Singularity (3)
By the sacrifice of the Sacred Tone, the Radiant Celestial had been activated.
The distortion of space caused the border between Gustav and Jincheon to meet, but the sea itself had not vanished.
Fierce fighting still raged in Jincheon's western waters, and demons surged endlessly onto the white sands.
"Hold them! If we can just hang on a little longer!" Their goal was to buy time until Jincheon's elites could take Gustav.
In a battle for the survival of two empires, the clearly dominant side was the army of Hell.
"Gwahahaha! Watching humans thrash about like this is disgusting. Aren't they just like worms?"
A hulking demon with a rounded, jutting jaw sat cross-legged atop a giant clam.
Mitura, commander of Hell's 8th Legion.
Beside him lay a butcher's cleaver so enormous that a normal human could never have lifted it.
"I'm peckish! Let's have a bite!" Following Mitura's command, his underlings hauled up creatures from the deep.
"Kyaaa!"
She had a beautiful human upper body, but a fishlike tail in place of legs—a mermaid.
"Please, spare me!"
They lived in pressures intolerable to humans, so there were almost no academic records of them. The mermaid's tear-streaked, pleading face was pitiful, but to Mitura she was nothing more than an ingredient.
"Shut up! I won't miss a delicacy like this."
Grabbing her by the hair, he slammed her down onto the clam's shell and picked up his cleaver.
"Please! Please!"
He pressed her head down and brought the cleaver down with a heavy chop; the tail was severed.
"Kyaaaa!"
Her upper body convulsed in pain and terror; the detached lower half flopped as if in shock.
"Where…?"
Mitura grabbed the tail and, blood gushing from the severed end, took a single bite.
The cold flesh of the fish melted on his tongue.
"Ughhh…"
The mermaid, forced to watch her own body be eaten, rolled her eyes and fainted.
She wouldn't live long.
"Tastes fine."
Mitura chewed the remaining half of the tail quickly, tossed the rest back into the sea, and stood.
"Shall we begin?"
There was no need to open the demon realm. They could raise a tidal wave large enough to sweep the white sands at will.
"Fuuuu!"
A vast radius began to ripple, and along that wave the seawater started to climb.
Weak for now, by the time it reached land it would become a two-hundred-meter-high tsunami.
"Sir! Over there…!"
The Jincheon troops fighting on the beach saw the rising tsunami and lost the will to fight.
"Damn it!"
Cutting down giant demons had been difficult enough; now a natural disaster bore down on them.
"Is it all over?"
If the western sea fell, the 8th Legion's demons would soon sweep away Imperial Castle Yeomra.
"Aaaaah!"
As soldiers weakened by the overwhelming force of nature screamed and fled, a small bell rang.
Clang.
Clang, clang.
Despite the thunder of war, the soldiers could hear that clear, fragile sound.
"What is that?"
The commander turned and saw a neat-faced young man with his hair tied atop his head, standing with a fan.
Arte, a three-star resident of the Ivory Tower.
Perched on his shoulder, a small red-skinned creature wagged a long tail.
"It's over two hundred meters? Can you really stop it?"
That creature was Arte's satellite, Tokei.
"D-demons?" the commander blurted in shock as Arte took a step forward.
"Two hundred meters. It'll be difficult."
Arte raised the fan above his head.
"Just a little difficult?"
Like a dancer, his sleeve fluttered as he lowered his arm, and it felt as if time itself slowed.
From the surface of the towering tsunami, the water streaming down could be seen with startling clarity.
"Pungyeong."
Arte's magic was peculiar—not about moving air so much as manipulating pressure differences. A pressure trough formed, and the atmosphere across the tsunami's enormous radius began to twist at incredible speed.
Pfoooooom!
A sound rent the world; the shock stunned the soldiers' hearing, and before their eyes the sea opened wide.
"The— the tsunami…"
As if struck by a small cyclone, the water barrier collapsed and heavy, haillike rain began to pour.
"Phew."
When Arte finished his movement, the clear bell rang again.
The commander, now steadying himself, asked, "Who are you? What in the world—"
"From the Ivory Tower."
Arte's expression was not cheerful.
'To save lives and make the world better. I don't object to that human ideal…'
But all the Ivory Tower stars siding with Shirone in an all-out war was unprecedented.
"There's no other choice." Tokei seemed to find the situation amusing.
"Stagnant water will rot. Shirone's new current will change the Ivory Tower."
That was why even the five great stars had entered the war—to prove their philosophies anew.
"I know."
The commander stepped closer. "What do we do now? We've stopped this tsunami, but second and third waves will come."
Arte walked toward the sea, lifting his fan.
"Spirit-Goblin Arte joins the fight against the demons."
Tokei's bell-like eyes whirred as he rapidly calculated wind elements.
"320893. 23091. 3494539. Azimuth 23 degrees…."
Arte's magic did not aim at Hell's army but at Gustav across the sea.
"Minimum Category Six winds. Can you do it?"
"I told you."
