Day 5: Clifftop (1)
Ugh...
……
This doesn’t feel good at all…
By my rough estimate, it’s around six in the morning. Ten hours ago, after finishing those pointless thoughts from last night, I had hoped to drift into a light sleep trusting my detection ability.
But I couldn’t sleep a wink.
Of course, sleeping comfortably in the Phase World is out of the question, yet I had hoped even a light doze would be possible. Instead, my detection ability kept scanning, analyzing, and projecting everything within an eighty-meter radius, leaving my brain constantly active and unable to rest.
There was no technique for sleeping with my eyes open either. Even if I tried, the ability never turned off, so I’d just end up with sore eyes. What a perfect ability this turned out to be, with such a massive flaw.
Yet strangely, my body feels optimal. I’ve stayed up all night playing games before, so I know what it’s like—eyes swollen, head throbbing, bad breath from not sleeping a full night. But right now? It’s like I got eight solid hours of rest. My body is completely refreshed and invigorated.
After ten hours of running the detection ability, my head should be exhausted, but nothing has changed from ten hours ago.
What is this?
I heard that stress releases toxins that cause fatigue, yet the Phase power seems to have automatically purified it all. Still, humans need sleep to flush out unnecessary information, make connections, and relax. So what now?
By around three in the morning, seven hours had passed since I lay down. I was so done that I started anthropomorphizing the movements of the Phase power inside me and playing with hallucinations. I even replayed the giantess’s shower scene frame by frame in my head, predicted the sequels to the webtoons, movies, and novels I was reading, and imagined bloody fights with the giantess.
I clung to one last thread of hope that I might finally fall asleep.
And the result? My mind is even more muddled than before!
I had vivid delusions where I shrank the giantess to my size, suppressed her with Phase power, and even let out a satisfied “ng” in my sleep. Somehow I focused so hard that the hallucination became a full video thanks to my ability’s assistance, and it got burned into my memory.
Just to test if my overwhelming memory and recall could turn fantasies into videos, I tried, but it didn’t work. I could remember the scenes, but they never became actual videos. They were just memories that would fade with time.
This is far from perfect.
Once I snapped out of it, it was six in the morning. The surroundings were already faintly brightening as the sun was about to rise, so I let out a sigh.
At this point, I almost feel like I should be sleeping.
I gave up on thinking and on everything else. I simply focused on the Phase power being absorbed into my entire body.
I had to wait until the sun was fully up and just pass the time like this.
After spending the night, my Phase power had risen to 275.
Despite all the torment from endless imagination, hallucination, and insomnia, the Phase power had slowly been gathering inside me.
I watched the movement of the Phase power circulating inside my body in a trance-like state. It started at my heart, climbed through my neck to the left brain, circled halfway around, descended through the right brain back to my neck, then returned to my heart, exited again, and moved to my left arm. At the elbow it changed lanes and reached the fingertips, then U-turned and came back. At the elbow it changed lanes again and entered my heart.
It went to my right arm the same way, and the same for both legs. The knee area was where the lane changed, different from the arms.
Overall, it looked like a Möbius strip spinning from the heart through the head, two arms, and two legs—five loops in total.
When I focused more, compared to the Phase power circulating in my torso, the amount flowing through my limbs and head was tiny.
If the Phase power circulating inside my body was 272.3, then the Phase power moving through my skin, muscles, and the rest of my internal organs was only 2.7—barely one percent of the total.
……Do physical reinforcement users circulate about fifty percent through the skin? Or since it said the whole body, is the entire body just a vortex of Phase power like me?
Thinking about how the parts where the Phase power flows get reinforced… I wanted to forcibly pull those parts I had never used before to pass the most important treasure, the first one.
Then the adults’ talk about sustainability and the greatest…!
Hmm.
I had said not to think, but since random thoughts and hallucinations were part of my nature too, I unconsciously thought about various things while trying to move the Phase power around at will for two and a half hours.
-What’s he doing?
-Who knows?
-Trying to move us? Are you an idiot?
Those were the only responses I got.
