Chapter 97: The Sword of Paracelsus
"When did you figure it out?"
Miranda stepped out from the swirl of feathers, golden pupils settling on Matthew.
When she saw his weapon-formed arm, something shifted briefly behind her eyes.
So this particular security director was not a simple case. As far as she knew, the company had not yet developed anything this stable that could be weaponized this way.
Matthew's expression gave nothing as he answered. "Looking at where things stand right now, does knowing the answer actually change anything for you?"
"Or do you want to die with your questions answered?"
Miranda laughed softly. "Die understanding? No." Her voice was unhurried, as if discussing something she had already considered from every angle.
"The reason I asked is simple. Next time I attempt something like this, I'd like to do it better. People learn and improve." She let a faint smile settle on her face. "So would you mind telling me what gave me away?"
"No." Matthew shook his head with the same flat calm. "I don't have a habit of letting people die with that kind of satisfaction."
Miranda looked at him with something that might have been genuine pity.
"What a shame." Her tone was lazy, the way someone sounded when discussing next morning's breakfast. "If you'd told me, you could have lived a few more minutes before dying."
She let the ending of the sentence trail.
The pity on her face receded, layer by layer, until what was beneath it became visible: a complete and untroubled indifference to the existence of anything alive.
She moved to act.
A faint but sharp vibration broke from somewhere deep in the underground space. The sound of something hard tearing through concrete.
Miranda looked down.
The cruelty on her face hadn't yet been replaced by alarm.
CRACK.
A fluorescent red spike drove up through the concrete directly beneath her, instantly piercing her entire body and launching her into the air. It continued upward through her and emerged from her mouth.
Miranda's body, seen from a distance, looked like a doll that had been pushed through with a single chopstick. Her limbs dangled lifelessly like willow branches, swinging from the momentum of being lifted.
It wasn't finished.
With a mental command, the surface of the spike that had run through her exploded outward with dozens of slender reverse barbs. Within the blink of an eye, Miranda's body had been turned from the inside out into a human-shaped cactus.
Matthew slowly drew the weaponized spike back and let it merge into himself.
The G-Virus's ten-plus staged evolutions had elevated every one of his capabilities by a considerable margin, and his weaponization range was no exception. What had once been constrained to his immediate body had since expanded dramatically. His effective attack radius now reached fifty meters.
He looked at Miranda lying motionless on the floor. He was not under any illusion that this was over.
As the final boss of RE Village, Miranda had access to the full gene library of the Megamycete and could fuse any of it into herself at will. In the original storyline, even after Rose had absorbed most of her power, Miranda could still shift into crows, spiders, and other forms. The E-Type Mold granted her something that went beyond ordinary endurance. As long as there was sufficient mycelium, she would not truly die. Even if the mycelium was exhausted entirely, her remaining consciousness would find its way back into the Megamycete.
He saw her lying very still on the floor and wasn't fooled for a second.
Without wasting words on it, he raised a hand. A coil of blood mist unfurled from his side and wrapped around the railgun on the weapon rack across the space, pulling it smoothly into his grip.
His thumb pressed the firing trigger.
The air around the muzzle became agitated. Energy building. Blue-white arc light flickered inside the barrel, and the discharge radiating outward was strong enough to rattle the stone fragments on the floor.
Miranda, who had been lying on the floor in perfect comfort, waiting for Matthew's attention to lapse so she could attack from behind, suddenly became aware that something was wrong.
She looked up.
The moment she saw the portable railgun in Matthew's hands, her pupils contracted.
That was...
Paracelsus's Sword?
When had the company developed a personal-use version?
Or was this not a company product at all, but something this man had built himself outside the company's knowledge?
The look she gave Matthew shifted into something with more genuine weight behind it.
Paracelsus's Sword. The name came from the alchemist Paracelsus, who described a sword that symbolized the beginning and end of all things, calling it "mercury," a universal remedy for whatever resisted ordinary resolution. Umbrella's internal designation for the railgun borrowed that symbolism deliberately. Spencer had always considered it the universal antidote to any B.O.W. that exceeded the reach of conventional means. Whenever something went out of control to the point where nothing else could stop it, Paracelsus's Sword was the answer.
Understanding what was pointed at her, Miranda spread all six wings and drove herself straight upward.
Halfway to the ceiling, a blood-red whip closed around her ankle and yanked her back.
Matthew's expression was cold and entirely unbothered. "You made yourself comfortable lying there and now you want to leave? What do you think this is?"
The barrel stayed steady on her, wherever she swung.
Energy charged to capacity.
A sound like the air itself winding up.
A blue-white beam nearly two meters across erupted from the muzzle.
Miranda threw every bit of wing-force she had into a sideways dodge. But compared to the railgun's discharge velocity, her evasion was too slow.
Half her body ceased to exist.
A scream tore through the sealed underground space. Black mycelium erupted across the destroyed half of her, rebuilding at a pace that was almost insulting to what had just happened to her.
Matthew was not going to give it time to finish.
"Doudou. Activate Trial Mode."
"Initiating: Trial Mode."
A mechanical voice from somewhere in the facility answered without inflection.
The white overhead lights switched to red.
"Please be advised. In ten seconds, this level will be fully sealed until Trial Mode concludes. All non-essential personnel evacuate immediately."
From channels in the walls, thick metal plates descended on all sides, sealing the entire battle space completely.
In the time that took, Matthew was already airborne, driving downward with the momentum of something that had stopped holding itself back.
He landed on Miranda and pinned her to the floor.
For the first time, his face wore something that wasn't controlled. A hunter's grin, genuine and ferocious.
He looked down at the struggling Miranda beneath him, and the grin grew more dangerous.
"Now. Enjoy the Trial that belongs to just the two of us."