Floating Sky Islands (3)
The island... call it Basin Island. The trees there grew only to a set height, as if some limit had been clamped on them, and a closer look showed the ground itself wasn't level — it rose and fell in uneven swells, like rolling hills. It was as if the trees simply refused to grow any taller than the earthen wall ringing the island's outer edge.
Odd, but I decided the knife-wind was what kept anything from growing past a certain point, and turned my attention to the vegetation.
The trees covering about half the basin weren't broad or massive like the moisture trees or the baobabs from before, so a hideout up in the branches looked impossible. Specks were drifting through the sky above the basin besides, and I had to assume every one of them was a flying aberrant.
Build a shelter in the trees and we'd only be hanging ourselves out as targets.
Hmm...
"Ah? Seoha. Something — something just took off from the temple."
At my sister's words I snapped my gaze down to the nearest temple, and sure enough something pure white was rising, flapping what looked like wings. The moment I judged it an aberrant I snatched her around the waist and dropped us flat on the hill — and she, chin cracking against the dirt as she went down, pulled a wounded face and asked.
"Agh! Wh-why'd you do that?"
"It's obviously an aberrant! We don't know what it is, so we hide first!"
Forced face-down in the dirt by my strength, she shot me a look that said I could at least say something first — but she turned her eyes soon enough and started staring a hole through the white speck that had climbed above the temple.
Watching that speck myself, the first thing I registered was how fast it was.
The white dot — a kilometer and a half off at the least, and by my rough guess more than six — flew so fast and so erratically that a moment's lapse would lose it. In one instant it shot high into the sky, then dropped like lightning and snatched several black specks clean out of the air.
Then it banked in a lazy turn and slipped back inside the white temple.
Out hunting, was it?
Speed like that meant either a physical-reinforcement type or a wind attribute. It was white all over, though, so wind was unlikely. Physical reinforcement, then.
"Judging by the fact that the Mid-Low Grades from Star Island aren't crossing over, whatever just hunted those aberrants has to be Mid Grade at the minimum — except it took them far too easily for a Mid Grade. Maybe I should be calling it Mid-High Grade. And the temple's pretty big. There are probably more of them in there."
"S-Seoha. What if we just go back to Star Island?"
I was muttering through the analysis when she offered, voice trembling slightly, that we turn back.
Would that even be all right? I could just fire a mana cannon and erase the temple — no. Rejected. I didn't know how much power a mana cannon actually carried, and if the blast came out bigger than I thought and shattered the island, then what?
She must have felt the unease in the way I stared wordlessly at the temple, because she caught my arm and started tugging, gentle and insistent.
"L-let's just go back. The drinking water's solved now, right? Even if our clothes soak up the damp, I can get them dry and fluffy in no time, so nobody's catching a cold or getting sick. Okay?"
More than that, my sister's Phase World was in a strange state of its own.
Cloud Island had been the same, and Star Island had almost no Lowest-Rank Variants either — every aberrant here was a flyer. For a first forced summon, a first run, the difficulty was insane.
She'd noticed. That was why she was this scared.
"Seohaaa."
I looked at her, face crumpling, pleading with everything she had. Honestly, if it were just me I'd be fine. Having her here worried me. More than anything, my gut was insisting we stay rather than go back.
"Are you scared of staying here?"
"...A little. And if I'm next to you, I feel like I'd just get in the way..."
Mmm.
"I've thought about it. I'd rather stay here than go back."
"Why?"
"Because..."
Kwoooooooong—
Right as I was about to explain, a vibration rolled in from behind us, something like the cry of a whale from the deep sea.
"Ugh..."
At the sudden sound my sister's brow tightened, and she pressed a hand to her chest.
Wooooooong...
It came again, a tone that seemed to vibrate in the ears, ringing out across the sky. Wondering what on earth it was, I scanned the surroundings — but nothing out of the ordinary met my eyes.
She clung to my arm with a look that said her skin was crawling, shivering as she glanced around, and her Phase Power wavered, unsteady.
I raised a hand to her back and cast Healing Touch. The unstable Phase Power gradually found its shape again, and her trembling stopped.
I turned back to the sea of clouds behind us.
