Chapter 168
"Zhulumat! KEEP GOING!" shouted a soldier whose face Zhulumat did not even have time to recognize because he was too busy running.
But the voice—the rough, hoarse voice worn down by blood and vomit—sounded like the voice of an older brother he had once had before the First War took him away.
"We'll handle them here!"
Before Zhulumat could object—before the word "No" could even form at the tip of his cracked tongue—the ranks behind him had already turned around.
Not in neat formation as taught in the Satanist Academy.
Not with strategies drilled into them through countless exercises.
But with organized chaos.
With a fury that no longer cared whether they would die in one minute, two minutes, or ten seconds.
What mattered was time.
Time they purchased with their own bodies.
With their own blood.
With flesh willingly offered to be erased by the lasers of faith so long as Zhulumat and the remaining forty-eight percent could reach the first step leading to the third floor.
"Listen, Commander!" shouted another soldier, a woman whose hair had already been half-erased by a strike of colorless light, revealing the white skull beneath.
Strangely, there was no blood.
Even her blood had been forgotten by the universe.
"We don't need your mercy! We need you alive! This is far enough!"
Beside her, Onigakure, who had begun turning back to help, felt his arm seized violently by Apathy.
When he tried to pull away, Apathy whispered in a voice he had never heard before—not the whisper of a soldier afraid of death, but the whisper of a little child begging an older sibling not to leave him alone in the dark.
"She's right, Onigakure. They've already made their choice. Don't waste it."
Nebetu'u, watching the scene from above, wore an expression on his female head that could no longer be interpreted clearly.
It hovered somewhere between respect and impatience.
Or perhaps mere boredom, disappointed that the clash between two great powers had proven less entertaining than he had imagined.
He swung the pendulum in his hand with a wider arc.
For a moment, the Angels' lasers shifted direction.
Not because the Angels intentionally aimed them there, but because the pendulum itself drew those lights of faith toward it.
Like iron attracting needles.
Like a black hole that could never be satisfied.
"The descendants of Satanists are beginning to sacrifice themselves for their commander," murmured Nebetu'u's male head.
His tone was flat.
Flat like water untouched by wind.
Yet beneath that flatness, something lingered.
Something that might have been called wonder.
A sincere wonder from a being who had never understood why mortals willingly died for things they could not take with them after death.
"Touching," his female head added.
The word emerged in a tone balanced uncertainly between mockery and praise.
Yet within her left eye—which no longer watched Zhulumat but the Satanist ranks forming a defensive circle around the staircase—there flickered something unmistakable.
Recognition.
Recognition that although she would never understand, she could at least see.
And beneath that gaze, Zhulumat, still running alongside Agatha, Onigakure, Apathy, Shaqar, Makakushi, and the remaining forty-eight percent behind him, felt his eyes burn.
Not because of the lasers.
But because of something older than tears.
Something that might have been called grief.
A grief that had no time to become tears because his legs still had to run.
Keep running.
Keep running.
Keep running until the first stair finally met the sole of his boot.
"DON'T STOP!" Shaqar shouted from behind.
His voice, usually overflowing with rage, now trembled at its edges like a string on the verge of snapping.
And when Zhulumat's foot finally landed upon the marble staircase leading to the third floor—a staircase strangely untouched by cracks, unstained by blood, and unmoved by the blasts, as though it belonged to an entirely different world from the chaos behind them—he allowed himself a single glance backward.
Only one.
Just enough to see the thirty-to-forty percent who had remained behind beginning to sway beneath waves of faith-born lasers attacking from every direction.
But before the image could carve itself too deeply into his bloodshot eyes, Agatha yanked his arm and whispered,
"Don't look back, Zhulumat. Their deaths won't be meaningless if you keep moving forward."
And Zhulumat, who for the first time in his life as commander of Team Xirkushkartum found himself without words for one of his subordinates, merely nodded.
A nod that felt as though he were breaking his own neck.
In the end, he stepped forward.
Onto the second stair.
Then the third.
Then the fourth.
Behind him, the sounds of battle gradually faded.
Growing muffled.
Growing distant.
Becoming like a nightmare that had only just ended, though its traces still lingered in the sweat soaking his entire body.
Their run stopped not because of exhaustion—though Zhulumat's lungs felt like two paper bags repeatedly crushed and unfolded—but because the floor ahead of them suddenly changed.
Not changed in the way marble becomes wood or stone.
But changed in the way a dreamer suddenly realizes he is not dreaming alone.
That other dreams have been forced into his mind without invitation.
Ahead of them stood a gate.
Not with elegance.
But with unease.
A gate made from a substance that could not be called wood, metal, stone, bone, or light.
Rather, it was all five at once.
Five substances rejecting one another while having no choice but to remain united.
"What—WHAT IS THIS?!" Makakushi whispered.
His voice was nearly swallowed by the sight beyond the gate.
Behind bars that followed no geometry he had ever studied at the academy, five different worlds wrestled with one another like starving serpents devouring each other's tails.
With every breath he took, he smelled the ocean from one world.
The desert from another.
The scent of burning forests from a third.
Metal and oil from a fourth.
And a fifth scent—
A scent he could not explain, yet instantly recognized as the smell of himself.
The smell of himself from the fifth world.
The five realms had not merged peacefully.
They resembled five colors hastily mixed upon a painter's palette.
The streaks remained visible.
Red unwilling to blend with blue.
Yellow clustering into tiny islands floating within a sea of green that welcomed no visitors.
Standing at the front, Zhulumat felt gravity around the gate behave inconsistently.
At times it became crushingly heavy, as though a giant hand were forcing his shoulders downward.
At other times it became so light that he felt he might float away unless he grabbed onto something.
And between those extremes there existed a pull.
A pull from five directions at once.
As though five separate pairs of hands were each trying to drag one of his limbs toward a different destination.
"Someone—or something—has forced five different realities to merge here. Look!"
To Be Continued…