Chain Reaction (4)
Gis studied Plu's face.
"Hmm."
According to the dossier from Dante's department, Gis's tastes were pretty hardcore.
- He wouldn't be interested in ordinary beauty. Sexual pleasure ties into domination. If she's a nation's princess, even an ugly one would be welcomed.
Albino added, "-Of course I don't mean you're ugly, Plu."
Gis nodded.
'Not bad.'
He liked Plu's attitude—she noticed his gaze but gave no sign of offense.
'The Magic Association's chief secretary...'
He wasn't so inexperienced that he'd show his feelings from the start.
"By the way, there's been no exchange with the Tormia branch of the Magic Association yet. How's that going?"
"We're doing our best."
"Politics is hard. You can't do it alone."
"Yes. Of course."
It sounded like a normal conversation, but the administrators analyzing speech at the nano level had already parsed it.
'Tormia isn't making a sound.'
Confirming that balance of power stirred something deep inside Gis.
'Ah, that's an unexpected pull.'
Gis laid a hand on Plu's shoulder. "Anyway, aren't we all gathered here for world peace? We have a little time—care for some tea?"
"It would be an honor."
Plu's eyes, following Gis, went cold.
'Not today, anyway.'
She wasn't the sort to act carelessly in front of all the foreign officials.
Fermi, walking from the opposite direction, cast a sidelong glance at Gis and Plu.
"They've started their approach already. Faster than I expected."
Ever since the rumor hit the papers, Fermi had suspected someone would make a move.
"But Tormia... Shirone wouldn't have suggested this—he's too gentle."
Just then Shirone, who had left the meeting late, looked at Plu with a grave expression.
Fermi realized.
'They didn't coordinate this?'
This was bad.
'Rupist. Definitely a formidable opponent.'
While the other nation was counting beads on its abacus, his animal sense had already picked up danger.
After a brief eye contact with Shirone, Fermi passed by with a casual expression.
'Good luck. Your head's going to hurt for a while.'
It might still be a lucrative situation, but the pyramid mattered more to Fermi.
'If Uorin bolted, then the Law, the system must have changed.' He glanced out the window.
"Not bad."
Apocalypse.
Five administrators of High Gear gathered where Mucus covered the entire world.
"Finally—it's complete."
A white sphere like a snow crystal slowly rotated on the operator's palm.
"Ice Blood."
A special code: injected into the Digitalra core, it could harden the Mucus.
A voice came from behind a moment later. "You're already here?"
Shirone and the leaders of the Parrot Mercenary Corps entered Apocalypse after getting the word.
Marsha pointed. "Is that a virus or something?"
"Yes. Very powerful. If we implant it in the core, we won't be able to control it either."
"Doesn't matter. It's a forsaken world anyway."
Shirone looked over the landscape. "It seems more expanded. The height of the Mucus is different. The drills are gone."
"Oh? It is."
When Marsha checked, the Mucus surface was blocking the sky much more than before.
Shirone guessed why.
'Because of the pyramid.'
The Law had warped so much that even the angels' ranks had slipped—Apocalypse had shifted too.
'More Mucus. What does that mean?'
Deputy Commander Freeman said, "Let's head down. We haven't been able to mine for days. You look like your situation's urgent, too."
Even the Parrot Mercenary Corps knew about the pyramids scattered across the world.
"Right."
The moment they stepped forward, the patch of Mucus beneath them convulsed and shot upward violently.
"Argh! What the—!"
Startled, the High Gear administrators watched as Marsha sliced a tentacle with her dagger.
The severed tentacle writhed briefly, then reverted to slime and was absorbed into the ground.
"Ugh, annoying. Why so violent? It wasn't like this before."
'The nature of the Mucus has changed.'
In other words, the algorithms of the buried Digitalra had been altered.
'Its stronger rejection of living things is a hint about the future.'
Shirone activated Miracle Stream.
"I'll handle this."
When the light smoke spread, the Mucus surface receded like a wave.
"I put a veil over it, then compressed it with pressure. Ordinary force won't break through."
Of course, if the world's mass concentrated in one place, that would be a different matter.
'Then it's full-on war.'
Contrary to their fears, the Mucus calmed and the party reached their destination safely.
"Digitalra is down here. To be precise, you have to take a strange device and go quite a way, but it's below."
Even if Shirone didn't remember the details, Fermi knew Apocalypse's geography.
"Then—"
Gathering the light smoke again, Shirone cast Hand of God above his head.
"Be careful."
The Parrot Mercenary Corps' leaders escorted the administrators.
'The Mucus keeps regenerating. The best method is to dig in as fast as possible.'
The Hand of God raised its index finger and drove straight down into the Mucus.
With a tremendous shudder, the Mucus shot up dozens of meters, forming colossal tentacle pillars.
Lollipop Mark shouted, "Ahhh! It's coming!"
At the same time, the Hand of God embedded in the ground spun like a drill and plunged down with a dull thud.
