The Difference Between Danger and Threat (1)
From Sunday morning on, I shut myself in the office and started digging through terrain data from the Phase World.
It wasn't only Grand Blue's Phase Intelligence Strategy Team. Yeongeun, at my request, had also handed over a huge stack of material sorted by terrain type — and once I piled it all together, the volume...
"This one's similar, that one's similar. There's more overlap than I expected, and these..."
I sighed and tossed the crudely lumped monster dossier onto the desk.
People who couldn't read terrain from tens of kilometers overhead the way I could, and who couldn't pick features apart in fine detail with Spatial Perception, had simply judged by whatever their eyes showed them and filed it. Ambiguous, every which way. The textbook case was the Fire Rat and the Red Squirrel. Were these Low-Rank Variants merely wearing red fur, or red because they wielded fire? Who could tell. In my experience a red that deep meant a fire-attribute ability — and yet the files had them marked Attribute: Physical.
The terrain data went one worse. I could turn a world map inside out over a photograph of coastline and find no match anywhere. Another shot showed jungle so thick it had to be Southeast Asia or South America, but the possible range was so vast that searching was hopeless. And what was this glacier zone? Antarctica? The Arctic? Except the far distance in the photo was grassland, no matter how I looked at it. Some secret realm tied to ice? A demonic domain?
"Damn it."
I'd been a conceited idiot, thinking that if I just gathered enough terrain data I'd be able to tell where on Earth the photographs pointed. Good thing I hadn't told my lovers. I'd been set to declare, full of confidence, that I alone could find that blue demon. Fail at that, and where would it leave me? I'd kept the work hidden so I could swagger in with the results once the investigation was done. To think that decision would be what saved my face.
...Anyway, the simplest method was to enter the Phase World and survey the terrain from the sky myself. I couldn't leave my post, though. I had a feeling that mongrel bastard Ha Cheolsu was about to come bursting out of the Phase World any day now.
The day that hunch hit — that the son of a bitch would be out before long — I'd brought it up with Mom, Dad, and Noona. Something might happen; couldn't they go stay with Grandma in Inje, Gangwon Province? Noona's furious refusal had caught me completely off guard.
"...So if that bastard comes back, this place gets a lot more dangerous too. That's why I want all of you at Grandma's until this is settled."
I'd explained what had happened and laid out what I wanted, the whole family gathered. Noona's face crumpled, and she answered looking thoroughly displeased.
"Why? Dad has a post at Grand Blue. Mom has a post. So do I. If people like us walk out, do you think the work keeps running? Seoha, raid team master or not, you don't get to decide something like that on your own. And I'm the Director of Integrated Management. You really think Deputy Director Yoo Chae-rin can cover the hole I leave?"
"You can work from home. Whatever falls short, Aunt Hyeryeong and Hwayeon can help with—"
"You know the workload Aunt Hyeryeong is already carrying, and you're still saying that? Hwayeon's buried in ability-user oversight too. And more than anything — do you think I'm idle enough to vanish for months whenever I feel like it?"
"...I'm not telling you to stay there for the rest of your life. Just keep your head down until this is resolved. Even that won't do?"
Her edged tone sparked a little anger of my own, and I raised a brow. Noona made some complicated face again, mumbled, and looked away from my eyes.
Once, she would have come at me shrieking, all emotion. This felt strange. Strange — and my own mood turned muddled in turn. From one angle she looked angry. From another, it almost seemed as if she'd come to dislike me.
I was frowning through that tangle when Dad and Mom, quiet until then, took her side.
"To my mind, we're safer staying here."
"Mom thinks so too. Better to stay beside our boy than go far away, don't you think?"
I said nothing.
If it truly got dangerous, I could Space Leap and move at least my powerless parents somewhere safe. So it didn't really matter. In the end I dropped the demand, and we closed on a promise: if things looked dangerous, they would follow my orders without a word of argument.
