[636] The Final Gate (2)
"You're the one I can't stand the most!"
Leaving the silent cries of the eliminated behind, Nade stepped toward Shirone.
"Sorry."
"It's fine. Let's fight with everything we've got."
"No. I don't mean that."
The electrical activity that had wrapped Nade's body dimmed, flickering as if settling into sleep.
That he could perfectly control his mana assimilation was strange enough; the force it could unleash would exceed imagination.
"You're blessed, Shirone."
Shirone said nothing.
"You could have done anything you wanted. No one would have blamed you for failing, and everyone around you would have been cheering you on."
Nade turned and began to walk.
"But do you know? While you fought fiercely and slowly built up victories and experience, someone—someone else—was denied even the chance to fight and screamed in pain."
Nade stopped walking.
"Effort? Experience? If you think doing your best is only that, then you're foolish."
He braced himself.
"I'm telling you this because you might never hear it otherwise. If you fight me, you might die."
A resentment toward the world, an unnamed rage, swelled and woke the monster in Nade's heart.
"Give it up. This is your last warning. You can't beat me."
"All right. I'll give up."
The Colosseum hummed.
"If that would take away your pain, if it would let you be happy, I'll give up as much as you need."
Nade ground his teeth and bowed his head.
"…That's why you're foolish."
Nade closed the gap in an instant with Spark magic and thrust his hand toward Shirone's face.
"You said you had no roots. But you don't know how beautiful what you have is. Would being first on the graduation exam mean nothing if it's for a friend?"
"No. It's an important exam that decides my life too. It might even be more important than a friend. But—"
Shirone meant it.
"It's not more important than a friend's pain."
'I hated this.'
That was why Shirone hated fighting Nade with every fiber of his being.
Being with Nade made his nauseating envy and his rage at the world feel unbearably vivid.
"Don't spout nonsense!"
Nade struck Shirone across the face; Shirone spun and fell to the ground.
"You're always like that! Do you think saying that will move me? Do you think the world obeys whoever wills it?"
"If you set your mind to it, you can do anything!"
Shirone pushed himself up with both hands and shouted as he stood.
"Then fight with everything you have! Don't ruin your life over that damn rage!"
"That damn rage?"
Reason snapped. Electric power swelled through Nade's body and rose into the shape of a Thunder Deity.
"That damn rage!"
KRAAAAASH!
A thunderous electrical roar erupted; the audience clamped hands over their ears.
-I'll kill you all!
As Nade's hatred manifested through mana assimilation, Shirone answered by activating his Manifestation Art.
When the Thunder Deity and the Radiant Angel—filling the Colosseum—collided, streams of simulation values bounced wildly through the analysts' minds.
"Similar, but different."
Light and electricity.
Their dazzling clash of magics projected their natures plainly, leaving not only the crowd but even the scouts agape.
The Thunder Deity's ferocity was so savage that even the Radiant Angel yielded a step, yet Lize seemed to hear a scream of agony hidden inside Nade's roar.
'Nade, don't lose hope.'
Perfect control of mana assimilation was itself an unprecedented genius.
But he did not shine like Shirone.
-Kill them all! Friends, family, humans—erase them all from my sight!
"I won't let you!"
Shirone planted his feet at the far end of the Colosseum and activated Quantum Superposition.
"I will become a mage!"
A three-hundred-stack Photon Cannon bombarded the Colosseum like a meteor shower.
-Being a mage—!
Nade unleashed electrical discharges with tears of blood.
"I'm a monster—!"
Seeing Nade's face emerge from the storm of flashes, Shirone's eyes filled with tears.
'No, Nade. You're not a monster.'
As the audience held its breath at Nade's cry, Baikal spoke aloud.
"If he'd been properly educated—"
If he'd been given the chance to hone his magic with everyone's encouragement and support.
"Talent that would have eventually reached this."
Who made Nade a monster?
'I'm sorry, Nade.'
Volum couldn't raise his head; he felt the eyes of everyone around him.
"…No."
Teria, however, still bared her gaze and denied her son's pain to the end.
"It's not my fault."
The Thunder Deity, collapsed beyond recognition, projected Nade's hatred into a vast electric net.
"I always thought he was a bright child."
At Olivia's words, Alpheas smiled bitterly.
"He wasn't always like that when he was small. He got through it. The fact he lived a normal life while embracing mana assimilation is a miracle."
"What a pity. If only we had known a little earlier..."
"No. I want to believe it's not over."
Alpheas refused to give up.
"When people grow tired of anger, they become adults. Youth knows no compromise. Anger means there's still longing in the heart."
A youthful purity that wishes for a life without blemish.
Perhaps that's why Nade, whose life was mostly wrecked by hatred, suffers even more now.
-I'm a monster—!
The raw electric charge filling the Colosseum kept wearing down Shirone's mental fortitude.
'Ugh! Incredible magic power!'
-Who can understand my rage!
