Editing Sorcery Hacker:Volume1 Phase4 (section)

===Part 11===

That facility had not originally been designed to attack the surface.

Since magic’s effective range was equal to the noise of the gunshot, a method of propagating magic through the silent vacuum of space could possibly extend their reach beyond the planet. It was meant to determine what happened if a vacuum was filled with a mixture of gasses to create an artificial atmosphere that would act in place of water or air.

But there had been an unexpected side effect.

That side effect was something like a distortion in the entire universe where so many stars could be seen. That great cry of the world itself never should have reached anyone, but it was concentrated and propagated to a single point where it manifested as a fearsome attack.

“Sorcery Cannon Zodiac Bright Eater – Hit.”

The red hot explosion spread out over a massive area while scorching even the upper atmosphere.

The invisible Guardian Umbrella atmospheric barrier was broken through, the air particles were pushed out of the way, and a sinister red aurora was scattered everywhere just before red light flew every which way like the frame of an umbrella.

Ayato could not even hear the scream of the woman right next to him.

It was unfortunate that the Free Audience Restriction had been brought down for the state event.

The atmospheric barrier managed to negate the blast, but that must not have mattered to the Demon Lord.

It was like an invisible blow.

As soon as the Guardian Umbrella shattered, a shockwave crushed the entire city like a giant hand or falling ceiling.

Ayato and the others had nowhere to run. Everyone there was struck and passed out.

That included the knights flying around with their flight devices.

It also included the Sorcery Hacker and Striker looking down at the ancient Demon Lord.

The Dark Elf had been aiming her gun at the tower from a short distance away, but she too lost consciousness, which exposed the long ears she had been hiding.

Even the blonde girl who was always working with the boy passed out.

…The only exception was Nirvelphany who had clenched her teeth and braced for impact while lying on that suspended footing with her sorcery gun in her arms.

“Phew.”

Everything was colored white.

The air rapidly cooled and a blizzard covered the entire area.

The sigh leaving the beautiful Demon Lord’s bewitching lips was heavy. It was like she had been hit with a powerful body blow. Her vision was poor within the pure white wall of the blizzard. She could vaguely see some bluish-white will-o’-the-wisps through the thick white, so those were probably the corona discharges that were a side effect of the orbital sorcery cannon.

She could not see the sky through the thick white, but she could sense the connection had been severed. No maintenance had been performed for so long and she had pushed the output past its limits. The orbital sorcery cannon would be breaking apart and burning up in the atmosphere as if fell past the sky city. That was the source of her power as the Demon Lord from before the humans had “invented” guns, but she had destroyed it for this one chance.

She felt something odd inside her body. The biological antenna’s wiring had been damaged by the diagonal slash to her torso, so the connection may have finally burned out.

That was fine with her. She had no reason to regret her actions here.

As long as she could save that old man and repay him for what he had done.

“…”

She was more interested in the scene directly below than the phenomenon on a mythological scale occurring in the heavens above. Past the blizzard that looked like thick cotton candy, that old man would be strapped to the execution device in front of a crowd.

All the preparations were in place.

With a temperature of 20 Embers below freezing<ref>Approximately -22 degrees Celsius.</ref>, an evenly spread blizzard would have taken the old man’s life before it froze the guillotine device. That was why she needed to deliver the finishing blow herself. If she scattered just a bit of artificial coolant from directly above, dull human senses would never notice the difference. She would use a pinpoint attack to freeze only the mana-conducting silver. That would be enough to force the government to declare the public execution a failure due to a benevolent coincidence, as much as they would hate to do so. The Demon Lord was not human, so her attack would be treated as a natural disaster.

Nirvelphany stuck her fingers into the slit of the long tight skirt of her red leather outfit.

She pulled out a small leather bag with insulation on the inside.

“Now, this has taken far too long, but it is time for the finishing touch.”



There were shouts and screams.

The crowd did not start trampling each other, but ironically, that may have been due to the extreme blizzard covering everything. With that thick white wall obscuring their vision, they could not accurately perceive the threat. And the cold sapped their strength, leaving them too weak to run around wildly.

In the plaza for the Temple Moving Ceremony, an old man was looking all around with a giant mass of platinum and gems on his shoulder. That was the Bell Ringing prototype, a Level 799 bell cricket that operated by absorbing the mana of the four castle towns to run the gemboards that were so numerous they even had to be placed on the exterior.

He was Forturiana High Priest Belbath Ruin Cranky.

