Chapter 438
Chapter 438
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 438
Chapter Title: The Day of the Full Moon (2)
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Rebel Army First Command.
Commander Krude stepped outside and gazed at the full moon.
The memory of a unit disappearing every time that moon rose stirred a thirst for vengeance within him.
*‘For my fallen comrades, I must win.’*
“You seem troubled.”
Krude turned his head.
Seeing Thain approach, he looked back at the moon and spoke.
“Not really. There have been no reports of angel patrols yet. It seems this Day of the Full Moon will pass safely as well.”
Thain's gaze followed Krude's.
“I see.”
Krude turned, speaking as if a thought had just occurred to him.
“How are things on your end? Is your research finished?”
Thain had been observing planetary movements day and night to obtain the precise coordinates needed for God's Punishment.
“For the most part.”
“Astronomy. What meaning does that hold for us mere mortals under the sky? Especially during a war.”
“For now, it has no meaning. But soon, the time will come when it will be the only thing that matters.”
Krude raised an eyebrow.
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“I can't reveal it yet. In any case, it's not a bad thing for the rebels. At the very least, we won't be taking a one-sided beating.”
*‘Some kind of suicide tactic?’*
That was the limit of what Krude could surmise from the study of planetary motion.
It was only natural, considering even Gaold and Thain had been flabbergasted when they first heard Shirone's plan.
“Sir!”
Kanya emerged from the barracks and saluted.
Beside her stood Lena and her father, Witcher.
After his wife's life came to an end, Witcher had left Heaven and was now a military civilian employee, teaching maintenance skills to the mecha unit members.
Krude returned the salute.
“Yes, what is it at this hour?”
“Ah, well... it was getting a bit stuffy in the barracks.”
It wasn't recommended for unit members to take a walk with their family at night, but Krude didn't reprimand them.
Every rebel had the right to feel anxious on the Day of the Full Moon.
Kanya asked Thain.
“Have you heard anything from Shirone?”
“Gardock visited a few days ago. It seems things are proceeding smoothly.”
The story of Shirone turning the Second Command upside down with his Nephilim abilities was a secret known only to a few in the First Command.
Like the other officers, Krude was displeased that Shirone had been incorporated into the Second Command, but he didn't show it.
That wasn't what was truly important.
“This might be late to say, but I don't think Lacis ever truly accepted Shirone.”
Thain looked back.
“You said there was conflict. A difference of opinion on biological experiments?”
“On the surface. But you don't throw away half your forces over a few biological experiments during a war. What she did back then went against the common sense of not only the Mecha but the Norr as well.”
“She crossed a line? What did she do?”
Krude's face twisted into a cruel expression.
“Lacis...”
*Screeeeeeeeeech!*
A piercing sound that tore through the sky swallowed Krude's words.
“Kngh!”
Krude grimaced as the sound waves directly assaulted his skull, while Kanya and Lena clutched their heads and dropped to the ground.
Witcher, pressing down on his two daughters with his arms, looked up at the dome-shaped sky, where electricity crackled.
“It's ultrasound. It's colliding with the magnetic field.”
Thain, his face devoid of emotion, raised his head, his Iron Ring Eyes flashing.
Something reflecting the moonlight was flying in rapidly from the far side of the sky.
-Search algorithm terminated.
Babel turned off its search function and transmitted the results of its Purgatory-wide scan to Kariel via wireless communication.
-Magnetic field detected. Target probability 92.7 percent.
All she could see was a dense forest, but the program detected that 0.3 percent of the total landscape had the exact same structure as another part of the scenery.
An artificiality, as if light had been copied and pasted.
It was the rebel command headquarters.
-Switching to attack mode.
Babel's eyes glowed red.
-Strike authorized.
As Babel, which had flown in a straight line with a sonic boom, entered the headquarters' airspace, Thain cast Mass Teleport.
*KWWAAAAAAANG!*
A massive crater, thirty meters in diameter, formed around the point where Babel slammed into the ground.
Emergency sirens blared throughout the headquarters, and lights began to switch on in clusters across the barracks.
“Damn it! What the hell was that?”
Just as Krude gritted his teeth and started walking toward the crater, a tall, ink-black woman walked up from it with clanking footsteps.