Even so, Noona's reaction nagged at me. Ever since she'd learned I wasn't her biological little brother but her cousin, she'd kept acting in ways that didn't feel like her. It wasn't that she seemed to have come to hate me. But being genuinely prickly with me, the way she'd just been — that was a first. Usually her lectures sat on a foundation of affection, and all I ever thought was, Ah, here she goes again. Just now, though... ugh.
Well, even Noona couldn't be in a good mood 365 days a year. And lately she'd been throwing herself into company work she wasn't used to. The stress had to be piling up. She wasn't like that these days, but back when she was in middle school, her period turned the house into thin ice. One small mistake and she'd grab hold of me for a lecture bordering on torture and grind me down without mercy. Compared to then, now was practically heaven. Better to pretend I hadn't noticed. She'd come back to herself soon enough.
Come to think of it, women seemed to swing hard every time that once-a-month spell came over them. On the days Yeongeun and Hwayeon had their periods, they walked around giving off an air a little sharper than usual — pinching me with a pouty sort of affection one moment, then beaming and clinging all over me the next. The mood swings were extreme.
Anyway, evacuating the family had failed. I needed another plan.
Should I ask the Branch Chief for information on Mental Manipulation users?
"Has Headquarters' Precognition Department said anything about Ha Cheolsu?"
"They're working to uncover his movements, but from what I hear there's nothing to show for it. Even precognition can't cross the wall between dimensions, I suppose."
"Is that so..."
My hunch didn't agree. What was the difference between precognition and my feeling?
"Anyway, it's already been over three months with Ha Cheolsu still not out. Don't we need some kind of countermeasure? Blind faith in my Space Wall is going to be a problem."
"Hmm... It's true. The later Ha Cheolsu emerges from the Phase World, the more sharply the danger index climbs."
"Right? So please tell me what you have on the Mental Manipulation ability. When he comes out, I'll deal with him."
When I finally produced the reason I'd come, the Branch Chief narrowed his eyes at me, then turned his head.
"Hmm... All right. I'll contact Headquarters and request the related materials be released. Go back and wait. I'll pass them along when the reply comes."
"I'd appreciate it."
A day later, a short document arrived on my Certifier. The sender was the Branch Chief.
Secret? So there was a confidential messaging function too. I sent back a thanks and opened the file at once, drinking in what it held. The document laid out, clean and orderly, the traits of Mental Manipulation users, the differences by rank, resistance to the ability, and its limits. One entry caught my eye.
▸ Mental Manipulation, contrary to the name of the ability, is the power to freely manipulate the emotions of a living target. This is precisely why Mental Manipulation cannot help but be the most terrifying ability among all those presently held by ability users.
▸ There will be those who say it ought to be called Emotion Manipulation, not Mental Manipulation.
▸ Emotion is the foundation of thought in every living being. Founded upon the five desires and the seven passions — upon joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure — it may be regarded as the very existence of the creature itself. The Phase Society therefore states, in this place, that it assigned the name Mental Manipulation to signify the domination of the mind through the manipulation of a target's emotions.
(Omitted.)
▸ One reason a Mental Manipulation user's ability is so fearsome is that they can steer a target's actions in whatever manner they desire while leaving the target's reason intact. What is more, a person under Mental Manipulation shows no sign of it in ordinary circumstances, and that too plays its part.
▸ The applications of Mental Manipulation are beyond counting. One may cause love to sprout between enemy and enemy. One may plant hatred between parent and child. One may force one-sided fondness and affection upon a desired partner. And into one whom one wishes dead, one may inject deep, dark misfortune, despair, dread, terror, and the like — killing the mind with suffocating negative emotion, or driving the victim to suicide.
▸ Mental Manipulation demands formidable mental power, a high level of skill in the operation of Phase Power, and the consumption of a great quantity of TP. Thus Mental Manipulation users spend the greater part of each day in training — expanding their mental world and governing the imagery within — striving to strengthen and extend their mental power.
