Floating Sky Islands (7)
I'd thought it more than once since we arrived on the Floating Sky Islands, but Noona really was a genius.
Why? You only had to look at her.
I'd given her a quick congratulations for making E-Class after taking down a kite aberrant, she'd smiled and thanked me, and we'd set off at once for the central lake. An hour of walking later, another wind-attribute Mid Grade kite and a Mid-Low Grade kite came diving at us.
I moved to drop the Mid-Low one first. Noona stopped me. Then she took both of them on alone—and light flashed, and suddenly there were four of her.
I startled. The kites startled.
The Mid-Low Grade paid for that surprise with its life. Now that she was E-Class, her Light Bolt had gained a whole new edge, and it punched clean through the thing's skull. The Mid Grade one flinched as all four Noonas sprayed Light Bolts at once and tried to climb—only to startle again at a Dark Ball that had closed in from nowhere. It flapped in a panic, took two Light Bolts to the body and one to the head, and died.
I watched the two kites fall, feathers scattering, without having managed a single attack worthy of the name. Then I turned to the Noonas.
"...The hell was that. A clone technique?"
The four of them came toward me, and all four smiled at once.
Spatial Perception told me the one standing foremost was the real Noona. Even so, the other three still carried traces of Phase Power, and that threw me. When I scanned the clone bodies, I felt an ambiguous texture along with them. If it was enough to confuse me, it must have scared the kites half to death.
"It's nothing special. I just used the refraction of light, like a concave lens."
That's nothing special? Is that just an ordinary day for geniuses?
"So it isn't a skill. You applied science through attribute manipulation?"
"Yeah. And there's this, too."
Noona blasted out a blinding light again—and the real one vanished.
The clones that remained started in on a cutesy little dance, their movements somehow awkward. What amazed me was that as ordinary clones they'd moved exactly like the original. Now each one moved on its own.
Curious, I examined them with Spatial Perception. The dancing clones were full of water, and at the center of that water something like a mass of light was wavering.
Don't tell me that's painting color onto the surface of the water. What's the principle?
I looked for the hidden Noona. Spatial Perception didn't catch her. I turned on Mana Vision and checked where she'd been, and all that remained was a faint trace of Phase Power.
I widened the range. About twelve meters off, inside the shadow of a nearby tree, I found her Phase Power—formless, without a shape.
Huh? Spatial movement? Teleportation?
That's straight-up cheating, isn't it?! And Spatial Perception can only see Phase Power??
She'd slipped Spatial Perception, if only for an instant. Amazed, I walked up to the tree shadow she was hiding in and looked at it.
Hmm. The shading was a little off. Even that only showed because Mana Vision was on. Turn it off, and there was nothing strange to see at all.
I reached out and touched the shadow. It seemed to ripple. I was still thinking that when the shadow erupted upward, and Noona appeared, biting back a laugh and rubbing her side.
"Honestly. This time I thought even you wouldn't find me."
"I am insanely surprised right now. How did you do that?"
According to her, she'd adapted the barrier ability she'd gained on reaching E-Class. So all she'd done was manipulate three attributes with a bit of care. The clones were pure application on her part.
A dark-attribute barrier could guard the body and, at the same time, let her slip into a nearby shadow. The clones themselves were nothing more than lumps of light set glowing to copy her appearance, and the ones that moved independently were water barriers she'd formed and held, with her image projected through them in light. Moving them separately was just water manipulation driving the clones. Water, light, and darkness, all under her control—nothing but Noona's own skill.
"I understood the first clones using light refraction. But coloring the water—that I don't get. Is it a prism? Even a prism just takes in light and shows you a rainbow."
"Mmm. I just thought it might work if I did it this way, so I tried. It's a phenomenon outside the principles of science. I can't explain how."
If someone asked me how Spatial Manipulation or a Mana Bullet explodes and tears things apart, I'd give the same answer she just did.
"Anyway~ If two kites came at me, I was going to hold them with the clones, water orbs, and a Dark Ball combo and take them down that way. They went down easier than I thought."
"Heh. I haven't seen many other ability users, but even so, I think you've gone past E-Class."
"Ehehe."
Honest praise seemed to please her. She beamed and started twisting this way and that.
The only attribute-user fight I'd ever watched was the museum incident. During the ability verification a swarm of snakes had fought ability users, but I'd poured every bit of my attention into Solid Snake and hadn't seen it. And those had all been ordinary attribute users, hadn't they? Noona carried two rare attributes, light and darkness. Comparing her to an ordinary ability user didn't seem right.
"But you've got two rare attributes. Of course you're strong. So don't get cocky, and don't let your guard down."
