Chapter 141: Phase World, Third Round (4)

...No. I'm not like that thing.

I didn't want to wound Franc and Hwayeon by doing what it had done. I wanted to live with them warmly, on good terms. I would not act as that bastard acted.

I steadied my hammering heart and lifted my head, and there was Franc, still watching me with worry written all over her face. Meeting eyes that clear, I was seized by a sudden want to confess everything I had just seen and felt... and to be comforted.

"..."

She heard out every halting word. When I was done, Franc smiled quietly and drew my head tight against her chest.

"Seoha would never do such a thing."

"But..."

"That creature is nothing but a beast. It cannot speak. It lives and dies by instinct alone. Anyone can have a thought. What matters is that you never carry it out. And Seoha is kind, and wise, and deeply considerate, is he not?"

She leaned in and kissed me, brief and soft, then drew back and opened her mouth to a gentle smile.

"...Yeah. If I ever start to do something wrong, hit me with a lightning bolt and knock some sense into me."

"I will!"

Franc's comfort, and the certainty in that answer, left me feeling strangely redeemed. And I swore that the second-in-command — the one that had stirred these feelings in me, that had made me loathe myself — would not be spared, no matter what.

I couldn't tell what it had been thinking when it glanced my way, but the second-in-command spent its lust to the full, collapsed into the nest of piled logs beside it, and passed out cold. The female, beaten dozens of times until her whole body was hideously swollen, lay sprawled where she had fallen and did not so much as twitch.

...I shut that side of things out of my mind, slipped through the crack in the rock, and started for the mouth of the den. First I had to finish mapping the rest of their lair — the warren that branched underground like an anthill.

I ran hard along a mountainside where the only living things were plants, and began to piece together the shape of the rest of the Elephant Uros den. Night had deepened, and not a single Elephant Uros was moving about. Aberrants came in diurnal and nocturnal kinds, so these must have been the day-walking sort.

I scoured the ground around Elephant Uros Mountain and found no entrance besides that one hole. Plug it, and their way of escape vanished. I could force them into one-on-one fights as naturally as breathing. The disappointment was scale. The mountainside spanned nearly eighteen kilometers, and the anthill ran deep underground, so I couldn't map the whole of it. What unsettled me most was that I never laid eyes on the heart of the warren — where the climb toward the mid-slope locked together with the deepening tunnels, the place I suspected their chieftain would be.

I ran the rest of the ground without a sound, careful over exposed soil, rock, and gravel, and as I drew near the den's mouth I saw four Elephant Uros scattered by the entrance. Whether they were standing watch or simply killing time, I couldn't tell.

...They're Aberrants. Monsters, nothing more. Beasts that live and die by instinct.

I glared at the two males and two females sprawled here and there — sentries or idlers, who could say — and spoke to Franc.

"There might be contingencies, so let's hit those four first. If Mana Bullets work on them, we plug the entrance and pick off whatever comes out. If things turn ugly, or get dangerous, we blow ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the inside of the mouth, collapse it, and run."

"A sound plan. Your Mana Bullets can strike across an area, so in a place with only one passage, their power ought to be at its peak."

Just then one of the males mounted a female from behind and started working his hips. The female laughed like a true beast and spilled rough, panting moans. They had begun mating without a shred of restraint, their own kind right beside them, and the other male and female didn't flinch or look away in shame. They whooped and cheered at the sight.

"...Filthy."

"Don't mind them. Anyway — if a Mid-High Rank Variant doesn't die cleanly to a Mana Bullet, we run immediately. Got it? After that we start jungling. We go after the ones whose guard will be up."

"Yes. ...Yes? Um, Seoha? What is jungling?"

"Ah, sorry. It's a game term. You roam the field and pick off whatever's wandered off alone, one by one."

"You mean defeating them individually. Divide and conquer."

Only after the extra explanation did Franc nod, the look of someone who had finally understood.

"I'll leave the timing of your lightning to you. Once I start firing Mana Bullets, read the situation and hit them as you see fit."

"Yes!"

The other two started mating as well. I frowned, gathered my focus, and raised Mana Mode.

