Hidden Code (2)
Eden, still fighting against doubt, opened his mouth.
"Sorry, Lilia. I know what's happening, but honestly, I can't trust you."
No matter how she told herself otherwise, the hallucination of her betrayal kept blooming.
"That's enough," Meirei said.
When she tuned Lilia's mind to the divine frequency and eavesdropped, the doubts in the party's heads vanished.
Sein let out a long breath.
'If you read someone's mind, prejudice can't form. The technical level of Terraforce is incredible.'
The right to judge good and evil wasn't given for nothing.
'Now.'
When Kuan signaled with his eyes, Lilia amplified the Law of the Mad Clown Pierrot to its maximum.
Even allies couldn't find him; Kuan's chosen target was Pride at one o'clock.
'This time I won't miss.'
He moved behind the woman and aimed for the heart. As if responding, Siok shifted in flawless synchronization.
'That's Sloth at four o'clock.'
You don't get hit by what you refuse to accept?
'Then try and hit me.'
With the asymmetry amplified to the extreme, he held the advantage even in a clash of cheats.
Kuan's blade flew toward the woman's back.
'Die.'
No one knew Kuan was there, so there would be no regret.
"Ugh—!" Pride at one o'clock, seized by a bad feeling, ground her teeth and twisted her upper body.
She simply wanted to do that.
'There's definitely something.'
Sloth at four o'clock would marshal every possible Law to avoid the coming future.
'You have to realize it.'
If she realized even one thing, she could change her choice out of regret, even if something terrible followed.
'Too late.'
In the moment when a second stretched like an eternity, Kuan sneered in his mind.
'Call it a Hidden Code all you like — the one who wields it is human. That's your fatal mistake.'
Before Pride at one o'clock could even turn her gaze, his blade should have pierced her heart.
'Wng?'
Chilling killing intent came from the side.
"Danger!"
Before Meirei's shout finished, Kuan had already withdrawn his sword and stepped back.
Where he'd been standing, a fist punched in with a bang and the air exploded.
'Who the hell is that?'
As if drawn by a centripetal force, Kuan arced through empty space and examined the fist's owner.
A young man with horn-rimmed glasses and his hair split two-to-eight relaxed his stance and laughed.
"Wow, you're really nimble. Timing's perfect, though."
??????
Exactly what Kuan wanted to say.
'That attack just now was almost on par with me. Was there a schema master in Siok?'
The youth mocked.
"You must've trained hard. How did you move like that? I want to learn too." He sounded admiring, but the eyes slanted like a seagull's wing behind his glasses were pure mockery.
Kuan, having landed, spat, "Why should I teach you? No— even if I did, someone like you wouldn't get it in a lifetime."
"Haha! Of course."
The youth stuck out a snake-like tongue and, with a creepy gleam in his eyes, said, "Who'd bother with that, idiot?"
Kuan clamped his mouth shut. Meirei's eavesdropping let the young man's thoughts flow into their heads.
'Wandering at six o'clock. The Hidden Code… assumes the result as if every action necessary to achieve an accomplishment had been taken.'
'You've got to be kidding me.'
Everyone who heard the ripple flinched.
Kuan showed visible disgust, but Wandering at six o'clock merely shrugged.
"I'm human too, but watching the world you live in is hilarious. It's a comedy. People try madly to do something, and when they lose they whine and cry. Hahaha! It's just…"
Wandering at six o'clock flexed his arm; with a pop his robe split.
A thick, log-like right forearm was revealed.
"This is all you need, right?"
They suspected it, but seeing it made Sein and the others go pale.
'No need to train.'
You just assume it was done.
"Knowledge is the same. You bury yourself in books every day, memorize, stay up nights trying to understand."
There was no other visible change in Wandering at six o'clock.
Still, Sein's group could read a subtly different thing in the youth's eyes.
"Hmm, say about twenty years?" He sounded learned and smiled wickedly. "Let's say you studied hard."
Sein wasn't the only one who felt a fundamental disgust at the purpose of life.
'How far do you plan to mock us?'
To gain 0.1 seconds, to lift one more kilogram, to score one extra point—
'Humans spend their whole lives on that.'
Even as his life felt denied, Siok's ripples kept washing over them.
'Negation at seven o'clock.' The user was a child.
His expression was blank and gloomy; an unmistakable viciousness filled his eyes.
'Right. What's the Hidden Code?' He takes no responsibility.
O O
Now Sein's group could easily recall the exact contents of the Hidden Codes.
'Backstab someone to death, shove someone off a cliff, dump poison into a stream—'
No one would see it as their responsibility.
'Alright, let's see how far this goes.' As they waited for the next mental waves, a blonde woman reached out her hand.
"Hidden Piece."
The landscape around Sein's party split like a puzzle, and Meirei's space slipped away as a whole.
"Give me the ear!"
The blonde smiled wickedly and raised a finger; flames flared.
Just as the burning finger reached for Meirei's ear, Sein adjusted the spatial information.
'Sun-Moon Wheel!'
The blonde's hand brushed Meirei's ear and the puzzle-like tangled space snapped back into place.
'Is this outside the rules?'
It was a technique he'd read about in the many reports that came into the cathedral.
'Mortasinger's ability.'
Ranked tenth among the Ten Elders.
According to Shirone, she'd succumbed to Satan's temptation and been dragged to hell.
"You're Mortasinger?"
The blonde covered her mouth and laughed.
"Hohoho! How unpleasant. To mistake me for someone who'd only serve as fertilizer."
"Fertilizer?"
Siok had no secrets now that their minds were being read.