So slow…
Even so, the Phase power coming in kept stacking up. After two and a half hours, my total Phase power reached exactly 300.
Seeing a number ending in 00 made me feel good. It wasn’t because my Phase power had increased, but simply because the numbers matched up.
Hmm. The sun was fully up and the surroundings were getting brighter, but the sun was still hidden behind the cliff, so it was quite shaded. Probably another three hours until direct sunlight reached me.
I raised my left hand to pick morning leaves and used my right hand to fiddle with the horned claw while looking at the giantess and the mole corpses.
Rigor mortis usually starts in certain parts after about six hours, most limbs stiffen after twelve hours, and full relaxation begins after thirty to forty hours, according to the books.
Decomposition starts in places like the eyes or nose after about twelve hours, but both the mole corpse and the giantess corpse still looked fresh.
Especially the giantess’s body: the blood hadn’t coagulated yet and was still slowly dripping from her private parts and anus. No postmortem lividity had appeared yet.
All this knowledge came from medical textbooks in my adoptive father’s book collection. …Perhaps in the Phase World, where Phase power exists, the process of corpses changing is somehow different from reality.
I had to cut open the giantess’s back and reach in to take out the Phase stone.
In ability user circles, wind or telekinesis users extract them easily, but I had no such ability, so I had no choice but to reach in directly.
Inserting my arm into a (non-human) body felt weird, but what could I do?
“It’s making me dizzy and strangely nauseous… My heart keeps fluttering…”
After smelling the blood smell all night, maybe…
I ate about thirty morning leaves and one portion of the cowhide belt (about the size of one finger), then picked up my weapons and started climbing down the tree.
In five days, the only threatening aberrants I had encountered below the cliff were the giantess, the horned puppy, and three giant moles. It was a strangely relaxing yet tense situation.
My detection ability wasn’t omniscient, so distant approaching things would be hard to detect. Maybe it was better to stay more tense?
Ah, I really wanted to know.
Whether aberrants detect Phase power, and if so, whether it’s visual detection or if there’s some obstacle blocking the view like my detection ability, which scans a certain range. I really, really wanted to know all of that.
And the detection distance by tier.
With just these three pieces of information, I could seize control in any situation and spend the remaining time comfortably and productively…
Since there was no easy comparison subject, I couldn’t know, and I didn’t want to take dangerous actions to find out.
At least for the lowest tier, the detection range was definitely under sixty meters. Hmm.
After climbing down from the tree, I approached the two giant corpses.
Ugh, the blood smell was getting stronger. My head felt foggy, like a haze from the blood smell.
Shaking my head made my brain slosh around, making the headache worse.
Grinding my teeth, I finally calmed the headache and examined the two corpses.
First, the mole’s height was four meters. For the giantess, measuring from back to belly 1.6 meters and then adding another fifty centimeters for the breast tips… but anyway, she wasn’t tall, so climbing up wouldn’t be hard.
As I got closer to the giantess’s corpse and the mole’s corpse, a strangely sweet? sweetish? smell mixed with the pungent blood smell.
Along with the usual beastly musty smell and the giantess’s unique sweet scent…
Ah, was the sweet smell the giantess’s perfume? Even as an aberrant, it had a sweet fragrance… and it was a corpse that had been dead for almost two days.
“Amazing in many ways.”
After a while, the thought of cutting open the giantess’s back and reaching into her heart made me feel gross, but I couldn’t discard the Phase stone. Considering the price of a high-tier aberrant’s Phase stone, it was something I absolutely had to bring back.
I had casually heard from adults’ stories and internet rumors that high-tier aberrants’ Phase stones cost tens of billions each?
Tens of billions!!
Eye-watering money. With that amount, I could buy a maid to pester me every day. I absolutely couldn’t leave it behind!
I tucked my claw into my waist and first analyzed the mole corpse.
The left front paw was fixed, claws piercing through the giantess’s chest. To climb up, I had to climb the mole’s body and then its back.
While the analysis told me what actions to take, I was about to use the horned claw to rip the leather… when I noticed a giant, sharp claw protruding from the giantess’s back, casting a shadow over my head.