All I could see was cloud spread endless as an ocean, and the needle-peak of Star Island jutting up like a thorn.
Kwoooooong...
The whale-cry came again, and one stretch of the cloud sea heaved and rippled as if something were thrashing beneath it — a stretch that looked wider than Star Island itself.
Then, as if they'd sensed a threat, every flying aberrant on the needle-peak launched at once and began to blacken the sky!
At the noise of hundreds, thousands of winged beasts, my sister flinched and burrowed into my side, watching with fear settled in her eyes.
"Wh-what is that? What's happening inside the clouds?"
"That's what I'd like to know."
She pulled my arm tighter and pressed herself close. And then—
Kugwoooong!
A dull impact slammed into my chest, and a light tremor passed under our feet.
"Kyaah!"
I pulled her in as she let out a small scream and stared hard toward where the sound had come from. What was that? The noise just now had sounded like a high-rise coming down.
Kuuuung—
Another shock, close to a detonation, and another tremor ran beneath us.
The clouds around Star Island churned even harder, rolling like waves, and then — kwoooooong~~ — that whale-cry rang out again, as if it meant to cover the whole sky.
"Agh."
"Sis?"
The moment the cry hit like a sound wave and passed through my body, the countless aberrants hanging in the sky dropped in a clattering rain — and my sister clutched her chest and collapsed at the same time.
Was this something like the roar of a Peak-Rank Variant?
I looked through her body in detail and found her three strands of Phase Power shaking so unstably they looked ready to snap.
Startled, I set a hand on her back, cast Healing Touch again, and spoke to her.
"Sis. You okay?"
"Hah... y-yeah. Are you... okay?"
Even clutching her chest and pouring cold sweat, she was worrying about me, and frustration surged up. Worry about your own body first, for—
"Can't you tell by looking? I'm fine, so stop worrying about me and worry about yourself."
I laid another Healing Touch on her and turned my eyes toward Star Island — and in that instant a thud I could have mistaken for an earthquake passed under our feet again.
From then on the aberrants in the sky grew even more frantic, scattering in every direction, and a large number of them started swarming toward where the two of us were.
Of the flock that had blackened the sky, a savage portion had fallen to the third cry. Less than a quarter remained.
Even the ones left didn't look whole. They staggered, beating their wings with effort — but surviving that cry meant they were Mid-Low Grade, didn't it.
If they came at us, there was a real chance my sister would get hurt... Where could we run? Diving into the basin was out, between the unknown temples and that white winged thing, and circling along the hills to slip away bothered me too, in case they gave chase.
If we couldn't avoid them, the only option was to kill as many as we could.
Once I confirmed her Phase Power had stabilized, I stepped in front of her and glared at the clouds, which were still heaving.
What was it, exactly? A sea of clouds filling my vision all the way to where sky met horizon, deep enough that nothing down there would surprise me... but that had definitely been something like a whale's cry, hadn't it?
Back in middle school, on a family trip to the biggest aquarium in the country, I'd heard a whale's call — and the three cries just now had been, literally, a whale crying.
And the way the needle-peak shook every time something boomed. So then... a giant whale, swimming through the clouds? And the tremors from it ramming Star Island?
Watching the flying aberrants drift toward the edge of my kilometer-and-a-half Spatial Perception, I readied Mana Bullets — a faster rate of fire than the slower Mana Shells. The moment they entered my range, I started killing them.
Fwoom, fwoom-fwoom-boom, boom, kuuung!!
Mana Bullets flung from my arm without pause flew faster than the eye could follow and detonated endlessly among the aberrants staggering through the air.
Kuuuung.
Another heavy impact rolled out. The tremor of heaving earth reached all the way here, and the needle-peak rising in the distance swayed a little harder this time.
Kwoooooooooong——
"Aaah!!"
At the cry, thicker than before, my sister screamed again — and blacked out cold!
That whale bastard — it attacked her, didn't it! I don't know what kind of thing you are, but just you wait!
Of the hundred-odd aberrants driven this way by the last cry, more than half plunged into the clouds.
The survivors flew so drunkenly it was a wonder they were still aloft, reeling like drunks in a stupor, splitting to either side of me and fleeing.
