Chapter 156: Ability Verification (3)
I came back to the tent whose nameplate read President, pulled off my jacket and long boots, and threw myself onto the air mattress.
They called it a tent, but the inside was nothing more than a rectangular air tube, and it felt as cozy as a capsule hotel. The wind in this Phase World ran cold, yet the tube doubled as insulation, and the result was, I suppose you could say, snug.
More to the point...
"Why do people keep trying to leave me out?"
I grumbled it up at Franc, who had followed me in. She laughed under her breath, came over to where I lay, and sat down beside me.
"I believe the reason lies in the amount of Phase Power you recover."
"Hm? You think... so?"
"Recovery is affected by one's emotions and physical condition, and an ordinary person needs more than a thousand minutes—upward of sixteen hours—before their Phase Power is full. So they must be telling you to rest on purpose."
"Fair enough... Now that I think about it, maybe that's why Hwayeon made a point of coming back at four."
"I believe so. If she starts resting at four, her TP will be full by 8:40 in the morning."
Lying on the air mattress, I turned Spatial Perception on the camp beneath the darkening sky—people cutting drainage channels around the tents, processing byproducts at a frantic pace—and a faint unease settled over me. A twinge of guilt, I supposed, at loafing while everyone else worked.
The storage tent was already packed with byproducts; I could see them pitching another. Even if they harvested everything left from the remaining carcasses, they wouldn't fill half of it... Hmm.
I set my head on Franc's soft thigh and toyed with a fall of her platinum-blonde hair, and by the time I looked again the byproduct work was nearly done. The supporters hauled out an enormous tent and raised a great canopy in the center of the encampment, one that shut out nothing but the sky, while others began preparing the meal beneath it. In the meantime the mountain of scraps had piled high once more. I'd have to go out and erase it.
I pulled my boots back on and stepped outside, and caught Yoo Min-hee, Team 3 Leader, running toward me—only to falter. She bit down on her lip, then came on again and spoke.
"The boss asked you to take care of the scrap pile."
Her expression had softened a great deal from the first time I'd seen her. Had she decided my ability was worthy of standing beside Hwayeon after all?
"Heh. So do I suit Hwayeon a little better now?"
"...Well, that much passes!"
She tossed it over her shoulder with a prim little turn of her head and dashed off somewhere. I watched her go for a moment, then crossed the darkening encampment toward the mountain of scraps.
"If even Team Leader Min-hee acknowledges me, I don't need to see everyone else's reaction to know what it'll be."
Franc only smiled.
I drew near the pile and spoke to a supporter who was wheeling in aberrant remains and dumping them in a clattering heap.
"Is that the last of it?"
"Ah?! Yes! Byproduct processing is finished!"
He was a Time River supporter, and he reacted as if he were lumping me in with Yeongeun—then bolted off somewhere else at once.
"...Am I the only one who thinks a lot more people will start reacting like that, once this verification is over?"
"Does that displease you?"
"Why would it? What strangers think isn't my business."
Ting-ting-ting—pap-pap-pap! I sent off a few mana rounds, erased the scraps without a trace, and turned back just as droplets began to fall from the night sky.
"..."
"Seoha?"
"Hm? I'm fine."
My chest gave a small lurch, but I was fine... or so I told myself. Franc clearly didn't see it that way. She took my hand and led me back to the tent, and I was lying on the mat with my head in her lap when Hwayeon and Yeongeun came in, soaked through.
"Of all times for it to rain."
"A sudden downpour. It should let up before long."
Both of them must have been out in it for a while; their hair was drenched. Had the water gotten all the way inside the tights armor? Soaked to the skin like that, they looked completely identical. Without Phase Power, I couldn't have told them apart.
"End the Authenticator's video recording. I need to wipe this rainwater off."
Yeongeun gestured at Hwayeon and tapped her own upper left chest. Had she stuck an Authenticator there too? At her word, Hwayeon shut hers down and reverted the tights armor from its plated form back into tights. The shift sent a ripple through the fabric, and those large breasts swayed with it... That alluring swell. Even a support bra was probably useless on breasts that size.