▸ Mental Manipulation is one of the few abilities that clearly reveals the mental limits of the ability user themselves. A Mental Manipulation user possessed of tenacious mental power and outstanding endurance would be able to manipulate, and maintain, the emotions of multiple beings.
▸ According to ████, who gave much advice and assistance in the writing of this paper, the mightier an ability user's mind and the higher their class, the more powerful the Aberrants whose emotions they can induce and bind as loyal retainers, and this number is proportional to the ability user's mental power. (For reference, ████, a B-Class ability user, held as many as three Peak-Rank Variants under his dominion, and that number increased exponentially as one descended through High Grade, upper-middle, and mid-tier.)
▸ When I asked what would happen if one manipulated emotions beyond the limit of one's mental power, ████ closed his mouth, saying that no one had ever attempted it and thus it could not be known. His expression, however, suggested that he knew the truth.
▸ To use Mental Manipulation, it is presupposed that the target recognizes the ability user, and that the ability user recognizes the target. That is, there is no restriction of distance, and the range is limited to the field of view.
▸ Resisting Mental Manipulation requires mental power stronger than the ability user's, or a high-level general technique: T Resist. Owing to the characteristic that an ability user's mental power strengthens at the moment of awakening, the probability that an ordinary person can block Mental Manipulation converges without limit upon 0%.
▸ By the nature of the ability, an ability user who awakens Mental Manipulation comes to possess mental power vastly superior to that of other ability users. For that reason, even should one hold T Resist at a high degree of proficiency — T Resist being an active skill — an unforeseen ambush will end in one being dominated with pathetic ease.
▸ It goes without saying that beings without emotion cannot be subjected to Mental Manipulation. The undead, for example, or inorganic artificial life-forms.
▸ No method exists to treat one whose emotions have been overturned after receiving Mental Manipulation once — unless the Mental Manipulation user who cast it restores those emotions to their original state, or another ability user sets them right.
I'd been trying to build a Phase World map from the materials the Phase Intelligence Strategy Team had submitted, grown sick of it, set the papers down, and opened again the file the Branch Chief had sent — the one setting out the traits of Mental Manipulation. After reading that PDF through to the end, I was, honestly, a little relieved. The condition for using it had been this: it presupposed that the target recognized the ability user, and the ability user recognized the target.
In other words, they had to be in each other's line of sight, facing one another, before it could be used. My Spatial Perception detected every presence within range regardless of obstacles. And that range was a full 6.75 kilometers in radius. Hide well enough, pulverize nothing but his skull with the Space Wall, and the game was over. Still, the fact that Mental Manipulation couldn't be cured once you'd taken it sat in one corner of my mind as a quiet unease.
Right after summer break ended, I'd filled the entire room Ha Cheolsu had used to enter the Phase World with a Space Wall. The moment he popped out, he'd be disintegrated and gone, and the Space Wall would pass that sensation on to me. But there was always the what-if. A disaster that arrives when you aren't ready is frightening. A disaster that arrives after you've prepared for everything is less so.
That bastard Ha Cheolsu didn't seem like the type to have anything to do with mental training, or with cultivating mind and body. They said awakening as an ability user strengthened one's mental power, but I was curious how strong a man who'd looked like a simple hedonist could have become. A bottom-feeding trash thug, grinding his teeth and biding his time for revenge — I couldn't picture that story at all. So the odds that he'd come out into reality dominating some absurd number of Aberrants, or dominating a powerful one...
Wait.
What if he took a colossal Aberrant as a subordinate and burst into reality together with it? What if he escaped the Phase World alongside a bulk that vastly outsized the Space Wall I'd set?
I needed to go and make the Space Wall bigger. No — should I just erase the officetel itself? A building like that? Toss them a single High Grade Phase Stone and it'd be settled. I'd already emptied the officetel against an accident, so demolishing it on the spot wouldn't cause any trouble.
...Right. That's what I'd do.