The ones in front broke at right angles and spread left and right of Basin Island, and the ones behind started to follow their path and peel away. I was turning to check on my sister when — that was a pegasus?!
The instant I looked back, something shaped like a pure-white horse, flapping wings bigger than its own body, came charging at me as if it were running across the sky.
Drawn by the Mana Bullet blasts?! Damn it — and it had two pairs of wings? Figures. Of course an aberrant wouldn't be normal!
I quickly detonated a micro Mana Bullet in the ground, shoved my sister into the hole, and stood covering the opening with my whole body while I glared at the thing flying in. I could feel it glaring back.
Soon it entered my Spatial Perception, and I checked the pegasus's Phase Power... heh.
A pegasus, and a Mid-High Rank Variant at that. Four times the size of an ordinary horse, and 18,000 Phase Power.
Kill it and let my sister absorb that Phase Power, and she'd become an E-Class ability user at 3,700 on the spot — but if I let even one of its attacks reach her, she wouldn't survive it.
The pegasus seemed intent on coming at me. The mass of Phase Power gathered at its heart squirmed, trying to form a pattern.
If it was a physical-reinforcement type, letting it close was dangerous. Just kill it.
Not a gentle Mana Bullet. I fired a Mana Shell honed to full power, a hundred TP, and a blue sphere the size of a fist, sheathed in Phase Power, flew at lightning speed.
The pegasus dodged it easily.
Knew you'd dodge. You bastard.
The moment its attention left the shell that had skimmed past, I detonated it by remote control.
Kugugugugung.
The detonated shell compressed space like an implosion, then erupted in a massive explosion and flung a shockwave in every direction.
Tearing the air apart as it burst, the Mana Shell pulverized the horse's head. Literally.
Even the Mana Bullets I'd fired as a D-Class had shown some effect on Mid-High Rank Variants. And now I was C-Class — with a Mana Shell whose power far transcended a Mana Bullet besides.
The instant the pegasus, the heavenly horse, blew apart, I hauled my unconscious sister onto my back and ran like a madman along the southern ridge.
Something else might come bursting out of the temple because of that explosion. The first thing out had been a Mid-High Rank Variant. Who knew if the next would be a High-Rank Variant!
Move first. Think later!
I sprinted a dozen minutes in Mana Mode - Acceleration, paused where the hill bent south at a right angle, confirmed that all three temples had gone quiet, and let out a breath.
Then I turned my eyes back to Star Island. The cloud sea had gone still, as if it had never churned at all.
"Hoo... what even was that?"
Thinking about it, it was honestly absurd. What kind of rotten luck did the two of us have, that a brother and sister both got dragged through hell as a pair. Me and that Rogue Imugi bastard. Her and some whale of unknown origin.
I'd heard of people who awakened a lightning attribute, ran straight into a Crystal Eater, hit B-Class on the spot, and came home in glory. And of course, when the two of us meet something, it has to be...
Fuck.
She was properly out. I'd shaken her hard on the run and she still hadn't come to, hanging limp against my back.
Whether it was the effect of Ring Wave's first stage, her Phase Power — which had been hanging by a thread — had mostly found its shape again, but it still wavered uneasily.
That last cry must have hit hard. They call it G Class, but a G-Class ability user is weaker than a Mid-Low Rank Variant.
I turned her from my back into my arms, set a hand on her chest, and used Healing Touch once more. Her slightly irregular breathing evened out.
Looking up at Basin Island's sky, I found a full-scale bloodbath of aberrants underway overhead.
A two-sided war, between the ones that had fled Star Island and the ones that lived on Basin Island.
The Star Island aberrants were in bad shape from taking that lethal cry up close, but the Basin Island ones didn't look much better.
The winners of that fight would be the few that saw Star Island go quiet and turned back.
I went down the hill on the side opposite the basin, laid my sister down gently, focused Mana Sieve into both hands until they hardened, and started digging with my bare hands.
Blasting a hole with a Mana Bullet would probably stir up whatever aberrants were inside the temples. Couldn't use that.
Fortunately it wasn't mud or soft earth. The ground was firm, so even if I dug the burrow a bit deep, it didn't look like it would collapse.