……If I moved the corpse while climbing and that thing came loose.
I swallowed hard, then thought of the opposite side and looked toward the direction of the mole’s right front paw.
“……Still, I discovered it before climbing, right? It’s fine, it’s fine. I’m getting smarter.”
Pretending to praise myself for developing intelligence, I climbed onto the mole’s right front paw, which hung limply, and walked up the body.
When I reached the mole’s chest, the dead giantess’s head was visible lying on her belly.
Her crushed breasts were like flattened rice cakes.
Mole child. To die while embracing such a beauty in her chest, it was a happy death for a man.
Though the species was different.
Still, it looked rather lewd. The giantess and the mole had similar body lengths, but the pose was… the giantess seemed to be crushing the mole. The giantess was also completely naked.
Anyway, the giantess was lying on the mole’s belly area, and since the mole’s body was long and wide, it wasn’t bad to look around directly.
The mole’s belly I was stepping on was firm, so moving on it wasn’t uncomfortable.
Avoiding my eyes from the cut surface of the visible breasts, I started wondering how to climb the smooth, velvety back of the giantess.
The mole had fluffy fur, so grabbing that and climbing would work, but the giantess had smooth skin and was velvety…
Wait, the giantess also had fur, right? Long fur on her head.
I tried grabbing the hair on the giantess’s head, who was now my size, to climb, but the moment I applied force, it pulled out with a tug, and I yelped in shock!
I felt like I had done something terribly wrong!!
Shuddering, I quickly shook my hand and revised my plan. I’d have to use the horned claw to rip the skin and grab that to climb.
I moved to the giantess’s nape, fiddled with it, and grabbed the horned claw. At that moment, the four mole claws that had entered my vision again caught my attention.
If I slipped by accident or the thing slipped and slashed me, the result would be a dismemberment murder case!
While fiddling with the giantess’s nape, the skin felt incredibly smooth and elastic, and I felt like I might get addicted to the sensation…
Hah!
I almost fell!
How I almost fell was a secret.
Ah, my heart kept fluttering. Because of the blood smell? Ugh.
I had no choice. Even if the giantess’s corpse was a little damaged, I thought, since she was an aberrant, and pushed hard to the left side of the giantess’s body, pushing to the right.
With force, my hand sank deep into the soft skin…
“Kueeeugh…!”
As the giantess’s body moved slightly, a creepy sound like zzzzt zzzzt came from the claws embedded in her body, as if cutting something.
To avoid the giant mole’s claws slipping and injuring me, I closed my eyes and pushed the giantess’s body while sensing the direction the claws were coming out for a few minutes.
Finally, the giantess’s corpse slid off the mole’s corpse and fell to the ground with a thud.
With a thud, the giantess’s corpse landed on the ground and soon lay flat with her legs twisted…
“Uek.”
The left breast’s cut surface was bloody and exposed, and the four claws had slashed her belly, half-cutting her waist so her intestines spilled out in a grotesque sight. I frowned hard.
If I had seen such photos before coming to the Phase World, I would have vomited, but after five days, my mental string had grown thick enough that it wasn’t that bad.
Maybe I had just gotten used to the blood smell I had been smelling since last night?
It wasn’t that it was gross… rather, hmm.
Compared to that, the breasts defying gravity were amazing even to look at twice. The volume that should sag sideways when lying down was instead bouncy and elastic like a rice bowl turned upside down.
Anyway, the giantess’s position was right next to the mole’s right side, so I didn’t need to go down to the ground and climb the giantess again. I could just jump onto her breasts from here.
The problem was the Phase stone’s position had changed.
The impact of the fall had moved the Phase stone out of the heart and slightly lower, toward the back near the solar plexus in her chest. I had no choice but to cut through the giantess’s body and enter from inside.
……
I had to cut open the giantess’s body and enter the corpse, but the feeling of being gross and the slight expectation I had felt made me shudder.
Ah. Was I really a necrophilia fan?
