The Shield of Miracles

by Sakon Kaidou

  I hadn’t seen the moment the words were carved, nor had I heard the sound of it happening.

  Additionally, all of Liz’s threads had been cut as if they’d never been spread out.

  “The concealment power is even greater than before...!”

  Originally, it’d only concealed Alhazred, but now, it extended to anything it influenced, making it impossible to perceive the moment it changed something.

  This was the apex of concealment. It affected the world and prevented anyone from noticing any changes made.

  “Good grief...” I muttered.

  It was clearly among the most troublesome Embryo abilities I’d ever seen.

  However, despite displaying such power, Gerbera was still being herself.

  After all — there was no need to carve any letters on the walls.

  Gerbera could’ve easily given me the death penalty and escaped this place, yet she was wasting time on this meaningless nonsense.

  It was a testament to just how strongly she was clinging to her old self and wanting to get back at me.

  She was asserting her presence while trying to imprint the “ideal Gerbera” back into her subconscious, which I found... terribly pitiful.

  “Ah...!”

  Suddenly, I realized my left hand had a laceration on it and was covered in blood.

  It had obviously been inflicted a few seconds ago, yet I’d only noticed it just now.

  “What’s going onnnn?!” Babi, too, was being tormented by wounds that increased without her even realizing it.

  Babi and Liz were indiscriminately and randomly attacking the surroundings, but I couldn’t even tell whether the attacks were hitting or having any sort of effect.

  Although it focused on concealment, we were facing a Superior’s Guardian that no doubt had its stats increased due to the merge with its Master. We, on the other hand, weren’t a particularly powerful group. There was no hope of winning for us if we didn’t focus our firepower, but we couldn’t do even that.

  I momentarily considered using Union Jack to become a Metal-Devil-Man, but I realized the situation wouldn’t change in the least — in fact, I wouldn’t even be able to use it. We simply couldn’t win this.

  “Looks like this is it,” I silently spoke. There was nothing more I could do.

  Before I realized it, my Lifesaving Brooch shattered and fell from my neck.

  Looks like she had enough messing around and decided to end it, I thought, realizing that it was over. Still, there’s one thing I can say here...

  “You truly are careless.”

  The very fact that she’d actually taken the time to corner me meant that she’d done the worst thing she could have. She might’ve been able to use her increased stats and concealment power to instantly kill me and run away.

  But instead, she’d wasted precious seconds on me... giving him enough time to make it here.

  “Sorry ’bout that, kiddo,” said a voice coming from the outside. “I took the shortest path, but it still took longer than I thought.”

  A moment later, the wall facing the road was pulverized, and someone human-sized jumped into the room.

  I knew full well what... no... who it was.

  Today, I’d asked Babi to do two things.

  One of them was to observe Gerbera, while the other was... to deliver a message.

  She’d told it to Elizabeth, who’d then passed it over to the authorities, and it went: “I will expose the true culprit, so please release him once I’m done.”

  I looked through the window — or, rather, through part of the wall where the window was — and saw a flying eyeball with bat wings growing out of it.

  It was a Broadcast Eye — a communication monster first created by Franklin, now salvaged and used by Gideon.

  Through it, the authorities at the knight offices would’ve seen and heard our entire exchange here, so the investigators should already know that Gerbera was the true culprit.

  She was probably already on the wanted list, and more importantly — Shu had been released and was now here.

  “And so... the star of the show enters the stage,” I said.

  “Yep,” he replied. “Kept you waiting, huh?”

  The moment I’d considered the possibility that Gerbera might be a Superior, I’d entrusted this incident’s resolution to him. For that, it had been necessary to prove that Gerbera was the true culprit, so I’d gotten her to confess to it.

  The preparations were now complete.

  A detective’s job is to expose the truth — not to arrest or defeat the culprit.

  That role belonged to Shu — the real Unknown.

  “I heard about ya through both the eye’s feed and the Telepathy Cuffs,” he said. “You’re still here, aren’t ya, Miss ‘Unknown’?”

  He was not in his bear costume, but in the “Godcloth” he’d worn when fighting Franklin back on that day. It was proof that he was ready to fight with his full power — as both a Superior and the King of Destruction.

  Thus, this would be exactly what had happened during Franklin’s Game — a Clash of the Superiors.

  “As you clearly know, I’m the ex-‘Unknown,’ Shu Starling.”

  There was no response to those words, and I couldn’t tell whether it was because we couldn’t notice it or if she actually wasn’t doing anything.

  Still, it was obvious that she was listening. If she’d been the type of person to escape with Shu’s appearance, things wouldn’t have gotten to this point in the first place.

  “I got tons of things to say to you, but it doesn’t look like we can have a conversation here, so I’ll just say one thing,” he pointed at his neck with his thumb. “I won’t run or hide, and I’ll fight you right here, so just bring it on, will ya?”

  It was no mere provocation — he was completely honest.

  And those words signaled the start of the battle.

  Since Gerbera’s ability was perfect stealth, the thing she had to be most wary of from Shu’s arsenal was the battleship focused on wide-scale attacks. Because he couldn’t use it here in the city, this was probably the very situation she’d been yearning for. However, she didn’t attack him once even after a whole minute had passed after his words.

