Chapter 143 — Third Cycle: Phase World (6)
The second-in-command I'd been aiming for had ended up smashed to pieces, and not entirely on purpose — but the Elephant Uros chieftain, I figured, was still out there. If it had still been inside the lair, there was no way it wouldn't have shown itself by now, so it had to have stepped out. Keeping my guard up, I started going over what remained of the Elephant Uros den.
I stood still, closed my eyes, and began sensing the surroundings, and Franc started peering into the anthill tunnels that opened off in every direction.
Scanning the place with that five-hundred-meter Spatial Perception of hers?
Anyway, twelve passages opened onto the ground, but aside from one, every path and structure fell entirely inside my perception, so there was no need to wander. Nothing worth pocketing was rolling around — no treasure, no Phase Stones — and a few chambers were simply piled high with aberrant carcasses kept for food, along with fruit and grass. No point inspecting what I could already see plain as day, so my feet turned of their own accord toward the one passage that remained.
"Franc, come here a second?"
"What is the matter?"
"Eleven of the holes either dead-end or link up with the others. Only one of them runs past the edge of my detection range, so let's head that way."
"That would be the passage leading underground, would it not? You don't suppose the chieftain might be down there?"
"Hmm... I confirmed it earlier, watching that second-in-command. A High-Rank Variant's Phase Power detection range seems to run a little over a kilometer. It varies some depending on their Phase Power, but still. So we can figure a High-Rank Variant's detection range sits somewhere between one and two kilometers, right?"
"Yes? Hmm. I suppose that would be so...?"
Bringing up aberrant detection ranges out of nowhere made Franc's eyes go round. Then, all at once, the pitch-black sky seemed to be shifting toward a dark blue-green. I looked east, and the color of the night was already thinning.
Dawn soon.
"They might not read hostility, intent, an individual's traits, or Phase Power the way I do, but if Phase Power keeps vanishing inside their range, wouldn't they find that strange?"
"Ah... If the Phase Power of so many subordinates were disappearing and it still did not stir, then the chieftain cannot be here."
I nodded at Franc, who had pieced together exactly what I was thinking, and stopped before the winding passage that led underground. It was nearly seven meters wide and close to fifteen high — a hole that was, for all intents, a tunnel — and I couldn't help wondering how they'd dug something like it. They hadn't even braced the cave with supports anywhere along the way. Not knowing what might happen, I focused Spatial Perception as hard as I could and started down into the burrow, tense.
The cave descended in a slow spiral, like a spiral staircase, and the grade was so gentle that dropping a mere three hundred meters underground had already cost us more than four kilometers of walking. And yet something about it felt deeply wrong. I think I understood how Gulliver must have felt, arriving in the land of the giants.
"Without Spatial Perception, I couldn't even have walked a place like this."
I said it while picking my way over the strangely uneven floor, and Franc nodded as if she felt the same, then answered.
"Spatial Perception truly is extraordinary. Before I used it myself, I only thought of it vaguely as impressive — and that thought was practically rude, given how remarkable it actually is."
She went on praising it, saying that even a blind man who couldn't see ahead would have no trouble with daily life if he possessed Spatial Perception. I fiddled with her soft, smooth hand as we walked downward for a long while, and somehow the air around us began to grow strangely warm.
A lot of geothermal heat? Well, it's a dormant volcano that's started to wake, so that would track. Maybe there's even lava flowing...
Huh? That really is lava!
I caught lava flowing at the very edge of Spatial Perception and told Franc.
"There's lava."
"It is a dormant volcano venting smoke, so lava flowing underground is only to be expected."
The place where it flowed was an enormous cavern, and inside it red-orange lava boiled and bubbled. What stood out was that, between the streams, the ground still held traces of something like the skeletons of buildings. It looked like a sea of lava scattered with many small islands.
"Was there some kind of ancient ruin under the mountain?"
"A ruin?"
Franc reacted to the word and met my eyes, as if asking me to explain a little more.
"Yeah. A huge cavern, about half full of flowing lava, and up on the higher ground there are structures lined up like houses. The heat and the lava have damaged them pretty badly, but you can still tell they're houses."
"How curious. Traces of a city existing beneath a great mountain. How large are the houses?"
"Hmm. Pretty big. What looks like a door seems to be about three meters high."
The great cavern, dyed yellow and red by the light the lava gave off, looked scorching — and yet, somehow, it sent a chill through me. Hearing my explanation, Franc lowered her gaze for a moment, her expression sunk in thought. I didn't interrupt her. I studied the lava cavern instead, as more and more of it entered the range of Spatial Perception.
