The 100 Million Ghost Parade: The Rules — 2
The moment I heard the words Hundred Million Ghost Parade, I felt a strange kind of acceptance — that anything capable of binding a Great Anomaly would have to be on that level — and simultaneously, a jarring sense of disbelief that such a thing could exist at all.
What would it actually take for a hundred million human beings to become one under a single purpose?
"Have you heard of the Hyakki Yagyō?"
"The Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. In truth, that's just a fragment of the Hundred Million Ghost Parade as seen through ordinary human eyes."
"Then what does it look like to someone in the Anomaly World — someone who isn't an ordinary human?"
"An undefeatable god. The absolute apex of physical force. The strongest collective spirit in existence — one so overwhelming that even a Great Anomaly's odds of winning in a head-on fight approach zero."
Even a Great Anomaly would have zero chance of winning?
At those words, I thought of Stalker.
The monstrous strength that casually hurled building fragments weighing dozens of tons even as her body melted away. The attack trajectory that bent mid-swing. The freely shifting center of gravity. The regeneration and body modification that belonged only in fiction.
And on top of all that, the ability to rewrite reality itself at will.
And there was something out there that could beat that with near-perfect certainty?
"Collective spirits are special. They're beings cherished by the world itself. The more of them gather, the more abilities they gain."
"Below one hundred thousand, even a Grade 1 Anomaly can handle them. But from one million onward, they enter an entirely different tier."
"Parallel cognition. With the processing power of a million minds, they can master martial arts from a single punch and find the optimal solution to any problem in an instant."
"From one million onward, they can wield their immense power with absolute precision."
That's not enough, though.
That was my immediate reaction upon hearing about the one-million threshold. Sure, it was impressive on its own, but it seemed woefully inadequate for taking on a Great Anomaly.
No matter how extraordinary their cognitive abilities, no matter how devastating their physical power — weren't they all helpless before an ability that rewrote reality itself?
"And at ten million, that's when the Great Anomalies begin to acknowledge them as equals."
"From that point onward, they can treat all phenomena as physical force and interfere with them physically."
"They can kick open a wormhole or portal, tear through a trace and follow it, and even treat an instant-death ability as merely a physical something — shrugging it off or counterattacking without a second thought."
What the hell is that.
Beyond common sense. Beyond reason itself.
Was this what it felt like to witness something truly outside the boundaries of human understanding?
Even if I'd been told to fight within the Rules, I had no confidence I could beat something like that. It would treat the Rules themselves as physical force and shatter them. Even if I protected my body with constraints or alternate laws, it would simply tear through them. And afterward, sure, the Rules would retaliate against the collective spirit — but I'd already be torn to shreds by then, so what good would that do me?
"What happens when it reaches a hundred million?"
"I don't know. The Hundred Million Ghost Parade has never appeared since the Rules were established. There have only been two candidates."
"Hell and the Human Dignity Committee. Hell could have become the Parade, but the Central Spirit told its members they were free to leave. And no matter how many new recruits they brought in, people kept leaving, so they capped out at eighty million."
"The Human Dignity Committee is currently at fifty million active members, with twenty million retired members in cryogenic sleep — seventy million total."
"They say if the Committee hadn't been so picky about who they accepted, they would have become the Hundred Million Ghost Parade long ago."
"Are both of them still active?"
"Hell has converted its entire space into the underworld itself and settled into a corner of existence, so you'll probably never encounter it. But the Human Dignity Committee is still very actively operating."
"...Just explain the Rules first."
My head was starting to hurt.
Setting aside the fact that the Hundred Million Ghost Parade had become the Rules, there were still active collective spirits with over ten million members — candidates for the Parade — walking around right now.
I prayed silently. Please don't let me be the protagonist. Please don't let me get tangled up with something like that.
"Ahem... I've gone off topic again. My apologies!"
"It's fine."
"Shall I start from the very distant past? It seems like you want the complete fundamentals, so let me begin there."
"Yeah. Summarize as much as you can."
"Certainly! In the far distant past — hmm, how to put this — there were Cthulhu-like beings that would drive an ordinary person mad just from laying eyes on them. Outer Entities roamed the Earth freely, and humanity prayed. They prayed for something to be born that they could understand, something that would protect them."