Kanya's voice trembled.
“I-It's a machine, isn't it?”
-Execute the subjects.
A short command was issued to Babel's program.
* * *
Infinite Judicial Halo: Valhalla Action.
Ikasa's unique ability, Valhalla Action, possessed the power to reverse cause and effect.
When one desires something, it realizes the result on the condition that the time and effort required for the action are paid back later.
For example, if Ikasa desired to go from A to B, she could instantly arrive at her destination, a distance that would normally take ten seconds to travel.
However, if there was an obstacle between points A and B, she would have to pay the price for the possibility of bypassing or destroying it.
If she had to destroy the obstacle to get to B, and that took five minutes, upon arriving at point B, Ikasa would fall into a state of inaction for five minutes and ten seconds to fulfill the cause.
Calculating that causality was the core of Valhalla.
Just as pressing a balloon with a finger makes the other side bulge, setting a desire 'A' automatically produced a result 'B'.
Therefore, any desire beyond Valhalla's computational ability could not be realized in the first place.
For example, desiring 'I want to go inside that rock' would be impossible to realize.
This was because there was no space to enter inside the rock to begin with.
However, if space was somehow created within the rock, it would be realized, even if Ikasa was unaware of it.
This meant that Valhalla's computational system was influenced not by mathematical truth, but by the Akashic Records, which encompassed the whole from the parts.
Similarly, it was impossible to realize the desire 'I want to behead that human.'
Valhalla could not compute the future actions of a human, thus preventing it from reaching an 'Action'.
*‘I just need to eliminate Shirone.’*
Ikasa's eyes, looking down at the billowing dust cloud, held a cold killing intent.
For her, who wished to be reinstated as an angel, Shirone was an existence that had to be killed, not just for personal revenge.
Although she was aware that Kariel was making unsettling moves within Heaven, for Ikasa, who had committed two grave sins, it was also the only lifeline she could grasp.
*‘It's slowly coming back.’*
22 minutes and 42 seconds.
The time it would have taken Ikasa to destroy an entire mountain with only her fists under normal causality.
Even considering it was the Day of the Full Moon, it was a power that could be called celestial.
While those 22 minutes and 42 seconds passed, the rebels on the ground fought desperately to clear the dust cloud.
They were using the group spell Mahagart to blow away the dust, but the haze from an entire collapsed mountain did not dissipate easily.
Shirone and Flu, who had narrowly escaped before the cliff collapsed, stayed put, their senses on high alert.
Flu took out the Phoenix from his Kubrick and swung it, applying the Dawkins Algorithm to his Spirit Zone.
A function that made his body react automatically if an object penetrated his Spirit Zone above a certain speed.
Following suit, Shirone took out Armand and activated Adamant Armament, and Flu immediately noticed a change.
The tattered robe was as clean as new, and his artificial brain glowed with a blue light, like the Ultima System he had seen in Babel.
“What happened?”
“I've integrated with the Ultima System.”
Flu pondered what that meant but then dismissed the thought.
That wasn't what was important right now.
“Does it have any functions that will help in a fight?”
He wasn't sure yet.
He had never fought with Armand after integrating with the Ultima System.
“I don't know. It changed from sharing thoughts to full integration, but how that will work...”
Finally, the dust cloud cleared, and the bright full moon once again illuminated the ground.
The revealed landscape was devastating.
The command headquarters' cliff was shattered beyond recognition, with not a single intact pillar to be found, and the bodies of the Norr lay scattered beneath the debris.
The result of a single surprise attack.
This kind of reality-defying power was precisely why the subjects feared the angels.
“That is...!”
Shirone's eyes widened at the sight of the angel floating in the sky. At the same time, a memory he didn't want to recall surfaced.
*‘Ikasa.’*
The fallen angel who had made him watch helplessly as Amy, Tess, and Arin were abducted right before his eyes.
Her movements, so fast he couldn't even follow them with his eyes, still sent shivers down his spine even now.
“Shirone, what's wrong?”
“I've seen her before. She's a fallen angel.”
While far better than a regular angel, it didn't feel like their chances of survival had increased.
Ikasa descended, her arms crossed.
An ominous vibration made the rebels' hearts pound.