I sat up. Hwayeon and Yeongeun pulled towels from their bags, wiped the water from their faces and hair, dabbed at what was running down the outside of the tights, and dried each other's backs. Seen like this, they really did look like a pair of close twin sisters. And thanks to the tights armor clinging to every line of them, the muscle beneath flexed and shifted with every movement... Heh.
I was admiring the four taut swells of flesh when Yeongeun, finished drying off, threw herself down on the mat, and Hwayeon sat beside me with a sigh.
"How far has your TP recovered?"
Right—Hwayeon wouldn't know either. I was about to explain when Yeongeun, sprawled beside me, flailed all four limbs and cried out.
"Ahh~! Our prince is such a cheat~! They say if he rests for less than two hours, his TP fills right back up. Can you believe it?"
"...It is surprising, but I've grown used to it enough that I'm fine."
Hwayeon only let out a small sigh and went on toweling the water from her hair, the look of someone who had simply decided to accept it. Yeongeun, of course, stared at her in disbelief.
"Hmm. The first time I was truly shocked was when I learned what the analysis ability actually was. Right after that I was shocked a second time, and a third, hearing the ability had evolved... Since meeting Seoha, I believe I've been astonished about seven times, and greatly shocked about ten."
"Aigoo~ I should have just laid everything out and clung to Seoha the day we first met. Ahh. Aigo."
Sighing as if the regret might crush her, Yeongeun rolled over, set her head on my thigh, and looked up at me with genuine wistfulness.
"Then I could have had the fun of getting to know Seoha one piece at a time... What a waste~!"
A laugh escaped me anyway. I reached out, touched the breast that had tipped a little toward the floor, and said,
"We've got far more time ahead of us than behind. Don't regret it so much."
"...Mm. You're right, aren't you?"
For an instant her expression clouded. Then it brightened all at once, and she rubbed her cheek against my thigh.
I wondered why it had darkened, and only one answer came to mind.
The age gap.
Yeongeun and I didn't look far apart, but in truth she had lived four times as long as I had. The years we could share would be shorter by that much.
"Have you hit the limit of your talent, Yeongeun?"
"Hm? Yeah. I still fight aberrants now and then, and I come and go from the Phase World, but my Phase Power isn't growing anymore. So that must be it, right?"
I gave her breast a hard squeeze, then reached out and pulled her into my arms.
"Oh my?"
When this was over, I'd have to apologize to my sister and move out on my own. And... I needed to confirm whether my hunch was right. Truth be told, between the first impression and everything else, there hadn't been much cause to think well of Yeongeun. She'd even pounced on me, for one decisive thing. And yet she was simply impossible to hate. Being around her put me in a good mood for no reason at all—she had a way of building an atmosphere that tugged a smile to my mouth.
Maybe that was why. Franc didn't dislike her either, and Hwayeon no longer kept her edge up and treated Yeongeun like a concubine, the way she had at first. Yeongeun, for her part, treated Franc and Hwayeon with respect. Right now the three of them fit together like a trinity.
I whispered to Yeongeun, breathing softly in my arms.
"I'm going to raise you to B-Class. No matter what. They say reaching B-Class extends your lifespan. So let's live a long, happy life together. Just us."
Once someone climbed to B-Class, their lifespan stretched by what you could only call a great deal, and their youth endured. It was possible. It had to be possible.
Yeongeun listened, the corners of her eyes trembling, then clutched me tight. Franc and Hwayeon seemed to understand something as well; their expressions dimmed for a moment, then brightened again.
"Just hearing you say that makes me so happy."
Her trembling voice was thick with tears. I held her harder, and she burrowed into my chest, pressed her forehead there, and closed her eyes. She recovered her brightness almost at once, nestled against me, and started acting spoiled in that lively way of hers—then began stoking Franc's and Hwayeon's jealousy without mercy. Yeongeun braced with sheer strength against Hwayeon tugging at her from behind and refused to leave my arms, while Franc pressed in at my side, kissing my cheek and rubbing herself all over my chest...
I had only just quieted the petite free-for-all when Choi Soohan called from outside the tent to say the meal was ready.
"Hey?! You're going out like that? No!"
