[391] Battle Readiness (4)
"Photon sculpting. It's advanced beyond the fractal stage."
Canis muttered, tense.
Making wings out of light meant the sculpting art had crossed into the domain of photons.
Shirone had already realized incarnation techniques.
"How much do you know?"
Harvist spoke through the mental channel.
-If we're talking about the stage of wielding a particular spell, then he probably outpaces us. Passing through the void wasn't only because of the Immortal Function, it seems.
That explained the unease Canis had felt back then.
"It's gotten clearer."
Canis looked at Arin.
"What do you mean?"
"Shirone's wings have become clearer."
Canis cocked his head. It wasn't common for him to refer to the form of a specific object.
'Come to think of it…'
On Galliant Island, Arin had once asked if Shirone was blond.
At the time she hadn't thought much of it, but after Harvist's comment she couldn't ignore it.
"What exactly does Shirone look like? Can you describe it?"
"Shirone."
"Yeah?"
"Shirone is Shirone. I had a vague sense before, but now I know—I was looking at Shirone's incarnation."
Arin couldn't analyze the form shown in her initial sight. But the incarnation form born from the numbers of the Law never changed.
"It's not incarnation magic. Shirone is the incarnation."
That was Arin's conclusion from her mental transcendence.
"Hmm."
Canis turned to Shirone with a grave expression.
There had to be a clear difference between incarnation magic and an incarnation. Nobody could predict the outcome when they clashed head-on.
"What do you mean by 'the wings are clearer'?"
"They were there back then too. Wings on Shirone's back."
"What?"
When they met on Galliant, Shirone didn't have the Light Wings technique. So how had she seen wings?
"Is it like a feeling?"
Arin shook her head.
"An incarnation doesn't have feelings. It's just an incarnation. Only, it wasn't as distinct as now. It sat there like a transparent shape made of wind. But now it's dyed in gold."
Arin wasn't a seer, so the wings she had seen likely belonged to the incarnation.
'An incarnation with wings?'
If Shirone continued to strengthen the incarnation's power, would real wings sprout from his shoulders?
Probably no one in the world could answer that.
Shirone fixed his gaze on the navigation magic hovering before him and bent his knees.
'One, two…'
At last the arrow pointed to the sky.
'Three!'
At the same moment the Light Wings fluttered and he shot upward.
The acceleration produced by plunging mass at a breakneck speed was enormous, and everyone looked up in astonishment.
Confirming direction, distance, and speed within 0.8 seconds and casting a teleport required pure intuition.
The hardest part was that the navigation's suggestion changed during the teleport.
In the end you could judge only when the turn finished, which incurred about a 0.2-second loss.
That 0.2 seconds was exactly the time the Association's "divine particles" promised to shorten.
'Now it begins!'
The Light Wings matched that criterion precisely.
Bang!
As the wings fluttered mid-teleport, the flash's direction snapped vertically.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Explosive sounds erupted in succession as Shirone executed the navigation's proposals without error.
"Ugh!"
The pressure from gravity acceleration during the abrupt direction changes fell entirely on Shirone.
Every time his course bent, the blood in his veins rushed to one side and his muscles felt as if they were tearing.
If it had been Armand's adamantine armament, he might have eliminated the danger himself, but now he was bare-bodied.
The stronger the pressure, the more violent the wingbeats became. Even if his body were to break, he could not stop.
This was flight for becoming a mage.
"Wow, that actually works?"
The 0.2-second gap registered with the students on the ground. It was a completely different trajectory from ordinary teleportation.
Those who knew how taxing it was to change direction mid-cast felt a chill.
"Won't he shatter in the sky? He's pulling multiple Gs."
"But if he can endure it, it's a whole different class from teleport."
The rhythm of movement itself was different.
The offbeat here was unlike any other offbeat; those on the receiving end would treat it as an entirely new tactic.
Numerically it was an enormous advantage too.
Assuming a hundred-turn fight, you could reach your desired coordinates twenty seconds faster than your opponent.
That was the real meaning contained in Shirone's current 0.2 seconds.
'When does this end?'
The navigation had been mercilessly harassing Shirone, as if it had cognitive intent. It demanded reversals, vertical drops followed by vertical climbs one after another.
How far had he flown?
The Academy grounds looked so small they could fit inside a circle made with a finger.
No movement evaluation normally required such vast space. What on earth was the Association thinking?
'No, this is right!'
Shirone believed blindly. The divine particles were his, but he trusted the professionals' calculations to be accurate.
Finally the arrow pointed toward the Academy.
The navigation proposed an average speed of over 300 km/h. The distance was a staggering 5.4 kilometers.
'Get in within 65 seconds?'
A distance reachable only by chaining 540 teleports. The problem was that inertia resets meant you couldn't receive the force of acceleration.
From the start it wasn't a photon-based method. What the Association demanded was mass dynamics—that is, movement imbued with acceleration.
"Huuuuu!"
Shirone broke the start with a teleport and then beat the Light Wings at maximum speed. Each stroke cleaving the air sent a tearing sound toward the Academy.
180 km/h. 220 km/h. 280 km/h.
When he passed the 2.4-kilometer mark, he finally exceeded 300 km/h.
