Day Six: Revenge (3)
After a short rest, I spent about two hours wandering — marking trees that looked decent for sleeping and building a map of the area in my head.
Using the spot where I'd killed the lean mutt as my center, I surveyed a rough three-kilometer radius. Not a single aberrant. Now and then a rabbit or a deer caught my eye, and I spotted squirrels and a few birds that looked a lot like sparrows.
Seeing ordinary animals made it sink in. I'd actually made it back to a proper place.
I'd been circling and reading the terrain for a good while when the sun began to sink and the world around me dimmed to a murky dark. I headed for the nearest of the trees I'd already flagged as decent resting spots, and when I reached the one I'd had my eye on in a single stretch, a grin crept across my face.
"Auto-mapping is a straight-up cheat! Hahaha!"
Mm. Forcing a laugh out like that made my back itch, somehow. I scratched it with the wooden spear and looked up at the sky. There was a way to fix your position and direction by the constellations, wasn't there... Should I have at least memorized the Phase World's stars?
Ah. Different world. The constellations wouldn't line up anyway. Still, it would be nice to know east, west, north, and south with any real accuracy. If I had something like a safety pin, I could rig a makeshift compass and get a more precise read. A shame. Buttons on my clothes were fine, but a safety pin or a hairpin was apparently out of the question.
Anyway. Once I reached the safe point, I bit down on the wooden spear's shaft and started climbing one-handed.
By now, scaling a tree like this with Search was a piece of cake. All I had to do was set my hands and feet where Detection and Analysis told me to and put some force into it. I could even tell which way to push, so it felt a little like I was getting a free ride — but so what? Good is good.
If anyone complained, I could always tell them to go get an ability like this themselves. That would come off incredibly smug, wouldn't it? Hehe.
This tree split into two trunks before the branches spread, and the gap where they forked made an excellent seat. Cut the tree, trim just that section, and you'd have a fine natural wooden chair. The back was a bit uncomfortable, though. I fixed that by cutting branches with the claw spear the way Detection and Analysis directed, hauling them over, and wedging them in until I had something soft and easy to sit in.
Lying down would have been better, but that spot was three kilometers southwest — the far edge of what I'd mapped. Walking there from here would take nearly an hour. Even with a Search ability the dark couldn't touch, there was still such a thing as mood, and survival studies said you should avoid wandering at night whenever you could.
I was in the mood to rest a little myself, and I didn't feel like moving. Tonight, I'd spend it here.
The moment I settled in, I took the Phase Stone from my pocket, then tore into a mouthful of cowhide belt and a heap of leaves for dinner. This was the eighth time I'd gnawed on the belt. Two centimeters a bite, and it was already sixteen centimeters shorter. The chemical taste had grown familiar the more I ate it... Thirty more meals or so and I could go back to reality. Should I eat a little more?
"...A little more."
I took another bite, then rolled the Phase Stone in my hand and turned over the question of switching Search between its modes. Someone who didn't know might wonder if I ever got sick of doing this every night, but survival studies said reflecting on your own abilities and techniques — really wrestling with them — was the shortcut to making them stronger. The more you thought and fretted, the more an ability got refined. Just like how I'd gained Telescopic Vision yesterday.
Maybe tonight it would change or evolve again. Heheheh.
That was what I had been thinking. Four hours ago.
Ahh, I can't sleep!
I threw all that contemplation of Search out the window and tossed and turned, trying to force myself under, only to feel irritation and fatigue piling up instead. Afraid I'd drop it in my sleep, I'd tucked the Phase Stone inside my shirt, and even that texture kept nagging at me. On top of that, I could see things squirming in every direction, so I couldn't even use the cheat of calming my mind and surrendering my body to Phase Power.
And the real showstopper... Forty-three meters north of here stood a tree bearing round, rough-looking fruit, and a squirrel couple lived in it. These two weren't sleeping. They mated, scurried around, mated again, gnawed the fruit, dozed off, woke up and mated, dozed off, woke up and mated — and they'd been repeating this for four hours straight.
Every time those little bastards went at it, some keyword seemed to jab at my brain, and the footage I'd stored of myself mating with the giant woman in her human form kept surfacing. It was a problem. All it did was stir up useless imagination.
Ack — mating. The word has a dirty ring to it, somehow. Let's call it intercourse. Sounds classier.
"Haa."
I was still all right for now, but if this kept up, my mind would wear down and something dangerous was bound to happen. I grumbled to myself with thoughts like that, but the truth was I couldn't relax because I had no idea where an aberrant might come from.
