[545] The Great Direct Path (1)
Shirone returned to the northwestern settlement and summoned the priest Bebeto.
Yo hovered at his side, uneasy—Shirone had been off since he went to the Forbidden Sanctuary.
When the shrine's code began to twist, Bebeto appeared.
"Regent, did you call?"
"Prepare to leave the settlement."
Shirone said it flatly, without preamble. Bebeto and Yo exchanged surprised looks.
"You're leaving the settlement? Where to?"
"Nowhere."
Shirone spoke with absolute certainty.
"I will change this world. A world with no war, no hunger—where everyone lives together."
Bebeto's face tightened.
When Shirone had proposed alliances with other settlements, that had been one thing—but this statement was not the sort of thing a sane person would say.
"What on earth happened?"
Bebeto asked Yo, but Shirone answered instead.
"It's not time to explain. Once those who went to propose alliances gather—"
"The Guardian has arrived!"
Before Shirone finished, the gatekeeper shouted.
Shirone rose and moved to the entrance. The doors flew open and a crowd poured in, the Guardian among them.
"What is this?"
As Shirone stared, Ekseer—wings like a bat—fluttered in and bowed.
"Regent, as ordered, I secured alliances with the eastern and southern settlements. These are the guardians of those settlements."
Exactly what Shirone wanted, yet it had come far too quickly and easily.
If those people hated a settlement having two suns, they would surely be suspicious of any alliance.
"How did this happen?"
Faced with so many questions at once, Ekseer finally looked flustered.
"The truth is—"
"My doing."
A woman in a green dress parted the guardians and stepped forward.
"I removed the regents of the eastern and southern settlements. In other words, the only sun in this world now is you, Shirone."
Shirone took an involuntary step back.
'Doesn't anyone else feel it?'
The serpent aura rising from the woman.
It couldn't be seen, but he pictured a giant snake coiled and flicking its tongue. It was some frequency unique to the Banya.
"Who are you?"
"I am Shura. At Ra's request, I will make you into a god."
"Ra's request?"
"There might be troublemakers. You should know who they are, right?"
Shirone thought of Miro and her group.
"You're going to deal with them?"
"No—quite the opposite. They will come to harm us. I will do everything to stop that."
Having reached the Banya realm through the Small World aperture, Shirone belatedly realized just how powerful Miro and her party were.
If she chose, Miro could erase this entire matter as if it had never happened.
'But… Miro said she did it for me.'
Slumped onto the throne, Shirone asked weakly, "Maybe this world is a lie. What do you think?"
Shura gave a thin smile, moved to Shirone's side, and bowed. With fingers as slender as a snake's, she pressed the crown of his head and whispered into his ear.
"There is no such thing as truth in this world, Shirone. Only what you choose to believe is true."
"..."
Shirone thought for a long moment, then raised his head.
"So, what now?"
"We'll perform the rite to become the Sun God."
Shura laid a hand on Shirone's shoulder and the guardians flinched.
When she first appeared claiming to be Ra's wife—Shirone's mother—he'd thought her mad. But after seeing her power, any doubt vanished.
"Shall we move the location?"
Shura closed her eyes. The surrounding scenery shimmered and began to unravel into code.
Bebeto, also a coder, shivered.
'The very language of the gods.'
Shura truly was a god of this world.
"Where are we?"
The guardians glanced around. The landscape had shifted: they stood in the middle of a desert beyond the city.
"Heh heh, do you like it, Shirone? This is where you'll become a god."
"Why choose here?"
"Even I can't protect you from Miro completely. And besides, you do like things flashy, don't you?"
"What's flashy about a desert…?"
Shirone trailed off, staring up at the sky.
Shura raised both arms and murmured toward the sun. From the code-tangled clouds, tens-of-tons rectangular stone blocks began to fall without end.
A task that would have taken years even if every resident had worked together unfolded in an instant. Witnessing it, the Children of the Sun began to accept the presence of a god as reality.
Standing before a pyramid hundreds of meters tall, even Shirone felt fear.
'Who exactly is this woman?'
Shura pointed at the pyramid. "This structure will protect you from intruders. It concentrates all my power."
A defense strong enough to stop Miro's incarnation required at least this scale.
Unspoken, it was also a device to analyze the code produced by the union of Shirone and Ra tomorrow.
"So that's why the desert. But Ra and I can't unite out here."
"You'll have to allow for some delay. Ra will draw all the city's Mukus here. They should start arriving by noon tomorrow at the latest."
"I see."
Shirone looked up at the pyramid's summit.
'Tomorrow, up there…'
He would save a ruined world.
'Still, I'm uneasy.'
Shura bit a fingernail and thought it over. Stopping Miro alone wouldn't be enough—Miro's allies would try to interfere somehow.
'I suppose I have no choice. I don't like borrowing hands, but—'
Shura, who had been looking at the sky, suddenly frowned and scanned the surroundings.
"What on earth is that monkey doing?"
* * *
"Yahoo! A hunt! A hunt!"
The subterranean combat unit, having given up on entering the Forbidden Sanctuary, had found another human and cheered.
"She looks tasty!"
Baknyeo watched a motorcycle squadron approach directly ahead.
Behind the encirclement, Taejang sat in a jeep with his arms crossed, wearing a vicious look.
