[763] Lord of Destruction (2)
* * *
"Commander."
Beshum, commander of the 7th Division attached to the 24th Legion, approached, his black-iron armor clanking.
"Our soldiers are attacking our own forces."
Maraduk of Ruin—the beautiful man—sat on the throne with only a faint smile.
"Can it be stopped?"
Beshum bowed at once.
"Leave it to me!"
"Hmm."
When Maraduk rose, the three other division commanders standing by immediately saluted.
"An interesting ability. Infection…."
Outside the window, the view was a boundless tide with no individual features.
"Argh! Die! Just die!"
Number infected: 165,843.
Maraduk bared his fangs and laughed as he watched demons stricken with the Walking Dead condition slaughter their kin.
"Truly demonic, aren't they?"
Savoring the irony, the four division commanders silently watched the scene beyond the glass.
Number infected: 325,574.
From the hundreds-of-thousands scale, infection routes were forming huge ripples and rolling toward the leader's palace.
"Clear them out."
Maraduk made a decisive order.
"Worthless things."
The situation was already irreversible; once infected numbers passed a million, even the division commanders would be exhausted.
"We will obey."
Shirone and Minerva walked through the center of the battlefield, their eyes fixed on the leader's palace in the distance.
"Kill yourselves! Bite and commit suicide at once!"
The hell-brigade leaders issued threats, but the command chain was already broken.
Some demons took their own lives, but statistics always converge on the mean: those who missed their chance turned and attacked others, and the infection snowballed.
Number infected: 653,329.
Shirone swallowed as he followed the path the hellish army had cleared.
It was over. A dreadful magic.
High population density helped it, but even if people had been scattered, annihilation would have been only a matter of time.
That was why his chest ached.
"A magic of fratricide."
When Minerva first revealed that magic to the world, humanity had faced extinction.
"It was originally designed to wipe out humans."
How deep must one's hatred of humanity be to make such a spell real?
"Don't be so harsh."
Minerva exhaled cigarette smoke and cracked a smile.
"If you praise it like that, I'll be embarrassed."
"..."
Just then, an explosion rocked the leader's palace.
"They only just realized their asses are on fire, huh."
Minerva pointed with her cigarette stub at four figures radiating a distinctly purple aura.
"They're division commanders."
No sooner had she said it than a demon in black-iron armor stepped forward and swung his sword.
"Pathetic things."
A trace that should have been only an afterimage writhed in the air and then expanded into a massive ripple.
"Arrgh!"
One stroke cut down more than three hundred demons, and the other division commanders began slaughtering their own allies.
"A counteroperation, then."
If you remove the infected targets first, you can at least prevent the demons from swarming into the leader's palace.
"A demonic decision. But it won't stop them anyway."
The infected already outnumbered the uninfected.
"It'll buy time. Look there."
When Shirone pointed toward the top of the leader's palace, Maraduk, commander of the 24th Legion, looked down at them with a displeased expression.
"He's handsome."
Minerva's voice was cold as ice.
"He's strong."
The ma energy around him burned like a blaze with no room for argument.
"I'll take the legion commander. You handle this side."
Shirone shook his head.
"No. This is my job. I'll take the legion commander—please take the division commanders."
Minerva gave a hollow laugh.
"You ever fought a legion commander before?"
He hadn't.
"You know how strong a division commander is. But a legion commander isn't on that level. He's the finest masterpiece you can make by compressing ma into cohesion."
Shirone remembered Igor, Lord of Terror in Radum, tormenting mercenaries with a "common brain."
"The hell army is made from ma infused with Satan's individuality. Especially from division-commander level up, the strangeness of their individuality defies common sense. It's a different matter from Nane's righteousness."
Satan was a being outside the Law.
"Nane's preaching is powerful because it is right. His tongue becomes a sword of truth that pierces the world. Your Yahweh is powerful because it makes what's wrong not look wrong."
All the laws loved Shirone.
"That's Infinite Magic. Everything you can imagine is realized through Yahweh's light. Does that make you a god?"
He's not a god.
"You wield godlike power, but you're human. A god doesn't imagine—everything a god is is what it has already made."
If he had truly been a god, JC would not have accepted the world's suffering.
"You brag, but you're strong. Only your Infinity can stop Nane's vast righteousness. But it's a contest of extensibility. In terms of depth alone…."
Minerva's voice turned firm.
"I don't think your realm is deeper than Miro's or Veron's. At least, not yet."
That was also true.
"You're twenty now. Your decision was based on seeing possibility, not on believing you could save everyone right now. Like with JC, right?"
With nearly all demons infected except for a few commanders, Minerva stepped forward.
"Leave it to me. Watch my back."
Shirone put a hand on Minerva's shoulder.
"Let me do this."
"...This isn't a game. If you die, humanity is finished. I don't care personally, but—"
"I won't die. Nothing can be saved by death."
Minerva clicked her tongue and turned.
"Do as you please. The world you saved—whether you boil the soup or poison it…."
"Don't worry. I survived against an archangel in Heaven."
Minerva managed a bitter smile.
"Angels who can't be system-destroyed…."
