Chapter 195: The Liquor of Anecdotes (3)

Peophe’s face became rigid when she heard Shirone’s words.

She could not understand what was happening inside her.

At the moment when the hope of being able to live arose, the firm emotions that dominated her began to fade like foam.

“A-are you mocking me? What do you gain by humiliating me?”

“Mock you? Don’t talk nonsense. Saving someone who asks to live is natural. Because I also want to live. My life is valuable, and that is why I know how valuable the lives of others are.”

Shirone had still not decided to release her definitively.

Until the last instant, his decision remained uncertain.

But he thought about Kanya and Lena.

He could not allow them to die like that.

“I will count to three. One.”

He tightened the hand holding Peophe.

“Two.”

“S-save me.”

Peophe said it in a low voice.

Shirone did not loosen his grip.

And just when he was about to say three, Peophe, with her eyes tightly shut, shouted.

“Save me! I’m telling you to save me! I don’t want to die!”

Shirone released her.

After regaining her freedom, she flapped her wings and rose into the air.

With her face red like the sunset, she rebuked him furiously.

“Do you think you will come out unharmed after doing something like that?”

“What did I do?”

“You tried to kill me!”

“Yes. And that is exactly what you did to Kanya and Lena.”

Peophe could not reply.

She had been an executor of the law since her birth.

She had never reflected deeply about the life expectancy of the faithful.

But when her own life had been in someone else’s hands, the matter became complicated.

Death was frightening.

Life was sweet.

Even for a fairy who could live ten thousand years.

“I also think what happened to Kanya’s mother was unfair. Return her life expectancy.”

Peophe, still unable to organize her thoughts, became irritated by the pressure.

“I already told you! Only the upper leadership of the seventy-two hierarchies of fairies can touch the life record. A verdict that has already been issued cannot be reversed.”

“Then judge Kanya and Lena again first. You can do that, can’t you?”

Peophe rested her chin on her hand and thought.

“Well… then I will leave it as a reduction of one year.”

Shirone let out a dry laugh.

That the sentence was reduced was a relief, but the difference in judgment was absurd.

It seemed that from the beginning there had been no standard at all.

“What is this, a junk shop? Can you deliver a sentence however you feel like it?”

“If I reduce it you also complain! Then should I raise it again to twenty years?”

“That’s not it. Doesn’t it seem strange to you? There should be a criterion for applying punishment.”

“I am the criterion! I am the executor of the law! You know? Now that I think about it, you are quite ignorant.”

Shirone remained silent.

He had to accept that fairies were a species different from humans.

A fairy’s way of thinking was more encompassing.

While humans could divide love into countless nuances, for a fairy love was simply love.

Peophe was an executor of the law.

That was why she never doubted her own judgment.

She knew how terrifying death was, and that was why she left it at one year.

That she could not make detailed evaluations like two years and three months or seven years and six months was also understandable.

Perhaps after thousands of years her thinking would become deeper.

But now she was only one year old.

“Is it fine now? Then I’m leaving. Fairies have a lot of work.”

“Leaving? And Kanya’s mother? Aren’t you going to resolve that?”

Peophe turned toward him with eyes reddened by anger.

“And how do you want me to resolve it? At that time I had not even been born! Besides, I am the youngest of the seventy-two hierarchies. I do not have the authority to modify the life record.”

“Then at least tell me the method. You are a fairy, you must know something. I will not let you go until you speak.”

Peophe had a twisted character typical of a spirit of the spiral, but being so young she was not difficult to handle.

If he could extract information from her, perhaps there would be a way to save Kanya’s mother.

“Ha. Do you think I cannot leave if you block me? And no one can intervene in the affairs of the fairy realm. That is established by the law.”

“I don’t know what that law says, but you also know it is unfair. Life is valuable. Is it really fine to reduce someone’s life by twenty years just like that?”

Peophe blinked with moist eyes.

In truth, not even she herself knew.

To judge the rightness or wrongness of the law with one’s own criterion, one would probably have to live at least six hundred years.

“Why do you keep pressuring me? I only do what I am ordered to do!”

“Weren’t you the executor of the law? When you were so confident in yourself, what happened? Are you running away now?”

“Ah, enough! What do you want to know?”

“First tell me what the liquor of anecdotes is.”

“The liquor of anecdotes? It is a sacred technique. The law of the faithful is purified and they are reborn as new life.”

Peophe answered smoothly, as if she were finally talking about something she knew.

But Shirone perceived nothing more than an embellished definition.

“That explains nothing. Explain it concretely. What it exists for, how it is performed, what foundations the technique has, things like that.”

“Ugh… how annoying….”

Peophe’s face became rigid when she heard Shirone’s words.

She could not understand what was happening inside her.

At the moment when the hope of being able to live arose, the firm emotions that dominated her began to fade like foam.

Peophe brought both hands to her head.

The liquor of anecdotes was simply the liquor of anecdotes.

She had never reflected on the information she knew through innate knowledge.

Only one method remained.

When she remembered memory transfer, her eyes lit up.

“If you really want to understand it, there is a clear way to explain it. We will use mental resonance. Fairies can transmit memories. I will show you my memory of the liquor of anecdotes. Will that be enough?”

Mental resonance was dangerous.

It did not seem that Peophe had bad intentions, but even so she was not an ally.

Arin spoke through the mental channel.

— It’s fine. I can control Peophe.

— Are you sure? Even if we have good defense, irregularities outside the norm also exist.

— Peophe is emotionally immature. I can read the particular pattern of an irregularity through transcendental perception. If she tries something, I will knock her out with a mental shock before she activates it.

