The Freshwater Mermaid (2)
Once we'd climbed onto the riverbank, I explained to the First Mermaid what I meant to test. By the time she'd heard me out, she looked thoroughly dazed.
"Got it? Take in my TP, and you'll climb from Mid Grade to Mid-High. Remember every detail of how it feels, and tell me afterward."
"...blub."
The First Mermaid nodded slowly, her face asking whether such a thing was even possible. Artificial evolution had clearly never crossed her mind.
Miho yipped in protest, as if demanding a share for herself, but the moment I tickled under her chin and stroked her head, she whined and purred like a kitten, as though she'd never objected at all. For a fox, she had a remarkable range of expressions.
"All right. Open up."
With Franc and Hwayeon standing watch on either side of me, I slid a finger into the First Mermaid's slightly parted mouth and began to trickle TP from its tip. First I needed to compare feeding it slowly against condensing it and giving it all at once.
She held my finger between her lips. Then her eyes flew wide. She seized my hand and began to suck with sudden, fervent hunger.
"Glub... glug!"
Watching her flap her fish tail and suck away with pure bliss on her face... I didn't have the words.
Fed slowly like that, the First Mermaid's Phase Power climbed from 800 to 1,999. She didn't evolve from Mid Grade to Mid-High Grade. Instead, the TP she'd taken in gathered in her heart, condensed, and turned into a Phase Stone.
Huh. I hadn't considered that a Phase Stone might form.
The moment I pulled my hand from her mouth, she clutched both cheeks and started rolling this way and that.
I caught the First Mermaid mid-roll, giddy with happiness, condensed 2,000 TP at my fingertip into a vivid sapphire blue, and placed it in her mouth.
She gulped it down at once. Under the dumbfounded stares of the Second and Third Mermaids, her face went slack and dreamy, as if she'd just been dosed with something and gone blissfully vacant.
The 2,000 TP rushed straight to her heart and swelled the Phase Stone already lodged there. The moment that stone also reached 2,000, it burst, and Phase Power flooded the First Mermaid's entire body.
And then her evolution began.
Her seaweed-colored hair brightened into a vivid green, and her eyes cleared to the same luminous shade. Flesh filled out her once-gaunt frame into something pleasing to the eye, and the two breasts that had sagged like an old granny's swelled taut and full.
A glossy sheen ran over the scales of her fish-half. It was like looking at the finest fish, still alive.
Breasts the size of an overturned rice bowl grew to the span of a deep soup bowl. Her waist drew in tighter, her hips swelled, her hair lengthened a little, and her face matured by a fraction as well.
She'd looked about fifteen, maybe sixteen. Now she might have passed for nineteen.
Feeding it slowly and condensing it into a single dose didn't seem all that different. She didn't look as if she'd gone into heat, either.
"Haa... I've never felt a sensation like this."
"Huh?"
Her voice rode the air and struck my eardrums directly, as if it were ringing inside my ears.
"You're not glugging anymore?"
"It's because I've become a Mid-High Rank Variant, just the grade you spoke of. I can shape sound much more finely now."
"Hoh. So that's why it feels like it's touching my eardrums. So how was it?"
At my question, the First Mermaid glanced down at her own body, then lifted both hands and began kneading the breasts that had risen so nicely.
...What is she doing.
I was staring at the way her slender, pretty fingers sank into her breasts, and at the nipples gone stark white between them, when she spoke.
"According to our chieftain, receiving the deep blessing of the sea leaves certain marks on the body."
"Outwardly, the hair grows brighter. Inwardly, an egg sac forms."
"Kin who receive the sea's deep blessing can put out the strength of two or three ordinary kin combined."
"I think that's the state I'm in now."
"...A variant? No—has she become a sub-species?"
"So consuming Seoha's TP turns one into a sub-species or a variant... Listening to that mermaid, and looking at her form, I'd say she's become a sub-species, not a variant."
"Ah. Then has Miho become an Energy Eater sub-species as well?"
A variant, they were saying, changed form completely—so this was a sub-species, not a variant. I tucked Franc and Hwayeon's exchange away and turned back to the First Mermaid.
"How's your body? Any sense that your Phase Power is slowly draining, anything like that?"
"I think my body changed because I received a blessing. I don't feel my Spex fading."
Spex? So they called Phase Power Spex? Intelligent beings would have words and expressions of their own. Anyway, if her Phase Power didn't vanish the way Miho's did, then dropping by one a day must be something particular to Miho.
