Kamiro (3)
"...you know. It's the Divine Crystal that comes out when we cremate a departed Brother or Sister."
"Frugal lot, aren't you."
"Efficient, too. If they're going to return to the earth either way, better that they be of use."
Taylor stole a glance at Alan, who had spoken at exactly the same time. His eyes narrowed slightly.
"Consent is obtained before any cremation is carried out, of course."
"And I take it nobody refuses?"
"Why would they? It's an honor."
Taylor nodded as if he'd expected exactly that. Religion was a terrifying thing. And yet, kept on a proper leash, precious few things made for a better tool.
The Purification Volunteer Corps members pushed forward with nothing but their own bodies. An explosion soon erupted from the building, and smoke bloomed from every corner. Bloodied from head to toe, they dragged cartel members out one by one. When anyone leveled a weapon at them, they simply blocked it with their own flesh.
"Like something straight out of a zombie movie."
Taylor clicked his tongue. When Shiva was the one benefiting from it, it had seemed fine — but seen through a third party's eyes, it was plain grotesque.
The last ones hauled out were people with cables jacked into the backs of their skulls, dragged out in a line. Every one of them was a Shark or a mage swimming the depths of Samramansang.
Without exception, their condition looked dire. Foam filled their mouths, and convulsions wracked their entire bodies.
"Alan, that was you, wasn't it?"
"Yes. It worked even better than I expected."
"What exactly did you do?"
"I implemented Russian roulette and had them blow holes in their own heads. The plan was to burn out only a sliver of the Brain Expansion Device, but the prediction seems to have gone astray. Apparently, doing it to yourself hits harder than having it done to you. Oh — look over there."
Alan magnified the artificial eye's field of view. The captured cartel members were being operated on on the spot. The priests pressed blades to the backs of the skulls with practiced ease and swapped out the Brain Expansion Devices.
"So those are the experts in healing. I suppose that's how they can manage something like this."
Sensing Alan's gaze, Shiva spoke up casually.
"I trust you have no intention of joining the Mother Church over some petty grievance, Brother."
"I didn't say a word."
"Your patterns are always so transparent, Brother Alan."
Alan looked back down at the scene below. The service corps members seemed overjoyed — no doubt because their ranks had grown. Taylor condensed the sight into a single phrase.
"Forced conscription? Makes him look like a regular necromancer."
"You vile bastards! Just kill me instead!"
No matter what curses the enemies hurled, the priests went on with their surgeries, smiling pleasantly all the while.
Any other organization would have needed considerable time to attempt such a method, but the Mother Church was full of healing experts, and the work was dispatched with almost insulting ease.
When one cartel member with anesthetic resistance thrashed about violently, the service corps members swarmed him and locked down his limbs.
"We'll take care of the struggling."
"Hey! Get out here and help subdue him!"
Despite having been used as a meat shield, the man was alive, and beneath his blood-soaked clothes his body was completely unmarked. Seeing this only made the other members resist harder, but they couldn't overpower a group takedown.
Counting the corps members who'd stopped breathing before they could even be treated, the operation ended with roughly thirty percent more personnel than it had started with.
The local allies of Pisto averted their eyes from the Mother Church's forced conversions. Scum like these deserved far worse, and yet something about watching it made a chill crawl up their spines all the same.
The operation unfolded in parallel across the city. The building Alan's party had raided was only the largest branch in Pisto — Electo's members were still scattered throughout every corner of the city.
CRASH!
At the sudden thunder, Alan turned his head — and there was Sister Alana, bursting straight through the building's wall. Even mid-growl, the sharp tusks inherited from her orc lineage announced their presence.
She strode over to the priests and spoke.
"Where's the branch manager?"
"Shall we check again?"
"Wake those ones lying over there and ask them."
Whether the priests shook them or poured sacred arts into them, the unconscious Sharks and mages stayed locked in their comas. As the futile efforts piled up, gazes naturally drifted toward the one responsible.
Under those stares, Alan released the spider. The little one scuttled swiftly across the ground, clamped itself onto the back of an unconscious mage's skull, and inserted its legs into the external connection port.
