Chapter12.8「Gray Accomplices or the Absolute Zero Extermination Mission」
The moment the heavy door closed with a silent *shhh...*‚ all reverberation vanished from the world.
Spreading out at their feet was God's private garden‚ far above the thick sea of clouds below――the 'Sky-High Azure Abandoned Sanctuary'. In the sky above‚ an absolute zero void that even rejected the sun's heat stretched out‚ with magic power crystallized in the atmosphere twinkling coldly like constellations.
「……ッ、は……」
The exhaled breath instantly transformed into ice crystals‚ shattering with a faint *crackle*.
A sharp pain like being stroked directly by a razor blade ran through the depths of their lungs. This was an extreme point with a theoretical 0% survival probability‚ where breathing without protective spells would turn the internal organs to stone (petrification) from the inside.
Their left arm felt terribly heavy.
The stone-like texture crawling up to near the elbow beneath the white glove resonated with this high-density magic vacuum‚ trying to forcibly drag their nerves toward the side of "silence."
「Chairman. ……Your vitals are unstable. Computational efficiency has dropped to 0.04%‚ exceeding the acceptable range.」
From behind came a voice stripped of all emotion‚ yet as clear as the sound of a bell.
It was Ceres. Her amethyst-colored eyes were swaying with quiet concern under the cold starlight.
「……No problem. This level of pressure difference is within the score's expectations.」
Even the brave words were sucked into the frozen atmosphere and disappeared.
（The loss in the lower world was 0.01%. And yet‚ just by being exposed to this abandoned sanctuary's extreme cold and high-density magic‚ it jumped to 0.04% in an instant. ……As expected‚ the environmental load of this sanctuary is dramatically accelerating the speed at which it chips away at my body.）
Their knees sank deeper than physical gravity would allow. The price of having single-handedly dammed the world's dregs was being mercilessly exposed by this sanctuary's pure cold air.
「No. ……Tuning is necessary. At this rate‚ the baton (tact) will break before the performance begins.」
She dismissed the refusal as "noise" and closed the distance without a sound.
「っ……Ceres‚ in this place you shouldn't unnecessarily release heat――」
「Be silent. ……I cannot approve.」
With the face of a tuner who would brook no argument‚ Ceres's slender fingertips were placed on the collar of the military uniform.
*Snap.*
The hook constricting their neck was undone‚ and the absolute zero cold air slipped through the slight opening onto their skin.
At the same time.
Ceres's palm――surprisingly cold‚ yet possessing the vivid contours of a human hand――slid directly from the shirt's opening into their chest.
「……っ！？ Ceres‚ what are you……」
「Don't move. ……The chairman's heartbeat has dissonant sounds mixed in.」
Her palm slid along the left chest――tracing the boundary between 'petrification' and the 'heart'.
Her white‚ translucent fingertips lovingly yet coldly traced the clavicle and the swell of the pectoral muscles‚ tuning them as the optimal solution for survival.
Cold.
It felt like touching ice directly. Yet every time her fingertips pressed against the skin‚ the nearly frozen magic circuits were forcibly rebooted with unpleasant heat.
「……It's hot‚ Chairman.」
Ceres's face drew so close that their breaths mingled.
Her neatly cut violet-black bangs. Beyond them‚ her amethyst eyes pierced their gaze without letting it escape.
Her fingertips slipped even deeper under the military uniform‚ as if confirming the pulse at the neck.
The faint friction sliding over the skin. That soft texture became the only "existence" in the absolute zero world‚ shaking their brain.
「……Pulse stabilized. Magic waveform output error confirmed converged within 0.001%.」
What transmitted from her palm was the temperature of a mad devotion that abandoned her own heat to support them.
If Rinne was the anchor keeping Aria connected to "life (heat)‚" then Ceres was the ice preservative that kept them confined within "theory (cold)."
「Ceres. ……That's enough. The tuning is complete.」
They forcibly deleted the impurity called lingering attachment from their own computational circuits.
Her fingertips were slowly withdrawn from their chest. On the way out‚ they deliberately pressed strongly against their skin once more‚ imprinting the lingering heat of suppressed passion.
「……Understood. I will protect the Chairman's 'perfection' even if it means shaving away this body of mine.」
Ceres hid her own white‚ numb fingertips inside her military uniform and took a step back as if nothing had happened‚ offering the bow of a beautiful doll.
They straightened their collar and gripped the baton once more with white-gloved fingertips.
