Trigger (1)
"Life is fundamentally painful. It hands you an instruction manual you don't understand and tells you to read the whole thing. Skip through it and you lose context, and then it only gets harder. The problem is, unless you read it from the very beginning, there's no chance it will ever get better. Look outside. Only children and fools laugh and run. Anyone with sense furrows their brow and turns the pages. How do you understand more? Simple. Buy a revolver and load exactly one bullet into the cylinder. Then, when you're fed up with everything, put the muzzle to your temple and pull the trigger. The odds your head will actually blow off are low, but if you just get a click—if it misfires—then even the crappiest writing will be bearable next time. Yes. The content doesn't change. What changes is me. What I'm saying is, those people don't care if their heads get blown off. They just pull. Click! Clack! Click! Their understanding of the world is on another level. I tried a couple of times myself, but my legs went numb and I couldn't do it again. Don't try to understand. Leave it alone. If you pull the trigger like those lunatics among them…"
"Oh my, how cute."
People in the casino watched the Wizard blocking the entrance with fascinated curiosity.
"She's alone—do you think she's all right?"
Money buys you adult treatment in a casino, but she looked far too young.
"Should we go ask?"
Everyone buzzed with curiosity, but no one actually moved.
The guards were the same.
'Weird.'
One guard shoved his hand in his pocket, cocked his head, and just watched.
'No—the weird part is that it doesn't feel weird.'
Even if a prince wandered in, their duty was to escort a seven-year-old out. But right now no one felt like doing that.
It was as if a mountain stood before them and they couldn't bring themselves to move it.
'Why?'
There was an absolute imperative to it. It felt like Havitz's Vanishing turned inside out.
'I finally found you, Havitz.'
From the moment she appeared, the casino's sense of reality seemed to slip.
Only the Wizard remained vivid; Havitz—still mostly outside perception—split his mouth into a grin.
"Krkrkr, is that so?"
'Is she really okay?'
Ashur glanced back at the casino one last time before leaving Jaive.
Only ten minutes earlier the Wizard had been a seven-year-old child.
"I'm worried about Amy unnie. And Ikael as well. Can't we go back now?"
Her pout and quivering voice unsettled Ashur, but—
"Hm?"
Her temperament changed in an instant.
"What's wrong?" He swallowed hard at the sight of her staring silently across the street.
'Did she see Havitz?'
Of course she could gaze into chaos.
'But—'
The mind shining in the Wizard's eyes now was nothing like the one a moment ago.
'Trigger. The trigger has been pulled.'
Training with Shirone had replayed that simulation on the order of hundreds of millions of times.
Her entire mind had funnelled toward the single correct response for a one-on-one fight with Havitz.
"Wizard, you—"
"Go."
Her voice was cold.
'She pulled concentration beyond limits through self-hypnosis. Nothing exists for her except Havitz.'
No—it wasn't "nothing" in the abstract.
'She defines nothing. Not even murder. Right now this child is endlessly repeating herself.'
The Wizard said, "I will do what I must."
Ashur nodded at the mechanical, automatic tone of her resolve.
"Please."
Even with his Signal ability, recognizing Satan was beyond him.
'If I stay here I'll just become Havitz's prey. Better to go to Ikael.'
Ashur vanished.
"I will return."
The Wizard stared at the empty air he'd disappeared into, then turned back toward the casino.
"Are you going to kill me?" Havitz asked, looking at the Wizard.
"Why?"
"…Because you must die."
In that calm tone and composed gaze, he finally understood.
'A natural enemy.'
If he'd had History Search, could he have removed this situation beforehand?
'No. It wouldn't matter.'
Even if the Wizard were killed, someone else would take the natural enemy's place.
'A fixed, immutable result. It's already decided.'
It was God's perspective.
'Shall we shake things up a bit?'
Havitz's eyes widened and a huge aura of malice filled the casino.
People froze in terror and began to weep.
"Betting! Two hundred thousand gold."
Vanishing allowed them no choice but to keep the game going.
"Cough! Cough!"
Even as people collapsed, spitting blood, Havitz did not avert his gaze.
'They won't last ten seconds. They'll all die.'
It was the same malevolence that had once brought Edenzo—the one who called himself the world's strongest Yora—to his knees.
The Wizard remained unmoved.
'A frequency of God.'
And in Havitz's mind there came a voice:
'Wena Wizard.'
A state in which only her existence remained. No enemy, no ally, not even the world—an extraordinary singularity.
'Damn. This is monstrous.'
The utter purity of it made him feel sick; it was as if the aura had been made solely to kill Satan.
'Who brings something like this?'
When Havitz released Vanishing, the people in the casino suddenly realized and screamed.
"Argh! What is this? That's blood!"
Pandemonium broke out and medics rushed in.
Amid the chaos, Havitz looked up at the ceiling.
"Sigh."
The game was over.
'I wanted to play more.'
Today, he would die before the child.
'Humanity. The world. The universe.'
Can't you stand to see me alive?
"Well then."
