Mind, and Manipulation (3)
At the entrance to the research institute halfway up the mountain, two H ClassPhysical Reinforcement ability users sat on duty in the guard post, behind a desk fitted with security monitors.
The moment they saw Hwayeon and me approaching, their eyes went wide. They shot to their feet and came rushing out of the post.
"Welcome, Master!"
Wait. Were these our Grand Blue security people? The uniforms were nothing but ordinary black. Hwayeon addressed the guard who had bent at the waist.
"We came after receiving word from Miss Altina Meldios."
"Yes, sir, we got the call! Might I ask you to verify your identification?"
At Hwayeon's quiet words the two guards requested ID with careful courtesy. Hwayeon and I switched on our Certifiers, confirmed who we were, and passed through the automatic doors of ultra-hardened glass into the institute.
Wouldn't be a research institute if it weren't white from end to end. Orchids and flowering pots dressed the corners here and there, but they fell a little short of softening the chill of those flat white walls and the marble-tiled floor.
Altina Meldios's laboratory lay in the deepest reach of the institute attached to Uihan University.
We took the elevator down sixteen meters, and Franc, who had gone ahead, was waiting in front of it. She led us into a lab packed with equipment I couldn't begin to name.
Sixteen meters sounded deep, but it was only the fifth basement level. The institute was built like an inverted triangle, the floor shrinking the farther down you went, and on B5 only two research teams were at work: the Meldios team, whose purpose was aberrant biology, and the Edel team, whose purpose was phase physics.
We were bound for the Meldios lab.
The moment we stepped inside, Hiarid caught my eye, seated in a sleek silver chair. It must have been made for her alone — wings and all, and a frame larger than any human's — because she looked perfectly at ease in it.
Something like cords had been stuck to her body. Small seals sat at both temples and on her forehead, and lines ran from phase-myography sensors out to a large silver machine nearby that looked for all the world like a component stereo.
I'd wondered what a phase-myography sensor even was. It turned out to be an electromyography sensor — electrodes adhered to the skin to read the flow of current — repurposed to read Phase Power instead. On top of that, lines from some unidentified device behind the chair ran in through the front of her dress and clung to her heart, the lower curve of her chest, her side, her neck, and elsewhere.
On her head she wore an ornament like a circlet, fitted with two microphones. The mic-like arms extended to either side of her mouth and caught her voice as she spoke.
Several pieces of equipment were stacked around the chair, and every time Hiarid spoke, a wave of altered Phase Power — the same kind I'd felt from the appraisal device — pulsed outward from them at steady intervals. So all of that meant they'd decided the way she spoke was some kind of ability that used Phase Power? Whether in answer to those waves or not, the Phase Power inside her body kept rippling without rest.
=Sky Lord.=
The moment she saw me, Hiarid rose.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep!
"Ah! Miss Hiarid! You mustn't stand!"
A rattling clatter joined the equipment's shrill alarm, and Altina — thick black horn-rimmed glasses, halfway through giving the researchers some instruction — came scrambling over to sit her back down. A normal human was never going to manhandle a Peak-Rank aberrant.
Altina and three other women, ability users themselves, flustered around her and tried to press her into the chair. She didn't budge a hair. Watching that, I gave the order.
"Stay seated."
=Yes.=
The researchers sighed at the sight of her seated again, reconnected the electrodes and lines that had slipped askew, and Altina set to fiddling with the equipment, adjusting something.
For a while she clicked tiny switches and carefully turned a round silver panel this way and that, tuning what seemed to be a frequency. Then she drew out a handkerchief, wiped the sweat from her brow, and came toward me with both arms spread wide.
"Welcome, Chairman Jung!"
"Yeah. You said you'd found something out about how Hiarid communicates?"
"Of course! I would never dream of summoning the great Chairman over anything that wasn't at least that important. Come to my office first."
Whether what she'd found was truly so impressive, Altina went in with her shoulders squared in pride, humming to herself as she opened a door set into one wall. I followed, and my sister and my two lovers came after us.
The small room — Altina's private office, by the look of it, barely sixteen square meters — had one wall papered entirely with memos dashed off in handwriting no one could read. The opposite wall was given over to a whiteboard, and that too was crammed with what looked like formulas and the terms of some calculation. The script crawled like worms. I couldn't make out a thing. The floor was buried under every sort of miscellaneous junk imaginable.
There wasn't a clear place to set a foot, so I nudged the clutter aside with my toes — impossible to tell object from trash — as I went in. My sister and Hwayeon, coming in behind me, took one look at the sorry state of the place and let out small sighs.