「Elze. ……Give the verdict.」
「[Measurement complete]. ……Lord of the Sweepings (Load) detected in the target area. Extermination process will now begin.」
Inorganic blue logs began running across their retina.
Packing the faint numbness of Ceres's tuning into the depths of silence‚ they raised the baton of absolute zero――an act that could be called blasphemy against God.
A pale aurora crossed their field of vision‚ pulsing eerily.
High-precision battlefield information sent from Elze's central computational system unfolded across their retina as inorganic geometric patterns.
――*Gigi... Gigigigigigi!!*
Shaking the frozen air‚ that 'colossus' revealed itself. The ancient defense mechanism 'Void Colossus'‚ said to have been forged during the age of the Magic Wars to protect the seat of the gods.
It was essentially the "completed original" of the outdated golems that Aria and the others had fought to the death against in the underground sweepings. Its towering giant body was a mass of death that distorted causality around it merely by existing‚ seeking to return space itself to 'nothingness'.
「[Encounter: Void Colossus]. ……Verdict: statistical garbage (noise).
Computational load within acceptable range. Immediate rejection process will begin.」
Elze's voice contained not a shred of respect for the enemy or fear of her own death. To her‚ this mythical monster was nothing more than a "useless variable" that slowed the computer's processing speed by about 0.01 seconds.
[ Vulnerability Identified: 0.01s ]
Countless equations exploded in processing behind Elze's glasses.
Before the colossus could swing its tree-like stone arm‚ their 'orchestra' began operating in series circuit.
「……Fix.」
Valt's short murmur.
[ Causal Fix: COMPLETED ]
Faster than the log could display 'Completed'‚ the colossus's giant body was "stopped" in place‚ ignoring physical laws.
The causality that should have been "stop after the attack hits" was reversed by the absolute standard rhythm of Valt's shield. Before it could even begin its attack‚ the result of being "fixed" was carved into the world‚ nailing it into inescapable stillness.
Immediately after.
Their vision warped with physical impact.
No log existed. It was proof that Zephyr had stepped into that 'vacuum' domain.
A domain where sound‚ friction‚ and even the atmosphere were rejected. By the time they noticed‚ Zephyr's stone right arm had soundlessly seized the colossus's throat.
「The heat of muscle is equal to output loss.」
Ignis glided along the shortest path and thrust the spear with her stone arm.
[ Shortest Path: EXECUTE ]
*Crackle.*
'Cold sparks' without any heat scattered pale blue in the vacuum.
Not a single scream or the sound of scattering sparks survived; they were instantly discarded by Zephyr's vacuum. The colossus's core was pierced at the shortest distance through its mathematical vulnerability without even being given time to understand what had happened.
「……Silence.」
With the white-gloved right hand‚ they swept the baton in a single flash.
Singularity 'Absolute Zero Silence (shhh...)'.
An absolute command that forcibly converged the existence probability of the entire area to zero.
[ Target Area: Overwrite Complete ]
What had been the colossus was not even given time to collapse; it was physically deleted from the world's score as a "computational error."
Not even dust danced. Only the same inorganic sanctuary silence as before they had descended returned.
「The '0.01% significant difference' that Aria and the others scraped together…… How comical‚ Chairman. That kind of muddy struggle is nothing more than computational lag before this 'process'.」
Elze pushed up the bridge of her silver-rimmed glasses with her fingertip and casually erased the logs on her retina.
The gray blood vessels standing out on her neck pulsed eerily and thickly from overload.
They coldly rejected the heat of the 'ancient heart fragment' sewn into their left chest through their jacket.
The single second that Aria had protected while coughing blood was now processed as mere clerical work in the blink of an eye.
That overwhelming "correct answer" pushed the petrification (gray) on their left arm a few more millimeters toward the tip of the elbow.
In the spot where the colossus's remains had been swallowed by 'silence (shhh...)' and vanished‚ the next dissonance crawled out. From the depths of the sanctuary‚ countless autonomous defense soldiers――'Void Hounds'――emerged by splitting the crystallized ice forest‚ silently surrounding them.
But no one moved.
The baton trembled faintly‚ and the orchestra (system)'s synchronization rate converged to 0.00%.
「[ Verdict: Source of impure dissonance ]. ……Target count: forty-two. Bulk cancellation recommended.」
Elze casually swiped the empty space on her retinal UI as if organizing unnecessary files.
At that moment‚ 'causality' was stripped from the world.