Hwayeon and Yeongeun got up from the air mat as if they meant to walk straight out, so I threw myself across the entrance. Going out like that was no different from showing everyone their naked bodies! Even the cleft and curves of their groins were on full display!
...Except it had been a tease. They giggled, pulled something like black shower robes from their bags, and draped them over the tights armor.
"Hehe~? This is armor, you know? We weren't undressed. Whatever was our perverted prince thinking~?"
Yeongeun smirked and poked my chest, so I dropped the play, yanked her fiercely into my arms, seized one ass taut as a ripe apple in one hand, and crushed a breast the size of her own head with the other. She flinched and shuddered. Then, into the ear of a Yeongeun blinking in fluster, I whispered, low and half in earnest.
"Ah—ah..."
"Understand?"
"Mm."
At the naked possessiveness in my voice, Yeongeun's face flushed as if it might burst. Franc and Hwayeon had frozen solid, as if they'd caught the scent of a claiming male off what I'd done, and I demanded an answer from them as well.
"You two aren't answering?"
"Ah, y-yes!"
"I—I understand."
Only after I'd done it did the coward in me wonder whether they'd be revolted by something like this. Pretending not to, I checked the mood of the three—and found, unexpectedly, that all three looked pleased. They say women keep a desire to be bound somewhere in their hearts. Was that actually true?
Led out by my three blushing lovers, the first thing I heard was the heavy drumming of rain beating against the great tent. A hard rain was pouring from the night sky.
Oho. The tent's soundproofing is excellent. If I play this right... heheh.
Rain sheeted down the slope of the canopy like a waterfall and ran out of the encampment along the drainage channels the others had dug. The downpour was about as heavy as the one when we'd fled the Rogue Imugi, but with my lovers stationed to either side of me, my chest didn't so much as stir.
At the center of the camp, earth-attribute ability users had raised stoves and braziers of packed earth, and the supporter women were grilling meat over them with fierce concentration. As I drew near, a spicy-sweet smell stabbed at my stomach. Stir-fried meat, meat stew, skewers, steak—the entire menu was a festival of meat. The other ability users piled their trays high, took stew in big mugs, and ate with cheerful faces near the lanterns set up here and there. The men were eating a great deal of snake, and for some reason their expressions had gone strangely slick.
"Kahahaha! Thanks to the Blue Genius, I'm getting a proper charge of virility today! Much obliged, boy!! Wahahahaha!!"
Hwa Joong-kang had stacked snake meat on his tray like a mountain and was inhaling it at a terrifying rate. The moment he saw me, he speared a chunk the size of my face, hoisted it on his fork, and—laughing with his whole chest—devoured it in a single breath. People seated all around under the great tent kept thanking me, and accepting their greetings left me a little embarrassed.
Come to think of it, the menu was snake, turtle, octopus, and alligator—every last thing said to be good for virility. The women were happily digging into the delicious meat as well.
I took a tray and went for meat, and the Time River supporter women grilling at the braziers, as if they'd been waiting, swiftly picked out only the largest, most appetizing pieces and set them on it. Franc went the other way and came back with a careful selection of nothing but fresh vegetables. Yeongeun piled a tray mountain-high with finished steak, skewers, and stir-fry. Hwayeon returned with four mugs of meat stew balanced on her own.
"Eat a lot."
It felt strangely like a camping trip, and I found myself enjoying it. The patter of rain, the sound of people laughing and talking, good food, and the people I loved. The four of us claimed a table and were eating snake meat in warm accord when the boss of Hwarang and the branch chief approached with trays in hand.
"Might we join you?"
"Don't you two have any tact at all?"
"Heheh. I have no intention of showing off my tact in front of Big Sister."
Yeongeun looked at the beaming branch chief and the Hwarang boss as if she couldn't believe them, then sighed, slid over against me to make room, and Hwayeon shifted in beside us as well.
"Dinner with some of the most beautiful women in Korea—I'm crashing the party, but the mood is excellent, wouldn't you say? Hahaha."
"These girls are all spoken for, so if you don't want the prince to mark you, mind where you look."