I dug enough for three people to lie side by side, carefully laid her inside the earthen hollow, crossed the hill, tore off a great many branches thick with leaves I couldn't name, covered her with them, and camouflaged the entrance with the rest.
This side of the hill was blanketed in grass, and the leaves I'd pulled were close enough to pine needles that from a distance you wouldn't tell them apart. The burrow's mouth faced the cloud sea, besides.
With her hidden, I climbed the hill to keep watch, and a sigh came out of me in a rush.
Six in the evening. Twenty-five hours since we'd entered, and already this. There was no way not to sigh.
I lay prone on the hilltop, watching the interior of Basin Island and stealing glances at the bloodbath overhead.
The fight in the sky was nearly over. The winning side seemed to be Basin Island's flock — I could see them chasing the birds fleeing toward Star Island, attacking as they went.
Some flapped their way safely across. Others were torn apart mid-crossing and became a meal for some other aberrant...
That was when I happened to spot something racing fast across the grassland.
It was white, somehow, so for a second I wondered if it was another pegasus and looked closer — but it was too far to make out the shape. I could tell it was white as anything, though.
The white one went over to an aberrant that had fallen from the sky, and something heaved... eating it, no doubt.
I watched that for a moment, then sighed again. Of course there were aberrants inside the basin too. Yes.
Anyway — what had that whale-cry even been. It had attacked my sister, so I'd already written its name in my death note, but I couldn't stop wondering what it actually was.
I was getting a little hungry, but the emergency-ration belt was hers alone... and I didn't want to open the entrance I'd just camouflaged, so I decided to skip dinner. Missing one meal wasn't going to kill me.
I started standing watch like that, and before long the smiling faces of my women began to flicker through my mind.
...Sigh.
Ten minutes' rest. Ten minutes on watch. Ten minutes of light sleep. Ten minutes on watch.
I cycled at ten-minute intervals, finished a watch turn, and looked over the basin under the pouring moonlight. Staring at the dark woods and fields washed in silver, I felt I understood what people meant by dreamlike.
I rested a while, scanning past the edge of my Spatial Perception, then closed my eyes and focused — and my mental image shifted, as if the range of that sense had been rendered as virtual reality.
A three-dimensional virtual-reality map. Literally.
How it had ended up like this — should I credit Spatial Perception?
My sister was fast asleep. The day had darkened, moon and stars were up, and silence hung on every side.
Even on watch there was nothing interesting enough to peek at the way I would in the flesh, so I'd been shifting the range of the ability this way and that, training and playing at once — and at some point I came to and realized that, eyes closed, I was looking down on my Spatial Perception from a third-person view, as if I'd opened a three-dimensional map.
I didn't know the exact reason. Anyway, I could look down on the map from above, or step inside it and walk around the way I was now.
Practicality aside, the three-dimensional map was incredibly fun. I could see wherever I wanted and go wherever I wanted — move as if I were walking there myself — so much so that I wondered if this was how it would feel if a god looked down on the earth from heaven.
Ordinary Spatial Perception let me see where I wanted too, of course, but that felt like two dimensions mixed with four. Completely different from the map.
Seeing my own body sitting far off with its eyes closed — not an experience most people get, is it?
Using the new ability, I watched the insects and animals inside the range and repeated the cycle of watch, rest, and Mana Sieve flow training, and time slipped by so easily that six in the morning arrived in a blink.
I was watching the morning sun rise off the cloud-sea horizon — the cloud-line? — laying orange shade across the clouds, when my sister got up, face puffy with sleep.
She'd slept twelve hours straight from six, and her Phase Power had grown a little too. Since becoming G Class yesterday it had climbed from 102 by another six, and now sat at 108.
One point every two hours. Was it going to keep rising at that pace until we returned to reality? I'd gone up 0.12 an hour.
Wondering whether absorption differed from person to person, I watched her. She sat there blankly, then slowly looked around — and soon her eyes welled and she started to shiver.
"S-Seohaaa? Where are youuu?"
...She'd acted fearless since entering the Phase World, so I'd thought she had nerve. Turns out she'd only been fine because I was beside her.
What a crybaby. I slid quickly down the hill and cleared the branch camouflage, and she startled hard and plastered herself to the earthen wall.