Franc shifted into something like a black full-body skinsuit, tied her hair up, and shot into the dark night sky like an arrow. Lost in the act, they didn't even seem to notice her rising. Fine. Savor the pleasure to the full. It would be the last they ever had.

A moment later she had climbed to four hundred meters. She held her place and spun a hand in a circle, as if to say she was set. I waved both hands side to side in answer, and she began condensing electricity between her palms. I confirmed it through Spatial Perception and shifted my own position, up onto a slope with a clear view of the entrance. About five hundred meters out. That ought to be a safe enough distance.

I watched the male working his hips for a moment, then sent each of them a gift: four Mana Bullets, ten TP apiece. A thin, needling ring split the air, and then the ground boomed. In the roar that burst out with the shockwave, the four Mid Grade Elephant Uros vanished without a trace, leaving only a wash of watery Phase Power behind.

Good. Mana Bullets work.

The blast must have carried into the den, because from three or four chambers near the mouth several Elephant Uros came walking out, each with its own weapon and a torch. They crept forward with unworried faces, as if they meant only to check on things out of duty. The moment they showed themselves I killed them, and the ones coming up behind finally sensed something wrong, snarled, and broke into a run. I blew those apart too, and the thunder of it rolled deeper and deeper into the warren.

The chain of blasts seemed to draw an answer from the depths. Dozens of Elephant Uros came pounding out from inside... The ones running were all Mid Grade. The Mid-High Grade ones dawdled, ambling along at their leisure. Watching that put me in a foul mood. The evils of a class system, I suppose you could call it.

Then my attention snagged on the heart of one Mid-Rank Variant.

"Ah. That one's carrying a Phase Stone."

It seemed a waste to simply erase it, so I angled the shot and blew out only the lower body. The torso sailed through the air and hit the ground with a heavy thud. The other Elephant Uros flinched at the sight and stopped in their tracks. Had they still not grasped what was happening? Their night vision must have been worse than I'd thought. Their companions had been dying in explosions without so much as a death cry or a scrap of flesh left behind, and through the deaths of a dozen or more they hadn't even noticed something was wrong.

The ones charging out behind slammed into the ones who had stopped, and a brutal jam clogged the entrance. How could they be that stupid? Into that tangled, shrieking knot a female Elephant Uros arrived late and stirred the Phase Power inside her body. ...Huh? What was that pattern, shaped like a Möbius strip...?

A detection ability?!

Aberrants could have detection abilities too?!

Strange mottled designs covered the body of the female with the special-type detection ability. She shook a wooden staff crowned with the skull of some unidentifiable beast and roared, and the jammed creatures roused their Phase Power and began to force their strength. Most of the patterns were whirl-shaped, so Physical Reinforcement, then. Sure enough, the wall of Elephant Uros that had been locked motionless began to shove its way forward, slow and grinding.

I watched the heaving barrier start to break, condensed TP at my fingertips, and was about to fire when the detection female whipped her head around and looked straight at me.

"Sakiav ary iat!!"

She leveled the bone staff at me and screamed. Alarm spiked through me. I fired, and the special-type Elephant Uros's upper body blew apart. But I was a beat too late. The ones heaving their kin aside, and even the ones still tangled in the knot — madness flooded their eyes, the whites rolling, and they came running at me. They trampled their own fallen without a glance, crushing them underfoot in a charge gone rabid.

"cugoohhhh!!"

"A! padarysiu su! ikti kaul? batus!"

Kuoohhhhh!!!

The herd came on like a tidal wave, shaking the earth. The instant they spilled from the den, lightning that shoved the dark aside stabbed down into them. A dozen bolts fell at once with a crackling roar and hammered the Elephant Uros. A blue membrane beaded across their skin and held the lightning for a moment — but only a moment, literally. Before the bolts, that membrane shattered like glass.

Maybe it was their size, but even after the blue membrane broke ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠they seemed to endure the lightning a little, so I started spraying Mana Bullets. Franc's bolts struck hide, scorched the earth, and kicked gravel into the air, and amid all of it my Mana Bullets detonated one after another, literally bursting the Elephant Uros pouring from the mouth.

Whoa. There are way too many. It wasn't just two hundred!