The plaza around him was 20 Embers below freezing<ref>Approximately -22 degrees Celsius.</ref>. He could not see anything clearly past a mere 2 esoule<ref>Approximately 2.4 meters.</ref>. He had a bad feeling about this. Based on past records, a blizzard or magnetic storm powerful enough to break through the Guardian Umbrella atmospheric shield would probably mean a failed execution. He had his reasons for needing this public execution to succeed. And this was nothing as simple as the lack of the promised entertainment triggering a riot that tore him to pieces.

“Where did she go? The knights must have noticed what was going on up there, but have they still not captured her!?”

The masked Executioner spoke to the High Priest in a muffled voice.

“Your Holiness, please end your speech soon. Let’s get that guy’s head off before anything else can happen. We can’t allow the ceremony to fail, right?”

“No one is even listening anymore.”

“Then end that long sermon already. If no one is listening, what does it matter?”

“''If that senile old man’s head is removed, then Nirvelphany really will vanish!! We can’t throw out the bait meant to lure her out, you utter buffoon''!!”



“…”

Ayato shook his woozy head and worked hard to keep himself breathing.

He saw white. The blizzard blotted out even the light of the sun.

The girls were all collapsed. The knights ruling the sky with their flight devices may have crashed after the shockwave and blizzard hit them. Only the devil in red leather was standing tall and preparing something with her back turned to him. She was no longer even looking at her enemy. She unilaterally declared the battle over and instead focused on the person she had to rescue.

She wanted to save the old man who had saved her.

That was the Demon Lord’s one and only goal here.

She wanted to repay the person who had healed her wound and provided forgiveness. This was not the performative charity that slimy nobles and business owners would do in front of the silver salt cameras. She was not like those people who disinfected their hand with alcohol the instant the handshakes were complete and no one was watching. Nirvelphany wanted to repay a selfless act with a selfless act of her own. That was all.

That was fine. She could do that if she wanted.

But Ayato clenched his teeth while collapsed behind her. She had taken several lives to accomplish that. And she had shoved the blame for those crimes on him. Before she could talk about the righteousness of her actions, he would make sure she paid for that.

His trembling fingertips once more touched the Linkage Plug sword used for Sorcery Hacking.

He grabbed it.

And he stood up!!!!!!

“Nirrvelllphanyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!”

“Wha-!?”

Before the Demon Lord could turn around and ready her anti-dragon rifle, Ayato ran forward with all his might, wrapped his arms around her slender waist, and tackled her hard. The two of them slid too far and plunged straight off of the narrow footing.

Teleria remained unconscious after the hit from the shockwave caused by the clash between the orbital weapon and the atmospheric shield, so he could not hope for any more ice footholds from that blonde girl.

They were thrown out into empty air.

And they fell together.

“Kh, ohhhhh!?”

Nirvelphany gave a roar while he clung to her and her back seemed to burst open. Instead of the artificial Expansion Armor, a real demon wing spread wide. It was the left wing. It was like a giant cape, yet it clearly moved like a living thing. But she could not keep her balance with just the one wing. Her body scraped along the wall of the closest tower as she tried to slow herself down however she could.

She could not allow this to end here.

She was so close. If the coolant inside her leather bag was added to the blizzard, she could freeze just the guillotine to prevent it from moving and save that old man before he was killed!!

“Why must you interfere, human!? This is my only chance! There really is no other opportunity!! The schedule does not give me time to bathe in the moonlight and expand my breadth of possibility! If you wish to take my head, then you can have it afterwards, but only ''after'' I rescue that old man!! Why won’t you wait!?”

“To hell with that. Don’t act like righteousness belongs to you and you alone.”

“What is wrong with my actions here? Someone is about be beheaded for nothing more than freeing me!! I am not interested in revealing that old priest’s lies, but it is those cowardly fools in power who created this situation!! That old man is no great evil and this Temple Moving Ceremony is not holy! What is wrong with trying to save my savior from an undeserved public execution!?”

“Enough false equivalencies, Demon Lord!! Saving that man and using that anti-dragon rifle to shoot unconscious criminals are not the same thing!! You can’t excuse any and all actions by saying you did it out of a desire to save an innocent old man! There’s no special rule that that lets you escape consequences for your crimes by claiming it was for a good cause!! Listen, Nirvelphany, you know what happens if you do that and you stick to that path to the very end!?”

Ayato desperately clung to her skinny waist and shouted at the top of his lungs.

He made a definite statement here.