Thinking back on the habits of the Long-snouted Lean Wolf I'd met earlier — the way it had been lying defenseless by the riverbank — I figured this area held nothing but things as weak as that one, or weaker. If anything threatening had been around, it wouldn't have been sprawled out without a care. And for all its weakness, the Long-snouted Lean Wolf had some kind of nerve: it didn't live in groups.
People said that with Phase Power in mind, living alone was only natural, but it wasn't always that simple. Plenty of aberrants lived as family units, or gathered with their own kind into packs.
Take the Silver White Wolf, which you could call a higher species of the Long-snouted Lean Wolf. The moment you saw one, you'd know it was a wolf aberrant. Otherworld Biology even included photos of Anomalous Ability Users fighting them, so I knew what they looked like. In shape it was an ordinary wolf, but its coat ran nearly twice as long as a normal wolf's, and the mix of white and silver glittered when sunlight hit it. Winter wolf fur is already quite long, and if that was the baseline they were using, seeing one in person was supposedly like watching a clump of long fur on the move.
The average Silver White Wolf stood 1.6 meters at the shoulder and measured 3.6 meters long; add the tail and it came close to five. Twice the bulk of a gray wolf, the kind you'd call an ordinary wolf. Its habits were wolf-like, too. They lived in nuclear family units and hunted aberrants stronger than themselves, which ranked them at the very top of the Low-Rank Variants. A Silver White Wolf that lived long enough accumulated staggering Phase Power from hunting stronger prey and evolved past Mid-Rank all the way to High-Rank.
At that point they were called Giant Silver Fangs, and they were twice the size of a Silver White Wolf. A Giant Silver Fang was a king. Hundreds of Silver White Wolves were said to follow one at all times. One High-Rank Variant and hundreds of Mid-Rank Variants. I couldn't even picture it.
Even a Silver White Wolf that impressive lived in a group. So who did the lean wolf think it was, living alone?
Anyway, the Long-snouted Lean Wolf's habits were said to match those of a wolf driven from the pack, or separated from it. Ostracized into a life of flying solo. No one had yet observed two or more acting together. Maybe the horned puppy I'd found was the first evidence of a Long-snouted Lean Wolf reproducing.
If I reported finding a horned puppy — a Long-snouted Lean Wolf pup — and offered the horn as proof, would that help my reputation? ...No.
Raiders — that's what they call hunters who put together teams of dozens to hunt High-Rank Variants — didn't bother with Long-snouted Lean Wolves, and neither did ordinary hunters. More precisely, they didn't bother with anything Mid-Low Rank or below. No money in it.
...Maybe if they swarmed in groups, they couldn't absorb Phase Power. Or maybe you couldn't absorb it from an aberrant below your level...
The more I thought about it, the more strangely persuasive it felt. If the mutt I'd killed during the day had been so weak that its Phase Power simply dispersed into the air, that would explain things.
Ah, they're at it again! I swear, I'll just— ...Huh? They've locked up. Frozen solid, like something seized them.
...!
An aberrant!
I went rigid just like the squirrels, killed my breathing as much as I could, and slowly began to X-ray and analyze the presence that had entered my Detection range. But it kept drifting in and out of that range. Surely it hadn't noticed my Detection and was testing me... No. It seemed like coincidence.
Detection alone wasn't going to cut it, so I opened my eyes and looked with Telescopic Vision. A body like an overturned egg. A long, hairless, needle-like tail about as long as the body itself. Small, thin forelegs and hind legs. It looked like a field mouse. Ochre fur, too. But it was as big as the horned puppy!
This was another one that showed up constantly on Phase World exams. Its name was simply the Big Rat aberrant — a Lowest-Rank Variant on par with the Long-snouted Lean Wolf. Its speed was said to be similar, and its habits identical to a rat's, except that depending on the location they didn't swarm. One or two wandering around was the extent of it. The texts did note, though, that poke one wrong and four or five might come pouring out.
I needed a closer look.
X-raying its insides with Analysis, what stood out was muscle and organs far better put together, and far sturdier, than the Long-snouted Lean Wolf's. A real contrast. The genitals said female. There could be a male, or young, nearby. But even scanning the area with Telescopic Vision, I saw only that one. Nothing else.
The Big Rat's Phase Power was 19 — three lower than the Long-snouted Lean Wolf's. Mine had climbed from 365 to 397 in the meantime. Simple math put me at twenty-one times stronger, but our physical capabilities were probably in the same ballpark.
Running into creatures you could call trash mobs, one after another, felt like confirmation that I'd returned to the kind of place that was supposed to exist. Oddly reassuring.
