Tomb of the Gods (4)
Imir's mind.
After reaching Deep Layer Level 5, Shirone and his party could not descend any deeper for a full seven days.
"This is maddening."
Arius grew anxious.
As they expected, Level 5 of the Deep Layer was an extremely rational environment, but the problem was its complete lack of differentiation.
"Hello, Shirone." A resident—like a wooden doll with a white egg balanced on its head—bowed.
Another figure, identical to the first, greeted them from a different street.
"Hello, Shirone."
Shirone walked past without answering.
'I don't know who they are.'
The residents had no names, ages, or genders, and the surrounding scenery was equally blank.
The world was nothing but simple shapes—circles, triangles, squares—scattered about.
"This is creepy." Miro couldn't help frowning.
What they saw now was exactly how Imir viewed the world.
"No matter how you slice it, does it make sense that every resident is the same? There should be at least someone memorable, right?"
Sein said.
"From what I can see, there isn't. They don't even notice the background. The world we fight so hard in—could it really be so simple to Imir?"
"They did call it the gods' tomb." Shirone said.
"At least that means Imir acknowledged them. So it's not that there's no memorable being at all. There should at least be Rian."
Miro grabbed a passing resident and shouted, "Hey! Where's Imir?"
Calling out your own name in the mental world was taboo, but the resident didn't seem to care.
"Hello, Shirone…!"
Miro's fist passed through the resident's face.
Sein exhaled; it was only a mental construct, and honestly he felt relieved inside.
When Miro withdrew her fist, the resident staggered like a puppet with severed strings and collapsed.
"You know what's annoying? We just smashed this guy, but we've met him three thousand times."
No one could prove it, but Miro's complaint had a point—nothing here could be verified.
"Wipe them all out. If we at least cut the numbers, our chances of finding something new go up."
Shirone said.
"We already wiped out a whole city—remember what Gaold did."
They had tried everything available in the world of Level 5.
Arius said, "The core issue is that no resident reacts to keywords about Imir. Maybe this world is ruled by something other than Imir."
"You used the names of every god Imir fought, didn't you? Even Shirone's Omega. You even tried this world's catchphrase—'Hello, Shirone.'"
Arius stopped dead.
"'Hello, Shirone'?" Miro's eyes widened.
"Are you sure?"
"No—this needs thought. Why do the residents greet Shirone but not respond to Gaold, who pierced the nightmare?"
Shirone said, "I thought it might be linked to the Ultima system. But we tried so many things and got nothing."
"Of course. What I want to say is, although it looks like a ritual, this place is, strictly speaking, the unconscious. It doesn't trigger by spotting specific keywords like the surface does. That's the fatal flaw."
Miro said.
"So you were wrong?"
"I'll admit failure…but calling it 'wrong' hurts a specialist's pride. You can't mistake what you don't know. This kind of Deep Layer is new to me."
"All right. Keep talking."
"If this were the surface, we could explain the residents' lack of individuality as simply Imir's perspective. But the unconscious has many things layered together."
"Aha."
Arius spread his arms. "In the end, it's everything. They—all of them—this world itself is the keyword."
They understood.
"But knowing that doesn't change anything. We still tried everything, didn't we?"
"Perhaps..."
Arius paused, then finally spoke. "There's something we haven't tried."
Shirone asked, "What's that?"
"Reverse integration."
Arius raised a finger. "The residents are Imir's viewpoint, yes, but they're also Gaians. The unification the nightmare mentioned. They're the simplest schema of Imir's idea of the Ultima system. And Shirone couldn't break that."
Watching the many busy residents, Shirone conceded. "I can't do it alone."
"Exactly. That's why there was no response. But what if Shirone integrated into them?"
Blending with those who wandered the streets without meaning or purpose.
Having honed his mental techniques to the limit, Shirone could move in a state of complete indifference.
"Maybe. The residents are unified, but they're just shells without minds."
Only the concept of integration remained.
"All right."
Shirone immediately cleared his mind, and Sein felt a chill.
"Perfect indifference. Right now Shirone exists only by the functions of mind and body."
Shirone said, "Then we'll begin."
His words were emotionless, like a machine.
When he walked toward the residents, they bowed and greeted him in unison.
"Hello, Shirone."
Listening without feeling, Shirone at one point spoke softly. "Hello, Shirone."
Every resident in the world froze.
Shirone's party watched anxiously as the world fell into a perfect, frozen stillness, as if time itself had stopped.