It seemed that Kanis’s group had also experienced irregularities before.

Thinking that that transcendental perception was truly extraordinary, Shirone accepted.

“Fine. Show us your memory of the liquor of Ilhwa.”

“Alright. I will begin.”

Peophe activated the memory transfer technique.

The minds of Shirone and the others were absorbed into the memory.

The plaza from a year ago appeared.

It was the place where the statue of the giant stood, and the faithful maintained absolute silence.

Shirone called his companions, who had appeared scattered, and they advanced through the faithful like spirits.

Although it was someone else’s memory, it felt as vivid as reality.

In the state of memory, Shirone could observe whatever he wanted.

Even approach someone’s face without them noticing.

They moved toward the statue.

When the crowd parted, a shocking scene appeared.

Several hoses were connected to the statue of the giant, attached to eight large glass spheres arranged around it.

Each sphere was large enough to contain a person.

Although silence reigned, some people were crying.

The mixture of devotion and despair generated a deep uneasiness.

The kergoinos ran around the statue preparing the ceremony.

Eight faithful stepped out from the group.

They were people between fifty and sixty years old, except for one young woman.

Shirone saw the hidden crying in their smiles.

Trembling pupils.

Quivering corners of their mouths.

Cold sweat on their foreheads.

They were thinking about death.

They entered the glass spheres naked.

The black liquid began to fill them.

The relatives ran crying and struck the glass, while other faithful prostrated themselves on the ground shouting “Anke Ra.”

Mother. Father. Grandfather.

The kergoinos forcibly pushed the relatives away.

Inside the rising liquid, the condemned smiled.

Death by drowning?

It was cruel.

But when Shirone looked more closely, he stepped back in horror.

It was not drowning.

Their bodies were dissolving inside the liquid.

It was the most grotesque scene he had ever seen.

He wondered about the composition of the liquid.

Now he understood why it was black.

If the relatives had seen that process, they would have gone mad.

The liquid was sucked through the hoses.

A disgusting sound was heard, like viscera being expelled.

The chants to Ra rose even higher.

When the level descended, the spheres became completely transparent.

Nothing remained.

The people who had been smiling moments before had been absorbed by the hoses.

Trembling, Shirone followed the path of the hoses.

The statue of the giant.

Toward its base, eight people were being poured in.

Then what was now filling the statue?

Ra, eternal and immortal.

The cries of “Anke Ra” pierced the sky.

Suddenly, the statue vibrated violently.

The faithful fell silent.

All the liquid had been transferred into the statue.

As if it were a mold.

Shirone shook his head.
It could not be.

But once the idea appeared, he could not stop it.

A mold that melts human beings in order to pour them.

Then what was being created inside was—

The statue opened along a cutting line.

An enormous foot emerged and shook the earth.

Shirone felt a chill when he saw the giant covered in a gelatinous substance.

Its expression was distorted.

It did not seem human.

Arin murmured through the mental channel.

They had not been able to connect mentally with the giant because multiple consciousnesses were mixed in a single body.

Then what was that mind?

Eight consciousnesses?

Or something completely different?

The faithful begged for mercy.

The giant was the one born from the law and guardian of the law.

Therefore it had the right to execute those who violated it.

If at that moment someone were crushed under its foot, it would not be the giant’s fault.

Those who met its gaze collapsed convulsing.

It was the ocular technique called Pressing.

Ah…

Shirone trembled.

The origin of the schema.

The primordial schema was the superposition of the human diagrams melted in the liquor of anecdotes.

He heard conversations while the giant moved away.

The giant would leave Heaven and go to Purgatory, where it would eliminate heretics who threatened it.

Then it would return to the Fifth Heaven, Matei, called by Ra.

The relatives cried.

Mother! Father! Grandfather!

The giant seemed to tremble, as if it had reacted to the voices.

But it did not look back.

It kept walking toward the gate as if nothing had happened.

Peophe’s memory disintegrated like burning paper, and the scene returned to the house.

Shirone and the others looked around.

Peophe had disappeared.

She probably fled while the memory was playing.

But they did not have time to worry about it.

Now they knew what the liquor of anecdotes was.

The condemned is decomposed in the liquid.

Then poured into a mold, where a special transformation occurs and they are reborn as a giant.

Human consciousnesses are mixed.

And in that process the schema emerges.

The stimulant that Kanya had bought was for that.

To preserve at least a fragment of consciousness in that unknown darkness.

Gardrak was right.

It was no different from applying anesthesia to a patient who dies in pain.

“This is…”

Tess’s face was completely pale.

The giant’s schema.

And her own schema.

When her mind connected both, she ran to a corner and vomited.

No one reproached her.

Everyone felt nauseous.

Rian approached, but Tess stopped him with her hand.

It was not that the memory was more brutal than a battlefield.

It was a mental nausea.

Schema was the technique of the giant.

Then why could she open it?

Did she have giant blood like a Nephilim?

But giants did not have reproductive organs.

“Now you understand why I did not say it.”

Kanya murmured sadly.

Some call it a blessing.

Others, a curse.

No one wanted to speak of that ceremony that divided even the faithful and the heretics.

“According to the law, humans were born from giants. That is why they return to become giants. That is the liquor of anecdotes.”

Even if her words were true, Shirone could not accept it.

What he had seen could not be hidden behind any pious façade.

At last he understood.

The liquor of anecdotes practiced in Heaven was a technique that used human flesh and viscera as raw material to manufacture giants.