The squirrels, though — they'd noticed the aberrant almost immediately. Better than me, it seemed. Distance-wise, the couple and I were about equally far from the field mouse, and they'd spotted it faster. That stung my pride a little.
And the Big Rat's path... it felt like the route I'd walked.
Am I imagining it?
I opened the map in my head, turned on the navigation, and compared. A chill shot up my spine. It matched the route I'd taken. Was that thing moving by my scent? More than four hours had passed since then!
Before I knew it, the Big Rat was coming straight for the tree I was in. I closed my eyes and started memorizing the way its muscles moved, bracing for a fight.
When the field mouse reached the base of the tree where I was hiding, it rose on its hind legs and twitched its nose in my direction. It hadn't found me by sensing Phase Power. It had found me by smell. And like an ordinary field mouse, it apparently couldn't climb — it circled the trunk in anxious loops, unable to settle.
Wait. Something was off. If it had sensed my presence, shouldn't it be showing hostility, or killing intent, and threatening me?
What if it hadn't caught my scent at all, but followed the Phase Power leaking from the Phase Stone I was carrying? I focused Detection on the Big Rat's nose and looked.
Skreee!!
Damn! While I was tracing the nostrils, I brushed its brain!
Sure enough. It hadn't been drawn by my scent. It had been drawn by the Phase Power flowing from the Phase Stone. Thinking something up in the tree had touched it, the thing squeaked, opened its snout, bared sharp incisors, and started gnawing and grinding at the base of the trunk.
Should I project into its brain a little more, piss it off further, then jump it? But what if that called its family? The rate at which the tree was being chewed through was no joke. Leave it like this and the tree would come down fast.
I drew the horn awl from my waist, aimed for the field mouse's heart with Detection and Analysis, set my stance the way Analysis instructed, and put everything I had into— and stopped short of throwing.
No. If I missed, or it lodged in the body and the thing ran off, I'd lose a weapon just like that. There was no guarantee I'd even hit, and no guarantee one throw would kill it. I couldn't spend a weapon on this.
I pulled one of the straight, thick branches I was using as a backrest, set it against the claw spear, and roughly, quickly shaped a wooden stake sixty centimeters long, ten centimeters across at its thickest. I made the tip as sharp as a nail, then, to raise the penetrating power, reworked it so it thickened toward the other end. That still didn't feel like enough, so I reshaped the tip into a harpoon barb, so it wouldn't pull free once it was buried in the body.
Once it was in, it wasn't coming out. The weight, the thickness, the size — a wooden harpoon big enough that, lodged in a Big Rat, it would cripple the thing's movement. Thanks to Detection and Analysis, shaping it took less than five minutes. I ran Analysis again, locked in the optimal stance and the right amount of force, set myself, and aimed for the field mouse's heart.
The Big Rat was completely absorbed in gnawing the trunk. Please, just stay right there—!
Shwip. Thunk!
Skreeeaaak!!
"Nice!"
Dead on. I'd hurled it with everything I had, hard enough to make my arm throb, and the sixty-centimeter wooden harpoon punched through the field mouse's back, drove deep into the ground, and pinned the body in place. It was something I'd tried because I couldn't just watch, and the result was hard to believe. I'd sharpened the tip, sure — but to pierce it with a throw!
Impaled from the back straight through the torso, the Big Rat screamed a tearing shriek and thrashed like mad, but it couldn't get free. It scraped and clawed at the dirt with its forepaws and hind legs. The harpoon that had gone through its body was doing a stake's job faithfully.
Skreeee! Skreeeaaak!
Listen to it howl like it was dying. Its heart had clearly been smashed to pieces, and still the Big Rat wasn't dying quickly — coughing blood and screaming. If I didn't finish it fast, its family might come looking at the sound of that shriek.
I checked the surroundings with Telescopic Vision. No living thing approaching. Thinking I'd smash its skull, I took only the wooden spear and scrambled down the tree. It must have spotted me sliding down, because the Big Rat aberrant thrashed, trying to bite me.
The sight twisted my face in disgust. Halfway down I kicked off the trunk, dropped toward it, and came at it from behind — and the way its body was heaving, the stake looked ready to pop free any second. A stake a fifth as thick as its torso was in it. Just die quietly.
I didn't think the wooden spear could smash the head, so I drove it into the Big Rat's neck with all my strength.
Shunk.
Skreee...
The spear severed the neck bone on the way through and seemed to block the windpipe as well. A strange moan leaked out. I held it buried in the neck and waited, and the Big Rat aberrant's body — nodding, shuddering — went slack.
"Hoo."
At that wretched scream, the small animals had frozen in terror and weren't moving a muscle, and insects were fleeing in every direction. All of it caught by Detection. Then, from around the Big Rat's heart, a slow wave-shaped ripple began to spread.
