The Blood-Written Codex (8)
The Sanctuary of Omniscience began to collapse.
Once it started, the collapse swelled beyond all control. The gears that formed the sky plummeted, and the laws Hermann had never doubted as absolute truth shattered to pieces.
Ah, aaaaah, aaaaaaah!
With a rending scream the sanctuary quaked. Inside the Sanctuary of Omniscience, omniscience itself was denied. What shook the sanctuary of a transcendent who possessed ten stars was, absurdly enough, the history piled up by humans who had never earned even a single star.
A variable that even omniscience had never known.
It was not a variable created by some exceptional, outstanding individual. Nor was it a gap forged by a transcendent who alone faced thousands upon tens of thousands. It was simply a variable born of ordinary humans gathering together—the kind of people who might be found anywhere.
Tak.
Unlike transcendents who could leap hundreds of steps in a single bound, humans could take only one step at a time. And yet humans often accomplished feats that even transcendents marveled at. Because their steps continued.
Tak.
Those who came after walked in the footprints left by those before. Where the footprints ended, they managed only a few more steps before their lives ended. Then the next person walked those tracks again. Little by little, they advanced forward.
One step, one step, and another step.
Even if they spent their entire lives taking only two or three steps, those steps clearly led to the next. Ten people gathered made tens of steps; a hundred made hundreds.
Tak.
And so, at last, they caught up to the transcendent who stood hundreds of steps ahead.
Tak—Yuel took a step.
The footprints left by the previous lords became footholds, preparing a place for her to plant her feet. Using their lives as her platform, Yuel stepped toward the sky.
Clutching the Star of Succession, Yuel reached the heavens.
The sky that had begun to collapse. Through the gaps where gears had fallen away, Hermann’s true form was revealed. Without hesitation, Yuel reached out toward Hermann.
And then—yank.
Yuel dragged Hermann’s true form down. With a grinding roar—ddddrrrk—the gears connecting Hermann to the sky were torn free. The scream echoing through the sanctuary grew louder still. Hundreds of billions of gears vibrated violently and crumbled to dust.
A god seized by human hands fell.
Together with the gears that had formed the sky, Hermann plummeted. The falling star slammed into the earth with a thunderous crash. The fallen constellation raised her head and looked up at the sky.
The once-perfect sky had become imperfect.
The truth she had built was collapsing.
Against the backdrop of the crumbling sky, someone looked down upon her. A human with snow-white hair cascading down. A sneer hung at the corner of her lips.
“You look disgustingly grotesque.”
The positions had reversed.
“You.”
“Yes, we meet again. I thought I’d never have to see that fucking face of yours again, but somehow you managed to survive? Your life-thread is filthy tenacious, isn’t it?”
“You, right now—”
“Well, good for you.”
Looking down at Hermann, Yuel moved her feet. Retracing the path she had come, she descended to the ground.
“Back then, given the circumstances, I carried out the execution without any proper procedure. Before an execution, one ought to inform the condemned of what they did wrong at the very least, yet I skipped the entire process? That simply won’t do.”
The collapsing Sanctuary of Omniscience—yet unlike the crumbling sky, there were places on the ground that still held their form. Because those places no longer belonged to Hermann.
Swaepedosi.
The city that had proven the Star of Omniscience was not omniscient had now become Yuel’s possession. Decorating the city’s sky was not Hermann’s star, but the Star of Succession.
“Therefore.”
The lord of Swaepedosi had returned to the city.
To punish those who broke the law, and to execute them.
“Hermann, Star of Omniscience.”
Yuel’s eyes turned cold. Her low, settled voice rang out across the whole of Swaepedosi. In the city’s plaza where countless criminals had been executed, the city’s lord pronounced the name of the sinner who had committed the heaviest crime of all.
“The execution begins.”
Najin adjusted his grip on Excalibur.
Hermann’s sanctuary was collapsing, yet the Swaepedosi where Najin and Yuel now stood had stopped collapsing.
And that was not all. The Swaepedosi that had surged like waves at Hermann’s will had, at some point, returned to the original form Najin knew. Not its past appearance, but the form it had when Yuel was its lord.
The lord’s castle, the plaza before the castle, the execution ground where the blood of sinners flowed through the waterways instead of water…
There Yuel stood as lord.
And Hermann stood in the plaza as a sinner awaiting punishment.
