His Replica
Scientist watched it rise from the coffin.
Human arms, human legs, a human trunk. Above the neck no shadow gathered into a face, and had the hands and feet only been properly formed, one might almost have taken it for a person. But Scientist, who had made the thing and sealed it in the coffin, knew how far it stood from the species called human.
Emotion shoved reason aside and surged up. More than any scientist's joy at a successful experiment, an overwhelming terror bore down on him until he thought he would go mad.
Its neck turned. Scientist felt a gaze looking down on him.
"You've awakened……."
^*⌒∇%^※%^&(.
"Gyaaaaaaagh!!!"
A language the mind could not comprehend stabbed inward. Pain, as if a razor were slicing his brain tens of thousands of times. Despair, as the very foundation of his soul gave way. Ecstasy, as his spirit was torn apart in strips.
Ah. So this is what a true language is…….
Not the petty organ called a throat, but a language delivered by will alone. A language that could hold the truth of the world in a single line. Scientist glimpsed a new realm. Common sense, locked inside its frame, collapsed, and one face of a universe tens of billions of years old beckoned to him.
"Hhk?!"
A consciousness that had nearly slipped from the three-dimensional realm into the multidimensional was seized by it. Scientist, drooling and laughing like a madman, jolted awake with a gasp.
Damn. I nearly died.
He understood, dimly, what had happened. A human who yearned for god had tried to touch god. With neither preparation nor qualification, he had nearly flown like a moth and burned his life away. It had stopped that worthless death.
"Th-thank you."
Scientist bowed his head without resistance.
It conveyed its will.
"What? You want me to explain what's happening?"
It nodded, ever so slightly.
"Wh-what happened was……."
He chattered. He prattled.
"……and that is how it came to this."
Ten minutes, perhaps, had passed before Scientist finished.
It said nothing.
Scientist grew anxious. For some reason the death around him was doing him no harm, but his body was already at its limit. Waking it had fulfilled the goal of his life, and yet he wanted, at the last, to see how it would rampage. The intruder who had driven things to this state ought to die where he could watch.
Scientist doubted his own ears. A human voice had burst from it.
It already learned the language?
Only ten minutes had passed. Even Scientist, the smartest man on Earth, needed a full hour to learn a single language, and that was when he sat down and studied in earnest. Acquiring a tongue from voice alone belonged to another world.
As if to prove his thought correct, fluent English left its mouth.
"I am called Scientist."
"I discarded the name I was born with. Scientist is the name I chose."
"Precisely."
It braced a hand on the coffin and rose. A deep rumble rolled through the chamber. It had only stood, and yet space itself answered. The death Scientist had manufactured in his experiments thickened further, and his face flushed scarlet. Breath was becoming impossible.
It waved a hand. Scientist gasped, dragging air back into his lungs.
"Th-thank you for your mercy."
"……."
It laughed, mischievous.
It has a self. And still, it is different.
The air around it, the attitude, the manner of speech. The pressure, beyond anything imagination could hold, was the same.
An unavoidable limit, then.
"……!"
It thrust its face in close.
"Ah……."
Scientist's eyes rolled.
"I-I'm sorry."
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Having laughed its fill, it passed a hand over its face.
It wiped the emotion from itself and asked.
"I am a dead man regardless. What you have already said is enough."
The shadow where its face should have been rippled.
"………."
Scientist's skin crawled. A scene recorded in the library of memory rose before him. That person had spoken in much the same way, and he had pledged a lifetime of loyalty then and there.
"That will not do. I have a master."
The shadow writhed.
"I'm sorry."
It looked upward.
"……Who won?"
The Demon Tree lost?
He had expected as much, given how grave its condition had been, but that the monster had lost still shocked him. Scientist bit his lip.
"Can you dispose of them?"
It considered.
It drew its power up.
It seized Scientist by the nape.
A vast, hollow roar gathered. The space of death converged upon it. The incomplete form established itself. The counterfeit became real, and what was real became something new. The same, and yet another, it tore through space.
The world of the living urged its steps onward.
"………?"
Dan Miryu blinked.
"What was I doing just now?"
He clearly remembered the world going pitch-black, and Mr. Phantom appearing, but after that…….
"Ugh?!"
His neck was hot. Dan Miryu looked down. The Life in the necklace was blazing like something gone mad, and that light shot all the way into the sky, blanketing the whole reach of the land. The light of Life descended. Earth the Demon Tree had torn apart in its rampage, split into countless pieces, knit itself back together.
"Why is it doing this?"
Dan Miryu peered into Life. For some reason it was operating on its own. He felt no particular fatigue. Life was simply moving as it pleased. He looked around. Every face was bewildered.
"You're awake?"
The phantom thief greeted him as if nothing at all were amiss.
"Mr. Phantom. Did something happen?"
"It did, and it didn't."
"What does that mean?"
"It means nothing happened."
Dan Miryu scratched his head.
"I definitely feel as if I fought something……."
"Don't worry about that. I handled it."
"You did?"
If Mr. Phantom had handled it, then, well. Dan Miryu let go of any interest in the method. Curiosity was how you lost, and expecting anything like a normal method from that man was a fool's hope.
"Now we only have to catch Scientist down below, and it's finished."
He looked down through the glacier, where an enormous hole had been bored. He had no idea why it was there, but if it was a way into the laboratory, wasn't that all to the good?
"At last. I'll get to see that bastard's ugly face."
"I feel the same. I'll end the clan's revenge with these hands."
Hwang Seokgu and Elder Wildflower wore murder in their eyes, fur bristling.
"Both of you. I know you're worked up, but please calm down. Even if we go in late, Scientist isn't running."
"Oh? And if he does?"
"He won't. He'll come on his own. Scientist isn't that light a man."
The phantom thief stretched, loosening his body. It was the motion of a warrior preparing for battle. From a man who had never held so much as a speck of seriousness, a grim resolve could be felt, and Hwang Seokgu's instincts and Elder Wildflower's prickled as one. A storm was coming.
"Everyone, gather over here!"
Dan Chuyeon shouted, cold sweat pouring off him like a waterfall.
"Please do as Chuyeon says. Hurry!"
Na Wangrang backed him from the side. The scattered party drew in around the high schooler. The phantom thief did not go. He only gazed into the empty air, hands clasped behind his back.
"Mr. Dan Miryu."
"Yes?"
"Please make a barrier out of that Life running wild. And don't forget to protect everyone."
Dan Miryu was puzzled, but he did as he was told. The Life covering the sky was drawn into the shape of a dome. The moment the barrier was complete, empty air split.
A soundless cry of horror hung among them.
From a crack opened in a straight line before the phantom thief's eyes, death leaked in thick clumps, like fog.
A footstep.
Two silhouettes stepped out of it. One was Scientist, the man from the photographs. The other…….
"Ha."
The phantom thief flung his mask aside. The face beneath it had gone hard.
"I expected it. Facing it in person, though, I can't say I care for the feeling."
A thin possibility, and one that could not be ignored. He had cloned even the executives. Would he have left the one above them untouched? Curiosity would have outweighed loyalty. Scientist was a madman. In the end, it had come.
"A pleasure. The replica of Another One."
It.
The replica of Another One.
Clad in death, it descended.