Participation in Battle (4)
'Evil.'
Is chaos so unbearably lonely?
Unable to commune with anyone outside the Law, unable even to understand itself.
So alone that even killing the entire world would leave it unmoved.
"You say you love? Who? That goblin?"
That was the kind of question Havitz could ask—from the angle of whether a human could love a beast.
"Shirone."
Sadness touched Kido's eyes.
"Shirone?"
Smodo said.
"The mage of the Ivory Tower I mentioned before. Balkan calls him the world's universal love."
"Oh, that guy. Hmm."
Havitz looked up at the sky.
What was he thinking?
At the word love—did Abella, who had died essentially by his hand, flash before him?
Uorin shook her head.
No. Nothing at all.
Chaos is like that.
Everyone reads meaning into Havitz's actions, but what truly moves him is random chance.
"Why did you do it?"
Havitz lifted Uorin's chin with the tip of his boot.
"Because she was one of the Three Sovereigns, because she was Kashan's female sovereign—did you think she could beat me? Did you really think she was stronger than me?" He had thought there might be a chance.
But when he reached the future he had seen, he realized how hollow that hope had been.
"Almost made it? Nonsense." Even if Law Execution had chased Havitz to the edge of his chin, failure is still failure.
"Probability means nothing to Havitz."
Because even a 0.01 percent chance can be the one he forces through.
"A monster born from the universe."
Uorin defined Havitz that way.
"I didn't know my place. I can't beat you. Please—have mercy."
Uorin spoke sincerely.
"I want to live."
There had never been a moment so humbling in Teraje's life, but she felt no resentment.
This is defeat. Nothing more. The structure of this world makes victory impossible for most, and at the extreme only one emerges victorious.
Teraje had approached the summit but simply failed to clear the final barrier.
"The one who rules the current world is Havitz."
Havitz said.
"All right. I'll let you live."
Uorin looked up, but Havitz had already turned away as if bored.
"Let's go."
Smodo asked in bafflement.
"Where to?"
"To another battlefield. I should finish conquering the world before they call me back, right?"
Who would call Havitz?
"I'm heading to the Central Continent. Leave this place to Balkan. He likes things like this, doesn't he?"
When Havitz whistled, the demonic mount that had been circling the sky descended to the ground.
Mounted on its broad back, just before taking off he pointed at Uorin and said,
"Do your best. Enjoy it."
Saved by the strongest enemy of her life, Uorin felt an indescribable strangeness.
"Why…?"
Even having set aside her pride, as a woman who bore the name Teraje she had to ask.
"You're sparing my life?"
Shame washed over her.
"You were my greatest enemy. My wife died because of me. Why?"
"You said you wanted to live, didn't you?"
The simpler the answer, the more tangled her thoughts became.
"I am Kashan's female sovereign. I might stab you in the back someday and also—"
"I don't know what you mean."
Havitz was indifferent.
"Sovereign or not, it doesn't matter. There's no one stronger than me anyway. If you stab my back, we'll just fight again."
The height of self-display.
By human measures of good and evil, he didn't even know whether his deeds were right or wrong.
That very chaos is the atrocity.
"Fun. Farewell."
As the demonic mount receded into the sky, Smodo stared blankly while Uorin sank into thought.
'Farewell? Fun?'
What on earth was this world to Havitz?
At that moment, a fragmentary memory from Teraje's vast database surfaced.
'McClain Geffin.'
Already expunged; the memory barely remained.
But upon hearing Havitz's words, a hallucination-like recollection rose—
'Fun. Farewell.'
Wasn't that the last thing Geffin had said before leaving the photon plane?
"It must be a delusion."
Even she, who had the background on Geffin, couldn't remember him saying that.
"So why do I have this thought?"
If it were true—
"If there is a god…"
Does that god actually take an interest in this world?
If the world we live in is just one among infinitely many creations—
"Havitz is…"
He might be the human nearest to a god.
"Don't think it's over yet." Smodo drew his sword and stepped forward.
"His Majesty spared you, but to end this war we must—"
"Smodooooo!"
Balkan, charging in with eyes blazing, halted the demonic mount and looked around.
"Havitz! Where is Havitz?" Smodo asked, frowning.
"He left. Didn't kill the sovereign—headed to another battlefield. What on earth is he thinking?"
Balkan looked Uorin in the eye.
Seeing her kneeling, he exhaled deeply.
"Sigh, fine. It's done. It's over now."
There would be no future where a rain of arrows could catch Havitz.
"It was a hair's breadth."
That was why Shirone's Law—sending Havitz eight kilometers away from that spot—felt all the more terrible.
"The difference between one centimeter and eight kilometers. That's the current strength of Shirone's Law." Balkan motioned for Smodo to mount.
"Let's go. Leave this place to the hellish army and follow Havitz. Best to get out of here."
That Havitz had left Kashan entirely was like a prophecy that a great calamity would soon unfold here.