The usually implacable Arte's face twisted into something almost ghostly.
"I said I'd join the war."
As the fan swept from right to left, the soldiers felt the air being sucked away.
"Climatic magic—Great Windscape."
Kra-kra-kra-kra-kra!
A vortex born of the pressure differential sucked water up from the sea.
The wind strengthened, and demons standing nearby were pulled into the whirl.
"W-what is that?"
The vortex's size grew exponentially; even its current speed was trivial compared to what it would become.
"It's a typhoon."
The Great Windscape would travel thousands of kilometers and strike Gustav like an imperial-scale storm.
Arte raised his fan again.
"Here we go. I'll blow it away whole." The commander swallowed hard as Tokei rolled his eyes.
'Madmen. They're going to hit across the sea?'
One massive storm after another sped toward the Gustav Empire, where Shirone and Rian stood.
Feeling Shirone's gaze like a blade at the back of his head, Merania pleaded more desperately.
"If I can calm your wrath, even if my body is cut to pieces here, I don't care. Please— forgive me."
She didn't expect this alone to soothe Shirone.
'But it'll have some effect.'
When rage takes hold, you don't feel exhaustion—but when reason returns, the aftershocks hit hard.
'He's thinking. That's enough. He's already been tearing the world apart for over a day; he can't be fine.'
Merania lifted her head.
"Yahweh—?!"
Shirone kicked her in the face.
A mage's kick is light as a feather, but when she turned her head her eyes were frozen in shock.
"Cut it out."
If this was how he'd respond to her plea, she might as well never have abandoned Yahweh.
"I won't believe you. No matter what you say. No— even if it's true, I'll deny it."
'Not possible, then.'
After all, Shirone was still human; if things continued like this, he'd die.
'Then there'll be no magic.' Shirone levitated a Photon Cannon on his palm.
"Just die."
A frantic thought flashed through Merania's head in that instant.
"It can be reversed!"
"—What?"
For the first time, Shirone's expression shifted.
"The woman who sealed the spirit domain is currently wandering in Hell. But she can be returned."
"The Sacred Tone…?"
The Photon Cannon vanished.
"You can bring her back?"
Merania spoke honestly—one small lie could ruin everything.
"I can't guarantee it. But if it's about freeing her from Hell—" Shirone grabbed Merania's collar and hauled her up.
"Tell me. How?"
"Pierce Siok."
"Siok."
They were the twelve apostles who preserve 0.666 seconds of every second.
"Even if the spirit domain is closed, if you can pass through a time that's outside the Law, you can extract her spirit."
"How do you pierce it?" Even Shirone couldn't perceive Siok.
"Not even the legion commanders know Siok's true nature."
There was only speculation that it was the counterpoint to the dragon and the twelve apostles who guarded time.
"Then that's impossible."
Shirone raised his hand again in uncontrolled fury. Merania hurriedly spoke.
"But they do obey Satan's command. And this is the decisive point."
"There is someone in the human capital who has been granted Siok's authority. Meet him and you'll know."
Shirone looked into Merania's eyes.
They were beautiful eyes with not a percent of falsehood, but she was a demon who had deceived with such eyes before.
"…Who is it?"
"High Commander Ozent Gai. He's human."
For a moment Shirone thought of Rian's elder brother they'd met before, but it passed quickly.
"A human has that authority?"
"Lord Satan Habitz is human, so it's possible. Siok isn't something the legion commanders control. Precisely, it's a safeguard the Valkan soldiers left behind." Merania loosened her grip.
"Guide us. To where Ozent Gai is."
Whether how much of it was true or not, there was no choice that turned away from a way to rescue the Sacred Tone.
"Yes, yes."
Merania bowed and rose, then issued orders to the demons around her.
"All of you, fall back. From this moment on, anyone who fights humans will be the first I kill." Though displeased, the demons could not defy their legion commander.
Like cockroaches slipping into corners, they dispersed.
"Let's go. I will guide you."
"If you lie—"
Shirone's eyes hardened. "I will stake everything and make your end the absolute worst."
Such immense emotion is hard to put into words; Merania swallowed.
'It's worth it.'
If she could calm Yahweh's wrath even for a second.
The command room of Imperial Castle Marsack.
Ozent Gai, who had come here to prepare for battle, donned his armor and fell into thought.
'Family.'
Black hair and blue hair—different personalities, but they'd been on reasonably good terms, so he remembered.
'Rian.'
No talent with a blade, immature—yet somehow he'd grown on him.
'Is it the era of blue hair for Ozent too?' The swell in his chest was surely because of family, but such thoughts felt like a luxury now.
'I want to be stronger. Isn't that natural for a swordsman?'
He had abandoned family, nation, even his own persona, standing with the demons in pursuit of strength.
"We need to end this war."
He strapped a longsword to his waist and turned—only to see a red vortex forming before his eyes.
"What is—"
Second Legion Commander Merania stepped out of the vortex, and his brows drew together.
"Why are the demons—" Behind her, Shirone followed, his gaze like ice.