[503] Wholeheartedness (2)
"Humans..."
Uorin said.
"You can throw your heart into anything."
It was the conclusion she'd reached after living countless lives.
"But you can't receive anything back. We're beings who only throw our hearts toward something."
Because of that, greed and longing are never satisfied, and the world fills with chaos.
"We're so self-centered we might as well just die."
When someone actively seeks death, they become something beyond human.
"We even throw everything at things without life."
"In a way, that's selfish."
Gando's remark made Uorin smile.
"Yes. Humans are selfish animals. But, Gando, that's what's terrifying about them. They're selfish enough to be capable of altruism. We are such contradictory beings."
Uorin didn't know what was happening in heaven, but she understood the nature of humans well enough to know it without seeing.
Gaold and his party would collapse the future.
With utterly selfish hearts and painfully altruistic actions, they would be throwing their hearts at something.
"This place..."
Kuan moved.
"This is my tomb."
The moment he pushed off the ground with his right foot and sprang forward, Mumeong felt as if the world's scenery had flipped.
In truth it was Kuan's body that inverted, and suspended upside down his form began to tremble along an unstable trajectory.
'I can't predict the blade's path.'
Even with insight beyond biological limits, he couldn't judge how Kuan's attack would come.
"Hgh!"
By the thinnest margin, Kuan's blade grazed the back of his neck.
Only then did Mumeong vaguely realize why his judgment had been paralyzed.
The reason the blade's path couldn't be predicted was that it didn't exist from the start.
It constructed a single decisive track out of a chaos of uncertain variables.
That way of moving was the complete opposite of the human mind—set a goal and act toward it—and because of that, even if you knew it, you couldn't stop it.
'Should I cut my arm off too?'
The thought flashed through him, then he shook his head.
A body part had been removed not because cutting it off taught him something, but because he had already understood that he didn't need the arm for balance.
'A sword is terrifying.'
The first skill he'd ever learned since being born into this world.
It might have been trivial or common, and that would have been fine, but now he knew.
He knew the infinite mystery contained in the thing he held.
'I want to conquer it!'
An urge that could not be replaced by anything struck Mumeong's mind like a blow.
Small realizations that make up swordsmanship—learned over years of dull, repetitive practice—embodied themselves in his body all at once, and in a flash they hurled his technique to its extreme.
"Hueeeee!"
Mumeong's pupils tightened, his mouth hung open and his tongue lolled out.
He thrust his twin blades forward and flailed like a madman.
Shiina and Armin, watching the child's tantrum-like display, felt chills run down their spines.
The pinnacle this eccentric genius—something that could never have been born from an ordinary human—had reached in swordsmanship was neither as beautiful nor as radiant as people imagined.
But in terms of killing efficiency, the technique was perfect; no swordsman could find fault.
As if dozens of blades were coming from behind, Mumeong bore the possibilities of innumerable blade paths as he charged.
"No!"
Shiina leapt up and tried to sprint past the barrier, but Armin grabbed her waist and pulled her back.
It wasn't just a matter of Mumeong stealing technique.
A genius obsessed with the sword would clearly not give magic a second thought.
Before anyone could appear, the murderous height he'd reached would cut them down the moment they showed themselves—even Armin would be decapitated.
"Shiina! This isn't our place to step in!"
Having fully chosen the path of the swordsman, Mumeong had reached reaction speeds no mage—no matter how great—could match.
Shiina's eyes brimmed with tears.
Mumeong's brutal swordsmanship spelled Kuan's death almost absolutely.
'Because of me... because of me....'
For the first time, that thought struck her.
Everyone could die on this mission; Kuan's death could just fold into everyone's death.
That made it something she could say proudly.
But at this moment Shiina felt guilt.
And that meant Kuan's death no longer necessarily converged into everyone's death.
"You mustn't die! If you die...!"
Shiina shoved Armin aside and stepped forward, crossing one foot beyond the stop barrier.
"Don't come!"
Kuan's shout rooted her to the spot.
She was late to realize it, but at that same instant Mumeong's blade slashed past right in front of her eyes.
Mumeong hadn't cut Shiina, but the mocking words were gone from him now.
His gaze was fixed solely on that unknown human: Kuan.
"...Please."
At last speaking with formal respect, Kuan was drenched in blood from countless wounds.
He panted, his heart racing, but his eyes remained alive.
After confirming that Armin had dragged Shiina back inside, he turned once more toward Mumeong with a terrifying killing intent.
'Damn. He's really strong, this one.'
If this creature crossed into the human world, how many sacrifices would it take to stop him?
Even at the edge of death, the curiosity of a swordsman was unavoidable.
And that led to the next question.
'Could I cut down Gaold now?'
A thought he'd deliberately avoided because of trauma settled into his head for the first time.
He wasn't certain he would win, but he no longer felt sure he'd lose like before.
At that moment Kuan felt hot; for the first time since being born, he was glad to be alive.
'I'll end this here.'
