We've Arrived. Halt.
He crossed his arms, and a fist drove down into the center of the cross.
Boom!
A tingling seized Dan Miryu as if every muscle had cramped at once, and he bit down on his lip. He twisted at the waist. Two fists skimmed past as though they were a single blow; the other three speared for his chest, and he slipped them. He had not taken a clean hit, yet the sheer pressure of the air tore his clothes. Had Life not been open, the bruises would have been certain.
Strong.
The Six-Arms moved with utter freedom. Nothing about him was straight or crude, as if each arm kept a will of its own. Even Dan Miryu, who had drunk deep of martial art after martial art, caught the scent of a beautiful discipline worthy of admiration. The man's muscle was strength incarnate, and yet in truth it was nothing more than an engine built to drive his art.
I can't beat him on technique.
In skill, the other side stood several moves above. Two arms would already have been a heavy burden, and the enemy carried four more besides.
In the body, I'm ahead.
Infinite Life shored up his flesh. It ripped without mercy through every limit the body would allow and hauled his muscle past its ceiling—and past even that.
Pak!
He gifted a straight punch to the solar plexus sitting plain before his eyes. The Six-Arms, hunching in to clamp down on him, flinched.
Pak! Pak!
Another. And another still. Like a boxer working a heavy bag, he kept the power seated in his waist, stepped through the blows, and held the range that let him pour out everything he had.
"......!"
The chain of strikes woke a sense of danger in A-31, and he staggered back. Blows that warped the air were breaking down a body that had seemed as if it would never fall. One foot retreated. The knee bent, and the waist slipped a fraction to the rear.
No enemy is so weak, or so easy, as the one that runs. Dan Miryu's eyes lit, and he threw the last blow.
Boom!
Shallow.
A-31's chest caved, and he shot away like a bullet. The wall of bodies that had hemmed them in collided with him and scattered like bowling pins.
"Tsk."
Dan Miryu yanked the arrows from his knee and elbow. The interference had come at the perfect instant, and the force had failed to seat all the way. W-29, the archer who had loosed them, nocked six arrows. Heads flickering a dark crimson flew out in every direction—arrows swimming through three-dimensional space, beating their wings as freely as birds roaming the open sky.
Five Captain Earths charged in as if to screen those arrows. A limb was missing, or the organs were ruined, and still they came on without so much as a blink.
Dan Miryu set his breath in order. Tendons stood out along his heels. A clenched fist warped the space around it, and Life turned into destructive energy. W-29's face twitched. In the instant he cast the bow aside and drew a shield, Dan Miryu was gone.
KRAK—!!!
Five ruptures collapsed into a single sound, and the shield covering the upper body shattered to pieces. Inside the slowed world, W-29 reacted. Before the incarnation of Life—pupils gone to green light—could kill him, he took the best move left to him.
———!!!
His back melted away into energy. The H and B series, so painstakingly made, became nothing but meat shields, good only for blunting the damage. W-29 gave up his right arm and kept his life. On the counter, he barely managed to take both of his enemy's eyes.
That much was an encouraging result. W-29 felt a small, proud satisfaction.
And that pride took back the life he had only just saved.
A sharp thrust punched through his heart. W-29 fell without ever knowing what had happened.
Flame rushed up. The corpse burned, and Death and Gluttony, which had been waiting for an opening, were swallowed whole by Life.
"No breathing room."
With both eyes whole again, Dan Miryu swept the field. The moment one superhuman died, the H and B series came on like a wave.
"Chuyeon..."
The sky howled. In one corner of the fighting, a small natural disaster had begun.
"This has turned troublesome."
"Yes. It certainly has."
Hong Yumin and Shrine Priest Tsukumi wiped the sweat from their brows.
"That masked brat. If the word is important, deliver it at once. Must you dawdle until the world ends?"
A magician of tree bark and blackened, dead skin cackled grotesquely. From a neck half-severed and left to dangle, a black branch had grown, and at the tip of that branch a card opened. Painted on it were two pictures: a reaper with a scythe being eaten by a tree, and, opposite, the reaper cutting the tree down.
Shrine Priest Tsukumi's gohei fluttered. The five-colored paper offered up to the Three Noble Gods received the Holy Child's command. Within that reversal of Heaven, divine script clung to the head, the waist, and the legs of the false magician who had been granted life anew.