Before heading out I wondered whether to take Franc, and swept the house with Spatial Perception. In the living room, Yeongeun, Franc, and Miho sat before a low floor table, busily talking, listening, and writing. Miho kept stealing glances at the little-friend Porongi disc case in Franc's left hand while hanging on every word Franc said. Right — you needed bait on the shelf before the customers walked in and spent their money... wait, that wasn't it.
Anyway, they were studying hard. No need to interrupt. I'd get some distance, lay down a bigger Space Wall, and come back. I sent the Branch Chief a text explaining the situation and rose from the office desk. If I moved out to the farthest point Franc could stray from the Soul Stone, the Ability User Association officetel would only just fall inside my Spatial Perception range...
In that instant, something came through — the feeling of something savagely worrying at the Space Wall. Not a light tap, tap. A thick, clinging stir from the inside. And with it, the instinctive certainty that something had just gone wrong.
Kuuuuuuuu—!!!
A monster's roar I'd never heard before pierced the soundproof windows and reached me, thin and far. I spun toward the Ability User Association Building. Beside the colossal tower, more than a hundred stories tall, a turtle every bit as high as the building itself was howling.
"What the hell is that."
Far off, half-veiled by smog, the Association Building showed faintly — and I could see it bending as a land turtle the size of the tower shoved into it.
KWA-BOOM. Kugugugung. Dududududu...
Windows that looked like reinforced glass blew out of the exterior, and a cloud of dust burst from the building like an exhaled breath. The moment I clenched my fist at a sight so far beyond common sense it was almost absurd, I also caught dozens of Aberrants, seven or eight meters long, wheeling around the building. Those were nothing next to the turtle. The land-turtle Aberrant was the problem.
Kuwooo—! Kwaaaaaak...!!
The Aberrants' roars came without a pause — screams of agony, by the sound of them, as their bodies were swept into the Space Wall I'd laid and ground apart. And yet. No matter how I looked at it, that turtle Aberrant was a Highest-Rank Variant, wasn't it? The flying Aberrants, faint in the distance, were all High Grade or Superior, every last one.
A swarm of Aberrants, sudden, in the middle of the city. Their position: right beside the Ability User Association. No question — things Ha Cheolsu had brought out with him. How had that rock-headed idiot scraped together a force like that...
Waaaaaeeeeeeng...
A siren that seemed to tear at the ears spread across Seoul, and in the same moment Hwayeon burst into the office, her face gone terribly hard.
"Seoha!"
Without a word I caught her around the waist and Space Leaped into Aunt Hyeryeong's office on the thirty-seventh floor.
"Director Lee Hyeryeong."
She'd been pressed to the window, staring blankly at the giant turtle. At my call she jumped and turned.
"Issue an evacuation order for the entire Grand Blue Building. Immediately. Not a single exception."
"Pardon? Yes!"
I Space Leaped to the floor directly below and found Noona plastered to the glass, face struck with horror, watching the Ability User Association building slowly topple.
THOOM...! Kugung...! Kudududu...!
The 132-story Ability User Association Building broke into three and fell, and even into an office with perfect soundproofing, three successive waves of terrible roar and vibration crashed in together. Watching a column of dust like a volcanic eruption, I lost the words for it — and so did Noona and Hwayeon.
The building had come down across residential blocks. Tens of thousands dead, at minimum. I didn't know whether Ha Cheolsu had caught on the Space Wall and died on his way out, or lived. If he'd lived...
"Noona."
"...Seoha?"
"Take Mom and Dad and evacuate. Right now. If those are Aberrants Ha Cheolsu brought out, they'll come straight for this place."
"Th-then those Aberrants—?!"
I nodded at Noona, who asked it aghast, and spoke to Hwayeon again.
"Hwayeon, you get people out too."
"You think those things will come this way?"
"Ha Cheolsu knows where the Grand Blue Building is. He dragged out Aberrants of that size. If he wasn't ground to death in my Space Wall, he'll come here. No question."
