[494] That Afternoon (2)
The laser shot into the sky by the Valhalla Action instantly inverted cause and effect, concentrating the dark orb's magic six thousand kilometers above.
The dark orb borrowed the reservoir of divine particles and sucked in mass at a terrifying speed, and finally a spear of light weighing ten tons was born.
The planet's gravity gripped that ten-ton mass fiercely, and the light—imbued with enormous kinetic energy—began to plunge straight down toward Arabot's spire.
Time remaining until the destruction of Heaven.
18 minutes 42 seconds.
"No—! If this keeps going—"
Ikael stared at the sky in a daze.
The Valhalla Action had transported Shirone in an instant all the way to Arabot's entrance, and the beam fired from there was thick enough to pierce the heavens.
If Shirone's magic was genuine, Heaven would be annihilated.
"How can we stop it?"
While she worried for Heaven's safety, nothing else mattered to Paiel, the great angel of annihilation.
He was simply flying toward where Shirone stood to eliminate the impurity before him.
Ikael knew it was to kill Shirone.
Still, even if Paiel's source concept was annihilation, it was baffling why he acted so single-mindedly.
"What is at the end of this war?"
Hidden in the message Paiel had left would be Anke Ra's true intent—he who had forbidden angel activity and restored himself as archangel.
"Shirone—"
Paiel was already more than halfway to Shirone.
He had set his mind on killing from the start; if left as he was, Shirone would simply vanish into a wisp of nothingness.
"Ugh!"
At the thought, Ikael's aureole began to tremble at a dreadful speed.
She had vowed many times during moments of faltering resolve, but only now, faced with the absolute entity of death that was Paiel, did she truly realize it.
There might be something larger than Heaven occupying the lost memories.
Ataraxia—the super-power amplification array.
Ikael clenched both fists and expanded the ring of light.
Kiiiiiiing!
The sight of light descending into a gigantic magic circle hundreds of meters in diameter was nothing short of celestial beauty.
She marshaled every ounce of mental power she had to reveal the source concept, pouring that immense amplification into a single thought.
"I have to recover my memories!"
The fragments of memory Anke Ra had erased.
What remained at the torn edge of her thoughts was no more than a tiny signal that couldn't even be called language, but Ataraxia amplified it more than two hundred million times and it became a perfectly clear image that filled her mind.
"Huh?"
That single remaining image swept through her body, and the torn, bluntly ripped memory began to knit itself back together on its own.
The archangel's cognition advanced at a speed fit to be called light, and at last, as if a new road had been laid across a severed bridge, all thoughts unified perfectly into a single history.
"Ah…."
Pure, crystalline tears ran down Ikael's cheeks.
Aaaaahhhhhhh!
The most exalted angel's lament shook Arabot.
How could she possibly have forgotten?
A knife of misery plunged into her chest and spewed from her lips like blood coughed up from the lungs.
Shirone.
And Gofin.
To have met those two in the span of a life that, as the first angel and leader of all angels, had existed forever—those moments had been but an instant.
But for Ikael, they were without doubt the brightest, most beautiful moments of her entire existence.
If she had only that memory, she could continue to exist.
To lose that memory was to lose any reason to exist.
She had chosen Shirone, and to think that that choice would ruin everything like this—
"Ra—where is he trying to lead the whole world?"
"Shironeeeeee!"
Ikael snapped back to herself and unfurled wings of light.
Though she had spent most of her mental power to recover her memory, she squeezed out the last of her strength and flew toward Shirone.
From above, Paiel had already reached Shirone and was gathering the aura of annihilation into his hands.
"Are you rushing toward death by your own feet? Well, that must be the limit of humans and the Nephilim."
Shirone grit his teeth and glared at Paiel.
Because the Valhalla Action had inverted cause and effect, the cost was a full ten minutes.
If he had simply cast God's Punishment it might not have been so risky, but it took far longer than expected to move to coordinates that would strike Arabot's spire precisely.
"No, this will do."
He had failed to save Peope, who had devoted his life to him, and Ikael—who he had expected to be his lifetime's spiritual haven—had nearly killed him.
He told himself that since the mission was accomplished, nothing else mattered now.
"Amy, I'm sorry. Everyone…."
Thinking of the precious faces he had left behind in his hometown, Shirone awaited death.
"Disappear, insignificant being!"
The face hidden under Paiel's hood—made only of light and shadow—twisted grotesquely, and particle-like darkness flared like flames.
As the power of annihilation swirled to engulf Shirone, Ikael managed to catch up to Paiel by a hair.
"Noooo!"
KRAAAAAAANG!
When Ikael stepped between Shirone and Paiel and activated her power, the concepts of annihilation and amplification crashed into each other and the whole area rocked.
"Ikael?"
Shirone looked up at Ikael, whose face was at least two heads taller than his.
She wasn't sweating, but her complexion was ashen and her eyes looked gaunt.
Still, Ikael forced a smile for Shirone; the expression soon shifted into sorrow, into apology, into a grief that surpassed everything and conveyed raw emotion.
"I'm sorry."
She put every unutterable thing into that look.
"I'm sorry, Shirone…."
The moment Shirone saw Ikael's tears, the same tears welled in his own eyes.
A cozy, moving sensation—perhaps the same in composition—made his parched emotions, shriveled by war, fill with moisture again.