From the inner den, from underground, Mid Grade Elephant Uros kept coming without end. The ones that reached the mouth lost limbs to that baptism of Mana Bullets, or vanished entirely, and still they charged toward me like things gone mad. The momentum was vicious and unbroken. I fired without pause and still couldn't hold them.

Damn it, what was this? What had that special-type female done before I killed her, that they were charging blind as if possessed?! Weren't they even afraid of dying?!

I swung both hands and poured out Mana Bullets, and Spatial Perception caught a Mid-High Grade Elephant Uros waking the second-in-command, who had been sprawled out dead asleep. Only then did the thing lumber upright, take up a crude spear beaten from metal, and come walking out. Even then it deliberately stomped the female collapsed at the chamber mouth. The sight sent rage surging up through me. A wet crack. A grinding crunch.

While my attention was on the second-in-command, I heard something like a drum being struck and torn. I looked to the den mouth. A Mid-High Elephant Uros had crossed both arms in an X and was enduring my Mana Bullets.

Wh-what? It isn't blocking with the blue membrane. It's taking them with its body?

Every time a Mana Bullet struck that Mid-High Grade body, the blast ran along muscle and hide. Muscle creaked and twisted. Fibers tore with a sizzle and a crunch. The shockwave burst and even locked the thing stiff — but it was definitely enduring the shots.

Franc must have seen it. Thunder rolled, something split, and she drove a bundle of lightning into the Mid-High Rank Variant. Only then did the blue membrane appear, and it shattered in an instant. The thing convulsed, electrocuted, its body shuddering. The Mana Bullets that arrived right after beat the unguarded Mid-High Elephant Uros without mercy. Three or four shots in a row, and at last its whole body broke, shattered, and turned to meat.

Damn it! One rank up from Mid, and it tanked ten Mana Bullets?! The Mid-High Grades were about to come pouring out, and at this rate I wouldn't be able to stop them!

The situation was deteriorating. Because one Mid-High Grade had bought time, Mid Grade Elephant Uros poured from the mouth without end, like a dam bursting, and charged my position in a frenzy. I clenched my teeth and sprayed Mana Bullets. Franc dropped lightning without rest. But a wall, once breached, was a long way from being sealed again. And the Mid-High Grade Elephant Uros mixed in among them were enduring the shots. The ground boomed under the impacts.

"Then—!"

To widen the blast radius I loaded ninety TP into each shot and fired with both hands. The interval stretched from a second and a half to three ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠seconds, but the explosions were far larger than before — large enough to swallow the Mid-High Grades and catch the Mid Grades passing beside them. Those Mid Grades were caught in the blasts and died...

I'd killed well over a hundred, and still as many as I'd killed came pouring out. They had reached two hundred meters out. I'd held this long only because my ground sat higher than the entrance. Otherwise the distance would have closed in a heartbeat.

This was bad. Franc was pouring lightning down in support, but the Mid-High Grade Elephant Uros were starting to pile up. Once they were hit, the lightning and the shockwave-stun of my Mana Bullets locked them in place, and they took a beating they couldn't escape. I'd killed a few that way. But somehow, the more Mid-High Elephant Uros there were, the less damage each of them seemed to take. The proof: once they passed forty, not a single one had died.

...Were Mana Bullets splash-type damage? Splitting the hurt across a set area?

Either way, with the Mid-High Grades stacking up, I was spending Phase Power just to hold them, while Franc cut down the Mid Grades spilling from the den. At this rate my Phase Power would bottom out first. Especially once I started pouring ninety TP into each Mana Bullet, what I had left began to drop fast. A few more minutes and I wouldn't even have enough Phase Power left to flee.

I glanced up at Franc. At first she had been calling lightning down from the sky. Now she was blasting bundles of it from both hands.

"?!"

Another problem. Phase Power gushing from the corpses of the Mid Grade Elephant Uros Franc had killed was flowing into the Mid Grades around them. And whether the wave of the fight at the mouth had spread through the whole den, the numbers pouring out swelled even further.

"Kh..."