"Wh-who is it!"
"Who do you think. Forget your own brother's face already?"
"Ah... the backlight. I couldn't see."
I crawled into the burrow, and only then — after making a ball of light in her right palm and seeing my face — did she let out a sigh of relief.
I admired the way the light in her hand lit the inside of the hollow.
"Ooh. A living flashlight."
"Seo..."
Her expression had been about to bloom at the sight of me coming in, then crumpled hard at living flashlight.
"What?! You keep sticking weird nicknames on your sister!"
"Hehh. You were shivering and sniffling a second ago. Acting tough now doesn't scare me one bit, you know?"
"Urk."
"Your dignity as the older sister is already gone. And do you even have the right to say that right now? I've gone two nights without sleep, standing watch up there. Do you know how many hours passed after you passed out?"
"...Huh?"
I sat down in front of her dazed face and said it.
"While you snored away for twelve straight hours, your little brother was up on the hill all night, watching the perimeter."
"Uh..."
"And who do you think dug this burrow?"
As I went on, her brows drooped lower and lower, until at last she smiled sheepishly, pulled my head into her arms, and started patting it.
"Aigoo, is that so? Our dear little brother had such a hard time? There, there."
......
I reached out, jabbed her side hard, and raked my fingers down it. She burst into helpless laughter and scrambled back, nearly rolling.
"Aaaagh, what are you doing!"
"Enough. I'm thirsty. Give me some water. I want to wash my hands, too."
She'd been rubbing her side with a sulky face. When I turned and headed out she followed me from the burrow, rose onto her toes, and stretched for all she was worth.
"Nnngh~~! Haah."
Huh? That cliff-flat chest of hers seemed to be growing a little contour. Don't tell me becoming an ability user had made it grow.
Her looks, which had always been pretty enough to put Franc to shame, hadn't changed much — but her chest had definitely developed.
When someone became an ability user, their structure shifted little by little and their constitution improved, and it seemed every point that might have gone to her appearance had been dumped entirely into her chest.
I washed my hands and face in the stream of water she sprayed from her palms, and her voice came from above.
"What happened yesterday?"
"Phew. Do you remember how yesterday ended?"
"...I passed out because of that weird sound? The one like a whale crying?"
"You remember well. I don't know whether an actual whale made that cry or an aberrant did — but there was Phase Power in it. Like this."
I concentrated Mana Sieve in my throat for those last words, and though it wasn't quite a whale's cry, my voice rippled faintly and spread outward. She flinched at the sound.
"Hear a roar carrying Phase Power from up close, and even a Low-Rank Variant drops dead on the spot. You only blacked out because we were far enough away."
I explained while shaking the water off my hands, and she swallowed hard, looking toward Star Island, murmuring in a trembling voice.
"If we'd been even a little later, or a little earlier, we'd have been in serious trouble..."
"Yeah. So let's spend a reasonable amount of time around here. If we can, we'll catch one decent Mid Grade or Mid-High Rank aberrant and have you absorb the Phase Power."
"Mm."
I cupped my hands and drank the water she made for me, and it sank so deep into my lungs that I understood what people meant by seeping in.
Morning, not hot, pleasantly cool. The air felt fresh.
Still, it would be nice if a single Mid Grade aberrant would peel off alone, the way that pegasus had yesterday.
"Ah, Seoha. The clouds around Star Island are lifting."
At her words I turned. I couldn't tell whether it was the aftermath of whatever unidentifiable thing had rampaged through, but the clouds wrapping Star Island had thinned a little, revealing part of it.
Through the exposed section I could see places along the outer edge smashed this way and that, and I realized the sunken part of the star was the mark of something unknown having rammed it.
It wasn't split vertically like an ordinary cliff. There were crushed patches all over.
Yesterday's booming had probably been the sound of Star Island breaking. A thing huge enough to smash part of an island — if it showed up again, I wasn't going near it to look with Spatial Perception. I'd just stay clear.
Come to think of it, had that thing been why my gut didn't want us going back to Star Island?
Following the hunch had been the right call. When I told her what I was thinking, she shivered as if it gave her chills, and agreed.