Anger (4)
Heaven — the Sixth Heaven, the Deva.
In the Great Battle Hall where Kariel resided, eight subjects were imprisoned, Smille among them.
Humans selected by special criteria.
The first giant had been a fusion with the Gaia-people, and there had been no adverse reaction when performing the Unification Rite.
That was because they had forged such an integrated mental framework that individual distinctions had become impossible.
From that integration was born the giant called Ymir, King of Giants, the ultimate of living beings.
But as the Ultima System weakened, the Unification Rite's success rate began to fall sharply.
"If there's no point in distinguishing individuality, the strength of integration comes only from numbers."
Put another way: if even one individual remained distinct, the complete dismantling of the Ultima System was impossible.
It was already difficult to make even a sixth-rank giant, so Kariel gave Anke Ra a special order.
Analyze the Ultima System.
To annihilate the Gaia-people completely, they needed to understand the mental framework that bound them.
"Smille, was it?"
Kariel glanced at the blue-haired woman trapped in the glass orb of the Physics Machine.
"Just an ordinary human."
There was no trace of fear in the calm way she accepted reality.
"She's not mentally tough, not especially durable, and she doesn't understand fear either."
The Ultima System wasn't about those things.
Among humans there were those who pushed their traits to the extreme, but such individuals couldn't be integrated that way.
"Ultimately ordinary? No — even calling her that is just a concept that obstructs the Ultima System."
The moment you define something, it can no longer be wholly integrated.
"Yes. This is something prior to definition."
Therefore there was no way to define Smille.
"Just accept her."
Kariel stepped closer to the glass orb.
"Aren't you afraid?"
Through the Black Elixir he could acquire prime matter and learn everything about Smille, but the anxiety that perhaps nothing could be found made him ask.
"You know what the Unification Rite is. Ten people, a hundred, a thousand. Do you think they could find you in there?"
Smille's eyes trembled briefly, then, as if swept along by a great current, she returned to her serene composure.
"Being eaten by a beast and dying and being buried in the ground are all the same."
"…Is that so?"
No matter what you pointed to in this world, if you traced causality back endlessly, everything became one.
'I think I almost understand.'
There was no distinction of sides. The vantage to contemplate all things as one was probably outside the universe.
'So she's trying to leave the photon realm?'
Kariel activated the Physics Machine. The liquid of the Black Elixir — the thing they called the Philosopher's Stone — began to rise inside the glass orb.
"Kariel-nim."
An angel flew into the Great Battle Hall at that moment.
"An intruder disturbing Heaven has passed the Third Heaven and entered the Fourth Heaven."
"What?"
Judging from the intruder's path, it had been destroying barriers clockwise from the First Heaven to get here.
"You haven't stopped it yet?" Kariel said. His first briefing had claimed it could be contained in the Second Heaven.
'No — that, but… it's too fast.'
Only twenty minutes had passed since the report; at this rate it would reach them within half an hour.
When the black liquid lapped at her ankles, Smille stood in the glass orb, buying them time.
It wasn't a struggle to survive.
'Brother.'
If the walls of Heaven had been broken, the culprit could only be Ozent.
'You mustn't come.'
She already knew her brother's heart.
'It was too hard for you.'
Ozent was timid. He felt love only when he kept someone constantly by his side, sucking at them.
'You think too much.'
Had it been wrong for them to live like that, knowing each other's hearts? If they'd surrendered to the flow of life, perhaps there might have been a chance for a burning love.
Humans couldn't do that.
'Stop chasing brother's happiness. Don't drive yourself into misery any longer.'
Torment.
It was the reason all humanity could not be united as one.
Kariel asked, "What happened?"
The angel bowed hastily at the rebuke.
"I'm sorry. My misjudgment."
The angel's shame at having misjudged a single human stung, but he could not deny the facts and bit his lip before speaking.
"The intruder I reported twenty minutes ago and the one now are completely different."
Kariel cocked his head.
"You mean the person changed?"
"Th—that—"
After a moment's thought, the angel gave up and spoke plainly.
"I don't even know what it is anymore."
Fifth Heaven — Matei.
"Pathetic worms! The mightiest giant corps couldn't stop a single human!"
Under the legion leader's command, hundreds of giants brought their swords down toward Ozent.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The sight of blades striking the ground in succession felt to Ozent like the sky collapsing.
The instant a massive blade tried to crush him, the giant swinging it widened his eyes.
"What strength…!"
Though the force was like a falling mountain, Ozent held the blade in place.
"Ughhh!"
Hot smoke shot from between Ozent's clenched teeth.
Crunch. Crunch.
Bones warped, muscles twisted like ropes; he was changing into something nonhuman.
"Benda!"
Ozent deflected the giant's weapon and stepped forward, and the giants around him had their faces cleanly torn away.
"What on earth is that?"
It was obsession.
"Stop him! Trample him!"