As expected, even this small ripple wasn't absorbed into my body. It drifted into the air and vanished without a trace, swallowed by the natural Phase Power.
Tsk. So I really couldn't absorb Phase Power from an aberrant far below my own?
I'd killed a second living creature, but thinking of it as an aberrant, I didn't feel much of anything. My heart was only pounding at the level of mild tension. The fight had been so easy it was embarrassing to call it a fight.
I looked down at the dead Big Rat for a moment, and the sight made me squint — a grotesque thing, like a bald hill with tufts of fur sprouting all over it. If it had been small, about two fingers long, it might have been cute. A rat the size of a small dog was just plain gross.
It had been eating well. Close to fifteen kilograms, and there looked to be plenty of meat on it... but it was a rat, and I didn't feel like eating it. Still, it was meat. It was an aberrant, so the taste was probably nothing like rat meat. I wondered. Actual rat was supposed to taste similar to chicken.
......
I flipped the Big Rat over, pulled out the blood-soaked harpoon, and used it to dig a hole. Leave the body like this and the smell of blood might draw something. Checking now and then with Telescopic Vision in case another Big Rat approached, I used the horn awl to cut off the head, the legs, and the tail, pulled out the organs, and buried them.
Then I set down the wooden spear, its tip now blunted, kept only the claw spear and the horn awl, picked up the Big Rat, and walked toward the river while staying on guard.
It was nearly midnight, but Search wasn't an ability affected by time, and even with my eyes closed, moving was no problem thanks to it. The image of the midnight forest rising in my head, though, felt like looking through a black-and-white infrared camera, and it was unsettling in a way I couldn't name.
Whooooo.
Shaaaa.
The wind blowing in was bleak enough to chill the nape of my neck... The kind of atmosphere where a ghost might appear.
...Speak of the devil isn't actually a thing, right?
The insects weren't even chirping — scared off by the scream the Big Rat had let out as it died — and every time the wind blew, all I heard was the desolate rustle of leaves. Honestly, I was scared. Scared enough to miss the burrow under the cliff.
I wanted to rub the goosebumps on my neck, but my left hand held the claw spear and my right held the Big Rat's body, blood dripping from it, so I just shrugged with my shoulder and set my stopped feet moving again.
From the tree where I'd been hiding to the river was about two kilometers. After thirty minutes of walking, the river entered my Search range.
A river at midnight was frightening in its own way. Something pitch-black flowed quietly across the surface, but beneath the water a terrible current was raging. Should I just turn back now? What was Big Rat meat worth, that I had to be out moving in the middle of the night?
Rustle.
Hhk?! Nothing registered on Detection?!
I jolted, flung the Big Rat's body behind me, and gripped the claw spear in both hands. I shot to my feet, focused everything I had on Detection, and scanned the direction the sound had come from — and nothing registered.
"..."
My mouth went bone-dry all at once, and my insides burned. My heart hammered. Cold sweat ran.
Whooooo.
Shaaaaa.
A chilly wind blew again, and the leaves sounded like they were wailing. Tense enough that my pounding heart rang in my ears, I began to open my closed eyes little by little, and in front of me...!
"Hooo."
Nothing. Just a forest wrapped in desolate dark, where I could see nothing at all. No moonlight either. Pitch black in every direction, and all that was visible was a small thicket right in front of me and a single tree, only part of it showing through the dark. Of course, thanks to Detection, the pitch-black stretches were as clear as if I were looking through an infrared camera.
Nothing there, and I'd spooked myself!! Agh! Everything and its mother was out here trying to scare me!
"You startled me..."
I muttered it timidly and pressed my palm to my thudding heart, trying to calm it, but a heart once soaked in fear kept hammering and ringing in my ears. Grumbling to myself, I gave the claw spear a pointless shake, as if flicking something off it, and turned to pick up the Big Rat's body I'd flung behind me.
My eyes met those of a woman ghost, staring straight at me.
"..."
Ah. I missed the timing to react. Normally I would have screamed "Aaaah!! It's hereeeee!!" and run like a madman. I was scared enough that tears might— no, not quite. Just cold sweat streaming down.
S-should I run even now? If it was a ghost of the Phase World...
Listening to my heart sprint as if it meant to bolt, I hesitated over what to do — and then it occurred to me that I didn't feel anything like hostility from her. Carefully, slowly, I looked her over: a translucent, pale-gray woman ghost hovering before my eyes.
Neatly cut straight hair. Features so clean and precise they might have been drawn with a brush. She was a strikingly beautiful woman ghost.
Naked.