Chapter 125 157: Leliel (Night Angel)

The Twelfth Angel had arrived.

The alarm sirens wailed abruptly, and just as usual, they left no room for psychological preparation. However, after so many encounters, everyone had grown accustomed to the chaos.

"An Angel attack? Position and distance?"

Shinji entered combat mode instantly. This time, he didn't even need to travel—he was already sitting inside Unit-01.

"Northwest, distance 20. Please hold, beginning image transmission immediately."

'Distance 20? It wasn't detected until it was right in our faces?'

Shinji was filled with doubt. Under his "suggestions," NERV had established a multi-layered, all-encompassing detection system covering space, sky, land, and sea. Even if an Angel flew in from the moon, it should have been detected in advance.

"It literally jumped right into our faces. What is the UN Army doing!?" Asuka complained, marveling at her luck.

"This Angel is really unlucky. I haven't been to Headquarters for ten days, and it happens to run into me today."

"Skipping work is not a glorious achievement," Rei muttered a quiet rebuttal.

"What reason do I have to come to HQ every day? Wait, didn't you skip work too!?"

The image transmitted. Shinji rubbed his chin; the Twelfth Angel looked even stranger than expected. It was a massive black-and-white striped sphere, over two hundred meters in diameter. Even if something this large could resist radar detection, it shouldn't have been able to escape the human eye. How did it appear on the city outskirts without any warning?

"Shinji, when do we deploy to slice this big ball into pieces?!" Asuka shouted excitedly. After the EVA's upgrades, she felt invincible.

"What's the rush? One must be cautious against any enemy. We must gather sufficient intelligence."

Shinji never let combat upgrades lead to arrogance. He looked toward Katsuragi Misato in the command center. "Does Operations have a judgment?"

There is a difference between a commander and a soldier. A soldier only needs to pick up a bolter and charge to the death; a commander is different—every step is taken with deliberation.

Katsuragi Misato, perfectly in sync with Shinji, replied immediately:

"The Angel was detected at the edge of Tokyo-3 at 14:02. Prior to that, there were zero observation reports. I've aggregated data from all observation stations; here are the results."

Several videos played in sequence. No Angel was visible before 14:02, but traces of a massive shadow moving across the ground could be found. At first glance, it looked like a cloud's shadow, but once processed by MAGI, it told a different story.

"This shadow moved directly toward Tokyo-3 and 'appeared' suddenly at 14:01."

'Invisibility?'

Shinji proposed a hypothesis and looked at Ritsuko Akagi. "What are the Research Department's thoughts?"

"We've used every sensor. Aside from the biological wavelength being blue—confirming it as an Angel—the sphere reflects no signals whatsoever."

"Like a ghost?"

"Yes. Furthermore, the Angel's movement speed is extremely slow, and it hasn't shown any aggression. The second automatic battery group has already opened fire."

Shinji turned his gaze to the live feed of the battlefield. It was the same old routine: a massive barrage of firepower was unleashed upon the Angel. Missiles, shells, and lasers streaked through the air. The sphere floating in the sky vanished, and the munitions overshot, turning a nearby mountain peak into a cloud of dust.

"It escaped?" Asuka's eyes widened.

"No. It seems this Angel plays by a different set of rules."

From the perspective of a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, a massive shadow could be seen suddenly covering Mt. Nishiya.

Hundreds of soldiers looked up, staring in horror at the sky. The Angel, which had been ten kilometers away, had suddenly descended right above them. At such close range, their very souls trembled.

Firing at an Angel from a distance is entirely different from observing one with the naked eye at point-blank range. It felt as if they were being peered at by a higher-dimensional being; their minds went blank instantly.

'Dammit.'

That was their only thought. But as soldiers who had long accepted their fate, they raised their rifles. In the next moment, the shadow beneath their feet suddenly expanded. The solid earth beneath them instantly turned into a swamp.

No one had time to react. Humans, vehicles, and equipment all sank. Physics became a joke; there were no explosions or flames. Those heavy armored turrets and missile launchers were all sucked into the mire.