After the injured were taken to the infirmary, Havitz sheathed his sword.
"Want a drink?"
He pointed to the bar inside the casino; the Wizard—still in a concentrated state—tilted her head slightly.
"I have no other intention. You can't run anyway. If today is my last day… a proper fight with the Wizard will be enjoyable."
Who could trust Satan's words? Still, the Wizard nodded.
"All right."
Her saintly tone felt natural because it was genuine.
'Extreme image training. Did she artificially raise her mental maturity?'
When facing Havitz, the Wizard's mind became that of an energetic early-twenty-something.
They sat side by side at the bar.
"Fill mine with whiskey. The strongest you have. And for the other—"
Havitz asked, "Milk?"
"I'm fine," she said.
Havitz shrugged and slid a gold coin to the bartender.
"Give it like that."
While the whiskey was prepared, Havitz puffed on the drug Asker and waited.
"Thanks for granting my wish."
"I do not intend to ambush you. I want to do this after making my intent clear."
She truly had no killing intent.
The moment assassination or judgment is defined, the Wizard's purity would be destroyed.
"…I see."
Havitz exhaled a long ribbon of Asker smoke.
"There's one thing I want to ask."
"Ask."
"We share the same nature. You might be able to kill me."
Because she had no murderous will, there was no chance she would avoid Havitz.
"If I die…?"
Pure as she was, she could perceive Vanishing; having trained to the extreme, even God's frequency was useless against her.
"Won't you try being Satan?"
The Wizard turned her head for the first time.
"To humans, parents are causes, but to God they are results. If I kill my parents, the concept of 'parent' doesn't vanish. In the end, result comes first."
From God's perspective.
"Satan is the same. Even if I die, the concept of Satan won't disappear. So I'd like you to do it."
Somebody has to guard the playground.
"I refuse."
The Wizard was firm.
"Removing you is why Wena Wizard exists. There is no life for me after that."
"I see."
It felt like looking in a mirror.
Havitz inhaled deeply on the Asker, then slammed down the full glass of whiskey.
"Krrg."
He set the glass down, rose from his seat, and pointed to the door.
"Let's begin."
Havitz led the Wizard outside and glanced up at the sky by the doorway.
"Can you teleport? Let's go wherever you want. Preferably somewhere with few people."
She was in a concentrated state now; she wouldn't care, but afterward it would matter.
"All right."
The Wizard teleported; the sky bent as they shot across it.
They arrived at a clearing in the forest twenty kilometers from Jaive.
"Good. Quiet."
Hearing birds, Havitz drew his greatsword and widened the distance between them.
Eleven black shadows formed at his feet.
"Siok."
Eleven fanatics—excluding the Four of Sloth—immediately spread out in a ring around him.
"Sorry, but I need Siok. Without this my strength is halved."
"It doesn't matter."
It was already built into the simulation.
'The Four of Sloth are dead.'
They couldn't recreate exact fractions like 0.666 of a second, but each of the others was said to be formidable.
Pride at one o'clock bowed his head.
"My apologies, Satan. The Four of Sloth still have not been selected."
"Never mind."
Siok are zealots who follow Satan of their own will and cannot be manufactured artificially.
"It wouldn't change anything even if they were here. If you're ready, start. Shall I go first?"
The eleven Siok turned toward the Wizard.
"Arrogant bitch. I'll tear your limbs off." Even with murderous intent blazing, the Wizard simply stood naturally with her eyes closed.
The Siok's emotions fluttered.
'What is this?'
The imperative was so strong they didn't even want to pay attention; she was a presence so clear they could not afford to doubt it.
'Just as no one doubts the sun… if Satan exists outside common perception, this child's existence is at the core of everyone's awareness.'
It felt like someone two thousand kilometers away would somehow know this child.
When the Wizard opened her eyes, a transparent avatar shimmered like heat haze.
"Musou-shin—the No-Thought God."
A grotesque tree with a fetal face shot up at once.
"Hroooo."
Its swollen, sealed eyes bulged; a tongue as long as its trunk lolled from its mouth.
Even as the No-Thought God writhed and grew, the Siok could not move.
'What kind of ability is this?'
"Hroooo."
From the spiraling trunk dozens of branch-like limbs stretched out like insect arms.
Then—
"Hro—"
The sound snapped off, and the No-Thought God's form dissolved as if it had been absorbed into the air.
In the vast silence, the Siok trembled.
"Evade!"
The Wizard formed a sigil.
"Denier."
Before anyone could react, a fist-shaped shockwave slammed down along the Siok's line.
The thunderous blast rattled Havitz's pupils.
'What is this?'
When the No-Thought God permeates the world, the Wizard simultaneously seizes control of the five systems that compose the universe—
Reality, the Other Side, Drimo, Under Coder, and De Abyss—integrating them into a hundred-percent cognitive dominance.
'Where did that come from?'
That absolute creativity transcended systems, striking the target at zero distance.
'No—nothing sent it.'
It was a shockwave created from nothing.