The Elixir of Evolution (2)
Gulp. Gulp.
Watching Miho tip her tiny muzzle open and swallow the TP spilling from my finger, I tensed a little.
It hadn't been long, but this was far from the first time her antics had startled a laugh out of me. Even so, if drinking my TP pushed her rank up and the ferocity came out with it...
I'd really rather that didn't happen.
Miho went on gulping it down, and the moment her Phase Power hit 50 she shivered once, hard — then kept right on drinking.
"Her Phase Power's past 50, but her form isn't changing."
"Has she become a Low-Rank Variant?"
"Yes. She's over 70 now."
Like a kit nursing at a bottle, she suckled greedily at the TP, and before long she had filled Phase Power to 100 and become a Mid-Low Rank Variant in an instant.
A little squeak.
"What. You full?"
"Kyong!"
She answered with bright energy, hopped down out of my arms, gave herself one brisk shake, and started bouncing all over the place. And she was fast — about on par with a half-dead mid-rank monkey aberrant slamming into my Wall of Space.
After darting around for a bit she flinched to a stop, planted herself in a pose like she was about to poop, and started straining, grunting with effort.
"Huh?"
"Ah."
"Oh my—?!"
In that instant a tail — a fox tail, fluffy and soft-looking — popped into being. One more. Even after she had two, Miho didn't stop straining.
"Ah, another one came out!"
Just as Franc said, a third tail appeared between the two. I went over to Miho, tails multiplied in a blink, and poked at her — her body was the same size as before.
"Hey. What's going on with your tails."
"Kyong? ...Kyaong?!"
She'd been licking her forepaws in obvious relief. At my words she turned a look of huh? back at her own tails, then startled so hard her little body hunched in on itself.
"No, I'm saying they're your tails."
The swaying tails spasmed now and then, and every time they did Miho flinched. She carefully stretched out a forepaw to poke one, lost her balance, and flopped over backward.
I watched her throw cat-punches at her own tails from exactly the position she'd fallen in, then looked back at Franc and Hwayeon.
"That's the one, right?"
"Yes. That's it."
"Yeah. That's it."
All three of us said it at once.
"A nine-tailed fox."
I stared, my own expression complicated, at Miho gnawing on her tails with equally complicated eyes.
One tail at the very bottom, two at Low-Rank, three the moment she hit Mid-Low. So if Miho reached Highest-Rank, did that mean she'd become a nine-tailed fox?
It was a relief she wasn't showing any ferocity, but the nine-tailed fox in my head was... hmm.
"Fox aberrants are ranked by the number of their tails. Obvious, really, but if she grows another every time her rank rises, then one day she'll be a nine-tailed fox with nine of them."
The Phase World had no shortage of fox aberrants with more than one tail.
The most common was the two-tailed fox I'd fought at the end of my first run, and the strongest known so far was the six-tailed fox — the Black-Blood Fox.
Black-Blood Foxes grew exponentially stronger with each tail, and the most common of them, among Peak-Rank Variants, were the elemental type that wielded four attributes.
I pictured one — pitch-black body, six tails red as blood — and then called to Miho, who had apparently decided the tails were hers after all, given up fighting them, and started grooming.
"Miho, come here."
She dashed straight to me, tucked herself into my arms, and swished her tails. It was fascinating, the way all three moved separately, so I touched them — and they were no different from the original.
She whined and gummed the hand that was petting her tails, careful not to hurt me. I watched her do it, then asked.
"You. Anything change when the tails grew?"
"Eong?"
"Yeah. No way you'd know."
I stroked the head of the little thing tilting her face up at me, puzzled, and held out a finger.
"Here. Let's eat more TP."
"Kyong!"
She snapped onto the finger I offered and started suckling at once. And then... a Phase Stone formed at her heart. Filled to its limit, the stone turned to Phase Power, spread through her small body — and this time, her body itself began to grow.
"Kyung. Kyoooong, kyauuu."
She flinched around my finger, then tumbled out of my arms and rolled over and over in the grass as if her whole body itched. The sensation of explosive growth seemed to register as an itch.
When it was done, Miho had nearly doubled in size. To the eye she was a full-grown fox, and yet a youthful softness still lingered all over her.
She stretched all four legs out, yawned her cute muzzle wide in a catlike stretch, and shook herself briskly. In the meantime one more tail had been added. Four.
Now that she was a Mid-Rank Variant, her body was bigger, her tails had grown to four, and even her cry had changed.
"Kyaeng! Kyang! Kiiing!"
"Ah, the sound's ringing straight in my ears. Like the merfolk."
"I heard it too. Do you think she'll be able to speak, once she's Mid-High?"
"We'll know if we feed her. Miho. Eat a little more. Come here."
"Kyoong? Kyong."