"Shirone, you are—"
KRAAAAAAANG!
Before she could finish, Ikael's body was flung aside.
Shirone's view, where Ikael had just been, was filled with the hugely angry face of Paiel.
"Ikael. Fallen, filthy archangel. How far will you go to profane the existence of angels?"
Shirone strained to move with all his strength, but there was no way to violate the principle of equal exchange.
"It won't matter."
Paiel turned his head back to Shirone.
"Ugliness and purity alike—once they're gone, it's over."
Paiel struck at Shirone again, and Ikael, who had fallen to the ground, shot back up and once more stepped between them.
"Ugh!"
Having spent her power to remember Shirone, it was the only path left she could take.
But Paiel no longer cared.
He poured annihilation at Ikael, as if to overwhelm her with sheer force and concept.
Dark smoke made of points, as if teeming with insects, enveloped Ikael, and her aureole began to dim.
"Ughhhhh!"
She fought with desperate might, but the shock of having her existence as an angel erased showed plainly on Ikael's face.
"No, noooooo! Nooooo!"
Shirone watched Ikael and wept.
Unable to move a finger, unable to let out a cry, forced to simply watch the one he loved die—this was the most wretched terminus of feeling a human could experience.
"It's okay, Shirone… It's okay."
Ikael's smile was beautiful.
The most beautiful smile in the universe.
* * *
At the portal in Inglis, Armin, Shiina, and Kuan waited for Etella to arrive.
Julu, who had gone to fetch the metagate, could meet them outside later, but to extract coordinates from the Akashic Record they absolutely needed the disk.
"She's strangely late. I wonder if something happened," Armin said.
Etella knew the urgency; even if Yamang had broken a promise or failed a contract, she should have reached Jebul by now.
"Let's wait a little longer. She's reliable—she's not so careless she can't tell right from wrong. She'll be here soon."
Shiina still trusted Etella, but an uneasy premonition had begun to stir in her mind.
A bishop of the Karsis Order.
Heaven was certainly crawling with beings too powerful for ordinary people to safely wander among, but performing a mission while avoiding combat wasn't beyond Etella's ability.
Gaold had prioritized Etella over himself when he first formed the team; that alone proved it.
"What on earth happened?"
As Shiina's worry grew, a low, filthy bellow echoed from the Inglis corridor.
"Grrrgh!"
The three of them turned their heads at once.
Just from the hideous shape of the shadow that emerged around the corner, they could tell it wasn't a normal foe.
"What is that?"
They had never seen a creature like it.
But anyone placed there would have felt the same.
The garas had no clear species characteristics; their forms manifested only through the mother's biological traits, and their only immutable traits were a proteinous core and an overwhelming lust to breed.
Their black shapes were varied as a result, but since they had once been Yamang's underlings, they still held some consistency.
Two meters tall, black skin slick with mucus, long knees bent backward, spines at the ends of their curved spines—each tail bristled with nodules.
"Kikiki! Breeding time!"
Because human traits had been grafted in, language was no problem.
But unlike the king of breeding born in Lacis headquarters, these were all powerful beings with telomere levels of five or higher.
Shiina's skin crawled at their gaze.
It wasn't the sensation of intent to kill. It was a chilling, primal horror that a woman could not help but register.
Ice cloud.
A frosty mist bloomed around Shiina.
The rapidly chilled air crystallized into ice, scattering across the floor like glass dust.
Shiina, inclined to aggression, had instinctively cast a defensive spell before engaging—an indication of how disturbed she was.
But the fear was soon brought under the mage's cool reason, and her eyes, fixed on the lascivious monsters, burned with fighting spirit.
"Arrogant things."
Kuan felt the garas' nature most keenly and grew the most irritable.
Already fired up with bloodlust, he gripped his sword's hilt more tightly than usual.
"I'll take care of—"
Just as Kuan moved to step in front of Shiina, Armin took the position first.
"Stand back. No need to waste your energy here."
Anything Armin stopped could at least be defended against.
But for Shiina it was infuriating that Armin's overprotection extended even to enemies that were neither angel nor maraud—she felt insulted by the garas' leering gaze, and the irritation flared.
"I'm not worried. This much is—!"
"Kiaaaaah!"
Dozens of garas screamed.
Their single sonic blast mixed hundreds of emotions into a roar—a sound no creature could imitate.
Exposed to an emotionally overwhelming lust, the three tensed.
The garas' movements—driven by telomere level 5 vigor and extreme desire—were explosive.
Ice daggers.
The ice cloud around Shiina condensed into dagger-shaped blades and scattered in every direction.
A certified Rank 5 mage unleashed spell after spell without pause; the garas that approached were flung back one by one.
Ting! Titing!
As the garas contracted, their carapaces hardened and shattered the ice blades.
Pushed back by the shock, they took no fatal damage.
Even Kuan's sword was being bounced off by the chitinous rebound.
"Damn it!"
It was humiliating for a swordsman to have a mere creature block his blows with its body—even if not as durable as Ringer's armor.
Absolute Zero.
When Shiina cast her most powerful spell, Absolute Zero, the garas began to freeze one after another.
Fragments of frozen garas scattered in a thunder of impacts as Kuan's sword took effect.
In the gap that opened in the middle of that cleared view—
There stood a man.