Arius said, "Imir's unconscious is reacting. Something is—"
At that moment, golden radiance surged from the residents' bodies toward the sky.
"An Idea?"
It was the massive hexa formed by the ten billion Gaians composing Imir.
A powerful voice thundered from above.
—One who does not belong to us, we deny your existence. Leave this world.
If this were reality, heaven and earth would have shaken; here, only Shirone's party suffered.
"Ugh!"
—Negation! Negation! Negation!
As the world undulated and slammed inward, Shirone's party was pushed back without end.
They snapped back to awareness, but had already been blown kilometers away. Miro deployed her incarnation.
"Thousand-Hand Kuan Yin."
The ever-growing incarnation of Thousand-Hand Kuan Yin brought its palms together.
A tremendous cracking roar echoed, but it was not enough to withstand the force defined by this world as a whole.
"Shirone! Break the Ultima!"
Shirone reacted mechanically and reclaimed his mind from the residents he'd been blended with.
'I negate the negation.'
Instantly the Ultima system split in two, and the explosion that erupted—
Was enough to devastate a world. The landscape radiated like thorns; structures shattered to dust and the residents screamed.
"Kieee! Kieee!"
Forms between human and puppet clutched their heads in agony, a sight that chilled the spine.
"It's awake! What do we do now?"
Shirone had already caught up to Miro's group, but residents were already saturating that area.
"Fight!"
Arius—weakest among them—took the center while the others formed a defensive ring.
Countless residents surged at them.
"Get out! Get out!"
A white-faced resident lunged, raising a crude spherical fist.
'How strong is it?'
Because it was Imir's mind, its power equaled what he felt toward the Gaians.
KRAAAANG!
Gaold's form blocked the blow squarely and was scattered by the shockwave.
"Gaold!"
Just as Kangnan tried to approach, Gaold—still clutching the spherical fist—revealed himself.
"I'm fine. This is bearable."
"Gods' tomb," Arius said. "This world is only the shell of Ultima. In the end, inside Imir's mind there's no being stronger than Imir himself."
After that, it was one battle after another.
Air Press pinned foes down; Hand of God smashed residents with its backhand.
"There are too many. This won't end like this."
Fatigue began to show on their faces. Ruber, who hadn't acted, spoke up.
"Let me."
He rose into the sky, spread his arms, and rings of light formed before each palm.
"Dream Machine."
Because they were inside the mental world, the dream manipulator could convert any dream into an object. But the farther from the REM realm, the lower the grade of objects he could summon.
'At Deep Layer Level 5, it should work.'
From just below the REM realm, Ruber summoned a small wooden box.
"The Butterfly of the Master."
Humble in appearance, if it were extracted into reality it would be an unrankable, dangerously powerful item.
"Awaken from the dream."
When he opened the box, every Gaian in this world began to dissolve into particles of light.
"What…what is that?"
The Butterfly of the Master is one of three dreams given special treatment in Drimo's bureau.
A kind of enlightenment.
If brought into reality, its effect would be to 'momentarily leave the photon plane.'
"Ugh!"
The shock of the summoning rattled Drimo, and the aftershock struck Ruber's incarnation directly.
Still, he did not close the box.
"It's not enough. A little more!"
The Butterfly of the Master strikes Imir's mind, not the residents. But even the unconscious of Level 5 made it impossible to deliver such a massive blow.
"Ruber! This is too dangerous!" Shirone shouted, but Ruber stood his ground with the box open as if resolved.
"Shirone! Look!"
Miro pointed to the sky; everyone turned.
The excited particles of light swirled and began to coalesce into a single point overhead.
A massive voice boomed.
—We negate.
Everyone crouched and covered their ears. Ruber screamed and fell.
"AAAAAA!"
The box closed of its own will despite his grip, and the pillar of light slammed into the ground like a drill.
KUUUUUUNG!
Feeling a vibration he'd never felt before in Level 5, Shirone scanned ahead.
"Huh?"
There stood McClain Gaffin—steel-like hair and a beastlike intensity.
"Gaffin?"
Shirone muttered, and the group looked back.
"What?"
"It's McClain Gaffin," Miro said, staring hard at Gaffin's face.
She couldn't say why, but her heart pounded as if remembering something.
'Is my mind remembering?'
"Focus."
Gaold cut in. "He's moving."
As Gaffin advanced slowly, a Miracle Stream rose and shot into the sky.
"Hand of God."
The colossal hand Shirone deployed was on an entirely different scale now, dominating the whole sky.
To be continued in the next volume.