The New Humanity (3)
A sealed room.
In a private space he hadn't even revealed to his close aides, Fermi opened the crate the Parrot Mercenary Corps had excavated.
Inside were memos still caked with soil and fragments of metal whose purpose he could not discern.
The future from the past.
"The memory chips will take time to restore."
Buried for ages, the hardware itself was badly damaged.
Fermi set the chips down.
"Careful, careful."
Full restoration would be difficult, but even one recovered word could be priceless.
He picked up a scrap of paper with tweezers and held it to the desk lamp.
Someone's diary.
"Let's see."
Or perhaps a final entry scrawled in despair before death.
"New Humanity?"
Fermi stored that word in his mind and used the tweezers to unfold the paper, which had been folded twice.
It was an official document, torn in half as if discarded, stamped and written in Eastern characters.
"Politicians, huh… no matter how the world ends, they won't hand information over to other nations. Such missionary zeal."
He decoded the characters with flexible logic.
"Second Beast. Number of the Beast 666. Three-stage filter leading to the apocalypse. Possibility of Argones going berserk."
Fermi set the document down and propped his chin on his hand.
"As expected, the end can't be avoided. Once human thought reaches a singularity, it can't ignore the outside world."
That singularity was divided into three filters.
"Stage one is awareness of the outside world. Stage two is contact with physical evidence of the outside world. And stage three… departure from the photon realm."
By Fermi's estimate, humanity was only just passing through the second filter.
"The beginning of that is the New Humanity."
More excavation would be necessary for details, but it was clearly linked to the outside world.
"If they reach stage three, the world ends somehow. But 'somehow' is… vague."
He thought an apocalypse would be as hard to bring about as the integration of humanity into Ultima.
"It's very difficult for any event to swing to an extreme. Besides… Geffin had already left the photon realm, hadn't he?"
"Hmm."
Fermi tapped the tweezers on the desk.
"Leaving the photon realm doesn't necessarily mean entering the outside world."
He tried to plug the gap in his reasoning.
"Or… the 'outside world' might be an entirely different concept from what Geffin or we imagine."
You can't defend against what you don't know.
"A perfect apocalypse? Coercion that transcends causality? Does this world's system even permit that?"
When Nane actually tried to close the world, didn't Shirone intervene?
"That's the rule. In a world like this, extremes demand counter-extremes." So the apocalypse would be something beyond the world.
"Impossible to picture. Beyond brain function—something our minds can't process."
What form would it take?
"The end of numbers."
No matter how alien the form, it would ultimately reduce to numbers.
The tweezers clicked onto the desk and Fermi's gaze fixed on one of the memos.
"Second Beast."
A being born first to greet the First Beast, and to destroy the world.
"Where is it?"
Shirone would be there.
Fermi examined the seal stamped on the torn section of the document with his tweezers.
"Bukjeon."
Borbor and Tanzura had passed safely through Bukjeon's gates and entered the brewery.
A white-robed scholar with swords at his hips bowed his head.
"You've come."
It was Tanzura's satellite, Daeho.
"Where's Mika?" As the tent inside was drawn back, a hunched old man emerged carrying a jar.
He checked the stars and spoke.
"A large portion of the residents have already been replaced by the New Humanity. Even the owner of this brewery is one."
Mika, Borbor's satellite, was an electromagnetic lifeform that could parasitize other bodies.
It had no emotions to begin with, so Borbor treated Mika with indifference.
"What's the mechanism?"
"It mutates surrounding organisms through psychic radiation. It's similar to techniques used by the Odaeseong. A tainted mind twists nearby life into monsters."
"Dangerous. I was complacent, thinking we only had to close the regions where the demonic realm opened."
"Mutations are unpredictable. And this one can control minds. It can induce precisely the changes it wants."
Tanzura's face contorted.
"A power that mutates living things. Serious. If we can't eliminate it in Bukjeon, the whole continent could be overturned."
Borbor agreed.
"Where's the leader of the New Humanity now?" Daeho asked.
"We scanned the city's strongpoints with Mika, but no one knows the exact location. He's likely beside Governor Hwanggak of Bukjeon. Or he might be Hwanggak himself."
"Very well. We'll meet the governor and verify."
Mika asked, "What about the host bodies?"
"Kill them."
At the order, Mika raised an arm and pierced its own chest.
Moments later, the electric body that slipped from the corpse flowed along the current and seeped into Borbor.
- I have taken control of the brain. Shall I do the thinking?
"No. Process any external signals coming in. Report any unusual mutants."
- Understood.
The two Stars and the two satellites left the brewery and headed straight for the inner gate.
Mika, silent until then, injected a powerful signal into Borbor's mind.
- They are not human.
Their outward forms matched people, but the soldiers' eyes showed no emotion.
"What's going on?" Tanzura said, watching the spears pointed at them.
"We come to meet Governor Hwanggak. If you admit us peacefully, we are willing to negotiate."
As the words ended, a powerful aura began to flow from the soldiers' bodies.
- Stand back. Analysis impossible.
Mika encountered a qualitatively different pressure than any organism it had parasitized before.
