The Evolutionary Leap (1)
Franc woke in the morning, caught on to the history made the night before, and fell into a sulk. I gathered her into my arms, patted her, and somehow managed to soothe her.
My lovely lovers hardly know possessiveness or jealousy. Even so, there was no sense leaving a sulk alone until a thing a hoe could have stopped had to be stopped with a shovel.
Preparations done, I looked up at a sky without a single cloud and decided to survey the ground from the air one more time.
I kicked off the Wall of Space and climbed until the air grew so thin I could barely breathe. The higher I went, the blacker the sky around me turned, and the sight spooked me enough that I stopped partway.
Climb too high and I might pop clean out into space. Then what?
Teeth chattering in the vicious cold, I scanned every stretch the clouds didn't hide. The eruption of Mount Elephantros had turned everything from twelve o'clock to three into a pale gray heaven, clear to the edge of the horizon my eyes could reach.
Nothing as massive as Mount Elephantros. Lower than that, I couldn't tell hill from plain by eye.
Still, something that at least looked like mountains spread away at ten o'clock from where I stood, so I set my course that way.
I dropped back to earth like a shot. My lovers startled at the frost crusting me, came over brushing it off, and asked.
"Good heavens, look at this frost! How high did you go?"
"You must have reached the stratosphere."
"Brrrr. Could barely breathe, and it was cold as hell."
I crouched there shivering, and Franc and Hwayeon pulled me into their arms and thawed my frozen body.
Miho was wound into a ball atop my jacket, off traveling through dreamland. I caught her by the scruff and lifted her. She blinked up at me with bleary eyes, then let out a kyung!
What a carefree little thing.
A couple of hours toward ten o'clock, and the aberrants that had fled began turning up one by one. They must have been waging fierce territorial wars in the meantime. The ground everywhere was scored with the marks of battle.
As we moved I caught every animal there was to catch, from creatures smaller than Miho to the big ones, and fed them all TP.
The curious part was this. No matter how long a caught beast thrashed, the moment Miho threatened it with a "kyong!" it locked up stiff as a frog before a snake. Buffalo-sized brutes and prairie-dog-sized runts alike.
Small as they were, they counted as aberrants.
Feeding them TP was easy because of it. Not one of the animals I brought in became an aberrant after eating the stuff.
I caught a few wolves, foxes, and monkeys to experiment on, and snatched up every bird and reptile I saw and fed them TP as well. Not one mutated into an aberrant.
I watched closely, thinking that even without becoming aberrants they might at least grow healthier. There was no way to tell whether they had.
"So feeding TP to ordinary animals with no tie to Phase Power doesn't trigger any mutation? Even the apes don't change. The odds of anything happening to Mom and Dad are basically nil."
"Perhaps... no. Never mind."
Hwayeon trailed off. I tickled her and put her to the torture until she'd confess what she'd meant to say, but she clamped her mouth shut and insisted it had only been an idle thought. Turn it over however she might, it had no basis in reality.
Dangle a mystery in front of me and then wave it away? That, I will not forgive.
"If you don't tell me, I'm banning all skinship and touching for a week. Across the board."
"...I wondered whether Siha was summoned to the Phase World because of your TP. Father and Mother are past the age for a forced summons, so they weren't taken. Siha is not."
"Oh my. That is quite a plausible hypothesis."
Hmm. Hwayeon says it isn't realistic, but...
"The chance isn't a complete zero, so I'm done smearing TP on ordinary people. If it really does send them to the Phase World, that's no different from murder."
"Plenty of people in this world would pay to be forcibly summoned. If word got out, it would be troublesome in all sorts of ways... a nuisance. Hide it. Actively."
"Yeah."
As for the creatures I'd injected with TP for the experiments, I ate the ones that were edible and disposed of the rest. Release them, and if they later evolved into aberrants, every last one that had eaten my TP would become a subspecies or a variant.
In truth, tens of thousands of TP had already piled up inside their bodies. Gain some trigger and awaken as aberrants, and they could become high-rank variants outright.