Silence fell over the command center as they watched billions of dollars' worth of equipment vanish from the face of the earth. They watched the despair of humans before being swallowed; some were still firing until their hands were submerged, plunging everything into a silence like eternal night.

It was gone. An entire defensive position had vanished without a trace.

"What the hell is that thing!?" Asuka couldn't comprehend it at all. It was too abstract. "The Angel... ate them all?"

Her scalp felt numb. If she had charged in blindly, the EVA would likely have been caught too. The desperate screams of those men felt like a form of mental pollution, making her fingers tremble.

"It's not eating, it's more like consuming. Interesting... does it think it can't beat me in a fight, so it's using these abstract abilities?"

Shinji mused. He was calm—at times even cold—and was not affected by the tragedy at Mt. Nishiya.

'Isn't that what the PDF is for? To achieve combat objectives, no sacrifice is too great to accept.'

However, this "mecha show" was drifting further and further from the theme. First, there was the infinite evolution of the Eleventh Angel, the "Terror Angel," and now this all-consuming Twelfth Angel.

It felt like the enemy was taking a specialized approach.

'Since I can't beat you physically, I'll change the method.'

Shinji looked at the half-vanished mountain. Indeed, Mt. Nishiya had been sliced through the middle. Not a single fragment of the fortifications remained; only a flat, smooth patch of ground was left behind.

"Ritsuko, it's time to show what you're capable of. Figure out the truth behind this Angel as soon as possible."

"I'll do my best, but I need time."

Ritsuko had already begun her research, mobilizing all of MAGI's computing power.

"Right now, we only have two conclusions. First: Leliel ignores all kinetic and optical attacks and can appear freely at any location."

"Second: Its consumption is related to the shadow. There is a 0.3-second gap between locking on and expanding. However, once touched by the shadow, there is no possibility of breaking free. Of course, I haven't tested whether an AT Field can defend against it."

A powerful Angel. This special trick surpassed any of its predecessors. "Powerful" didn't just refer to how large a district a single blast could level, but rather the essence of its power. This "Night Angel" possessed an abstract, higher-level ability that even Ritsuko Akagi couldn't immediately grasp.

All hypotheses required data as support. Fortunately, the Angel didn't just stand there doing nothing.

The sphere appeared in the city center once more. It waited quietly for a few minutes, and seeing that the humans didn't attack, the shadow expanded in the city center.

[Special energy field captured. Consumption domain expanded. Diameter: 400 meters.] [Buildings 3 through 5 have had power cut. They are disappearing from MAGI's detection.]

Everyone watched as those skyscrapers—designed to collect sunlight—slowly sank into the swamp. Even though over half of them were buried underground, the matter covered by the shadow, regardless of how strong its defense was, vanished entirely.

"Is there any response from the sensors?" Ritsuko turned her head, her eyes scanning the screens rapidly.

"They functioned normally until the moment of intake. After being swallowed, there's zero signal."

"Radar waves ineffective. Particle detection ineffective. Unable to capture any data models."

'Blocking all internal detection?'

She was surprised, but she didn't waste time being shocked. She tapped Ibuki Maya's shoulder.

"Maya, magnify this data. Magnify the units until we hit the nanometer scale. Hmm... I see."

Ritsuko looked up and spoke to Shinji: "Leliel consumes all matter in a dimension 'above' the shadow. You can think of the shadow as a plane. Sigh, luckily NERV is built underground; if we were a tower, we'd be finished right from the start."

Shinji looked at the emergency mock-up. Leliel consumed along a plane, and the thickness of the shadow was exactly three nanometers.

"Three nanometers? How can a shadow that thin hold so many things? Is it directly connected to an alternate dimension?"

Misato found it difficult to understand, but her words caused both Ritsuko and Shinji to freeze.

Since it was "consuming," the matter from the physical world was being sent to another region—like a pocket holding things. It was just that this surpassed the spatial concepts of ordinary physics, using a mere three nanometers to contain a hundred-meter skyscraper.

The two of them happened to know of a place with infinite space that was impossible to observe.

'The Negative Universe? The Dirac Sea?!'

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