“Hahaha, you should have come out when I told you to. Did you really think a creature worse than an insect could defy my words?”
As her words were transmitted mentally through the angel's power, one of the surviving officers shouted.
“Focus on me! We'll counter with a group spell!”
The officer prepared the great spell, Aruope.
It was a spell that boasted the greatest cutting power among those that utilized the essence of air.
Ikasa, watching dozens of mages connect their Spirit Force to the officer, sneered.
“Foolish things.”
Ikasa moved.
It was like the movement of an electron, existing as a probability within space.
Appearing like an afterimage before dozens of soldiers, she knocked them all down with the fists attached to her slender wrists.
From low-ranking mages to officers, the pyramid of ranks collapsed rapidly, and in an instant, the uprising was over.
“Gack!”
As Ikasa's fist buried deep into his abdomen, blood spewed from the officer's mouth.
“Kekeke! Killing humans is so much fun!”
Ikasa was strong.
For her, who could destroy a mountain in twenty minutes, defeating a few dozen human mages was possible even without Valhalla Action.
But she was faithful to the concept of the Source, and Shirone clearly understood what function her halo possessed.
*‘An equivalent exchange of cause and effect.’*
The Ultima System detected that exact sensation.
When Ikasa, having wiped out the rebels, turned her head, a jolt of electricity ran down Shirone and Flu's spines.
They were the eyes of a fallen angel filled with a desire for revenge.
“Shirone, do you have any idea how long I've waited for this day? You scurried away like a little rat back then.”
“I haven't forgotten what you did, either.”
“Hoho! No, I think you have forgotten. You couldn't lift a finger as your women were taken away. Do you think now will be any different?”
Shirone scrunched his nose and lowered his stance.
“Be careful, senior. I think that angel's halo can reverse cause and effect.”
Flu, having seen what happened to the rebels with his own eyes, understood quickly.
“Let's play defensively. We need to buy time for now. There should be surviving rebels underground.”
Ikasa puffed out her cheeks and laughed.
“Pfft! You know why I hate humans? It's because you're all delusional by default. Just Human 1 and Human 2, yet you're all deluded into thinking you can achieve something.”
Kicking off the ground, Ikasa rushed forward and threw a punch in front of Flu, the air trembling with a *whoosh*.
Against the gale-like attack, Flu's upper body bent like a willow branch.
It was the effect of the Dawkins Algorithm, but his spine ached as if it would snap, and it felt like he couldn't hold out for long.
“Keuk!”
Ikasa's left hook landed, sending Flu's body flying away like a clothesline.
Just before impact, he had struck the back of her hand with the Phoenix to absorb some of the force, but the shock was still unbearable.
“Hahaha! Struggling is also a characteristic of insects!”
The moment Ikasa laughed cheerfully and turned, the maw of a giant tentacle appeared before her and grabbed her face.
The tentacle then shot diagonally into the sky, bent into an arch, and slammed Ikasa's body vertically into the ground.
*KWAAAAANG!*
Splayed out on the ground, Ikasa blinked, her face still buried in the tentacle.
*‘What is this?’*
A shock strong enough to make the back of her head tingle. A speed she couldn't even react to.
It was a strange and heavy blow, one she couldn't just dismiss as a surprise attack.
“You insolent brat...!”
Ikasa chopped the tentacle with the side of her hand and shot toward Shirone like a spring.
“Look out!”
Flu shouted, but the scene that followed was completely different from what he expected.
Shirone was evading all of Ikasa's relentless punches by swaying his upper body.
*‘I can see it! I can see Ikasa's attacks!’*
If Armand was meant to maximize the user's physical abilities, now, Armand itself *was* Shirone's body.
Everything he could do in his Adamant Armament state was as easy as moving his own fingers.
“A mere human? I have the body of an angel!”
Ikasa threw a decisive straight punch.
The moment the fist reached its destination, Shirone's body spun rapidly.
A heavy tentacle shot out from his robe and viciously struck Ikasa's cheek, sending her body flying horizontally.
*KWAAAAANG!*
Flu stared blankly as Ikasa crashed into a pile of rubble from the collapsed headquarters.
In front of Shirone, who was glaring at Ikasa, Ataraxia was accumulating several times faster than before.