Chapter 11: Judgment of a Liar

In the end, I had absolutely no idea what Raika was thinking or what she needed.

Even after being told, "I want you to save Raika," I had accomplished nothing. It was pathetic.

I knew it wasn't something I could accomplish overnight, but the emotional distance between Raika and me hadn't closed at all. If anything, my impatience was only growing.

I had failed to fulfill Hazuki's first request of me.

I tried talking to Raika again and again, attempting to have a real conversation with her. It was only when I finally tried to see through what was going on inside her that I realized something.

Raika had never told me anything about herself.

"......Hey, Raika. What were you doing before you came here?"

Whenever I tried to close the distance between us, Raika would try to push me away.

She answered my question with an expressionless face.

"Who cares? Does it have anything to do with you?"

"......It does. I need to deepen my relationship with all of you Bluffers. Besides, you've helped me countless times."

"I didn't help you. You would've managed just fine without me. I know that very well."

I had no idea what she was referring to.

"I've just been living a lie ever since before I came here."

With only those words, she brought the conversation to an end.

And so, we finally reached the fateful day.

The sky looked like nothing I had ever seen before.

It was an endless sea of blue. Not an ordinary blue sky. There was no sun anywhere to be seen, the clouds weren't moving across the sky, and the flat, featureless blue simply stretched on forever.

It felt as though I had wandered into a painting. The blue was painted on so unnaturally thick that it didn't feel like it belonged to the world I lived in, and it made me uneasy.

Trying to distract myself from that uneasiness, I spoke to Hazuki, who was standing beside me.

"Hazuki, things feel kind of different today. Has the weather ever gotten this strange before?"

"No. I've never seen anything like this either."

Even Hazuki, who was normally calm and never changed her expression even during battle, seemed a little tense.

Looking around, I could see the Bluffers from other squads in the distance.

Apparently, this "Fictional Invader" was appearing across an extremely wide area, and a large number of Bluffers had gathered here.

The strange atmosphere only made the uneasiness inside me grow stronger.

"A sky as blue as a painting, huh? I wonder what that means."

"──The Last Judgment, perhaps. The motif is probably Michelangelo's fresco."

Victoria had approached us at some point and muttered the words quietly.

"Huh?"

"An apocalypse. In Christian terms, it's the day of judgment, when people are judged on whether they will go to Heaven or fall into Hell. This is probably a 'fiction' modeled after that."

She looked up at the brilliant blue sky and pointed.

"Can you see the people floating in the sky? They're great figures and saints who lived in the past. They're watching our fate. Watching the judgment."

Straining my eyes, I could make out something faintly floating within the deep blue sky.

Apparently, Victoria could see it clearly.

As she gazed at the sky through her eyepatch, there was none of her usual playfulness in her voice.

She wasn't joking around. She genuinely seemed to be analyzing the situation.

"So we're about to be cast into Hell?"

"Perhaps. Maybe we're going to be judged for something called Original Sin, despite having no idea what we did to deserve it. Well, regardless, what we have to do hasn't changed."

The eye not covered by Victoria's eyepatch turned toward me.

"Whether they're saints, the Son of God, angels, or even God himself, we take them down. We have to keep denying the domination of reality by fiction."

There was none of Victoria's usual lightheartedness in her words.

As Hazuki and I listened to Victoria, I saw Raika walking toward us from the distance.

Her demeanor was tense. As usual, there was nothing I could read from her murky eyes.

"The three of you are together, huh? There's a pretty troublesome enemy out there. Could you and Hazuki work together and take it down quickly?"

She seemed to mean me when she said "you." The suggestion was unusual coming from her.

"I don't mind, but......that's an unusual order coming from you, Raika. Usually, you take the position where you can protect Shota while I move to the front."

"Doesn't look like we have the luxury of doing that this time."

She looked up at the unnaturally blue sky as she spoke.

"Well, if that's what Raika thinks, I have no objections. Hazuki and I have trained extensively with Shota, after all. If we're going to use Bluffer Wearing, we're probably the best candidates now."

"Is that so? Then we should be fine."

Raika was unusually quiet today.

"Raika, is something wrong?"

"No. It's nothing."

