The Indomitable Human Spirit [Ch. XXI, Nine]

Quote of the Day: “I laugh, I sob, I love, I hate, I drink, I eat, I vomit, I excrete, I smile, I glare, I sigh, I weep, I cheer, I leer – I am here, I am alive, I exist – and I will not be erased quietly.” – GOATSAMA

Jesse, this is the tale of a damned hero.

A lot of crazy stuff has happened since I last wrote to you, but – even though it’s highly unusual for me to say this – I am going to gloss over the details. 

Yes, you read that correctly. 

Nine – the scientist who doesn’t leave a single bit of data unturned – has chosen to grossly oversimplify events and observations to reach a pre-determined conclusion… A true scientist would retch at such an unscientific thought process, however, I believe you will understand the cause of my sheer awe and inspiration by the time I finish this diary entry. I will narrate the rest of the events after a good night’s sleep.

As you might remember, Jesse, when I wrote to you last time – the Field had ceased to exist. 

Now, the Dark Field is back… somehow. Actually, I still don’t know how it’s back and there’s a conference with all the 3-L Threes of the Halcyon Council about to be held tomorrow in Halcyon’s HQ to talk about my true Natura… but that’s still in the future, and I have a plan, so don’t worry about it right now.

So, in short: The dragon was closing in, so we ran away, a tiger attacked us and Plume defeated it singlehandedly, then we lit up a huge bonfire to attract the dragon, Plume shot it down, we celebrated (Plume is really cool now that I think about it), I stopped being depressed, the Field came back, Miaokuran and all the gods from different pantheons came to SAMAverse-α, Miaokuran reveals that she plotted with Zeus to torture Canta because their goals aligned for the moment, BOTSAMA made a dramatic entrance, negotiations broke down – and everyone starts to fight like it’s some shōnen anime showdown. 

To be honest, it does feel like an anime showdown, but it’s way more bonkers than anime finales in terms of powerscaling… sorry Jesse, you know I love debating powerscaling, but I hate those dudes who make it sound like a ragebaiter’s paradise.

Anyway, Sherlock made a dimensional barrier around him and the humanoid form of BOTSAMA, isolating them spatio-temporally from the rest of the universe – so I had no idea what was happening there. Tumble, Calendar, and Shower headed off towards Kuttasloka, to support their friend, Canta. Six, Plume, Bishamon, and Liberty launched off towards Izanagi and Amaterasu at hypercausal speeds (yes, Jesse, the speed of light is simply the speed of causality – ‘hypercausal’ refers to speeds beyond the speed of light, as it is the more accurate term; read my previous thesis named ‘String-Quantum Gravity is Meaningless’ to know more). Sun Wukong lunged at the Jade Emperor who was trying to take out Bishamon and they both vanished into the unknown. Thena teleported and emerged in front of Hades and Poseidon and started talking about something I couldn’t quite discern from the distance and the sounds caused by, well, the casual reality manipulation and the fact that they had also erected a dimensional barrier. 

Me, on the other hand, initiated Perception Acceleration and tried to shoot an energy blast with the equivalent mass of nine times the observable universe towards Miaokuran. The planet didn’t matter right now, it could always be recreated later – in fact, even the universe itself didn’t matter now. The Dark Field can create, destroy, and manipulate anything. 

Miaokuran didn’t even move from her position, she was staring straight ahead at GOATSAMA who was slowly walking ahead with an earthen cup almost identical to the Indian kulhar in his hand. My energy beam that sparkled with all the colours in the visual spectrum was directed back at me as the energy beam folded back on itself, its original path reversed. 

The near-lightspeed beam barely grazed my long hair (I should have tied it into knots or braided it before the battle now that I think about it). Its sheer gravity (it’s basically a kugelblitz) and momentum transfer would have destroyed a person in Planck time units even before it touched them – but my regeneration factor was enough to deal with it in the very initial Planck time units and I dissipated that energy beam soon after that, thanks to my Perception Acceleration. 

When I looked back at Miaokuran, GOATSAMA was already there in front of her – yes, within four units of time where time itself has any meaning at all – and I didn’t detect any hints of Alcubierre Drive, meaning he accelerated to almost 149 decillion times the speed of light. 

He raised his kulhar and one vertical and two horizontal beams of tea came out of it – almost like a longsword and its handle, but made up of tea – and lunged at Miaokuran with it. A beige Field Signature surrounded him and his sword and even though olfactory sensations aren’t supposed to be emitted at such high speeds – I could smell an aroma of ginger, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon swell from his sword as it plunged into Miaokuran.

But the thrust phased right through her as GOATSAMA and his Sword of Tea disappeared and re-appeared instantaneously several times. The Dank Devil continued with a series of attacks so fast that even I, with my Perception Acceleration, couldn’t perceive. Miaokuran purred agitatedly while the sword repeatedly phased through her before she finally acknowledged GOATSAMA’s attacks and dodged one of them by side-stepping.