Valt striking the ground with the butt of his shield‚
Zephyr turning her body into vacuum‚ and Ignis pouring magic into her spear――it was no longer even a matter of "order."
One second later.
The forty-two hounds‚ unable to take a single step‚ had their necks simultaneously severed by vacuum blades and their cores pierced by absolute zero spears at the same time.
The process from 'fix' to 'annihilation' was completed in an instant as an extremely compressed batch process. Gun smoke‚ death throes‚ and even the sound of scattering sparks were trashed the moment they occurred by Zephyr's vacuum.
All of these steps were completed in a mere three seconds.
「……The computer is crying. No‚ perhaps it's laughing.」
Elze once again deployed the analysis data of the 'proof of survival (error log)' that Aria and the others had obtained by shaving their lives at the boundary observation post‚ behind her silver-rimmed glasses.
「This purification formula they calculated over two hours…… How comical. When I re-ran it on my system‚ it completed in 0.03 seconds of clerical work. The single second that Aria desperately protected…… was not salvation‚ but merely 'lag' caused by inferior computational ability.」
There was not even mockery in her words. It was merely a cold evaluation that sorted facts as facts.
「Excess heat only dirties the score.」
With white-gloved fingertips‚ they coldly crushed through their jacket the 'ancient heart fragment' sewn to their left chest――the amber heat that Aria had once picked up from the sweepings and which now anchored them to the present world.
The extermination in this sanctuary was not even a "battle."
It was simply perfect 'clerical work' to continuously output 100% correct answers.
The crystallized magic forest quietly pulsed‚ reflecting the pale starlight.
They reached the final corridor leading to the deepest part――the sanctuary's core‚ the very heart of the 'silence'. Blocking their way was a swarm of amorphous shadows‚ reconstructed with all the defense mechanisms of the sanctuary.
「[ Warning ]. Target residue concentration has exceeded measurement limits (capped). ……Judged as a pure 'turbulent flow of dissonance' that has rejected the concept of individual entities.」
The most intense computational log yet ran behind Elze's glasses. The gray blood vessels on her neck pulsed thickly in red-black.
「Bulk packing recommended. ……I will complete the 'process' in 0.02 seconds.」
They held the baton horizontally.
In their left arm――deep within the white glove――the petrified skin screamed with pain as if grinding the nerves directly. But even that agony was now nothing more than a symbol called 'computational load'.
「……Let's begin. This sky needs no impure sounds.」
The series circuit began its final relay.
「……Fix.」
Valt thrust his shield into the ground.
[ Causal Fix: EXECUTE ]
It was at that moment.
In the corner of Elze's neatly arranged blue logs on her retinal UI‚ a bright red warning flashed for an instant.
[ Undefined Frame Detected ]
In the causality of the space that Valt should have fixed‚ the enemy's 'final obsession with life'――a heat that could not be measured by formulas――had created a 0.0001% fluctuation.
The log froze in an 'incomplete' state like thin ice that would shatter at a fingertip's touch‚ just before displaying [ Causal Fix: COMPLETED ].
Elze's fingertips twitched to a stop above the floating keyboard.
Behind her glasses‚ her intuition as an analyst sensed a decisive discomfort in that 'missing single frame'.
However.
「[ Verdict: Statistical error (noise) ]. ……Rejecting (cancel).」
Elze refused to directly face that small crack.
To her‚ Solan's score had to always be 100%. Stopping the system for a 0.0001% bug was the height of inefficiency. She casually tossed the error into the trash and forcibly executed the next process.
「Delete friction and resistance from the definition. ……In my theory‚ mass does not exist.」
Zephyr glided through the space that still held the 'crack'.
For an instant‚ her vacuum trajectory bulged outward by a few millimeters due to the previous slight fixing error. Her silver-white hair swayed in wind resistance (noise) that should not have existed.
But even that.
「Execute via the shortest path.」
Ignis thrust her spear‚ forcibly correcting the shifted coordinates with her stone arm.
[ Shortest Path: EXECUTE ]
*Crackle.*
Cold sparks scattered‚ piercing the异形's core.
In the despair where causality was reversed and logs output belatedly‚ the异形s were severed from the world's logic without even recognizing the fact that they were 'already dead'.
「……Silence. This world has too many unnecessary sounds.」
They did not even notice the discomfort of that imperfect tuning.
They swept the baton in a flash.
Singularity 'Absolute Zero Silence (shhh...)'.