The motorcycles braked before Baknyeo and the riders all aimed their barrels at her.
"I won't listen to last words. I'm hungry."
Baknyeo analyzed the stirrings in her chest.
'Hunger. Mockery. Death. Final judgment.'
Before her thought had finished, thunderous gunfire erupted and muzzle flashes bloomed.
Then the barrels trembled and swung up toward the sky.
"...."
Taejang stared blankly as his severed subordinates convulsed and fired their rifles into the air.
Moments later the motorcycles toppled and Baknyeo stepped onto the jeep's hood.
"Not bad. Who—or what—are you?"
'Recognition of me. A question about the target. A desire to understand.'
Someone asked.
He had never learned the subterraneans' language, but Taejang's stance and tone conveyed meaning through his whole body.
Baknyeo.
Sura Yacha, eleven thousand two hundred years old.
Unlike most immortals who sought to transcend humanity, her mind had dug deeper into something more animal. After millennia she could no longer find a boundary between self and nature.
That cultivated instinct became a 'monstrous sense'—an ability to predict nearly every instantaneous phenomenon that logic could not reach.
"You are my king."
Baknyeo's words creased Taejang's face.
He too bore wild genes and was hypersensitive to signals that pressed on him.
"How dare you ignore me!"
Taejang sprang up like a spring. Baknyeo stepped back.
As the subterraneans opened crossfire, she landed and crouched, a sneer on her face.
"Grrrr!"
Axing–Nirvana E-Engine (Nirvana power, 8 cylinders).
With a bang, her body swept the area.
Like the gust of a blade, afterimages cleaved through the subterraneans; bodies were sliced as Taejang roared and hefted the jeep high.
"Eat this!"
It was brutal strength, but Baknyeo saw the jeep's movements slow as if time itself lagged.
'Benda.'
Her Axing–Nirvana E-Engine shoved aside the Law cylinders with Nirvana power.
Up to eight cylinders can be arranged, and each cylinder equips a single action.
A straight-eight configuration—eight processes in one cycle.
The faster the Nirvana E-Engine accelerated, the stronger the Nirvana power and the quicker the cycle—there was no limit.
'Accelerate!'
Baknyeo drove her Nirvana power higher and swung her blade at the falling jeep.
Her cycle—eight slashes across eight Laws in eight directions—had already passed eighty revolutions; the speed blurred even to Taejang's keen eyes.
The iron frame split like a star as innumerable cuts tore through it.
By the time Baknyeo passed the jeep, it had been dissected as if into spare parts: thousands of fragments skittered across the ground.
"Huuuu!"
Heat rose from her, her clothes fluttering—pure Yacha form.
"Ah…."
Taejang stared at Baknyeo in horror.
Language might not pass between them, but the wild physiology in his genes conveyed a single emotion.
"Uoooo! Uoooo!"
A king!
The king who will rule this city's jungle has appeared!
Taejang bellowed, strode forward, and knelt heavily before Baknyeo.
"Your Majesty, rule over me."
In the wild, strength was everything. Baknyeo naturally became their leader and gave an order.
"Take me to the one who used to be your king."
Taejang still could not understand words, but instinct told him where to go.
* * *
At sunset, Miro and her group finally located the place where Shura would hold the ceremony.
Rian the swordsman guarded the ground while the three mages rose into the sky and stared at the gigantic pyramid in the desert.
"This structure isn't on the maps. So this is the place."
"Yeah. That was fast."
"Are we too late?"
"We have time. The Mukus won't arrive until at least noon tomorrow."
All the city's Mukus were clawing their way toward the desert.
Their expansion was thousands of times faster than average, but the distance was still vast.
As dusk fell, Miro's gaze flashed. She cast a telescoping spell that refracted light to see farther.
"Hmm…"
The bluish hemispherical veil around the pyramid was clearly a defensive barrier of Law.
"We can't just smash it, then?"
"Aunt's power won't be enough here?"
Fermi teased, but Miro surprisingly admitted it.
"Maybe in the real world, but not here…"
"Is there no other way?"
"If we could disrupt magic from the inside—an anti-magic to scramble their spells—maybe—"
This time Miro snapped.
"Are you kidding? That barrier was set up to stop me. No one would bother with precautions like this against me unless they really meant it."
"I understand."
If the shield couldn't withstand Miro's full-strength assault, there'd be no reason to put it up.
Only someone like Shura—perhaps the strongest Law-user among humans—could manage this.
"Either way, it's a problem. It looks like they've unified the settlements there, too. Can we fight through the mutants to get inside?"
"Wait. Something's coming."
Hundreds of headlights rolled across the desert from the far side.
Miro saw subterraneans crossing the sand in their transports.
"They've added the subterraneans to the settlements' defenses."
Marsha said, "To bring the shield down we'll have to infiltrate the interior. Opposing us are the Ten Roads Association executives, the guardians of the Children of the Sun, the subterraneans, and the Mukus. Can we do it?"
Miro shook her head.
"No. Banya-level power can only be countered by Banya-level power. As long as Shura is active, leaving this to me would be a bad choice."
"Then what do we do? There's no way."
"Is that so?"
Miro smiled and looked down at the ground.
"We have a Yacha."
All eyes turned to Rian.
Unable to fly, he sat on the ground, weary, leaning against his sword.
"Ah, I'm hungry."