[772] The Doubt of Emptiness (2)
* * *
While Shirone conversed with the stellar deity, Minerva registered in the Ivory Tower.
Araka of the Internal Affairs Bureau handed over the dossier.
"From now on, whatever result produces, the Ivory Tower will accept it as 'rightness.'"
"Good work."
"I only hope it's put to good use. Though Saint Shirone needn't worry."
"Ah—so you mean I'm different?"
Araka answered with a sly smile.
"You've brightened considerably."
Before Shirone arrived, Minerva's face when she returned from missions had been colder than the countless corpses she'd produced.
"Is that so?"
does not get destroyed.
Not that it possesses the absolute-concept durability of Rian's weapon, .
A dagger anyone could shatter with a hammer.
But in the end, is reborn by the laws of this world and ends up in someone's hands.
A crystallization of murderous intent.
It was an endless chain reaction of death.
"Because it's Shirone, it becomes many things, right?"
As if reading her thought, Minerva turned and shook the file.
"Thanks. I'll repay you later."
Araka watched her walk away.
'Yes. The world will never forgive you.'
After all, she was an arch-witch at the pinnacle of evil.
'So at least, you should forgive yourself. You'll need that to endure it.'
There was no one to wish happiness for the one who'd driven humanity to the brink of annihilation.
I hope it wasn't too painful, Araka thought.
"I've put into custody, and it'll take time for Terraphos's verdict to come through…"
As Minerva sorted her thoughts and left, a gray brain drifted through the air toward her.
"Brain, you were still at the Ivory Tower?"
A brain whose owner was unknown.
Even Minerva, leader of the Humanity Safety Enforcement Division, couldn't say whose it was. She could only make a few educated guesses.
"What is it? You seemed to be waiting for me."
Sensing the brain wanted somewhere quiet, Minerva took it into her room.
The brain floated to a chair and cast an illusion; in an instant a handsome man sat cross-legged in the room.
"What is this? What kind of service is—"
"Do you not like it?"
The voice was sweet enough to melt hearts, but Minerva's eyes narrowed.
First assumption.
Even if the brain could use magic, it was still just a brain.
It couldn't see or hear.
Why, then, could a brain without sense organs respond accurately to stimuli?
There was only one possibility.
The brain's senses operated on ten tiers, using the formless state—so it was possible to infer what the brain contained.
Akashic Record.
Minerva thought there were two ways to survive a reset that triggers from the formless.
One was Hexa: a new signal coming from outside the system.
And the other was to copy the Akashic Record and back it up into a new storage vessel.
It wasn't Anke Ra.
The Akashic Record in that brain would be primordial information, different from the current Akashic Record.
We're in the Great Purge now.
Three resets had been carried out; much information was erased and no one remembered it. Someone, however, must have felt the need to preserve original data to resist the resets.
What did they try to leave behind?
Put another way: what event lost the most information through those three resets?
The history of Paradise.
The original human Gaia who opposed Anke Ra.
So the owner of this brain is very likely to have been a Gaian.
Gaia no longer exists in the universe after Gevin left the photon realm, but the history of their struggle against the whole remained.
Through a formless brain.
"Not really…"
Minerva smiled casually.
"Not my type. You don't know women very well, do you?"
"Is that so?"
When the brain accelerated its illusion, faces of countless men and women of all ages spun like a roulette wheel.
The final stop was Shirone.
"You've gotten better at pranks?"
The brain had come to Minerva's division to enforce humanity's safety.
"I thought you were going to erase Nane."
"Heh. You seem to hate her a lot. Or rather, do you truly hate the Anke Ra she harbors?"
The brain wouldn't be led by leading questions.
"You don't have to leave everything to Hexa."
Because it might be the only brain that had backed up Gevin's data, Minerva couldn't dismiss it.
"I know. Something that looks like you exists in my head too. It's not that simple."
"I heard you met people who play card games."
"I saw the possibility of ending the game. But betting with money and betting with reality are different. To shatter the balance among Good, Evil, Emptiness, and Love, you need to deliver a massive shock to whichever pillar you target."
"So you help Love strike Evil?"
"Or should I help Emptiness strike Good? It's the most rational choice among the scenarios humanity could pick."
"Do you think it could be achieved with ?"
Minerva fell silent.
"Evil is not something you can overcome with rational judgment. Even if you change the Law…"
"I know. I'm looking for a way. For now, we should wait to see what judgment Shirone's apostasy receives."
Minerva propped her chin on her hand and murmured, lost in thought.
"I wish some opportunity would arise, though."
* * *
Midheaven East.
Formally absorbed into the Jincheon Empire, it remained a legal sanctuary the Empire dared not touch.
The tens of thousands of peaks rising through the clouds had once been where the Law's clan cultivated their minds.
They were called the Mountains of the Monks.
But now that the Midheaven monks had departed for Zion, what remained were villagers working their fields and…
"Hahaha! Humans! Humans!"
Demons slaughtering them.
"Evacuate the civilians!"
The Jincheon army responded quickly, but the number of demons occupying Midheaven East swelled to four hundred thousand.