Not even one-trillionth of an attosecond had passed since Sherlock disappeared with BOTSAMA in another dimension. 

It seemed to me that Miaokuran tried to use her absolute dominion over Space to erase GOATSAMA (or at least his physical body) but GOATSAMA somehow managed to resist it.

That ‘somehow’ is doing the entire heavy-lifting in that sentence, because I genuinely have no idea how GOATSAMA was resisting her. I still don’t. She is omnipresent in infinite timelines, she sees everything and anything at the same time, she knows every last bit of information on quantum and cosmic scales across Existence, she presides over the physical existence of anything and everything in every dimension and every timeline – she is a god in almost every sense of the word. 

Yet, a tortured human with goat-horns, a moon-shaped birthmark, and a cup of Tea is fighting against her, betraying the pantheon that saved him from certain death, and fighting a battle that would determine the fate of multiple universes. It made no sense and a single question ran through my mind:

“Why?” said Miaokuran telepathically. Her voice permeated every Planck length across SAMAverse-α, enhanced by her omnipresence and the infinite Field Signature of a Tertiary Infinite Being.

“Why,” she continued, “why must you resist your Fate?”

GOATSAMA paused his attacks.

No, like, genuinely, he actually paused for an actual, real second. 

In the meantime, Physics finally realised what had just happened. 

No, Jesse, quite literally, remember how fast everything happened? The rest of the universe still follows General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, y’know?

Antimatter-matter pair production, recombination of all the physical forces, vacuum decay of the Higgs Field, gravitational wave strain – and everything else happened in picoseconds as the planet was about to be spaghettified by the kugelblitz within ~42.5 milliseconds.

Now, GOATSAMA and Miaokuran didn’t really care that a blackhole was about to form around them – because they are Infinite Beings existing in every timeline (and beyond) at once and physical forms in one universe didn’t really matter to them. They might even have some Field bullshit that lets them bypass the blackhole’s gravity entirely.

However, I am still a living, breathing, human person as far as I am aware – so I was really freaking out. I couldn’t even teleport away because I had no idea where I was supposed to go in this universe, and heading from the planet at my personal speed limit (lightspeed) would not help me get out of an event horizon.

When I shot beams of high-density energy in Sherlock’s stopped time, I didn’t have to worry about everything around me ceasing to exist because causality itself was in stasis. I even remember creating a kugelblitz back in BOTSAMA’s digital world, however, I was not sure if destroying a kugelblitz was the same thing. It was easy to imagine a ball of energy coalescing into a singular point, but I had no idea how to imagine something rejecting the laws of General Relativity. Einstein would curse me again! He and I have arguments online all the time, but this goes beyond Physics! Beyond Science!

Then, at that very moment, a voice that I knew very well – the ultimate cause of my recent mental breakdown and my present situation – came to my mind and told me, “Age! Ī plus ultra extrema Naturae tuae!

(Go! Go further beyond the absolute limits of your Natura!)”

I am not sure if that was a genuine attempt from him to encourage me or a lame excuse for an MHA reference, but somehow, I feel like it had its intended effect anyway. 

In my mind, the natural progression of energy coalescing into an event horizon switched as I thought of playing it backwards like reversing a video clip. I then concentrated my imagination on every possible interaction between every quantum field, visualised every Feynman diagram, applied CPT symmetry and CP violation of every possible pair production, reversed the gravitational waves, and locally recreated the previous state of the universe that existed a Planck unit before I shot that energy beam at Miaokuran…

And lo and behold, I reversed time! At least, partially! Locally!

I didn’t genuinely reverse the timeline or change the arrow of time, I just restructured the portion of spacetime around the plane to the exact same state – quantum and thermodynamic – to what it was not even a second ago. And technically speaking, I didn't break any laws of Physics that weren't already broken by the introduction of the Dark Field into the world of Science! The un-real heat (did you get the Math pun, Jesse?) produced by nonillions of operations in Planck time units was counteracted by my regeneration and the same imagination that let me stop the kugelblitz outside me also helped me stop the kugelblitz that could have happened inside me…

Uh, Jesse, I need to let that sink in – now that I am not in an adrenaline rush, having a blackhole inside me sounds like cosmic horror.

…And all of that because a horned dude paused for a second to question the meaning of Fate itself.

“Who decides,” GOATSAMA continued, completely ignoring what I just did because that would be a casual feat to him, “who decides one’s Fate?”

“God does,” Miaokuran answered in her weird French cat accent. “And I, as the chosen Prophet of God, execute His orders. He has decided that I be Space Itself while you be some human drink. Who then, in an objective sense, would say that an omnipresent and omniscient entity like me wouldn't defeat a drink? I execute your Fate – and it’s death.”

