Black Seung (1)
The gap splitting the Wailing Wall was so narrow it couldn't be seen from a distance, but up close it opened into a span of about twenty meters — fairly wide.
"Hah. Hah."
People merely breathing.
"There... you there. Water. Could you bring me some water?"
People begging for help.
Rian showed no reaction to any of it and simply kept walking in silence.
Only when the path ahead and behind ceased to be visible did he speak for the first time.
"Shirone, what are these?"
Or rather — should he call them "these"?
"Unpurified ones."
Shirone watched dozens of hands and feet writhing out of the Wailing Wall.
"The Wailing Wall isn't only here. It spreads through the underlayer of the world. If you map it to reality, think of it as a warehouse used for civil engineering."
"A warehouse? You mean people are being used as material?"
"There are beings called black Seungs. Well, it's more like a system. An active offensive form of the purification system — it draws in creatures that fall here."
"So they've stacked humans in here? Why? By your logic they should be purified."
"Hell is the underlayer of reality. Everything needed to live exists there too, just with opposite properties. In the real world there are organics and inorganics. Organics are used as food; inorganics become materials for countless structures."
Rian understood.
"So hell is the opposite."
"Yes. Demons' food is demons refined by hellfire — purified demons. It sounds like cannibalism, but not all demons are the same. Humans eat chickens or pigs even though they're all life. Same goes for rice or wheat."
Shirone pointed at the wall.
"Conversely, what functions as mineral in hell are unpurified demons — the murky human emotions left as they are. Minerals are often consumed in bulk, so you need a special warehouse..."
"And that became the Wailing Wall."
"If it's on this scale, they'd be used for things like dam projects on the River of Fire or city expansion. I heard there are subcontractors who process and transport parts of the Wailing Wall..."
Shirone shook his head.
'That structural explanation should be enough. Saying more would be cruel to Rian.'
To Shirone, who could perceive both layers at once, the Wailing Wall was just a system. Rian saw it differently.
"More importantly, watch out for the black Seungs. They'll have dragged in fugitives from all over hell, and there'll be some here. Given how vast this place is, the chance of running into one is low, but—"
By reality terms, the chance was about as likely as meeting a warehouse manager in a massive logistics center.
Rian tightened his eyes. "No need to worry. Black Seungs or whatever — if one shows up, I'll just cut it down."
It wouldn't be easy.
'The black Seungs' chains are the most binding hidden code in the underlayer. Even if you severed Gehenna's Chain...'
While Shirone was lost in thought, a voice came from the left wall where Rian was walking.
"Please save me."
Rian had tried not to look, but the desperate voice broke his resolve.
When he turned, an old woman — her face and both arms jutting out from the wall like strange appendages — was crying.
"It's unbearable. Please get me out of here. I beg you. My own feet..."
"Shirone."
Shirone answered before Rian could finish.
"Impossible."
"There's absolutely no way? For example, if we purified the wall with Gehenna's Chain—"
Shirone shook his head.
"Rian, listen carefully. Those here aren't real-world humans. They're their emotions."
"I know that. But they're asking for help. Isn't that more important?"
Rian was that kind of person.
"Of course it is."
Shirone respected him for it, but he also knew human emotions very precisely.
"This isn't like purifying hellfire. That's a pure crystallization of magic. You could burn along Gehenna's Chain and overcome it. But these are still unpurified, filthy demonic matter. If you drove Gehenna's Chain into this..." — Shirone's face grew uneasy — "all their emotions would be transmitted to you. You might lose yourself."
Rian was stubborn, but he wouldn't force Shirone into danger.
"Fine."
He wouldn't do anything to put Shirone at risk.
'Sorry, Rian.'
Even knowing that, Shirone felt suffocated by having to refuse.
"Please... save me. Have mercy."
After staring a moment at the old woman's pitiful, wretched form, Shirone turned away.
"Let's go. If we want to get out of the Wailing Wall today, we have to keep walking without rest."
Rian tore his gaze from the wall and moved to follow Shirone when a gust of wind blew.
A hoarse voice rode the wind.
- O foolish sinners.
When they looked up, something like a black cloud streaked across the sky.
"A black Seung."
At those words, Shirone and Rian pressed their backs to the wall and hid.
'There are quite a lot of them.'
Even through the twenty-meter gap, the sky had been covered by a black cloud.
Rian asked, "I agree avoiding unnecessary risk makes sense, but are they really that powerful?"
If worst came to worst and they had to face a black Seung, it was best to know the enemy's strength.
"It's the system. Their chains exert tremendous binding force on unpurified demons."
"Hmm—"
As Rian frowned, a gaunt arm reached out from behind and wrapped around his neck.
"Here—"
It was the old woman who had begged him for help a moment ago.
"Here! Fugitives are here!"
The shout right next to them was deafening, but the first reaction that rose in Rian was doubt.
Why?
