A Horrible Truth (2)
Sein and Kangnan stared as if their souls had been ripped out.
"My gods…"
Gaold's fists struck Imir like a man possessed; there wasn't a single unbroken part left on Imir's body.
When Gaold lunged and threw a punch, Imir's head snapped as if it would come off.
"Urrgh!" The shock that made him reel was stronger than the split lip or the shattered teeth.
'What kind of man is this?'
He had faced countless powerful foes, but none had ever pushed him this far.
"Even so…"
Ignoring the tremor of his broken arm, Imir thrust out his other fist.
'Vacuum Press.'
Imir grabbed the giant's fist with both hands; his eyes went wide and something snapped.
"Ugh!"
And for the first time, Imir moved away from Gaold of his own volition.
The fist had been crushed.
Even the normally unshakable Sein felt a ridiculous thought bubble up in that instant.
'Could it be…'
Kangnan spoke the thought aloud.
"Is he…winning?"
They were crushing the one called the strongest creature in Heaven's history—the king of giants.
Sein glanced at Miro as if asking for confirmation.
"What do you think?"
She, too, had never dreamed Gaold could reach this point, but her reaction was the same—"How much must he be hurting?"
That thought left her chest hollow.
"How much pain is Gaold in…right now?"
Because it was Gaold, and because it was Imir, the brief flaring of tension between the two soon sobered.
"Haah. Haah."
Gaold's focus was gone.
'Where am I?'
Only fragmentary images rose; nothing remained in his brain.
"Ah…?"
He remembered he'd been fighting—what was the name?
"Imir."
"Gaold."
Imir smiled with his eyes.
"What a fine name. It must hold everything you've achieved."
Gaold said nothing.
"That is truly splendid. Imir. Splendid. Miro, splendid. Gefin, Ozent. Ashur. Uriel. Yes—Rian."
'…what about us?'
Sein and Kangnan felt their throats tighten, but Imir only looked out into empty space.
"Train a single individuality to its extreme until it reaches an unapproachable realm. Then which among them is the strongest? That's a very interesting question. Someone has to lose in the end, but no one ever thinks they will be the one to lose."
The more he spoke, the better he felt.
"I think I can beat any opponent. Not because I'm perfect, but because I absolutely trust my weapon and want to fight with it. I've cut down countless bastards, but winning or losing is meaningless. What matters is—" Imir's eyes ran back to ink-black.
"the fight itself. A battlefield where I can throw everything away and show off the realm I reached."
"Fun," Miro muttered.
Cutting through the suffocating killing intent, Gaold's steps quickened.
"You still haven't taken enough."
"Heh. Maybe."
Imir clenched his crushed fist and drove it into Gaold's face.
The moment it struck the Air Press barrier, heat erupted and the ground trembled again.
"Grrk!" Gaold's face twisted like a demon's, while Imir's mouth pulled up into a grin.
"You were the strongest."
It would've been nicer if they'd met in reality.
"It was a good dream."
As Gaold's body was flung away, the earth split outward in radial cracks.
Rumble!
Kangnan, staring dumbfounded at the endlessly retreating waves of ground, sprang up in a panic.
"Gaold!"
Imir wasn't in good shape either.
He watched the fingers bent in impossible directions, then lifted his eyes.
"Is this the end?"
At that moment, a flash from the side struck Imir square on the skull.
Imir, whose neck had been twisted at an angle of about twenty degrees as he savored the shock, slowly turned his head.
"What…are you?"
Shirone approached with Rubor and Mongah.
"Imir, Ultima—"
"Ah." Imir waved her off.
"No need for complications. I don't want to hear it. If you want something, fight me and take it."
That was the perfect answer of a pure fighter, but Shirone—being a mage—thought differently.
'Fighting here is pointless. Recovering Ultima comes first. Or at least…'
He had to break free from Imir's dream.
'I'll be independent of simultaneous events. That's why the transference dream started.'
In other words, the Shirone in that other space had failed to accept Yoran's realization.
Shirone headed for the black hole.
'Extract Ultima and get out first.'
Rubor had said Arius had already gone in, but his chance of returning was slim.
"Hey."
Imir didn't like Shirone much.
"You're interested in the wrong thing. Decide quickly whether you want to fight or die. It's irritating."
Fighting people who treated combat as a means rather than an end was just a headache.
'Gefin. Your son takes after his mother more.'
That was also why Imir hadn't named Ikael among his archrivals.
Miro stepped forward.
"Shirone, go into the black hole. Arius must've tried something. I'll handle things here."
Imir laughed.
"Of course it's fun for you too. But don't you get it yet? I didn't pick Gaold as the strongest because of brute force."
Imir's wounds began to knit at a staggering pace.
"It's his mind."
By the time the broken parts had fully recovered, Sein bit her lip and clenched her fists.
'I see. This isn't reality. It's an incarnation. If the mind recovers, the incarnation recovers too.'
This was a clash of minds.