"To activate a Hidden Code, you need ingredients. Extreme emotions. Here's the fun part: extreme emotions are rare in the real world. Out of a hundred people, maybe 0.1 might experience one in a lifetime."
They had a rough idea what she meant.
"But in the Otherworld they're common. Mortasinger is still screaming in hell. If you're going to be like that, you should at least beg to be purified. Ha! But purification is another word for pain. What does that mean? It means you want to be tormented more, don't you?"
The mental wave collecting the blonde's thoughts poured in.
'Envy at eight o'clock. The Hidden Code lets you possess what you cannot have… I see.'
You could steal money, a lover, a title.
'But things like talent, looks, happiness—those aren't transferable. Envy at eight o'clock makes them possible.'
The condition is destruction.
If you envy someone's face, you can pour acid on it.
'So that's why she went for Meirei's ear…' Whether or not she knew they could read minds, Envy at eight o'clock babbled on.
"Ah, and thanks for sending that Jinseong-eum. The spirit gate might be sealed, but the Hidden Code's been strengthened. He's caused quite a stir, and our demons are keeping him very busy. We won't run out of ingredients for a while."
"Ingredients?"
Sein suddenly had a question.
"You said extreme emotions are needed to activate a Hidden Code. Then why is Kuan…?"
Sein turned to Kuan and stopped.
"Oh."
Kuan stood calmly, one arm gone, the sleeve on the other side fluttering in the wind.
'The extreme of asymmetry. With the ankle ligament severed and one arm removed, the code he gained…'
Kuan had been using his own emotions as the ingredient to activate his code.
'That explains it. A living example of how extreme emotion works with a Hidden Code stands before us.'
When Siok stepped forward, Sein took the same distance back and gave an order.
"Keep your distance."
"Hoho. Why? You can read our minds, can't you? What fight could be more advantageous than this?"
Sein felt humiliated.
'At first I thought that too.'
The problem was that Siok's Hidden Codes weren't the sort you could stop simply by knowing about them.
'Delusion at nine o'clock is tricky as well.'
After hearing the thought-waves, Sein's gaze fell on the plainly dressed bachelor.
'When imagination becomes reality. A truly terrifying Hidden Code. Like a perfected Nemesis.'
Delusion at nine o'clock pointed at Sein's ring.
"Smells familiar. Is it Nemesis?"
Sein's hypothesis was right.
'So that's it.'
Like humans dreaming, the demons' emotions drifted into the Otherworld and floated there.
'Sometimes you can even see them.'
If you've ever seen something while sleep-paralyzed, a temporary crack opens.
'Then a mental mage digs it up and it spills into the human world.' Of all the countless objects, the ones that made human lives miserable mostly came from the Otherworld.
"Sein."
Sein turned his head and his eyes widened.
"Miro?"
The scene shifted in an instant, and the long-ago campus of Alpheas School of Magic spread before them.
"What are you staring at? You said you'd help with my research today. Did you forget?"
"Ah??????"
Sein hadn't yet realized Delusion at nine o'clock had triggered its Hidden Code.
Imagination becomes reality.
"Ah, sorry. I was thinking about something else."
Though memories of Siok remained, the cheat inverted the sensations of reality and imagination.
"Damn! I never said I'd help!"
The meek Gaold of old followed, carrying three boxes of documents.
'Gaold…'
On the day of the Twenty Judges, he was the only man who threw his life away to save Miro.
'That's right.'
All the memories were vivid and he knew why, yet there was no sense of incongruity. This felt real.
"Miro."
In the contradiction of knowing the future yet living in the present, Sein was seized by a fierce impulse.
"Huh?"
He liked her.
Just once—just once—he wanted to honestly tell her his feelings.
Like Gaold had in the Infernal Heat.
"What? You called me and then won't speak?"
It wasn't that he lacked courage.
He only wanted to know that there was no man in the world who could take Miro from him.
'But I was wrong.'
Everything began…
Time sped and the scene of the Twenty Judges unfolded.
He saw Miro walking toward Istas.
'Gaold must have come.'
The voice that had called to Miro even while cursed by autoreferential mutation had caused a tiny crack in her previously flawless mind.
'I regret it my whole life — no, even now. Why couldn't I be brave like Gaold?'
As Miro passed, a tear welled in one of the iron-ringed eyes that hadn't had one before.
Farewell, Miro.
That was the entirety of the final words he chose.
'Damn it!'
The voice of Pride at one o'clock planted a code not in Sein's conscious mind but in his subconscious.
- Choose. The future can be changed.
'Miro.'
- Gaold will come. Before that, you protect Miro. Shout it to the world! Say Miro is my woman!
'Miro!'
- Skip all the process. You know it, right? Choose here and Miro becomes your woman.
"Miro!"
At Gaold's shout from afar, Sein's face went pale.
'You must do it now! You can change it! You won't regret it! You've carried it your whole life!'
But Sein's reason, not understanding what was happening, resisted the voice.
'Grrrr!'
The cogs in both pupils clicked as if something had jammed, spinning fractions of a degree wildly.
'No! You can't!'
Bias at five o'clock cast a Hidden Code on Sein.
- The truth is, Miro likes you. A lot.
"Arghhhh!"
His eyes flared like fire from the clash of reason and emotion, and Sein screamed.
- She only thinks of you even now, you know?
"Please! No…!"
As Sein cried out, something in his head snapped and a huge crack split the scene.
"What…!"
As imagination and reality swapped places, a chilling tremor ran up Sein's spine.
"Damn it! You stupid brat!"
Everyone who'd escaped Delusion at nine o'clock glanced around with the same wild look as Sein.
"Kuan?…"
Only Kuan remained on one knee, sword thrust, panting for breath.