Five Great Systems (4)
As a result, during the Great Purification Incident Shagal had never actually met Rafael or Etella.
But that was the fabricated part.
Ra Enemi reconstructed false memories for Shagal based on what he'd known up to age seven.
"Wah! Wah!"
Ra Enemi—who sought to become human—had sought out Shagal to awaken his sense of smell.
From that point on, everything injected into his memories was plainly counterfeit.
"Tia—"
And Raiden lingered in Shagal's memories as a distinct, lingering scent.
Then what had I been doing before I met Ra Enemi?
The Karma Administration Bureau set that unknown answer out in raw scent.
Alone on some nameless mountain, muttering to himself, clutching a rock, flailing his hands.
"Ah."
There was no one.
In the false memories Ra Enemi had implanted, he'd lived alone for over twenty years.
"Ahhh."
As if the screen had split, Shagal's fabricated memories bled into the perfume.
It was the day the gang attacked the Leaf Circus.
"Boss! Tia!"
He found Tia among countless corpses, and saw Raiden's face—the one who had killed them all.
In the memory he heard a single word.
"Ra Enemi."
At the time it made no sense, but now Shagal snapped awake.
'I knew.'
Even while living in those false memories as if hypnotized, his sense of smell had detected something off.
'That not everything was real.' In the memory Raiden had leapt forward.
"Ra Enemi!"
Quick-draw blades clashed, and in the hallucination Shagal slew his master Raiden.
Only then did the Shagal standing in reality see the true face of the cold corpse before him.
'Rafael.'
Master.
Across the memories up to age seven, the one teaching Rafael had passed on beyond the incident was this:
"Forgive."
Forgive all the things that ruined your life.
"Aaaah!"
The Shagal in reality seized his head and screamed.
'Forgive?'
My whole life—twenty-something years—was stolen, and I'm supposed to forgive that?
'Why?'
He wanted at least a reason.
"Why should I forgive? It wasn't my fault! Why should I be the one to take responsibility?"
Etella, who felt Shagal's fury through the chain, hastened to calm him.
"Calm down! If you run wild here—"
"Aaaah!"
Shagal, who didn't even want to hear Etella's voice, screamed—and the scent of the memory shifted.
"Ah??????"
Since killing Raiden in that implanted memory, Shagal had been tracking Ra Enemi on the border between dream and reality.
With the fabricated incident's perfume still active, it made some sense that he'd run into Rafael.
'Strong.'
The heir to the Yin-Yang Wave Fist had already backed the now-world-class killer Shagal into a corner.
Rafael clicked his tongue.
'Shagal, huh. A horribly twisted one. Left unchecked, he'll poison the world.'
That was his thought.
Even so, he couldn't bring himself to kill him—because the moment he saw Shagal something in his chest ached.
'I don't know.'
What had they been through, what words had been exchanged?
'I've forgotten.'
Like the tie of a past life, like burying your face in a mother's keepsake you'd cherished.
'Is that so.'
Rafael could never know the exact events, but he embraced the existence called Shagal.
'So that's how it came to be, Shagal,' Rafael said.
"Whichever path you take, the way back will lie behind you."
A quick-draw blade sank into Rafael's heart, and almost simultaneously a few more strokes followed.
"Hah. Hah."
In darkness without even moonlight, Shagal stared at Rafael's fallen body.
Of course, Shagal's skill wasn't so crude as to assume his opponent had gone easy on him.
Still, a strange feeling remained.
"Did he stop at the last moment?"
It didn't look like an accident; a single brief judgment could have cost a life.
No answer came.
"That trivial line…"
If the words that had circled his mind like a broken record had returned as a boomerang, and he had been able to contain his rage and speak with him a little longer—
"What the hell—!"
Eyes bloodshot, Shagal inhaled the perfume as if drawing in the whole room.
The memory of meeting Etella, the memory of mistaking her for Tia, and the memory that had led him to now.
"Why are you doing this to me!"
It was all mockery.
The fury of having his entire life toyed with burned Shagal's reason to ash.
"I'll kill them all!"
Shagal became a murderer.
"I'll wipe them out—leave not one alive!"
And he was the worst kind of fury.
The doors to the Karma Administration Bureau burst open as agents who'd heard the commotion poured in.
Their faces twisted savagely when they realized a comrade had been annihilated.
"How dare you… ugh!"
Blades flashed; the agents by the door were pierced through vital points.
"Kiiiii! Kiiiii!" The indiscriminate hostility directed at the world concentrated into the agents with terrifying force.
"Shagal! No!"
Etella clutched the chain and tried desperately to hold him—but it was beyond her.
"Ugh!"
More of the chain slid free from her chest, and Shagal crashed through the door and bolted into the corridor.
'It keeps lengthening.'
As the Taeguk's effect expanded, the chain linking them stretched on without end.
'What will happen if this continues?'
Etella, who had been stepping into the corridor to stop him, suddenly froze.