Where CPR stimulates the heart and lungs, what Alan was doing now was meant to jolt a sunken consciousness awake. Through the Brain Expansion Device, he injected mana and extracted every one of the splinters he'd driven into the mind.
"GYAAAAH!"
The moment the final wedge came free, the mage shot upright with an unearthly shriek. The instant his eyes opened, he clutched at his temple.
"A hole? Blood?"
Watching the mage slowly calm down under the sacred arts, Taylor asked.
"What's wrong with him?"
"I used the mental image of Russian roulette to subdue his mind."
"Russian roulette means somebody's supposed to survive, you know."
Taylor jerked his chin. Until Alan woke them, all five had taken the hit and were groaning on the ground.
"I merely used it for reference. Why else would I have emptied the chamber?"
"And knowing that, he still pulled the trigger. Gutsy."
"I made him pull it."
"Isn't that basically mind control at that point? Would've been quicker to just finish it in one go."
"That would be simpler if I wanted them dead. The objective was subjugation."
Taylor watched the mage undergo his conversion. It was truly hard to say which side were the bad guys here.
"Still — one pull of the trigger and he's cracked? You'd think death would be old hat to these people."
"Even imaginary death hurts. The longest anyone lasted was, what, fifty rounds?"
"Oh — so it wasn't one pull, you kept repeating it. Right. Well, as long as you enjoyed yourself."
"Nothing out of the ordinary for me."
"That's what worries me."
In the meantime, the mage had spilled his information without resistance. He had no other choice — with his Brain Expansion Device replaced, defiance was simply impossible.
Then the converted mage suddenly bellowed.
"Love! Huh? Peace! What did you do to me, you kind, wonderful people!"
When laughter erupted around him, the mage — who had been screaming about love with veins bulging in his neck — clamped his mouth shut.
Shiva explained the rather comic scene.
"A profanity filter. The purification of body and mind begins with virtuous words."
"Speech and thought are inseparable. Speak good words often, and good thoughts follow; think pleasant thoughts often, and only pleasant words come out."
Alan seemed to remember something, and turned to look at Kaka. The bloodstained orc tried to dodge the sudden gaze, but the corps members caught him from behind.
"Come to think of it, I believe I heard Mr. Kaka cursing when he boarded the transport."
At Alan's words, a monk whipped his head around. Kaka tried to quietly slip away, but pinned as he was, there was no escape.
The monk pushed his face in until their foreheads nearly touched.
"You seemed to have found enlightenment of late, so I relaxed your filter. Was I deceived? This monk is disappointed."
"No, it just slipped out! When you live long enough, words come out reflexively—"
"Spare me the excuses. Your honorific training resumes now."
The monk channeled divine power into his fingertip and jabbed the back of Kaka's skull. Apparently that was all the procedure required, for the monk walked away, leaving only the despondent Kaka behind.
"Hap... pi... ness..."
Taylor snickered at the words.
"'Happiness,' was it? Sounded a lot like a different word to me."
Kaka must have heard — his face twisted like he'd chewed something foul, but under Taylor's glare he forced out the most innocent smile he could muster.
Alana gathered the capable ones together.
"The branch manager fled before the fighting even started. No doubt he caught wind of how the battle was turning and made preparations."
"Noticing is a skill too. So the next job is tracking him down?"
"Correct. We capture the branch manager and extract the locations of the hidden branches and safe houses. The scale and purpose of his forces as well."
"What about a Spatial Gate? If he had one, he'd be long gone."
At Taylor's words, Alana shook her head and gestured to the brawny man standing beside her. With a golem prosthetic arm attached, he looked absolutely massive.
"He's with Pisto's vigilante committee. These people destroyed every Spatial Gate in Pisto in advance."
"Then what's left is aircraft, or a mage who can open space. The skies are being watched, and if he'd had a mage of that caliber, he wouldn't have needed to flee in the first place."
"We leave interior surveillance to the vigilantes and set up checkpoints on the roads out of the city."
Just as Alana said, they split up their forces and established checkpoints on the roads. Alan's party took one of the southbound routes.
