[300] Master of Consciousness (4)
"We've arrived. If we open this door, we can go down."
"I see. From now on we're entering Shirone's unconscious."
Amy drew a deep breath as Armin's words sank in.
Beyond this door lay Shirone's true emotions.
Judging from the state of his avatar, there shouldn't be any grotesque lusts. But there might be yearnings of a similar intensity.
'Doesn't matter. I'm not pure either. Everyone has those feelings.'
Shirone hesitated to open the door. Descending another level seemed to stir up inner conflict.
In the end he released the doorknob and turned to Amy with an annoyed look.
"You don't have to come any further, you know…"
Suddenly Shirone jerked his head up, his eyes rolling back. He trembled violently like someone in a seizure, then collapsed.
"Shirone!"
Amy grabbed him and checked his condition. His face had gone pale and his breathing was harsh, as if his lungs might give out.
"What's wrong? What happened?"
A rumbling shook the Grand Hall and the ceiling began to crumble. When slabs of stone larger than a person broke loose, Armin flung the door wide and shouted.
"There's no time! The unconscious is collapsing!"
* * *
Kazra Castle — food storage.
Zenoger's force line finally sliced into Shirone's blood vessels. Thousands of beads of blood popped from the wounds and spread out as slowly as the slowed passage of time.
The effect in reality hit the mind immediately.
Rainfall level eleven spiked and half the city was flooded. Projectiles drifting on the torrent emitted screams that sounded almost like human wails.
Among the crowds swept toward the lowlands was the terror-formed Egoist, the manifestation of Nade.
"Kyaaaaa!"
The Egoist flailed, trying desperately to break free. In the end it couldn't overcome the rapidly rising water and, with a last desperate cry, sank beneath the surface.
Secrets of the Abyss (1)
Shirone's mind — Level 5.
With a long squeal the door opened.
Before anyone stepped through, a sense of vigilance seeped in.
Only after a while did the flushed-faced Arius and Gion, clad in full diamond-forged armor, cross the threshold.
"This is… Shirone's unconscious?"
Gion looked bewildered; the scene didn't match his expectations.
The level they'd entered was a library whose bookshelves stretched on without end.
The spine of knowledge.
Arius saw, from scanning a few shelves, that history had been arranged in chronological order.
'This is… beyond impressive—almost inhuman.'
He had dived into the minds of much greater high mages than Shirone. Even so, those minds' unconscious layouts had been lax and chaotic.
That was to be expected. It would be odd for a human unconscious to be so standardized.
Gion asked in a disappointed voice, "What is this? You said we could see everything about Shirone."
"This is the spine of knowledge."
"The spine of knowledge?"
"It's history arranged in chronological order. It's difficult enough to build something like this, and even if you try, success is rare. It seems to be the result of Shirone's unique growth."
Gion snorted.
Shirone had grown up as the lowest of the low, a mountain dweller's child. No matter how hard he'd fought, he couldn't possibly match someone like Gion, who'd had princely lessons since birth.
"This is a crude method. Basically shoved-in memorization, right? Illiterate types—don't understand, just memorize."
"Is that really so?"
Arius smiled with quiet amusement.
It was impressive, but not because the spine itself was spectacular—what astonished him was that it remained down here in the deep fifth layer, below the REM domain.
"You can't erect a spinal structure in the unconscious by rote memorization alone. It means he understood everything. And that's extremely effective. No matter what knowledge you study, you can place it clearly. It's leagues more efficient than stuffing information aimlessly."
Gion's expression soured.
Arius couldn't see the face beneath Gion's helmet, but he felt the murderous intent radiating off him.
"So that's it, huh…"
Gion was insulted.
Badly insulted.
He had been raised to gather and master everything praised as good. No one in the world had likely been educated more thoroughly than a child of Teraze.
But that pride had been bruised repeatedly ever since Shirone appeared.
How could a peasant's child possibly be better than the emperor's son?
Gion's breathing grew harsher.
He looked at the shelves packed with books.
It wasn't that Shirone had actually read tens of thousands of volumes. Rather, the knowledge he'd truly understood and internalized had been organized under perfect categories, making the collection appear immense.
"Damned brat!"
Gion drew blades from his gauntlets and began slashing the shelves recklessly. Paper fragments fluttered like down and the shelves split as if cut through cheese.
He moved to the next section and, swinging blades in both hands, tore through Shirone's knowledge.
"There! How's that? Huh? I'll mess up your head completely!"
Gion's voice trembled with exhilaration.
"Haha! This is fun! Would've been easier if it'd been like this from the start! Break more, break more!"
Arius spoke in a cold voice.
"Stop it."
Gion, who wasn't the type to be swayed by others, nevertheless halted.
When he turned slowly, Arius fixed him with a frigid look.
It was a killing intent worthy of someone called one of the Black Line's Mado Seven.