'Master.'
An answer to the single doubt that had never left her since hearing of his death.
'You sacrificed yourself for Shagal.' That was the virtue.
Watching the chain continue to slip from her chest, Etella quietly closed her eyes.
'I will carry out Master's will.'
Feeling a warmth in her lower belly for a moment, she snapped her eyes open and went outside.
The Six Brain lay in the opposite direction from Shagal.
Tormia and the southern code origin.
With Captain Rai of the guard escorting them, Shirone and Lupist arrived at the meeting place.
They were deep in the mountains, and the southern warriors scrutinized them with beastlike eyes.
"Chief, Shirone has arrived."
By naming him directly, Lupist effectively ceded the floor.
"Welcome. I am Shirone."
The chief, Entara, was gaunt and old, but his tribesmen treated him with reverence.
That alone showed how the southern tribes viewed life.
"Please, come, Yahweh."
Entara did not rise, but his voice conveyed courtesy.
"I heard you wished to meet me. Why?"
Of course, Shirone had his own curiosity.
'How did they keep the beasts at bay?'
As if reading his thoughts, Entara smiled faintly.
"I wanted to meet at least once. I heard Yahweh pursues an integrated mental system."
It felt like two questions answered at once.
"The south, backward compared to the world, could join the crusade because damage from demonic beasts was minimal. The main reason for that was a man named Gaold."
His rampage had once driven the demonic beasts of the southern continent before him.
"A terrifying apex of humanity. But one man alone cannot guard the vast south. We, too, found a method not inferior to that." Entara narrowed his eyes. "Elikia."
Shirone listened.
"All the southern tribes worship different gods, and to honor them they dance and sing through the night. In civilized terms, they enter a trance and eventually reach ecstasy."
"I see."
Shirone understood where Entara was going.
"Elikia is a single choreographed dance and song the southern tribes created together. By uniting everyone's hearts, it's a technique to alter the world's Laws." Of course, it differed from Ultima.
Using ecstasy only forces emotional unity and ignores individual identity.
'But perhaps…'
He suspected this was the closest thing to Ultima humanity could realistically perform now.
"I'll show you directly."
When Entara turned, the tent opened and a group stood in the torchlight.
Exactly seventy people.
"Elikia."
The man at the front murmured, and a low sound spilled from all seventy mouths at once.
"Oooo. Oooo."
To a set rhythm, they snapped their torsos and stepped, bending at the waist.
As they traced a cross-shaped path back and forth, each footfall thudded and the ground rang.
Tormia's administrators watched; only Rai kept his hand on his sword's hilt.
"Oooo. Oooo."
After a while the seventy tribesmen slipped into a trance.
'The Law changes.' It couldn't be seen with the eyes, but it could be felt clearly through the Spirit Zone.
'If hearts aren't perfectly unified, quantum phenomena won't occur. It's about reaching a trance-state.'
Their steps accelerated until a clear shimmer of light bloomed in everyone's eyes.
'Signal.'
What kind of signal?
"Hu! Ha! Hu!"
Stomping the ground in rapid rhythm, the tribesmen lifted their heads in unison and fixed their gaze on the barracks.
"Kraaaang!"
A massive beast formed of clustered light surged straight at Shirone.
'I expected as much.'
Despite the overt hostility of the attack, Shirone watched with an indifferent expression.
As if an invisible barrier held, the beast's illusion flattened like a coin before Shirone.
Clap! Clap! Clap!
Entara, clapping a slow tempo, now wore Rai's long sword slung around his neck.
"This is an act of hostility. He must be killed." The reason they hadn't killed Shirone earlier was that his ability kept the long sword gripped.
"The captain of the guard is right. But now… it's better to listen a little longer."
At Shirone's words, Rai sheathed his sword and returned to his place with practiced grace.
Entara's eyes curved like a gull's.
"Remarkable. To stop the south's trump card, Elikia. Truly a master of the heart."
"It wasn't such tremendous power." Entara showed no change in expression at Shirone's provocation.
"Indeed. It was only about this much. Pardon our clumsy display."
Lupist, unable to hold back, chimed in.
"What is it you wish to say?"
"What I mean is this: the south has over seven million tribesmen who can perform this." Even Shirone felt a shiver at that.
"You want to know how we stopped the beasts? Seven million united. The power of their combined hearts. I wish to offer that power to Yahweh—you."
Entara pointed at Shirone.
"For one who's mastered the art of the heart, using Elikia is like giving wings to Yahweh. Ultima… I find it speculative too, but with southern power I can at least gift seven million people. However, there is one thing I must ask beforehand."
"You mean what the south can give me?"
Entara laughed.
"Ha! A bolder question than I expected. Reasonable enough. But you're wrong to ask about things with a single fixed answer."
"Then what do you want to know?" Shirone adopted an actively negotiating stance; Entara put his arms on the table and propped his chin.
"What will you do with the power I would dedicate to you?"