She wouldn't meet my eyes. Normally, she would look straight at me and lie without hesitation, but now she wouldn't even look my way.

"Raika, just tell me what you want to say. I'm not as clever as you are."

"Yeah. You're right. In that case, I suppose I'll be honest too."

Raika looked straight into Hazuki's eyes.

"To the east. There's an exceptionally powerful enemy somewhere near that still-standing skyscraper. I don't know if we can beat it as we are now. So I want the two of you to work together and take it down. An Anchor's power is most effective when it's concentrated on a single person. That's why the two of you are the best choice."

She furrowed her brow and continued.

"......Honestly, it might be a fight for your lives."

Her eyes, filled with anguish, lowered.

In response, Hazuki gave a wry smile.

"It's unusual for you to ask me for something like this, Raika."

"You two have developed the strongest bond within the squad. If you're going to use Bluffer Wearing, you're the best candidates. I......I'm sorry. It feels like I'm dumping a troublesome job on you. I think it's only natural if you resent me for it."

"No. That's not it. You're wrong, Raika."

Hazuki grinned.

It was an expression she rarely showed.

"I'm happy. I'm happy that you relied on me. You always help me, yet you never let me help you in return. The fact that you've finally relied on me like this makes me incredibly happy. So don't make that sad face. Don't worry. I'll definitely come back with this guy."

"Hazuki......"

Raika's relieved smile was so happy that it was a side of her I rarely ever got to see.

"Raika. I promise I won't let Hazuki get hurt either. I want you to leave your precious friend to me."

"Yeah. I'm counting on you."

Raika smiled brightly.

For a moment, I studied her face.

Her right cheek wasn't raised. Her eyes weren't darting around. Her voice hadn't trembled.

......Ah. I see. She really meant it.

"Hazuki, let's go."

"Yeah."

We exchanged a few short words. With more determination than ever before, we walked toward the enemy.

〈TIPS〉 The Anchor's power becomes more dispersed as more Bluffers are within its range, so the fewer people there are, the greater the benefit each individual receives. It is said that a single Anchor can lend its power to a maximum of five people at once. For this reason, Bluffer squads are often composed of around five members.

"Ha......"

After the two of them had left for their destination, the white-haired girl suddenly burst into laughter once she was alone.

"Ha......AHAHAHAHAHA! Honest people really are a bunch of idiots! They listened to everything I said without even suspecting a thing! That's what a truly nasty liar does. To make someone believe a single lie, you control everything from your usual behavior to your facial expressions, all to earn their trust."

Her laughter was horribly hollow and dry, like she was desperately trying to keep up a facade.

The girl headed in the opposite direction from the one the two of them had taken.

To her, the path beneath her feet seemed like a one-way road straight to Hell.

"The real target is this way. You two won't even get to lay eyes on the boss. You green little brats can go home and play at romance or whatever."

She took a cigarette from the breast pocket of her suit and lit it. Normally, she wouldn't smoke somewhere she might be seen by other people, but the girl didn't seem particularly concerned about it.

"......This is bad. What the hell is this?"

Even after inhaling the smoke, she couldn't calm down.

She threw the first cigarette onto the ground and replaced it with a new one, but it made no difference.

"Ah, so this is what guilt tastes like. I remember now. I remember......Fuck."

She grimaced, tossed the second cigarette onto the ground, and walked toward the enemy.

〈TIPS〉 "Fictional Erosion" was born from human lies. Its strength is often determined by "how universal that lie was."

The enemy's positioning was already more or less clear to me from observing them through the scope earlier.

I'd succeeded in keeping everyone in the squad away from me. All that remained was to accomplish my objective.

I couldn't save Hazuki. If that was the case, then I'd have to do it myself.

"Yeah. This is the one."

After walking for several minutes, I finally reached the place I was looking for.

The eerie sky, dyed blue. An eerie silence where not even a sound could be heard.

The gazes of the saints watching me from far in the distance seemed to be directed straight at this place.

A cross was driven into the very middle of the cracked asphalt like a gravestone.

And beneath it was something with an overwhelming presence.

"──Ah."

As I approached, an arm burst out from the asphalt where the cross was embedded.