From the nearly fifty Mid-High Grade Elephant Uros eating my Mana Bullets, extreme rage and killing intent stretched toward me in strands. Feeling it, a sense of crisis closed in. Because the cost had climbed to ninety TP, my remaining Phase Power had already fallen by half. Only about eighteen thousand left.

What do I do? Keep this up and my TP would hit zero before I'd killed nearly enough. Then those fifty-plus Elephant Uros would all come at me at once... Damn it, if I only had time to use the Mana Cannon! Charging five thousand TP took over a minute. I couldn't use it in a situation like this! At this rate my Phase Power would run dry before the second-in-command even got here!

...! Right! The entrance!

I cut the cost per Mana Bullet down to ten and fired them as fast and wide as I could, aiming only to lock them stiff so they couldn't move, and I called for Franc in desperation.

"Franc! Franc—!! Fraaaanc!! Look over here! Franc!!!"

No good. She couldn't hear me over the thunder!

I racked my brain for a way to catch the attention of Franc, who was firing lightning without pause, then shot a single ten-TP Mana Bullet into the mid-slope and detonated it. The blast made her start, and she turned my way. I waved hard, beckoning her over, and she came toward me still throwing lightning.

"Franc! I'm going to collapse that den mouth!! Once it comes down, I'll fire the Mana Cannon into the gap while they're trying to get out! So hold those gathered Mid-High Grade Elephant Uros with your lightning for a bit!"

"Ah! Yes!!"

Not the thick bundles from before — short, fierce things like arrows of lightning poured down, truly like rain. Like a Rain of Lightning. The Mid-High Grade Elephant Uros inside that range began to dance, shuddering as if in a seizure.

Good. Here I go!

I fired fifty-TP Mana Bullets into the cave without rest and detonated them. The roar and the shudder of bombs going off in series never stopped. At the same time cracks split across the den mouth and dirt-dust began to pour... Huh?

A long, low rumble rolled down from above. An sound that was anything but ordinary, and a trembling in the earth... or so it seemed...

"Huk— what is that?"

"Seoha!! It's an avalanche! We have to run!"

Franc had even stopped firing lightning. She grabbed my arm, her face urgent. I had never seen her move with such desperation.

"On that scale, it will bury everything for kilometers around! We have to flee, now!"

"Uh, u, uwaaah!"

A roaring, grinding thunder closed in. At the sight of that black avalanche surging down with it, the hair on my nape stood on end. I spun Mana Mode harder and ran for my life.

"unsnukis!!"

"Neikite i? karto!!"

"Deombyeora? unsnukis!"

"Nelaim?!! Nelaim? ateina!"

"Venkite!!"

"Ahhhh!!"

The earth drummed. As I fled, some fifty Elephant Uros — flesh crushed and burst, bones broken — came after me trailing killing intent, or else ran for the den mouth. Meanwhile the avalanche of perennial snow pouring from the summit swallowed the entrance in an instant, and chased me and the Elephant Uros as we ran like mad things down the mountain.

"Hiiieek!"

Twenty-seven Elephant Uros pursuing me with killing intent was nothing next to a catastrophe like a tidal wave tens of meters high, coming on at a terrifying speed. It was frightening enough to stop my heart. The hair on my head stood up. Gooseflesh broke over my whole body, as if someone had dumped cold water on me.

I accelerated Mana Sieve further and ran as if my feet alone could save my life. Franc, flying beside me, looked from the avalanche to the Elephant Uros and back, then seemed to reach some decision and shouted.

"Seoha! I'll hold the Elephant Uros with lightning for a moment, so don't stop — keep running!"

"F-Franc?! What are you going to do!!"

"I can fly, can't I! Don't worry about me — run!!"

Then Franc shot up into the sky and thrust both hands toward the Elephant Uros. Arc discharge crackled from her palms, and the vast Phase Power of the Soul Stone flowed into her hands. With a crash of thunder, lightning as thick as a forearm began to spray in bundles from those slender fingers. It didn't stop there. The bundles gathered, merged, and began to flow as a river.

"aibas!!"

"Ahh!"

Kh! The thunder was enough to make my body shake! Huh? Wait — she spent a million TP on that attack!?