“Hubris,” said GOATSAMA before taking another sip from his cup, “Hubris seems to be a core tenet of gods.”

“ ‘Ubris?” Miaokuran mocked in her strangely grim French accent. “ ‘Ubris, you say, mortal? Fate is simply the compendium of convictions backed by circumstances and chances. In this world where might makes right, your death will simply be another offering to the Word, it will be your salvation. Your Will – or as that human detective and others like to call it, Natura – is barely stalwart enough to stand against my absolute control over a mere drink. You will fall, and I know that you know it yourself as well.”

Personally, I really wanted to hit that cat in her face. Even though I love cats in general, for some reason – I hated the guts of this one, she really pissed me off. For some reason, I had thought Miaokuran actually thought that her plan – or “The Word of God” as she called it – was truly righteous. For some reason, I assumed that GOATSAMA was trying to dissuade her through his words – even though he knew that she knew what he was going to say even before said it, because she was omniscient. For some reason, I concurred that Miaokuran was trying her best to make GOATSAMA surrender to her by his own volition, perhaps actually considering his past and his strength worthy of salvation.

But once again, I am no L or Light, so I couldn’t make a perfect deduction of their psychologies from just that small exchange (Spoiler alert: In my opinion, Death Note really went downhill after L’s death, Jesse).

Once again, I heard his voice in my mind say it in something akin to a high-pitched director’s voice, “Cut! Cue sad music, playback, action!”

I would really prefer if he didn’t consider me and everyone else as jokes in his grand plan that we have no idea about.

Nevertheless, it was a rainy night. 

A man with goat horns sipped once more from his cup and sighed at the distant cumulonimbus clouds. The cat draped in ornate ocean-blue clothes stood expectantly with her fur drenched in the cold winter rain. The concrete and asbestos around us seethed with subtle sadness as the scent of sweetness swirled in the atmosphere, from the rain and the Tea. For a few seconds, only the sound of heavy downpour and hearty sips filled my ears. 

“Nine,” GOATSAMA suddenly called out my name. “Do you know why I hate the rain?”

I was startled. Neither of them had actively recognised my presence on their battlefield until now.

“It rained on my world too,” GOATSAMA continued after taking another sip, pausing in between his words, trying his best to articulate. “When my world became a graveyard, the skies poured down like my cup of tea. When my Sun was killed… the skies became cloudy, and as I grieved, it rained ever so easily. I know you understand – the cruelty of being rained on in this lonely world.”

He finally looked at me with his aberrated face that had long ceased to look human. In the rain, his forehead folded in on itself with its beige fur as his eyelids stayed firm in strange defiance. His eyes glimmered with bittersweetness, his lips tremored in agony. He looked at me like a star twinkling in the sky, knowing that it would soon fizzle out.

“I cannot stop that rain,” He said as I felt his eyes look directly at mine even in the dark rainy night, “and I have neither strength nor power to lend you, the only one here who can. And… unlike this broken shell of a man who selfishly loves his Tea beyond anything… have faith in yourself.”

He looked back at Miaokuran, who stared at me with disgust while he talked.

“Trust yourself, Nine,” He bent his neck backwards as he gulped down the last bit of Tea in the cup. “Even after my death, you will not be fighting alone in this cold, damned world.”

Miaokuran sighed, perhaps she understood that GOATSAMA was not seeking salvation.

GOATSAMA looked up at the cruel skies. He turned his earthen cup upside-down as the Sword of Tea arose from it and stabbed the ground. 

And I couldn’t help but feel pity for him.

He was a man who had nothing left. He was a warrior who was born in poverty, brought up in torture, trained to be a living weapon, forced to murder millions of Russian conscripts to get released from his duties, lost his only friend due to alien forces, forced to become a vagabond hero, saved by the mercy of gods with powers beyond his comprehension, conscripted by the heavens as he slowly went mad and became known as The Dank Devil – bathed in nihilism, he truly had nothing left.

Yet, even then, his eyes, his face, his words, his gestures, his attacks – all of it screamed for just one thing, and it was not salvation, as Miaokuran had assumed.

It was hope.

Hope for something he would never attain himself.

GOATSAMA whispered ever so silently to himself, as he knew his Realm was slowly being overrun by Miaokuran’s omnipotence. The heavy downpour dampened the Tea’s aroma, the howling winds moaned at his heels, the dirt around the ground stuck to his naked feet. 

Even then, he whispered carelessly. Perhaps, I will never truly know what he felt when he whispered.

