[678] Awakening of the Five Senses (2)
* * *
Brooks shouted at the medical team.
"Hurry! There's no time!"
If the golden window passed while the heart was stopped, it was over.
"This... this can't be!"
True to his reputation as a resourceful mercenary broker, the people who'd flown to Brooks's mansion were emergency and rescue specialists.
They delivered shocks and performed CPR endlessly, but Venetia did not move.
"It's no use! She's already dead!"
"Bring her back! If this woman dies, it's over!"
If the Lupist completed the mission safely, Brooks would gain exclusive rights to manage Radum. The quickest way to stabilize Radum was, unsurprisingly, to use Venetia, the head of the Spectrum.
"I don't care if she dies—keep going!"
It was absurd, but the medics understood and kept shocking her heart.
Fifteen minutes passed like that, and the exhausted rescuers one by one collapsed, spent.
"It's over. She's gone."
"Damn it!"
Brooks kicked the door until the hinges rattled and, unable to contain himself, paced angrily around the room.
"Haah!"
Then Venetia's eyes snapped open and she inhaled as deeply as her lungs would allow.
"Venetia!"
Brooks ran over, and the medics, forgetting their fatigue, sprang up.
"How—"
Her heart was beating again.
"She's alive! She's alive, Mr. Brooks!"
"Hahaha! See? What did I tell you? It works if you do it!"
Motives were split between saving a life and securing money, but the relief felt the same.
"Wait—what's wrong with her?"
One of the medics approached Venetia with a grave look.
She had already propped herself up and was staring straight ahead as if her soul had left her.
"Ra Enemi…"
The Sanbrain tribe possessed three brains that perceived past, present, and future; but in Venetia's head only the ante-brain—the part that perceived the past—was active.
This was a sensory mechanism utterly different from a human brain.
Her gaze slid sideways, following the trail Ra Enemi had left.
"I have to meet him."
She muttered unintelligibly as she pushed herself up. A female medic draped a coat over her bare upper body.
"Venetia! Where are you going?"
Because the brain that perceived the present had died, she couldn't analyze the situation, and with the future-perceiving brain gone she couldn't predict what would happen—so she couldn't realize she must never meet Ra Enemi.
That, precisely, was why Ra Enemi had come to Venetia.
"To Radum."
The sight meant to observe Ra Enemi tracked him, and she moved to follow.
* * *
Waiting for Jane at the entrance to Saenghwa, the Lupist frowned when the facility's cloaking system cut out all at once.
"This feels wrong."
An ancient weapon capable of biological feedback wouldn't lose power because of some random defect.
It was a decision by the Spectrum—and it likely boded ill for the humans.
"They're concentrating the power."
A grind sounded between the Lupist's teeth.
Given Saenghwa's size, maximum output would put even Wangsung in range.
They'd set interception-radius limits when they first began managing Radum, but if Ra Enemi was directly involved, those limits could be lifted.
"Now it's the Great Purifier. We were careless about something nineteen years old."
If Ra Enemi could dominate past events, finding the override codes would be easy.
Without waiting for the others, the Lupist slipped into Saenghwa.
"Make sure you handle it, Jane."
She only hoped Jane would seize control of Saenghwa within the time limit.
* * *
With each throwing dagger that struck, nonhuman screams of agony erupted.
All members of Spectrum's lower ranks were attacking Shagal, and Etella's group could only watch, stunned.
"That's not human. It's a ghost."
Even the warmonger Yordic trembled at the slaughter.
"Uaaaaah!"
The screams drew nearer, and at last Shagal pushed through the crowd and revealed himself.
"Ughhh!"
His face was a contorted mask of bloodlust, and the whites of his eyes gleamed with an oily, untouchable madness.
"Kill! Eliminate all life!"
With doubt erased by a single, clear objective, the schema activated at full capacity and fortified his body.
"Stop! Listen to me!"
When Etella cried out, Shagal's face twisted further.
"Tia!"
Why did she have to die?
"Don't think at all! If all life disappears…!"
If life vanished, even the capacity to think would vanish.
"Die!"
The throwing daggers, now beyond mere weapons and verging on catastrophe, drove beings of every species to attack Shagal.
As if born to extinguish life, those who entered his radius dropped instantly, pierced through and lifeless.
"Trapezius! Clavicle! Deltoid!"
"Argh!"
When a blade struck along a goblin's left neckline, blood spurted past the dagger's sheath.
"Sternum! Pectoralis major! External oblique! Rectus abdominis!"
"Eeeeek!"
Pidu screamed as a blade sank into his torso.
"Rectus femoris! Vastus lateralis! Adductor!"
"Ummmm!"
A dagger slid diagonally down Tobo's thick thigh, from groin to center, striking vital organs.
"Bladder! Kidneys! Stomach! Lungs! Heart!"
—The point is to stab quickly.
"Shut up!"
Ignoring Raiden's voice like a ghost in his ear, Shagal twisted his upper body frantically and plunged daggers in every direction.
A juggler of slaughter.
He stabbed, twisted the blades to pull them free and retrieve their sheaths, then eyed the next wave of foes.
The goblin whose eyes met his jaw trembled.
"R-run away!"
When the mouth famed for belligerence told someone to flee, the battle was effectively over.
"Damn!"