“You’ll make it so people died because of what that old man did!! You’ll justify their phony excuse for the public execution!! That old man will have to carry the weight of the murders you committed!!!!!!”

Her breath caught.

Nirvelphany’s breath caught in her throat.

“You can’t do that.”

That boy was also a criminal who carried his own crime.

And as someone who had continued forward instead of letting it stop him, he spoke to this newcomer on that path.

“If you really want to save that old man, then you can’t do that!! You don’t have to sit there and let yourself be arrested by the people who invent their own definitions of good and evil and manipulate the majority into oppressing the minority, but you can’t look away from the truth of the crimes you chose to commit!! So I’ll say it. I’m a Sorcery Hacker, but I’ll shamelessly ignore my own crimes to say this here: You can’t deny the truth of what you yourself did every step of the way!!!!!!”

That may have been the difference between Ayato and Nirvelphany.

They had both once been the strongest in a certain field, but their paths had never crossed. The boy had turned his back on his perfect record and stooped to the thankless work of a Sorcery Hacker in order to never look away from the truth of what he had done.

“So carry it, Nirvelphany. Those were the results of the actions you proudly chose to do! So don’t shove the blame onto others! Carry it on your own shoulders as you move ever forward, Demon Lord!!”

“You…”

“And as luck would have it, there’s a perfect stage for that right below here.”

He further moved the arms wrapped around her waist. He more or less climbed up her to put himself at her eye level and grabbed her slender shoulders instead.

The Sorcery Hacker made no attempt to escape as he shouted directly at her.

“Go reclaim the crimes you shoved onto that innocent old man’s shoulders, Nirvelphany!!!!!!”

A moment later, he pulled his head as far back as he could and then swung it down like a blunt weapon to crack their foreheads together.



And everything came together.

Ayato really did nearly pass out as he clung to Nirvelphany’s waist and she soared like a glider to fall toward the depths below.

The Temple Moving Ceremony’s plaza was there. They fell right onto the stage where the public execution was to be held.

Ayato and Nirvelphany arrived on the stage to join the old man bound to the mechanical guillotine, the High Priest drowning in his wicked drive for popularity, and the Executioner.

“Say it, Nirvelphany.”

It was covered by the thick blizzard, but this cruel stage was still surrounded by a large crowd. Worse, the old man she had been so desperate to save was right there. The message Ayato was demanding of her may have been too cruel in those circumstances.

“Throwing stones at an innocent old man is wrong. If people have complaints, they should bring them to you, right? Then say it!! What did you do in this city!? Don’t shove the blame onto that old man!! Reclaim it for yourself!!!!!!”

Her mouth flapped wordlessly as she crouched down and she did not move for a bit.

She may have been more afraid of that one old man than she was of the crowd numbering in the tens of thousands or the silver salt cameras of the newspaper companies that would record this moment for eternity.

But she understood the truth.

Even she had to understand that she could not leave things as they were.

“I…”

The Demon Lord remained crouching as her lips trembled.

“I was trying to save the man who saved me.”

The clear liquid dripping down her cheeks was not the clear specks of the blizzard melting on her face.

“So I hired a human trafficking group to abduct Urban Design Manager Jorbe Alphoverin. When the human traffickers screwed up, I was afraid they would give me away, so I silenced them. I destroyed the cores of the fire and wind castle towns to break through the Free Audience Restriction barrier supported by the cores’ massive energy. And I took revenge on White Hat Hacker Dagregor Bull Gerlos who interfered when I should have been one step away from saving him.”

She still could not stand up.

[[Image:SorceryHacker_v01_BW08.png|thumb]]

“It was me. I did it all.”

In fact, she seemed to be breaking down crying.

“This old man had nothing to do with any of it. Those are my crimes. I did it all myself. So please…I beg of you!! Please stop blaming him!! Please, I will atone for what I did! Blaming anyone else for this would be unjust!! So pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!!!!!!”

Her shout echoed out.

It was selfish, it did not get through to the crowd that had no idea what she was talking about, and it did nothing to reduce the severity of what she had done. But how much had it eaten away at her, how much of her pride and dignity had she needed to throw out, and how much of the energy she had stored up did she need to use up to get out that desperate cry?

Ayato understood.

Even if no one else in the world did, a fellow criminal like him understood.

The thick whiteness cleared up.