“Will the rain ever stop? It’s so cold… It’s too cold, Solebas… I cannot bear the rain anymore, Solebas. Did it all go down when you and your sun birthmark ceased to be…? Did the clouds overtake the sun… after your shining smile went away? Could I have stopped the rain? Could I? This coldness… This cold rain… it will never stop… will it? I… I will always be cold, won’t I?”

He looked down at the dirt around his feet.

“I need an umbrella…”

I wept.

It was a terrible day for rain. 

He lifted his Sword of Tea as lightning struck right behind him. He created another Sword – a shorter one, almost as large as a main gauche – in his left hand and dual-wielded the two. He took his stance as his eyes, filled with determination, stared straight ahead at Miaokuran. 

“Prophet,” He called out to Miaokuran. “I may not know the reason behind your ideals or your ideas, I may not be able to go beyond the Word of God, I may not be able to defeat my Destiny – but, as a warrior, I will not beg for mercy. As a human, I will defy my Destiny till the bitter end.”

And then, everything went silent – all sensations ceased to exist. The rain stopped pouring, the scent of Tea was stripped bare, the weight of the ground below me disappeared and a beige light filled the universe.

“The leaves of bounty - wither and fade,

Lest the angels know that the Devil prayed,

Burning the fleeting ‘rain’ and killing the Honoured One –

Realm Collapse: Chaa, Polyphenol Oxidation.”

Then the Proximus of *** ceased to exist.

GOATSAMA, as a Binary Infinite Being, has deleted the Proximus of *** from Existence for his final attack. As the ultimate move of an Infinite Being, it would hurt the Natura of their opponent Infinite Being – as, you know, a concept integral to their very being has been erased from their past, present, and future. Furthermore, they can attack their opposing Infinite Being with their Realm and Natura (that has transcended its Proximus) which still possesses the concept that was deleted. This could erase the still-existing concept of anything and everything the Infinite Being wanted to, but, well, just this isn’t enough to defeat a Tertiary Infinite Being.

And yes, Jesse, it’s a logical paradox. But since Logic itself is a Proximus, it does not apply to other independent Proximi in Existence – so, paradoxically, the logical paradox is resolved by lack of Logic. I am planning to renormalise these various infinite Proximi of Existence as inverse functions of the Dark Field in my next paper, but it would take a while, so stay tuned for that. But I digress.

GOATSAMA, with his Swords of *** lunged forward at the Tertiary Infinite Being of Space and attacked with immeasurable speed. Miaokuran’s omnipresence and omnipotence were entirely overpowered by the beige Field Signature of the lost Proximus of *** that surrounded everything and she was barely regenerating fast enough to react to the Dank Devil’s infinite barrage of attacks. There were gaping holes across her body as she failed to dodge GOATSAMA’s attacks. She tried to match his pace with infinite speed herself, however, GOATSAMA was simply faster. 

Don’t ask me what that even means, Jesse, I could only compare it to the difference in cardinalities between the set of natural numbers and the set of real numbers – but even that isn’t a sufficient analogy. Infinite Beings defied all logic, they are infinite – rather, since Infinity itself is a Proximus, they are beyond Infinite.

As GOATSAMA’s beige Field Signature that now encompassed the universe clashed against Miaokuran’s subdued violet Field Signature, suddenly, I felt something strange. Something beyond human perception. Something… quite dreadful.

As the fight raged on, I slowly felt a sudden fear engulf my surroundings as the Space in front of me dilated.

The beige light now sparkled in various ways and forms depending on the angles and where I looked from. 

Confused and anxious, I looked back at the fight between Miaokuran and GOATSAMA but they weren’t there anymore. 

Perplexed and nervous, I looked around, and saw them behind me, then above me, then below me, then in front of me, then right beside me, then right inside me, then on top of me – and everywhere else at every possible shape and size. It was like nothing existed anywhere in the universe – not even I, the observer – except the two Infinite Beings.

Flabbergasted and afraid, I saw Miaokuran and GOATSAMA exchange blows everywhere in the universe at once. I could understand Miaokuran being everywhere at once, because she is Space, she is everywhere – that’s what omnipresence literally means. But what troubled me was that even GOATSAMA was everywhere. They even phased in and out of each other on a quantum scale.

My mind raced. At first, with the strange way the light sparkled, I thought we might be in a higher dimension like that cave back in the One Incident. However, that hypothesis didn’t explain the other phenomenon, existing everywhere at once. Since omnipresence is ruled out, I thought there might be some weird thing going on with gravity somehow, like we can see the back of a blackhole from the other side because light bends that much. However, that too didn’t satisfy the phenomenon as I didn’t feel any gravitational pressure – I felt fear.