Watching the giants thunder forward, Ozent thought.
'It's already over for me.'
Everything had fallen to ruin.
'I won't vanish having been happy for even a moment.'
His anger swelled without end and would eventually devour everything.
'Death is fine.'
He felt no grievance. He had been born human and lived twenty-some years; many lived far less.
'But Smille—'
She would never understand.
'I don't know how to live as beautifully as you do.'
He calculated and analyzed — this would happen, that would happen — but there were no answers.
'There are none.'
A miserable life wandering and crying through some unknown midpoint of existence.
'That is me.'
Life is beautiful? "Lucky you, being happy." Where could such petty feelings, unable even to rejoice for another, go?
"AAARGH!"
A furnace-like rage burned his mind and began to twist his body.
"Urrk! Urrk! Urrk!"
He vomited biological refuse as he swung his sword like a lunatic.
'I reached it!'
At the apex of rage where he barely felt like himself, he realized another state.
"Urrrkk! Urrrkk!"
Save me.
"See? This is humanity's strongest sword art!"
No giant could match him.
'Do you think this is beautiful? Do you think this looks cool?'
Struggling to live like an octopus thrown into a boiling cauldron was life's fate.
'Still, I'll try to live.'
He flailed, soiling himself, but the truth of life was he could never get out.
"I'm so angry I'm going mad!"
The moment Ozent's blade swung, the barrier of the Sixth Heaven, the Deva, exploded.
Angels flying from afar suddenly halted midflight and widened their eyes.
"What—?!"
By the time Ozent's body reached the angels' realm, his human form had already collapsed.
"Hrek! Hrek! Hrek!"
The process of rage burning skin, twisting muscles, and melting bone was horrific.
'It's fine.'
Breath filled to his chin and biological refuse kept spilling from his mouth.
'I must swing the sword.'
There was nothing else he knew to do.
'If I swing, and swing, and keep swinging… a good day will surely come.'
"Something good will happen to someone like me!"
Not knowing where his limbs even were, Ozent swung at the mara charging him.
The motion — a single-minded will to cut beyond form — was monstrous by human standards, but…
"He's not human."
To the angels' eyes, that desperate struggle was perversely beautiful.
"Life itself."
Ozent shouted through his sobs.
"Give me Smille!"
"Kill him."
Fearing the danger, the angels gave the order, and hundreds of maras leapt.
At the same time, Ozent's body flared like a blaze and cleaved through all the maras around him.
"How can that be?"
This world's Laws never grant infinite power to one individual.
"Destroy his weapons!"
A massive triangular mara snatched Ozent's sword, snapped it with a metallic crack, and tossed it away.
"That's enough! No more—"
Benda.
The mara's face contorted and its body split cleanly in two.
The angels narrowed their eyes.
'I see.'
An Idea.
'He's becoming a sword.'
Their one regret was that they had failed to stop him just thirty minutes earlier.
"We cannot let him reach that. If he goes further, we must stake Heaven's very existence."
The angels' radiant forms all shifted into halos.
"We launch a full assault!"
The Judicial Halo embroidered the sky, concentrating the angels' innate concepts onto Ozent.
Amid barrages that shook the Deva, Ozent's roar cut through the mist.
"Arghhh!"
When the smoke cleared and his shape was revealed, the angels watched in stunned silence.
"This cannot be…"
"Ughhhh."
His perfectly regenerated body resembled a human, but his temperament was no longer human.
A face twisted like a demon, muscles grotesquely contorted across his frame.
"Can't he be destroyed?"
If he'd reached the conceptual plane, destruction would be impossible.
"No — it's just extremely tough. As long as he has a body, he can't fully reach the Idea."
"Then what is he?"
"Yaksha."
The strongest yaksha in history.
"Smilleeee!"
As Ozent roared, the angels blocking his path were split in half.
Kraaaang!
Infused with the Law of Mach, a massive hole tore into the wall of the Great Battle Hall and Ozent entered.
"You finally came."
Kariel, who had been watching from above, greeted him with a sour expression.
"Smille."
When Ozent saw Smille submerged in the black liquid, his muscles tightened further.
He didn't show his anger outwardly, but every step he took shook the surroundings.
"Foolish one."
Even having become an angelic-level being, he would kill himself just to find a single woman.
"I'll commend you for coming this far. But you will never get what you want."
That's human life.
"Give me Smille."
Ozent had given up being human.
"Judicial Halo."
When Kariel's trademark Simularc was assembled, every electronic device in the Great Battle Hall flickered.
'The stronger it is, the stronger it becomes; the stronger it becomes, the more it amplifies — a cannon of matter.'
A conceptual muzzle was born from a theory approaching a near-perpetual engine, something beyond human reach.
"It's enough to shatter you."
Maybe it was, but Ozent ignored it; like someone brandishing a sword, he lifted both arms.
"Benda."
From the matter cannon, the hardest sphere was fired.