I sent them off without pain, buried them, ate water buffalo for lunch — it tasted awful — and set out again.
"Ah! Seoha! There's a Silver White Wolf over there!"
"Let's catch it!"
Franc's eyesight outstripped an eagle's. She spotted the Silver White Wolf and called it out, and we took the mid-low grade beast alive.
All four of its legs were broken. It thrashed and whimpered, eyes a muddle of rage, pain, fear, and confusion.
First I dripped TP into its muzzle, a little at a time.
Unlike Miho or the First Mermaid, this one turned vicious the moment it ate my TP, and began to growl.
"Huh. What's wrong with this one?"
"Fall back for now."
Hwayeon caught my hand and put some distance between us. The beast's fur lengthened. Its color shifted to the dark of a night sky, and its yellow eyes paled like the moon. Its teeth sharpened like a vampire's, its bulk swelled, and a chill began to roll off it — the feeling of standing in midwinter in nothing but your underwear.
"It is a Silver Knight Wolf!"
"This is?"
Awooooo—! Au, awooooo—!!!
Its broken legs had healed. It rose on all fours, howling at us without pause and clacking its teeth, until Hwayeon's slash severed all four limbs in a single stroke and slammed it back into the dirt.
Ordinarily it wouldn't have been cut so cleanly. Fresh from its evolution, it seemed to have no energy field, and the blade went straight through.
Krawooooo~!!!
Ooh. That raised the hairs on my arms a little.
Even a faint fear leaked from the howl. Miho, spooked, burrowed into my jacket.
I hugged the bulge at my side tight, set my foot on the head of the thing that had evolved into a Silver Knight Wolf, and pressed down hard.
Grrrr. Uggh-gugh-gugh.
I wasn't in acceleration mode, but I still had something like C-Class physical reinforcement, and even so my leg bucked against the strength in that skull.
"Pretty strong. It's a mid-rank aberrant now, but turning into a subspecies seems to have made it a lot stronger."
"Now that we know your TP evolves them into subspecies, let us find more and compile statistics on the odds."
At Franc's word I cut the throat of the thing writhing like an insect with its legs gone. After that I caught twenty-three aberrants ranging from the very lowest to mid-low and fed every one of them TP. Every last one evolved into a subspecies.
I was especially thorough with the Silver White Wolves. I found several and varied the method — condensing the TP and feeding it all at once, or letting it trickle in slowly — and still every one of them evolved into a Silver Knight Wolf.
The standout was a Long-snouted Lean Wolf. I caught the lowest-tier thing, pried its muzzle open, and fed it TP. Flesh filled out on its frame, a gloss began to run through its coat, and for a moment I thought it had evolved into a Silver White Wolf.
"That is not a Silver White Wolf. What is this thing?"
Hwayeon's observation made me notice it. The fur was shorter than a Silver White Wolf's, the forelegs and hind legs longer, the tail a little shorter.
"Let's feed it more."
I gave it enough TP to push it to mid-low and let it go. It twisted and writhed. Forelegs and hind legs lengthened, the spine straightened, the neck bones stretched, and its shape turned something like a person's!
"Whoa? A Lycanslope? No — a werewolf? This one's become a variant, hasn't it?"
I took a startled step back from the sudden transformation. The thing sprang backward just as fast, then rose.
It had shifted to a bipedal form and grown to three meters. While we were still staring, our reaction seemed to provoke its ferocity. In that instant it opened its muzzle at me and roared.
Kuhehehehung!!
"How dare you!"
Hwayeon bellowed and flashed in like lightning, launching a rising kick into its skull.
Thud!
Kyeng!!
"A puppy with no manners must be taught a lesson!"
And Franc dropped a bolt of lightning on it.
Crack!!
Kyaaaeng!!
Head struck, lightning striking true, the thing yelped like a beaten dog and tumbled. Hwayeon walked up to it. Then, without mercy — quite literally grinding it underfoot — she began to stomp.