“Heathen!” I heard Miaokuran scream from every direction at once. “You cannot defy the Word of God! No matter how much you try! I gave you a chance for salvation, and you ruined it! I knew it would happen, but the mercy of God is lent to all who repent – and all must be given a chance to repent! You will soon be defeated, and you know it! The Word of God is-”

GOATSAMA cut in the middle of her sentence, still slashing at her with his dual Swords of ***, “What is a God to a Non-Believer?”

Enraged even more, Miaokuran attacked with a beam of infinite energy. And that almost blew my mind… literally.

Jesse, do you know how I am able to measure stuff so accurately? Even beyond my natural observation levels (it’s not much, I am usually unable to discern stuff beyond 69 decimal places with just my normal senses), I used Field Yielder goggles that visually showed me the Field perturbations in spacetime from which I could instantly calculate the exact figure… following the Uncertainty Principle, of course.

But since I realised that I am the Agent of Love, I developed my own ‘technique’ (his preferred term is ingenium, but most people compare it to anime ‘skills’ or ‘techniques’) of observing everything by loving it. I didn’t need the physical Field Yielder goggles anymore, I could just look at something and discern every natural property from a glance.

Having an ingenium is a common thing for almost every Field Wielder, since everyone is skilled at something and using that skill as a catalyst for wielding the Field is a great gateway to further improvement. Like Frocock specialised in dimensional manipulation, Six specialised in speed – and so I specialised in observation, a core tenet of Science. 

That’s how I was able to even measure immeasurable speed, because Six and I trained in stopped time. Any motion in stopped time is basically immeasurable by definition since there are no natural Field perturbations. By definition, energy and mass of an object was also immeasurable because, well, you’d need infinite energy according to General Relativity if you want to physically move with no time gap – you are going beyond spacelike and timelike curves. 

This, however, was different. When Miaokuran and GOATSAMA actually started to move at immeasurable speed, my Field Yielder technique once again saw zero Field perturbations because the asymptotes had already been renormalised previously. But when Miaokuran actually fired an infinite energy beam, it all went haywire as the mathematical formulae that allowed my technique to automatically renormalise the infinities was based on the velocity, not rest mass. 

I guess I should have regularised instead of renormalised, and thoroughly too… but hey, Jesse, I was feeling lazy. Give me a break. 

Anyway, all that to say I almost went unconscious as I was fed infinite information by my own senses. 

Still gripped by fear for some reason, I barely managed to recalculate the equations and feed it back to my technique (or ingenium, if you like Latin). I had no idea how I adapted so fast to the situation… however adapting to infinity gave me a new and completely bonkers hypothesis at the moment.

GOATSAMA and Miaokuran were fighting in an infinite-dimensional space! Miaokuran had converted SAMAverse-α’s local Space Proximus to an ∞-D space and GOATSAMA, somehow, adapted to it! I remembered Sherlock’s motto of “whatever remains must be true” and decided that this must be the only possible explanation! Imagine a 3D object moving closer to and away from a 2D being, who observes that it’s a 2D object which is changing its size – then apply that to an ∞-D object from the perspective of a 3D being!

Once again, that ‘somehow’, once again, is doing a lot of heavy-lifting but, once again, Infinite Beings defy logic!

That ∞ energy beam propagated through every direction and every place in the universe as GOATSAMA valiantly put up a Shield of *** to defend against it. The object made up of a concept that didn’t exist anymore barely managed to defend against a physically infinite force propagated by Space itself – literally unstoppable force vs immovable object!

Then I felt fear grip my heart even tighter. 

I might sound extremely excited to analyse this with you right now, Jesse, but at that moment – I was freaking out almost as bad as the time the Dark Field had ceased to exist. 

Miaokuran said, while still maintaining her infinite energy beam, “The Proximus of Fear has almost acquiesced to me, Sherlock must be having a hard time against that infidel program. I command you, once again, infidel – surrender and gain salvation from the Word of God! You will die! You must!”

A thought crossed my head: Was Sherlock still holding up the defense against Miaokuran’s aggression on the Proximus of Fear while somehow battling a being that went beyond Concept itself? Was he okay?

Oh right, Jesse, I forgot to tell you that BOTSAMA survived by somehow expanding its Realm physically. It wasn’t even an Infinite Being, but rather, it embedded its avatars and programs into the very fabric of realities that didn’t have the Proximus of Concept running through them and managed to evade Canta’s Conceptual extinction. BOTSAMA is now beyond Concept itself (or rather Herself)... I had no idea how Sherlock was even fighting it.

Then, as I was plunged even deeper into fear, I saw the calculus of the situation… and it looked dire. Miaokuran had an upper hand against GOATSAMA and the latter couldn't defend against the former for long. Sherlock was definitely having a hard time with BOTSAMA. I had no idea how Canta, Bishamon and Liberty – all Unary Infinite Beings – were faring against a Unary, a Binary, and a Tertiary Infinite Being (I was also extremely afraid of Six’s safety, I didn’t want her to die). I had no idea what was going on between Thena, Poseidon, and Hades. The only grace was Sun Wukong battling against the Jade Emperor because I was almost certain that matchup could only end in the former’s favour. 