The Shrine Priest struck up a kagura on the spot. Even on a battlefield where killing intent and death ran wild, the heart of one who revered the gods was as precarious as a single flower blooming on a cliff. But a flower on a cliff sends its roots far downward if it means to live. So it was with the Shrine Priest. His song and dance were not so shallow as to fall in hard wind and rain.
Beneath the great name of Amaterasu, may you pass into peace.
The divine script caught fire. White radiance rose like a pillar.
The magician suffered. No—Death and Gluttony, wearing a magician's shape, suffered. The Shrine Priest did not stop the kagura. The white divine flame piled radiance upon radiance, and sparks leapt to the H and B series looking on. They, at least, turned cleanly to dust.
"Kieeeeeeeek!"
Even under the judgment of a god, the magician clung on. The card grown from his neck burst its pulp, and Death and Gluttony, swollen with stored power, crawled out like insects. The white radiance had them blocked and dying, yet the magician did not die. He aimed at the Shrine Priest.
Hong Yumin, busy with replicas devoured by Death and Gluttony just as he had been, parted her lips.
"Kneel. Be still."
The words that left her throat took on meaning, and meaning seeped into the world. The will of a sacred immortal pressed down upon a law that defied all principle.
Kneel. Be still.
A human power, kin to the speech of gods.
The magician received the Word Command and stopped where he stood. He remained blank like that for several seconds. The judgment reached its end, and the magician passed on.
"Comforting the dead in a moment like this. You really are hopelessly kind."
"Haha."
Shrine Priest Tsukumi scratched his head, abashed as a student scolded by his teacher.
"Forgive me. There was no other way to extinguish an evil aura of that order."
"I know. Let it pass."
Hong Yumin swept her arm. A great mass of earth poured from the sky like a landslide, and the six-armed giant and the warrior of weapons slipped it like ghosts. Through a gap in the human tide, violet hair drowned in Death and Gluttony glimmered.
A bitter taste filled Hong Yumin's mouth.
"I wish the three who went down would finish their work soon..."
"Will you be all right, not going with them?"
"...Perceptive, aren't you."
Hong Yumin sighed.
"I was afraid to face her. Will that do?"
She had sins to her name. She could not push a brazen face forward and meet her. And when it came to steeling herself, the little girl left in a corner of her heart grew anxious.
"I touched a tender place. Forgive me."
"So long as you know."
At the Shrine Priest's apology, Hong Yumin spent her unease upon the enemy. Clouds billowed against the ceiling that shut out the sky, then spat lightning and rain. The foes caught on the slant were swept away without recourse.
The battle on the field went on.
Trusting the allies who fought on above, Alexei, Dan Miryong, and Sipsado had slipped down in secret. Veiled by the Phantom Thief's power so that Scientist would not notice them, the three were a rescue party in search of Sipsado's mother. Dan Miryong took the lead himself and guided them wherever Sipsado pointed.
"The laboratory's abnormally huge. And complicated as all hell, on top of it."
"I didn't know it was this wide either."
Dan Miryong took up Alexei's complaint.
"If it were up to me, I'd scrape everything down here clean..."
"Endure it. If the Phantom Thief were with us, maybe. Do that, and they'll spot us at once."
"They can't spare us a thought anyway. Pull troops off that force and they'll be overrun in a heartbeat."
"Scientist is meticulous. The likes of us, he can deal with whenever he pleases."
Dan Miryong did not believe the human replicas were Scientist's true strength. The facilities were too fine to waste a laboratory this vast on nothing but making copies.
"Forgive me for interrupting. May I ask one question?"
Sipsado looked at Dan Miryong as she spoke.
"What."
"Are you the same kind of being as those above?"
Dan Miryong flinched.
"...What do you mean by that?"
"For now, I will call it curiosity."
"Then I'll say, for now, that I'm not."
Dan Miryong creased his brow hard, plainly displeased.
"Don't treat me like those half-finished things."
"Understood. Then I will change the question."
Why do you carry the same scent as my mother?
"What relation do you have to my mother?"
"..."
Dan Miryong closed his eyes.
"How long until we're there?"
At so blatant a dismissal, Sipsado asked nothing more.
"We have arrived. Halt."
She stopped the two and pointed down with one finger.
"The Dragon Mother lies beneath this place. Five floors down, at the least."
"Move."
Alexei swung his greatsword. A hairline cut bored straight down, opening a shaft just wide enough for the three of them to slip through. Beyond it gaped an enormous cavern. They jumped without a moment's hesitation.
Beneath the three as they fell lay a great dragon.
She was the only dragon on Earth.
And Heaven's criminal.