  Did she escape? I thought. No, that can’t be it.

  “Oh, right,” I said. “She’s actually being cautious.”

  Gerbera was wary of how Shu could counter her attack. Although he was focused on STR, a single attack from her wouldn’t be fatal, and even if it would be, he still had his Brooch. She, on the other hand, would die from just a single lucky hit by him.

  For Gerbera, who’d already lost her Brooch, that wasn’t a gamble she could take.

  “Oh, you’re worried about this?” Shu said while pointing at his Lifesaving Brooch. He too, realized the reason why she wasn’t making her move.

  He then took the Brooch in hand and...

  “There.”

  ...crushed it to pieces.

  “I just have one life now. So come on, don’t be shy. Kill me and take the ‘Unknown’ title.”

  A destroyed Brooch couldn’t be replaced for the next 24 hours. With this, Gerbera and Shu were on even ground.

  Part of his face was hidden by bear fur, but you could still see him crack an indomitable smile as he said, “Bring it.”

  Those words seemed to work as a trigger, since the situation visibly changed, even if all I could see were Shu’s movements.

  The left hand he’d extended suddenly became a blur, and the next moment, it was tightened next to his neck.

  “There you are.”

  His whole body became filled with vigor as he performed a Kodachi — the roundhouse kick I’d seen him do many times during training.

  From my perspective, it didn’t look like he’d grabbed anything or kicked something.

  Suddenly, the scene drastically changed again.

  Blood began gushing out of Shu’s neck, a large hole opened up in the wall, and I could hear s
omeone’s — most likely Gerbera’s — scream coming from far in the distance beyond it.

  After that, there was nothing.

  He didn’t follow after Gerbera, nor did anything else break.

  “Ow ow ow,” Shu lightly groaned, and that was the sole notable thing about the situation.

  As I silently watched, I could make a conjecture about what had just happened here, but it was difficult to understand and accept that as the reality behind it all.

  The wound on Shu’s neck had come from an attack by Gerbera.

  The hole in the wall had been made by Gerbera when he’d blown her away with his kick.

  And the scream had been Gerbera’s voice after suffering so much damage that the Master-Embryo merge was undone.

  Basically, Shu had perceived the attack on his neck, stopped it with his hand, and defeated her with just one hit.

  As for how he could perceive the imperceptible... his groaning was an excellent hint.

  “You turned on your pain?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “I already heard that she had powers that made her hard to perceive, and I could somehow tell that she also hid her influence on other stuff, so I tried to see if that worked on pain, too, and sure thing, it hurt like hell.”

  Pain was something that most of us Masters had turned off, and we couldn’t experience it here in Infinite Dendrogram unless we willfully turned it on. I hadn’t known just how bad the pain could become until I’d gone through the hellish training, and I was quite sure that Gerbera had never known any in-game pain, either.

  It was quite reasonable for Alhazred — an Embryo that could only be felt by Gerbera — to be unable to conceal pain — a sensation that she couldn’t feel.

  “How did you know that pain was still there?” I asked. It was the only thing I still didn’t understand.

  It would make sense for him to turn on pain and confirm whether it was there after some time into the battle or after getting a scratch, but Shu had just arrived here, and he hadn’t suffered any damage until the final attack.

  Liz couldn’t experience pain, so not even I had known about the fact that it was still there. His knowledge of this had me curious.

  “I have a bunch of reasons... but they all boil down to intuition and experience. Rules of thumb and all that jazz,” he answered, not giving a single proper detail.

  I looked at him in silence. This was a man who’d turned on his pain to fight an enemy he couldn’t perceive, gambled that it would work on her, and actually succeeded as though it was nothing.

  He really is Ray’s brother, I thought. They’re very alike in just how absurd their methods are.

  “Heh heh,” I chuckled. All the thinking I’d done on this case suddenly seemed exceedingly comical.

  “All righty then!” Shu said as he switched from his Godcloth to the bear suit. “The culprit’s blasted off, so let’s go get some chow! I’m beary hungry fur some non-prison food!”

  “Ah, but I just ate, and—”

  “Rooook...” said Babi while looking at me with lots of resentment in her eyes. “I haven’t had aaany dinner yet... And I worked sooo hard observing her... Nom nom!”

  And thus she chomped at my head.

  Err, I would prefer it if you didn’t bite into my head. You remind me of Nemesis.

  “Let’s go eat.” I gave in.

  “Hell yeah! It’s on me! Come on, I’ll take you around fur a while! I couldn’t bear not to take you! Let’s go where I usually go whenever I eat out!”

  From Shu’s voice, it was easy to tell he was enlivened. No one could fault him. The man was tasting freedom after being in a cage longer than a day.

  Anyhow, all’s well that ends well, so... ah.

  “May I ask you something?” I said.

  “Hm? What?”

  “Just what, would you say, are those holes on all those buildings?”

  Beyond the wall he’d broken through, I could see countless structures with holes similar to the one we had here. It seemed as though something human-sized had moved here while breaking through every wall in the way, and it felt like it continued all the way to the offices in the first district.

  “I was in a rush, so I went straight here.”

