Shocker's Heart
The grind of meshing gears, the pressure-thrum of warped metal pipes, the mechanical groans venting steam.
From time to time a thunderous roar cut through every other noise and settled over them all.
In the midst of it Minel gripped Silence and Noise and slowly caught his breath.
“Hah….”
All around him the fanatics chanted their prayers and leapt about. Between them the Combatants opened their eyes, sharp as predators crouched in the undergrowth. One by one the High Priests began to fix their stares on Minel as well.
“Catch him! Do not let him get away!”
The one-eyed High Priest’s bellow mixed with the metallic din and spread. At the same moment the nearest High Priest hurled something.
Whish!
A pair of handcuff items. Minel dropped low and rolled across the floor. The missed items clamped hard around the wrists of two fanatics behind him.
“Aaaagh!”
“Judgment is upon us! Judgment!”
The fanatics thrashed and poured out their pain.
Bang-bang-bang!
For an instant Minel doubted his own ears. To open fire in a place this crowded—
Several fanatics near him spat blood and collapsed without even understanding what had happened. The rounds that had been aimed squarely at Minel simply hung, bobbing, against his skin.
Bullet immunity.
It was no empty boast of a skill. A moment later the bullets lost all strength and clattered to the floor.
“B-bullets don’t work?”
“Damn it! Close in!”
So they had nothing above Level 4 firearms. He only had to watch the melee range.
A Combatant arrived right in front of him. Minel swept Silence in a slanting arc; the man’s club split cleanly in two and metal fragments sprayed in every direction.
Shing—!
The continuing path of the blade carved a deep gash into the Combatant’s forearm. Blood and the reek of iron mingled and spread through the air.
“Uwaaaaagh—!”
While the man fell, another High Priest scattered handcuff items into the air.
Whish, zing!
Minel dropped his waist and the cuffs skimmed past his hair. Behind him the kneeling fanatics were caught all at once and toppled like dolls. From their mouths rose screams of pure rapture instead.
“Urare! Make us one!”
“One! One! One!”
Had the prayer reached the heavens? Once more a thunderous roar burst from the generator.
Kwa-kwang—!
From the ruptured great pillar soot and metal dust exploded like a cloudburst, blanketing every fanatic’s face. Unable even to open their eyes they dropped to their knees where they stood.
“Judgment! Purification! Lightning!”
“Judgment! Purification! Lightning!”
“Judgment! Purification! Lightning!”
The situation shifted in an instant. With every fanatic bent double, the Combatants and High Priests posted throughout the hall suddenly stood out clear as day.
Perfect targets.
Minel raised Noise in one fluid motion and squeezed the trigger.
Boom—!
A flash bloomed like fire and three Combatants were hurled backward at once. They never even screamed; gaping holes had been punched clean through their bodies. Every remaining Combatant froze as if their limbs had locked. None of them had dreamed a mere pistol like Noise could hold such power.
“Wh-what? That isn’t a throwing weapon?”
“E-even a shotgun can’t do th-that….”
“A-armor’s completely useless….”
Minel swung the muzzle toward the next nearest Combatant. The man tried to duck; it was already too late.
Boom—!
Half his face vanished. The Combatant behind him had his side blown open as well. After that the rest simply stood and stared at Minel, will to fight drained from their faces.
Yet numerical superiority was absolute; sooner or later reason would return. He could not waste the moment of panic.
Keeping Noise trained as a threat, Minel sprinted for the nearest exit. At the sight of his movement one or two began to recover their wits, but having watched holes appear in perfectly whole bodies, none of them dared step forward first.
“He must not escape! Absolutely not!”
The one-eyed High Priest’s voice thundered. Minel casually turned Noise’s muzzle that way. The man was already holding a string of prayer beads high. Lightning poured from them, and every kneeling fanatic surged to his feet at the sight.
“Urare’s grace has returned!”
“Oooohhh! Grace! Grace!”
“It is Urare’s grace!”
The risen fanatics became living shields. Minel had no choice but to lower Noise and run for the exit again.
Then the one-eyed High Priest’s voice filled the entire space once more.
“Urare has spoken! Because of the fool who tried to slip secretly from this sacred hall, judgment has been handed down! Therefore seize him so that no one may leave the great worship hall!”
The other High Priests copied him at once. They drew their own beads, drew lightning, and issued the same command to the fanatics around them. Ecstatic under the lightning, the fanatics flooded the exits and tangled together like a living net.
By a hair’s breadth Minel failed to get out.
“…….”
He could not help admiring the one-eyed High Priest. Complex orders were useless on mindless fanatics; dressed as a High Priest himself, they could not even properly identify who Minel was. So the man had substituted the simple command that no one was to leave the hall.
The Combatants’ mood shifted as well. With the fanatics serving as a wall, courage returned. They shoved the devotees aside and began closing slowly on Minel. The High Priests refined their control through the beads: the fanatics sealed Minel’s path while opening lanes for the Combatants.
“Judgment… upon the apostate!”
“Judgment… upon the apostate!”
“Judgment… upon the apostate!”
With the situation reversed, the one-eyed High Priest flailed both arms and bellowed as if confidence had finally found him.
“Tighten the net! Do not let that apostate escape! He has the puppet! We must reclaim it! Capture him alive! Alive at all costs!”