It sounded like Really? I can eat this much?
"Yeah. Special gift. Today only."
"Kyaeng! Kyaong~!"
Thud.
She came bounding at me as if overjoyed and drove her head into my chest — and I coughed. That actually had some impact.
If an ordinary person took a hit like that, it felt like their ribcage would cave in.
Going to have to teach her some manners later.
She was in such a good mood her tails couldn't hold still for a second, swishing nonstop, and her forepaws kneaded my chest like a cat making biscuits.
...That's physically uncomfortable. Don't.
I offered my index finger again, and she latched on fast and went back to suckling.
Miho took in the TP flowing from my finger with single-minded focus, quickly stacked her Phase Power to the Mid Grade limit, and once more began forming a Phase Stone at her heart.
Not long after, that stone too filled to its limit.
With what I could have sworn was a sharp, glassy ching, the Phase Stone in her heart didn't just shatter — it turned to powder and spread through every part of her.
"Kraaaong. Kyauuung~!"
By the time she became a Mid-High Rank Variant she had grown even larger, about the size of a full-grown Siberian husky, and one more tail had brought her to five.
She still couldn't talk. Her abilities, though, had unmistakably strengthened. The way she moved looked to be on the level of that silver wolfman.
She was too big now to hold comfortably, and as I looked at her — "Kyaong, kyaong. Kyahihit!" — she took off, bounding in every direction at once.
Watching her grow this fast, I couldn't help a thread of worry. But Spatial Perception showed nothing wrong, and she was lively as anything, so she'd probably be fine.
She still wasn't showing any ferocity. Didn't seem likely she'd go berserk the way that wolfman had.
And so Miho kept absorbing the TP I fed her, until she became a High-Rank Variant at 25,000 Phase Power — and a clear change came over her appearance.
"Aung?"
A body of about ten. White hair falling in a glossy sheet to the small of her back.
Pale brows drew a soft, pleasing line, and the irises of those bright round eyes were a gentle color, like pearl.
A dainty nose, full red lips, plump cheeks — a little girl's face so cute that ten people out of ten would have turned to look.
If not, that is, for the white fox ears pricked up on her head, and the six tails sprouting from the base of her spine, just above her hips.
"..."
"..."
"..."
She'd turned into a person. Or transformed into one?
Franc and Hwayeon stared blankly at Miho, now a girl of about ten, and couldn't get a word out. In the meantime Miho looked down at her hands and her body, patted herself over as if asking is this my body?, saw the white hair spilling forward, and in the next instant grabbed a fistful and yanked downward with all her strength.
"Kyaa!"
Naturally the little head attached to that hair jerked down with a jolt, and a short scream burst from her full lips.
Startled by the perfectly predictable pain, Miho fumbled at her own head with two tiny hands. Her fingers found the fox ears growing there, and with confused eyes she came scurrying over to look up at me.
Her Phase Power sat at exactly 25,000. A High-Rank Variant, no more and no less.
"Miho."
"Kyong!"
"You can talk now, can't you? Yes. Try it."
"...Yes?"
"There you go. Good girl."
I petted her head like a reward for doing as she was told, and her hair wound around my fingers.
Soft as the finest silk thread. Nothing like human hair. The thought came, unbidden: yeah, not human.
As I stroked her, Miho broke into a fox's smile, ears flicking, savoring the touch. I watched her a moment, then spoke again.
"How'd you end up looking like that. Can you turn back into a fox?"
"Kyung... I think I can!"
At the question she sprang upright and flung both arms wide, and in my head the words of the child-protection statute flashed like a red warning light.
...She's an aberrant. Does she even fall under that law? Either way, I can't just leave her standing there naked.
I shrugged off the jacket I was wearing, draped it over her, and zipped it all the way up.
It fit me perfectly, but on a Miho who looked about ten it hung like a dress, covering her past the thighs. She must have liked my scent. Buried in my clothes, she giggled — hee hee hee.
"Do you know how much stronger you've gotten?"
"I'm weaker than Master!"
Well, obviously. If she were stronger than me, that would be a scam.
"Yeah. First let's see what you can do. What kind of abilities can you use?"
"I eat Phase Power! I can eat tons of it! Master's Phase Power tastes good!"
She beamed as if that were her specialty and threw her arms wide, leaping into my embrace. Franc and Hwayeon caught her by the scruff and hauled her right back out.
"Uuung?"
The moment Miho confirmed it was Franc and Hwayeon who had her, her fox ears and tails went limp, as if the strength had run out of them.
"Miho. In front of Seoha, you must always carry yourself properly."
"What's 'carry yourself'?"
"It means you can't just jump into Seoha's arms, or hug him, or hang off him whenever you feel like it!"
"Why not? I was doing it the whole time."
