Solid Snake (1)
At Franc's cry, Hwayeon immediately cycled her Phase Power, reshaping her tights into plate armor, and burst out of the tent roaring.
"Enemy attack! On your feet! Everyone, up!"
The volume of it was terrifying. The encampment snapped awake in an instant, and I threw on my Force Leather and bolted out after her.
Afraid the snake might have heard her, I sprinted for the edge of the forest. The three sentries posted there turned at my approach, a little flustered.
"Franc. That way?"
"Yes. The snake was looking straight at the encampment."
The forest lay more than four kilometers out. My Spatial Perception couldn't reach that far, of course, but I strained my eyes anyway, on the off chance sheer force of will might let me see it. Rain hammered down as I glared into the dark where I thought the snake would be, and the woman among the three with the highest Phase Power — a D-Class physical reinforcement type — spoke up carefully beside me.
"Um... Blue Genius, sir. What's going on? Nothing's been wrong on this side..."
"A snake we judge to be a high-rank variant was watching us from the edge of the swamp. Franc, go check its position one more time? Its appearance too, if you can."
"Yes!"
Franc launched herself high and vanished into invisibility. I glanced at the woman, gone rigid at the words high-rank variant, then turned my eyes back to the dark and strained them harder.
Maybe I pushed too hard. Mana Vision switched on, and the world in front of me flared bright all at once.
A monochrome nightscape unfurled so suddenly I flinched — and the three tense figures behind me jumped and stumbled back. Ability users, and they still spooked that easily...
Anyway, Mana Vision could do this too? It hadn't, before I reached D-Class, and I'd kept it shut off after that... Had it come with becoming D-Class, or C-Class? Hmm. If I'd known sooner, the third run through the Phase World would have been a lot easier.
Careful not to meet anyone's eyes, I scanned the boundary of the swamp forest. The ground rose in a gentle swell, and it was too far — nothing like a snake showed itself. The fidgeting sentries grated on me a little, but I ignored them and started turning the fight over in my head.
How would a high-rank serpent variant attack? Bite first, pump in venom, coil around a body and crush it... And since it was an aberrant, a tail strike? Would it take to the air like the flying snake I'd seen yesterday? I needed to know whether it was an elemental type or a physical reinforcement type. If only Franc would hurry back —
The thought had barely formed when, at the very edge of my Spatial Perception, I caught snakes of every kind, from low grade to mid-low, crawling in.
Enough of them to blanket the ground!
I shut off Mana Vision, spun around, focused Mana Sieve into my throat, and shouted.
"Ma'am!"
Yeongeun heard me, and so did Hwayeon, the Branch Director, and the Hwarang boss. All of them came running to where I stood.
"What's happened?"
"Snakes from low grade up through mid-low are closing on the encampment. They'll be here in... five minutes. There are enough of them to carpet the ground, and more keep coming."
Yeongeun took that in and immediately issued orders to the Branch Director and the Hwarang boss.
"Alert the verification team and prepare for combat. And the high-rank variant?"
The two of them, already turning to go, stopped dead at her next words and looked back.
"Franc went to check again... Ah. There she is."
"Seoha. It is a high-rank variant with a Phase Power of 294,917 and a Phase Stone of 292,163! Fourteen point four meters long, its torso two point six meters thick, with rock-like growths stuck all over its body. Right now it is coiled four kilometers out, watching the encampment — but thousands of snakes between low and mid-low grade are advancing on the encampment in its place!"
"That's a lot."
I muttered it, glancing up into the pouring rain, then spoke to Franc again.
"It's raining, so once the snakes and our people mix, you won't be able to use your lightning. Roast as many as you can before they get here. I'm counting on you."
"Leave it to me!"
The sentries went stiff at Franc's shout. Inexperienced, maybe — their reaction was pretty poor. I turned to Yeongeun.
"This is for my verification, so Franc and I will take down as many as we can."
"Y-you're sure? What are you standing around for! Get ready to fight, now! You three — record the situation on your Certifiers. Hwayeon, bring the girls and prepare to support Seoha, just in case."
Snapped out of it by Yeongeun's bark, the Branch Director and the Hwarang boss sprinted back into the encampment, shouting orders to prepare for battle. Hwayeon ducked into the women's barracks and started helping Sophia, Kim Ga-min, and Yoo Min-hee into their gear.
"Can you handle it alone?"
"Honestly, I'm debating whether to open with a Mana Cannon right now."
A long roll of thunder — then crack, crack, a chain of detonations. Lightning flashed overhead and bolts began to fall one after another. The night sky washed white again and again, and the force looked so excessive that I checked the consumption. TP was draining from the Soul Stone in a string of ones, threes, fives, and sevens.
