Chapter 202
Chapter 202
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 202
Chapter Title: The Age of Upheaval (2)
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Only Arin, who had the Metagate snatched from her at point-blank range, couldn't comprehend the situation and stared down at her empty hand.
Her expression showed she wasn't even aware that a fallen angel was standing right beside her.
“Hmm, isn't this a Metagate? It's forbidden even for the subjects of God. Not bad for a bunch of heretics.”
Hearing Ikasa's voice, Arin's face turned pale.
She had been more than thirty meters away. So how could the Metagate have been stolen?
Furthermore, to snatch an object while moving at high speed meant she had accelerated using purely physical strength.
“Hmm, so you came here with a Metagate? Don't tell me... did Miro send you?”
Shirone didn't answer. He instinctively felt he shouldn't give her any information.
“Huhu, if you don't want to talk, you don't have to. I'll find out the coordinates once I analyze this anyway.”
The Metagate was a piece of high-tech equipment from the Mecha tribe. With Mecha technology, one could dismantle it and find the recorded coordinates without even activating it.
Of course, Ikasa already had a hunch. The boy's act of stopping the Ephemeral Art was particularly impressive. They were undoubtedly from the detestable Miro's homeland.
Ikasa swayed her slender body as she walked through Shirone's group.
She was completely unguarded, yet no one could lay a hand on her.
Ikasa stopped where the girls were standing.
As the tall angel looked down at her, Amy shrank back in extreme fear. But she refused to succumb to her terror and continued to meet her gaze.
“By any chance, are you a virgin?”
Amy's face flushed crimson. In terms of verbal abuse, it was a low blow.
“W-What?”
“Hahahaha! So you are. You two as well?”
Ikasa asked, pointing alternately at Tess and Arin. Both of their faces turned red without exception.
“Hmm, so that's a yes? For humans, you have remarkable patience.”
Ikasa bent down and studied Arin closely. Black hair, black pupils, and a pale face reminiscent of moonlight.
“Hoh, so you're from an eastern race. I like that very much.”
Ikasa was satisfied. She had initially come to vent twenty thousand years of resentment, but she had unexpectedly reaped a great harvest.
The coordinates to Miro's homeland and three young girls. With this, there was a good chance she could be promoted back to an angel.
Ikasa rotated her halo, activating her angelic power.
“Wh-What?”
As Amy, Tess, and Arin rose into the air, a ball of light reflexively gathered before Shirone's eyes.
“No! Stop!”
Just as the Photon Cannon surged forward, Canis and Harvest launched a pincer attack. Rian also charged, raising his greatsword.
Ikasa extended a slender finger and drew a line from left to right. Instantly, all the attacks were deflected by an invisible barrier.
Shirone, unable to shake his anxiety, shouted.
“Let the girls go! Come down! Fight us!”
Ikasa gave the group a pathetic look before flying high into the air with the three girls.
Shirone felt like his heart was about to explode.
It couldn't end like this. If the situation concluded so helplessly, his spirit would break.
Rising into the sky, Ikasa accelerated her halo.
A burning vortex formed before her, from which a heavy mass emerged. It was a black body with intersecting bands of orange light, but its shape was still indiscernible.
“Tabu, kill the heretics. I'm going to Lord Kariel.”
“...Yes, Lady Ikasa.”
Ikasa quickly receded into the northern sky. Amy's voice, calling out for someone, trailed after her.
Shirone stared at the sky, his face a mask of disbelief. It didn't feel real.
It wasn't that he hadn't braced himself for danger upon coming to Heaven. But he never imagined he would be this powerless.
‘I... It was my idea to come.’
Shirone squeezed his eyes shut.
It was his fault. He should have stopped them from coming to Heaven in the first place. To think he believed they would be somewhat safe just because they had the Metagate. What a foolish delusion. Angels were beings beyond human imagination.
KUUUUUUUNG!