Kyak! Kek! Keok, keok! Kaeng, keueong! Kyaeng!!
An aberrant may be stronger than a person of the same grade, but Hwayeon is highest-tier B-Class, and that thing was only just mid-low.
At first it seemed to try resisting. Under the violence pouring down on it, it eventually tucked its tail between its legs and screamed that it was dying.
Overwhelming violence, it turns out, can make even an aberrant scream.
Hwayeon planted a foot on the back of the creature as it clutched its head in both arms and howled face-down. Then she reached out, seized its mane, and hauled with everything she had.
The werewolf's waist jackknifed. It gagged, unable even to scream, and from that spine came a sickening crunch...
"Hold it just like that."
I approached the thing as it scraped and clawed at the ground with both arms, and poured a little more TP into its muzzle. A Phase Stone began to form in its heart.
I looked down at the growling beast and kept streaming TP between its gaping jaws. The Phase Stone cracked, and it began to evolve into a mid-rank aberrant.
Keok, keureuk, grrrr... Uwoooooo—!!!
Once it became a mid-rank aberrant, it had unmistakably turned into something you could call a Lycanslope.
Muscle that had been a little thin swelled into something fearsome. It grew taller still, and its fur began to shine a dazzling silver.
Even the roar was enough to prickle the skin.
Twenty minutes ago it had been a skinny dog the size of a bicycle. For it to get this big — I could hardly believe it. What kind of energy is TP, is Phase Power, that it ignores the law of conservation of mass?
I fed it more TP in that state and made it a mid-high rank variant. It grew larger still, reaching four meters. Its claws sharpened and lengthened like blades. Its molars turned vicious enough that a bite wouldn't tear flesh so much as rip bone.
The silver werewolf, now a mid-high rank variant, was gradually overpowering Hwayeon's strength. The heaving grew worse. A few more twists and it looked ready to break her hold.
Mounted on its back, Hwayeon furrowed her brow.
"This... thing. It has grown stronger. Nearly the level of a mid-grade high-rank variant."
"We won't be able to push it to a high-rank variant. Hwayeon, hold it a little longer."
I kept pouring TP until a Phase Stone formed in its heart. The moment the stone of the glutted beast hit twenty thousand, it slowly stopped resisting.
In the instant Hwayeon puzzled over that, the thing exploited her lapse. It wrenched its whole body violently, shook her off, and leapt into the air.
Now a gigantic werewolf over four meters tall, it sprang nearly ten meters up, looked down on us, and unleashed the full measure of its ferocity.
Kuhehehehehung!!
Both eyes had gone blood-red, killing intent streaming off it in threads. Hwayeon took in the sight, drew her sword, and shot up like a flash of lightning to sever the werewolf's limbs.
It tried to block her blade somehow. The overwhelming gap in combat experience cut it down without resistance.
Kheueooong!!
I stepped back several paces to avoid the limbs raining blood and the torso of the thing that had become a werewolf.
It hit the ground with a thud and howled, eyes wide enough to weep blood.
Keuhung! Keuhehehung!!
"Why did this one become a variant?"
"Who knows..."
Hwayeon, who had severed all four limbs in a single cut, turned to me with her sword still in hand. I didn't know the reason either.
The silver werewolf sprayed red blood from its severed limbs and thrashed them wildly. It looked like a berserker with not a shred of reason left. I watched the thing through Spatial Perception as it twisted its face like a demon and howled like a madman, then spoke.
"Might be a difference between individuals. For now, though — the ones that eat my TP evolve into subspecies or variants when they evolve. That's right, isn't it?"
"Judging by how Madam came out a balanced type when she advanced to B-Class, I believe it is true that evolution is the trigger."
Meanwhile Franc, who had been looking the werewolf over from head to toe, tilted her head and asked us.
"Ordinary werewolves are said to have dark brown fur, but this werewolf's fur is silver. Is this aberrant a variant of the Long-snouted Lean Wolf, or a subspecies of werewolf?"