Huh? Single digits, and that much power? Was the rain amplifying it?
Then Franc shot urgently into the sky, and by a hair's breadth my Spatial Perception caught something long and black whipping past beneath her feet. A snake, moving fast.
"Franc!"
I kicked off the ground and ran. That bastard dared attack her?
"Seoha!!"
Damn it. I should have just fired the Mana Cannon instead of hesitating!
As I sprinted madly toward Franc, a tremendous bolt of lightning slammed down just outside the range of my Spatial Perception.
KRA-KOOM!!!
A hundred thousand TP worth of lightning.
Thunder tore the air apart, and current exploded outward along the wet ground, wiping out well over a hundred low- and mid-low-grade serpent aberrants in a single stroke. And in the world the bolt lit for an instant, far off, I saw the high-rank serpent glaring at Franc.
Boulders the size of my torso crusted its entire body. It had moved that fast in a body like that? Not an earth attribute, then — a physical reinforcement type? But what were the rocks stuck to its hide? The thoughts flashed up and vanished just as fast, and a dark, sullen anger settled in their place. Resentment and rage, aimed at the Rogue Imugi I had met on my first run.
"Haah!"
I swung both arms and loosed a bundle of 300 TP Mana Bullets from each hand. Eight colorless, transparent spheres rushed the rock snake at speed. The moment it whipped its head around and locked onto me, it coiled like a spring and sprang away in a flash, dodging every one of them.
Elasticity and restoring force — that was how it moved! It landed on the wet earth with a heavy thud and began weaving in an S, wary of me, at the speed of a sports car.
The instant our eyes met I threw up a Spatial Barrier in a hurry — and damn it! The rain was eating through the barrier's duration fast.
Shaaaa—!
In the blink I had looked away, the rock snake had closed to five hundred meters. I refocused, swung only my left arm to fire a Mana Bullet, then thrust out my right and loosed a Mana Laser — but my movements must have been too obvious. It slipped the bullet without trouble and corkscrewed its body like a whirlwind, dodging the laser too.
Tch. Mana Mode — Acceleration!
The flow of time around me dropped to sixty percent. The snake came on at a speed cut nearly in half, but I had slowed as well. If I was putting out a ten and that thing a twenty, trimming forty percent only left me at six while it was still at twelve.
So that was how it was...!
Kiiii—!
The rock snake charged with its maw gaped wide enough to swallow a bull for an after-dinner snack. I dropped the Spatial Barrier and raised it again, then braced my whole body and set my stance so that half its torso would only graze the barrier as it passed. And just as I loaded a Mana Bullet into my left hand for a feint and prepared to draw a Mana Laser with my right, the snake — smaller stones studded all over its body — opened its jaws wide.
——!!
A hole the size of a fist opened deep inside its maw. The air around me shivered, and in that instant the Spatial Barrier's remaining duration plunged to a third.
"?!"
Startled by the sudden drop, my focus broke, and the Mana Laser failed to fire. On top of that, in the moment those vertically slit eyes seemed almost to smile, the thing slammed through the Spatial Barrier and blew past.
"Ghk!"
My plan to let it glance off at an angle failed. I took the rock snake head-on, and with an impact like being hit by a dump truck I was flung far away — and the snake was thrown the opposite direction.
The ground rushed up as if to swallow me. I tumbled, and the pain, like being beaten with boulders, threatened to knock my mind clean out.
"Krgh...!"
I stabbed an arm into the earth to stop the skid, and pain like every bone in my body grinding flooded in until my head went white. If I hadn't been under sixth-stage physical reinforcement, I might have died. Shaking, I barely managed to fire a Healing Wave. A blue ripple spread outward from my body, and the pain that had been scrambling my senses vanished fast.
"Huff!"
I shot to my feet and looked where the rock snake had been thrown. A third of its head was gone, and it was thrashing and twisting like a stepped-on worm. And hundreds of meters away, the glowing stump of that head was already beginning to regenerate.
That... don't tell me my Healing Wave had affected it?
"Hraaah!!"
I kicked off like lightning, leapt, and swung my left arm, firing a 500 TP Mana Bullet at the part the rock snake was trying to regenerate. My other hand readied a Mana Laser.
Tang—!
Not the ping of a flicked coin, but the snap of a breaking string — and the Mana Bullet bursting against the wound came into my accelerated sight like slow motion. It detonated hard against the hide, but the blast never carried the shock into the body. The force dropped off sharply, erasing the rock stuck to the outer skin and searing a patch of scales, and that was all.
So Mana Bullets did work on a high-rank variant. But that much power wasn't enough.