Matching our slow descent, the deeper reaches of the lava began to come into view, and I couldn't even guess how deep it went. The cavern itself was immense. We'd come down another fifty meters or so and still couldn't see the end, and the lava's depth showed no bottom either. A truly enormous cavern...
"...?!"
In that instant, a massive quantity of Phase Power swam through the lava and abruptly entered the range of my Spatial Perception. I stopped short in surprise, and Franc turned back with a puzzled look.
Wh-what? Deep in the lava, there's something with over three million Phase Power! I can't make out what it is at all! Spatial Perception can't even detect a form — as if the thing were the lava itself!
One thing was certain—!
"F-Franc! Let's run!"
"Yes?"
"It's a Peak-Rank Variant! There's a Peak-Rank Variant in the lava!!"
"...?!"
I grabbed Franc's arm, kicked Physical Reinforcement into gear, and immediately turned and started running. A Peak-Rank Variant that lived in lava — Franc lifted off and began to fly at speed, and I raised Mana Mode another stage and ran upward without a backward glance.
...Wait. The end of this hole looks like it connects to the lava zone... D-don't tell me this is the path that thing uses to come and go... No. No way.
The thought struck, and the moment I looked at the cave walls, goosebumps rose over my whole body. It wasn't ordinary ground. It was igneous rock — something that had melted and then set. That was why the floor was uneven and yet strangely hard...!
"Franc! Faster — we have to get out! This place is dangerous!"
Feeling a maddening mental itch, I burned Phase Power without restraint and broke into a desperate sprint. If that unidentified bastard came after us, my only means of attack would be Spatial Manipulation or the Mana Cannon — and if I used the Mana Cannon here, the lava might get provoked and set off a volcanic eruption! Even if it didn't, I'd be buried under a collapsing mountain and die!
In a matter of minutes, Franc and I burst out of the anthill, tore clear of the crater's remains, and fled down the mountain. Using Elephant Uros Mountain as my bearing, I ran north like a madman for about an hour before the forest began again. Only once we reached the edge of it did I stop running, find the biggest tree nearby, and climb. I dropped onto a branch thicker than my own body, and only then did a long sigh rush out of me.
I'd turned tail, spooked by a mass of 3.31 million Phase Power, and thinking about it again still put cold sweat down my back. Through the gaps in the leaves, Elephant Uros Mountain sat nearly fifty kilometers from where I was now, but the mountain was so huge it didn't even feel that far.
Should we put a little more distance between us...? No. If Franc's going to read the situation with her eyes, this distance is about right. There's a Return Point not far from here, too.
Catching my breath, I looked up at the sky through the leaves. Dawn seemed to be breaking, slowly, but thick gray clouds hung overhead, so the world around us wasn't brightening anytime soon.
"Seoha? What manner of Peak-Rank Variant was it?"
I was sitting on the branch, getting my breath back, when Franc sat beside me and asked, her face full of worry. While I'd been fleeing, she had fired lightning at the Low-Rank Variants and Mid-Low Rank Variants that tried to swarm us and driven them off. If she hadn't helped like that, I'd still be stuck trying to get out of the hills.
"Haaah. That's... I don't know."
"Pardon?"
"All I saw was something with over three million Phase Power moving inside the lava."
At the figure of three million, Franc's eyes went wide.
"To be exact, it was 3.31 million, but strangely I couldn't detect a form. Phase Power clumped together inside the lava, maybe? It moved like a flock of autumn migrants wheeling in formation, and I couldn't think of it as anything but an aberrant, so I ran... Was I too hasty?"
Hearing me, Franc shook her head firmly, then gripped my hand tight and spoke.
"No! You did well. In a case like that, avoiding it first is the proper course. To face a foe whose nature you do not even know is not courage. It is recklessness."
"Yeah."
But... I'm afraid. What if that 3.31 million Phase Power is the Elephant Uros chieftain?
For a while I stared carefully toward Elephant Uros Mountain, but there was no sign of the unidentified something coming after us.
Maybe it's all right to relax, then.
"Uwaaah..."
As the tension eased a little, a groan like a scream spilled out of my chest. With it gone, the fatigue of a single night — running more than a hundred and fifty kilometers, fighting, fleeing a natural disaster — crashed in all at once. Drained, I flopped onto my back on the broad branch, and Franc came over and offered her lap as a pillow. Feeling her soft thigh against the back of my head, I sighed, and she stroked my face tenderly as she spoke.
"You are tired, are you not? Close your eyes a little. I can use Spatial Perception now as well, so I shall keep watch."
"M-maybe I should...?"