"Do beings whose bodies changed like yours also form Phase Stones inside them?"
"A Phase Stone...? Ah. You mean a Crystal of Blessing. Yes. When Spex fills the body, it becomes a Crystal of Blessing, and once that gathers to its limit, the next blessing descends and we grow."
"Hmm... Are there any beings whose Phase Power slowly disappears from inside their bodies?"
At my question, the First Mermaid's eyes glinted faintly. She looked at Miho perched on my shoulder and spoke.
"Is this experiment for the sake of that child wrapped around your neck?"
"Well... yeah."
"That child is a Supexis who received a blessing and cast off her old form. That may be why."
"Supexis? What's that?"
"It means beings that hunger for Spex. They give everything to the devouring of it, and in the end they themselves become Spex. Pitiful children."
...So they call Crystal Eaters Supexis.
"Hmm. So taking in my TP is no different from what you call receiving a blessing?"
"That's how it feels."
Then was it fine to just feed them my TP? If becoming a sub-species meant ceasing to be human, or anything like that... no. Yeongeun was healthy, after all. Still, agile-type Yeongeun had become a balance-type, so it did mean the body's condition shifted somewhat.
Had Hiarid become a sub-species too? She hadn't shown any outstanding change like the First Mermaid. Maybe she simply hadn't taken in enough TP yet to cross that line.
At the First Mermaid's words, Franc and Hwayeon turned serious eyes on Miho atop my shoulder. I set Miho down and looked at her myself. Gazing into those bright, round black eyes, I sank into thought. Would it be all right to feed this one TP? If she became a Peak-Rank Variant as well, she and Hiarid together would be a great help to me.
After a moment's thought, I looked back at the First Mermaid and nodded.
"Thanks for telling me. You can go now."
"You're just letting us go?"
She stared at me in surprise. Why that look?
"Yeah? I don't want anything more from you."
"...Are you a messenger of the sea god?"
Flushed and heated, she looked up at me and asked with complete sincerity. Her speech had shifted, too—from that odd casual register into honorifics.
The sea god? Did she mean the Sea Sovereign?
"I'm not. I'm just a hunter who makes a living hunting aberrants. Why would you think I'm a god's messenger?"
"Because the only being who can bestow a blessing is the divine messenger!"
"Wrong. Anyway—the TP you took from me mixed completely with your Phase Power and became one with it, right?"
"Yes."
"Then that's enough. Take your sisters and go. Who knows? Follow the river far enough and you might find the sea."
"But you did more than save us sisters. You even bestowed a blessing upon us..."
Her expression said she ought to offer up her body or something.
Absolutely not.
"Enough. There's nothing you can do for me. Honestly, I saved you and treated you because of the friendly attitude you showed. If you really want to do something, use that stronger power of yours and look after your sisters properly."
"...Then please accept at least this."
With that, the First Mermaid drove her hand deep into her own smooth lower belly.
Th-that...
Red blood began to run from the torn flesh, yet she showed no sign of pain. With a perfectly calm face she rummaged inside herself and drew something out. The old claim that fish feel no pain flickered through my mind as she held out a hand smeared in red.
Resting on her palm was something like a pearl the size of a quail's egg. Do mermaids cultivate pearls inside their bodies? What was this, a relic?
The wound she'd inflicted on herself sealed in an instant.
"If you hold this in your mouth, it will let you breathe even underwater."
An item that could replicate part of a water-attribute ability user's barrier. Better than nothing, I supposed... but the way Hwayeon's eyes went wide suggested it was quite something.
"Thanks. What happens if I swallow it by accident?"
"The effect should last through thirty risings and settings of the sun."
"Hoh. Thanks. I'll put it to good use."
"Thank you once more. I will pray to the sea god that we may meet again, so I can repay this kindness."
"Speaking of the sea god—you lived in the sea?"
"Yes."
"Then why did sea-dwellers come all the way out here?"
"Curiosity led us along the waterways, and we found an enormously vast lake. For two months my sisters and I were sightseeing in that new underwater scenery, when all at once the way back vanished and the water level kept falling... We were trapped there."
So they'd wandered into a plain submerged by the great flood and gotten stuck. Curiosity didn't kill the cat. It had nearly killed the mermaids.
The three mermaid sisters smiled brightly, waved at us, and then swam swiftly away with the current until they vanished. The two younger ones were still skin and bones, but the First, who looked after them well, was whole now and had even evolved into a sub-species. She'd take care of them.