Escaping this place would not be difficult at all. All he had to do was cut down every fanatic blocking the exit and walk out. Could these creatures even be called people anymore? At this point they were nothing more than screws and gears—parts that could simply be discarded.
Minel felt the grips of Silence and Noise grow hot in his hands. The instant he prepared to swing Silence, his father’s voice rang inside his skull.
Minel clenched his teeth. Even now, with his life hanging by a thread, was he supposed to obey those words? In a moment this desperate, did it really matter?
That was when he saw it: the deep yellow light rising in the fanatics’ eyes. There was no faith in those eyes—only thirst for electricity. A craving for more current and nothing else. Lightning addiction dressed up as religion.
Then their longing would simply swing toward whoever offered the greater lightning.
Minel flicked his fingers and drew the Shocker’s Heart from his inventory.
Bzzzt—!
Bzzzt—!
Static boiled so fiercely he could hear the hair on his body stand on end. The electrodes of the glass tubes hanging everywhere began to vibrate in resonance with the unstable voltage of the great worship hall.
Bzzzzzt!
Bzzzzzt!
Blue lightning erupted from the heart, reverse-flowing in every direction, licking the empty air. The fanatics who had been blocking the exits with their own bodies began to scream one after another.
“It’s grace! Grace!”
“Urare! Urare!”
“The real Urare! Urare has descended!”
At that signal every pair of yellow eyes in the hall turned as one toward Minel. Tear-streaked faces lifted; tongues endlessly licked dry lips; both hands rose, pleading for the blue current to drench them. One stretched a scarred arm toward the heart only for the fingertips to spark; he sobbed in ecstasy. Another crawled forward on the floor and slammed his forehead against the ground again and again in Minel’s direction.
All of them slipped completely free of the High Priests’ control and began to submit to Minel.
“Close your eyes! Do not be deceived! That is false grace! You must not believe! Do not give the false prophet an opening! Heresy! It is heresy! Never follow him!”
The one-eyed High Priest shouted until the veins stood out in his eyes. Every other High Priest raised their beads and joined him. But prayer beads could never outmatch the lightning pouring from the Shocker’s Heart.
What controlled the fanatics was never dogma—only dose.
“Ah… ahh… not enough.”
“This is fake. Let’s go to the real grace!”
“To Urare! O Urare!”
Even the fanatics farthest from Minel saw the blue lightning and began to converge. Minel lifted the Shocker’s Heart higher still, for all to see, and shouted in a clear voice.
“All of you—leave the exits. Right now.”
The fanatics immediately bowed their heads and obeyed. To them the lightning that satisfied them was Urare itself.
“Judgment! Purification! Lightning!”
“Judgment! Purification! Lightning!”
“Judgment! Purification! Lightning!”
Realizing they could no longer control the crowd, the High Priests jerked their chins at the Combatants, ordering them to handle it. The Combatants drew automatic rifles and opened indiscriminate fire toward Minel.
Ratatatatat—!
Ratatatatat—!
Ratatatatat—!
The continuous roar of automatic weapons mixed into the worship hall’s cacophony and rang like a drill boring through thick iron plate. The rounds struck Minel’s body and simply stopped, but the fanatics around him had no such protection.
“Aaaagh! Guh—”
“Khah! Urare….”
“Judgment… judgment….”
Bullets tore through flesh and shattered bone, punching mercilessly through the chests and heads of the kneeling devotees. Bodies jerked like rag dolls under the storm of fire and were flung to the floor. The red river spreading across the ground mixed with generator oil and shimmered a dark crimson. Their screams and prayers, their weeping and their hymns, all fused into a chorus more hideous than any machine noise.
They already knew about the bullet immunity. The massacre was only to clear a path.
Minel narrowed his eyes, cold.
Urare’s prediction had been exact. For the sake of the puppet these people would slaughter every last devotee present without batting an eye.
“Stupid bastards. You dare betray Lord Urare?”
“You should be grateful you died by bullet.”
“Heh. We just saved them from becoming sludge.”
Not a single High Priest or Combatant showed even a flicker of pity. Instead a deep feral gleam—Wildness—rose in their eyes, and faint smiles began to touch their lips.
The result of the massacre was absolute. Corpses piled in a tangled heap at the exits, and Minel stood alone as if stripped bare. The Combatants holstered their firearms and drew various throwing weapons. The High Priests put away their beads and took handcuff items in hand.
At a glance the number easily exceeded a hundred. Even if he answered with Noise he would kill only a handful before the end. No method remained. Should he simply have cut his way out with Silence from the start? Had his father been wrong after all? Were those words he had spoken like absolute truth nothing more than relative ideology that simply did not apply in the Backrooms?
Then someone brushed against the tip of his boot.
“Isil?”
Isil, gut-shot, dying. Perhaps because death was so near, the pain seemed forgotten; those two eyes were strangely clear—clearer than Minel had ever seen them.
“Urare spoke to me.”
“…….”
“Said to put the heart into the puppet….”
If he put it into the heart it would awaken. Wasn’t everything they had done meant to keep the puppet from waking? And how had Isil heard Urare’s voice in the first place?
There was no time left to think.
Minel opened his inventory and drew out the puppet at once.
“N-no! Stop! You must not harm the puppet! Everyone stop! Cease the attack!”
While the one-eyed High Priest’s cry threw the others into confusion, Minel thrust the Shocker’s Heart into the puppet’s chest.