He used Skema to suppress the bleeding as much as he could, but he couldn't completely stop the blood pouring from the severed arm.
Whatever the result, this would be the last.
'I have no regrets.'
Kuan lowered his sword and approached Mumeong.
Limping. Limping.
Watching Kuan hobble, Mumeong's mouth twitched.
With each step Kuan took the scenery wavered, and finally Kuan's figure began to flicker.
He was slipping out of perception.
'I could never do this in my whole life.'
This wasn't a matter of skill level but the branching of individuality.
The moment he realized that your sword and my sword were different, Mumeong began, for the first time, to like swords.
'Then this is my sword.'
As Mumeong surged forward, Kuan's body spun.
"Hueeeee!"
If Mumeong's madness held a ruthless, precise killing intent, Kuan's sword was flamboyant and beautiful.
'Yes.'
Amid the chaotic, jumbled scenery, Kuan pulled Shiina's face into focus with absolute clarity.
'I am Pierrot the clown.'
Unable to move closer or step away, a clown dancing in front of her.
"Hueeeee!"
Mumeong's blade paths sharpened as if splitting space into infinities, and Kuan threw his body toward that endless death.
'I win.'
Even if he died, Armin was by Shiina's side.
'I won.'
He'd beaten Armin.
I saved Shiina.
The only small consolation left at the end of his miserable life was something no one else would notice.
Kuan's eyes reddened, and with a grotesque smile he gripped his sword.
What did it matter?
'I am a sword demon!'
Kuan's body rotated at record speed and began to shake like a man possessed.
"Uaaaaaa!"
A streak of light sliced through the space between Mumeong's overwhelming blade paths.
* * *
"Ergaaaaaa!"
Julu screamed until his throat seemed to split.
Red blood streamed from beneath his wide-open eyes, and his expression—soul absent—was grotesque enough to chill.
Hooooooo!
The more that was so, the stronger the lich became.
Kali's Four Great Tools activated their abilities in turn, but the lich welcomed every kind of death.
Spheres of electricity rose above the lich's crown and sent power outward in all directions.
Blue lightning left white afterimages on the eyes even after it vanished, and in that glittering scene Sion's equipment was destroyed.
Julu wailed like a child regressing to infancy.
He was lonely.
The loneliest in the universe.
A heart he'd been unable to throw to anyone became a maw that ate at his insides, burrowing deeper and dragging Julu's loneliness down into the abyss.
Hooooooo!
"This can't be..."
Kali's skin trembled.
The lich was showing how far a human heart could fall into the abyss.
Julu's mind grew thicker, darker, stronger, and the lich's lightning spread without end.
Hundreds of bolts scraping along Sion's wall finally converged into one and struck Kali's body.
"Kyaaaahhh!"
Even the death god's scream was nothing compared to the lich's sorrow.
The lich embraced Kali's body and became electricity itself.
Sizzling.
Tiny cracks spread across Kali's black flesh, and it finally hardened into brittle ash.
Even after the simultaneous disappearance of the lich and Kali, the fallen mind didn't calm.
Julu knelt, hugging himself, and kept calling Erga's name.
"Erga. Erga."
"Kirururu."
At that, a command activated and a small black bird rose up in front of Julu.
Cold-eyed Erga stared down at Julu with disgust.
* * *
"Aaaah! Uuaaah!"
Kanya clutched Babel and sobbed.
The mangled, ruined form looked more tragic than death.
There had been no life in it from the start, but that didn't matter to Kanya.
Humans are overwhelmingly lonely.
"Why... must life be so hard?"
Uorin looked up at the ceiling and asked like a girl.
"Why does the one who gives their heart have to hurt more?"
Gando watched Uorin's wistful face and thought.
She was thinking of someone and feeling pain—did she know?
Did she know that he was looking at her now and feeling pain because of it?
'Probably not.'
Because she was human.
In the Hall of Corruption, where even Kariel had departed, Yuriel only began to vaguely understand Anke Ra at the war's end.
Gaold still fought, but he was no longer a threat.
His mind had already left for hell; what moved him now was only the animal signal born of the last instinct to fight.
"Aaaah! Aaah!"
Gangnan pulled with all her might on both arms.
A tingling spread from the wrist caught by .
It was surely pain, but for Gangnan it was the only hope.
'It's working!'
Feeling pain meant 's power wasn't fully functioning.
A blind will to reach Gaold was operating beyond Gangnan's body.
"Aaah! Aaah! Aaah!"
As cuffs and wrist slammed together with rattling sounds and the reddened skin peeled and began to bleed, she swung her arms with all her strength.
'This is what it means to be human,' Yuriel thought.
One who throws their heart.
They can flow into good or evil, and thus they can collapse the absoluteness of this world.
Born from the Akashic Record but moving outward beyond it.
"Aaah! Aaah! Aaah!"
Through divine transcendence, strength surpassing the power of was applied, and finally a dreadful sound began.
Creak. Creak.
Bones crushed, and the recoil of the arm she brought down grew little by little.