"Is this thing really that good?"
I turned from the sisters, already gone from sight, and looked at Hwayeon as I asked. She nodded as if it were obvious.
"Even a C-Class water-attribute ability user can't maintain a water barrier all day. But hold this in your mouth, and you can stay underwater without limit. Of course it's good."
As she said it, she cast a regretful look in the direction they'd gone. The kind of look that said if they were still in front of her, she might have split their bellies open.
"Is that so... I don't particularly see what's so great about it."
"That's because you haven't experienced many Phase Worlds. In the Phase World, fighting underwater is more common than you'd think. Time River alone has more than ten unconquered zones tied to water. Factor in coastal combat and the uses multiply exponentially. There is absolutely no downside to having it."
"I see. Then should I put it in the raid team's classified vault for now?"
"Why? There's only one, anyway. It's most efficient in the hands of someone with outstanding individual strength, like you, Seoha."
Franc, who'd been listening beside us, nodded vigorously, as if to say Hwayeon was right.
"It seems that if you gather TP with your Mana Sieve and inject it into an aberrant, you can turn it into a sub-species or a variant. If we find a Silver White Wolf and test it, I think we could be certain."
"You said the Silver Knight Wolf is a sub-species of the Silver White Wolf, right? And Franc said she's seen a Silver Knight Wolf. Then starting tomorrow, shall we look for a Silver White Wolf?"
There didn't seem to be any White Wolf habitat around here... What to do. Turn back? Running into the Rogue Imugi on the way was a bit much. I figured I'd need at least twenty million Phase Power before I could use the Wall of Space to handle that thing with any real margin, and I was reluctant.
While I fretted, Hwayeon offered an alternative.
"It would be better to capture several of the same aberrant and test on them. Catching ordinary animals and experimenting on those would be good as well."
"Ah. Ordinary animals... Come to think of it, back when Mom and Dad were still ordinary people, I smeared TP across their eyes once. That worries me now, too."
When I frowned, Franc and Hwayeon came closer and gripped my hands tight.
"Don't worry. While you and Siha were in the Phase World, every member of the Grand Blue raid team underwent a thorough physical. We took special care that Father and Mother received one as well, and the results showed them perfectly healthy. Nothing amiss."
"Ah, really? That's a relief. Thanks for looking out for them."
"It was only what Franc and I were supposed to do. Don't give it another thought."
Yeongeun too. Women this kind, this considerate, this sharp—and they were my brides-to-be.
"Heh heh. I really am blessed, I tell you."
I grinned and pulled Hwayeon and Franc in by the waist, and both of them let out small squeals of delight. With my lovers' soft bodies on either side, my hands tried of their own accord to wander toward their breasts and hips. I clenched them, held back, and moved us under a tree.
I sat in the shade beneath the tree where I'd left the backpack and, with my lovers, looked down at the river scattering dazzling light as it caught the sun. Little by little, the day began to tilt.
"It's peaceful."
"To be able to let my guard down like this in the Phase World... What a novel experience."
Franc gave a small nod, as if she agreed.
I'd considered heading out at once to hunt aberrants, but a day's rest seemed reasonable, and night would be on us soon. We'd sleep soundly here tonight, and starting tomorrow search for a Return Point while looking into how aberrants became variants and sub-species.
Franc and Miho played. Hwayeon and I watched them, idling the time away until the sun had fully set and the moon and stars rose. Moonlight striking the water and glancing back off it held a cool allure quite different from the daytime view. Perhaps because we were by the river, it grew a little chilly once the sun went down, but no one here was the sort to be bothered by that, so it hardly mattered.
As I got a campfire going, Hwayeon cleared the ground of stones and began laying out blankets and sleeping bags. When Franc and Hwayeon offered to stand watch, I stopped them, explaining the three-dimensional map I'd mastered.
"The trees block the view completely. If either of you can keep a better watch than my Spatial Perception, which senses out to 4.5 kilometers, then by all means stand watch."
The two of them lost whatever they'd been about to say and smiled wryly. I pulled them into my arms, and from within my embrace Hwayeon spoke as if grumbling.
"I think I understand why Madam throws herself into her work. When I'm with you, I feel as though I've become something powerless."
"I feel the same..."
"What a thing to say. Honestly, fighting's about the only thing I'm good at. Franc, Hwayeon, and Yeongeun handle everything else."