Hwayeon stopped dead in the doorway, plainly with no intention of coming any farther. My sister, wearing a face that couldn't decide whether this was an office or a pigsty, frowned at the mess, thoroughly unimpressed.
I asked Franc in a low voice. She was studying the formulas on the whiteboard with a look of pure fascination.
"Franc. Do you actually understand those formulas, or are you just looking?"
"Pardon? No. I was only looking, because they seemed curious."
My sister, who had turned to Franc in surprise at the question, couldn't help a short laugh at the answer that followed.
Meanwhile Altina had rummaged through a desk so wrecked that "chaotic" was the only word that fit, and come up with a few sheets of paper.
"Please, look!"
She cleared her throat and held the sheets out with complete confidence, so I took them and looked.
"......"
I stared in silence at what was written there. My sister and Franc peered at the papers in my hands and let out small gasps of awe.
"This is really something."
"Yes... I have never seen anything like it..."
Is this writing, or a drawing?
My sister took the papers from my hands, drew her brows together as she flipped through them, sighed again, and called to Altina.
"Miss Altina?"
"Yes!"
"I can't tell whether this is writing or a picture."
"What?!"
Altina went blank, took the papers back, and stared down at them in dismay.
"I-Is my handwriting really that bad?"
"When you submit a report, write it out neatly in clear print. For now, just tell us the essential points."
They brushed past her question and changed the subject, and Altina, looking vaguely unsettled, flung the papers back over her shoulder— Wait. Was she allowed to just toss them like that? If they were worth showing me, didn't they have something important on them?
Anyway, Altina slipped between Franc and me and headed out of the office, talking as she went.
"To put it simply, Miss Hiarid's manner of speech has a great deal in common with a dolphin's."
I followed her out. Hiarid was repeating after the female researcher standing in front of her, and every time she opened her mouth, the frequency trace on the equipment beside her warped.
"Garlic."
=Garlic.=
"Apple."
=Apple.=
"A dolphin? The ones that talk in ultrasound?"
"Yes. Dolphins use ultrasound as a means of communication. They emit it through an oil sac in the front of the brain called the melon, then absorb the ultrasound reflected off objects through the lower jawbone and recognize it that way."
Once I was out of the private office, Hiarid turned her gaze on me and went on parroting whatever the researcher said.
"The weather is lovely today."
=The weather is lovely today.=
"When Miss Hiarid opens her mouth, that wave travels down from her head. Part of it stimulates the Phase Power inside her body, passes the vocal cords, and exits through the mouth. At that point the wave takes on Phase Power, spreads, and is transformed — and anyone who hears that wave comes to understand its meaning!"
"That's... different from telepathy, right?"
"If it were the same thing, I would have used telepathy as my example, wouldn't I?"
Listening to her, I focused Spatial Perception on Hiarid's head, neck, and chest. Sure enough, every time she opened her mouth a minute trace of Phase Power flowed out along her throat — so faint it was barely there. It was Phase Power so thin you wouldn't notice it unless you were watching with real care. What flowed out seeped into the heads of the people around her through their ears, and the moment the TP that had seeped in touched the brain, it vanished without a trace.
"Communicating by using Phase Power this way — if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I never would have believed it. At first I couldn't get a grip on the mechanism, but since Hiarid is an aberrant, I was certain it had to be an ability tied to Phase Power! So at the Grokis Institute we analyzed her voice with a topological plasma phase-deposition apparatus, and we learned that a phase wavelength spreads outward! So if you listen to Hiarid somewhere Phase Power cannot reach..."
She was talking without a pause. Leave her to it and she would never stop explaining how she had arrived at this result, so I cut in and got to the point.
"If you analyze that pattern, could you make it into a common technique the rest of us could use?"
At that she faltered and turned to look at me, scratching her head and mussing her blonde hair, her expression complicated. She was plainly trying to work out how to explain it.
"Roasted chestnuts in autumn."
=Roasted chestnuts in autumn.=
I concentrated Mana Sieve in my head and tried to block the TP radiating from Hiarid's mouth. It didn't take. TP that even Mana Sieve couldn't stop? Because it wasn't a skill, but TP itself? I drove Mana Sieve hard against my skin once more, and only then did I hear her actual voice.
"White wings."
سپين وزرونهسپين وزرونه
A peculiar voice, bright as someone tapping a xylophone. Was this Hiarid's real voice?
The fierce blue aura of Mana Sieve, devouring the daylight that poured from the ceiling of that pure-white lab, drew every eye in the room to me. Hiarid most of all stopped parroting the researcher entirely, unable to tear her gaze away.
I pressed Altina for an answer. She was staring at me with her mouth hanging open and a dazed look on her face.
"Y-Yes? Wh-What did you say?"
Where does she leave her head?
