Mind, and Manipulation (7)
"Hmm. When the day comes that I reveal what my TP can actually do, I ought to take every support-staff ability user in Grand Blue who's slammed into the ceiling of their talent and push them all the way to C-Class."
I muttered it while looking at Choi Soohan, limp and unconscious, and Hwayeon came up beside me and nodded.
"Siha and I already talked that over once. Right now Grand Blue has about four hundred support-staff ability users at H Class or below, all told. If every one of them became C-Class, we could finally raid the Peak-Rank Variants we can barely lay a hand on, and the work split between combat and daily support would be divided evenly. The outposts would stabilize far more visibly than they do now."
So they'd already discussed it. Yeongeun, though, made no effort to hide her grimace at Hwayeon's words. She stretched out on the sofa and spoke.
"Wouldn't the ability users we already have push back? They'd feel the relative deprivation, and more than that—there aren't many people kind enough to smile while watching someone else get ahead. All the more so if those people used to be weaker than them."
"That would only be natural. Which is why I thought we might charge a reasonable fee, and only of those who sign a lifetime contract when they join Grand Blue. What do you think, Madam?"
Lifetime hires, was it. Yeongeun looked at Hwayeon with a pleased, proud expression, then smiled and answered.
"Oh my, you've already thought it through? Since time immemorial, any gap between expectation and reality can be closed by wedging a little question of cash into the middle of it. Works every time~."
"Are you a worshipper of gold too, Yeongeun?"
Franc wrinkled her brow a little, as if she couldn't approve of the notion that material things might stand in for everything. Yeongeun smiled wryly, then pulled Franc into a sudden embrace and rubbed her cheek furiously against Franc's, pale and soft as a fresh rice cake. Chin propped on the shoulder of a Franc whose brows were knitting in distaste, she said:
"Materialism, the worship of money—they're venerable schools of thought that have written history alongside humanity ever since the concept of private property was born, you know? Until I met Seoha, I thought there was nothing gold couldn't do."
She grinned at me as she said it, then went on.
"Anyway, as we said last time, we just take a set fee per TP. For Grand Blue's people, about ten times the posted rate on the World Phase Stone Exchange ought to be fair, don't you think? Anyone who finds it too expensive won't take it, and the ones who'll pay even so will throw themselves into raid-team work."
"And we'd charge those who aren't Grand Blue personnel a little more."
"Obviously~. What sense would it make if there were no merit to belonging to Grand Blue? Just set it at a hundred times."
A hundred times.... Yesterday's closing posted rate was 875 dollars per TP, wasn't it? At a hundred times, that's over a hundred million won per TP in our currency. Ten times the posted figure, then—going from H Class to C-Class takes 29,900 Phase Power, which comes to 299 billion won.
Franc squirmed free of Yeongeun's arms and asked with a small sigh.
"Isn't that far too expensive? Price it that way and an H Class ability user would need close to three hundred billion won just to become C-Class. That isn't a sum any individual could raise."
"Oh my, Seoha can raise the Phase Power of people who've already hit the limit of their talent, can't he? When you consider that effect, ten times and a hundred times are actually on the cheap side."
She pressed thumb and forefinger together into a circle and went on.
"And Seoha was thinking of making them C-Class in a single jump, but in practice, even just reaching F-Class lets you join a wide number of subjugations. If you're with Grand Blue, H Class to F-Class is 4.5 billion won. Grind yourself to the bone for two or three years and you can scrape that together easily enough. Keep working steadily after that and the income stays as pure gain, so their quality of life only gets better."
"You're right, Madam. In a subjugation, people whose teamwork fits matter more than one powerful ability user. Even at F-Class, once they've had the proper training and keep taking part, the money will come together quickly. And if it truly won't, there's always the weapon of installments—or a loan."
Whoa. Binding them with money, is she. Hwayeon, you realize Yeongeun is standing behind you right now with a look that says, 'You've grown up so well, my daughter'?
Yeongeun, smiling slyly at Hwayeon, rubbed her palms together and said:
"Rich children from abroad will come flocking in droves. Two hundred years of wealth piled up by ability-user society isn't something to scoff at. So we accept payment only in our own currency, or in kind. How's that?"
"...Impressive."
She hadn't thought that far. Hwayeon stared at Yeongeun's triumphant face, half admiration and half exhaustion.
Done that way, it would suit Yeongeun perfectly. Enormous sums of foreign currency, precious metals, and the like would pour into the country. The state could probably squeeze a few other gains out of it as well, but I don't really follow it that far.
Franc made no effort to hide her worried expression as she looked at Yeongeun.
"If we do that, won't other countries start scheming? Even thinking about it simply, it's the power to mass-produce high-class ability users. They'll feel threatened, and I don't think they'll sit still..."