"Jump!"
Avoiding tentacles thrusting from all directions, the mining team dove into a pit.
The narrowing hole sealed completely, and the tentacles embedded in the surface exploded like water balloons.
"Ah—!"
Falling into an endless depth, Smile Mark—the middle-aged, hirsute man—screamed like a schoolgirl.
'This is incredibly deep.'
Although the Hand of God pierced faster than gravity, that only made things worse.
'The pressure's too intense.'
Looking up, Shirone saw the tunnel he had cut above rapidly closing.
'Huh—?'
At that moment, the enormous resistance that had been pressing against the Hand of God vanished as if it had never existed.
"Shirone!"
Marsha shouted.
"Ugh!"
Shirone redirected the Hand of God back into Miracle Stream and hauled everyone to safety.
"Hah. Hah."
Suspended in the sky, the operator looked down at a city two hundred meters below.
"What is... going on?"
Inside—where Mucus should have filled everything—there was roughly the size of a single city.
Marsha flew over to Shirone. "Thanks. We couldn't have held on with fly magic alone."
"Yes. But what is this place?"
They were enclosed under a vast dome, and a Mucus curtain ringed the city's outskirts.
"Maybe like this." Marsha raised a finger. "The Apocalypse world reacts to changes in reality. If some future event caused the Mucus to expand faster than normal—
"areas of trapped air would form."
"Right. Mucus predicts where a cell-burst will occur in reality. But the ground's higher not because the volume increased, but because it swelled. There may be pockets like this throughout Apocalypse. Like holes in cheese."
Shirone agreed. "Let's go down and take a look." Casting a spell, the mining team descended and first scanned the city's streets.
"It really has changed. There are buildings I've never seen. This complicates things."
There was still Mucus residue on the ground, but not enough to make exploration impossible.
The administrators, many entering Apocalypse for the first time, felt a heavy melancholy at the silence.
"Are there no people here?"
Marsha had been thinking the same.
"There were people—Children of the Sun, Dynamic Humans. But now there's nothing."
"They were probably swept away by the Mucus flood. Not surprising. At this level—"
A moan from somewhere made them stop.
"What was that?"
Shirone scanned quickly and ran toward the sound's source.
It was a square iron structure.
'I know this place.'
A memory of the Maze Andre surfaced.
'World #19,000.'
One of the countless reachable worlds where humanity had met a mental end.
"Just leave it."
"What do you mean? There are people trapped inside."
Marsha leapt onto the warehouse roof, grabbed the iron door's handle, and pulled.
"Ugh."
When it wouldn't budge, Freeman climbed up.
"Move. I'll break it."
With a magic cartridge loaded, he trained the muzzle at the mechanical panel beside the door.
"Wait!"
Lollipop Mark raised his hand to stop him. "Leave it to me." The boy who had climbed up with Freeman examined the panel carefully.
"Wow, this is sweet."
The operator asked, "Can you open it?"
"Ten seconds."
He held a card he had made in the Undercoder to the panel; it went transparent and revealed the code.
"Hmm. The tech's advanced, but the pattern's simple. Maybe it was just locked?"
Clang—the device disengaged.
"Convenient. How'd you do it?"
"Hehe, you called me because I'm the expert at this, right? Anyway, go ahead and open it."
Marsha gripped the handle. "Where—"
The door swung open, and as Shirone had expected, a horrific scream erupted.
"Eek! What is this!"
From children to the elderly, men and women tangled together, naked.
"Human storage."
Everyone turned to Shirone.
"This is the worst fate humanity could face, unfolding right here."
"The worst fate?"
Marsha peered into the warehouse.
The sight of people licking one another's fluids and surviving that way was no life at all.
"So... this is Apocalypse, right? Constructed based on information from reality."
"Yes. In other words, if nothing in reality changes, we could end up like this in the distant future."
"Why?"
Marsha's eyes trembled. "Why would this happen? Why to us?"
"We don't know yet. To find the cause, we have to go deeper. And to mine, we first need to plant the virus."
Shirone turned away. "Let's go. Even while we linger, the real world is moving toward this moment."
As Marsha stood dazed, Freeman quietly shut the iron door.
"Let's go, Marsha."
With the mood subdued, the mining team moved on with solemn hearts.
One small consolation was that the route to Digitalra still existed.
"Here."
Shirone saw a monument beside a building.
'Fairy Biomimetics Research Institute.' He couldn't recall it—some information had been lost—but that gave him a certain insight.
"Wait. Fairy?"
Long ago, the fairies had been split in two by the Geopin.
"What's wrong, Shirone?" Marsha asked, but Shirone couldn't answer.
'Elves who merged with the Nor through the power of agape. Fairies who controlled humans from heaven.'
And now, the fairies who once ruled heaven were staying on Shirone's planet.
"They weren't elves."
Marsha blinked, and Shirone's face twisted fiercely.
"The ones who ruled the human world were the fairies."