182 Wanna See How Big My _____ Is?

"That's not possible. It shouldn't be possible..." murmured Haydn as he strained his Anima-infused eyes to their absolute limits. He wanted to capture every single second of it, for he had no other choice but to do so. 

What had occurred could not have been the work of Men. To Haydn, the only logical explanation to him was that he had witnessed an act of God.

A genuine miracle — a feat that no person cut from mortal cloth could have accomplished, even with the almighty power that came with possessing an Alma. 

"How... long have you known?" asked Haydn via a telepathic message. The contents of their conversation could never be spoken aloud, for fear of the immense ramifications it would cause. 

Anima had infinite potential. It was limitless. This was a hard fact. Under the right conditions, it could become anything and enable one to do anything. It was, in essence, the physical manifestation of the word "potential". 

"Since before either of them even appeared in Mulia. More than five millenniums ago, if you want a rough approximation of the number," responded Velvund, without a single stutter. 

But this, of course, did not mean that the people who harnessed it had the same potential within them. Not in the slightest. They were finite beings. Mortal creatures. Born with a limited set of possibilities on a path that would eventually lead back to whence they originally came from. 

Death.

A return to nothingness.

The cessation of their ephemeral lives. 

"How can that be?! Foreknowledge? But that also shouldn't be possible! I've heard about it... But not even the Ancient Mulians themselves were capable of extrapolating the future, at least not without the assistance of artificial intelligences of inconceivable magnitude and complexity," retorted Haydn in disbelief. 

The world-sibyls, the enormous moons that once served as oracles for the Ancient Mulians, had all but disappeared by the ending of the Great War. It was unknown to the remaining survivors where they had gone.

Too much had been lost and forgotten during the final confrontation against the Infestation. 

"It is exactly as you say, so I'll leave it to you to form your own conclusions. And to keep the record clean, I'll promise you this — Everything I have told thus far contains no falsehoods. Consider this piece of truth a small token of my trust in you, Crown Prince." 

"I'm honored that you think so highly of me, Lord Velvund. I'll make sure not to disappoint you in the future... for the sake of the North and the East."

How large was the gap between a simian born in the primitive jungles of ancient Earth millions of years ago compared to a modern-day human living in Mulia? 

The answer? The entire span between Heaven and the Earth. 

In the same respect, one could only question how large the gap was between the Ancient Mulians, who were born as the earliest sapient species in the Primary Universe where Anima was at its purest and most abundant... 

Velvund once pondered the very same question himself in his youth, to no avail. For five thousand years, the abducted races that the Ancient Mulians brought to Mulia had proliferated in an environment designed to accelerate their development. 

But it had all been for naught.

They had not advanced enough, even though they had been given the best possible conditions. Compared to the Ancient Mulians, the modern-day people of Mulia were...

"Hopeless," said Velvund. 

Haydn furrowed his brow in confusion and asked, "What is hopeless?" He didn't think that the situation they were in was completely hopeless yet, though he did have some concerns...

"Not what, Crown Prince, but rather, who is the correct question."

And the answer is... all of us.

One only had look at what was happening ahead of them to understand that simple fact. 

She had moved it on her own without any assistance to speak of — with her bare hands. Though it was a crude method, that did not deter from the unimaginable difficulty of the act.

The amount of skill and physical fortitude required to pull something close to that required an inhuman comprehension of one's body and an affinity for Anima that was not currently attainable by any Chosen.

No amount of training, experience, or manufactured genius could make for what Chosen lacked, despite the continued efforts of a particular individual. 

A crystal iceberg of souls — the size of an entire metropolis — shifted itself on its y-axis until it became an upright tower rather than a floating island. Well over a trillion tons of ice and crystal had been laboriously moved by a single person into an arrangement most peculiar. 

Such an act violated the common sense of Mulia and, therefore, could not be allowed to be known by the rest of the world. Events like these were the very reason that Velvund had only allowed his personal ship, the Spirit of Bountiful Charity, to remain around the fissures. 

Not as support for Reed and Lu'um, obviously. There was nothing they could do on that front on that, much to his hidden frustration. Though he understood that the fissures were a problem that only they could tackle, it pained him to not be able to anything for them. 

The only he could do was remove any unnecessary obstacles and potential disturbances that might impede them at a later date. Dirty work was a better word for it. Cleaning up loose threads was something that Velvund was an expert at anyway, so he didn't feel it too burdensome a task. 

He'd do anything to ensure the success of his magnum opus... even silence the crown prince of an empire if the situation demanded it. Nothing was off the table for him. 

Thankfully, he would not have to do anything, given the young prince's response. 

...At least, not for the time being. But that was not important at the moment, not by a long shot. What was happening in Itroch took precedence, especially as of now with what was current occurring. 

"Oh my Goddess, what is that...? Is... that Anima? What is she doing? Why is she—" 

Deep beneath the bowels of hell, unearthly tongues of Anima furiously stirred as they were forced into unnatural angles and positions, curved in self-containing shapes. But for all that was being worked upon below, an occasional flare of super-compressed Anima escaped containment and flew out of the fissure's gaping maw towards freedom. 

It was a horrifying sight to behold from the Spirit of Bountiful Charity. Judging from the size, density, and brightness of the Anima flare, even one of them had enough energy to power the entire continent for, well... an inestimable amount of time.