"Oh~ Is our Franc finally opening her eyes to politics between nations? You're right. They won't reach out with a fair hand, the way our Franc would. They'll reach with desire, slick and clinging."
With that she drained in one swallow the orange juice Choi Soohan had brought earlier, now gone lukewarm, and spoke.
"An ability like Seoha's, and they'll run their mouths—for the salvation of all humanity~ this and that, sacrifice~ this and that, and therefore that ability requires strict control! They'll set the press to work and whip the mood in their favor. But listen. Who is our Seoha? He's the Seoha who brings down even a Calamity, a Highest-Rank Variant, all by himself, you know?"
"That's right. And the defensive security system for Father and Mother is complete as well. If we simply watch ourselves, nothing will arise that can threaten Seoha."
Even so, Franc still couldn't seem to relax. Yeongeun's eyes flashed, and she shot in like lightning and snatched Franc up.
"Kyaa?!"
"Ohoho. Does Franc not trust us? The worry simply will not leave your face~."
"Hieeek! I-I'll trust you. I'll trust you, so stop iiit."
If Yeongeun, the woman they called the Steel Witch of Korea, and Hwayeon, who had inherited her gift, were willing to say that much, then the countermeasures were surely already in place.
"Anyway, I have no intention of revealing my Mana Sieve yet, so let's fold this talk away and take it out again next time."
"Yes. When we do, it would be good to call Siha and think it through together."
I was watching Yeongeun grope Franc like some sly, lecherous old man while Franc desperately fended off those hands, when Choi Soohan's body began its final change.
Keep pouring in TP and the body eventually stops absorbing Phase Power and begins to stabilize. That stabilization is the last stage. This was the third time I'd seen the phenomenon, and a body that had drawn Phase Power to its limit did seem to suck that internal Phase Power back in, rewriting its tissues into something fit for the next class. The problem was what happened if you failed to keep injecting TP at intervals, once the Phase Power stored in the body was entirely spent. Put simply, they'd die. An ability user who burned through their internal Phase Power too hard and triggered Ether Shock turned to dust if no follow-up was taken.
Once stabilization ended she would come to on her own, so leaving her like this ought to be fine. Which meant...
I turned my gaze to the four dogs and cats sprawled out, brain-dead.
Healing Wave had worked even on people whose minds were flickering after an energy drain inside the Soul Reaper's coffin, but it could not treat a brain-dead state collapsed by mental manipulation. Earlier, when Sophia had looked to be in poor shape, I'd fired Healing Wave at stage five. The blue radiance that spread then had wrapped the animals, and there had been no reaction at all.
I ended the lives of the four brain-dead dogs and cats without pain, then laid them gently to rest on the hill behind the Grand Blue Building. Erasing them with a Space Wall would have been simpler. But after experimenting on living creatures as I pleased, killing them because they'd gone brain-dead, and then burying them in the earth like this—was I a hypocritical, contemptible man?
Franc, having barely torn free of Yeongeun's clutches to follow me, offered only a small silent bow, her face full of pity. Miho clung to my back and tilted her head, as if she couldn't understand the act of putting corpses in the ground.
Choi Soohan came to after four hours, the same as Yeongeun had.
Naturally, the moment she woke, she wore a look of breathless rapture at breasts that had grown yet again. Then she saw the sweat and the slick of arousal she'd spilled in such quantity, flushed the color of a plum, hurriedly cleaned up the mess, and bolted for the bathroom.
Hwayeon and Yeongeun admired Choi Soohan's enlarged breasts, then started murmuring to each other.
"Would our breasts not grow larger still, if we too became A-Class?"
"Mmm. Looking at Soohan, or at Siha, doesn't it seem so?"
"If I could become an E cup like Franc... that would be welcome. Seoha does seem to favor large breasts, after all."
"Isn't it less that Seoha likes large breasts, and more that he likes Franc's because the proportion and the shape are perfect?"
"...There is sense in that."
Beside them, Miho, who had been staring straight at their breasts, looked at Yeongeun and asked.
- If I evolve, do my breasts get big like Hiarid's?
At Miho's words, Yeongeun looked at Hiarid's breasts... and shook her head.
"Miho, dear. Those aren't breasts. You have to call them lumps of flesh. Say it with me. 'Filthy huge, cumbersome lumps of flesh.'"
- Filthy huge, cumbersome lumps of flesh?
=.....=
At guileless Miho's remark, Hiarid's expression turned a little hurt.
For size, Franc was about an E cup and Hwayeon and Yeongeun about a D, but Hiarid, measured by size alone, went past an L cup. Honestly, at that size an ordinary person would have trouble simply getting through the day. But Hiarid wasn't merely tall. Her overall proportions were 1.3 times larger than a human's.
"Think about it, will you? If lumps of flesh that size—'filthy huge and cumbersome'—were stuck on our little Miho's tiny body, do you think you could even move?"