As a child captured by thieves, Nade had been hung over a pit studded with spikes, hands and feet bound.
With only a rope clenched between his teeth while he was tortured, his mind had slowly begun to break.
When he could no longer hear the taunting voices, half-conscious, he dreamed of swimming a vast sea.
Land was visible in the distance, but no matter how he kicked and flailed, he couldn't move forward—a terrifying nightmare.
-Nade. Nade.
The nightmare trapped in Nade's subconscious began to surface again through the Thunder Deity's form.
-Save me, Nade.
Teria rose like a drowning figure to the surface, climbed onto Nade's back and pushed him down.
'Swim! Swim with me, Mom!'
-I don't want to do anything. So you save me.
'I don't have the strength!'
-It's okay for you to be weak. I must be happy. My happiness is what matters most.
"Urrrgh!"
As if still biting a rope, Nade clenched his jaw until his molars cracked.
'I want to live! I want to live too!'
-Right. So keep swimming! Save me.
'I don't want to anymore! I won't swim!'
-Then we die together. Your life ends too.
"AAAHHH!"
Waiting for parents who never returned, Nade wanted to drop the rope he held in his mouth.
He really wanted to let go.
"What do you know!"
Shirone could not possibly know.
How it feels to live a lifetime unable to cut away a rotten root.
"How could you know!"
As the Thunder Deity's discharge intensified, anti-magic shockwaves rolled in at tremendous speed.
There was nowhere left to hide.
"Fine, I don't know! But you can't give up!"
Shirone's heart tore as Nade's life was broadcast vividly through the Thunder Deity.
"Fight to the end! Struggle to the end!"
Nade's face twisted grotesquely.
'Don't spout nonsense!'
Why wouldn't he want to die?
But if he fought fiercely and the only result was Teria's satisfied smile, his heart would only rot further.
"I'll die! I'll destroy everything and die in the most painful way possible!"
He would die.
If he could make those who'd shirked responsibility and fled life suffer, nothing else mattered.
"And you tell me to thrash about? You who know nothing—tell me to fight more!"
"Fine! Fight!"
"Why! Why me! I'm the only one in pain, so why me!"
As the Thunder Deity's discharge struck with unprecedented force, Shirone's ordinarily iron mental fortitude trembled.
"You idiot! Why don't you understand!"
Still, he could hold on because if he fell now, no one would be able to stop Nade's ruin.
"If you don't fight… if you don't at least struggle…"
Tears ran down Shirone's face.
"You'll sink—down—!"
An unprecedented spell began to cast, and countless Shirones started to overlap at a single coordinate.
Quantum Superposition — Wheel of the Void.
At first it was a double stack.
The Shirone who unfolded Force Dimension acted as the base, and the newly overlapped Shirone activated Quantum Superposition again.
What would the result be?
Miro, who knew the answer, widened her eyes and shouted.
"He's crazy! What is he thinking doing that!"
Events inside Force Dimension are independent; once stacked and fed back even once, control becomes impossible.
In other words, it was a Void fractal.
'How will he control it?'
By now even Shirone himself couldn't tell how many events were being overlapped.
Some Shirones would stop layering, but if even one among thousands made a different choice, the fractal structure would start anew from there.
They'd be trapped in a quantum-bubble phenomenon where stacking was the only option.
"Krrrgh!"
All the Shirones lost activity under the weight of the endlessly stacking events, but they desperately waited for the limit of control.
'I can do it. I can integrate them.'
The more events there were, the more variables arose; those variables in turn increased the number of future variables exponentially.
"Now!"
At the moment he reached the limit of variables he could control across all time, Shirone snapped his eyes open and glared at the world.
Ultima System — Elysion.
Unified as one, Shirone halted the Quantum Superposition and simultaneously lifted his head. Miro shivered.
'I didn't know there was such a way.'
To everyone else it looked like a single Shirone, but Miro could clearly feel the terrifying presence contained within.
'And perhaps this is McClain Goffin's true ability…'
Quantum oscillation.
'Live! Live, Nade!'
Shirone shot into the sky and compressed photons; the heavens seemed to tear open as a colossal sphere of light trembled.
The power of divine particles drawn from the Void's realm approached the samadhi-like state Miro had once reached.
Scouts who witnessed that transcendent phenomenon lost the will to analyze and simply accepted the spectacle.
'Oh gods, is this it?'
Alpheas wept tears of awe.
'Am I… is this enough?'
The light of the Mirhi family.
Mistakes of youth had left him haunted by guilt for betraying a talent the gods had given him.
But now, after founding the School of Magic and waiting so long, a genius who might surpass him had appeared.
'True light will not be extinguished by darkness. I am merely a tool to illuminate that light.'
Beyond the curtain of a world turning white, a hand seemed to reach down.
Your sins are forgiven.
After decades of waiting, a voice rang like certainty; Alpheas dropped to his knees and lifted his head.
'Ah — so this is what you show me, gods. The masterpiece you created…'