[ Target Area: Overwrite Complete ]
The space before their eyes was completely 'deleted' by silver silence‚ as if nothing had existed there from the beginning.
「……Fuu. This completes all clerical work for the corresponding area.」
Elze pushed up her glasses with a fingertip and closed the retinal UI as if nothing had happened.
There was no longer any record of the previous 'undefined frame' in her system. It had been perfectly incinerated as statistical garbage.
They placed their white-gloved left hand on their own chest.
――There was no sensation left in their left arm.
The cold air of petrification that had crawled up to the elbow was coldly crushing the heartbeat.
Accepting that collapse as 'specification'‚ they maintained the face of a perfect conductor.
They had no way of knowing that the entrance to the 'miracle' Aria believed in had opened right behind the back of their own score.
「[ All Areas: Silence ]. ……Terminating process.」
Elze's voice resonated directly into their brains without vibrating the air.
When they lowered the baton‚ the world once again reverted to a single color of "nothingness."
The turbulent flow of异形 that had spread before them vanished as if it had never existed‚ leaving only the absolute zero starlight coldly illuminating the stone pavement.
There was no gun smoke‚ no death throes‚ no surge of victory.
All that remained was the sterile silence after perfect clerical work.
「……Fuu. Computational load increased 0.02% beyond expectations. Cause determined as illogical resistance from terminal circuits (impurities). ……Not even a miscalculation. Rejecting.」
Elze pushed up the bridge of her silver-rimmed glasses and bulk-packed the floating blue holograms before erasing them.
The gray blood vessels standing out on her neck pulsed with an unnatural thick heat before gradually calming.
「All heat has been released. ……Is there more‚ Solan?」
Ignis shouldered her spear again with her stone right arm and turned an inorganic gaze toward them.
The cold sparks that had scattered from the spear turned to ice crystals and piled at their feet‚ vanishing with a faint *crackle*.
「An unnecessary question. ……As long as the score continues‚ we remain parts that play.」
They entrusted their sensationless left arm to their right hand and put strength into their fingertips to straighten the white glove――at that instant.
――*Para...*.
There was no sound.
Yet from the gap in the white glove‚ the petrified skin turned to "sand" and silently spilled onto the stone floor.
The flesh and blood that had once controlled body temperature had been unable to withstand the high-load computation and turned into mere inorganic dust.
At the edge of their vision‚ the retinal UI displayed their collapse in red text.
[ Warning: Flaking volume increasing. 0.0001s processing delay detected ]
Even collapse was nothing more than "specification" to them.
「……Chairman. Please don't move.」
Ceres approached without a sound and gently wrapped their left wrist with both hands.
Her fingertips touched the cuff of the military uniform.
「っ……」
What transmitted was absolute zero cold air‚ no longer human.
Ceres's slender fingertips absorbed the overflowing temperature of death and instantly froze into "deathly white."
The same color as the "white" that Iris released by burning her life.
Yet she accepted the loss of sensation as supreme joy.
Her amethyst eyes gazed lovingly at the stone arm‚ forcibly suppressing its tremors with her own body heat.
「……Is it cold‚ Solan?」
「……No. I feel nothing. ……That is our correct answer.」
Ceres hid her own paralyzed fingertips beneath their military uniform.
The anchor that supported them. The ice preservative that kept them anchored to this real world until the moment they fully became perfect stone (gray)‚ while simultaneously robbing them of their "human" elements.
「Chairman. ……One report. Regarding the previous 'undefined frame'. ……Theoretically it should be noise to be ignored‚ but……」
Elze projected the residue of the log she should have erased onto her retina once.
「……A perfect series circuit does not assume 'parallel attacks'. ……If those Aria and the others had struck all the dissonances 'simultaneously' rather than in sequence――」
「Reject it‚ Elze.」
They coldly cut off her words.
「The probability of accidental simultaneous notes (noise) overlapping with a 100% correct score (score) is not worth computing. ……Let's go. This place is already silent.」
Supported by Ceres‚ they stepped toward the deepest part of the sanctuary.
Behind them‚ only silence remained.
An excessively intricate and fragile clockwork orchestra that would collapse from a single misalignment.
Their shadows‚ which shaved themselves away and sang of salvation as stone‚ stretched long and cold under the absolute zero starlight.
They had no way of knowing that Aria and the others' "muddy rebellion" lurked on the back side of that score as a fatal rest (break).
Chapter 12.8 Complete
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