"That is not a question with a simple answer. However... an aberrant that has eaten Seoha's TP does not seem to undergo the evolution that means growth in ability. It seems to undergo the evolution of a living creature."
Nothing remained but torso and head, and the thing kept squirming, clacking its muzzle at Franc and Hwayeon as they talked right in front of it.
I stomped its head so it couldn't move, turned to my lovers, and asked.
"Don't you think aberrants get more ferocious when they eat my TP?"
"Mm. They certainly seem to."
"But the mermaid was not like that, was she? Nor Miho, and Hiarid ate a great deal of Seoha's TP, yet she has no aggression."
"Could it be they divide into beings who can converse with people, and beings who can't?"
"You mean the presence or absence of higher intelligence decides the ferocity?"
"That does sound plausible."
While we talked, the cross-sections of the werewolf's limbs began to bubble and boil, regenerating little by little.
"Shall I kill it?"
I nodded at Hwayeon's question. She swung her sword lightly and took off its head. I drew the Extrema Ratio, split the chest, and pulled out the Phase Stone in the heart. Franc blinked and stared hard at the werewolf's Phase Stone.
"This one looks a little different in color from other Phase Stones."
"The density of the color certainly looks different from an ordinary Phase Stone."
At their words I examined the werewolf's Phase Stone myself, then took from my coat the high-tier aberrant's Phase Stone I'd been charging and held the two side by side.
Set next to each other, the werewolf's stone was clearly more transparent, and deeper.
"The werewolf's is like a sapphire. The high-grade Phase Stone is like a blue diamond."
Kying. Keuung.
Miho looked at the werewolf's Phase Stone, licked her lips, and started bumping her nose against my cheek.
"Huh? What? You want to eat this?"
I showed her the werewolf's Phase Stone. She whined frantically, rubbed her head against my neck, and rose and settled, unable to sit still.
"...And this?"
Kying!
I showed her the high-grade Phase Stone. She huffed and whipped her head away.
"Your likes and dislikes are certainly clear."
"It seems Miho can eat Phase Stones created from Seoha's TP as well."
"Let's catch a few more of whatever we see and test it. Give some to Miho, and take some back as samples to have examined."
"Understood."
"Yes!"
Kyang-kyang!!
The werewolf corpse my experiment had produced couldn't be stripped for byproducts or hauled back to reality as research material, so I erased it with the Wall of Space.
Then I sat, settled Miho between my legs, and held the werewolf Phase Stone — about a quarter the size of my fist — in front of her muzzle. She snapped it down at once.
Miho's Phase Power right now is 38. The werewolf's Phase Stone is 21,441. Absorb all of it, and Miho would become a mid-high rank variant too...
"Huh?"
"Oh my?"
...She didn't. She just gulped it down and started grooming herself, thoroughly satisfied, wearing a that-was-delicious look. Her Phase Power was still 38.
"Why isn't this one's Phase Power going up?"
Bewildered, I caught Miho's front paws, stood her up, and shook her little body as if we were dancing. She tilted her head and looked up at me.
Hwayeon glanced at my face, then fixed her gaze on Miho and spoke.
"An Energy Eater does not gain Phase Power merely by eating Phase Power and Phase Stones. It may be because of that."
"Ah... her trait didn't vanish completely. Right."
Tch. Wasted effort.
I repeated experiment after experiment until evening, when the sky began to darken, but a case like Miho or the First Mermaid never appeared even once.
I caught them, evolved them, then tried talking. It didn't get through. I turned on Mana Vision and tried Mana Voice to win their favor, but they went so violently berserk I could tell that didn't work either.
Beat them half to death to weaken their minds, and they raged in proportion to the beating. Then the blood rushed all the way to the brain and they died foaming at the mouth.
"So in the end, all my TP does is turn aberrants into subspecies or variants. Pump as much as I like into animals, and nothing changes."
At that point I took stock of what Mana Sieve could do.