Hearing Franc's gentle voice, an unbearable drowsiness poured over me all at once. She had to be tired too... I wanted to look after her, but she sang a lullaby in a small voice and stroked my forehead, and my eyelids grew exponentially heavy until I couldn't hold on.
"S-sorry. I'll rest first. When I wake up, I'll... take the watch..."
I barely managed to say it while feeling my consciousness flicker, and Franc smiled quietly and nodded. The moment I saw that, my awareness receded fast.
Just a little sleep. Just a little...
I felt my mind come clear, as if I'd slept deeply, and opened my eyes — and two heavy masses of flesh were blocking the view.
...Huh? Oh. Franc's chest.
Then a sculpted chin and lips that looked soft came into view, and above them a prettily raised nose and small nostrils. I stared blankly at her fluttering platinum-blonde hair scattering in the wind, and her chin moved. Beyond her lips and the straight rise of her nose, sparkling eyes the color of jasper appeared, curving gently like a crescent moon into a perfect eye-smile.
"Did you sleep well?"
"Mm."
How long did I sleep? Returning her greeting, I looked around and found a slightly stinging sunlight filtering down through the leaves, as if it were close to noon.
...Huh? The bastard that always insisted on making itself known whenever I woke from even a short nap was quiet, and I frowned, just a little. Was there only one way to check? I rolled over and buried my face between those soft thighs, and a short scream spilled from somewhere above my head.
Hnn.
I drew in a deep breath, and a rich scent of apple rushed up my nose. Perhaps because she no longer needed camouflage, Franc had gone from her night-raid clothes to being completely naked. I reached for her backside and kneaded it with a lewd hand.
"Seoha, honestly."
I was enjoying the feel of that sunlit, pale-glowing backside distorting under my hand as if it might burst, and only then did Treasure No. 1 start standing up stiff.
Good. No abnormalities.
I pulled my face from Franc's triangle and sat up, and Franc, her cheeks flushed red, shot me a glare.
"Here."
Smiling, I crossed my legs and patted my thigh, and Franc let out a disbelieving little laugh before lying down with her head on it, looking prim. I was admiring the view — a dainty thatch of golden down softly covering the mound of Venus — when those slender, jade-fair fingers covered the triangle. I glanced at her face and found her sending me a look that said, and just where do you think you're looking.
"Ahem. Nothing unusual while I was asleep?"
"No. No aberrants approached, and it was a very peaceful stretch of time."
"Got it. I'll keep watch from here, so rest easy."
I lowered my hand to cover Franc's eyes, and she pouted. I pressed those cherry-pretty lips lightly with my index finger, and she bit my thumb with a soft little snap of her teeth. We fooled around like that for a bit, and Franc must have been tired too, because she soon fell asleep with a small sound of breathing. Careful not to wake her, I shrugged out of my school-uniform jacket and draped it over her naked body.
It was for her. It was also for me. There was only one thing I had to do in this third cycle, but that one thing was difficult enough that I had to keep my focus. If I slipped, even by accident, and pinned Franc down to explore that moist, warm flesh of hers, I had a feeling my resolve would go soft and fall apart.
I swept a kilometer and a half with Spatial Perception and saw scorched, dead aberrants scattered here and there within five hundred meters. Franc's handiwork? And she'd said no aberrants had approached... More than that, I'd slept so deeply I hadn't even heard the lightning fall. I must have been that tired.
Aside from that, no aberrants were in sight. Small animals like rabbits and squirrels wandered in search of tree fruit, and palm-sized birds of some unknown species chirped, and that was all — a peaceful stretch of time going on. I spent it in the breeze that came and went in soft little gusts, and gray clouds began to slowly cover the blue sky. Watching the sky spread like a gray oil painting, I wondered if rain was coming.
I'd been listening to the faint rustle of Franc's breathing, and when I took my hand away she scrunched her brows and fussed in her sleep.
"Mmnn..."
I covered her again, and her brows smoothed as she went back to even breathing.
I'll have to stay like this until she wakes.
While Franc slept, I charged TP into the high-grade Phase Stones of the Phase Stone vest against my skin, and practiced control by repeatedly accelerating and decelerating Phase Power with the Mana Sieve. Then, glancing by chance at Elephant Uros Mountain, I noticed something strange. Something small... dust? Anyway, something faint and tiny was billowing outward. Dust visible from fifty kilometers away wasn't something I could ignore.
I narrowed my eyes and focused on that tiny thing, but I still couldn't see it well. Every so often, what I thought was dust would billow up, and that was all. Anywhere else I would have ignored it, but of all places it was the Elephant Uros lair — the place where the crater had formed — and that nagged at me.