Filthy brutes.
Even though Jincheon's population rivaled the world's largest nations, only twenty thousand troops were available to defend Midheaven East.
"Hold them! Fight for your lives!"
Though the monks were gone, if the Law's sanctuary fell to demons, human morale would plummet.
"Raaaaargh!"
The demons surged like a tidal wave, and the imperial forces could not make use of even their defensive advantage.
Gartas, commander of the Seventh Division of the Fourth Legion of Hell, was a grotesque monster with sharp needles protruding through his skin.
"You idiot! Is that the best you can do to torment them?"
A ghoul slicing a human's limbs trembled at Gartas's shout.
"S-sorry!"
When it raised a dead helmet to strike again, Gartas drove a spiked foot through the ghoul's torso and flung it away.
"Aaaargh!"
"You lack imagination! At least—!"
Grabbing a soldier by the head and forcing it into the ground, he ground the man against the dirt like sharpening an eraser at lightning speed.
"This is what I want you to do!"
Watching the brutal spectacle from afar, the imperial commander Bakgi's eyes went wide.
"You bastard! What do you take humans for?"
Riding down the hill, Bakgi charged; Gartas's eyes glittered coldly.
"Not a bad toy."
"You'll take my head even if I die!"
Bakgi, a master of body techniques up to the fourth rank, engaged with tremendous skill; blows were exchanged in an instant.
"It's over!"
His spear pierced Gartas's throat.
"Kuk, this feels delightful."
Gartas walked forward, then crushed both horse and Bakgi against his massive body.
The horse screamed and died of shock; countless thorns pierced Bakgi's armor.
"Ugh!"
"How do you like that? Feels amazing, right?"
Piercing flesh with thin thorns that wouldn't kill was a favored form of torture across nations.
"Like this. Like this. Like this."
With every small movement the pain deepened, and Bakgi eventually had to give up, screaming.
"Are you enjoying this?"
Turning toward the voice, a man with tattoos carved into his face stood with a sorrowful expression.
"Kugh!"
Gartas yanked Bakgi free and spun him about, his face twisting.
"Buddha…"
If Yahweh was the demons' object of hatred, Buddha was their object of fear.
"What pleasure do you find in this?"
Behind Nane, Shura slaughtered countless demons with a gestalt ability.
"Why did you come? Isn't this the altar you liberated? To teach humans fear?"
Nane had come here seeking Gevin's gate.
"So we have no reason to fight…."
"Sermon. Pain."
As the words fell, a violet blade shot out and pierced Gartas's solar plexus.
"Aaaaargh!"
Gartas's eyes bulged as if they would pop from their sockets; clutching his belly, he sank to his knees.
"It hurts! It huuuurts!"
"Yes. That is pain."
Even as consciousness ebbed, Bakgi could not believe Nane had incapacitated a division commander with a single strike.
Is this Buddha…?
When Nane stepped forward, Gartas shrank back.
"W-why are you doing this to me? I did what you wanted! No— I did!"
"You did what I wanted?"
"Aaaaargh!"
The blade's vibrating pain spread through his entire body, scattering his demonic essence.
"Stop! Please stop—!"
"Hear me clearly, minion of Hell."
When Nane placed a fingertip on the crown of Gartas's head, his expression froze.
"If you had never existed, or at least if you were something capable of repentance…"
Nane's face crumpled with sorrow.
"I would have no reason to close the world."
"No! Rather, kill me—!"
"Annihilate."
When the sermon triggered, Gartas's body burst with a pop and dispersed into an eternal void.
Demons who realized a Buddha had appeared fled in all directions, and Shura, having finished the slaughter, approached.
"He still has breath."
Bakgi weakly raised his head.
"Buddha…."
Nane leaned in as if to listen.
"If I die… what happens? Is there really nothing after death?"
"Awakening."
Nane pressed a hand to Bakgi's chest.
"It's only a dream. Do not be afraid. Once you open your eyes, you will recall this and laugh."
"…Is that so?"
Despite the spasms of pain, a faint smile creased Bakgi's face.
"I hope you wake soon."
With the most peaceful expression, he closed his eyes; he would likely not fall into hell.
Nane pressed palms together in prayer, then lifted Bakgi's eyelids and looked around.
The landscape, piled with corpses, resembled the hellish scenes Nane had seen in the otherworld.
"There are no more survivors."
Shura thought those words might offer some comfort.
"Is that a good thing?"
But Nane asked back.
"War is terrible, of course. So many lives suffer, and beloved people are lost."
Nane clutched at his chest.
"Ah."
Before he realized it, a scream tore from deep within his chest.
"Aaaaargh! Aaaaargh! Aaaaargh!"
The vibration of the sermon shook Midheaven East, and Shura, unable to fathom its meaning, could only tremble.
"My heart aches."
Thinking of the countless sentient beings who had fallen into the demonic world, his heart felt as if it were being ripped into ten thousand pieces.
"Even though it hurts like this, I—"
Nane looked back at Shura with a sorrowful expression.
"I cannot shed tears."
The irony of Emptiness.
Thus Nane was left with an unanswered question.