Like something straight out of a zombie movie, it crawled up from underground, revealing its entire body.

Yet the presence emanating from its upright body was nothing like that of dead flesh. Instead, it gave off an untouchable, almost divine majesty.

"──Original Sin still remains here."

It was some kind of humanoid entity whose form refused to settle, like a hologram.

It looked as though an alternate dimension had suddenly manifested right in the middle of the real world.

Its entire body seemed to be covered in static, making it impossible to even tell what its face looked like.

But there was one thing I could tell for certain.

It possessed an absolutely terrifying amount of power.

"Amorphous God. 'Mythology is the most universal fiction created by humanity,' wasn't it? Man, that's a bit much for an ordinary girl to take down."

I raised my handgun and grinned.

This was the boss of the first chapter in the original story I knew. The monster that drove Hazuki and the others to the brink and killed one of the Bluffers.

"Punishment upon those who break the commandments. Eternal suffering in Limbo. The End Times have come."

"Pick either Christianity or Buddhism. You've mixed together so many myths that the concept closest to 'God' has become one giant mishmash."

The Amorphous God moved. Its humanoid form, whose very outline refused to settle, glided toward me and drew back its fist.

"Drop dead."

I unleashed a rapid volley from my semiautomatic handgun. Even after taking the shots, the Amorphous God did little more than stop for a moment.

It barely seemed to have any effect. Apparently, this wasn't an opponent I could bring down with small-caliber rounds.

"Do you still intend to pile sin upon sin? Foolish."

"Switching──Assault Rifle."

I raised an assault rifle modeled after the most-produced rifle in the world and immediately opened fire on full-auto.

Heavy gunshots rang out in rapid succession, the recoil vibrating through my hands and shoulders.

The barrage of large-caliber rounds consumed a considerable amount of power, but in exchange, it delivered overwhelming destructive force.

This was the most powerful attack among the weapons I normally used.

"Kh......Blasphemy......High treason......!"

Bullets had indeed pierced its hologram-like body. However, it regenerated almost immediately.

The gods humanity imagined are, by definition, immortal beings. There was no way this thing could perfectly reproduce that concept, but obviously it wasn't going to go down easily.

......That said, my goal was never to kill this thing by myself.

"Judgment upon the high treasonous. Receive your due."

The Amorphous God raised its right hand toward the sky, and dark clouds instantly gathered overhead.

The air crackled with electricity.

In the unnaturally cloudless blue sky, the heavens seemed to descend toward me with a force that almost felt deliberate.

With my knowledge of the original story as a reference, it was easy to guess what was happening.

Realizing what attack was coming next, I immediately took evasive action.

"To think they'd reproduce the original story this perfectly......!"

The next instant, a deafening thunderclap assaulted my ears so violently that I thought my eardrums were going to burst. For a moment, the ringing in my ears drowned out every other sound.

The lightning struck about three meters to my right, blasting a crater into the ground.

If I'd taken a direct hit, even a Bluffer wouldn't have walked away unscathed.

"......Looking down on me, huh?"

The Amorphous God had somehow grown large enough that I had to look up at it.

The static covering its entire body remained unchanged, but its presence had grown immensely.

Its featureless face stared down at me from above.

The forms in which humanity has depicted its gods are countless and varied. If so, it wasn't strange for its appearance to change as well.

That said, this wasn't its final form.

Apparently, I'd have to keep provoking it a little longer if I wanted to make this thing take me seriously.

"Switching──Rocket Launcher."

Normally, I wouldn't use such an inefficient Fantasia Weapon, but this time I manifested one.

A rocket launcher that fires unguided projectiles, bringing destruction with an explosion upon impact.

It was a revolutionary weapon modeled after one that allowed even infantry to destroy tanks.

"Take this!"

I shouldered it and aimed at the enormous target before firing the warhead.

The accelerating warhead struck the massive silhouette head-on. An explosive roar rang out upon impact.

It drained a huge amount of my power. In exchange, I could definitely feel that it had done some damage.

From within the black smoke, the Amorphous God emerged──having returned to a human-sized form, it was charging straight toward me.

"Kh......Sawed-Off Shotgun."