Borbor looked up.
If the intensity of mutation strengthened at close range… the leader of the New Humanity must be inside the castle.
He didn't know the full extent of the psychic radiation, but even a Star of the Ivory Tower wouldn't be exempt.
"Heh heh! You things that aren't human sure put on a show. What now?"
Borbor decided.
"Break through."
At once the soldiers' skin split, revealing forms like a blend of human and locust.
"Kieee!"
A shriek issued from the gaping jaws, and Tanzura swallowed, eyes lighting up.
"Interesting."
"Charge!"
As Daeho shouted, a swarm of locusts filled the sky above the ramparts.
Crunching filled the air.
At Governor Hwanggak's corpse, a seventeen-year-old girl tore and devoured an arm.
Her face looked innocently pure, as if unaware of darkness, but her pupils were not human.
"Tastes good."
She ripped through muscle with a wet snap and exposed bone.
"Piri-nim."
That name was not given by parents.
Evolved into a New Human, she had given herself a name meaning a deviation from reason.
"Bardvelb, any more like this? Meat from strong humans. I want to keep eating."
At the end of Piri's gaze stood a colossal locust-man over two meters tall.
Wings hidden beneath a carapace fluttered, and a scorpion-like tail arched higher than its crown.
"This is no time for feasting. Very powerful beings have arrived outside the gate."
Piri's face shone with joy.
"Really? More tasty meat? What are you waiting for—go catch them already."
"Aren't you staying too long? We should wipe this city and leave soon."
"Ha ha! It's fine. We're strong. You know that, right? No one in this world can beat us."
It wasn't a lie.
They hadn't fought all of humanity, but they knew themselves accurately.
That power, that intelligence—
"Have we become gods…?"
Piri reached out.
"More. Meat."
The locust's eyes watched, then it spread its wings and turned toward the window.
"I'll bring it at once."
The locust-people filling the inner gate surrounded Tanzura, trembling.
"Kik! Kik!"
They couldn't move because Tanzura had already passed sentence.
"For sowing unrest across the land: six hundred years' imprisonment! For causing severe mental harm to innocent residents: nine hundred and eighty-seven years!" The moment the verdict was pronounced, the Law's binding force clamped onto the locust-people.
"Therefore, combining all convictions—" Tanzura tore at his mouth.
"Death."
At the same instant, Daeho flew like the wind and swung twin blades in both hands.
'Cleansing Blade.'
Like a pair of shears cutting a scene, locust faces were sliced off in chunks.
"Heh heh! Another exemplary punishment today." The Cutting power of the Cleansing Blade, using the Law as a lever, was theoretically limitless. Tanzura stroked his beard with satisfaction.
'It's the same principle as moving a planet with an infinitely long pole and fulcrum.'
Because of that, even in a "detained" state it could still inflict physical damage.
Borbor approached.
"Don't let your guard down. This alone won't topple the northern pass of the Azure Dragon Range."
Daeho sheathed his sword.
"These are Bukjeon mutates. Are they qualitatively different from the mutates of the Azure Dragon Range?"
Before anyone could answer, the gate opened.
When he saw a being that didn't feel human move with the elegance of a person—
- Flee.
Mika warned, but Borbor could not move.
'If I move, I die.'
A grotesque, convincing terror wrapped around the locust-people.
'Strong? So we can't win? No, it's not that kind of thing.'
He couldn't explain it.
Even without seeing all the universe, it felt impossible.
'What's wrong? The aura of form? The grotesqueness of evolution? No, those are all imaginable.'
The only thing he couldn't imagine was—
'Numbers.'
When the information composing it was expressed mathematically, the magnitude difference was glaring.
'It uses numbers different from ours.' Numbers that didn't exist anywhere in the universe.
His thought reached Mika, and as fast as electricity a decision came.
"Flee!"
Tanzura and Daeho abandoned their posts, and Borbor charged forward.
'I don't care if I die… the one thing to avoid is everyone here being wiped out so the Ivory Tower can't be notified.'
- I will do it.
When Mika was handed control of Borbor's brain, Borbor's body bent like rubber.
As limbs whipped out like whips to wrap around the locust-people—
- Unrecognizable.
The enemy's form evaporated and a powerful blow struck the back of Borbor's neck.
"Gah!"
Mika reported.
- Eighty-nine percent of brain function has been paralyzed. He's entering a coma for the time being.
"No." Hold them off as long as possible.
- Refused.
A locust-man hoisted the unconscious Borbor on its hip and looked toward the gate.
"Shall we pursue?"
It hesitated, then pictured Piri waiting, hungry, neck ready to be torn.
"We'll eat them alive. It's tastier that way."
The inner gate shut.
Tanzura's eyes flared red.
"Aaaargh! Damn it!"
He fled in a frenzy, but in his mind he tore the locust-people to pieces a thousand times over.
"Hold position. Report first."
When Daeho's Cleansing Blade split the outer gate, the open plain came into view.
"Wuh—?"
Tanzura's eyebrows twitched and both men abruptly stopped.
"Odaeseong-nim?"
Shirone was walking up with two Apostles.