Seeing how calm I was, perhaps, Noona steadied herself, then asked with a hard face.
"Seoha. What are you going to do?"
"Isn't it obvious? I'm going to kill Ha Cheolsu and those Aberrants."
"...You don't need help?"
Ah. There she was. The Noona I knew.
"I don't. You saw the Ability User Association Headquarters paper on Mental Manipulation too, didn't you? I'll hide in the gaps between buildings with Space Leaping, move that way, and aim only for Ha Cheolsu's head."
Kugung... KWA-BOOM...
Kuuuuu... Kuuoooo...!
As the distant booms and Aberrant roars drew nearer, Noona's face stayed a little tight, but her eyes shone as if she trusted me.
"Seoha. You'll be careful, won't you?"
"Don't worry about me. You look after yourself."
I left Hwayeon and Noona behind, unfolded Space Leaping, and moved home. The moment I landed in the living room, sirens, a monster's roar, and the sounds of things bursting and exploding came through unfiltered. Franc and Miho, who'd been watching the Ability User Association Building from the terrace, turned at the same time and ran to me.
"Master! A turtle! A crazy huge turtle!"
"Seoha! A monster turtle—!"
Yeongeun, who'd been at Hiarid's side, hadn't even noticed I'd arrived. I wondered what she was doing — she was on a call through her Certifier, and her expression was grave. Franc gently tugged at my clothes as I looked elsewhere, and asked.
"Seoha. Are you going to go hunt that turtle?"
"Yeah. It's an Aberrant Ha Cheolsu brought back from the Phase World, obviously. This isn't somebody else's mess, so I've got to take it down. So you and Yeongeun evacuate too."
I said it while stroking the head of Miho, who was clinging to me — and the protest exploded at once.
"I don't want to! I can help you too, Seoha!"
"If all we were doing was taking down that giant turtle, you'd be more than enough. Overflowing, even. But that's not what this is."
"Ah..."
Disappointment spread across Franc's face as she grasped, a beat late, what the real problem was.
"If you follow me and get caught in Ha Cheolsu's Mental Manipulation, there's no coming back from that. You know how I feel, don't you?"
Whether because the situation was growing urgent, Yeongeun ordered the government's ability users to stand by and ran for the dressing room to get ready to head in. Watching that, I stroked the head of Franc, who had gone tearful, and soothed her.
"Franc, help Yeongeun."
"Nn... Seohaa..."
"Be good for me, all right? I'll hunt with Spatial Perception, so it won't be dangerous."
"Yes..."
I was glad she didn't throw a fit about coming along. In all honesty, I didn't want Franc to see what I looked like when I killed Ha Cheolsu. I took off the Soul Stone necklace, settled it around her neck, and spoke to Miho and Hiarid.
"You two stay with Franc and follow her orders. Even if Aberrants come this way, you do not step in. Not under any circumstances."
=Understood, Heavenly One.=
"But I wanna help Master too..."
Miho didn't want to let go of me, but when Hiarid and Franc forcibly peeled her off, she puffed her plump cheeks full. Just then Yeongeun, changed into a suit, came out and asked with a face hard with anger.
"Seoha. They're saying it's taking time to evacuate the residents in the affected area."
"They want me to buy time for the evacuation, don't they?"
I asked it while taking the Heavenly Cloud Sword from its stand. She shook her head, expression rigid.
"No. The people's lives matter, but from the nation's standpoint — and from a human one — you, Seoha..."
"...I know what you mean. You don't need to say any more."
When was that, again? Yeongeun had said that if one looked at nothing but gross national product, my value equaled sixty percent of the whole. From where she stood, me running toward a place that held a presumed Highest Tier Aberrant must have felt like watching a husband dive in after a drowning child.
I let the excitement boiling up drain out, gripped the hilt, and called to the family watching me.
"I'll be back!"
"Be careful!"
"Please be careful!!"