A river of lightning engulfed the twenty-seven Elephant Uros. Through Spatial Perception I watched the others see their kin fried in real time, cry out in shock, and hurl themselves aside. And the ones who hesitated, even for a moment, while they dodged — every one of them was swallowed by the snow, by the landslide. The ones who couldn't escape the river of lightning were seared to death. The ones who did were overtaken by the avalanche rolling in like a tidal wave — a tsunami — and buried alive.

And still, as if that weren't enough, Spatial Perception showed me the avalanche hugging my heels in real time. I thought the fear might kill me. It wasn't mere snow. Inside it, dozens, hundreds of boulders the size of houses rolled along as if they meant to smash everything to pieces. One Mid-High Grade Elephant Uros struck by those rocks was, quite literally, turned into jerky.

"Uwaaaaaah!!"

I screamed and drove still more Phase Power into my legs, sprinting like a madman.

"Hah... hah. Huaah."

I regulated the expenditure, reinforced my body to C-Class level, and ran flat out for twenty minutes before I finally escaped the catastrophe. The cost was that my Phase Power was completely gone, and my stamina with it. I didn't have the strength left to move a finger.

Looking at the trace of the landslide, stopped just short of me... The hills had been filled in with earth and snow until they weren't hills at all, but flat ground. Giant trees and boulders, snapped and broken, jutted up in a wreck all around. If I'd been caught in that, I would have died without so much as a squeak.

I sat down to rest and looked up at Franc, hovering in the air. She looked back at me and spoke, her expression awkward.

"I didn't know an avalanche would happen..."

"M-me neither. I probably would've done it even if I'd known... Ugh. I th-thought I was going to die."

My heart was still pounding, and even sitting, both legs shook. My arms, braced on the ground, trembled too, so I just flopped onto my back. Franc came over, laid her body over mine, and spoke gently.

"It's all right. The avalanche is over now. You're not in danger."

Franc's warm body wrapped around me, and only then did the trembling begin, little by little, to ease. After about ten minutes of catching my breath, my Phase Power had recovered enough to settle gently around a body worn out from the all-out sprint. Body and mind both calmed, I talked with Franc.

"Nnngh. Feels like we took nothing but losses. My TP recovers fast, but you drew one million four hundred thousand Phase Power out of the Soul Stone."

"Hehe. That's an amount that recovers if Seoha charges it just a little, you know?"

"...Says the woman who rolls her eyes back and passes out every time I charge her, and still talks big."

"Nnh."

I snickered at Franc, red-faced and flustered, then got up and spoke with a grave expression.

"Mana Bullets didn't work well on the Mid-High Grade Elephant Uros."

"No, they didn't. Something was strange. They endured the Mana Bullets even without forming a blue membrane..."

"Mana Bullets aren't a normal attribute ability to begin with, so if that's why it happened, I can accept it. The problem is..."

"Why it happened at all."

I nodded. I'd been cautious to the point of excess precisely because something like this might happen, so the shock was milder than it might have been. What mattered was how a Mid-High Grade Elephant Uros had endured a Mana Bullet.

"Mid Grade and Mid-High Grade are only one step apart, but is there something different about them? Or does the effect change with size?"

"I couldn't say about the difference in rank, but I don't think it's a change that comes from size. Against the Mid Grades, your Mana Bullets showed their true power."

"Then what's the cause?"

"Th-that, I don't really..."

"..."

"..."

The conversation died. From Franc, who looked as if she were wringing an answer out of her head by force... honestly, I couldn't expect help on this front. A sorry thing to say, but Franc wasn't an INT character. She was a WIS character, if I had to put it that way. I scratched my head and changed the subject.

"How was the lightning? Did it work well on the Mid-High Grades?"

"Ah, they resisted lightning better than the Mid Grades too. I dropped a 580 TP bolt on a Mid-High Rank Variant with 5,800 Phase Power, and it still endured."

It died after about four shots, Franc said, but the time it took to fire was the problem. If she just dumped it without thinking, there was almost no delay — but regulating a smaller amount, guiding the flow of charge, and calculating the impact point took a long time. Even sweeping away that whole pack of Mid-High brats in one go had only been possible because she'd released the limiter and just blasted it...

