“All right. Enough of that!” The White King checked the squabbling that was devolving into physicality, and with eye lenses like Marquise-cut gems, she looked to the right and left sides of Ushas. “I’d like to introduce myself, so could I ask our two guests there to also come forward?”
Now that she mentioned it, there had been three dots, Haruyuki thought.
The remaining two dots flashed simultaneously and shot out several extremely thin beams of light like the ones he’d seen only moments ago.
Appearing to the left of Ushas was a tall woman like the personification of the word “noble.” Her hair was tied up in a complicated fashion and decorated with magnificent combs and accessories. The clothing she wore resembled but was still different from Bari’s hanbok and Amaterasu’s shrine maiden robes, an ample hanfu in the style of ancient China, and a slender straight sword hung from her left hip. This was probably Queen Mother of the West Xiwangmu.
Although her features were gentle, the aura she radiated was more powerfully intimidating than that of any of the other Beings, and Haruyuki couldn’t bring himself to gaze directly at her for even three seconds.
He quickly turned his face to the right just as the final dot had finished taking a three-dimensional shape. And took a startled step backward.
“Holy huge!” he cried out.
All of the high-ranked Beings he’d chanced to meet—Metatron, Amaterasu, Bari, Ushas, and now Xiwangmu—were women, and of the two pillars with whom he remained unacquainted, Night Goddess Nyx had “goddess” right there in her name, so he figured she was probably a woman, too. He’d sort of been convinced that the final pillar would also have been a woman.
But the new three-dimensional figure of light appearing to the right of Ushas sitting sulkily with her legs crossed didn’t even have a human form, much less have a gender.
Actually, it was human. But only the one part of a person—a head. Three, in fact.
The new Being was three enormous heads, two meters from crown to jaw, fused together and looking out in the directions of two, six, and ten o’clock. Indian-style crowns wrapped around their foreheads, and teardrop-shaped gems hung from their eyes. The sharp and fierce features were clearly male. He didn’t understand why the Being was in the form of heads, but there was no doubt that these three visages were the Storm King Rudra.
The front face looked down on Haruyuki with eyes that were, of course, closed beneath sharp eyebrows.
“…In recent days, it was you who so insolently contacted us, then,” a low, sonorous voice rang out, and Haruyuki froze in a cautious pose.
“C-contact?! I—I—I—I did?!” He was about to continue and say that this was out of the question, that they had never met before, but a second before he could, a small voice called to him from behind.
“It was when you escaped from my sense blockade, Crow.”
He didn’t have to turn around to know the voice belonged to Snow Fairy. This “sense blockade” was probably the asphyxiation attack she’d made him suffer through on the Highest Level. He had been so lost and panicked that he couldn’t remember what he’d done, but at the very least, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have contacted Rudra or any of the top-ranked Beings.
“The tiny one speaks true, Crow,” Amaterasu said, as if reading his mind. “While it was limited to the one time, your consciousness expanded to every corner of the Highest Level in the manner of a bubble popping. Xiwangmu appears to have simply been slightly annoyed, but Rudra was quite ticked.”
“Ticked…?” he parroted dubiously.
“This is what you small ones say when one is irritated, yes?” she responded, an eyebrow arched. “Milady used the word.”
What are you teaching her? he demanded of Tsubomi Koshika/Rose Milady in his mind before it clicked for him. He first learned of the existence of the DD world when he’d activated a negative Incarnate in order to escape Fairy’s asphyxiation attack. At that time, his consciousness spreading throughout the Highest Level must have unintentionally also touched the high-ranking Beings.
“Um… I-I’m sorry about that!” Haruyuki first turned toward the “ticked” Rudra and bowed deeply, before then bowing to Ushas and Xiwangmu on the left. “I definitely didn’t contact you on purpose. It was more like I had too much momentum. Or like my Incarnate suddenly couldn’t stop, and anyway—”
The reason I used negative Incarnate in the first place was because Fairy was suffocating me.
He decided against bringing this up as an excuse and instead apologized once more. “A-anyway, I’m really sorry!”
“You are not forgiven.” The thunderous voice shook even the nihilistic space.
Haruyuki jumped slightly and was about to prostrate himself in front of the Being, but Rudra continued, his tone softening slightly.
“If you desire the gift of our pardon, then you will make us an offering of a chariot’s worth of this cake or what have you that you fed to that arrogant Archangel.”
“…”
Haruyuki stood stunned, rooted to the spot.
Before him Ushas cried out, “Same!” and even Xiwangmu spoke for the first time, “We would have this, too.”
Metatron, how much did you boast about that cake?! He kept this question inside his head and bowed neatly. “U-understood… I will.”
Amaterasu and Bari had also ordered him to offer each of them a nagabitsu of cake (whatever that was), so now he had five deliveries to make. But this was a small price to pay if it meant the help of the top-ranked Beings. He wasn’t sure what a chariot was, though. Probably some kind of wheeled carry bag… As he considered the issue, Haruyuki continued to bow.
“It seems we can finally get to it, then,” the voice of White Cosmos rang out behind him once more.
It had only been three days since he’d come under her command, but he felt intuitively that what the White King was exhibiting corresponded to the highest level of patience on her own personal scale. If she was cut off again here, there was the threat of the ultimate war beginning: Burst Linker versus Being… This fear, fortunately, did not become reality.
The six Beings seated in the air—excluding Rudra, who was only heads—moved without a sound to form a large semicircle facing Cosmos. Haruyuki realized he was obstructing their view and immediately trotted in a crouch over to Snow Fairy and glued himself to her side. She turned irritated eyes on him, but this was any number of times better than being glared at by the Beings.
Meanwhile, the White King showed no sign of faltering under the gazes of the six pillars as she inclined her crowned head only the slightest bit and introduced herself. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all for the first time, excluding Metatron, who I’m already acquainted with. I am White Cosmos.”
The Beings remained silent, but perhaps she had anticipated this; Cosmos continued without quailing.
“Immediately after Tezcatlipoca destroyed itself, I received a message from the BB system. I will read it out to you.”
She paused for a beat and lowered her voice a touch.
“Final stage victory conditions. Defend the seven Beings/Units listed below until JST 2047-07-31, 24:00:00. MN2-01 Metatron. SJ2-01 Bari. SJ3-01 Ushas. BK1-01 Xiwangmu. KT2-01 Rudra. CY1-01 Amaterasu. SY1-01 Nyx. If four or more of the Beings are destroyed, Brain Burst 2039 will be deemed to have lost, and the trial will end.”