Move the Phase Power inside my body at will, and I can use physical reinforcement, elemental power, and recovery. Concentrate it through my whole body, and I can raise the Wall of Space without limit. Concentrate it in one part of the body, and that part is reinforced, with a defense against attacks made of Phase Power that's effectively bottomless. Feed it to an ability user and their Phase Power rises. Feed it to an aberrant, and they change into a subspecies or a variant.
The sapphire-colored Phase Stone in my hand. I decided to call it a Blue Stone for now. I'd meant to take it back to reality and have it researched, but the moment I actually considered doing so, unease welled up.
"I've got money to spare. Should I build a research institute?"
"A research institute?"
"Yeah. Hand something like this off for just anyone to study, and I don't see any good coming of it."
"True enough. Few places could properly research an object of this caliber, and all of them are well-known foreign institutes. Let the information leak to the country in question, and we would be the only ones in trouble."
Hwayeon stood with her arms folded, thinking a moment. Then, as if she'd made up her mind, she nodded once.
"Not bad. No — a good proposal. When we return, I will convene a meeting and push it forward."
"Yeah. I'm counting on you."
"It will not go up quickly. Recruiting researchers is a problem from the start."
The experiments had slowed us a little as we traveled, but we managed to find a suitable Return Point.
Too low to be a mountain and too high to be a hill, it was more like the wooded rise behind a neighborhood — and it was a monkey mountain, swarming with monkeys from low grade to mid grade.
"That one over there looks to be the boss of the troop."
"Let's go!"
At the summit I cut down the monkey Franc pointed out in a single stroke — a mid-high rank variant that looked like a mandrill, four meters tall — and drove off the rest.
Driving them off wasn't hard.
I concentrated Mana Sieve through my whole body, killed the boss in one cut with a Mana Riser, and tossed mana rounds into the air and blew them apart. The remaining monkeys shrieked kyaaak, kyaaak and fled down the mountain in an instant.
I looked again at the mandrill aberrant, dead and split clean in half lengthwise. Its coat was a vivid gold, and for a second I wondered if it was one of those golden-furred divine apes that make cameo appearances in martial arts novels... Of course it wasn't.
"Seoha. When we enter next time, those monkeys will not cause us difficulty, will they?"
"...Sorry. Die for me!!"
I swallowed all 375 aberrant monkeys milling around after fleeing roughly two kilometers, using the Wall of Space.
Watching the monkeys submerged in the amber Wall of Space break down swiftly — not a shard of bone, not a drop of blood left — I thought again what a frightening ability it was.
Less than four hundred thousand Phase Power, and I'd slaughtered 375 of them at once.
If they were people, couldn't I kill them just by generating a ten-centimeter Wall of Space in the head or the heart?
Ten centimeters costs 10 TP a cast. Anyone inside the range, and I could take three hundred and fifty thousand at once. No. I wouldn't even need 10 TP. With a single TP...
...Enough of that thought.
Franc and Hwayeon had been looking down the mountain. When hundreds of amber walls appeared and vanished and the monkeys vanished with them, they let out adorable gasps of wonder, then headed down to collect the Phase Stones.
While Franc and Hwayeon used Spatial Perception to find the stones and pick them up, I sat a reasonable distance from the Return Point and lifted Miho, asleep on my shoulder.
Wouldn't do to set the Return Point off by accident while working right beside it.
I was watching Miho sleep, snoring softly, when Hwayeon came back with the stones, poured them into a backpack, and asked with a serious face.
"Are you going to evolve Miho?"
"Yeah. If Miho becomes a high-tier aberrant too, she'll be a big help."
Miho woke at the sound of voices. Her name had come up one time after another, and she turned to us, blinking, as if to ask what was going on.
"From now on I'm going to feed you TP and make you strong."
Kyung?
"If you get strong, you'll listen to me and help me, right?"
Kyung!
She answered energetically and looked at me with sparkling eyes. I held a finger to her mouth. She opened her dainty muzzle, took my finger in, and started sucking on it.
I haven't even started, and already she's this impatient.
Watching her tail spin round and round like a windmill, I began to pour TP into her muzzle.