"Yeah. I know."
I'd said it in case she got careless. She looked entirely unbothered. Maybe she'd just been happy to be praised.
On her own, she took in every last drop of absorbable Phase Power an aberrant scattered when it died, and she was growing at a ridiculous pace. Normally five to ten people would have to bring down an aberrant of the same grade and split that twenty percent by headcount. You didn't grow this fast that way.
You had to move carefully, so you wouldn't face more aberrants than you could handle. Finding prey worth hunting took time. And if a fight turned against you, running was hard. That was the Phase World. Lives were on the line. Of course people grew passive.
I watched her hum to herself, manifesting water, light, and darkness, practicing her control.
I was a safety net, sure. Even so, the fact that she'd grown this far was entirely her own strength. I'd helped a little right after she awakened, but once she'd finished her first hunt in one piece and taken a wound, her wariness and her attention had both climbed. Since then she'd been picking aberrants off cleanly, with hardly any need for me.
She hadn't even learned how to operate Phase Power, and still she'd figured out how to regulate the TP an attribute shot consumed—sometimes a lot, sometimes a little—and kept fighting whatever showed up after that. Once she hit E-Class, the hunts grew steadier still.
She was getting a great deal of use out of the dark-attribute Shadow Jump—her name for it—and Mirror Image. She'd lure an aberrant into striking a clone, open a gap, and fire an attribute shot. Or she'd use a clone as bait, Shadow Jump into a nearby shadow, and cut the thing apart with an attribute laser. Mid Grades had barriers, and those just became beehives under the concentrated Light Bolt fire she poured through the unicorn horn.
Shadow Jump was the useful one.
When a Physical Reinforcement aberrant charged in ready to die taking her with it, she Shadow Jumped into a nearby shadow. The black mist that billowed out right after was viciously corrosive, and the charger couldn't beat its own momentum. It offered its body to the mist. When it thrashed at the pain of whatever the mist touched melting away, Noona leapt out of the shadow and put it down with a Light Bolt.
Even without that, Water Balls and Dark Balls kept them in check, and between those Light Bolts lanced out like beams. Most Physical Reinforcement aberrants never got close. They ate attribute shots, locked up in stagger, and died as a matter of course.
Aberrants that lived on instinct had no answer to her cunning. Add the force of rare attributes and the unicorn horn on top of that, and, well.
I couldn't tell whether light and darkness were simply that strong, or whether Noona was the special one, or whether it was both.
"Shadow Jump looks extremely useful. Is ten meters the limit per jump?"
"Well, Shadow Jump seems to use five percent TP at a time. That's the optimal amount, I guess. I can go farther, but then the TP cost jumps a lot."
"How much?"
"When my Phase Power is full, the farthest I can move is about fifteen meters?"
"That's really short! Can't you chain it?"
"After I use it I have to wait a few seconds, but I can ignore that and use it anyway. The price is spending more Phase Power. And while I'm hidden it seems to drain a little at a time, but not that much."
An incredibly useful combat ability, as expected. Maybe because it was a rare attribute, the whole performance felt dumped into fighting.
"Still, you can be hit while you're in shadow form, so be careful. Anything with good instincts will pinpoint you fast."
She nodded at that.
"I should test it. Will you help? I'll hide in a shadow, so attack me."
"Yeah."
She finished speaking and vanished with Shadow Jump. The black mist she'd left in the transfer rippled in front of me.
I slipped a hand into it. A stabbing sensation, and then the worst of all pains—a searing burn—began to set in. I pulled the hand out. Skin was melting away in patches, raw red muscle showing through.
Not wanting Noona to see, I cast Healing Touch on it at once. As if time were rewinding, the hand slowly found its old shape. The burn vanished, and a cool feeling took its place.
Even with Mana Mode cranking my physical enhancement way up, it had done that. Considerable power. No wonder aberrants that touched the black mist thrashed like mad.
It occurred to me that I hadn't focused Mana Sieve. I gathered it into my hand and put the hand back in. This time the hand was fine, but blue light shoved the black mist this way and that, and my Phase Power trickled down by a hair—an honest-to-god speck.
My recovery was 50 a second, so the actual drain had to be something like 50.1. That was by no means weak. My recovery was enormous, that was all.
Once the mist was gone, I walked to the tree shadow behind me. She was hiding there.
"Mm. I'll throw a rock first."
Better to warn her than hit her without a word. She'd be able to brace. I picked up a stone about half the size of my fist, one my foot had kicked, and tossed it gently at the spot where her Phase Power read.
Thuk. It tapped the ground and bounced away.
