[765] Lord of Destruction (4)
* * *
"I heard about it."
Gando didn't bother to ask who Woorin had met—the number of people she'd met already surpassed the need to ask.
"Humans have five senses."
Woorin traced a line on the table with her two forefingers.
"Think of it like a card game. You combine five cards and define rules. Of course, different creatures have different numbers of cards and different cards."
"The rules they define will differ too."
"Right. And that's where the problem starts. To define rules is to start a game."
Woorin tapped her temple.
"The moment a game begins, patterns of combinations accumulate without end. Then you realize something: besides the five cards you hold, there's one more card you can't hold."
Time.
"The experiences the five senses receive are integrated into a single sense—a synesthetic sense—and stored as memory. The speed at which that synesthetic sense accumulates is what we call time."
Time is felt through the five senses as well.
"But sometimes you feel time differently. You can sense that that's going to happen, and then it really does."
"The accumulation rate of sensation changed."
Woorin nodded.
"We already exist in all timeframes. It's just that, as beings of the five senses, we only perceive as reality the instant when the synesthetic sense accumulates. But some beings accumulate sensation faster than humans."
A prime example was angels.
"Compared to a human present, an angel's present is vastly larger. From our viewpoint, it's like the reality of time exploded and expanded."
A sixth sense a living being can attain.
"That's called Siok. Shirone, who bears the incarnation of an archangel, feels a present larger than the one we experience."
"…Not very humanlike."
"So Shirone gained a new card."
The rules changed.
"Sensation is as exact as an object. Shirone, who senses time as a sense, can feel every space that exists at the same time and thus discovered new worlds."
Gando glanced out the window.
"The spirit realm."
"Some sensitive humans can sometimes sense it too. A feeling someone's nearby, strange eyes seen through a crack in the door… Of course, Parkji isn't at that level."
"Something inaccurate isn't a sense."
Woorin looked satisfied.
"From Siok to Pakji, then to Ipdo, and reaching Bardos, even the seventh sense was perfectly integrated. At that point Shirone began to perceive minds like objects."
Woorin spread her arms.
"All that remained was extensibility. Opening the Immortal Function, Shirone entered the eighth-sense Ipdo by unlocking the super-cognitive sense. He became able to sense all information in the world."
"He almost couldn't come back, didn't he?"
"If Yahweh's mind hadn't supported him. But in the end he became an Infinite Mage."
"Is there anything beyond that?"
"String."
Woorin raised a forefinger.
"Siok senses photons, Pakji senses quanta, and Ipdo senses photonic quanta."
In order: they conquered spacetime, non-substance, information.
"Information is a signal carrying unique individuality. So how are those signals produced?"
Her finger curved.
"Specific forms. All information in this world is made from infinite combinations of forms created by vibration."
Form is everything.
"To put it simply: every event that happens in this vast universe happens only once."
Woorin hooked her bent finger on her thumb and snapped.
"They're things set off by the action of some force."
"Only once…."
"Yes. To put it as plainly as possible: someone walking down the road sees a taut string and plucks it. That's it."
Gando shut his mouth tight.
"How hard it was plucked, I don't know. That intensity will split the universe's outcomes infinitely, but in any case the string vibrated, and by the probabilities made by that amplitude, time, space, substance and non-substance, all information combined into specific forms to create the world we live in."
Woorin looked up at the ceiling.
"We live relying on the amplitude of a single vibrating string. Someday it will stop, but even I—who've lived eons—can't imagine how distant that day will be. The amplitude might never shrink within any timeframe we can imagine. Of course, then this universe would have to end."
A scale even Gando couldn't picture.
"Vibration alone is everything. In the endless repetition between extremes, all information vibrates."
"Then resonance is…."
"Yes."
Woorin turned to Gando.
"The world a being who's attained super-cognition can explore is no longer fixed. It's a world produced by a single force that quivers without end. And if the eight senses combine with the String…."
She opened a folding fan and intoned solemnly.
"It means one can resonate with the vibrations of the world."
"..."
Gando didn't fully understand, but he bowed his head in an indescribable awe.
* * *
"Krrrrrrr!"
Maraduk, both hands at Shirone's throat, grimaced at the savage vibrations.
"What on earth are you?"
It wasn't the vibration itself that terrified him, but the countless vibrations felt through that pre-vibration.
It was as if the whole world shook to Shirone's vibration, and Maraduk's vision jittered up and down.
"Despicable Yahweh!"
As he twisted Shirone's neck, the afterimages Shirone's vibration produced began to writhe in agony, each with a different expression.
"Uuuuu!"
From those expressions, Maraduk realized the number of afterimages exceeded ten thousand.
"What is this!"
He wanted to snap the neck right now, but Yahweh's light was counteracting the demonic energy.
"Die! Die! Die!"
As his thick arm muscles swelled to bursting, Shirone's vibration intensified.