The black mass crashed to the ground. Its surface was so smooth it looked like rock. But as it unfurled its crouched body, a gorilla-like figure stood up.
Thin orange bands were engraved symmetrically on its body, the color contrast strangely nauseating.
A triangle floating above its head identified it as a one-horned Mara. It was much smaller than the Mara they had seen at Nor's Rest, but it didn't seem weak.
“Kekeke! I am Tabu. It's been a while since I've had a battle, so let's have some fun.”
Shirone's group assumed a combat stance. But having had the girls taken from them, their fighting spirit had hit rock bottom.
Whether it knew of their feelings or not, Tabu crouched down, giddy with excitement.
“My power is suppressed, so I'm a bit shy to show off, but...”
Tabu's orange bands glowed, and an intense heat erupted.
“It's more than enough for the likes of you.”
With those words, Tabu kicked off the ground and charged.
Rian rushed in and swung his greatsword. Tabu neither dodged nor blocked. As if he couldn't even see Rian, he ran straight into the sword.
CRACK! With a deafening impact, Rian was sent flying into the air.
Tabu bent backward, looking at Shirone upside down. And in that position, he launched himself. The sight of Tabu's inverted face approaching was indescribably bizarre.
Faced with an approach that defied human common sense, Shirone cast Photon Burst. A curtain of light struck Tabu, but he pushed right through it as if it were nothing.
“Kukuku, what an interesting spell.”
Tabu's face was right in front of him. Where its eyes should have been, there was a vertical orange line, and its mouth was a lipless crack.
The Photon Burst was emitting mass at a rapid rate of twenty times per second, but Tabu was as composed as if he were walking through a storm.
He let his tongue hang down to his solar plexus and taunted Shirone.
“Keke. Are you sad? Because your women were taken?”
Killing intent filled Shirone's eyes. He had to get Amy back.
Ironically, the moment he realized that, Shirone erased Amy from his mind.
As his focus sharpened, the power of his Photon Burst intensified.
This time, even Tabu couldn't withstand it. Pushed back by the Photon Burst, he began to disrupt the battlefield with strange, indescribable movements.
Creative? No, it was primitive.
Each time it approached with monkey-like elasticity and delivered a rock-heavy blow, Shirone's group could do nothing more than defend.
‘Is this the power of a Mara?’
Its raw power might have been less than the Vortex Serpent's, but if one were to rank them, Tabu would be much higher.
In speed, strength, balance, and combat intelligence, it surpassed the Vortex Serpent, which was merely large in size.
If Ikasa hadn't lost her power, wouldn't this monster also have displayed a catastrophic level of strength?
The moment Tabu's fist flew toward Shirone, a Shadow Wall shot up from the ground.
BANG! A loud noise erupted from the other side of the shadow.
Tabu didn't retract his attack. He simply kept his fist pressed against it and pushed with insane force.
His fist broke through the Shadow Wall and struck Shirone's forehead.
The primary defensive barrier absorbed the impact, but the world still spun around him.
Canis rose from Shirone's shadow.
“Normal attacks won't work. Open the Immortal Function now.”
“What are you talking about? It's been open for a while.”
Canis looked bewildered. Having experienced it firsthand, he knew better than anyone the power of a Photon Cannon cast with the Immortal Function active. And yet, it couldn't even scratch it?
“Is the laser impossible?”
“It'd be difficult, wouldn't it? It's small and fast.”
Accumulating the energy takes more than five seconds. It might have worked against a large target like the Vortex Serpent, but it was an impossible tactic against Tabu, whose movement patterns were unpredictable.
“Let's try anyway. I'll hold it off, you attack then.”
Canis cast the Power of Darkness. Shadows gathered like capillaries, seizing Tabu's ankles, crawling up its knees, and tightly binding its wrists.
As Shirone's laser seared Tabu, its body gradually began to glow red. If it just stayed like this, an explosion was only a matter of time, no matter how durable it was.
