The Law Trembles (4)
Kitra's coffin clattered open in the inner chamber where the Twelve Zodiac Palaces were housed.
"Your Highness."
Kitra pushed his upper body upright.
The reason his heart didn't beat was because he was already an OOPArt that carried the Law of Things.
"The time has come."
Waves of time pressed on endlessly, rewriting the Laws carved in the pyramids standing across the world.
A Great Adjustment.
The reason changing the concepts engraved inside the pyramids took longer than expected was clear.
'Satiel and Raiel.'
Two archangels clung to the existing Laws in the sun's core.
'Every concept derives from eight archangels. So two of them are two‑eighths of the whole—one quarter.'
Not negligible, but not enough to stop a cosmic Great Adjustment.
"The time has come."
Light flared in Kitra's eyes. The colossal adjustment device spun, and cracks appeared on its outer shell.
Light gushed through; a pitch‑black sphere formed and swallowed the shell as it was born.
"Ugh—aaaah!"
Everything in the chamber was drawn in; even members of the Twelve Zodiac Palaces were pulled toward it.
Rumble, rumble.
Listening to gravitational waves inaudible to humans, Kitra stared at the black orb.
'There is Nothing inside it.' Paradoxically, it contained every possibility the world could hold.
"O gods, come."
Kitra rose from the altar and spread his arms.
"Final adjustment."
The inscriptions inside the pyramids around the world emitted a blue light.
As the stream of light that had been racing like a wave accelerated, a strange phenomenon occurred.
A gigantic electromagnetic field formed around each pyramid—more than eighty kilometers in diameter.
"Huh? What's this?"
A man sipping tea in an ordinary house felt a faint current run through him.
"My skin's suddenly crawling…."
In that moment he realized the scene inside his home had started overlapping with other scenes.
A mansion, a shabby one‑room, a busy bar, even coffins buried in graves.
'What kind of harmony is this?'
After a stunned pause, he intuited the relationship between himself and the overlapping views.
'Everything in the world changes according to my mind…'
"Honey, what are you doing?"
The woman walking in the mansion scene had no differences from the wife he knew.
No—more precisely, the reality he had been living in felt like the illusion.
"Y—you are…"
The husband remembered her.
A classmate from when they were twelve, his first unrequited love.
"Why that face? Did you just have a dirty thought? Haha!"
Her belly laugh was exactly as it had been in childhood, but he couldn't make sense of it.
'What's happening?'
At that instant the Law twisted across space‑time and the logic of cause and effect rearranged.
'Oh, right.'
Ten years later they'd met at a reunion; he'd confessed, and they'd married.
'Right, right. I did that.'
All the memories sank into his mind as if he had truly gone back and lived through that past.
'So what is real?'
Yet the wife from his original reality remained as an afterimage.
'Like probabilities.'
He wasn't schooled in math, but the feeling fit that word perfectly.
'The real wife holds about sixty percent of the reality, the wife now about forty…'
They overlapped.
"Honey, let's go shopping. That dress you liked? I'll buy it for you."
As the original wife faded, he instinctively shook his head.
'No. I prefer the wife I have now.' No—that wasn't all.
A sudden thought struck and the scenes overlapped again.
'The woman I truly loved was a coworker I met at twenty‑six.' He pictured her beautiful face.
'Why? Why isn't she here?'
Countless scenes overlaid, but anything involving her did not register.
'Did she hate me that much?'
Even if he wanted it, if she didn't, the future didn't exist for them.
'I really liked her.'
She had married a far more capable, well‑off colleague.
'If only I'd had power and money.' At the same time he felt himself as the version who had fought and become a ruthless, successful businessman.
'I can still meet her.'
In the probability‑branched events perceived by his senses, she bowed her head coldly.
"Boss, your meeting time."
The man felt disappointment.
'Just a secretary? After all that effort?'
If there was no way to win her love by any means, only one option remained.
'It'll be fine. I can change it again anyway, right?'
He used the boss's authority to kiss her, and a dull impact followed.
The ashamed woman struck him with a metal trophy on the table.
"Eek!"
Bleeding, he collapsed and watched the scene recede as consciousness faded.
Events vanished and only darkness remained.
'I'm going to die.'
He had mistaken this phenomenon for something happening only to him.
"Help me, honey—" He called to the wife who now had only one percent of reality; she turned with a smile.
Another man approached, embraced her, and kissed her tenderly.
*sobs*
As the probability of his death rose past ninety‑nine percent, memories of his children slipped from his mind.
'No. Why now—?'
He forced himself to recall his original family, but they had already departed to pursue their own desires.
'Live. I can't die.'
Then the darkness cleared and a few choices slid back into his perception.
Of course the beautiful scenes would never return.
"Someone help me!"
He screamed and shot upright in a shabby empty den.