"I asked whether you could analyze the way Hiarid communicates, turn it into a technique, and put it to use."
"Ah. Based on what we've confirmed with the deposition equipment so far, I think the possibility is high."
Good. Learn that as a technique, and the language barrier would vanish entirely. But Altina opened her mouth with a slightly troubled look.
"Only, I expect it will be judged a fairly high-grade technique."
"What?"
"Common techniques have grades, and you know that learning a given technique requires a certain proficiency in a specific one, yes? When we studied Hiarid's phase wavelength and frequency rate, they took a considerably complex form. To imitate that, an A-rank Phase Power operation technique would be essential, I should think."
Because it tried to shape and move Phase Power in a complex form? Well. None of that concerned me.
"That's fine. For now, research it on the premise that we turn it into a technique."
"Understood. Th-Then, once this research is finished, you'll let me research that, won't you?"
Watching her rub her palms together and study my face with a giddy little grin, I felt a bit sorry for her. A young woman, wearing a face like that — like some kind of pervert.
I released the Mana Sieve I'd been holding and spoke to Altina, who was blinking rapidly.
"We'll see when the time comes. I'm not doing anything like an unlimited supply of egg cells, so you'd better prepare a proper research objective in advance and persuade me."
"Of course!"
I told the beaming Altina what I had confirmed with Spatial Perception.
"When Hiarid opens her mouth, a minute amount of TP flows out. Once it enters people's ears, they seem to understand what she's saying. Look into it from that angle."
"What?! How did you know that?!"
"Forget who I am? Anyway, I'd like to have an interpreting technique by the next time I see you."
"Mmm... I'll do my best."
"Hiarid. Come straight home when the work is done."
=Understood, Sky Lord.=
I left the lab behind Altina, muttering with a put-on gravity as if she'd taken some mental jolt, and Hiarid, still parroting the researcher's words like a parrot. My sister, who had been following, stopped and waved a hand.
"I've got something to say to Miss Altina, so go on ahead."
"Something to say?"
"Watching how she behaves, I can see a few things that need pointing out."
Every member of Altina's team had been handpicked by Aunt Hyeryeong and my sister, and under the influence of my Mana Vision there shouldn't have been any need to worry about security. Still, the way that office kept its materials probably did deserve a talking-to.
"All right."
I left Altina's aberrant-biology lab and was of a mind to head straight home — then turned my steps toward the phase-physics lab across the way. Since I was here, I might as well show my face.
The moment I opened the door, that sharp, nose-stinging smell peculiar to a chemistry lab hit me.
Dr. Dwight, who had been gently scraping a Blue Stone with something like a pick, looked up at the presence of me, Hwayeon, and Franc, and came over bright-faced. His three children, and Director Oh Soeun — a doctor in her own right now — bowed their heads to me with polite courtesy.
"Welcome, Chairman!"
Dwight pulled the magnifying loupe from his eye and greeted me in a voice that sounded deeply fulfilled. My sister had said he was extremely satisfied with how things stood, and it looked like the truth. At the Grokis Institute, she'd told me, he had only ever done research that would make money. Had he wanted to do research that actually felt like research?
I shook his hand with a smile, nodded to Dr. Oh Soeun and to Seria, Ethan, and Arol, and asked him.
"Is the research coming along?"
"We are proceeding steadily, step by step. Proper research, however, will only be possible once the institute is built and we have proper equipment and safety measures in place."
I listened, and looked around the lab.
Something shaped like a giant oxygen cylinder, webbed with countless pipes, was running with lights glowing on its panel, and a machine with cylinder-like pieces bolted on in a jumble along what looked like a round pipe was humming away. Beyond that, everything from a modest phase microscope to a computation server. In the room beside the lab, a single enormous machine occupied the space entire. The scientists Dwight had brought were setting the triple-charged Phase Stone I'd handed over as reference material into that huge machine of unknown purpose, photographing it with something like a folding camera, and talking among themselves in words I couldn't follow.
It was called a physics lab, but at a glance it had the feel of a somewhat complicated engineering-college laboratory. Equipping the place even to this extent had cost some twenty million dollars. Was research still impossible with equipment of that level?
Seeing my gaze sweep the room, Dr. Dwight gave a sheepish smile.
"A Blue Stone can at a glance be taken as interchangeable with a Phase Stone, but in reality it is entirely different. Establishing the foundational theory therefore requires analyzing the Blue Stone's constituent materials, and since the Director of Integrated Management asked us to be mindful of safety, caution has piled upon caution, and the work has gone slowly."
"Ah. If that's the issue, it can't be helped. Then... in a month, you've learned nothing at all?"