The number was large enough that the onboard intelligence in the Spirit of Bountiful Charity was unable to crunch the data on the spot. 

What worried everyone above at the moment was what had just happened, though. For some inexplicable reason, Lu'um had put it back from whence it came in the strangest position. 

Why?

No one knew, but the tension on the Spirit of Bountiful Charity had reached a fever peak. The readings they were getting from beneath Itroch were enough to prompt an emergency retreat and an immediate recall from all ground crew, a certain trio included... 

As far as they were concerned, the city was set to blow up in an unholy explosion. Or perhaps some unknown anomalous disaster. If all went well, then nothing would happen.

Either way, something was about to happen and Velvund couldn't risk his subordinates' lives, even if personally he wanted to stay and witness it for himself. He might've been able to withstand whatever was to come, but they would not be able to do the same...

On the frontlines, a terrible scene was already underway and it could no longer be stopped. It was starting to get... hot. Extremely hot. The temperature below had already hit a point the scenery in the fissure had turned into a true hell. In a literal sense. 

But that wasn't a problem for Reed... because he couldn't feel anymore. He had forcibly shut off the screeching in his mind — his nerve receptors — trying to tell him that he was in mortal peril. 

Not one to shy away from suffering, Reed somberly smirked as inspected what was left of him at the moment. His skin had already turned a shade of black and possessed a texture reminiscent to that of charcoal. ...Well, what little remained of it. 

Whatever hair he once had already been burnt into ash long ago. Most of what remained of Reed was desperately trying to fight back against the... living, breathing monster he had created.

Only the most important organs necessary to keep him alive were given priority regeneration — his heart, brain, spine, and lungs. Everything had been discarded. Any unnecessary senses had been cut off, as they had only been slowing him down. Distracting him from what he needed to do. 

Encased in a sphere of cooled Anima, a lump of reforming flesh continued to work without stopping. Reed had not stopped, even though fear had almost overtaken him several times. 

He couldn't afford to mess up, after all. What he was constructing could not afford to have even a single flaw. A single defect would spell an unfortunate end for himself and anything not on the other side of the continent. 

But that was an obvious fact, given the amount of energy that was at play. 

When Reed detected the geode of souls, he immediately set his plan into motion and sent out a multitude of enormous chains of Anima to drag it further down into the depths of the fissure. He needed it as far below as possible for what was to come.

Loading complete.

Was it a stupid idea or perhaps, an extraordinary one? To be quite frank, not even Lu'um knew the answer. It bordered the line between pure genius and insanity, if she had to be honest. 

At the very least, she would have never come up with the idea to turn the entire continent...

Into a gun.

That was the whole plan, in a nutshell. Reed was to turn the continent into a gun for the express purpose of sending the geode back to where it belonged. And now Reed had everything required. His grand plan was to build a big fucking gun.

He had a gun barrel — the fissure itself. 

He had gunpowder — a direct connection to the source of all Anima in Mulia, the female titan.

And he had a bullet — the geode of souls. 

Everything that was needed had been gathered and set up as planned. While Lu'um had been charged with loading the geode back into the fissure, Reed had been at work reshaping the fissure itself to handle the tremendous forces that would be at play. 

It was hot. Hotter than the surface of a star beneath Itroch. Reed's work, which involved the manipulation of a massive bounded field (Tolai field) of twisted spacetime, had almost reached completion.

The idea was that unfurling the bound field would propel whatever was caught within it through a hole through reality and onward. What concerned Lu'um was what would take place after the bullet was fired. 

Firing the bullet was one hurdle, but aiming it at the correct target was another problem in itself. How does one accurately aim a gun at a target that doesn't exist in reality? At a target that exists outside of it?

That was the main quandary, but Reed had devised his own makeshift solution. He'd manually adjust the trajectory by personally... riding his bullet to its destination. 

Pure insanity. Had anyone aside from Lu'um heard Reed's plan, they would have thrown him into an asylum. Locked him up for his own good and the safety of the world. Velvund would have probably lost his damned mind if he knew the truth...

Thankfully, he would not be faring the infinite alone. His other half would also be along for the ride, apprehensive as she was about it. Rather than allow him to venture into the Outside alone unsupervised, she'd be there to keep him safe. 

"...Look at you. You're barely alive. Is this what you meant by, 'I've got this under control?'" said Lu'um as she descended to where Reed lay waiting, atop the geode of souls. 

"I'll be fine. I've already activated the reset node, so we only have a couple of minutes before it boots me out of control. Are you ready?" replied Reed via his thoughts. 

Once the bullet was fired, the reset node would take care of repairing the damage that caused the Itroch Syndrome and resolve the issue at Itroch once and for all. 

And he'd set it all off with but a single thought. The final part of the assembly was none other than... himself — the trigger. 

"I'm ready," replied Lu'um as she settled herself around Reed, or what was left of him. 

"Then, let's not waste any more time. Hold on, it's about to get real crazy, real fast...!" said Reed, positively giddy in anticipation. Whether it was the adrenaline coursing through his veins, the onset of some form of madness, or something else was unknown. 

Whatever it was, it had taken Reed hostage and it terrified Lu'um to the bone. 

"Ready...."

"Steady...."

"Go."

And then... they were gone. It'd begun. The world's largest gun fired off without a hitch.