meakashi
patreon
Chapter 165 - Beyond Light
🕑 Added 2022-02-25 18:48:52 +0000 UTC"You are the one!" Elaine suddenly screams as Mataku reattaches his severed head with countless tendrils sprouting from his neck. She points at Rolan in accusation, seemingly finally recognizing by his movements that he was one of those instrumental in the death of her son Alverost.
Ignoring Mataku, who stands between her and Rolan, she opens several rifts in space from which concentrated beams of light shoot out. The Primordial Terror is pierced, but it turns out to be an afterimage. However, Rolan deflects every last beam with Roshanee, moving well beyond the physically possible.
As Mataku floats off to the side, I watch with my heightened senses the moment that the fallen hero reaches the speed of light, even if only for an instant. He not merely deflects the beams away from himself but guides them into the Primordial Terror's back all at once. The latter is pierced for real this time, and his body bursts into flames. Then, Rolan falls onto his knee and holds his chest, gasping for air as if he sprinted a full marathon in an instant.
Our surroundings shift, and space moves. I realize that it's not the universe moving but us. Elaine puts the Sun behind Rolan, but something impacts her side before she can do anything and sends her tumbling into the distance. It's Kerry, having stayed out of sight of their mother all this time. Finally, they made up their mind to fight her.
Mataku puts out the flames engulfing his body and mends the holes created by the beams of the Sun itself. Then he turns to Rolan with a less than amused expression. Although it was Elaine's attack, the fallen hero was the one who redirected them toward his back.
"I was willing to overlook you, insignificant creature." He declares and raises a hand toward him before performing a crushing motion. But when nothing happens, Mataku narrows his eyes in confusion.
"Was... I supposed to die... here?" Rolan asks between wheezing breaths when he realizes what the Primordial Terror was trying to do. His nervous smile shows that he wasn't aware of the attempt, but ignorance might have been what saved him.
"Then I shall do it in a way a lesser being like you can understand." With these words, Mataku bursts out into his full Crawling Chaos form for the first time. He becomes an even more monstrous version of me, with countless loose tentacle blades separating from his hulking body. Spreading them out in a mandala-like pattern, he charges at Rolan as if sliding through reality itself.
I decide it's time to help him, but space shifts again, and we fall toward the Sun. Elaine has regained her bearings in the distance, wholly unharmed by Kerry's meteoric headbutt. Even though the Sun is behind us, her head is illuminated by a halo that shines as intense as her rage must be.
As Rolan rises and faces Mataku's onslaught with all of his remaining strength, Elaine is trying to throw all of us into the Sun. But I know that this is all within the Imagination Engine, a representation of the possibility that we are outside the tesseract and in the control of one person's mind.
Our surroundings suddenly smear like artifacts in a bad video player. Reality twists, and we're thrown into an ancient forest. I somehow recognize it as the Dark Continent, a most familiar place for Exla, the Guardian of the Soil. It must have been her who transported us here to stop Elaine's imagination. She knows it so well that her mental image is strong enough to overwrite the God of the Sun's.
Even the hole in reality has disappeared, and the storm from the other side sucking away the atmosphere in this space ceases. This means that Mataku can't escape into it when he deems the battle unfavorable for him.
But the God of the Sun doesn't let the sudden overwriting of her imagination stop her. She unleashes a barrage of sunlight from her halo that burns the surroundings. Sintress raises a Perfect Sanctuary to block the attack, but it passes through it as light would. Instead, Gram leaps forward and erects a force field from his shield that blocks the beams without a problem.
I already had a hunch that the Perfect Sanctuary is only perfect outside the tesseract. Inside here, anything can be overwritten with a strong enough imagination - even the power of the Sun. In that regard, the so-called lesser beings of Earth, created by the Old Humans for the sake of entertainment, seem to have the upper hand.
"Ironic." I comment with a genuinely amused smile.
Then, several plasma beams come from behind us and pass through Gram's barrier to assault Elaine. I glance over my shoulder to see the reawakened Luna, desperate determination written on her face. Maybe her mind was watching her own actions when Shelnir controlled her, and she's trying her hardest to redeem herself.
Elaine raises a barrier of her own that absorbs Luna's powerful plasma beams. Svanhild suddenly charges through it with her rocket lance and the much smaller energy barrier extending from it that shields her from the God of the Sun's attempts to stop her. But the Dragon Knight's target isn't Elaine, as she shoots past her and heads for the battle between Rolan and Mataku.