“Khahaha! Satisfying! But that's enough!”
Tabu swelled its thighs and leaped, and the Power of Darkness holding its limbs tore apart like paper.
In an instant, its figure became a dot in the sky.
Was it impossible after all? The Power of Darkness was specialized against engineered forces but wasn't particularly strong physically. To hold Tabu, a much stronger binding force was needed.
“Canis! Buy me a little more time!”
Shirone decided to gamble on Photon Sculpting. It had once been deemed inefficient, but things were different now that he had succeeded with Shining Impact.
While Harvest engaged Tabu, Canis saw a sphere of light gathering around Shirone.
Seeing that the light's intensity was weak, unlike Shining Impact, he realized it was an attempt to reduce the particles' vibration for sculpting.
It was a decent idea, but would it actually work?
-Even if you suppress the vibration, you can't increase it to a sculptable size. It'll just explode in the end, like Shining Impact.
-No. I don't think it's compression.
At Harvest's words, Canis turned his head again.
What Shirone sculpted from the sphere of light was a small ring, about the size one could make with their thumb and index finger.
‘That bastard! Don't tell me...?’
An astonishing thought flashed through Canis's mind.
It was true that light magic couldn't be modeled with the same precision as dark magic.
But perhaps sculpting itself wasn't impossible.
The ring of light Shirone created began to replicate itself over and over.
A shiver of thrill ran down Canis's spine as he watched the scene.
There was a shape that could be created with photons.
A fractal structure.
A fractal is something that forms a whole by replicating its own shape.
Shirone had come up with a method of gathering minimal particles to create the simplest shape, then replicating it infinitely.
Once a single shape was complete, churning out copies was instantaneous.
From the sphere of light gathered between Shirone's palms, a chain shot out like a stream of water.
Because it was a method that went against the properties of light, the mental energy consumption was bound to be greater than that of ordinary magic, but it was the only strategy he could try against Tabu.
Tabu, who was chasing Canis, sensed something was off and turned to look at Shirone.
A chain dozens of meters long undulated around Shirone, emitting a brilliant light.
The power of light, called the power of angels. And this was Photon Sculpting, said to be the most difficult technique of all.
“A mere human!”
Tabu roared and charged. Shirone met him by swinging his arm and throwing the chain.
The chain, tangled into a spherical mass, began to wrap tightly around Tabu's body. It started at his ankles, coiled around his waist, and dug into his armpits. Then it circled his neck, crossed down in an X-shape, and bound his thighs.
KAK! A sound like scraping stone was heard.
Tabu's fist stopped just before it could strike the bridge of Shirone's nose. The trembling fist spoke of his rage.
“Krrrrrrgh!”
Tabu couldn't move an inch.
The links of the chain, possessing gravity, pulled on each other, increasing the tensile strength.
The slightest movement caused it to dig into any opening and tighten its grip.
Fairy Captain Igirin stared at the chain-bound Tabu with a look of disbelief.
Just who was that boy?
Even among the angels who wielded light, only a few could use sculpting techniques.
Canis also found the situation hard to believe.
It wasn't a simple chain. It was formed using fractal technology and generated tensile strength using mass.
This was on a different level from Shirone's magic until now. Spells equivalent to Photon Cannon existed in other schools of magic. The same went for the laser and Photon Burst.
But this chain magic was in a realm unique to the God Particle, one that no other school could imitate.
-The Unlocker's omniscience is evolving at a frightening pace. And every new spell he creates shatters common sense. First Shining Impact, and now Shining Chain?
Canis remained silent. While it was good for an ally to grow stronger when they needed to rescue their friends, his innate belligerence felt a sense of defeat.
-Canis, your heart is beating fast. Don't worry about it too much. You came to Heaven to get stronger. You can definitely surpass Shirone.
-Yeah. I'll have to surpass him someday. For now, let's focus on the situation.
Comforting himself with that thought, Canis walked toward the bound Tabu.