"Hm. I can say with certainty that if the Blue Stone becomes known, the value of existing Phase Stones will plummet."
At Dwight's confident claim, Hwayeon showed a spark of curiosity.
"You mean to say the Blue Stone possesses value of that order?"
"In theory, its phase-energy cohesion exceeds seven times that of a Phase Stone of the same grade. Personally, I expect it may be closer to ten, and in energy dynamics of this kind a tenfold difference surpasses a merely arithmetic tenfold."
At the word tenfold, Franc and Hwayeon marveled.
But here it was again, this talk of ten times. The efficiency and effect of techniques and abilities that used my Mana Sieve ran, almost across the board, to about ten times the existing standard. And now the Blue Stone's efficiency was ten times as well. Was I the only one needlessly unsettled by that figure?
......
I shook off the idle thought trying to take hold and pressed Dr. Dwight for a straight answer.
"So you're saying the Blue Stone has an effect similar to a Phase Stone?"
"Yes."
"You should have led with that."
I said it incredulously, and Dr. Dwight stared back at me just as incredulous.
"I had assumed the Chairman already knew... Was that not the case?"
Huh? Ah. He could think that. I gave an awkward smile, and Dr. Dwight laughed along, then held up the dish containing the Blue Stone for Hwayeon to see.
"If one can draw ten times the energy from the same quantity, it is only natural that the existing energy would be pushed aside. Incidentally, how did you come by this Blue Stone? Its structural makeup is similar to a Phase Stone's, and yet entirely different. One might almost call it a jewel."
"I got it in the Phase World."
I told him with a grin. He hadn't particularly wanted an answer, it seemed.
"Haha. Of course you did."
He laughed and let it pass.
When we came out of the phase-physics lab, Franc and Hwayeon began talking with deadly serious faces.
"If a Blue Stone bears ten times the efficiency of an ordinary Phase Stone, then there is no need to hunt aberrants merely to earn money, is there?"
"Indeed. The point being that up through High Grade, Blue Stones can be supplied with ease..."
Having answered, Hwayeon stared a hole through the back of my head and whispered to Franc.
"Seoha is nothing less than a Midas of the real world."
"Ah. He truly is King Midas."
"...I don't like King Midas, though."
I'd been listening when I tossed the remark out, and Franc turned with a puzzled look.
"Why ever not?"
"Because he's dull, and he's an idiot. Everything he touches turns to gold, and then he loses something precious through his own carelessness, whines about it, and goes back to being an ordinary man. It's an incredible ability, turning whatever his hands touch into gold — of course there's risk to match, isn't there? At the very least he could have gone around with his hands covered in gloves woven from gold thread, and taken them off when he actually needed to use it."
Franc went blank at that. Hwayeon wore an ambiguous expression, not particularly convinced.
"If everything he touched turned to gold, he could have handled his meals through maids and attendants. He was already a king, so he had more than enough power and force of arms, and on top of that an ability that produced the gold to supply his wealth. It was precisely the ability to raise his own country into the ranks of the strongest, and yet through careless handling he turned his own daughter to gold and did nothing but blubber. I can't see it as anything but stupid."
"Well..."
I pressed the thought a little further on Hwayeon, who was still unconvinced.
"I don't know whether only the primary thing his hand touched turned to gold, or whether everything connected to what he touched turned to gold as well. But I don't think it was the latter, at least."
If it had been the latter, the moment he touched any object, everything connected to it would have turned to gold. At the instant of that first touch, not only everything on the earth but the entire planet itself would have become gold, wouldn't it? But the legend says only what he held in his hand changed — which means only the primary object of contact turned to gold. So King Midas was a dunce without equal under heaven.
Franc, having heard me out, turned a thoroughly smitten look on me.
"You're right!"
Hwayeon shook her head all the same.
"Gold is a thing that follows if one works hard. To give up the happiness of being able to touch the person one loves, for the sake of mere gold — I... could never do such a thing."
"Th-That is true, now that I think of it. Even wearing gloves woven of gold thread, one still could not touch directly."
At Hwayeon's opinion, Franc's face said oh, now that I think of it, that's true. I agreed, of course. But still.
"What I was talking about was the reason I don't like King Midas, remember?"
"Ah, right. We were on that subject. For a moment I projected myself onto King Midas."
I understood. If I lost Franc, and Hwayeon, and Yeongeun that way, I'd be crushed, as if the sky itself had fallen. Even so, I thought the reason Hwayeon could say it so firmly was that she had been born with a golden spoon, and was comparatively free where money was concerned.
If it were someone living hand to mouth, earning a day to eat a day, and you offered them a gold-touch like that — would anyone actually refuse? I was willing to bet most people would give up something as minor as the sense of touch in their hands.