Here, inside a representation of Earth's atmosphere, Tahiri and Halthor can both participate. Without a perceivable signal between the two, the God of Storms turns into a lightning bolt, the tail end of which the Lightning Knight grasps. The bolt flies past Elaine and strikes Mataku's flank.
The lightning burns through him and exits on the other side. But before the Primordial Terror understands what happened, Halthor crashes into him fist-first. The monumental strike matching Korenga's sends him tumbling backward into an ancient tree that shatters from the impact.
But he bursts out from the still flying splinters and lets out an otherworldly roar. It's cut short by Svanhild stabbing her drill-lance into his stomach and spinning it at a blinding speed. The rotational force shreds his matter, causing the tip to be embedded deep inside him.
All of Mataku's tentacles converge on Svanhild, but she presses a button on her lance handle. The tip of the lance opens inside the Primordial Terror's stomach and unleashes a massive explosion that blows a hole into him and throws the Dragon Knight backward.
I watch in silent awe. Normally, I would have moved to help them already, but seeing these members of new humanity fight a Crawling Chaos to a standstill makes me want to see how far they can go. The thought that it would be impossible for them to make a difference here is exactly why they can do it. Mataku is so out of reach for them that he would never need to imagine himself winning against them. His absolute victory should be a foregone conclusion in his mind, and that is why their desperate imagination allows them to overcome him.
"All of this is useless!" The Primordial Terror roars and consolidates his shape. Then he shakes his body, and countless black blobs separate from him like oily droplets. The moment they hit the forest floor, they begin writhing and growing, taking on humanoid shapes within seconds.
They must be artificial Crawling Chaos models or split bodies like those I can create. They're physically imposing, reaching a similar height and shape to my true appearance. Even if they aren't as resilient as the original, their numbers alone could tip the scales of this battle. But whatever the case, they don't stand a chance against real people with their own minds and souls.
Several streaks made of pure darkness move across the battlefield. It's Asoko and the twins, charging into battle while turning into their true appearances. They had their minds opened to their full potential when I gave them a glimpse of infinity as we traveled from the Queen Pelomyx to the Rhodos station. Now, they should grow rapidly and soon reach my level on their own.
I watch in satisfaction as my three progenies rip through Mataku's minions with efficient brutality. Then I remember that somebody seems to be missing and hear the cracking of undergrowth. Korenga bursts from the greenery and flies toward the original Primordial Terror. Having been flung far away in space after phasing through him, she could only return after Exla brought us to the Dark Continent.
The Black God delivers a monumental punch to the place that is most likely Mataku's head. His form bursts under the impact, but he instantly consolidates himself and returns the gesture with an uppercut that launches Korenga upward. Roots shoot up from the ground and catch her before she flies into space.
Tokomaha joins the fray from out of view, but her presence is made sufficiently apparent when the entire forest moves in to attack the Primordial Terror and his minions. Even as their whirlwinds of bladed tentacles cut through their surroundings, the landscape continues to come down on him.
Under the cover of this onslaught, Kamii moves forward. Even though she no longer has her crab pincer, I know that her cursed ability must still be there. If her combo counter hasn't reset after losing her arm, she should have the power of a directional explosive on the level of a kiloton bomb.
She heads for Mataku, identifying him as the more important threat. Since the tear in space leading to the realm of the Outer One is no longer visible, we have a real chance to put an end to whatever it is that he has planned.
I look back at those not participating yet. Aurelia is observing carefully, still undecided which fight to join. Dregana kneels by Hestia's side, ready to shield the unconscious Fata with her body. Sigurd carries his mother on his back, watching the situation unfold in anxious silence. Rewera is waiting for my order, unsure what she could do in this monumental confrontation. Exla concentrates on holding this imaginary real space together and seems unable to do anything else.
"Why are you standing around like this?" Senka looks up at me with a doubtful gaze. She's right; I would normally have been the first to jump into battle. But right now, I feel somehow content as an observer. Is this what the Outer One is like when his eyes appear in the night sky?
I glance at Flann and see through her emotionless façade. She's silently telling me not to show my hand before the right moment. After all, this matter goes beyond merely fighting Mataku and Elaine here. As long as neither of them bends reality too far, I can stand back.
Speaking of the God of the Sun, she seems to have a surprisingly even battle against Luna, although the latter isn't exactly fighting alone. Gram's shield separates the half-elf from a swift death by a solar beam. Judging by the God of the Sun's expression, she's not at all pressured by this situation and merely considers what to do next.
A massive shockwave that blows apart the forest rings out, and I find that Kamii's right fist still holds the power of her curse. She disintegrated one of Mataku's minions and splattered several more with a single punch. This does bring a smile to my lips.