  Well, he had mentioned using the shortest path. Though breaking walls slowed down most people, Shu was on such a level that they were barely a hindrance.

  Merely by looking outside, I could tell he wasn’t lying about having come straight here. I also saw the people in the now-holed buildings start to evacuate.

  “Sh-Shu Starling!” roared one of the investigators who’d just rushed in through the apartment’s door. “Y-You’re under arrest for property damage!”

  “Gyaah! It was an emergency! Sbear meee!”

  ...It appears that he will stay in jail for now, I thought.

  Alas, this was a case I could do nothing about.

  ◇

  A short while later...

  Due to no one being injured, some mediation by Elizabeth, and the fact that it had been for the purpose of taking care of the culprit, Shu had ended up only having to pay for the damages.

  I could recall him shouting, “This is gonna cost me all my bearnings!” as he continued vigorously selling his popcorn.

  Thus, the curtain fell on the serial murder case that had shaken Gideon.

  Although, it was still a mystery who, exactly, Gerbera had been trying to show off to by creating this incident.

  Side Story: Epilogue — Outlaw

  The Gaol, Dead Hand, Gerbera

  I logged in after 50 hours of being offline and found myself somewhere that wasn’t Gideon.

  With dirt roads and dusty wooden buildings, it looked like a set for a western. The scenery obviously didn’t belong to any of the seven countries.

  “How unexpected,” I said. “I thought the ‘gaol’ would be more... jaily. Like... an indoor institution with thick walls.”

  I looked up and saw a blue sky, but then I realized that there weren’t any birds or clouds. It was also bright, but I couldn’t see the sun anywhere.

  Maybe this actually is indoors? I wondered.

  “Well, at least it looks like a nicer place to live in than I thought it’d be. Then again, I’m breaking out soon, anyway.”

  Yep. I’ve been sent to the gaol, but I’d be leaving in no time. I could just use my Alhazred’s ultimate skill and escape this stupid place, as easy as pie. And then I’d be the first Master to ever break out of the gaol!

  That’s my countermeasure to this situation!

  “...Which is probably just another thought he’d consider to be ‘warping reality into what I want it to be,’” I muttered.

  This was the first time I’d even had the idea of a “countermeasure.” I’d never thought I’d ever mess up, so I’d never even bothered to think of anything like that.

  I now knew that I’d been warping reality to make it convenient to myself... and it was all because of him.

  “Argh! I’m such a mess!” I shouted.

  Ever since hearing Rook’s words on that day, I’d started worrying all the time. When I tried to think something that made me feel good, I always questioned myself.

  It wasn’t just for what was happening now, either. Even my fun memories and the old moments of thinking I was great were falling apart.

  This had been happening ever since that moment. It was why I hadn’t been able to log in right after the death penalty ended. I’d needed time to get a grip.

  “I won’t forgive him for this!” I swore.

  I’d make Rook pay for digging into my mind and making a mess out of it.

  I also had a bone to pick with the KoD for destroying me and my Alhazred, which should’ve been invincible even without my warping, but that grudge was nothing compared to what I felt for Rook.

  Now that he’d said those words to me, I couldn’t have even a bit of fun. I couldn’t even become my ideal self back in reality. His sharp words prickled and bit me like a curs
e.

  That was why I decided to do everything to escape this gaol and get my revenge.

  It’s the reason why I even logged in!

  “First, I’ll make Alhazred check up on the gaol’s structure... But wait, if the rumors are true and it’s a different server, then escape is impo— No, I should still be able to... cough!”

  As I thought aloud, I suddenly started to choke on the dust in the air.

  Ugh! I can see that this place is based on westerns, but the amount of dust is awful, I complained. I want to rest in a clean place somewhere. They do exist here, right? I’ve heard that prisons that charge you are like hotels, not to mention that this is part of Infinite Dendrogram, so there should be more proper places here.

  If there weren’t, I’d find and force someone with a building-related Embryo or job to make me one. I had taken some construction jobs for my infiltration, so I could make designs. All I needed to build something was labor and materials.

  Yes — though it would only be a temporary home, I was a Superior, so I could obviously stand at the top of this place.

  Heh heh, becoming the queen of the gaol sure seems like tons of fun, I grinned. There might even be a hidden Superior Job for that! If I got it, my clan members would obviously think more of me!

  “But... can I really do it...?” I began to worry again. “Argh, come on, now!”

  “Hey there,” some man with a basic-looking avatar spoke to me. “Some new girl, aren’t ya? What’s with all the faces you’re making?”

  His appearance made it clear that he was some sort of PKer. He was obviously a shitty weakling.

  “Does it matter to you?” I snapped. “Get lost. You’re annoying.”

  If you don’t, I’ll tear you up with my Alhazred. He’s right behind you.

  “Whoa. Scary,” he said. “Well, I guess it’s normal to be mad when you arrive here for the first time. When I came here after the Prodigy of Feasts killed me at Wez Sea Route, I also...”

  He’s actually talking about himself. I’ll just kill him.

  “Oh yeah, by the way,” he said before I could do that. He then gave me a book. “You should have this.”

  “What’s this? I’m not joining any cult.”