"Then we can take it that they endured the Mana Bullets because they were Mid-High Grade."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Watching Franc look a little deflated, I started turning over what to do. For now, the mouth of their den was completely sealed, so they wouldn't be coming outside. The avalanche had been terrible enough to change the shape of the mountain. All that snow, and that tremendous mass of earth and rock, had plugged the Elephant Uros den shut.

Elephant Uros Mountain had originally risen gently to about five hundred meters above sea level, then shot up at a sharp hundred-and-twenty-degree angle. Now that steep pitch was gone, smoothed into something gentler... gentle, though it was still a hundred-and-forty-degree slope, but flat enough that I could vaguely guess how much earth and snow had come down. Which meant the plan I'd drawn up earlier had hit a snag. I'd meant to pick off, one by one, the ones that came out of the den to catch me.

Then one fact occurred to me.

"A lot of Mid Grade and Mid-High Grade Elephant Uros died to us at the den mouth. What if the living Mid Grades absorb that and become Mid-High Grade...?"

"...Ah. That does seem likely?"

Franc agreed, halting, then clapped her hands once as if something had come to her.

"Ah. The avalanche did seal the entrance, but the Elephant Uros are large and strong, so before long they'll dig back out... they will..."

"And the ones that come out will be much stronger."

Franc and I sighed at the same time. Did that mean the plan wasn't disrupted after all? I thought it over for a moment, but the situation wasn't the worst it could be. Mana Bullets had lost some of their bite, but they still worked well enough, and if I linked up with Franc a little more tightly, we could handle Mid-High Grades too. Earlier I'd simply been too startled to respond properly. If I'd anticipated it, the moment Mid-High Grades appeared I would have concentrated my fire so they couldn't leave the den. And left the Mid Grades to Franc.

Anyway, the plan would proceed as scheduled. The disappointing part was that even if I killed Elephant Uros, there was no Phase Power I could gain from them. I was D-Class. In Aberrant grades, that was High Grade. To absorb Phase Power I had to kill something of the same High Grade, and I hadn't seen a High Grade among the Elephant Uros. But if Franc absorbed the Phase Power, there was no harm in it.

Then a bad flight of imagination unfolded before my eyes.

"...Hey, Franc. That second-in-command wouldn't snap just because it got buried, turn around, kill its wounded kin, absorb their Phase Power, and evolve into a High-Rank Variant, would it?"

Franc couldn't answer in time. She hesitated, then replied carefully.

"They have no way of knowing their own Phase Power values, so I don't think they could do it on purpose. But they are vicious, lawless beasts. In a rage, they might kill their own without hesitation..."

My expression darkened a little. If it really did that, it would become a High-Rank Variant too, and Mana Bullets that already worked poorly on Mid-High would work even worse on it. I did have long-range Spatial Manipulation as a hidden card, but using it would drop me too. And close-range Spatial Manipulation... could my movements even dodge an Elephant Uros's attacks? Mana Laser was... nngh.

I scratched my head hard, then stood and spoke to Franc.

"Let's head back for now. On the way, we'll look for Elephant Uros that got caught in the avalanche."

"Wouldn't it be better to go once your TP is full?"

"If I jog slowly in Mana Mode, my TP will fully recover on the way."

"That's true."

I broke into a light run and spoke to Franc, who matched my stride beside me.

"I'm a little worried about the chieftain that never showed, even in all that chaos."

"...If the chieftain appears, I'll deal with it even if I have to spend every bit of Phase Power in my Soul Stone."

"No! Spend all of it — what are you saying?! We don't know what happens if you use up all your Phase Power!"

I was so startled I shouted, and at my fierce reaction Franc's eyes went round.

"Understand? We don't know what might happen, so you must leave at least five hundred thousand TP in the Soul Stone!"

"Yes. I'll be sure to leave it."

Franc could use Spatial Perception now too, so she could check the Phase Power remaining in the Soul Stone. I'd wrung that promise out of her this firmly. She'd regulate it properly. I turned on my smartphone. Beside a battery drained to three percent, the current time came up.

Ten minutes spent extracting that promise from Franc. I circulated the Phase Power that had recovered in the meantime and began to jog slowly toward Elephant Uros Mountain.