"Hestia!" Dregana exclaims behind me, and I turn to find that the fallen Fata has awakened. She looks around, surprised to find herself in the middle of a forest, but quickly gains her bearings.
"You saved me, Onee-sama." Hestia looks up at me with a reverent gaze.
"Are you good to go?" I nod in the direction of the raging battle with a grin. Although her body is fully mended, she might still be shaken by the grievous wound she sustained earlier. But much like with Tahiri losing her powers, the best remedy for that would be to fight with her full strength.
"Of course." The fallen Fata stands up and spreads her wing covers demonstratively. The metal plates covering her real wings move and click in a beautiful display of adaptive machinery. Truly, Kleihn surpassed herself when she created this for Hestia.
"Our opponent is Mataku." Aurelia turns to her and points at the fierce battle where most of our numbers are concentrated. It has turned into a veritable battlefield, with the enemies' numbers increasing as the Primordial Terror continues to create minions with every movement in his high-speed battle with Rolan.
Elaine seems to overhear Aurelia, and her eyes narrow. The Golden Queen is one of the people responsible for her son's death in her eyes. Being ignored by one of Alverost's murderers when his mother is right before them and seeking revenge seems to make her decide to act.
"Exla, bring us somewhere else if you do not want the Earth to be annihilated." She calls out to the Guardian of the Soil while spreading both her arms. Exla's eyes widen, and our surroundings shift immediately. The lush forest of the Dark Continent is replaced by a reddish desert devoid of all life. I can instantly tell that this is the surface of Mars.
But nobody seems to be affected by the lack of an atmosphere. By now, all my companions have already reached the mental state that allows them to breathe in a vacuum without even thinking about it. Or maybe they're just unaware of where we are.
The battle against Mataku continues in the background as Elaine brings her hands together, and I realize what she's about to do. Before I can move to stop her, Kerry approaches in a sonic boom and heads for their mother once more.
The God of the Sun unhesitatingly turns around and opens a massive gash in space from which an explosion of energy blasts the God of Comets. The tiny obsidian body disappears into a veritable coronal mass ejection that evaporates the surface of Mars in its general direction.
But from within the continuing solar eruption, the glowing-hot Kerry bursts forth and hits Elaine's barrier, where they stop for a split second. Then, they break through with all their built-up energy released instantly, causing their form to vanish in a flash. A hole appears in their mother's chest, and a delayed impact annihilates the landscape behind her. The God of Comets was turned into a veritable relativistic kinetic missile.
Before the shockwave on the level of an extinction event meteorite hits us, our surroundings shift to the surface of the Moon. A spot in the sky shines more brightly than I've ever seen before, and I zoom in to see that it comes from Mars. Its surface has been cracked open by Kerry's impact.
A short distance away from us, the God of Comets bursts out from inside the Moon where this shift in location left them and looks at their mother through their helmet slit. Elaine is still standing with a massive hole in her chest, seemingly unperturbed by the damage to her body. The wound is neither bleeding nor cauterized but glows from within.
Wordlessly, the God of the Sun unleashes the power of the Sun from within her. Her entire body explodes into light, and the surface of the Moon under her feet vaporizes into glowing-hot dust. Before the heat radiation can hit us, I put a barrier of dark matter around Elaine.
"That's enough." I declare. Within the tesseract, turning one's own body into a star seems quite possible. When Zylos tried it, he killed himself in a runaway nuclear reaction because he was limited by probability. Here, she might truly be able to annihilate her surroundings and return to her human form afterward. "What should I do with her?"
I could crush this sphere inward and reduce Elaine to a singularity. With Flann here, I could carry her billions of light-years away from here and return in an instant. In fact, I could even remove her abilities for the time being and let her suffocate in the vacuum of space. But I know that each of those options would hurt Kerry.
"Release her. I got this." Exla calls out to me, and I glance back. That's when our surroundings shift and return to the interior of the Imagination Engine core. It's not the room with the rift but one of the tesseract's infinite recursive rooms. So this is how the Guardian of the Soil hid the hole in reality.
"Are you sure?" I look past the light-swallowing black sphere that locks Elaine in place at where Mataku and the others are fighting. Tokomaha, having been robbed of nature once more, has fallen back while Hestia and Aurelia join the fray. We're still in a precarious position in that regard. Just like I did until now, the Primordial Terror is most likely playing around before heading off to complete his plan.
"I will not let my sanctuary fail again." Sintress declares while holding onto Sigurd's shoulders. I wave my free hand in her direction and restore her legs the same way I did Kamii's arm.