As Smodo boarded the demonic mount, Balkan snatched the reins and told Amon,
"Use any means necessary to stop Yahweh."
"Yahweh????"
Amon, who already knew the Seventh Legion's demons were being massacred, turned at once.
After everyone left, Uorin sat lost in thought with Kido, unconscious, lying on her lap.
"Shirone, you came."
She had wanted to see him.
"My sovereign."
Twenty wind banners sang as they spun rapidly around her.
"We've found a weak sector. We will escort you."
Uorin shook her head.
"We're returning to the Imperial Palace. It hasn't fallen yet—there should be medics. Heal Kido."
"But—"
"We'll see the end of this war first."
Kriaaang!
At last Shirone's weapon, Salsu, entered the Imperial Palace.
Whenever the engine of Law Execution—powered by Yahweh's wrath—moved Salsu, demons exploded.
Screams of terror rose from every direction; not a single voice cried out in repentance.
'Why!'
I want to ask you, human.
Would it be wrong to stop thinking and simply practice love right now?
"Impossible."
As long as even a single evil exists, good becomes foolish, pathetic, and inefficient.
"Uaaaaaagh!"
So people admire evil's methods as stylish, clever, the privilege of the enlightened.
'So… are you satisfied now?'
If absolute evil descends, why do humans still wail in blood and beg for mercy?
'I can forgive you. I will save you.'
But sometimes—
'It's not too late! Save the people near you! Then we can win!'
Even that desperate cry sounded like an empty echo, maddeningly infuriating.
"Uuuuuu—"
Shirone's roar—
Kriaaang!
—changed into Salsu's monstrous cry and obliterated the nearby demons in an instant.
"Yahweeeee!"
With a bellow, Amon in black iron armor charged Salsu head-on.
"Graaah!" Gripping Salsu's spikes with both hands and driving them into the ground, the mound of earth began to swell exponentially.
"What is that?????"
Shirone narrowed his eyes as Law Execution's engine faced resistance for the first time.
"It's the legion commander."
Even pushed back tens of meters, Amon did not yield, and finally Salsu was buried deep in the earth.
"Ha ha. Is that all you've got, Yahweh?" Uorin, who had arrived at Aganos' spire on a wind banner, landed and scanned the battlefield.
"Shirone…"
Though she could hardly believe it of one of the Ivory Tower's five great stars, Amon's skill—witnessed with her own eyes—surpassed the constellations.
"Die, Yahweh!"
Amon lunged with tremendous speed and swung his sword; Shirone teleported and stepped back.
"Oh?"
In an instant, Amon closed the distance and swung again, cleaving Shirone's neck.
That was one second.
"Die, Yahweh!"
The same moment repeated.
As Shirone began to learn from identical incidents, his countermeasures multiplied exponentially.
'Block!'
Death.
'Counter!'
Death.
Each accumulated experience sharpened Shirone's reactions.
'I found a counter route!'
And finally, after the two-thousandth cycle, he could see the sword's trajectory with his eyes.
'Strange.'
For Amon it was always one second.
'This isn't coincidence. It's some technique.'
He couldn't be sure what it was, but Shirone's movements carried a peculiar tremor.
'Not physically based. You shouldn't be able to move like that. Yes—it's like…'
As if a single motion had been split into countless pieces and stitched together using only the best-feeling fragments.
Even though a human moved it, it didn't feel human.
When he saw movements built on as many as twelve thousand experiences, the world seemed to ripple like oil.
'I see.'
Amon understood.
'That's why Satan—' After roughly forty thousand learning cycles, Shirone finally seized an opening to strike.
'Indeed strong.'
In swordsmanship alone, he didn't lag far behind Fried.
The Photon Cannon, filled with its utmost power, fired.
'This ends here!'
A straight, blinding beam.
But to Amon it felt like a nauseating curve that had traveled through every conceivable event.
About ninety-eight thousand cycles.
That was how many learnings Shirone had accumulated to produce this result.
"Ugh!"
Before Amon's body could be shoved back by the Photon Cannon driven into his abdomen, his armor burst with a bang.
"Graaah!"
As Amon's body was hurled back with a roar, countless demons collided with and were flung from him.
Kraaaang!
A deafening crash filled the air as he smashed into a wall, and every demon on the battlefield froze.
"Legion commander…"
For those who had followed Amon across battlefields, this was something that should never have happened.
Shirone breathed heavily and glared at the pile of stones where Amon lay buried.
'I couldn't pierce through.'
Its bodily durability was of a completely different order from other creatures.
"That's enough! We can win!"
Uorin, watching the battle from Aganos' spire, pumped her fist in triumph.
"If we can just bring down the legion commander—"
Then the ground trembled, and the entire Imperial Palace began to shake.
"My sovereign! Evacuate!" the wind banners shouted, but Uorin's gaze would not leave the spot where Amon had been driven in.
"There."
Something horrific was stirring.