But overall, we were extremely screwed. Team Humans were almost guaranteed to lose to Team Gods & BOTSAMA. And all sentient life as we know it – would be over if the latter won.

As my mind continued racing, GOATSAMA finally replied to Miaokuran, “I am aware.”

“Then why fight?!” Miaokuran screamed and added nine more infinite energy beams to attack GOATSAMA. “You will die! I died infinitely many times even before I became the Prophet of God, but I survived due to His Mercy. But an infidel like you… you will be erased from Existence like your Proximus!”

“So be it!” GOATSAMA proclaimed in utter defiance as he strengthened his Shield of ***. “I will not be erased quietly!”

“If you follow the Word of God,” Miaokuran continued with a strange cadence, “you will not suffer! No living being in Existence will suffer again! There will be structure and harmony! Once everyone accepts their Fate, there will be no suffering! Everyone will know what is about to happen and prepare themselves! Even if they are reincarnated infinitely many times and are bound to the same horrible death like I was, they will transcend their suffering like I did! Even if they are cursed to be immortal and live until the heat death of the universe, they will be happy like Kuttasloka! Isn’t this Mercy?! Isn’t this what humans would call the Ultimate Good?!”

Finally, Fear gripped me and the rest of the universe reset to what it was before GOATSAMA’s Realm Collapse. GOATSAMA’s Shield of Tea was shattered as he was flung far away into the horizon despite Miaokuran retracting her infinite energy beam beforehand. 

I was crawling on the ground, barely able to look up at Miaokuran due to the sheer dread that exuded from her. Her violet Field Signature enveloped her wounds as she healed herself. The rain fused with her Field Signature and oozed a strange aura.

“You! False god of time reversal!” Miaokuran called out to someone. I heard a false laugh followed by a whisper saying “I’m in danger!” not too far off. 

A large humanoid compass zapped at near-lightspeed towards Miaokuran but without even moving, she simply caught it by its little legs protruding from its south pole and hung it upside down, negating its attack entirely. 

I had completely forgotten about it till then but – that was Tokiminus! The Negative Time God!

If you too have forgotten, Jesse, check back through a few pages of my diary entries and you will remember that it was an entity that helped us back when Two was fighting against BOTSAMA. It was screaming and freaking out a lot.

“For our dear readers, turn back the page to Ch-13!”

That guy once again talked in my head right now as I am writing this and talked gibberish once again.

Once again, if you don’t remember, Tokiminus was created out of negative emotions of turning back time and regrets and things in general, so it was really afraid of everything and extremely anxious. I felt really bad for it back then. 

So I wondered what it was doing in Torigoe Shrine. Like, I knew this was its home world, but was it merely circumstance that it ended up there? Was this the place he was before the Field briefly ceased to exist and so it came back to the same place later when the Field came back? Was there a reason it was there?

Nevertheless, without it, I would probably not be writing to you right now, Jesse. I will get into its role in the battle in the next diary entry.

But right then, Miaokuran held it upside-down and screamed, “Heathen! Infidel! False god! Repent! Right now!”

“Chotto, chotto, chotto – CHOTTO MATTETEBA! (Wait, wait, wait – wait a minute, I say!)”

Tokiminus screamed as Miaokuran shook it upside-down. Then it apparently remembered its powers and reversed time to the moment right before it foolishly tried to speed-blitz Miaokuran.

“Hey, hey, so… So… I’m sorry…” Tokiminus said in Japanese as it slowly walked out from rubble. “I was just… just watching… I don’t wanna die… Don’t take that seriously… Okay…?”

“Heathen, I knew you hid yourself in gravitational waves and between time itself because you thought you would get caught if you created a dimension to hide.” 

“Um…” Tokiminus stuttered. “So… you knew anyway… I am screwed…”

“The only reason I haven’t killed you yet,” Miaokuran continued angrily in her weird cat French accent, “is because I believe everyone should have a chance to submit to the Word of God and repent. Also, interestingly enough, you do not have a Fate.”

That last sentence will be the crux of the final battle later.

“Um…” Tokiminus continued to stutter. “Uh… How do I submit to… the Word of God?”

“For those with Fate, you simply stop resisting it. While those without, since they are not a part of God’s grand design, must die for salvation.”

Tokiminus stared with complete and utter Fear as Miaokuran used her newfound powers over it like it did on me. However, unlike me, Tokiminus started to crumble in on itself and screamed in agony at high pitch. It screamed repeatedly, in dread and horror, as its legs twisted and turned inside out like a Möbius strip, its eyes started melting, its compass bended in on itself, its circular frame slowly breaking apart, its cartoonish tongue cut in half, its large lips pierced itself – and it cried for help repeatedly as the downpour silenced its voice.