"I ask again. Are you sure?" I inquire when I see the Lady of Brilliance's surprise as she lowers herself from her son's back and stands on her regrown bare feet. If she still can't imagine healing lost limbs while inside the tesseract, how can she create an actual Perfect Sanctuary now?
"Yes. I will seal her imagination." Exla gives me a confident but grim look. She seems to have made up her mind about something. Thinking back, she was able to remove her brother Zenlith's powers with a thought. But within this space of infinite possibilities, it surely takes more than simple imagination to do that with somebody as powerful as Elaine.
Sintress averts her eyes, realizing that she lacks Exla's confidence. Her Perfect Sanctuary failed against even Luna in her mind-controlled state, so the fear that it might be broken again when lives are on the line now could lead to that very outcome.
"I believe in you." With these words, I lower my hand and undo the dark matter barrier around Elaine. However, the God of the Sun seems to have calmed down as she's no longer as luminous as the Sun itself. All her physical features have been erased, leaving a glowing human-shaped body that floats above the tesseract's floor with her arms crossed casually. She must have been waiting for me to release her.
"Elaine, let's put an end to this all." Not thinking too much about that appearance, the Guardian of the Soil declares and points at the glowing figure. It was enough to return Zenlith to his original form when he tried to run away in the form of a lightning bolt. But nothing happens to the God of the Sun.
"This is not a fantasy, Exla. And it is all thanks to you, creature." Elaine says in a surprisingly calm tone and turns to me with her featureless face. "I may no longer be able to live outside the tesseract, but that is a small price to pay for my revenge."
I narrow my eyes as I look the glowing figure of the God of the Sun up and down. Physically, she should be similar to what Tahiri turns into when she's a lightning bolt. But I can instinctively tell that this isn't temporary. Her life energy is so radiant that it blots out its surroundings. It's nothing I've ever seen before and seems to defy the void-like existence that is a Crawling Chaos.
"Impressive." Mataku's human voice echoes through the chamber, and I turn to the battle. It's still raging, with Rolan seemingly gaining the upper hand in the high-speed duel against the hulking original. But as it turns out, even that is nothing more than a more elaborate minion.
The real one is upside down on the ceiling, wearing his signature white suit and sitting in an armchair while enjoying a glass of wine. Sometime in the middle of the battle, he must have separated from my comrades and taken his distance without them noticing. Even now, they're engrossed in fighting the endlessly replenishing numbers, unaware of what's occurring over here.
Mithra is right-side-up next to him, his expression hidden under the bandages covering his face. I feel that he doesn't enjoy working for the Primordial Terror. Knowing his final goal of gaining freedom from the Outer One - a goal perhaps not even Mataku knows about - I can see him reluctant in playing around at this juncture.
"You have certainly transcended. I can no longer call you a lesser being." Mataku sounds truly impressed when he says this to Elaine, but his tilted-back head and self-confident smile show that he still doesn't consider her a potential threat. The God of the Sun looks up at him, her reaction indiscernible on her glowing and featureless face. "Once I finish my business on the other side, we could perhaps converse about eternity?"
"What makes you think I will let you leave?" I call out to the Primordial Terror.
"Because I already have." He says with a shrug. At those words, his form wavers and vanishes as if it were a mirage. He disappears even within my Chaos senses, showing that he's no longer in this dimension - or at least no longer on the Rhodos station. As if his disappearance triggers something in his minions, they all go berserk and lose their shapes to turn into whirlwinds of tentacles.
While they seemed to be fighting with clear intent before, they have become nothing more than bundles of cosmic hunger. Their unpredictable movements throw off my companions, who do their best to defend against the onslaught.
I raise a hand to erase them with a thought now that I know they are mindless beings but feel compelled to dodge. My arm disappears without a trace at that very moment. If I hadn't moved, that would have been the better half of my body. I look at Elaine, who hasn't moved from her spot, but I can spy a hint of a smile even in her featureless face.
Did she move through me at the speed of light? But I should have been able to perceive it with my expanded consciousness. Then again, that must have been the reason I could sense something and dodge it in the first place.
"Did you know that light is everywhere at once along its path?" Elaine explains calmly. But I can hear a mocking undertone in her voice. "Can you see it?"
The moment I concentrate my senses on the world of the infinite, she asks me as if she anticipated it. That's when I see that Elaine is everywhere in the room at once. Her shape is duplicated infinitely, with parts of her cut off by people's shadows and dimmed by reflections off the walls. If I weren't a Crawling Chaos, the shifting kaleidoscopic reality of her existence would have broken my mind right there.