At Yeongeun's smiling little barb, the Hwarang boss flinched and went stiff, and the branch chief stared in surprise at Hwayeon and Franc seated beside me.
"Ah, well... I have no desire to earn the displeasure of an ability user who's about to break into the world top ten, so please don't worry."
With that, we began to eat together. The cold-faced branch chief turned out to have a surprising gift for talk, spinning ordinary stories into something entertaining. Even told with hardly any expression, they were somehow funny, and with the Hwarang boss—warm as the uncle next door—chiming in and playing along, the mood heated up in no time.
"So? What were you so curious about that you came over to our Seoha?"
"Come now. Big Sister, that's too much. I only just got the mood going, and you throw cold water on it."
"Blame your own actions. They're plain to see."
Under Yeongeun's sly smile, the branch chief simply heaved a sigh and glanced at me for a read. What he wanted to know had to be about Franc. Every time she and I came and went—more precisely, every time Franc entered his line of sight—he'd studied her almost as if he were glaring.
"It concerns the spirit... young lady contracted to Mr. Jung Seoha. To be more precise, where you formed that contract with the spirit lady."
Unlike five days ago, he was using honorifics with me now. A branch chief of the Ability User Association, addressing me with respect—verification serious enough for that. For a moment I doubted whether a rise in station this fast could even be normal. But then, the station of the two young ladies beside me was a station all its own...
"Seoha? Ahh~."
"Ah~."
I accepted the bite of meat Franc had sliced small and held out, and the branch chief and the Hwarang boss stared at me like raccoons begging for scraps, desperate to know.
"I met Franc on my first entry. In the middle of the night I went looking for a river to wash the meat of a big field rat I'd caught, and that's where I found her, half-transparent. Honestly, back then she was hardly in a state you could call a spirit."
Watching the two adults listen with their eyes wide, determined not to miss a single word, I felt a laugh rising.
"Then I ran into an imugi, and while I was taking a baptism of lightning from it, Franc took that lightning into herself and became a spirit."
"An imu—gack! Uuergh!"
The branch chief shot to his feet in shock, bit his own tongue with heroic commitment, and babbled without even managing to clutch it.
"Hya—hyamshi!"
He yelped it and sprinted off toward someone. Had that been just a moment?
"That man is a disgrace to the nation. Seoha, ah~."
At his disgrace, Yeongeun clicked her tongue, sliced a piece of snake steak small, and popped it into my mouth.
...!
The sight of me being fed by Yeongeun seemed to hit the Hwarang boss like a physical blow. His face had gone so vacant he wouldn't have noticed if he'd dropped his fork. Then the branch chief came running back, red-faced, and tried to wedge himself between me and Franc—only to flinch at her cutting glare and take a step back. Coming to his senses, he returned to his seat, cleared his throat, and spoke again.
"Ahem. You met an imugi, you say? That imugi—the Highest-Rank Variant?"
"Yes."
Ah, that look. I'd seen it often on Hwayeon. The face of a man who couldn't decide whether to believe it.
"That's enough. That Franc is a spirit of lightning is a fact both I and Hwayeon have confirmed. And at the announcement, we proved it with a photograph of an Elephantros cooked clean through. You don't need to go out of your way to confirm it all over again, do you?"
"That is... so, but..."
Yeongeun fed me the last piece of meat, gathered her dishes and mine, and stood as she spoke.
"How Seoha came to be with Franc isn't what you're thinking. Knowing the story won't let you obtain a child like Franc, so give it up. Shaky-Hands."
"Big Sister. That nickname—!"
"If you don't like hearing it, fix the habit. Every time you get stupidly worked up or nervous, you can't hide the tremor in your hands. Isn't that why they call you Shaky-Hands?"
"Kh."
At her rebuke, the branch chief's face soured as if he'd swallowed bile. Franc and Hwayeon gathered their dishes and went to wash them, leaving me at the table with him and the Hwarang boss. Lost in thought, the branch chief began stabbing his blameless meat to shreds with his fork.
I was watching the encampment, where a faint rain-mist had begun to hang, when the Hwarang boss laughed softly and spoke.