Ah… if it got to that point, I was a human scum.
My future was truly worrying!
No, that couldn’t be. It must have been because I was intoxicated by the blood smell and my head was overheating now. I hadn’t slept or even dozed off last night, had I?
……If I escaped here, I’d seriously have to get psychiatric counseling. Since my adoptive father is the director of a small general hospital, I could secretly get examined without leaving a record.
I carefully positioned myself and prepared to jump onto the giantess’s breasts.
Using my detection ability, I confirmed that jumping onto the belly side would cause her lower orifices to spurt blood and her intestines to burst out from the gaps on both sides.
With the soft-looking breasts, there would be no impact when falling.
“Hup!”
With a small battle cry, I front-flopped onto the erect breasts. The analysis had advised that if I jumped with my legs first, the elasticity would send me flying somewhere weird.
Slosh.
Fortunately, the giantess’s breasts were large enough to cover my entire body and more, perfectly absorbing the fall impact. And the soft, squishy feeling all over my body and the huge nipple sensation on my chest…
No no no!! I was really going to fall!!
I really couldn’t!! The worst degenerate warning in my head was at maximum volume!!
I had to reduce the imagination and quickly grab the Phase stone, wash my body, smear on mud, and climb back up to the tree where I had spent last night!
Leaving the regretful feeling behind, I hurriedly raised the claw upside down and thrust it into the center of the chest. The sadistic feeling of piercing the chest of an existence that looked exactly like a human, even though she was an aberrant, made me shudder.
Ah… impossible. Cutting the belly was already impossible, so entering from inside the belly? Physiologically impossible!
Hah, but there were tens of billions inside.
Grinding my teeth like a dog needing to poop, I fidgeted on the giantess’s breasts until my gaze naturally went to her waist.
The giant mole’s claws had slashed through, spilling intestines and blood in a messy state. Could I enter through there…?
First, after slipping from the chest and landing on the ground, I peeked into the side slit that looked like a cave after being cut open.
“……This is also impossible.”
Tens of billions… tens of billions…
“……Crap!”
I let out a double sigh and pulled out the horned claw from my waist, sticking it to the place where the giantess’s side ribs were.
I had to explore inside after entering the waist. It would be better to make a hole near the Phase stone and only insert my upper body a little to pull it out!
Puuk.
The feeling of cutting and tearing human flesh made my head spin. But it was tens of billions. A little suffering and a bit of human morality erosion for tens of billions!
After making a hole in the soft flesh, the moment I pushed my arm inside, the sensation of the intestines on my arm made me shudder.
Ah… it doesn’t reach. It’s completely short!
The Phase stone’s position, confirmed with detection ability, was a position that my arm or leg could never reach in this posture.
……I thought it was impossible, so I made the hole bigger and spread the ribs apart with both arms, pushing my upper body in.
Squish.
Hic?! Uwa!?
Something soft made me startled and gasp, then the sweet blood smell rushing into my nose made me panic and pinch my nose.
At that moment, my hand was covered in blood, so I was startled twice, and then I sensed that the blood on my hand had gotten on my nose too, startling me a third time.
“Hiiik?!”
While panicking and fidgeting, unknown intestines poured out onto my back and head, and the sensation made me shudder. In the moment I stretched my hand to grab the Phase stone, blood poured down from somewhere.
Splash!
“Uwa!!”
Still, my hand didn’t reach the Phase stone! Thinking it was impossible this way, I quickly pushed my whole body into the hole, grabbed the small-fisted Phase stone, and tried to exit the giantess’s body, but something caught my arm and I couldn’t get out!!
The feeling of the intestines being pulled out was the worst!! No, the fact that I secretly enjoyed that feeling made me even worse!!
Soon it seemed like some precious human thing would break!!
Fidgeting, I cut it with the horned claw and hurriedly crawled out, but… suddenly I realized I was holding something along with the Phase stone. This was… a heart vessel?
“Kua!!”
Unconsciously, I threw the heart vessel along with the Phase stone, quickly grabbed only the Phase stone, and ran madly toward the river.