Campione: Strongest# 447: The Puppet of the Counter Force

Araya Souren stared, his expression shifting rapidly as he tried to process the impossible sight before him.

“Hey, you rotten monk—I mean, Mr. Araya—was that thing really a Divine Spirit?” Ryuunosuke Uryuu stammered, his eyes wide as he gazed at the majestic figure enveloping Shiki Ryougi in its enormous, blurred hands. He swallowed hard.

Gods and demons were concepts he tossed around freely, but to see one in person… even a self-proclaimed monster like Ryuunosuke was profoundly shaken. He knew in his heart that a man as wicked as him standing before a Divine Spirit was a death sentence.

“That sublime divinity… Could it be a God-King from the Age of Gods?” Araya Souren’s expression flickered between awe and dread.

As a former monk who had lived for two centuries, he could feel the sheer power of faith resonating in the air. The identity of this being was unquestionably of a higher order. And the hymns ringing in his ears… was this the return of the Lord himself?

Suddenly, a heart-wrenching wail shattered the silence.

“Mr. Araya, help me! Help me!!!”

The piercing scream made Araya frown and shift his attention to Ryuunosuke. Like flesh dropped in boiling oil, Ryuunosuke’s head was hissing and sizzling, his skin visibly disintegrating. The parts of his body closest to Shiki were melting like ice cream under a scorching sun.

“Waaahhh! The Divine Spirit is punishing me!” Ryuunosuke cried out in terror. “No, please! Don’t turn me into goo! Just let me bleed! My blood is so beautiful!”

Araya Souren’s lip twitched. He would never understand the twisted logic of a psychopathic killer.

“—Halt!” With a soft command, Araya threw up a barrier that enveloped Ryuunosuke’s head. The melting slowed. As much as he would have loved to let the man die for attacking Shiki, he had to consider the repercussions from Valery Vandelstam. He was forced to intervene.

“Phew—I survived…” Ryuunosuke sighed, a look of lingering horror on his face. “Seriously, is a Divine Spirit’s punishment always this potent? It nearly burned my soul to ashes!” While the physical pain was tolerable, the raw, searing agony in his very soul was unbearable.

“That was merely the unconscious release of Holy Power from a Divine Phantom,” Araya stated flatly.

“Unconscious?” Ryuunosuke’s muttering died in his throat. If that was its unconscious power, what would an intentional attack feel like?

“It appears to be a protective entity. Since you attacked Shiki with your ‘Death’ Origin, the spirit is likely dedicating its full power to purging that influence.”

Araya narrowed his eyes, watching the black aura seep from the unconscious Shiki’s body. He looked utterly crestfallen.

The Origin was a force that transcended reincarnation, a concept bordering on True Magic, yet this Divine Spirit was cleansing it with a mere phantom. It had to be the God of the Bible.

“Jehovah?” Araya Souren murmured.

Buzz—!

The phantom figure suddenly solidified. A pair of brilliant, golden eyes fixed on him. In that instant, Araya’s world dissolved, leaving only those cold, merciless eyes.

A violent spray of blood erupted from his mouth, staining the gray cement a shocking crimson.

“To be wounded by a mere name…” Araya’s expression grew even more distressed as he felt his final trump card—the ‘Prototype of the Soul’ that sustained his immortality—shatter within his spiritual core.

At the same time, the phantom figure began to shrink, gradually reducing to human size. As it condensed, the golden eyes softened, gaining a flicker of emotion. The figure gently embraced Shiki.

“I thought someone had triggered my ‘Protection,’ but it’s just you, monk,” a calm voice, like a thousand people chanting in unison, echoed through the alley.

Haru—inhabiting this vessel—gently smoothed the crease from Shiki’s brow and looked at Araya with a detached expression.

“So the Counter Force sent you to obstruct me? To think they would call upon you, O Lord of the Cross.”

Araya Souren’s distressed expression slowly twisted into one of fanaticism. He spread his arms wide, embracing the sky like a medieval zealot. “Excellent! Excellent! That a ‘God,’ a being from the lost Age of Mystery, now stands before me only proves that my path to the Root is correct!”

Gods, the destruction of his immortality—none of it mattered. As long as it validated his quest, Araya would walk his path fearlessly, even if it meant his own annihilation. The mad monk saw nothing beyond the Root.

“You really are a joke,” Haru said, looking at the ecstatic Araya with the exasperated air of someone watching a circus animal.

Even if Araya was a Master of Bounded Fields just a single step away from the realm of a True Magic, that slight difference was the chasm between man and god.

As for the danger he posed to Shiki? Laughable.

Did Araya truly believe he was the master of his own destiny? The two great Counter Forces, Gaia and Alaya, watched over the ‘Root’ made manifest with obsessive care.

The original timeline of The Garden of Sinners likely only occurred because the Root Shiki—Shiki's third and true self—had simply wanted to see what would happen. In reality, Araya Souren was little more than a puppet, a character in a play written by Alaya to entertain its most precious charge.

“Hmm?” Araya looked at Haru, completely failing to grasp the meaning of his words.

“You claim I’m here to obstruct you?” Haru’s voice was laced with contempt. “Do you go out of your way to step on an ant?”

“…” Araya fell silent. He couldn't deny the logic. He viewed ordinary humans as ants; he supposed that to a god, a master magus was no different. He took a long, deep look at the Shiki nestled in Haru’s arms. But even an ant can bite.

“O God,” Araya began, his voice low and intense, “will you hear my prayer?”