*Gasp! Gasp!*
Because everyone had chosen life according to their own desires, he had nowhere to go back to.
'But I survived.'
Around him shimmering mirages still painted the air.
'Heh. Heh heh. In that case, I won't lose either.'
After only a few overlays, the man's humanity had already shifted completely from what it had been.
"It's fine. I can change it again. If I put my mind to it, I can turn this shitty reality into heaven."
The Law trembled.
Habitz, having realized he could not read the Wizard's mind, opened his mouth.
"A draw."
It was a game he could not refuse.
"Not a bad opening. Is it your turn to make a proposal first this time? Go on, I'll hear it."
The Wizard stuck to her purpose.
'It worked.'
The key to the game Zetaero had proposed rested on how much Habitz would enjoy it.
'If a kiss is effective…'
Then this situation—where the truth could never be known—would drive Satan to death.
"I…"
The Wizard said, "I will love you for one day."
"And I will hate you for one day. A day lasts until midnight. That's my proposition."
One of the two statements had to be true.
"Doesn't the game rule say that proving a fact must be accompanied by an act or evidence?"
"That's right. If it's true that I love you, I'll kiss you again."
"And if you hate me?"
"I'll break one of your fingers."
A finger wasn't a life‑or‑death stake, but Habitz realized—
'He could die.' Under the premise of a game, the Wizard could perceive Habitz's vanishing. Conversely, Habitz could not capture the Wizard's extra frame—the single missing frame.
'You need at least two frames. But that means you can't even get close.'
Not an easy task against an awakened Wizard.
'In the end, one of the two will be proven. Either a kiss, or my finger broken.'
The warm impression of the Wizard's lips still clung to his own.
"I approve."
Habitz's eyes cooled.
'As expected, you…'
She didn't understand how cruel this game could be.
"Then it's my turn. I will kill Shirone. And I will kill Uorin. By the midnight you set."
Because he had to carry out an assassination game in parallel, he gave a long interval—but that made it an extreme move.
The Wizard thought, 'The only time my feelings were discovered was just the other day. I didn't expect the information leak to bounce back like this.'
If Habitz went after Shirone, the Wizard would have no choice but to hate him.
'A proposition to set a baseline for rational judgment. I'm desperate to learn your truth.'
Habitz—Satan.
'So naively pure it's almost laughable.'
Shirone's emergence as a variable was exactly what Balkan had predicted.
"Fine. I approve."
"Then it's decided. By midnight, each of us must prove our fact. The loser…."
Habitz smiled.
"You can look forward to what I'll do."
"Habitz."
The Wizard strode forward and said, "I love you."
As Habitz looked puzzled, she twisted her waist violently.
'Now it begins.'
Gritting her teeth, she struck his side with everything she had. Habitz's eyes widened.
"Ugh?!?"
With magic power behind it, even Satan's body recoiled from the terrible impact.
'The kiss and the broken finger…'
They were just bait to herd Satan into this place.
"Habitz."
Kneeling, Habitz slowly lifted his head. The Wizard smiled and said, "I love you."
A flash of killing intent lit her eyes, and a small fist crashed into Habitz's jaw.
"Argh!"
His head snapped as he slid across the floor; over his shoulder he watched the Wizard close in.
'Right. You can never read me.'
Aside from the kiss and the finger, he could do whatever he liked during the game, but—
'You've already been eaten by the system.'
Balkan had put it like this.
"Siok and the beings beyond the Law are irritating, sure, but Satan's greatest weapon is vanishing. Tie that down and Satan can't be invincible. Of course, that only works with you, Wizard."
"And if it doesn't work?"
"It will."
Balkan's mouth curved.
"Satan—pure chaos. Humanity didn't know what to do with a concept that appeared in reality. But now things are different. Many sacrifices were made to learn Habitz."
Even if some failed.
"Abella, whom Habitz loved. Jaestin, who hated Habitz. The assassination attempt during the world war. All that information defines Habitz." Those sacrifices were not meaningless.
"Humans fail more than any other species. But piled failures eventually solve the problem. That moment is now. So…."
Balkan said, "How about we try it this way?"
Habitz spat blood.
"Cough!"
Even as the Wizard approached, his vanishing failed to take effect.
It was still a game.
"Why?"
Propping himself on the wall, Habitz looked at the Wizard with a baffled expression.
"Well…."
The Wizard gave a gentle, smiling squint.
"You'll find out yourself. That's the point of this kind of game." Habitz, breathing harshly through his nose, limped down the opposite corridor.
"Why run? Didn't you say you liked me?"
"Siok."
Twelve shadows spread across the floor and, in an instant, Habitz disappeared.
'Was that too strong?'
No—he would come back to find me.
"Where did he go?"
In a situation where murderous intent could pass for a prank, the Wizard gave herself a brief hypnosis.
"Play with me, Habitz."