Doesn't seem to be the thing from the lava, at least...
Whatever had been kicking up dust for a long while seemed to be searching all over the crater, and then, at some point, it went still. I stared that way for a while, but nothing like dust rose again.
If that was the one with 3.31 million Phase Power, could I blow it away with a Mana Cannon? Should I have just woken Franc and confirmed what it was?
While I was turning those thoughts over, Franc seemed to wake. She wiggled her hands and feet, then nuzzled her cheek against my thigh. The school-uniform pants were thick, so I couldn't feel how soft her cheek was, which was a little disappointing.
"Sleep well?"
"Yes... Mmnn. You smell truly wonderful, Seoha..."
Even that slightly sleepy voice wrapped itself around my ears so nicely it was almost unfair...! Was this what people meant by a sweet voice — Franc's?
When I tried to take my hand away, she reached out with both of hers, caught it, and covered her eyes with it again. She looked like she was being spoiled because she didn't want to get up, and a grin tugged at my mouth.
"Does Franc want to be Sleeping Beauty?"
I reached out and tickled her chin, and she giggled and tucked her neck in. That made her shimmering platinum-blonde hair look even lovelier, and while I was touching it, Franc lifted my hand onto her forehead and looked up at me with eyes that wanted something.
"...Want a kiss?"
"Pfft. At a time like that, you needn't ask. You may simply do it."
I laughed awkwardly and gave her lips a light kiss, and the sensation was nothing at all like concentrating on the Mana Sieve — somehow my face seemed to grow hot. Franc blushed too and buried her face in my thigh.
Ugh, I still had to confirm what that thing rampaging earlier actually was... Franc's forehead kept brushing my dick in little glancing touches, and my self-control was about to collapse.
This won't do!
Around the time I started thinking those sneaky little brushes were somehow deliberate, I pushed Franc away with enormous difficulty and opened my mouth.
"While you were asleep, something strange happened on Elephant Uros Mountain."
"Something strange?"
At my words she stopped playing, sat bolt upright, and asked with a serious face. This was one of the things I liked about Franc. Even in the middle of fooling around, when the situation mattered she listened as seriously as if the play had never happened.
"It was too far, so all I could make out was dust rising, very faintly. It bothers me a little."
"Are you wondering whether it was the Elephant Uros chieftain, or the Peak-Rank Variant of 3.31 million you saw in the underground lava zone?"
"Yeah. You're up now, so I was thinking of going back to check. What do you think?"
"It is not a bad judgment, but for safety's sake, I believe it would be better if I scouted first."
"Scout? How?"
Franc's visible now, so sneaking a look would be hard, wouldn't it?
"Fortunately, my eyesight is rather keen. If it were only a matter of vaguely grasping an outline, I could manage even from here, but to confirm the form with any certainty I would need to close to ten kilometers. So I approach that far, and look down from high in the sky. At ten kilometers, even a High-Rank Variant should not notice me coming."
She added that at such a distance, even the Giant Killer Mantis Queen and the Giant Silver Fang had failed to notice her back when she herself was a giant, and I nodded.
"All right. Let's do it that way."
"Then let us eat first!"
...Huh?
"Please, eat."
Since gaining a visible body, Franc had become able to exert a certain degree of physical force. Using that force, she produced a small stone dagger, carved wood into spoons and bowls, snapped twigs and even got a fire going, then set about cooking in earnest.
The ingredient was a land flower-crab aberrant.
As if she'd known I liked flower crabs, she searched the area, found some, and used the shells to simmer a crab soup. She seared the thick meat with electricity into a crab steak, made a crab salad from scraps of grass she'd gathered somewhere, and even dug up mushrooms that smelled exactly like pine mushrooms to make a stir-fry of crab and mushroom on top of it all. I stared at her in surprise at the four appetizing dishes set before me, and she fidgeted with her fingers as if embarrassed.
"I wish there had been more ingredients..."
Without a word, I took a bite of the crab salad — white, yellow, and orange all mixed together — with the wooden chopsticks Franc had made.
"...Franc is going to be a truly beloved wife."
"Seoha, honestly~. Hehehe."
I shot her a thumbs-up and rapidly worked through what had to be nearly six servings of crab steak, crab soup, crab salad, and stir-fried crab and mushrooms, and Franc laughed a happy hehe. The soup had a creamy texture and such a deep savoriness I wondered if she'd put MSG in it. The steak was like something dusted with cracked pepper and salt — succulent juices, and that sharp, tingling bite peculiar to whole peppercorns stimulating the tip of my tongue. And then the salad, clean-tasting yet full of the scent unique to crab meat, and the stir-fry, whose heat blended with the mushrooms' refreshing aroma into a flavor that was genuinely excellent!