I fired the Mana Laser I had prepared and brought it down like a cut. The space before my eyes split open, and the beam dropped toward the regenerating rock snake's neck. It boiled as it went, and began to split the brain visible between the regenerating white skull.
Chwak!
But the middle of the Mana Laser snapped, and it shot past the thing's head. Was the laser's cohesion lacking?
Thud! Crash! Crack-crack-crack!
Hit again the moment regeneration started, the rock snake thrashed like a mad thing and whipped its tail in every direction, slamming and sweeping the rain-soaked earth. Where the thick stone tail struck, the ground burst, and chunks of rock and clods of dirt sprayed out like buckshot.
Damn it. Should I use Spatial Manipulation? But they were recording — wasn't Spatial Manipulation something I ought to keep as a hidden card? Even if I tackled it with the Spatial Barrier, getting close to something thrashing that wildly would only get me launched again, same as before...!
I dodged the countless shards of rock and dirt flying in like shot and swung the Mana Laser again. If once wasn't enough, I'd swing until it was! I kept at it, steadily shaving down the rock snake's head, but the damage I dealt couldn't keep up with the regeneration.
Fucking hell! Just how much recovery had that Healing Wave given it?!!
"Damn it, the power's not enough..."
I landed and drew a deep breath. It was definitely dealing damage. Then I would pour everything in!
Just before the wound closed completely, I launched myself at the rock snake's skull — only a finger-joint of a gap left — and shoved most of my Phase Power into the Mana Laser. The beam, no thicker than an index finger, instantly thickened and widened to about double, changing from a laser into a riser. And the Mana Laser, transformed, drove into the rock snake's head just before it finished healing.
Sssssst...
A noise like a swarm of thousands of locusts spread out, and the Mana Laser searing the rock snake's head finally punched through its recovery and bored clean through its skull.
Crunch.
Bone crumbled, and blood — and something that wasn't blood, and the powder of something else — sprayed out under the Mana Laser. At the same time the rock snake's tail shot up like lightning, shuddered for a long moment, and went limp. The vertically slit reptilian eyes flashed, then slowly lost their light and dropped to the earth with a thud.
"Huff! Hahh! Hah! Hah!"
The moment I was sure it was dead, my heart — quiet until then — lurched and began to hammer, driving blood through my whole body. A few variables, and my own stupid choices on top of them. For letting the snake get in close just once, the price had been far too steep.
"Urgh."
Aching all over, and with three-quarters of my Phase Power gone in a single instant, I started to sink down — then noticed more than fifty people watching, and desperately locked my legs and held. I couldn't let them see me looking pathetic!
"Seoha!!"
"Seoha!!"
"Seoohaa!"
More than that, my lovers were running toward me, eyes full of anxiety and worry. A man has his pride. How was I supposed to look wrecked in front of my women? Ah. Had I already shown them? Bah! That and this were different!
Shaaaaaa.
Anyway, I stayed stubbornly on my own two feet, and the heavy rain beat against me, cooling a body gone hot. Standing in it, I turned my gaze to the rock snake lying dead. A hole the size of a fist blown through its head, blood and brains leaking out — and looking at it, some feeling I couldn't name rose up.
Middle schoolers and high schoolers scream and lose their minds just seeing a dead rat. So why could I tear an aberrant apart like that and feel nothing? They say becoming an ability user hardens the mind and makes it more resilient, but what I felt was almost as if I enjoyed the killing...
"Phew."
Useless thoughts. We were already in the business of killing and being killed. No reason to soak in pointless sentiment.
I waited a moment, and Franc arrived first, flying in and throwing herself into my arms. Yeongeun and Hwayeon came right after, looking me over for injuries before sighing in relief.
"Seoha, are you all right? You took the tail and went flying..."
"I'm fine. ...They got me getting launched on camera too, didn't they."
"Obviously?"
"Ugh. Getting filmed taking a hit like an idiot. I should have been more careful."
A misjudgment and a mistake, and the result was footage of me getting wrecked. Humiliation, plain and simple. If this had been a livestream, fail clips would have been churned out by the dozen and spread all over the internet. At the sight of me squirming, Yeongeun let out a hollow little laugh, then stroked my cheek and murmured.
"You really took down a high-rank variant on the verge of evolving into superior grade, all by yourself, without even Franc's help..."
"I took them as a D-Class. No reason I couldn't as a C-Class."
As we talked, the verification team murmured their way over to gawk at the dead rock snake. Through them came the Branch Director and the Hwarang boss, wearing the look of men who couldn't believe what their own eyes were showing them.
"Haa. You really did kill it."
"To take it alone, without even a spirit's help..."