“….”
And Najin wordlessly watched Hermann. Hermann’s body was already half-collapsed. Perhaps because she had been exposed up close to the explosion of the Calamity Star that day? As a constellation, her rank and her star were severely damaged.
Seeing that state, it was not hard to guess why Jacqueline’s brain, which had been connected to Hermann, had melted either.
With the influence of the Calamity Star still remaining, and connecting those gears to her body to try and recover from it…
The collapse created by the Calamity Star, and a state of being connected to hundreds of billions of gears to resist that collapse. An enormous overload must have been placed upon her. Enough overload that an ordinary constellation’s brain would melt without enduring it.
Just enduring that for over a hundred and fifty years alone was enough to gauge Hermann’s rank. A constellation with ten stars, classified as a Great Constellation by Merlin’s system—Hermann’s rank was astonishing even to Najin’s eyes.
Well, she’s my contemporary.
Merlin sighed.
She was a constellation even in the era I was active. That means she’s lived at least a thousand years. Living long doesn’t necessarily mean being strong, but at the very least, one becomes seasoned.
Seasoned. Najin understood what Merlin was trying to say. As if confirming his guess, Merlin nodded.
She’ll try to find a way to live somehow.
Just like right now.
As Merlin finished speaking, Najin’s arm moved. A blade of sword aura shot in a straight line, cutting between Hermann and Yuel.
Chaaaaaaaaak!
The magic formula Hermann had secretly woven was bisected by Najin’s sword aura. Hermann’s eyes narrowed. She let out a hollow laugh as she glared at Najin.
“Ah, Excalibur. So in the end, some fool who drew that sword has appeared. Utterly foolish…”
As if sincerely pitying Najin, Hermann clicked her tongue. With her surprise attack blocked, Hermann no longer bothered to hide anything. Hundreds of millions of gears that had been falling from the sky were seized in midair.
“You said you would execute me?”
With a creak, the gears began to turn.
The clanking sounds rang out continuously.
“You? Me?”
Even if it was collapsing, this was still Hermann’s sanctuary. And Hermann was a constellation with ten stars, a constellation who had lived a thousand years. The rank she possessed and the story she had built up could never be underestimated.
From Najin’s perspective as well, she was clearly a formidable foe, one comparable to the Revelry Emperor… or depending on the conditions, an even more troublesome opponent than the Revelry Emperor.
That she was such a being was certain.
Yet unlike when facing the Revelry Emperor, Najin felt not the slightest sense of crisis. It was not that he was acting arrogantly because he had grown stronger since then.
Simply…
In Najin’s eyes, this fight was already over.
A fight whose victory and defeat had been decided long ago.
He had been guessing as much, but seeing the situation unfolding before his eyes now, Najin could be certain.
Hermann’s conquest was already complete.
And that, more than a hundred and fifty years ago.
So what was about to happen from now on was, strictly speaking, closer to a settlement. A simple process of calculation where the victor enjoyed the victor’s rights and the loser paid the price of defeat.
In terms of a trial by combat, the duel was already finished.
All that remained was to conclude the trial.
And in Najin’s view, the disgraceful spectacle Hermann was putting on now was no different from a criminal in a trial by combat whose outcome was already decided screaming, “I do not accept this result!” and throwing a tantrum.
Disgraceful spectacle—literally, a base and shameful act.
Swaepedosi’s laws were not so soft as to leave a criminal throwing a tantrum in court alone. Najin looked at Yuel, and she smirked and nodded.
If there was a sinner who refused to admit their crime and would not kneel, then crushing that knee would be enough.
Najin raised Excalibur.
Hermann’s authority took the form of gears.
The laws and rules that composed the world—Hermann defined them in the form of gears, and by manipulating the rules dwelling in those gears as she pleased, she forced her own laws upon the world.
Gravity reversed, fire grew cold, and all that was seen and heard became lies.
In her world, she was omnipotent. The world called one who was omniscient and omnipotent a god. At the very least, within her own domain, Hermann was a being akin to a god.
But that was all in the past.
Her omniscience had been denied, and because omniscience had been denied, her world had collapsed, and in a collapsing world her omnipotence lost its value.
Clank, clank, clank…!
The turning gears forced rules upon Najin. Binding Najin’s feet, countless gears pouring from that sky sought to strike him with their physical force.
“….”
