The Sky Island (6)
Day nine since we entered the Phase World. We were up early, made a breakfast of pieces broken off our emergency-ration belts, and set out for the nine o'clock side of Basin Island.
"Today's July fifteenth, right? I wonder if the company's getting along all right without me."
Sis had been lifting a clouded face to the sky whenever the company weighed on her, and today was no different.
"Hwayeon's there, and so is Aunt Hyeryeong, so don't worry. You've got plenty of people under you, haven't you? Aunt Hyeryeong's probably working them to the bone."
"Mm."
"If anything, shouldn't you be worrying about after you get back? There might be a mountain of paperwork piled up waiting for you."
"Heh. I'd rather it were."
Hoping for a stack of paperwork... Should I drag her to a hospital and have them check her head?
We walked for about two hours in the light of the rising sun and reached the nine o'clock camp. It should have been a four-hour trek, but Sis had become an elemental ability user and climbed to F-Class, and her body had come up with her. Walking without a rest cut the time down hard. No Aberrants came at us, either.
A careful look at the basin from around the ridge turned up nothing, so we slipped down into it quiet and unbothered.
The first time I'd set foot in the basin, what I'd felt was that it was solid. Whenever the wind blew, cloud would spill in, pool for a while, and vanish, and watching that I'd figured the ground had to be soggy. I carried Sis on my back, slid down the slope near the cliff, and we stepped into a forest like the primeval woods of some resort.
Trees wove a deep green canopy over the dark grassland, and the pour of sunlight through the leaves tangled with the shadows they cast. It had a fantastical feel you would never get from a forest back home.
"Whoa... it feels like we've walked into a forest in another country."
I glanced at Sis as she turned in place, marveling, and swept Spatial Perception carefully over the surroundings for Aberrants or anything else dangerous.
Mm. Clean. I took her hand and started walking, and she whispered.
"Where are we starting?"
"The lake at the center of Basin Island. I've seen things coming and going around there a lot. Couldn't tell if they were animals or Aberrants."
"Okay."
Every night on watch I'd kept scanning the basin, so aside from what the trees blocked, I had the whole of it drawn in my head. The ground near the central lake was the highest point in the basin. From there, the temples the trees had hidden ought to come into view.
We walked hand in hand through woods with no path, and before long Sis was studying the trees and naming them.
"That's a pine, isn't it? There's a fir, too, and that one... a Korean fir? There's even a yew. How strange. How can so many kinds of trees be gathered in one place?"
"Every one of them has leaves sharp as needles. How can you even tell them apart?"
"What are you talking about? You've seen Korean fir plenty of times. It's what they use for Christmas trees. And pine bark cracks like a turtle's shell, with needles and pinecones. And fir is..."
It was a forest, sure, but the cloud-shaped trees jutting up from the ground, and the pines and Christmas-tree Korean firs she'd named, stood far enough apart that walking was no trouble at all. I let her lecture go in one ear and out the other until a mass of Phase Power brushed the edge of my Spatial Perception.
"Sis, hold on."
I raised a hand and stopped her mid-explanation. Less than thirty minutes after we'd come down into the basin, and already a Mid-Rank Variant.
Huh? But that shape...
"What. A unicorn?"
The thing grazing at its leisure 1.4 kilometers off was a little smaller than the Pegasus I'd killed. Phase Power 1,620, and it looked every bit the legend: a white horse with a horn about a meter long rising from its brow, and a slender body packed tight with fine, dense muscle, worthy of being called a steed of renown.
If only it hadn't had six legs.
Sunlight spilled through the high canopy, and through that light the six-legged unicorn wandered at its ease, cropping grass. Had it not been an Aberrant, the sight would have been beautiful enough to steal your breath.
"There's a unicorn?"
She'd caught my mutter. Eyes sparkling, she rose onto her toes and peered in the direction I was looking, but from this angle the trees would hide it.
"Yeah. About 1.4 kilometers from here."
I caught her hand and pulled her toward it. When roughly five hundred meters remained, I started recording. I'd have to show this to my lovers once we got back.
"Whoa, whoa whoa. Seoha. It's a real unicorn. But it's got six legs. It looks like Sleipnir!"
Sleipnir has eight legs, doesn't it? A knockoff Sleipnir, then. And right then, the thing that looked like a unicorn and Sleipnir mashed together locked its eyes on Sis and broke into a charge.
Picking us up from five hundred meters out—yeah, an Aberrant all right!
I stepped in front of her to tank. Or I tried to. What? Why isn't its Phase Power shifting into a combat stance?
Looking closer, its gaze was fixed on Sis behind me, and that spotless white tail was flicking about with shameless excitement.
"Uh, uhh?"
Prrrr! Prr. Fwhinny!
The creature, tall as a one-story house, came bouncing closer without a speck of hostility and closed to thirty meters. It stared at Sis a moment, snorted again, reared its forelegs, and whipped its tail around like a windmill.
Sis was flustered too. She shot me a glance that asked what she was supposed to do.
For now, just watch what it does.
She read my lips and stepped out where it could see her. The unicorn only grew more delighted, leaping and snorting.