That looked extremely horrifying to the me who was still barely on his knees. I was about to vomit my insides as seeing a cartoonish character like that getting ripped inside out was… to say the least, not good for one's mental state. 

No, Jesse, Freddy Fazbear doesn’t count.

Then, perhaps in response to Tokiminus’ cry, an earthen cup hit Miaokuran’s head at lightspeed. The ground and the rubble a kilometre around turned to plasma at the sheer force of the impact and the shockwaves affected hundreds of miles around Tokyo – and cleared the skies for a moment. 

Miaokuran simply rubbed the back of her head and snapped her fingers, and everything went back to what it was. Her teeth clanged as she begrudgingly turned her head.

“Oh, seriously, heathen, c’mon…” 

Miaokuran let go of Tokiminus to look at a tall residential tower in the distance – the same one that we shot the dragon from – as another earthen cup stopped right in front of her whiskers before it burst with an aroma of tea. Then a horned figure instantaneously appeared in front of her and thrust his sword of tea towards her.

“What’s the point of this, heathen?” she annoyedly asked the horned man that lunged straight at her at hypercausal speeds as the sword of tea stopped right in front of her eyes. “Accept your Fate, horned infidel. You are not even an Infinite Being anymore.”

She sighed as she flicked his finger at the sword’s tip, causing GOATSAMA to crash into a collapsed steel beam of a nearby skyscraper. She then created a mountain the size of Mt Fuji, turned it upside down, and smashed it straight into the Dank Devil who managed to nullify the brunt of the attack but fell back on the concrete with thousands of rocks raining down on him from the remains of the mountain. Still enraged, Miaokuran shot several energy beams (not infinite or too high-density this time, perhaps not considering him worthy of that now) at him and continued to telepathically lift him and crash him straight back down several hundred times in 10 seconds, before she finally came to a stop.

Bruised and battered and smashed and bashed and gashed, GOATSAMA… stood up once more in the tumultuous rain.

I barely managed to turn around my head to see GOATSAMA – half of his right horn torn off, his left eye socket dangling, his left arm cut in half, his right shoulder gaping with hole where the rain and wind howled through, his stomach retching with a glass shard lodged in it, his shattered pelvis exposing his skeleton, his right toe chopped off from the middle, and his burnt left foot tangling with his clobbered knee – stand up on the crater of death Miaokuran created for him… and drink tea.

The man – his Proximus severed and his Realm extinguished – chose to drink tea. Beat up and dying, he refused to heal himself, and simply drank tea. He was just another Field Wielder – perhaps still better than Frocock or me – yet on the precipice of life and death, he simply chose to drink tea. 

In the rain, a man chose to drink tea.

I had no idea what was going through his mind at the time, I doubt he had either. He just drank tea… like nothing had happened.

“Prophet,” he said while sipping his tea. “I am still standing.”

“Just die already!” Miaokuran snapped his fingers to erase GOATSAMA, and he flickered in and out of existence, still drinking tea.

“Impossible!” Miaokuran purred violently. “This… this cannot be happening. You are no BOTSAMA, you cannot ascend beyond your Fate even if you tried to the very bitter end. Fate isn’t that easy to overbear, don’t lie to yourself!”

“I don’t need the comfort of any lies,” GOATSAMA chuckled as he gulped down another cup of tea. “I have seen the ending, I know there’s no ascension for me.”

I genuinely have no idea how GOATSAMA was resisting Miaokuran's omnipotence without being an Infinite Being. Back then, I was too busy trying to deal with the effects of her Fear to think about it, but even now -- I have zero definite hypotheses. Perhaps GOATSAMA's Natura or Will was still of the same caliber as an Infinite Being even though he didn't embody the Proximus of Tea anymore. Maybe, he could have also transcended to the Tertiary tier beforehand but willfully chose to stay bound to his tea which restricted his abilities. I am not satisfied with these explanations, I will ask Sherlock later.

“Then, just, stop this futile endeavour! Just accept the Mercy of God already!” Miaokuran screamed out loud, repeatedly snapping her fingers in futility. “Your Fate was to die on this battlefield, that’s what the Word of God said. After the rest of the heathens are defeated, I will be able to completely take over the Proximus of Fate and be able to perfectly execute what is already written. That false thunder god of Fear was simply a pawn on my grand quest – except for that bizarre program, everything was a part of my plan! Yet, even though I can read your thought process and tell to your face what you are thinking right now, I simply do not understand – why?”

“I am only human, after all,” said the horned Devil. “I was born to fight in this wretched world, and I will fight till my bitter end for what I believe to be right.”