If Gaold had broken Imir's incarnation because his mind was the most extreme…then—
'Miro's mind is specialized for defense. There will inevitably be penalties here.'
Gaold was abnormal for changing the shape of an incarnation inside someone else's mind.
Then an unexpected voice came.
"Go, Shirone." Gaold approached, supported by Kangnan.
"Oh?"
Imir was surprised too.
"There was definitely a splitting sensation. Heh heh. Still, you're an incarnation. An obsession without end."
Gaold said to Shirone, "Go."
"But—"
"How long can you hold out?"
No matter how powerful the obsession, there's a limit to restoring an incarnation inside another's mind.
"Please."
As Gaold nodded faintly, Shirone hurled himself toward the black hole.
Imir did not follow.
'Enough!'
As the landscape below shrank to a pinprick, Shirone felt relief—but the black hole was farther away than he'd expected.
'Ultima is there.'
At last, Shirone's body was pulled into an extreme gravitational field.
It felt like the speed of light.
Shirone fell into darkness. 'Where is this?'
Countless stars streamed toward a single point, and his body was carried along that inertia.
The thought of all those stars colliding at once made him dizzy, but a faint realization came.
'Time is flowing backward.'
It was the same as the nightmares he'd had every night when he first opened the Immortal Function at school.
They called it a death image.
'I see.'
He felt it.
Information cannot pass the speed-of-light barrier, but the mind can cross time and space.
A planet disintegrated, and Shirone's body began to scatter into particles.
'And yet it persists.'
He understood now what remains until the end of what makes a human.
'The concept of me, before I form.'
Following the path guided by phantom time, Shirone drilled into spaces smaller than particles.
Strings of light—where even time was integrated—vibrated, and countless events were born and died in turn.
'Only possibility remains… the boundary of the outer world.'
Within the unity of body and mind, Shirone felt the concept that composed him expand.
'It's being integrated.'
It was like…a colossal explosion.
Kanis asked, "Now do something. How do we summon a god? You said you could."
His excitement was driven by the depth of his resentment and rage toward the god.
'Appear before us.' To appear meant to take form; at least then they could fight.
'My gut's boiling.'
Rukia, who had been looking tenderly at the unconscious Glen, drew her gaze firm again.
"Integration of concepts."
"Integration?"
"It doesn't matter what the concepts are. Once something exists in this world, it is split into two. They must refer to each other to define existence."
Shirone—and everyone—had learned something over their journey.
"Only a god could define those two as one. Good and evil, light and darkness, being and nonbeing—whatever the pair. When you combine them, you get an idea that needs no further definition, and a god will appear within that concept alone."
It was a plausible hypothesis.
"I see."
Ares said, "The god's right hand and the demon's left hand—another power appearing wasn't an accident."
"Yes."
Rukia raised both hands.
"The god's right hand relaxes the heart; the demon's left hand twists it. So if I clasp my hands and activate both at once, what would happen?" Shirone asked.
"A Taiji interaction would occur. Neither side yields and it cycles endlessly."
Rukia nodded.
"A god could borrow my concept and appear."
"But Rukia," Shirone said, understanding Taiji, "if it becomes infinity, even the concept of existence disappears. If the Law's number two breaks, you can't define the god."
Because Shirone could exist while embracing Infinity, he was an Infinite Mage.
"I—"
Rukia looked at Glen.
"I decided to forgive him. Glen probably had no choice. In times of poverty he may have approached me out of admiration. It might not have been love… but—"
She smiled.
"I don't want to define it. If I can hold Glen with my heart, that's enough."
She would not define it.
'I will sacrifice everything with my whole heart.'
Realizing she could not be stopped, Shirone stepped back and Rukia returned to the device.
'Glen.'
To save the whole universe.
'I love you.'
Rukia closed her eyes, clasped her hands in prayer, and activated her power.
'Have mercy on us.'
When the god's right hand and the demon's left hand acted simultaneously, Rukia's mind began to spin.
The pyramid vibrated, and every glyph carved into the inner walls started to glow blue.
'Electricity.'
When the energy produced by the yin-yang rotation concentrated on the device, everyone understood.
'The ancient supercivilization was a generator.'
Moreover, the electrical energy gathered here should be enough to pierce the veil to the outside world.
"The god…"
An unprecedented event in human history.
"He will descend." "Shirone! What are you doing?" Shirone, tears streaming in front of Sein, heard Nade's voice.
'I don't know. Why does my heart ache like this?'
This wasn't the first time.
When he parted from Amy, when she ascended to the sun, and now—this moment too.
'Perhaps I—'
Will he have to bear a vast sorrow from now on?
Shirone was exposed, but Kiyorgi didn't even twitch.
'Choose, Yahweh.'
Rule through, or integration.
To achieve what no one of the doctrine of good-and-evil had managed, only one thing was required.
Shirone slowly lifted his head.
"Sacrifice."
The Immortal Function opened, and Shirone's body began to radiate a dazzling light.