"What? You saying that to me now?"
Gion's gut tightened, but he replied defiantly.
He was Arius's employer, and an employee shouldn't oppose his boss. Even if this was Arius's own mental domain, the power of money extended across the whole universe as long as humans existed in it.
Arius let his killing intent ease.
'Damn kid…'
To be honest, he had nearly killed Gion.
The spine of knowledge Shirone had built gave Arius a deep satisfaction.
Notorious among the Black Line's Mado Seven for his ruthlessness, Arius's intellect could rival any scholar. He understood better than anyone what Shirone had been aiming for with this structure. No matter the enmity, he felt a kind of intellectual kinship.
If they'd met under different circumstances, he might have truly looked after Shirone—though from Shirone's behavior so far, the chance of joining the Black Line seemed slim.
Arius suppressed his rage and returned to professional composure.
Whatever his feelings, he was a pro. Rebelling against an employer was against his principles.
"From here on is the unconscious realm. If you start destroying things, Ataraxia could suffer errors. So stop the destruction and let's go down."
Ataraxia would probably remain intact. The deep Level 5 is merely a consequence of Level 4's state.
You can't change the cause just by altering the result.
Still, Arius didn't want the spine of knowledge damaged.
Not out of affection for Shirone.
This space genuinely satisfied his intellectual aesthetic.
At the mention of Ataraxia, Gion also ceased his cutting. He'd paid four billion gold for it—any damage would be a huge loss.
"Fine. He's going to die anyway—this will do," Gion grunted.
Arius gave a satisfied half-smile.
"Then shall we go down?"
Gion's stupid stunt had riled everyone, but it had yielded something: despite the damage, no Egoist had appeared.
Below the REM domain there are no projectiles, so an Egoist can manifest at any time to eliminate intruders.
That's one reason even divers with lucid-dream certification hesitate to descend into the deep.
'The Egoist hasn't manifested. The collapse should have happened by now too.'
And that was exactly what Arius had been aiming for.
No matter how rapid mental processes are, descending to Level 5 would mean a fair amount of real-world time had passed. It was reasonable to assume Shirone had sustained life-threatening wounds.
'Finally—can I see Ataraxia?'
Arius's gaze shone sharper than ever.
* * *
Armin flung the door open and stepped into Level 5. Shirone, supported by Amy, staggered in gasping.
Barely escaping the REM domain's collapse, Shirone could no longer stand and sank to the floor. His face was not just pale but faded to near translucence.
"Shirone! Are you okay? Snap out of it!"
Amy stroked his cheeks anxiously.
What she got in return was a brusque shove and a cold voice.
"Step aside."
Amy stepped back with a pained expression.
Even amid a crisis that threatened the collapse of his mental world, Shirone's frozen heart showed no sign of thawing.
Staring up and glaring at Amy, he strained his lips as if to say something before annihilation could reach him. But the moment Amy turned away, the mouth that had opened closed again.
Amy's heart pounded as she looked around.
She vowed she wouldn't judge Shirone for whatever she might see. Even if she witnessed something ugly directed at her, she wouldn't criticize him.
"This place is…?"
But there was nothing like raw emotion before her eyes.
What unfolded was a flow of history organized by category.
The spine of knowledge Shirone had talked about.
When she'd heard about it, she'd imagined a vague diagram. Seeing it in person, she realized the magnitude of what he'd accomplished.
For the spine of knowledge to be imprinted at Level 5, not a single piece of information could be treated carelessly.
If you don't connect the causal relationships of all the data you've gathered, understanding is impossible.
Shirone had done that.
As Armin wandered the stacks, murmuring admiration, he found the section that had been mangled.
Books were shredded and shelves destroyed.
"They were here."
Amy felt sick at the sight of the damage. She knew better than anyone the effort Shirone had poured into perfecting the spine of knowledge, and resentment toward the culprits welled up.
"You horrible people. Do you know what this is…?"
Amy gathered the scattered papers from the floor and tears sprang to her eyes.
She would never forgive Gion. She would make him pay somehow.
"Wait."
Armin stopped her.
The ruined bookshelf was regenerating as if a living thing were healing a wound.
Amy watched, astonished.
"How can this be?"
"In ordinary cases it would be impossible. But mutually complementary knowledge bases form a network. If one path is blocked, they immediately reroute and establish a new one. The spine of knowledge will be restored to its former state soon."
Reina asked, "Then why did they break it? Arius would have known—he's an expert."
"Precisely because he's an expert," Armin replied.
Reina tilted her head.
Armin left it at that. Praising an enemy in the middle of a crisis would do no good.
Gion had smashed it; Arius had intervened.
That was the only conclusion that made sense.
A man mocked as a tomb robber by the world, yet fiercely proud of his intellect—he had clearly been strongly impressed by Shirone's unconscious.
As if an invader didn't want to deface another land's antiquities.