Chapter 199: The Mercy of God (4)

The point where the laser struck began to overheat, and the statue started to vibrate as if it were about to explode at any moment.

“This cannot be. How can something like this be happening…?”

The executor clenched his teeth. He could neither throw himself at Shirone nor prevent the destruction of the statue.

At that instant, the roar of a lightning bolt falling from the sky was heard.

Blue discharges descended in clusters, violently heating the area around Shirone.

The ground exploded, raising a cloud of dust.

The executor looked up toward the place from which the lightning had come. From the entrance of the plaza, a group of fairies was approaching while flying.

Even from afar, Shirone immediately distinguished the fairy positioned at the center of the group.

Only she shone with a golden radiance, and her painted face was beautiful.

It was Igirin, chief of the Department of Believer Administration.

Shirone’s friends positioned themselves around him. A tension different from what they had felt while fighting the believers quickened their blood.

The strange thing was that the initial attack had been electrical.

Electricity was an attribute close to spirits, something that fairies could not handle directly.

— Who launched that lightning?

— We still do not know. But there must be a fairy who manipulates friction.

If the charge in the atmosphere were made to rub, it was possible to provoke lightning.

Depending on the arrangement of the charges, electricity flowed, so it was natural that the precision was low.

Rian advanced while unsheathing his great sword.

“Full deployment of the fairy unit? The moment has finally arrived.”

Shirone had already foreseen it. They had broken the Law of Heaven, so it was normal for the internal administration to intervene.

The believers moved aside to both sides, opening a path for Igirin.

The fairies, flying with an arrogant bearing, stopped ten meters from Shirone’s group.

Shirone saw Peophe at the end of the group.

Unlike the others, she looked ahead with a distracted expression, as if she did not understand why she had to be there.

Igirin pointed at the group.

“So it is you, the ones who pretended to be Nephilim in order to enter Heaven. That alone is already a serious crime, and now you attempt to interfere with the sacred Liquor of Anecdotes.”

The executor frowned in confusion. Was he not a Nephilim, but someone pretending to be one?

But the ability the boy had just used was clearly of angelic nature. If he was not a Nephilim, how could he manipulate light?

“Lady Igirin, are you saying they are heretics? That young man clearly used the power of light.”

“Do not be deceived. In the realm of the earth there are techniques to handle light magic. Besides, the others do not even need verification, they are obvious heretics. They even attempted to deceive the fairies.”

Kanis’s eyes hardened.

From what he was hearing, they had investigated them thoroughly. And the fact that Peophe, with low combat power, was there indicated that she had told everything.

“Damn it, that is why I said we should leave. That fairy betrayed us. We should never have trusted her.”

Peophe frowned.

Betrayal? She had only followed Igirin by direct order. Until arriving there, she had not even known that they were present.

“Ha! Of course! I told everything! You are dead! You should have behaved more prudently!”

In any case, she had no intention of declaring her innocence before humans. Peophe even assumed faults that were not hers, provoking them even more.

“She did not betray us.”

Shirone spoke.

“Peophe issued a fair judgment. A fairy like that would have no reason to betray her own convictions now.”

Peophe snorted and looked away. It was her way of saying that it was already too late for those words.

But thoughts were boiling in her mind.

Fair judgment. Convictions.

Values that her superiors had never acknowledged in her.

Igirin paid them no attention. After living more than three thousand years, she could dissect concepts with a precision superior to that of humans.

If a human classified love into a hundred types, she could divide it into ten thousand.

When that level is reached, every event becomes independent.

Looking inside a house does not make someone a thief.

Breaking the lock does not either.

Entering after breaking it does not necessarily either.

Not even taking an object makes someone a thief yet.

Only when he leaves with the object in his hand does the concept of thief become fully established.

It was a cognitive capacity impossible for humans, who tend to judge the whole by a part.

In that sense, the conversation between Shirone and Peophe was independent of the current situation.

“I am Igirin, chief of the Department of Believer Administration, the fairy of Authority. For the crime of pretending to be a Nephilim and entering Heaven, and for interfering with the noble Liquor of Anecdotes, I reduce your lives completely.”

Shirone’s brow wrinkled.

“Is it always like this? Do you kill lives just because something displeases you? The same happens with the Liquor of Anecdotes. Why do you push believers toward death?”

“You were born from the giants. What is unjust about returning to them?”

“Nonsense. No father asks his son to return his flesh.”

“The seed is sown to harvest it. Living beings die to feed others. You are also subject to that Law.”

“The seed is sown to produce new seeds. Living beings die to give opportunity to others. That is how humanity prospers. A life without meaning is like being dead.”

Igirin let out a sigh filled with sorrow. Why was that premonition never wrong? It was not a coincidence that Miro’s face crossed her mind when she saw Shirone.

“Worthy of a heretic. A human with whom one must not deal. What are you waiting for? Begin the Liquor of Anecdotes immediately!”

At the order, the executor acted without hesitation.

When he pulled down the switch, the black water began to fill the ten glass spheres.

“Damn it! There is no time! We have to stop it now!”

Rian and Tess ran toward the statue to destroy it.

Igirin raised her hand and gave orders to the fairies.