"If it hurts even a little, come out."
She didn't. This time I threw at about 140 kilometers an hour. Pak—an impact hard enough to gouge the earth, and the stone skipped like a flat rock across water and vanished into the trees.
A normal person would have broken bones and a cracked skull. Noona seemed fine. She didn't come out of the shadow.
I picked up a solid rock the size of a baseball and hurled it at about 200 kilometers an hour. A heavy whump, and the ground caved in a good bit more. I spoke again.
"If you don't feel anything, stay there. If you feel anything at all, come out."
I waited. She still didn't come out. Immune to plain physical force, or near enough?
Her Phase Power had been ticking down since earlier—about 2.1 a second? Steady, at that rate. I kept an eye on it, spun up Mana Mode - Acceleration, and brought my fist down hard on the shadow.
The ground trembled, slightly. Her Phase Power stayed perfectly level. Not a ripple. I'd wondered if an impact would make it drain faster. It didn't.
Then maybe she really was immune to ordinary physical force.
I climbed the tree she was hiding under, snapped off a branch, and came back down. With Mana Sieve I trickled Phase Power into the wood until it hardened, then injected TP slowly so the branch wouldn't burst. It began to glow a faint blue.
"I'm going to poke you lightly with this. I've put TP in it."
I gave a light poke around her Phase Power. The shadow didn't react at all. Her Phase Power dropped a little more than usual.
As expected. An attack carrying Phase Power got through.
The moment I saw the shadow ripple, I stabbed about twenty times, shallower and faster than the first—pap, pap, pak—and Noona burst out of the shadow with a wail.
"It stings! It stings, it stings, it stings!!"
She came leaping out, stamping her feet, rubbing her face, patting at her body. Tiny holes were poked here and there in her clothes, and on her face there were red spots like mosquito bites—one on each cheek, and one on her nose.
"Hiiing! Seoha, you! You knew, and you still did it!"
"Heh heh heh."
It must have stung like crazy. She kept rubbing herself, eyes welling up, and the sight was so funny I snickered. She flew into a temper and charged me, smacking my head with the side of her hand.
"What are you so proud of, laughing?! Is it fun stabbing your sister and leaving marks?! Huh?!"
"Ah, I told you to come out if there was a reaction. You didn't come out, so I kept testing. Why are you like this~?"
"You didn't give me a chance to come ouuut!"
Now she was flailing both arms, looking thoroughly wronged. It was so funny I burst out laughing, and this time she started kicking too.
"Okay, okay. I was wrong. I'll heal you, so quit it."
I reached out to use Healing Touch, then figured she had red spots all over and just fired Healing Wave, stage one. The blue wave touched her. The stinging seemed to fade, and she muttered with a slightly calmer face.
"You're really awful, always picking the meanest things to do... Ah, holes in my clothes?!"
Holes about as thick as a pinky had opened here and there over her. The ventilation looked outstanding.
"Nice breeze through those. Should be cool."
Her face flared all over again, and she kicked me.
Once I'd confirmed what Shadow Jump could do, I could set one worry aside.
Even if I ended up fighting a High-Rank Variant or a Peak-Rank Variant, while I held them she could Shadow Jump from shadow to shadow and run, or hide. Just in case, I told her that if we got separated she should take shelter in the hole we'd bored atop the hill on the outskirts of Basin Island. And if she couldn't wait and had to move, she should go clockwise if she could.
Agree on it beforehand, and even if we split we'd find each other quickly.
For about two hours we moved carefully toward the lake, paying as much attention as we could to the temple side. Contrary to what I'd expected, no Mid-High Rank Variants showed. Noona would need those now if she wanted to keep stacking Phase Power.
Hmm. She was E-Class. Maybe it was about time I infused her with some TP.
We fought the flying aberrants resting in the trees, moved, fought, moved, and pressed on toward the lake at the center of Basin Island. Along the way we met another unicorn.
At exactly 1.5 kilometers it confirmed us—more precisely, it saw the unicorn horn in Noona's hand—and bolted without a second thought.
"Ah! That one's running!"
I told her to hide and was about to chase it down and kill it. She caught my arm, face gone serious, and shook her head.
"Don't go. Let's just leave it. Okay?"
"Why? Cut off another horn and we might sell it for a fortune. To a light-attribute ability user, it might be name-your-price."
"S-still. That unicorn's Mid Grade too, right? Even if I kill it now I won't get any Phase Power, so let's leave it and only hunt the ones that come at us. If we come back later, its grade might have gone up and the horn might be better quality, you know?"
"...You just don't want to look at how hideous that thing is."