Thus several days passed. Pisto had been quiet since the first raid, and the checkpoint was just as quiet.
"Thank you for your cooperation."
Taylor, who had finished inspecting a car carrying ordinary civilians, pressed the button. The vertical barricade lowered flat, opening the way through.
"Shiva."
"Speak."
"It's too quiet. Think he's already slipped out?"
"He may simply be waiting for us to let our guard down."
"If it were me, I'd have grabbed an aircraft and bolted rather than sit cooped up in here."
Of course, there was a reason he couldn't. The airspace was sealed — the moment anything lifted off, the anti-air guns would start spitting shells, and there was precious little one could do about getting shot down mid-flight.
Just then, an old car approached the checkpoint. It was headed out of the city. The moment Taylor moved to intercept what looked like an ordinary family—
Beep! This is Checkpoint 3. We've spotted the branch manager trying to slip out.
The communicator, patched through to the speaker, crackled loudly. This was Checkpoint 5, so Checkpoint 3 was on a road quite close by.
Taylor sprinted for the helicopter parked nearby.
"Let's go!"
"One moment."
Alan pointed at the family waving cheerfully in their direction. Before Taylor could even ask what he meant, Panther slammed its body into the car. The driver's side door crumpled instantly, and the driver met much the same fate.
Panther vaulted onto the roof and extended its claws to full length. The blue blades shredded the ceiling in a heartbeat.
"Shit, we're made!"
Not the reaction of an ordinary family. The mother's wrist bent at an unnatural angle, and a small missile materialized in her grip; the child's skin split open, spikes erupting from beneath it.
"Finish up with Panther and follow me."
Beep!
Alan left the cleanup to the children and boarded the helicopter. The roar of blades hammering the air was deafening. Taylor, wedged into the cockpit, shouted over it.
"Small fry?"
"Yes. Can't exactly let them walk, though."
The helicopter, carrying three, lifted into the sky. Once airborne, they could see the chase playing out in the far distance — cars weaving through the roads. The range was so great that even with his vision magnified, they looked like specks of dust.
Taylor flew with a gleeful expression plastered across his face. An aircraft's greatest advantage was ignoring terrain altogether, and with the speed to match, they reached the scene in no time.
The armored car carrying the branch manager — shaped rather like a chafer beetle — plowed onward, absorbing every attack rained down on it. Occasionally it even counterattacked, its rear hatch opening to spill bombs out in a scatter.
Naturally, the road was chewed to ruin, and some of the pursuing vehicles flipped outright. They could have cut their losses and left the wrecks behind, but the Mother Church's people detached separate cars to collect the wounded.
"Nice car. So he wasn't hiding out of fear — he just needed time to prepare."
"Alan, worry less about the car and tell me how we're supposed to catch that thing."
"The rockets in the pod are tuned for penetration over explosive force — fire them."
"Ah, armor-piercing rounds, got it."
Taylor finished laying his aim and hammered the button. The rockets leapt from their cradles, swarming toward the armored car like piranhas scenting blood.
Screee-ch!
They hit — and accomplished little. The mana barrier sheathing the armored car's surface turned the rockets aside, and crumpled chunks of metal pattered down onto the road.
"Oh."
"Not the time for admiration!"
"Try the missile this time."
The missile mounted above the rocket pod surged forward. Once again the armored car's onboard defense system kicked in, but this time the result was slightly different.
No explosion. No thunderclap. A missile snapped cleanly in half went rolling across the asphalt.
"The hell? Where did the warhead go?"
No sooner had the words left Taylor's mouth than the armored car wobbled. Then it left the road entirely and went tumbling across the open field.
"Ah — so that's it?"
"Yes. Rune power is far stronger on the surface than inside the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth imposes its own constraints on space itself."
The helicopter circled round and round above the armored car, flipped over by Space Interference. After a few rotations, the rear hatch swung open and a hulking skinhead stepped out.
"He looks remarkably unscathed, considering the warhead detonated inside."
"That thing?"
The skinhead's skin was mottled red and black. Some kind of healing device must have been at work, because the burns were gradually fading.
"According to the analysis, his Depth—