As Shagal closed with a speed the eye couldn't follow, Arkman teleported.
"Fire Snake—!"
He tried to cast on arrival, but pain shot up from his toes and his pupils shook.
"Ugh!"
Before he knew it, throwing daggers had sliced into both insteps.
If he teleported again like that, his ankles would be gone—but that was better than dying.
"Aaah!"
Arkman tore at his ankle and rolled on the ground; what his eyes met was a rain of daggers.
"Idiot! Get out of the way!"
Yordic swung an ice whip forged from an ice globe, but seven sheaths were already lodged in Arkman's chest.
"Damn! Where are you!"
Yordic had detected Shagal's movement through the Spirit Zone, but that awareness was only perception.
It would take ages for nerves to produce a logical response, and Shagal slipped through that gap.
"Ugh, uaaaaa!"
Yordic, having abandoned thought, flailed his whip wildly—and felt nothing.
Plink.
The sound of flesh being pierced was clean as a birdsong.
"Guh…!"
A sheath lodged in his nape, and as Yordic staggered like a crab, Shagal launched himself.
He thrust an arm forward—pok, pok, pok—and stabbed the nape three more times; as if on cue, Yordic's body slid aside.
"Uaaah!"
Blood sprayed under the force of the impact.
"If this keeps up, we'll all die!"
Etella tried a flank ambush, but Shagal, attracted by the scent of the incident, left immediately and aimed for Ibian.
"Hup!"
Shagal's dagger halted and trembled before it could advance further toward Ibian's wide-open eyes.
"What the—?"
The throwing dagger's handle was metal.
"Now! Quickly—!"
Before Ibian could finish, Shagal's kick struck his flank.
"Ughhh!"
All his ribs shattered, but if he released the magnetic force, the dagger would plunge in.
"Hmm."
Shagal turned, landed, grabbed the back of Ibian's head, and shoved him toward the dagger.
With a thud, the blade lodged in Ibian's forehead.
"Master!"
When Elwi cast a spell, a strong poisonous gas spread.
With the masters of the three great guilds already dead, it was the only revenge she could carry out.
"Hoooh!"
Etella, who had held her breath for nearly five minutes, exhaled slowly as the dense mist cleared.
"Ugh! Ugh!"
Shagal, having wrapped himself around Elwi from behind, sat against the wall and clamped her mouth shut.
No matter how powerful, the gas would not blow back onto its caster.
At first he had held the blade to her, and when she still didn't dispel the spell he covered her nose and mouth.
Etella checked Elwi, who was crying in terror, and said, "Wait. I have something to tell you—"
"Ugh! Ugh!"
Shagal stabbed Elwi's torso repeatedly, looking only at Etella.
Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk.
It was mechanical, like stamping a seal for sport, and each time the blade sank Elwi's body convulsed as if electrocuted.
When life finally left her, Etella closed her eyes and held a silent prayer.
"Where he goes, only corpses remain."
Over a hundred bodies, human and nonhuman alike, lay scattered and blood flowed as if it had rained.
"But why did my master—"
Did he give his life to that thing?
"Do you hate me?"
Shagal asked.
"If you despise me, then come at me."
With the tremor gone from Elwi, Shagal rose, gripping the single remaining dagger.
"You are strong. Stronger than I am."
Etella admitted honestly.
"But if you were nothing but evil, you wouldn't have been able to kill my master, Archbishop Raphael."
"I am evil."
Shagal could not forget Raphael.
"Were you his disciple? Your master died by my hand. Take revenge."
"I looked into you. And I learned why my master willingly gave himself to you."
"Hypocrisy."
A bitter curl lifted Shagal's mouth.
"If you want to package it that way, fine…"
"The group called the Leaf Circus never existed in this world."
"What?"
To honor the final wish Raphael conveyed through his death, Etella stifled a near-superhuman urge to crush Shagal on the spot.
"Your whole life was a lie. You were nothing but a mundane brain."
* * *
Shirone, leaping over Radum's rooftops as she scanned the vicinity, said, "Rian, let's split up."
Time was short, and Rian agreed.
"Then I'll take this side. You take the opposite. Meet at Saenghwa's entrance."
"Okay. Be careful."
Rian snorted as if worried for no reason and launched himself.
'You can't die even if you try,' he thought.
Rian jumped down and ran at full speed, combing the area thoroughly.
He couldn't fly like a mage, but the ground left its own traces.
'This way.'
Following the Ainfolk corpses, Rian stopped where they led him.
It was Gale Wigg.
He lay dead, halved at the waist.
The expression frozen on his face—capturing the emotion of the moment of death—looked stunned, as if he hadn't even known how he'd been cut.
'This wasn't a battle wound.'
His right arm was gone below the elbow, as if ripped off.
At the eerie tuk-tuk sounds, Rian looked up and saw a glasses-wearing goblin wrapped in a red cloak holding Wigg's arm and tearing at the flesh.
Rian clicked his jaw and leveled his greatsword.
"Come down. I'll quarter you."
"To defend myself—"
The goblin cleaned his teeth with his tongue and said, "He hunted me first."
Wigg's arm twitched.
"He kills me and sells my meat. He buys food with the money. How is that different?"
The goblin devouring Wigg's body was the captain of the Speedkillers, Kido of Consumption.
He corresponded to the Great Purifier's taste.