"Now, I have nothing to fear." She raises her hands in a grand gesture, which is mirrored by all of her representations at once. But I spot a delay, showing that she is still limited to the speed of light - possibly a self-imposed limitation. That brings me to a realization.
"Oh, is that all?" I tilt my head and look at the original standing at the center of this mind-bending light show. I must admit that she is indeed an existence beyond physical reckoning now. No technology could ever hope to observe the truth about her; no living being of this mortal dimension could match her reality. But I'm neither technology nor a being of this dimension.
"You are merely a native existence from the other side." Elaine's reaction to my belittling words tells me that she's not amused. But she doesn't lose her sense of superiority. "What you take for granted, I have studied, internalized, and now finally harnessed for myself."
"Are you saying I'm a genius and you're the normal person surpassing me through hard work?" I smirk with my arms crossed.
"No, you are the normal person. I am the genius who put in the hard work to surpass even real gods." The God of the Sun responds angrily.
"Then show me what all that hard work amounts to, genius." I raise my regrown hand and beckon her to bring it on.
"I already am." Elaine turns her featureless face to look across the representations of herself in this space at the border of time itself. But I grin and snap my finger. Light ceases, and the extinguished God of the Sun stands before me in her human form. "What?!"
"Why have you limited yourself to the speed of light? Is it because you fear what lies beyond it?" Our surroundings are steeped in absolute darkness, and all that remains are the exposed Elaine and me in my human appearance. But I melt into the black background and stare at her from every angle at once. For the first time, she shows fear - something not even the Outer One's gaze could achieve.
I revel in the feeling that a transcendent being that has gained even Mataku's approval is akin to a frightened child before me now. I seemingly switched off her abilities and reduced her to a human with a snap of my finger. But in reality, I merely pulled her into the realm of my perception.
"What lies... beyond the speed of light? That is impossible! Not at this scale!" Elaine musters the mental fortitude to argue despite the reality of the situation. Then she realizes the fallacy of her statement and gasps.
"And that is why you will forever be a lesser being." I declare with an abyssal grin that stretches across this entire space of absolute darkness like a tear in the fabric of reality. Elaine screams when she sees this, finally realizing the futility of her struggles. Her belief that she had reached or even surpassed our realm has been shattered with a simple display of the fundamental difference between our existences.
I return perception to normal, and we find ourselves in the tesseract once more. The God of the Sun is still in her human form, cowering on the floor, naked and shivering. I can tell that she has lost her will to fight after the glimpse of true infinity.
"What did you do?" Sintress walks up to me and asks. For everybody else here, it must have looked as if Elaine suddenly collapsed into a puddle of self-deprecation after talking about being everywhere at once.
"Well done, Your Majesty." Mithra's voice praises me from surprisingly close-by. I turn around and find that the former court magician hasn't left with Mataku and stands beside his daughter. Gram, Luna, Exla, and Sintress prepare to fight him, but I raise a hand to stop them.
"I assume that I am your master now." I address Mithra, who only nods wordlessly. He then waves his staff in the direction of the Primordial Terror's minions, which scatter into dust that vanishes from existence moments later.
Rolan and the others look around in surprise, then notice that the battle on this side appears to have ended. The moment his tension fades, sweat bursts from all of his pores as if it had been held back by his willpower alone. He drops Roshanee and collapses onto the floor in exhaustion, unable to move a single muscle. Luna, Gram, and Sigurd run forward to check on their leader.
The others fighting beside him aren't as tired since they only faced the lesser minions, but they breathe a collective sigh of relief when they sense that it's over for now. Svanhild and Halthor fall on their backsides and take deep breaths. Kamii, Hestia, Aurelia, and Tahiri stay on their feet, cautious about the sudden peace.
"Where is Mataku?!" Only the Black God is still full of energy, roaring in unabated rage. Asoko and the twins instantly return to their human appearances to avoid drawing her attention. While Korenga has had herself well under control recently, she still has trouble distinguishing between friend and foe when Mataku is involved.
"No longer in this realm." I reply to the Black God while breathing a tired sigh. Then I address Mithra again. "But that's why you're here, isn't it?"
"Indeed." Flann is the one to answer instead. Our surroundings shift, and we find ourselves in the core chamber with the hole in reality still sucking away at the infinite atmosphere of the tesseract. "The time has come."
Comments
Just so you know, I'm still reading this web novel, and very eager to find out what happens next. I like the LN version as well, but they are different enough so it's hard to predict what happens there.