They seemed a little pleased by the sincerity in it, but their expressions didn't brighten completely. Seriously—if I couldn't at least fight well, what kind of face did I have as the head of this household? I was desperate in my own way, wasn't I?
I held both lovers in my arms and drifted in and out of sleep, until I felt Hwayeon, who'd been using my arm as a pillow, quietly rise. I looked up at her, puzzled, and she went toward the river with a faint smile.
I glanced at Franc. She was fast asleep, with no sign of waking, and Miho slept curled into a ball by my head. Careful not to wake Franc, I slipped my arm free and followed. By the time I reached the bank, Hwayeon had begun taking off her Force Leather armor.
"What are you doing?"
"Washing. We ran for quite a while today, and it was hot. I sweated a bit, and it feels unpleasant."
Mm. I'd run at full power and sweated some myself. Maybe I ought to wash before sleeping, too.
Hwayeon peeled off the blue leather jacket wrapping her upper body and tossed it behind her. The large breasts bound in her tights-armor came free and swayed. Then she removed the gauntlets, kicked off the boots, and shed the pants, until all that remained was the tights-armor, like a short-sleeved, short-legged full-body swimsuit.
I stepped closer and touched the fabric cinched around her thigh. It felt only a little thicker than paper. Drawing paper, maybe?
"Something this thin turns as thick as plate armor. Hard to believe."
"The power of Phase Power. Miracle energy that turns the impossible into the possible."
She slipped a hand into the gap at her neck, yanked it wide, and began pulling it down past her chest... and then—
"You're not wearing underwear?"
I swallowed hard at the sight of two peaks under the moonlight, and the cute little summits poking up at their tips.
As if she'd been waiting for those words, Hwayeon freed both arms from the tights-armor and slowly pushed it down. Extremely thin shorts covering her lower body came into view.
"I am."
Even granting she was, with the cloth swallowed into that sharp cleft, could it really count as wearing them? Looking closer, I could even make out the outline of the skin over her clit.
Whether excited by my gaze or not, Hwayeon's pink nipples stiffened. Watching her breasts sway with every movement, the desire to rush in, knead them, and taste them rose hot enough to be called temptation itself.
"Heh heh."
At the sight of me staring holes through her, Hwayeon wore a smile dripping with allure. One arm covered her breasts. The other hooked fingers into the shorts, and she began to ease them down, hips twisting slowly.
The shorts, dragged down unevenly by her fingers, passed the crest of her thighs—and then, with a soft drop, fell all the way to her ankles, and the plump flesh between her thighs—!
"Graah! I can't hold it!"
"Kyaa~."
Letting out a bewitching nasal sound unlike her usual self, Hwayeon caught me as I lunged and let herself be nudged toward the river.
"Wh—whoa?"
And just like that, we fell into the water.
A noisy rush rang in my ears as cold, refreshing water stroked my whole body. Where Hwayeon's skin touched mine, warmth lingered instead—a contradictory sensation that raised goosebumps. I opened my eyes underwater to the sound of bubbling, and her long hair came into view, rippling as if black ink were spreading through the dark.
Wearing a bewitching smile as she looked up at me, she soon brought her face close, kissed me, and pushed her tongue into my mouth. Cold water rushed in along with her warm tongue. The difference in temperature defied words. I seized her slim waist hard and began to devour her as if I meant to swallow her whole.
In water filled with nothing but stillness, moonlight filtering down, I caressed Hwayeon's stark-white naked body and gnawed teasingly at the tongue inside my mouth. From her shoulders, down her back, to her waist, and lower still, I kneaded her firm, springy ass—but my destination wasn't that apple-taut rear.
I spread her cheeks and slipped the tip of my middle finger into her asshole. Hwayeon gave a smothered, lewd little smile and tightened her sphincter, biting down on my finger. I smiled back just as knowingly, pushed the finger in a little deeper, and reached with my other hand to roughly seize a breast too large for even half of it to fit in my grip. Hwayeon closed her eyes and twisted her brows, as if pleasure had stabbed her in the chest.
As my finger stirred inside her ass, she threw her head back, stretched her toes straight, and began to twist. I watched her long hair undulate like a swimming jellyfish, then undid my belt buckle, and she stripped off my jacket.
Naked in an instant, I aimed my cock—swelling past mere hardness into engorgement even in the cold water—at Hwayeon's lower mouth without using my hands. I snapped my hips up and drove in to the root in one thrust. The glans bored through her tight pussy and struck the mouth of her womb.