"System destruction?"
"Anke Ra is the master of the system. A master doesn't allow his own house to be burned."
"That makes no sense."
"Ask Taeseong. Why Anke Ra had to seal Imir…."
Minerva spun her jet and coiled her lower body, ready to spring.
"If you're going to do it, I won't stop you—but be careful. The legion commander can withstand Yahweh."
When Minerva blasted off on her jet in a terrifying rush, Shirone put his doubts aside and launched himself as well.
If they killed the legion commander, the war would end.
With his wings unfurled, he reached the spire where Maraduk stood in an instant.
A blast thundered from where Minerva had been, but before Shirone could look back, Maraduk rose into the air.
"Yahweh?"
The legion commander planted his sword vertically; dark energy crept up the hilt and covered the blade.
Dangerous.
When Maraduk swung, the cut split the landscape and a ten-meter-thick line stretched to the horizon.
"What is that?"
Using his spatial sense to leave the spot, Shirone leapt to the opposite spire and watched the ground.
There was no sound, no shock.
The line—drawn as straight as with a ruler—was a trench of unfathomable depth.
How deep?
A kilometer? Ten kilometers? Maybe more.
"Don't be surprised already."
Shirone slowly turned and saw Maraduk levitating a black sphere above his right hand.
"Maraduk of Ruin."
The oily, gelatinous sphere fell and pierced the palace ceiling.
When Shirone checked the palace interior with the Spirit Zone, the sphere punched through floor after floor and then burrowed into the ground.
It kept falling.
Physically impossible.
"Don't worry. It won't pierce a star."
Shirone looked back at Maraduk.
"It'll just… hurt a little."
Because it was outside the Law, it differed from Nane; even an Infinite mage could only squeeze imagination to match it.
How to stop it?
* * *
Taeseong curled up in pain.
"Ugh!"
The terrible shock delivered to the star reverberated through her body.
"Are you all right?"
Saint Mahoro Amanta, another of the Five Major Stars invited to the Earth Temple, approached.
He was the highest star in the Balance Division: a slim, bald man with brown skin and deep crow's-feet. The little wheel he held between thumb and forefinger clicked as it spun, and Taeseong's gaze went to it.
'The World Wheel.'
Mahoro's title meant "the one who turns the world wheel," and the ticking was a sign he was ready to intervene.
Taeseong forced a smile.
"Don't worry. This won't cause a system destruction."
Long ago, when an asteroid struck, she had stood firm.
"That's true. Even if demons tried system destruction, overclocking beyond the limit is unlikely. I only mean you don't needlessly bear more pain."
Amanta pursued moderation alone; in that sense, the ma's actions had crossed a line.
"You talk like Terraforce."
"…The same philosophy. You can't exist if you don't follow the rules. I am neither for the ma nor for humanity."
Taeseong's sad face was reflected among the quickly turning spokes of the World Wheel.
"I only hope I don't make you sorrier."
Amanta gripped the World Wheel, and the Earth Temple dropped into profound stillness.
"Guard this place."
Those words left behind, Amanta vanished. Taeseong looked up at the vision of North Aemon painted on the ceiling.
"Shirone…."
Judgment day was approaching.
* * *
'Angel's Punishment!'
Hundreds of archangels of light hurled spears of radiance that devastated the ground.
The leader's palace had already lost its shape; the capital, steeped in the dictator's greed, resembled a wasteland.
"I can't catch him."
Every time Maraduk's sword slit the air, countless Shirones' heads were severed.
They were all Shirone, sacrificing themselves to protect the original.
The real problem was Maraduk's blade: the ruinous aura it sprayed like ink disintegrated any material it touched.
"Homing Photon Cannons!"
Two hundred homing photon cannons arced at Maraduk, but he had no reason to move.
"Veil of Ruin."
A black liquid covered Maraduk; the photon cannons dissolved silently as light ripples were swallowed.
"I miscalculated."
Maraduk let his blade drop to his side and prepared a wide, sweeping strike.
"This isn't merely plaything fodder."
When his Annihilation swordplay unfolded, the black liquid traced enormous lines and sprayed in all directions.
"Shibulsang Pokmae!"
Using his spatial sense to pierce the lines' trajectories, Shirone entered the Otherworld through Choni Bardo.
So that was it.
If it was a phenomenon that ignored physics, it had to be an ability that activated in a realm beyond physics.
As suspected, the black liquid was even devouring the Otherworld as it flew, though its form there differed from the real world.
What on earth is this?
Thanks to bulking a shield out of Material to buy time, he could sense it through the Spirit Zone.
Minute organisms were gnawing at iron.
'They're nanomachines.'
There were so many that metal decomposed instantly, and Shirone hurled himself away in haste.
"Does knowing change anything?"
Maraduk, tracking Shirone's position where the nano-weapon made contact, swung his blade in the real world.
"Of course it doesn't."
A dark sphere.
"One hundred thousand-fold stacking."
God particles were compressed monstrously, spawning a black hole with an eight-meter gravitational radius.
Kieeeee!
The black liquid that had been arcing was sucked into the spiral, and an eerie scream tore the air.