"Because you have a human body now."
"But I'm not a person?"
"You still look like one, don't you? Then you have to follow human rules!"
"What's rules?"
Dangling in midair with Hwayeon holding her by the scruff, Miho pelted them with one curious question after another, and Franc and Hwayeon answered every single one.
I watched the etiquette lesson that had sprung up out of nowhere in a bit of a daze, then scratched my head.
I wanted to test Miho's abilities, but Franc and Hwayeon looked so deadly serious I couldn't bring myself to cut in.
...I looked up. A red sunset was trying to settle over the sky.
At first I'd waited, figuring it'd be over quickly. Thirty minutes passed. An hour. And past three hours, the etiquette lesson showed no sign of ending.
I stopped the three of them — no. Two people and one animal.
"That's enough for now. We'll do the lessons back in reality. Checking Miho's abilities and getting home comes first."
"All right."
"Fine."
Something from those three hours of etiquette must have sunk in. Miho knelt neatly, both hands set on her knees, and looked up at me.
She was unbearably cute. Adorable, even. Those tiny fingers fidgeted on her knees, and I found myself wondering how a creature this precious was even allowed to exist.
I caught my hand before it could reach out on its own and started explaining, as far as I knew it, how ability users' powers worked — Phase Power, TP, Phase Stones — and the rough shape of the Phase World itself.
Miho listened hard, ears flicking the whole time, and nodded.
"Did you understand?"
"Mm-hm. So — I got faster. I got stronger. Umm... I can move fire, and wind, and water!"
She tipped her head this way and that, counting on her fingers, working hard to explain what she could do.
"Physical reinforcement and three elements. Did you gain an ability every time a tail grew?"
"That's right!"
Then she ought to have six. Why only four?
"What was the base one?"
"Eating Phase Power! I'm the best at eating! ...I am!"
The way she remembered, at the very end, to tack on a courteous little ending was ridiculously cute. Franc had told her she had to speak politely to me; Miho had asked what polite speech even was; they'd explained that she just had to add a polite word at the end of her sentences — and this was the result.
I laughed under my breath, petting her head, and thought it through. So: Phase Power absorption, physical reinforcement, fire, wind, and water. That still left one tail.
"Eating Phase Power, physical reinforcement, fire, wind, and water. That's five. What's the last one?"
"This!"
With a soft rush of air, Miho turned into a white fox — somewhere around ninety centimeters, still with a trace of youth about her.
"Ah. Transformation."
"Kiiing, kiiing!"
The fox-shaped Miho started rolling this way and that, her neck apparently caught in the Force Leather jacket. I grabbed the struggling girl and got the jacket off her. She shook herself out, then came into my arms and rubbed against me — and a creature standing over ninety centimeters plastering herself to me was a little much.
The fur, though, was incredibly soft. The finest pelt in the world wouldn't have come close.
Transformed, she looked up at Franc and Hwayeon as if asking is it all right now? The two of them sighed in resignation and nodded.
Reassured, she curled herself into a ball between my legs. I stroked her head and asked.
"Can you talk while you're a fox?"
"Kyung? Eooong, eong-oong!"
"So you can't. And would you look at that — the desert fox went and turned into an arctic fox."
I ran a hand through Miho's plush fur and she wriggled in delight, then toppled off my knee and flailed, limbs going everywhere.
She plainly couldn't manage the strength and size she'd just gained.
I had her turn back into a human, and to start by looking into the Phase Power absorption I held an ordinary Phase Stone up in front of her eyes.
"Why can't you eat this anymore?"
"That one's not for eating!"
"Not for eating? Before you met me, weren't you trying to eat things like this?"
"I was... but I don't anymore! ...I won't! It hurts if I eat it!"
"Then what about this?"
The moment I held up a Blue Stone — one of the ones I'd made on the way here — her hand shot out. At the same instant, Franc's and Hwayeon's punishment came down on her head, one after the other.
Smack. Crack!
"Agyak!!"
"We told you insolence isn't allowed. Until Seoha says you may eat, you may look, but you do not reach, and you do not put it in your mouth."
"Kiiing..."
Tears welled in those pearl-colored eyes as she rubbed the spot where Hwayeon had hit her. I spoke to her gently.
"I'm taking this one for an experiment, so I can't let you eat it. Anyway — this one, you can eat. Right?"
"I can eat it..."
"Can you feel the difference between a Blue Stone and a Phase Stone?"
"Blue Stones taste good! Phase Stones taste bad!"
...She was going to need a proper education. Should I look into a private tutor?
Come to think of it, I had no idea whether Choi Soohan was even getting taught properly.
"Hmm..."
I considered her mental age for a moment and decided that raising her any further would be dangerous.
This isn't handing a child a gun. It's handing her the button for a missile.