But because he had lost time in the acceleration's initial phase, he had to fly even faster to meet the average speed.
"Uuuuuugh!"
His vision narrowed to the navigation alone—a feeling not unlike falling off a cliff.
Shirone obsessed over speed. The navigation wouldn't purposefully hurl a student into a cliff, he reasoned.
340 km/h.
He doubled the surface area of the Light Wings. Their force, akin to a photon cannon, surged and acceleration skyrocketed.
440 km/h.
He heard a burning-in-the-ear sound. The Academy rushed toward him at tremendous speed.
'Wait a moment…'
A sudden thought popped up.
Who guaranteed the navigation wouldn't slam the student into a cliff?
That was the vague hope of someone backed into a corner, not a rational assessment.
The only reliable information was that the navigation merely pointed to the Academy's coordinates.
'This is insane!'
Shirone drew the Light Wings closer to his body.
Acceleration had built as much as it would. If he let go of his speed now he'd be disqualified. The only safety mechanism to preserve life was air resistance.
Ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka!
Shirone felt violent vibrations as he tore through the body's mass of air. He'd never known air could feel so solid.
The students who had spotted Shirone jumped to their feet.
"Move! If he crashes here it's over!"
But where could they go? With the arrival point unpredictable, they could only sway their upper bodies left and right.
The navigation kept its final suggestion until Shirone reached the evaluation ground. The point: stop here; it would be best for your safety.
"Hgh!"
Shirone widened his eyes and swung the Light Wings forward.
Fwoooom!
A sound that seemed to tear eardrums erupted. The training ground's dust was pushed away, casting a wide veil of haze ahead.
Students who turned their heads frowned, ears ringing with a dull tinnitus.
But then they moved their gazes to the sight of dust settling with fear on their faces.
They would rather the dust not clear than imagine Shirone's corpse smeared with blood.
"Sh- Shirone?"
Maya stepped forward, face ashen. Her body froze and she couldn't move farther.
"Shirone! Shirone!"
Amy and her friends dashed past her toward the evaluation ground.
Flap!
A slow, massive sound scattered dust in every direction. Nade spat out dust from her mouth and peered ahead.
Shirone hovered five meters above the ground, fluttering his wings slowly as he descended.
"Shirone, are you okay?"
Shirone answered with a smile and turned his gaze to Maya. When Maya slumped down with a relieved expression, a thrilling elation washed over him.
It was a clearly contradictory feeling.
"I'm fine. Let's finish the evaluation first."
He folded the Light Wings and dispelled them; for an instant golden fragments flashed brilliantly before vanishing.
The evaluator began to record.
"Shirone—Movement Control Master difficulty passed. That gives you thirty points today."
He didn't reach Fermi's perfect score of a hundred, but every graduating student's minds were thrown into confusion once more.
Fermi, the All Master. Shirone, who wasn't an All Master, had exceeded Fermi's capabilities.
The duel between the two was still razor-thin.
'This makes things harder. Is Fermi really going to be toppled?'
Everyone except Fermi's entourage had put their lives on this graduation exam, so conflict was inevitable.
The Electric Monster Lycan said with cold eyes, "I've never seen someone so tenacious. Fermi, maybe—"
Lycan's face froze as he turned.
Fermi's pupils were not normal. The right pupil rolled up and the left pupil shifted to the side.
It was the true monster hidden behind the businessman mask.
'Damn, that leaves only blowing ourselves up together as an option.'
An unregulated deviant. No matter how cold-blooded, inside such a one was a thoroughly twisted monster.
If Fermi were to start moving emotionally—unlikely as it seemed—the losses would be enormous.
'How much does he make in a month…'
Lycan thought it might be better to just let Shirone go.
"Hey, Fermi. You—"
"I'm calling an emergency meeting. All executives gather on the Gold Ring."
Fermi gave a brief order and walked away.
Like someone who had seen a ghost whose facial features had vanished, Lycan realized he couldn't recall Fermi's face from a moment ago.
* * *
Two days remained until the high-ground occupation assessment.
Students would gather in secret for strategy meetings, and those without a team had to decide soon.
As this was a mock evaluation for the graduation exam, everything from team formation to matchups was voluntary.
You named the team you wanted; if you were named by multiple people or by none, selection was decided by drawing beads.
So far, the only team with its full roster revealed was Shirone's.
The Screamer team, meanwhile, remained shrouded. At least that was the case from Shirone's team's perspective.
'Wonder if she'll be in the music room today too?'
Shirone entered the graduating students' building. At Iruki's request, he went to find Maya earlier than the scheduled strategy meeting time.
As expected, the sound of singing drifted from the music room and his heart began to beat, recalling the emotions of that sundown.
He opened the door slowly and Maya turned with a bright smile.
"Oh, Shirone! What brings you here? We were supposed to meet later."
Shirone felt a strange mix of distance and intimacy. In moments like this she felt closer than anyone else.
"Iruki asked if we could come a bit early. He came up with a tailored strategy for the Screamer team."
"Oh, I see. Where did you want to meet?"
Maya closed the piano and stood up, passing Shirone on her way to the door. She smelled faintly of milk, like a child.