"It's truly rare to see Her Excellency like that. She must be quite fond of you, Mr. Jung Seoha."
Looking at him, with that simple, honest face, I remembered Hwayeon's assessment. As a detection-type ability user he had considerable skill, but he was a man who fell short of what it took to lead an organization. Under my gaze he laughed sheepishly, scratched the back of his head, and rose.
"I hope we can keep in touch from here on. Not for business. Privately, as well."
He shot the branch chief a sidelong look, gave me a small bow, and left. The branch chief set down his fork and stood as well.
"I showed you an embarrassing side of myself."
"At a glance, the lady just looks like a pretty older sister. I understand."
He gave a bitter smile at that.
"If only she were nothing more than a pretty older sister."
And with that he walked off. From the look of it, he was heading toward where the Ability User Association members had gathered.
My lovers washed the dishes at the washstand the earth-attribute users had made, then led me back to the tent—where, as if they meant to be the death of me, all three women tried to climb between my legs at once.
"H-hold on! We already did it this afternoon!"
"Didn't you say you could produce semen with TP? You're accomplished at recovering TP as well, so I believe in you, Seoha."
...!
"No need to worry—we have the red intestines, an aphrodisiac unmatched through the ages! A Worm Driller's red intestines are the greatest elixir of this age. People line up to pay tens of millions for them! They say a single teaspoon keeps a man's cock from going soft for a whole month. Want to try some now?"
...!!
"I-I believe in Seoha's beastly nature!"
...!!!
Watching my three lovers settle the order with rock-paper-scissors, I suddenly remembered what Mom had said—that two wives might be enough to snap a man's back.
"Yes! I'm first. Ahem. Seoha? Those two cannot manage it, but my throat can accept even something as large as yours, you know?"
Uh...
I froze, feeling a flicker of fear at Franc's face—overflowing with a sensuality nothing like her usual self. She pushed Hwayeon and Yeongeun back, came into my arms, and whispered in my ear as if she wanted the two of them to hear.
"Please enjoy, to the very fullest, a mouth technique on an entirely different plane from those two...♥"
"What!"
"Mmm—!"
Ghk... I don't even know anymore.
I opened my eyes to a feeling that something was wrong.
Something I couldn't name was scraping at my nerves. I swept the surroundings with Spatial Perception, but nothing out of the ordinary registered. I looked around, and the scene was the same as before I'd fallen asleep: three plush sleeping bags lay joined together on the air mat, and I was lying there with my three lovers. Franc slept deeply in my right arm. Naked, Yeongeun lay facedown across my body, breathing in soft little snores. Hwayeon had claimed my left side the same way, her heavy breasts bare.
I checked the time. One in the morning.
Starting close and working outward, I found the rain had lost some of its strength but was still pattering down, and ability users in rain gear—three teams of three—were circling the encampment on a watch that left no gap. I widened the sweep to the full 1.5 kilometers around us. Nothing strange showed itself.
But I had not forgotten what happened at the museum.
"Everyone, get up."
I reached out, shook Franc and Hwayeon awake, and woke Yeongeun by spreading the ass of the woman asleep on top of me, wide as if I meant to split it.
"Mmm. What's... going on?"
"Nnngh... Seohaa..."
"Hwaaah...?"
Soothing my lovers as they rubbed the sleep from their eyes, I spoke to Franc.
"Something feels off. Franc, go up into the sky right now and look around. It'll be hard to see in the dark, so be as alert and careful as you can."
"Yes? Ah—yes!"
At my words her face snapped fully awake, and she turned invisible at once, passed straight through the tent, and shot up into the sky. I turned to Hwayeon and Yeongeun, who had been staring blankly after her, and gripped their shoulders.
"You two, get your gear on fast. Wake everyone, and pass a warning to the sentries."
"Mm. Understood."
"What's wrong? Did Spatial Perception catch something?"
They turned toward me as they pulled on the tights armor they'd taken off.
"No. But I had this same strong feeling that something was off, right before I met the imugi—and again when the Soul Reaper showed up at the museum."
In that instant Franc came bursting in from outside the tent, face urgent, and cried out as if screaming.