Here and there the body was burst and torn by Mana Bullets, and half the face — regeneration cut short — was left grotesquely exposed. The Branch Director stared at the rock snake's corpse as if he had run out of words, then swept his rain-soaked hair back and spoke, composed.
"Taking down a Solid Snake by yourself. The verification needs no further review — you pass. Furthermore, as overseer of the verification team, the Ability Users Association will recognize you, Jung Seoha, as a Special Type ability user. Once we return and submit the report, it will be reviewed quickly, and your Special Type certification will be confirmed."
Solid Snake? That was its name? Well, it had been a hard bastard... Still, Rock Snake would have suited it better.
"Of course. If they won't recognize our Seoha, then no one will ever be recognized as Special Type."
Yeongeun shrugged as she said it, and the Branch Director gave a bitter smile, looking at the Solid Snake. The Hwarang boss looked the limp, dead thing over from several angles, then spoke with expectation mixed into his face.
"The size is incredible, though. At this scale, the grade ought to be gold-crown, shouldn't it? There should be a Phase Stone."
I nodded.
"There is. A Phase Stone worth two hundred ninety thousand."
Now that I thought about it, it was a bit of a waste. If it had become a high-tier variant, I could have absorbed the Phase Power myself... Then again, would a high-tier variant have been harder to handle?
"Hwayeon. Open its belly."
"Yes."
Hwayeon drew a dagger from her waist, tore away the rock stuck to the Solid Snake's scales, and began to cut the belly open. A few physical reinforcement ability users came over to help her. In that moment, dense Phase Power began to well and pour from the Solid Snake's corpse.
"Haa. Time River ought to have priority on the Phase Power, but everyone who entered is C-Class, so it can't be helped. If you're all right with it, Seoha, would you yield it to the others?"
Franc glanced at Yeongeun, then sidled away from the corpse. In that span she had absorbed maybe five percent of the roughly twenty percent available.
"Franc already took five percent."
"Ah? Ah, then let Franc absorb—"
"Yeongeun? It's fine to call the others."
It was fine. I could inject TP into Franc myself anyway. I nodded too, partly so I could look generous about it, and Yeongeun smiled brightly and gave a light wave of her hand toward the Branch Director and the Hwarang boss. The Hwarang boss and the Branch Director widened their eyes a little, then nodded and shouted.
"Blue Genius has yielded the Phase Power absorption! Only those qualified under the non-combatant rule, step forward!"
"The Association as well! Per the non-combat rule, only those eligible this time may participate!"
Huh? What rule was that now. About eleven of them ran up to me, bowed at the waist, and offered their thanks.
"Thank you, Blue Genius!"
"Thank you!"
"That was amazing!"
Ugh. If they were going to thank me, they could leave the nickname out of it. They all passed by calling me by it, so I put on a cynical smile — and Yeongeun smiled and set a finger on my protruding lip, pressing it lightly.
"If you dislike the nickname that much, why not file an objection with the Ability Users Association and request a title change?"
She turned toward Branch Director Kang Hyunwoo as she said it, and under her gaze he flinched. Oh?
"Can my nickname be changed?"
"There would be a way. But there is no guarantee the next one would suit you, Jung Seoha. It might end up even more atrocious than this. The titles are given by the Association's old men, so they tend to be intuitive. You said the ability's name was Spatial Perception? You might well end up called the Space Ruler."
"...I'll just keep this one."
They'd slap Space on it just because the word was in there? Better to leave it as it was.
Whether she had finished extracting it or not, Hwayeon came over with a Phase Stone half the size of a fist. So that was the Solid Snake's Phase Stone.
"Heh..."
For some reason the Hwarang boss sighed, looking back and forth between the Phase Stone in Hwayeon's hand and me, his face full of a hollow sort of emptiness.
I nearly got myself killed too, you know? The moment that thing opened its maw, the barrier's duration dropped like a stone — you have no idea how much that startled me...
"Then we'll begin the cleanup. Detection ability users, watch the perimeter! Everyone else, gather the aberrant corpses scattered all around!"
At Yeongeun's order, the cleanup of Franc's handiwork began. Looking now, most of the aberrants lay dead of electrocution. Lightning attribute, mass slaughter of the small fry — that was Franc, all right.
"You're doing cleanup in rain like this? Wouldn't it be better once the sun's up?"
I muttered it, watching the ability users in raincoats bustle about, and Hwayeon answered.
"We're only gathering the corpses in one place. With more than fifty people at it together, it won't take long. So get back, Seoha, wipe yourself down, and rest."
"Ah. Yeah."
Franc had been holding my hand and tugging at it for a while now anyway. I was pretty tired mentally, too.