“What beliefs?! You do not believe in any god, what is the source of your morals and righteousness? How do you know that you are right while the world and Fate itself is wrong? Who are you to decide that?! You who know neither of peace nor of transcendence – how can you understand the Mercy of God? You who cower behind false saviours and spit on the face of gratitude – how can you comprehend the Word of God? You who are neither omnipotent nor omniscient – how can you decide the Truth of God?!”

After preaching all of that in a single breath, Miaokuran paused to take a breath, and asked GOATSAMA, “Human, I do not understand, why are you still standing despite knowing that your journey is that of doom?”

As GOATSAMA gulped down another cup of tea through Miaokuran’s impassioned speech, he finally looked at her after she asked that question, and said, “I have walked a lonely road, the only road I have ever known throughout my life. My adoptive father gave me up to the Americans’ experiments and himself pushed the needle into my skin for mutation. Yet, even though he was never there for me, I remember only three words that he told me – ‘Never give up’. And I tried to follow the command throughout my life, so I see no reason why I’d give up at the very bitter end.”

“What’s the point of it now? Your resistance is futile, your attacks are meaningless.”

“The defiance itself is meaning,” said GOATSAMA. “Even if my journey is doomed to destitution, I will stay true to my being till the very end. That is what being human means to me.”

“Is that the reason for your existence? Is that why you refuse to be defeated?”

“I laugh, I sob, I love, I hate, I drink, I eat, I vomit, I excrete, I smile, I glare, I sigh, I weep, I cheer, I leer – I am here, I am alive, I exist – and I will not be erased quietly. I am human, and I will choose humanity over and over again.”

“B-But…” Miaokuran’s lips tremored. I am not sure why, but even the self-proclaimed Prophet of God stuttered in front of a human. By the looks of it, it was almost like she held a grudge against humans for some reason. Was the Infinite Death loop thing a part of it? Did she try to take over everything because of that? I still didn’t know what her motive was, but it looked to me like she was becoming less certain of herself and even begging for answers from an enemy she considered beneath her. She was a cat, after all.

“But… Why choose humanity when nothing even means anything? In this infinite menagerie that we call the world where anything and everything goes on without any reason, why would you choose a creed without power or knowledge? Neither omnipotent nor omniscient, how do you know you are correct?”

As GOATSAMA sipped his final cup of tea, he said, “We, who are neither almighty nor all-knowing, still strive to become both – for we are humans.”

“What about the imperfections?” Miaokuran knelt slowly as tears hit her whiskers. “Fear, Rage, Greed, Pride, Lust – what is your answer to those inhuman blemishes on humanity?”

“We conquer Fear, and call it Courage,” GOATSAMA raised his cup above his head, as if giving a toast to humanity. “We overbear Rage and call it Passion. We overcome Greed and call it Ambition. We embody Pride and call it Conviction. We go past Lust-”

He looked at me for just a moment. 

 “-And call it Love.”

As he said that, he dropped his final cup of Tea from high above his head. As the cup fell to the ground, the rest of the universe collapsed and emanated a strange beige light and an aroma of various Indian spices. Miaokuran burst into a splash of chai as the ground and the clouds and the sky all turned to tea. GOATSAMA managed to take advantage of Miaokuran’s wavering Will as his Natura burst forth to reclaim the control of the Proximus of Tea to temporarily disable the Tertiary Infinite Being of Space herself. A man humbled the Prophet of God – for just one moment.

Then…

Tthe earthen cup fell to the ground and shattered.

As one would expect, Tea cannot defeat Space.

It all reverted back to as it was in an instant. Where there was once a mangled, half-dead GOATSAMA raising his fist in defiance – there was nothing. He was erased.

The man was dead.

But, as you can see, Jesse, the scent of Tea and the Indomitable Human Spirit still lingers on.

Miaokuran reemerged from nothingness and stood right in front of me as I tried to stand up. 

“You,” she stared down at me. “You are following your Fate… even though there is a void in the Proximus of Fate in your recent past, and you are fated to destroy Fate.”

Then she raised me up by my neck and held me above ground. 

“As the Prophet of God, I cannot allow that.”

I was too Afraid to move. Fear had gripped my very being even though GOATSAMA sacrificed himself for me. He managed to conquer the effects of Absolute Fear through sheer Will, even as a Field Wielder, while I could barely move. I was going limp, I felt like I was about to get choked to death, I was helpless.

Right then, Fear disappeared from my heart.

A man – smoking a Trichinopoly, wearing a deerstalker hat and donning a tweed suit – appeared and pointed a gun at Miaokuran’s ears.

“No sacrifice,” said Sherlock Holmes, “shall be in vain.”

Next Chapter: The Kudryavka Sequence