hell.
Thinking of comrades who'd already left the world behind, Geffin gladly surrendered himself to the pain.
"I will lead."
This was the first step that would later bring Geffin to face Anke Ra as a representative of the Gaians.
Yujeong, being pulled into Hell, bared her teeth and thrashed.
Kiaa! Kiaaaa! The fierce cries of the monkey were drowned by Siok's funeral march, but, surprisingly, her upper body began to come back out.
Oh.
Havitz's pupils trembled slightly.
She's getting out?
Once you enter Hell, you can't return until the purification time ends.
Yujeong knew that instinctively and fought with everything she had.
"You bastard! I'll kill you! Do you know who I am?!"
A great-granddaughter of Sun Wukong.
Her golden eyes flared as if ready to explode; her body began to glow red-hot.
"If I set my mind to it, I'm a stone monkey that can beat Buddha!"
She'd realized an avatar and reached a living-beast state, but her Idea was inorganic.
It couldn't be destroyed by any physical force, and there was effectively no limit to the energy it could emit.
Kiaaaa!
Her ancestral object, the Ruyi, stretched out horizontally along the border between reality and Hell.
Move! Move!
As her body burned white, Siok's funeral march swelled even larger.
A tremor suddenly shook the ground and Yujeong threw her head back with a scream.
Shut uuuuuup!
The Ruyi spun between reality and the Otherworld, and the ground heaved like a tidal wave.
W-what is this?
The temple buildings shook.
Iruki, who had been reviewing strategy in the command room, looked up at the ceiling in alarm.
"Cracks are forming! Evacuate!"
As Aromi shouted to Iruki, the door burst open and a herald rushed in.
"Commander! Urgent report!"
"What happened?"
They had thought they could annihilate the demon forces within forty-eight hours.
Whether it was good or bad, the mere existence of a variable made their hearts race.
"The Homeland Defense Department has detected a seismic event. The epicenter is the Abyssal Cliff; magnitude 12.4."
"What!"
Iruki slammed his fist on the table and stood.
"What do you mean? The Abyssal Cliff is a subduction zone... no, that's not the point."
Magnitude 12.4?
Iruki pictured the devastation such a quake would bring.
It would tear the earth apart.
At first he tried to reason it as geography, but now he prayed it was only a natural calamity.
Yes—natural. It's absurd to think any will could wield such power.
No analyst he knew could account for that level of destruction.
"Commander."
Seeing Aromi's eyes, Iruki steadied himself and bit his lip.
Right. It can't be a natural disaster.
That ominous feeling that had clung to his mind had become reality.
The officer asked, "Commander, what should we do now?"
"First, assess the damage at the Abyssal Cliff—"
Iruki stopped and shook his head.
There was no need to confirm; the demons' movement must already be crippled by the collapse.
We have to push forward regardless. Having lost the optimal site to detonate the elemental bomb, Iruki scanned the world map.
"The second site to execute the operation is..."
Iruki's hand trembled as he pointed with the command baton.
"The capital of Tormia, Bashka."
A great city where over half the kingdom's population lived.