Her hot walls chewed at my cock as if urging it deeper. The shock of the penetration made her furrow her brow in pain and open her mouth, and air bubbles streamed out, burbling. She shut her mouth at once and even covered it with both hands, but in that brief moment most of her breath seemed to have escaped, and her face began to look strained.
Watching that change closely, I kept working my hips, knocking at her womb again and again. She thrashed both legs, her face flushing red and going blue by turns, forcing herself to hold her breath. At that point I reached out, pushed aside the hands covering her mouth, kissed her, and pushed air into her. Hwayeon urgently grabbed my head and began to take the breath I was giving her.
I pulled my lips away, looked at her reddened face, and smiled. As if embarrassed, she clung to me and wrapped both legs around my waist. As her thighs spread, my cock—well past any ordinary measure—sank even deeper and drove her womb back.
Every time my thighs struck her ass, a dull, watery thump traveled through our bodies and rang out.
Blub, blub.
Whether her lungs were burning through oxygen under the fervent thrusting, her face grew strained again. As if that tightness were stoking her lust, she sucked and licked at my lips as though she couldn't bear to miss a single moment. Making love in such an unusual setting, my urge to come rose quickly. I checked her face, but she still seemed a long way from climax.
...I couldn't finish alone.
I invaded her asshole again and began to pour TP from my fingertip. Hwayeon's eyes flew open, and she started shaking her head from side to side with a pitiful look, as if begging me not to. Watching her long hair ripple this way and that, thinking how beautiful it was, I grinned.
No. We're finishing together.
Under the double stimulation of the TP, her vaginal walls began to squirm like living earthworms. I drove my hips up harder, tasting her chewy flesh with my glans, and worked the finger buried in her ass. Strength began to gather in the arms and legs wrapped around me. The pressure of her pussy grew with it.
With every thrust her inner flesh felt deliciously chewy, and a silent exclamation slipped through me. I drove myself deep into Hwayeon's hole, which had gone from writhing to locking tight, set my urethra against the mouth of her womb, and began to pour out the semen boiling in my lower belly with all my strength.
Blorb, blub, blub!
Her back and waist, locked around my arm, flexed hard, and her asshole clamped fiercely on my finger. Air bubbles poured from her mouth once more. And from her petals I felt a tightness I'd never experienced before.
They say the agony of suffocation makes a woman's vaginal muscles contract...
As my blue semen filled her womb, her pupils began to roll back, and she started drawing water in through her nose and mouth. The more she did, the worse the clench became—tight enough that I could barely move my hips. The more she clutched her throat, wore that pained expression, and thrashed, the more a sadistic flame kindled in my chest.
The desire to keep watching her suffer like this warred fiercely with the knowledge that we had to get out of the water right now.
Kh...!
Watching the water that had flooded nearly half her lungs as she gagged, I formed a foothold of Wall of Space beneath my feet, kicked off hard, and burst out through the surface.
Hwayeon, clinging to me with both hands and both feet, began hacking and retching water onto my shoulder. Every time she coughed, her hole clenched and rolled at the same time, giving me a pleasure so sharp I thought my waist might snap.
"Cough—haaahn! Hack. Hyaang!"
Even as she coughed, she didn't know what to do with the pleasure rising from below. Her head jerked again and again, her body trembling... It was incredibly erotic.
I pulled out and patted her back. She sank down and vomited water for a while, then avoided my eyes with hers gone red, walked to the water's edge, and washed her face. Sniffling, red-eyed, she burrowed into my arms and rubbed against me.
"I thought I'd crossed the Rubicon."
"Sorry. Was it hard?"
"...No. It was good. Different from... that, until now. I thought I'd grown somewhat used to pleasure, but... Haa."
The pain seemed gone, and she'd steadied, so I took her by the waist. As if answering me, she climbed up over me and took my cock into the hole that was still slick and wet.
"Haak. Ah, you're still not satisfied...?"
"If I went until I was satisfied, your belly would swell up and burst. And you were the one who tempted me first, weren't you?"
"Nngh...! Ahh, ah! Seo—haak!"
I grabbed her ass and started bouncing her, and her face flushed at once as heated moans spilled out. She always acted strong, but the contrast, when she softened and melted under pleasure, was unbearably lovely.
And so the lovemaking, bathed in the moonlight, continued until the edge of dawn drew near.