After that, I measured Miho's power.
In fox form, first of all, her speed jumped enormously, and from the tips of her tails she could freely fire elemental rounds — or lasers — of fire and wind.
She handled the elements remarkably well. So naturally, as if they were parts of her own body, that I couldn't help but be impressed.
A fox white as snow, riding the wind wherever she pleased and whirling something like an eerie blue foxfire — in an age before science had advanced, it was a sight people would have worshipped as a god.
The force of the elements was nothing to dismiss, either.
Fire reduced a tree dozens of meters tall to ash in a few seconds. Wind could shear through rock. Water, driven as pressure, produced an effect like a Wind Cutter, or launched a massive Water Ball that ground stone to powder.
Hwayeon watched, and delivered her verdict.
"She doesn't reach Superior-tier. But even among High-Rank, she's at the very top."
In human form she leaned toward strength rather than speed, but otherwise she was the same as when she was a fox. And her Phase Power, strangely, wasn't any specific type. Like mine, it simply filled her body.
"You can't hide the tail and the ears?"
"I can't!"
A racial trait, then... Well. She was cute, so maybe it didn't matter.
"Power check's done, so let's do one last lesson — the most important one — and head back. Miho. You know Hiarid, right? The one with wings."
"I know her!"
"She attacked a person, and she was scolded hard for it and put under restriction. If you attack people, or hurt them, without a special reason, I won't give you any more TP, and you'll be scolded just as hard as Hiarid was."
I'm a person too, so counting it as an attack on a person was fair.
"Kiiing..."
I said it to Miho as she knelt in front of me, solemn-faced, and she looked up thoroughly cowed.
"If it gets bad enough, I might have to kill you. But I don't want to. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
"I'm not supposed to attack people?"
"Right. If you haven't done anything wrong and someone's hurting you, bullying you, you run to me first. And you tell me. Then I'll punish every last one of them."
"Okay!"
"If you can't run — if it's bad enough that your life's in danger... then you can go wild. But the moment you're able to escape, you come straight to me. You can do that?"
"I can!"
She answered with full energy, as if she didn't think it was hard at all. I stroked her head and went on.
"The strength you have now is nothing like a few hours ago. If you act the way you used to, you could hurt people, so later you'll learn how to hold back from your older sisters. Until then, don't go charging at people."
"Yes!"
When I stood, my lovers came over — they'd been watching the important lesson. Miho went hopping through the moonlight, and I spoke as I watched her.
"We'll give her more social education, and wait until she's smarter, before we raise her to a Peak-Rank Variant."
"We should. If she hits Peak-Rank like this, she might not be able to control her own strength and just go around causing accidents."
With a mind as unripe as Miho's, Franc might well be right — she really might cause an accident. She wasn't weak even now, and the gap between High-Rank and Peak-Rank was wider than the one between Mid-High and High.
"That wrapped up earlier than I expected. Shall we head back?"
Preparations for the rainy season were done, the experiment of feeding TP to an aberrant was wrapped up, Miho had been grown, and the Blue Stones were secured. Time to go. A relief it hadn't run past three days. I was looking up at the round moon in the night sky when Franc put on a faintly disappointed face and shot Hwayeon a look, and Hwayeon, embarrassed, avoided her eyes.
She was probably sulking that I hadn't woken her, even while I'd gone at it until she was swollen and sore down there. When I promised I'd take her properly once we got back — good and thorough — her expression eased.
"Miho..."
That one, panting as she tore around in my black Force Leather jacket — would it be better to just have her live as a fox?
The moment her name was called she shot over to me, tails swishing. Did you call me? Seeing that, I decided it was better to let her go around however she liked.
"Which do you like better. Looking human, or looking like a fox."
"Both!"
"That so. Then whenever you're human, you wear clothes. Every time. If I catch you running around without them, you're in trouble."
"Yeah!"
She answered with full energy — and immediately had her cheeks pinched by Franc and Hwayeon.
"Didn't we tell you to speak politely?"
"First I've heard that foxes are stupid, but it looks like she's going to need a harsh education."
"Hugyaang?!"
...And just like that, the scolding started all over again.
Still, things were turning out better and better. Educate Miho properly and raise her to a Peak-Rank Variant, and on top of Hiarid I'd have Miho as well. Physical reinforcement and elemental shots — a capable asset, in more ways than one.
Grand Blue's strength was growing by the day. It put me in a good mood.
Better still was what the repeated experiments had proved: my TP evolved them regardless, ability user or aberrant alike.
Literally, an elixir of evolution!
...Of course, the better part of all aberrants turned their hostility straight on me. But there were ones that didn't, so good was good, wasn't it? And the thing waiting for me, when I came back to reality in that fine mood—
was a middle finger.
A big one.