Mocking him, the countless faces embedded in the wall began to scream.
"Two are hiding! Quickly! Quickly!" Their voices carried as they climbed the wall and finally reached the sky.
The black cloud poured through the gap and fell toward Shirone and Rian at terrifying speed.
"Dodge, Rian!"
Rian tore the old woman's arm from his throat and charged.
"Here! Here!"
Countless fingers from the wall pointed and lashed at them as screams flew.
"They're coming this way! Grab them fast!" Rian shouted, catching up beside Shirone.
"Why did they snitch on us? If we do them a favor for the black Seungs, will they be freed from the Wailing Wall?"
"No. They're treated like minerals in hell. Freedom's impossible."
"Then why report us?"
Only one answer formed in Shirone's mind.
"They want us to be unhappy."
"What?"
"They gain nothing by helping us. They just hate that we're better off. They're desperate to drag us down so we suffer the same misfortune."
Those who had been barely able to open their eyes a moment before now screamed hoarsely.
"Here! Over here!"
Listening to their cries, Rian cooled the flame in his chest.
'Don't think about it.'
They were what they were.
'Protect Shirone. Keep only that thought in your head and move.'
The black Seungs were coming.
Rags fluttered and a white face flashed within the darkness.
'Skulls? No — it's the cloaks they're wearing that's the problem. I can't read their movement.'
A substance not of this world.
It was as if gas, liquid, and solid had been mixed into one physical state.
- O foolish sinners.
"Rian! Now!"
The black Seungs blocking the way in front and behind drew black chains from their cloaks with a sharp sound.
At the same moment, Shirone and Rian shot upward; Rian pushed off the wall as he rose.
Kraaang!
Looking down, black chains had been driven into the wall in a complex, web-like pattern.
- Unpurified ones, you shall be tested.
Something slithered along the chains and was sucked in, and the eyes of the people making up the wall widened.
"Ugh! Ugh—"
A moment later.
"Arrghhhhh!"
The whole wall trembled as enormous demonic energy was drawn into the bodies of the black Seungs.
- Seize the sinners!
The roar from below slammed into Rian's face as he shot straight up.
"Krrr—!"
The Wailing Wall was truly immense; even running at near-flight speed, the top didn't come into view.
- Yahweh! Why disturb hell!
Meanwhile, Shirone, who had fled to the opposite wall, dodged the black Seungs' chains and ascended.
Arriving at the wall's summit faster than Rian, Shirone landed on a mucky, marsh-like surface.
People were half-buried, and from the black cloud above tiny human figures kept falling like specks.
Twenty-four black Seungs hovered in the air behind Shirone, stirring up a fierce wind.
'Light of Agape!'
Shirone's eyes snapped open and the brilliant orb of light above him burst.
"Arghhhh!"
When the light vanished, a huge, shallow trough had been carved out centered on Shirone.
'Still no good.' The human wall had been mashed as if melted, but it had less effect than against demons.
They weren't pure magic.
'And the black Seungs...'
They held fast, wrapped in black chains that clearly bore the power of hidden codes.
"Yahweh."
One of the black Seungs spoke, retracting its chains and spreading its liquid-like cloak wide.
A skeletal figure wielding a scythe revealed itself.
"Where are you roaming in a world that rejects you?"
"We came to meet the administrator of this world. If you send us on our way, we won't make things complicated."
"…Why?"
"To eliminate the demonic realm within reality. Your codes have been killing countless humans."
The black Seung bowed its head.
"Words always sound plausible. But Yahweh, do you know? It is precisely human death that—"
The black Seungs gathered behind spread out and descended on Shirone at once.
- It is our life.
The black Seungs moved hidden beneath their dark cloaks in a way that completely defied the Law.
'Chaos.'
They couldn't be calculated.
Watching their cloaks flutter, it felt as if space itself wavered with them.
- We will purify you.
The black chains hissed as they shot forward, and Shirone's body twisted.
- What is this?
Hundreds of chains skimmed by without striking him.
'Quantum movement.'
The algorithm the world's strongest mage used was bizarre enough to rival hidden codes.
- Do not be careless. He is Yahweh.
The black Seungs circled and began to wrap Shirone tightly in black chains.
At the same time, black Seungs who had driven their chains into the rooftop activated the purification code.
- Uoooooo!
They intended to neutralize Shirone by fusing Agape with humans' murky emotions.
- It's coming! It's coming!
Trembling with Yahweh's love, a black Seung raised its head and saw the Hand of God.
As the massive sphere of light began to vibrate, Shirone's voice rang out from within the circle of chains.
"Photon Cannon."
A vertical flash slammed into the right rooftop of the Wailing Wall.
"Whoa! Whoa!"
The outer wall swelled like a balloon, and the people forming it wore expressions of terror.
"No! No—!"
And finally, with the explosion, more than three thousand holes opened and light leaked through.