Ishura - Volume 2 - Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Atrazek the Particle Storm

A hundred and sixty years had come and gone since the existence known as the “Particle Storm” started being spoken of in the Yamaga Barrens. The fierce winds, like a raging deity, were savage, the sand blocking out everything else in the world, sealing the five senses. Then, after it passed, nothing would be left behind in its wake.

There was no one who had discovered its true identity and made it back alive, and even houses built from stone were unable to defend against the weather phenomenon.

It broke out without any warning, disappearing without leaving a trace.

To the residents of the Yamaga Barrens, the Particle Storm wasn’t a godlike power—it was their god itself.

They believed their faith would let them escape from its divine power, and in actuality, that was indeed the case.

Villages that didn’t offer sacrifices were annihilated.

Villages that tried to defend themselves with the powers of civilization were annihilated.

Countries that kept extending their territory inside the desert were annihilated.

The village where a quiet, deep, and almost perverse fanaticism proliferated was the only one allowed to live.

Despite the settlement being a three-day horse ride from the neighboring city, the village was isolated in the shadow that the lights of civilization could not reach, and therefore, even during times of ruination brought forth by the Particle Storm, it never saw extinction.

The very day the calamity went on the move.

Ani, who was supposed to be offered to the Particle Storm, had disappeared during the night.

Hearing of their emergency, the village chief headed for the believer’s barrow by himself. So he could use his own life as compensation for the Particle Storm’s sacrifice.

“…P-Please, we humbly ask for your forgiveness.”

Facing the barrow stained with the blood of child sacrifices, he desperately pressed his forehead down into the ground in reverence.

The bone splinters and the dead that should have been laid out behind the barrow had been pulverized, disappearing in a single night.

“Lord Particle Storm. Please, we beg you. To atone for the foolhardy Ani, please take my blood, spare the people of the village. I beg you.”

The Particle Storm’s anger. Their god, who ruled over destruction.

With both hands, he held out a dingy wooden bucket for drawing water.

“If child’s blood is what you so desire, please take it! Six young boys, all under the age of twelve, this morning…I tied them up and killed them! I beg of you, Lord Particle Storm, your forgiveness…! Please!”

The wind howled.

A voice echoed from the other side of the formless wind.

“…How pitiful. Minia. I truly pity your kind.”

“A-aaah…”

The village chief was terrified. There wasn’t anyone of his generation who had directly heard the Particle Storm’s voice before.

“Why… Why do you act so foolish? If you killed a pack of children for today’s offering, then what do you plan to do for the next year’s offering?”

“W-well, um…”

“Do you intend to do as you have, and abduct them from some other place?”

“Eek…N-No! Th-that wasn’t it, at all!”

The god had spoken the truth.

“All of th-that, it was all to show our t-true faith to you, Lord Particle Storm.”

Once every year, they needed to offer up thirty-two children as living sacrifices.

Every year, the mothers of the village were forced to birth children, but even after robbing them of the children they had raised, it was ultimately not enough to support the village. Occasionally, it had been necessary to supplement their numbers with children abducted from elsewhere.

During the era when, with the arrival of the True Demon King, the people from the surrounding towns vanished, they had stripped the skin of smaller-sized elderly villagers and disguised them as children’s corpses. For over a hundred years, these were the things the village had done to survive.

“True faith, you say? Do you think I do not know of such truth? I know about every living person in this desert land. Everything, including the years when the number of children living in your pack were too few.”

In this desert, drawing water was the children’s job. There were times when these children, while crossing between the village and the watering hole, would be visited by the Particle Storm and disappear.

Their numbers dwindled.

“How wretched. I do not compel you to do anything, and yet you do things like this, adding to your foolish sins yourselves. Killing among your fellow minia, among parent and child, all to offer up these completely meaningless sacrifices. Though from your perspective, it may not seem a long time, you have worked hard to continue this incessant lunacy… I am truly impressed.”

The child sacrifices they gave as offerings weren’t even eaten.

They had been forced to look at the meaningless corpses, piling up as time went by.

They themselves hoarded the symbols of their own powerlessness and worthlessness.

This being, this god, had simply watched it all.

It was laughing. Contrary to its words, it felt not a single bit of sadness at all.

“P-Please! Mercy… I beg for mercy! Th-they don’t want to die! None of them want to die! Please, we beg you!”

“Such drivel, as you strangle your offspring to death? Very well. I see. How…how wretched.”

Whether their village was destroyed or not, from the very beginning, was entirely dependent on this being’s mood.

Their faith was meaningless. In this desert, all anyone could do was beg for mercy.

At the core of that mercy was boundless malice.

He acted not for the sake of destruction but simply to enjoy himself. He watched the small, predestined creatures fear his enormous power and, through their own choices, urge themselves toward their senseless ruination. Crazed by their fear of destruction, they suffered as they pointed the burden of their sacrifices to those even weaker than themselves.

What he truly was robbing from them was their dignity.