It felt like a hundred thousand Shirones existed, and amid the overlay of every expression came screams.
A sound not even found in hell.
"Huuuuuu."
Before that cosmic phenomenon, Maraduk felt for the first time in his life the fear of the unknown.
Shirone weeping blood, Shirone screaming, Shirone begging for life.
"…Are you mocking me?"
Among the afterimages, Shirones smiled, stuck out their tongues, rapturous ones moaned, others burst into laughter.
"How dare you mock a legion commander!"
Calling up ruinous power, Maraduk prepared to expend his life for a final strike—then,
'The afterimages are disappearing.'
More precisely, they were resonating with identical reactions.
Ten thousand Shirones became thousands, then hundreds, then tens.
"Uuuuuuuuu!"
The identical Shirones, teeth gritted and enduring pain, were merely shaking very quickly back and forth.
'No, they're not shaking.'
If one person shook at that speed, the brain would have been pulped inside the skull.
'A tremendous number of events.'
It was the process of ten thousand Shirones, superposed like a quantum superposition, fusing into a single piece of information.
"Huuuu."
The dwindling afterimages went from five to three, until finally they unified into one Shirone.
"Still like this?"
The debt of the Valhalla Action disappeared.
"We die together! Yahweh!"
At the instant Maraduk unleashed his magic to choose mutual annihilation, Shirone's eyes snapped open.
'Resonance!'
The Shirone who'd unified into one poured Yahweh's light through a Spirit Zone forty kilometers in diameter.
"Kraaaaaa!"
Demons—infected ones remaining—turned to ash and scattered with agonized wails.
"So warm…."
Minerva, pipe between her lips, closed her eyes gently and the corners of her mouth lifted.
"Y- YAHWEH! YAHWEEEEEE!"
Maraduk's screams pierced eardrums, and the pressure of his grip vanished completely.
When Shirone slowly opened his eyes, Maraduk's limbs had melted away and he knelt, grinding his teeth.
"How utterly evil are you?"
To withstand Yahweh's light meant the legion commander's magic rivaled that of Satan.
"Don't think it's over."
Maraduk lifted his head.
"There are plenty of ways to torment you. Repent, Yahweh. Realize your foolishness and follow the demonic path!"
Black spread over Maraduk's body and he began to reveal his true demonic form.
His beautiful face had only been a body shaped by force; now it became a hideous shadow that descended on Shirone.
"I will annihilate you."
A sizzling, insectile friction replaced his voice.
"Ataraxia."
The sphere's Ataraxia wrapped Shirone's body and, at the same time, an explosive radiance burst forth.
Dragon-destroying magic—Quasar.
Countless lights arced in from all sides and trapped Maraduk inside a massive sphere of light.
"Kuaaaa!"
Like ink dropped into water, but far more grotesque, a writhing silhouette frothed inside.
"I will not forgive you! O Satan… please—Yahweh—"
As the coalesced forces vanished, so did sound; when the Quasar's light faded there wasn't even a speck of dust left.
"It's over."
Minerva had come up behind him.
"No. It's only just begun."
As Shirone looked back toward the sunset beyond the horizon, Minerva smacked the top of his head.
"Ouch! Why'd you hit me?"
"You're not cool at all. Did you think I'd stare at you with teary admiration if you turned like that?"
"No?"
Minerva jabbed a finger.
"Anyway, you should understand now. Let go of the obsession to protect everyone. Move by efficiency."
Rubbing his sore head, Shirone said, "But it's what I have to do."
"That still… after all that!"
The fierceness left Minerva's eyes.
'He's starting to place himself within the whole.'
What one cannot do is simply impossible.
'Admitting even that is true mastery.'
And the greatest efficiency toward perfection.
"I'm not afraid anymore. I'll just do my best and do what I can."
Having had his delusion shattered, Minerva's resolve to follow Shirone's perfection remained intact.
"Alright. Shall we seal the altar? Report to Taeseong and then fly straight to Kashan."
The matters entrusted to the stars were endless, and Minerva took off into the sky on a jet.
Since she could now be caught, Shirone stayed a moment to gather his thoughts.
'A new sense. This must be the ninth.'
He didn't know the ninth sense was called Resonance, but he had heard of the tenth.
'Mutai.'
And now he had a vague idea of the world that sense was hidden in.
'It manipulates the information of all worlds. If that's possible, then theoretically…'
Reset—the ability to initialize a world.
'Anke Ra's sense.'
If this world had an owner, it would surely be an administrator's authority, and whether even Shirone could reach it was doubtful.
That a human Shirone could obtain the sixth sense was because he inherited an archangel's sense.
'Ikael.'
And the reason he could rise to the ninth was because the end of sensation, the eleventh sense Ultima, pulled him upward.
'Geffin.'
Ikael pushed, and Geffin pulled him up.
'Made human… and yet—'
With one final sense left, Shirone thought of them and felt a fierce, aching longing.