She pretended not to hear, turned her head, and whistled. I stared at her, displeased, then looked at the unicorn, already shrunk to a speck, and felt the loss.
Too late to chase it now. I shook the regret off and turned toward the lake, which wasn't far.
The hypothesis aberrant scholars liked to repeat—that aberrants were unconditionally hostile to humans—felt more and more wrong. Otherwise that thing wouldn't have run like that. And there was Miho, too.
The lake we reached a little past noon looked even bigger than Cloud Island.
Deep in the water near the center, a few aberrant fish had gathered, Low Grade up through Mid Grade. The water was incredibly clear. Transparent. Almost no moss.
Looking across, it was wider than I'd expected. I strained my eyes at the far shore. Nothing that looked unusual.
Something I'd learned after entering the basin: there were no carnivores here. It had been that way the whole way in, and even now, inside my Spatial Perception, I only saw ordinary herbivores. Not one carnivore like the hyenas that had been on Star Island.
"Whoa~ The water's so clear!"
I watched her a moment as she pulled off her shoes, dipped her feet in, and delighted in it. Then I lifted my gaze to the aberrants flying in the sky beyond my detection range.
Had those things up there eaten all the carnivores?
Aberrants, so they didn't sort themselves by kind. They were flying extremely high, and it nagged at me. Drop from that height and they'd close 1.5 kilometers in an instant.
The moment I thought it, one of them dropped straight at Noona.
Mid Grade. Useless. I fired a Mana Bullet at once and erased the owl-like thing as it plunged.
At the heavy thud of the Mana Bullet, Noona, who'd been playing in the water, looked up, then came splashing over in a hurry.
"What happened? Did an aberrant attack?"
"One of the ones flying up there dropped, so I erased it."
"Mmm. Better to take cover under a tree."
We went in under the shade of a big tree and sat.
A breeze came softly off the grassland. Sitting in the shade, looking at the lake, it was genuinely peaceful. Idle. Waaay off to the left a herd of antelope had gathered to lap at the water, and waaay off to the right a herd of water buffalo was doing the same. It felt a little like the African savanna.
I'd thought there might be Mid-High Grades at the lake in the center of the basin. This was a letdown. Those pegasus-looking bastards weren't showing themselves again, either.
Beside me, Noona let out a long breath, squinted as if the sunlight off the lake dazzled her, and spoke.
"On the internet they say the Phase World is the ultimate resort. Seeing it in person, I think it's true."
"Right? I was genuinely moved when I saw a volcano erupt on my third run."
Moved in a different sense, mind you!
"I wonder what the Phase World's ocean is like. Have you ever seen the Phase World sea, Seoha... Mm."
She trailed off and looked back and forth between me and the lake, checking my face. Had my PTSD occurred to her a beat too late?
"I'm fine now. I haven't seen the sea either... If we jumped off the Floating Sky Islands, don't you think there'd be a real ocean under the sea of clouds?"
"...Ugh. D-don't say things like thaaat."
"Why~? This is the Phase World. It wouldn't even be strange if, down in the clouds beneath the islands, there was some ashen world where a terrifying ghost of a monster, heavy with Phase Power, ate whatever fell off the islands with a maw full of saw teeth."
"...Stop."
"Think about it. This island is at thirteen kilometers, floating over the clouds. And below that, an endless ocean, stretching on and on! Deep in that pitch-black sea, a monster several kilometers long, looking like a devil, is eyeing whatever's floating on the surface. When it opens its mouth there are three rows of sharp awl teeth, and its eyes give off a crimson light as it ambushes the prey falling off the island—ow!"
"I said stop!!"
Pale and growling, she smacked my back, slap, slap. Her face was thoroughly frightened.
"There's that enormous gray whale too—ghost whale, really—so there might be a big one that could swallow this whole Basin Island in one gulp if it opened its—ow! There might. Just biding its time, waiting for you to slip and—"
"Aak! I said don't! Why are you doing this!"
"Why do you think. Because your reaction's funny. Heh heh heh."
She lifted the unicorn horn and bonked me on the head with it, face genuinely scared. It had been a while since I'd messed with her. I felt refreshed.
Giggling, shameless, I flopped onto my back in the shade. She glared, then, face twisted, wrapped both arms around herself and shuddered as if the creep had gotten into her. She glanced past the hills that enclosed the basin and kept flinching.
Right about now she was probably imagining some deep-sea monster swallowing Basin Island whole.
"You don't think a monster like that exists? There's a turtle over twenty-six kilometers tall. No rule says there isn't a monster fish that big."
"..."
Noona said nothing. She just raised a hand and smacked my stomach.