The tsunami ascended that ramp in silence, its water lapping ice and submerging that slab from the bottom up, rising to consume every ounce of it until nothing would be left.
Seconds passed.
The tsunami held as it was, dark water still climbing. Overhead, those pillars of white continued on their way, blazing with heat that melted ice from mere proximity alone.
More time.
Still nothing, save for a piece of that slab splitting free of the wider whole and plunging down, swallowed by that tsunami.
Nearly half the ramp was gone by now, its whole foundation quaking, cracks widening across the surface from within, water rolling over it thick enough to count as a tide of its own.
Nothing changed.
Then something did.
A single mote of sky-blue flared from within black water for a breath before vanishing. Another rose after it, then a pair this time, flaring, ascending as though rising through open air instead of water.
Motes flickered across the tsunami's center, their numbers cascading upward until even they shone through its black, a color that refused to give out beneath that relentless flow.
Water rising near the ramp ripped apart in a straight line, tearing upward from its base through nearly a kilometer of height, peeling open like a wound, water seeping out like blood, accompanied by sky-blue flakes flying high.
They collided with the pillars of white. Sparks erupted from every point of contact, the surrounding air detonating in wide halos.
The descent of those pillars halted forcefully, locking them in confrontation with flakes that carried miniature buildings, desks, and classrooms compressed into their forms.
Beneath, a car punched out of the slit, water shredding off its front and sides like peeled-back curtains, tires hitting that slope at high RPM, chips of shattered ice launching behind them in two trails of shards.
I pushed down on the pedal; Mustang's rear end skidded out into a drift. My arms were already countersteering, forcing the car straight before it could slide.
Behind me, ice flaked away into concrete in a spreading domain, slabs interlocking with geometric precision, extending until the tires caught solid purchase, friction snapping to an ideal state.
Mustang's chassis jerked, a fraction of a second for rubber to settle into its new grip, and then the car shrieked forward, windshield cracking under the continuous slam of water.
Ahead and along my flanks, buildings punched up through the ramp's length, jutting out of its surface; the tide struck them and diverted sideways, force bleeding off in continuous loops.
I swung the steering right, curving past a gymnasium whose roof buckled and plummeted down under the water. Another classroom sheared in half, its desks still settled in rows.
A skeleton of metal bars, concrete, and paint tumbled through its fall, casting a shadow across Mustang's whole front, covering the violet headlights and reflecting nothing back.
My hand went to the handbrake.
Click.
[Deca Accel]
A boundary field rippled out from me, engulfing the whole of Mustang. The speedometer needle froze, spinning tires ground to a halt and locked in place, the engine's screams stretched, dropping from long and sharp to something smooth and low.
Water falling on my windshield hung an inch above the glass in sheets, dropping by a centimeter for each second that passed.
Inside that field of twisted time, I turned the steering and pushed down on the gas.
Tires resumed spinning, throwing sprays from Mustang's wheels, its frame aligning back out of a drift, handbrake let down again, that shattered classroom shrinking in my rearview mirror.
I glanced above and swiped a finger; the whole tide split along my gesture, flow peeling sideways in both directions until sky showed through the windshield.
My flakes clashed against those pillars in a collection of halos stretching horizon to horizon, holding them back in a rain of ripples, though not for long. Ten seconds at most.
Thumbs extending toward the two red buttons mounted on the steering, I took a breath. "Haah..."
And then pushed them down.
NOS.
The fuel gauge hit zero in a single tick, draining everything it had all at once.
Azoth alloy engine. It exploded.
Twin lances of sky-blue shot backward from the exhaust, trailing flake after flake, burning white at their tips.
Pistons hammered past screaming into something that was pure, bottomless vibration; the dashboard quivered, the chassis buzzed, every component humming alongside in one symphony.
Mustang went mad.
Its hood shuddered like a living thing, the engine trying to tear itself out of its casing, hundreds of bolts rattling loose behind me.
My spine crushed into the seat, shirt slamming into my chest, vision narrowed to a slit just wide enough for the speed dial, where the needle swept past its highest number and kept reaching for figures that had never been printed.
Then the world let go.
Color went first. Everything stripped down to two shades, black lines on a white page. The tsunami shed every shade of its black water until nothing remained but its outline, the inside of it pure white.
Mustang left the concrete far behind, tires wailing on ice and holding, flaring upward in a trailing line of blue.
Depth went next.
A building flickered on my left, its front and sides merging into one continuous page, colors bleeding off its outline until only a black skeleton of it remained on a white background.
Those pages tore as I passed, both sides still glowing along blue outlines when Mustang was already beyond them.
Every piece of architecture stood straighter here than it ever had in real life, posture perfect, drawings having no weight.
Depth was dead weight.
Water from above clipped Mustang's sides, but it had no mass, trails of it spread for hundreds of meters behind the car, droplets hanging mid-air, gravity loosening its hold.
Comprehension went next.
Those structures of black and white smeared into long streaks that collapsed inward, left leaning toward me, right leaning toward me, a tunnel of geometry that didn't exist.
Sky-blue particles blasted from Mustang, the tires touching that tunnel and already out, a flaking fracture splitting it in two.
Then the ramp ran out.
The slab abruptly ended and became sky. Front tires lifted first, then the rear, and gravity reached for us and passed through.
We launched.
Exhaust flame bent, stretching into two solid tails of blue, and Mustang climbed. Hundreds of meters of altitude came between heartbeats while the ocean collapsed into one unbroken layer below.
Our car shot skyward. A pillar of white passed on my left, its heat searing a whole column down the door, peeling off paint and melting the metal there, leaving it useless.
Another raked over the roof, warping it until its metal sagged inches low, wisps of smoke curling off my hair.
I blasted past them, that relay station expanding from a silhouette to a building in my vision.
Mustang hammered right into its wall. Concrete shattered inward, consoles sheared off their mounts in showers of charred casings and melted cables, burning papers went up in a blizzard of white, screens flared dead grids, then static, then nothing.
I was inside.
...
"—and that is why none of you insufferable, ordinary humans ever understood true genius! While you called me incompetent and laughed behind my back, I was already ten steps ahead, weaving the seeds of Chaldea's destruction into every line of code, every—"
Lev spread his arms wide, chest puffed, silhouetted against the burning wreckage behind him, tears of pure ecstasy welling in his eyes.
"—every single calculation, all so that on this glorious day, I could finally reveal that I, Lev Lainur Flauros, was the mastermind all al—"
CRUNCH.
A Mustang at several hundred miles an hour rammed into his back.
Lev couldn't even finish the word "along." One second he was mid-gesture, savoring his own brilliance; the next he was airborne, spinning end over end through what used to be a wall, his monologue choking to a strangled "GYAAAAA—"
In the three seconds of freefall that followed, past the mountain's edge, the tsunami's rising tide, and those pillars of white diving like judgment itself, Lev had just enough mind for a devastating thought:
Fourteen years! Fourteen years! I prepared that speech for fourteen years! And some bastard rammed into me and ruined it all!
He didn't even get his "along."
"Curse you, humans!"
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[15 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Author's Thoughts]
Hahaha! Lev, oh Lev! Not ramming into you wouldn't finish our arc of reaching Chaldea and begin Singularity F. Hahaha! He's gonna be super pissed in Singularity F, hope they somehow ram into him again there! Send him packing, hahaha!