"A god?"
"Yes, exactly! And so the Anomalies were born. From then on, Anomalies and Outer Entities remained in constant opposition."
"The most well-known Outer Entities would be... the giants of Norse mythology, the Titans of Greco-Roman mythology, and the Fomorians of Celtic mythology, to name a few representative examples."
"So all the gods are Anomalies too?"
"Yes and no! People sometimes worshipped Anomalies as gods after watching them fight each other, and sometimes they worshipped the aftermath of power or natural disasters as gods. Zeus existed, but Thor didn't."
"...That's complicated."
"And so, for thousands of years, Anomalies and Outer Entities remained locked in conflict. Then, one thousand years ago, that conflict reached its absolute peak. In human terms, it was a world war — a war of annihilation."
"Because of that, the Anomalies desperately needed human emotion. They began brutally exploiting humans, flooding them with something like drugs that forced intense experiences of joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure. Because if the Anomalies died, the humans would die too."
"The devastation must have been... unimaginable."
Any faction, right before collapse, squeezes its members to the absolute limit.
Just look at our own history — wartime mobilization, requisitioning vehicles and equipment, curfews, rationing, internet censorship. Compared to peacetime, it borders on abuse of the populace. And if you were an Anomaly that drew power from emotion...
"Yes. I've heard that both humans and Anomalies were utterly devastated, pushed to their very limits."
"So was the Hundred Million Ghost Parade born from humans banding together during that period of devastation?"
"It wasn't just humans from that era. You see, before the Rules existed, Anomalies tormented humans in a completely chaotic, lawless way. Even the monsters from folk tales — they kidnapped people, killed them, violated them, did absolutely everything."
"That's... certainly true."
"It was something that embodied the incomprehensible, the catastrophic, and the unjust all at once. And back then, the Anomalies—"
"So the victims from the past accumulated too?"
"Yes! Victims piled up like sedimentary layers over the ages. Collective spirits that had quietly gathered their forces. And the ideology spoken by the Central Spirit of the Hundred Million Ghost Parade: 'Unjust persecution must cease to exist.'"
"These three elements merged together, and the Hundred Million Ghost Parade was born — a force that hunted all things. In the West, they called it the Wild Hunt."
"If it hunted all things, did it hunt humans too?"
"Yes, but ordinary humans were left alone if they stayed inside their homes."
"The direct targets of the hunt were limited to three: Outer Entities, humans connected to the Anomaly World, and Anomalies themselves. They also incorporated weaker Anomalies and other spirits who joined their cause into the procession."
"Why did they hunt humans from the Anomaly World?"
"Because the humans in the Anomaly World at that time watched what the Anomalies were doing and chose to look the other way. The humans captured by Outer Entities suffered far worse fates."
"...I can understand that, but isn't that still complicity?"
"Burning down a village for emotion extraction before the Outer Entities could reach it — that's difficult to classify as mere bystander complicity."
"If they were active participants, then... well... I have nothing to say in their defense."
"Thirty years after the Central Spirit of the Hundred Million Ghost Parade was born, when the Parade had swept across the world and both the Anomaly World and the Outer Entities had lost over ninety percent of their forces—"
"A certain woman appeared. The Great Shaman."
"Having cast away her name, she persuaded Shuten-doji and Kraken — the Great Anomalies of that era — and then convinced the Crusaders, the primary human faction, to stand against the Hundred Million Ghost Parade."
"Just before all of them were defeated, she engaged the Parade in direct dialogue."
"I'll show you the footage that the Broadcasting Station recorded of that moment."
"This was filmed by the Station Director — a Grade 1 Anomaly at the time, now a Great Anomaly. This single recording is so significant that it alone justifies the Broadcasting Station's right to exist."
"They charge one second of lifespan for it, but honestly, it's practically free. I'll cover the cost myself!"
"Thank you."
With those words, Kkamangi manipulated the round terminal, and the surroundings darkened like a movie theater.
On a large rectangular screen, the footage began to play.