Prrk. Fwhinny! Fwha-ha-ha!!
I couldn't say about the rest, but it definitely liked Sis. Oh, that bastard.
The moment I saw the hideous thing on its underbelly, swollen fit to burst, I lunged and sheared its neck off with a Mana Laser.
Sis had locked up at the sight of that grotesque length, easily a meter long, and then froze all over again as the unicorn's head tumbled to the ground.
"Goddamn horse bastard. What a filthy species trait!"
"Ugh... augh. S-Seoha..."
Pale as a sheet, she staggered into my arms. The way she trembled, the shock had hit her hard. Fair enough. When would a virgin ever have seen something like that?
Disgusting and infuriating as it was, we still had to absorb the dead thing's Phase Power. I took her hand and tried to approach the carcass, but she stuck her hips back and dug in, refusing to go.
"What are you doing? We have to absorb the Phase Power."
"Ugh. It's g-gross!"
"Gross or not, we have to absorb it! Take this and just one more, and you'll be E-Class!"
Its Phase Power is 1,620. If she absorbs it alone, that's 324 for her!
"Hiiing."
Even Sis couldn't override a gut-level revulsion, and she kept refusing to budge. Ah! The Phase Power was starting to leak!
"Oh, come on!"
I grabbed her by the waist, slung her over my shoulder, and jumped into the wave of Phase Power beginning to spill free. Hung over my shoulder, she thrashed her arms and legs in horror, but she couldn't do a thing against my strength. I set her down on the unicorn's torso, and she went rigid as if someone had called freeze.
Goosebumps had risen all over her bare skin. She really hated this.
I watched the Phase Power sink slowly into her body, then walked over to the dead unicorn's head, still grinning. It had been cut around the middle of the neck, but damn, it was huge. The head alone was as tall as I was.
A unicorn horn, then. It reminded me of the horn awl from the horned pup I'd met on my first run, and I felt an odd fondness for it. Might as well keep it.
I gripped the base and tried to snap it. As expected, it wouldn't break. I switched on Mana Mode - Acceleration, and when the horn still didn't so much as twitch, I clicked my tongue. I could push physical reinforcement up to D-Class, and it still held. This might actually make a decent weapon.
I ended Acceleration, set the Mana Sieve to pure Physical Reinforcement, and spun my Phase Power hard, pouring in C-Class strength until veins stood out on my forehead. Only then did the base snap clean with a crack.
Ah. I should have just cut it with a Mana Laser. Eh. A good result is a good result.
I knew the horn was a meter long, but holding it, it felt longer than I'd thought. I was fiddling with the spiral grooves winding around it when Sis called me in a voice thin as a mosquito's.
"Ugh. L-let me dooown..."
Leave her any longer and she'd start crying.
I tucked the unicorn horn into the belt at my waist, walked over to where she sat on the carcass, and held out a hand. Trembling, she leapt down and threw herself into my arms. Stiffening in little jerks, she clung to me, eyes brimming with tears of pure disgust.
"Huu, huuu..."
"Come on. It's dead. What's there to be so revolted by?"
"W-would you be fine if you saw someone look at you and shove that hi-hideous thing at you?"
"...Yeah, I'd hate that."
She was so thoroughly revolted, and there wasn't even a Phase Stone, so I fired a Mana Bullet and erased the carcass. Only then did her twitching body begin to settle.
We'd been heading for the lake, but chasing the unicorn had bent us a little left. We'd need to angle back right. I started walking with her still in my arms, and she flinched and kicked, asking to be put down. I set her down. She braced her hands on her knees, caught her breath, wiped the cold sweat from her brow with her sleeve, and muttered.
"Hoo, hoo. I think I'm going to hate unicorns from now on... What's that, though? A unicorn horn?"
She'd noticed the 101-centimeter horn at my waist and shown an interest, so I handed it over as I answered.
"Yeah. It reminded me of the horn awl I used on my first run, so I just snapped it off."
With a look of wonder, she reached out and began stroking the horn. This was part of the thing's body too. This one was fine?
The horn tapered in a cone from base to tip, and the root was narrow as a skewer, slim enough to fit entirely in one of her hands. She fiddled with it, a peculiar look on her face, then gripped it around the middle like a staff and thrust it up at the sky.
"...?"
What was she doing? I was watching her, puzzled, when she looked down at the horn and tilted her head too.
"Trying to be a twenty-year-old magical maiden?"
"No!"
I tossed out the joke, and she flared, waving the horn up and down at me.
"I felt this strange sense of familiarity from the unicorn horn—"
Ching!
"Whoa?!"
"Kyaa!? Seoha!"
W-whoa! A Light Bolt had suddenly shot from the tip of the horn straight at my head. Scared the hell out of me. I knocked it aside with my forearm and was rubbing my tingling left arm when Sis came over, half in tears, grabbed the arm, and stared helplessly at the angrily swollen spot.
"A-are you okay?! Huh? Aaah, look how swollen your arm is! What do I do, what do I do!"
"Honestly. Laughing, then crying, then getting mad, then crying again. Keep that up and you'll grow hair on your backside."
"Ugh. Your arm? Are you okay? You're not hurt?"