Sky City Celedileka’s Guardian Umbrella atmospheric shield must have rebooted in safe mode. The thick blizzard was cut off and the sun and the stars were visible overhead once more. Everyone was watching the small, curled-up Demon Lord: the crowds surrounding them in all directions, the Armored Dragon made of bat wings that had fallen surprisingly close by, the old man bound to the mechanical guillotine, the masked Executioner, and the Forturiana High Priest.

And someone spoke.

“Feh heh.”

It was the High Priest.

Once it was his time to shine once more, he lightly clapped his hands twice to gather everyone’s attention.

“No matter how much malicious obstruction the element of darkness throws at us, the benevolent coincidences of the gathered element of light will never be shaken!! Heaven itself has mandated this Temple Moving Ceremony in order to protect everyone in Celedileka, so nothing can stop it. The execution of Thomas Robergin will be swiftly completed! The death of those who would bring chaos to the world shall preserve the world’s beauty!!”

“Kh.”

Nirvelphany’s shoulders trembled while she was curled up with her forehead frozen to the floor.

It had not reached them.

The cries of a criminal had not reached those who held a unilateral monopoly on righteousness.

“Everything is in place. See here what happens to the villains who would disturb the peace with their selfish actions!! We will punish this great evil and prove our power to serve the king! Eternal glory to the Forturiana Church!!”

The old man’s speech reached an emotional climax.

And once he was done, he placed a hand on Ayato’s shoulder and whispered to the boy.

“(Well done. You are the MVP who prevented Demon Lord Nirvelphany’s escape…no, her return. All of the suspicion placed on you will of course be removed. This was nearly a disaster for the both of us, but now we can take our time and celebrate here in this city. I will use all of my authority to ensure it.)”

His voice was sticky.

It was the kind of voice that inspired an instant dislike of the person producing it.

“(The world needs no Hero or Demon Lord. It only needs the Light of Forturiana. Any who would intrude on that can be sent back to the darkness from whence they came using this execution stage that I can use at my discretion. You are a clever boy. I am glad you could work out what was really going on here as a fellow human.)”

Ayato Criminaltrophy grinned.

And his next action was an extremely simple one.

He stabbed his Sorcery Hacking sword into the machine’s rail as if to stop the guillotine blade.

“Wha-?”

The initial muffled syllable of confusion came from the masked Executioner. He pulled the lever, but the guillotine did not fall. Nirvelphany’s interference had ended in failure, so why? He clearly could not figure it out.

But the changes did not stop there.

“Gwah!?”

The thick metal lever sprang in the opposite direction he had expected and smashed into his jaw.

“Your Holiness, I know your aesthetic senses are hopelessly lacking, but don’t interrupt a once-in-a-lifetime confession. Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Finally, the machine moved on its own to release the innocent old man’s arms and head. He had no idea what was going on as he stretched his arms while still down in a crawling position. Even Nirvelphany’s eyes widened in surprise.

Ayato was Sorcery Hacking in front of a crowd. The guillotine was sure to be scanned and retaken before long. So once the old man was free, he released the resonance that decided its provisional level.
In other words, he needed to preserve the rest of his resonance.

This was not over and he was looking ahead to something more.

“Listen, Nirvelphany. I had just the one issue with you: shoving the blame for your crimes onto me. I couldn’t let you do that, so I pursued you to make sure you paid for it. …And now you’ve dealt with all those excess hurdles. So a question: If not for that pain-in-the-ass detour, ''whose side'' do you think I would have taken?”

“You mean…?”

She might be the true Demon Lord, but after her power gradually leaked from her wound while she was sealed, she could not draw on even 1% of her original strength. It must have been terrifying to challenge this sky city full of humans with no one at all to rely on. If her identity was revealed, she would have been attacked by all those people and been helpless to stop them from doing what they would with her. Simply imagining it had to have made her bristle with fear. But she had still gathered strength in her trembling legs and faced ever forward to save the man who had saved her. That courage was praiseworthy.

What reason did he have not to take her side?

What reason did he have to join those throwing stones at her after she had shown him all that?

“So there’s just one thing we’ve wanted to say from the beginning.”

He grinned and spoke as a Sorcery Hacker who had abandoned a top-ranked position that had only let him obey the morality as spelled out in the job request.

“If you had time for all that nonsense, you should have explained what happened and asked for some help. If you had, we would’ve had this done ages ago!!!!!!”

The Demon Lord had gone on a rampage to repay a debt. The Hero who had forgiven her was also here.

But this was not their story.

This was the story of Ayato Criminaltrophy, a Sorcery Hacker who stood on an axis different from good and evil.