“Very well. Meaningless as it may be, your faith and affection have impressed me. Though, really, I had grown a little tired of it all. As a reward, I shall grant you the day of guidance. You believe in a day of guidance or something, yes? Naturally, I shall bestow it on all those living among your pack, as well.”

“P-Please… Anything but that…”

“Why do you sorrow? This is the mercy you so wished for. What’s the matter? Rejoice.”

The titanic presence—the ungodly something, with a true form of his own, lifted his head from the ground.

The chief was unable to lift his own head. He was unable to look upon the terrifying Particle Storm.

Tears of despair dripped from his downcast eyes. He, too, had offered up beloved children to this being many times before. His seven-year-old son. His two-year-old daughter. His five-year-old son.

The Particle Storm, which pulverized everything into dust, was no weather phenomenon.

It was produced by the being’s tremendous Force Arts.

If it was indeed possible for a living, breathing creature of the world to possess the strength of calamity itself—

Then such a being was even more terrifying than any true natural disaster…

“Rejoice.”

“Th-this is the u-ultimate…honor, Lord Particle Storm…!”

“Ah, yes. I see, I see. This is how the insanity comes, then. Truly admirable faith. As forgiveness for your forsaken foolishness, I shall show mercy, and instead of destroying your pack after your atonement—”

…because malevolence could exist within such a being.

“I shall destroy them first.”

And then, presently, in the Gumana Ravine.

The Particle Storm, which had laid waste to natural landscapes and populated cities alike along its advance, was face-to-face with two shura who outmatched and exceeded all common understanding. One of them, Mestelexil, was the ultimate weapon, built precisely for a calamity like this.

“Mestelexil! Go wild!”

Kiyazuna the Axle shouted from inside the Chariot Golem. She had brought all the golem materials, including the Blasting Blade, into the driver’s seat. The slightest exposure to the Particle Storm would easily be enough to wear and tear them apart.

“Ha, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Irokems fainek. Tostemkold. Eporosica quona—” (Molder causeways are four. Narrative burrow. Spin in deep eyelids—)

Toroa the Awful moved together with Mestelexil’s incantation. His target was the keeper of the enchanted sword, Kiyazuna the Axle. The golem immediately responded with his jet propulsors and used his giant body to stop Toroa’s enchanted sword.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“……”

He knew the attack would be blocked. That was why he had drawn the Frostvenom Blade. Mestelexil bent forward to hold back the blade. The crystalline substance began spreading over his torso from the point of contact.

…But they were in point-blank range. The elongated box-like launcher, shaped to be carried on the golem’s back, set its sights past Toroa to the Particle Storm behind him.

“—asbims (tear). DAGR.”

Next it was Toroa’s turn to bend his body and evade an attack. Crossing over his eyes as he bent backward, he saw guided missiles launched rapid-fire. They then sank into the Particle Storm’s sand layer one after another.

Muffled explosions rang out in succession.

A colossal shadow, lording over all before it, came into view on the other side of the dust and sand.

“Hm. I see, I see. So that is how you intend to defy me.”

The rapid-fire missiles, each one able to pierce the armor of the tanks in the Beyond, blew away the Particle Storm curtain, and exposed the true form of the god within.

“How pitiful.”

It was a wurm.

The ancient creature, possessing monumental strength through spontaneous mutation, was the true form of the Yamaga Barrens’ willed calamity.

After a moment, an even thicker curtain of dust kicked up. The missiles hadn’t left a single scratch.

The sandstorm, unceasingly grinding with its terrifying momentum and density, disintegrated it all. Having it infiltrate into one’s respiratory organs was enough to slice up their insides to dust.

The enemy calmly continued its advance. That, in itself, was its attack.

“All in this world are powerless particles. Nothing but particles to be wrapped in wind and soothe my tedium.”

A colossal amount of grit and gravel, on par with the entire landscape itself, was sent into motion.

Assuming every individual grain was simply under the influence of the lone wurm’s Power Arts…

The Particle Storm was an indestructible layer of particles that bested any and all of the world’s defenses, even those from the Beyond, while serving, too, as a reactive armor that kept all outside attacks in check with its reversed momentum.

Even if something should pierce those defenses, the wurm’s scales themselves were as tough as fortress walls. His colossal form overpowered all terrestrial creatures through physical strength alone.

The wurm’s unique bone-conduction–based Word Arts transmission was able to continuously maintain its gargantuan scale of Force Arts.

“…Damned monster.”

Even Toroa the Awful felt this way.

“Now to see, will you all turn to particles, too?”

He was undoubtedly a calamity. Born as disaster incarnate, his mind was filled with atrocity, able to take pleasure from watching living creatures die and go mad in the face of his power.

The disaster had a name—Atrazek.

No other person had ever used this name because he was simply the calamity.

He was enveloped in a particle offense, impossible to defend against, that infiltrated and gouged through any and every possible opening.

He was enveloped in a particle defense, impossible to attack, bereft of any vulnerabilities.

He could exercise his godlike authority eternally, never faltering.

The embodiment of calamity, outmatching all living beings, turning his true form into the very mantle of ruin itself.

Ruler. Wurm.

Atrazek the Particle Storm.