"I'm fine. But even if you're mad, maybe don't fire attribute shots at me. Let's use our words, nicely. Yeah?"
"Nooo! The unicorn horn absorbed my Phase Power on its own and fired a Light Bolt!"
The horn had fired it?
I set a Healing Touch on the swollen spot and spoke as it mended.
"Shoot it again."
"Mm."
Watching my slightly swollen forearm return to normal, she let out a relieved sigh, looked at me with a thoroughly apologetic face, pointed the tip of the horn at a tree ten meters ahead, and then just stood there.
"...?"
"Ah! What are you doing? That's dangerous!"
She'd turned the tip toward her own face. I caught her arm and fixed it back on the tree.
"You're staring right at the tip. What are you going to do if a Light Bolt suddenly pops out? Your head'll explode."
She frowned at that, nodded, and started waving the horn at the tree again.
"But it's not coming out. Why?"
Ching! Crack!
Mid-swing, another Light Bolt burst from the tip and punched straight through the tree.
"...That's one dangerous weapon."
"Aish, why is it doing this?"
Anyway, the power was pretty strong. Did a unicorn horn just have good affinity with the light attribute?
"It's doing it on its own, kyaa!"
Chiriring!
"Hey! Don't point that at people!"
"Sorry!"
I snapped at her while nimbly dodging two Light Bolts that shot toward me like beams, and she clutched the horn in both hands, thoroughly flustered. Good thing I'd been watching the tip. I sighed and asked her.
"Hoo. You haven't tried holding the horn and using Light Bolt the way you normally would?"
"...!"
This scatterbrain.
To cut to the conclusion, it was exactly as I'd said. If she simply held the horn and fired a Light Bolt with the usual intent, the bolt shot from the tip—and that bolt was about one and a half times stronger than the ones she fired from her fingers, and nearly twice as fast. Speed alone, it fell a little short of my Mana Bullet, but with the horn's assistance, rapid fire had become possible. Where she used to manage one shot a second, she could now loose one every 0.6 seconds.
"That's incredible. Did you know this thing was good?"
"No. I just... felt drawn to the unicorn horn at your waist. Seoha. Can I have it?"
"Why not. Congrats on the new weapon."
"Yeah!"
She hugged the horn to her chest, overjoyed.
Materials that boosted an elemental ability user's attribute power were fairly common. Uncle Hwa Joong-kang's knuckle buster, for one, was a kind of booster. But I'd never heard of a material that enhanced a rare attribute. Was it just not well known?
As we moved, Sis held the horn and fired water and darkness attribute shots. Water was so-so, and the darkness shots actually lost power, speed, and size. It seemed the horn only amplified light.
"Looks like it's light-attribute only."
"Yeah. A little disappointing."
Watching her examine the horn like a staff, a little let down, I felt a flicker of jealousy. Some people barely make it back alive through pure hell with nothing but their own body, and some people awaken in a day, shoot up in class, and pick up a weapon besides. But Sis getting stronger was good for me too. I soothed myself with that and asked her.
"Sis. Are there a lot of unprocessed Aberrant byproducts that boost attribute effects?"
"Most of them only show an attribute boost after Phase Power processing. There are things that make Phase Power a little easier to handle, or that give a small effect just from carrying them, but those are extremely expensive."
"Then that unicorn horn..."
"Mm. I've never seen anything that amplifies one specific attribute this much. Not like this White Ivory."
She'd already stuck a name on it.
"Hmm. You were surprised to see a unicorn too, right? So that thing isn't known either?"
"I haven't gone through the entire bestiary, but... I've never heard of a unicorn or a Pegasus being discovered."
"Strictly speaking, it's a hybrid of a unicorn and Sleipnir."
"Heh. True."
While I'd been roaming the ridges of Basin Island, I'd seen four or five white specks. If those were all unicorns, snapping off the horns and taking them might not be a bad idea. Light-attribute ability users would probably pay a fortune for them.
After that, aerial Aberrants came at us more than once, but Sis put the unicorn horn to full use and cut down the Mid-Low Rank Variants in a flash. She didn't even need Dark Balls. Light Bolts that seemed faster than bullets handled all of them. She kept firing Water Balls and Dark Balls anyway, probably to build proficiency. Light Bolts and Water Balls from the horn in her right hand, Dark Balls from her bare left, so the Dark Balls never clashed with the horn.
The real showpiece was another wind-attribute kite Aberrant. Sis shot down every Wind Cutter it threw with Light Bolts, hardly troubled, while her left arm poured out Dark Balls without a pause. When a dozen-odd Dark Balls swelled into being in an instant and chased it, the flustered kite flung Wind Cutters at the orbs instead—and as if she'd been waiting for exactly that, her aim, sharper and truer than before, put a Light Bolt through its head.
A wind-chime ching, and the head was gone. The body dropped, and at the same time the Dark Balls that had been chasing it melted the whole thing away.
At first she'd looked like she could barely hit a Wind Cutter. Hell of a leap.
And so, having absorbed the kite Aberrant's Phase Power, Sis rose to E-Class without any real trouble.
This was the power of getting carried.