Najin watched the entire scene in silence, then stomped the foot he had lifted. The gears that had bound Najin’s feet were torn away. With a single stamp of his foot, Hermann’s authority faded.
Because this was Hermann’s sanctuary, yet it was not her space.
This was Swaepedosi. And Najin, who stood with his feet planted in Swaepedosi, had been Yuel’s adjutant and the leading actor of this stage who had always been with her.
Flash.
The stars engraved upon Excalibur shone. In that moment, Najin kicked off the ground and sprinted. Gears barred Najin’s path, but the instant they touched Excalibur, the gears were smoothly sliced apart.
Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!
Platinum-colored sword aura cleaved the gears. Gears that looked to be dozens of meters in size could not withstand a blade of a mere hundred and thirty centimeters and shattered into fine pieces. Through the scattering gears, Hermann’s fingers flashed.
She was a great mage before she was a transcendent.
Magic created by interlocking gears.
A massive wave of ice large enough to swallow the entire city crashed down upon Najin. Frost spread over the city swallowed by the wave. Buildings and the plaza froze, but…
“No matter how you look at it, she doesn’t seem omniscient, does she?”
Najin did not freeze. Because Merlin, who had materialized at Najin’s side at some point, was grinning as she looked at Hermann. Hermann’s eyes widened greatly.
“There’s a fool here who dares try magic in front of me—and ice and water at that?”
The moment Merlin gestured, the ice covering the city became water and rose into the air. The water droplets that rose to the sky froze again, turning back into ice. Sharp, spike-shaped ice filled the sky.
Snap.
The moment Merlin flicked her fingers, a rain of ice poured down. The ice stabbed into the gears Hermann hastily raised before herself. As the ice shattered and created a dense white powder like fog—
Crunch.
Hermann saw it. The blade tip that had pierced straight through the gear blocking her front and touched her brow.
The sword shining platinum—Excalibur.
Najin lightly swung Excalibur, which had pierced the gear, to the side. Every obstacle that had stood between Hermann and Najin vanished. Hermann moved her hand again to thrash about, but as the word “thrash” suggested, it was nothing of particular significance.
Slash.
Hermann’s arm was severed by the sword Najin swung. The moment she stretched out her remaining arm, Najin reached out without even swinging his sword and seized that wrist.
Twisting the wrist to break it, Najin circled behind Hermann and kicked the back of her knees. With a crunch, Hermann’s knees buckled and she sank to the spot.
With his feet trampling both of Hermann’s legs, Najin grabbed her hair and forced her head up.
…Najin treated a transcendent as if she were a mere human.
Originally, a transcendent was a being who should neither be subdued nor be able to be subdued in such a manner.
But on Yuel’s stage, in Swaepedosi, even a transcendent was nothing more than a mere sinner if they broke the law. And a sinner must kneel, raise their head, and face their own crime.
Click.
Yuel approached Hermann, who awaited execution.
In one of her hands was the law code stained with blood.
“Let the sinner hear.”
She opened the law code and listed Hermann’s crimes one by one. With each crime pronounced, Hermann’s body trembled in pain. The crimes did not end. Dozens, hundreds of crimes were listed without omission.
“That is all.”
Tak—and she closed the blood-stained law code.
As usual, there were no citizens watching the execution.
But that did not mean there was no one watching this judgment. Looking around, there were humans surrounding the plaza and glaring at Hermann.
The lords of this city.
The victims whose lives had been toyed with by Hermann’s experiments.
And those who had desperately wished for a moment just like this one were looking at Hermann. The moment Yuel opened her mouth, their mouths opened as well.
“Death.”
The voice of “death” echoed through the plaza.
It was always the lord who carried out the death sentence, and another name for the lord of Swaepedosi was the Executioner.
Are you listening?
Yes.
And you saw?
I saw.
Then?
A sinner must receive fitting punishment. And I am the executioner who has executed countless sinners. Is there anything else I should do?
Indeed.
Yuel smiled. Because her conclusion matched that of the other self within her. They had not yet merged, but a point of connection had formed between the two.
The Star of Succession gripped the blood-stained law code.
The Heavenly Slaughter Star raised the blood-stained sword.
Yuel, lord of Swaepedosi, delivered the judgment. Yuel Razian, executioner of Swaepedosi, began the execution according to the judgment.
“Execute.”
Yuel Razian brought her sword down.