"This is seriously delicious! There aren't even any seasonings — how did you get a flavor like this?"
"Spatial Perception is reeeally amazing, isn't it? About a month ago I saw a collection of ingredients that grow only in the Phase World. I thought of it, and wouldn't you know — Spatial Perception went and told me where those ingredients were!"
"Ah, so that's why you were flying all over the forest so fast."
"Yes! Thanks to Spatial Perception, I was able to gather the grasses used as seasoning, and edible mushrooms!"
How to put it — the man who marries Franc is going to be the luckiest man in the world. And that lucky man is going to be me. After finishing every last bit of what she'd made, not leaving a single drop of broth, I plucked some of the water leaves that grew here too and ate them as I asked.
"So cooking's a hobby of yours too, Franc?"
"Lady Shinomiya loves delicious food, and cooking is a hobby of hers as well, so while I watched and learned at her side it became a hobby of mine too. I also learned by watching your mother and Lady Siha cook."
"I see."
Shinomiya — that was the second madam of House Aldion, wasn't it? The one Franc thought of as a foster mother... A few things I was curious about had come up, but I decided to ask later if there was time. I sat cross-legged and beckoned her.
"Stomach's full, so shall we top up your TP? Franc, come here."
Franc sat on my knee with her face slightly flushed. I took her by the waist and began pouring TP into her, and soon a deeper color rose in her face. Since I'd started injecting TP directly into her body, a few experiments had confirmed that when Franc entered the Soul Stone, the invisible Phase Power accumulated in her body merged with the Phase Power inside the stone. And once she went in and came back out, the Phase Power was divided exactly in half...
"The difference between injecting TP straight into the Soul Stone and injecting it into your body like this before you enter the stone seems to be the conversion rate of TP into Phase Power. Injecting it directly into the Soul Stone accumulates more, but the burden on you is lighter when I inject it into your body, right?"
"Hahk. Yes, I think so as well."
A moan had spilled out the moment she opened her mouth, and Franc flinched, startled by her own sound, even as she answered. Put TP directly into the Soul Stone and the conversion rate was one to one, but if it passed through Franc's body it felt closer to one to zero-point-six. The drawback of the former was that the sexual stimulation became so overwhelming she nearly lost her mind.
"Hmm. If I keep injecting TP like this and the Soul Stone's Phase Power goes past 10,499,997, what happens?"
"Nngh. That... I don't really... know."
Franc's sultry moans seemed to carry a bewitching quality that shook one's reason. That plaintively trembling voice sent a thrilling pleasure into my ears and made me want to tease her without even meaning to.
...I have to hold back.
"There's so much TP now that injecting it takes a long time."
"Aaaahn."
I muttered on, deliberately turning away from a voice that sounded like a succubus tempting me, and Franc seemed to be finding it harder and harder to endure. She threw herself against me all at once, rubbing her thighs together as heated moans began to spill out.
...And endure I must.
The TP I'd injected into Franc's body so far was around 3.6 million... She'd said the lightning seemed to grow stronger the more TP accumulated, so I'd kept injecting steadily after that. Yesterday she'd used as much as 1.4 million of the Soul Stone's Phase Power, so to replenish that...
"Hahk. Ahhnn. Seoha, ah, ahn, aaahn."
By now Franc wasn't even trying to hide her moans. She had her arms around my neck and was twisting her body. And yet I couldn't shake the feeling she was doing it on purpose... No — the arousal wasn't fake, but I could feel an intention in her, too: to excite me and make me pin her down.
Look at her! Even now she's pressing those big breasts into my chest and rubbing! And her hands — at first they only groped the back of my head and my back, but they keep traveling lower!
I let out a deep sigh, and Franc flinched and stopped her hands.
"Franc. Keep that up and I'll torment you through the Soul Stone. Absolutely no penetration — just enough wanting to drive you mad, until you feel like you'll die."
"Hic—!"
"I'm holding back because the timing is what it is. So you hold back too, Franc. ...You can, right?"
"Yeees..."
Her reluctant answer was thick with frustration. Still, she seemed to be trying to restrain herself — she moved her hands to my shoulders, buried her face in my chest, and forced herself to swallow her moans.
Haaah. I'm not joking. I'm actually going to end up with blue balls. A girlfriend attractive enough that I wanted to pin her down at every hour of the day was, sometimes, a genuine problem.