“Attack! Do not let them approach!”

Shirone’s group adopted a combat formation.

Arin canceled the mental resonance, leaving only the channel connected to the group. Igirin’s resonance was already spreading throughout the place, so there was no need to translate.

The spirit of the shot began the attack. As it extended its hand, the air shot forward as if a hole had opened in the atmosphere.

Small masses of solid gas struck the bodies of Shirone’s group.

They did not pierce the body, but they were invisible and far too numerous to counter.

“Fall back!”

Kanis raised Shadow Wall. The air bullets struck its surface with the sound of hail.

At that moment, a sharp roar tore through the sky.

The spirit of friction generated static electricity and launched lightning, but Harvest absorbed it.

Bright lightning bolts fell repeatedly, but they had no effect against the magical creature.

“Hehehe! What is this? A new massage technique?”

Amy, leaning against the barrier of Shadow Wall, made a Jack O’ Lantern float above the palm of her hand.

The sphere of fire rose into the sky and multiplied into dozens, bombarding the front indiscriminately.

Since Jack O’ Lantern’s own ability was false flame, in reality there were only three authentic spheres. But since the enemy could not know which one was real, they could not avoid feeling fear.

When Amy’s bombardment scattered the fairies, Kanis finally withdrew Shadow Wall.

With the field of vision cleared, Arin quickly located the enemy positions and proposed a plan through the mental channel.

— If the fairies are mental entities, I have a method. I can trap them with Mental Shock.

It seemed reasonable to Shirone.

In a battle of magic against magic there are affinities, but against a direct attack on the mind, not even fairies could defend themselves.

— Will you be able to do it? There are many of them.

— I will launch an area Mental Shock. It will consume a lot of mental energy, but I can do it once. In exchange, draw them in. The radius will be twenty meters around me.

Gathering them all was almost impossible, but if they managed to catch at least half, they could tilt the balance.

“Good! Let’s split up as well!”

Individual combat began.

The abilities of the fairies were not insignificant either. Perhaps they already expected a fight, because most represented concepts specialized in combat.

But the fact that the enemy was strong made the task of attracting them easier.

“Eh? Eh?”

In the middle of the battlefield filled with magic, only Peophe was flying without a clear direction.

It was her first real combat, and the power of the exchanged spells was on a completely different level from hers.

A flash approached her.

Startled, Peophe raised both hands, preparing to use her spiral ability.

Shirone, by reflex, charged Photon Cannon.

Their gazes crossed as they recognized each other, and their pupils trembled.

Peophe bit her lip, unable to decide. Then Shirone canceled Photon Cannon and turned his body.

Peophe looked at him in confusion, but he said nothing and ran toward another fairy.

Peophe’s head tilted in discouragement.

— Arin! We cannot hold anymore! This is the limit!

Since the fairies could fly, concentrating them in a single point was almost impossible.

However, the magicians of Shirone’s group also had great mastery of movement, and they managed to attract more than half into the designated area.

— It is enough!

Movement is the union of time and space.

The only moment when Arin could launch her magic was that brief instant, less than a second, when the fairies entered the area.

Arin crouched and placed both hands on the ground. Her shadow expanded like a sinkhole, and five fairies sensed the danger and propelled themselves to escape.

But it was already too late.

Boom!

A mental wave exploded, lifting the earth in all directions.

The fairies lost control, staggering, and as if they had ingested insecticide, their wings stopped and they fell in cascade.

With half their force out of combat, the morale of the fairies collapsed, and they began to flee screaming.

While Harvest waved its claws to drive them away, Rian and Tess broke through the circle of the kergoines and managed to return the switch to its original position.

The liquid that had filled one third of the glass spheres was absorbed back into the tank, and the level descended.

The subjects exhaled in relief.

But even that must have been a form of torture. A minimal hope was nothing more than another word for almost absolute despair.

“Shirone! Now! Destroy it with the laser!”

Shirone was already prepared.

If he destroyed the statue, the Liquor of Anecdotes would stop. With the fairies practically defeated, no one could interfere.

Just as Shirone’s laser began to emit a red glow, Igirin’s voice permeated the battlefield.

“In the name of divine subordination I order you, lacking authority in this world, kneel before me.”

When the decree ended, something astonishing happened.

As if the world had been turned off, all the humans fell to their knees. Shirone’s group was no exception.

With his knees driven into the ground, Shirone was bewildered.

He tried to stand by applying force in his legs, but his body was as heavy as if he had turned into an elephant.

Voices burst through the mental channel.

— What is happening? I cannot stand up!

— She said she was the fairy of authority. What does this have to do with authority?

— It is not ordinary magic. It is an exceptional regulation.

Shirone thought the same. If it were not an exceptional regulation, it would make no sense.

Then how was it activated?

It was not a simple verbal decree. It was not possible to force hundreds of people to kneel just by pronouncing words.

Unlike Shirone’s group, the believers offered no resistance. They only looked at Igirin with eyes full of reverence.

Igirin calmly advanced among them and approached the statue.

And she lowered the switch with her own hands.

The liquid began to fill the glass spheres again, and the subjects closed their eyes tightly.

Somewhere the sobbing of the families could be heard.