The double barrel belched fire, and a storm of buckshot tore into the Amorphous God. The pellets gouged into its body, but its movement didn't stop.

"Judgment."

The moment its raised fist slammed into my abdomen, I felt an impact as though a bomb had exploded inside my body.

My small frame was blown away like a bullet, and my back slammed into the wall of a ruined office building.

"Kh......ah."

My consciousness grew hazy. The pain made it difficult to think. When I barely managed to raise my head, all I could see was the dark clouds gathering overhead.

"AAAHHHHH!"

Running purely on willpower, I forced my legs to move and dashed forward. I temporarily ignored the pain throughout my body.

Hearing the sound of lightning crashing down behind me, I slipped into the enemy's guard.

The Amorphous God seemed to have been caught completely off guard by my unexpected movement, freezing for an instant.

"Switching──Sawed-Off Shotgun."

"Ga......ah......!"

The horizontally double-barreled shotgun I manifested once again scattered buckshot everywhere. The bullets pierced its hologram-like body, and the Amorphous God contorted its face in agony.

"Switching──Submachine Gun."

I followed up without giving it a moment to breathe. The submachine gun, with its extremely short barrel, spat bullets at high speed, its light gunfire accompanied by fierce recoil that traveled through my body.

"GAHHHHHHHH!"

The Amorphous God let out a cry of agony.

My head was spinning from the backlash of using too much power. A submachine gun was simply too inefficient for me to use normally, which was why I rarely ever did.

I felt a strange sense of weightlessness, as though I could no longer tell whether this was a dream or reality.

Ah. I instinctively realized that Ascension Flyout was drawing near.

My eyes were probably already beginning to turn slightly red.

When our eyes become completely saturated with red, we Bluffers lose our minds as human beings.

While I was catching my breath, the Amorphous God had retreated a short distance.

The kind of attacks that would have torn a human body to pieces long ago.

After taking those attacks, the Amorphous God's appearance began to change.

"Repent. Accept your judgment."

Ah. So you've finally decided to show me that form.

The body mixed with holographic distortion gradually regained a more human shape.

The static running through its body hadn't disappeared completely. Even so, I could now clearly make out the figure of a man wearing only a loincloth.

When the Amorphous God held out its hand, a gigantic cross appeared before me.

This form was the Amorphous God's true power. It was what I had been waiting to see.

It was the instrument of execution upon which the Savior had once been crucified for bearing humanity's Original Sin.

The Amorphous God's ultimate attack. A recreation of the most famous execution in the world. Throughout history, the scene had been exaggerated in countless ways, with all sorts of lies being added to it.

"Beg for forgiveness."

In this case, I suppose you could also call it offering a sacrifice to God.

Since Fictional Erosion is based on human lies, its characteristics and weaknesses are the same.

By recreating the process of being executed while bearing Original Sin—or being offered as a sacrifice—the Amorphous God would have its power greatly diminished.

In the original story, Salvation Kanon used this to sacrifice herself and save Hazuki and the others.

The Amorphous God, which had nearly wiped out the entire squad, was defeated thanks to Salvation Kanon's sacrifice.

In the end, I couldn't think of any solution other than the one from the original story.

A way to defeat this "Fictional Erosion" without putting Hazuki and the others in danger.

Since Salvation Kanon didn't exist, I had to take her place.

Either way, I didn't have much of a role to play.

If I couldn't save Hazuki, there was no way I could save everyone else either.

I no longer had the strength left in my body to resist. I couldn't move, overwhelmed by the pain from the attacks I'd taken and the dizziness caused by using too much power.

Pulled by an invisible force, my body was dragged toward the base of the cross.

"......"

The Amorphous God approached me as I hung crucified upon the cross, carrying a massive spear.

"I shall pass judgment."

"Yeah. Get it over with."

"Execution" was the Amorphous God's most powerful attack. However, it could only be activated once.

Since it was recreating a myth, the moment it executed me, "Original Sin" would disappear. All that would remain was the weakened Amorphous God, stripped of the justification of humanity's atonement.

"......Ah, so this is the fate of a liar."

I was far from being a saint, but if I could die for the sake of good people, I suppose that was fine.

With that thought, I tried to close my eyes.