- Uuung... No way!
"Right? So what did I say you call breasts like that?"
- Filthy huge, cumbersome lumps of flesh!
Miho, stuffed with Yeongeun's bizarre knowledge, drove the words like a knife into Hiarid's breasts with a sunny face. A prank so steeped in malice was something even Hiarid could not let pass, and she appealed in a small voice.
= Th-they are not cumbersome. =
"Goodness. These lumps of flesh, bigger than my own head, and you're saying they aren't cumbersome?"
Yeongeun, standing before Hiarid, wedged her head between the two astonishing breasts. Yeongeun's head was small, granted, but the breasts were large. Far too large.
...Then again, Yeongeun really must have been a perverted old man in a past life. Just look at her—face shoved between breasts the size of prize watermelons, kneading away while she went uhehe.
Well, by raw size they were watermelons, but relative to Hiarid's proportions they were about a human D cup. Reckon it that way and Yeongeun herself became a filthy huge, cumbersome lump of flesh, and Franc's breasts were larger still than those filthy huge, cumbersome lumps.
...Say that aloud and I'd be sleeping alone tonight. Mouth shut.
I glanced at Yeongeun tormenting Hiarid, then made a final sorting of the mental manipulation that handled the seven emotional lines.
Those were roughly the categories of emotion worth using.
Even a single emotion already had high utility, against people and against aberrants alike. Mixing two or three emotional colors did add further effects, but most of them were much the same. Obedience, I'd found entirely by accident. Lay two or more emotions mixed together on the dogs and cats, and you got no feedback at all. And it was hard to say that mixing many emotions produced a good effect. What mattered was matching the concentration, and injecting whatever emotion was needed in the moment.
Then Choi Soohan came out, washed clean and changed into her butler's uniform.
On her, I meant to test the emotional lines of love, joy, and desire at a ratio of two to seven to one. Against the dogs and puppies it had shown an effect similar to loyalty, but I needed to know exactly. I injected into Choi Soohan an emotional line of white verging on deep green, and both her eyes flooded green before returning to normal. In that instant she flinched, drew her back straight, and began to look at me with a gaze that was upright and gentle.
As expected, TP was consumed at exactly one-tenth of Choi Soohan's current Phase Power. And whether it was the difference of class, the fatigue seemed to stack a little higher than it had with Sophia. The pressure felt about 1.4 times stronger than when I'd laid it on a C-Class.
If I could dominate about fifty ability users at Sophia's level, then at Choi Soohan's level it would be around fifteen...
A B-Class ability user, by grade alone, sat at the same tier as a Highest-Rank Variant, didn't she? Did the burden grow heavier when the target of mental manipulation was an aberrant? If I laid it on the Dark Matter Slime, would I take a mental load of this degree? Or was I left with this much room because my own ability was superior?
The pressure didn't particularly affect my capacity to think, but the mere fact of feeling it was a little unpleasant.
Mmm. At this rate I'd have to test it on an aberrant as well... I glanced at Hiarid for a moment, then looked back at Choi Soohan and asked.
"How do you feel?"
"This feeling... It is the wish to offer Master my body and my mind, and to devote myself with all sincerity."
"Devotion, perhaps?"
When Franc murmured that upon hearing Choi Soohan, Yeongeun answered, eyes bright with curiosity.
"If we go by the dictionary, devotion would be the word."
"Mmm... Loyalty is nice, but devotion is nice too."
"You like devotion?"
"It's a word that sets the heart pounding, isn't it. Serving one's lord with loyalty and devotion..."
"Aha. Franc used to be a knight."
While Franc and Yeongeun talked, Choi Soohan steadied her surging heart and spoke with a composed air—and yet with a face that yearned for it.
"Would you not try on me what you tested on Sophia? I believe it is also important to confirm whether granting emotion in the same ratio produces the same effect upon a different subject."
"Hm? Ah, well. But I don't think the burden on the mind would be the same, between having the same emotion injected in succession and receiving a different one."
"It is all right. If I can be of help to Master, then even should my mind collapse, I can accept it with a glad heart."
...Hearing those words from Choi Soohan, so full of sincerity, the thought rose up fresh that mental manipulation was a truly dangerous ability. I must never use it on my lovers. Not as a joke, and not by mistake.
For now I reached out, caught her cheek, met her eyes, and released the devotion. Her eyes flooded black once and returned to normal. She closed them, drew a deep breath, and still looked at me with that upright, gentle gaze.
Startled, I asked.
"What. The devotion didn't come off?"
The TP had been consumed normally, though.
"No. I came to understand the mindset I ought to hold, and I only carved it into my heart so that I would not forget."
"Hmm."
"My, my."
Even Yeongeun and Franc marveled at that devout figure, like a believer standing in the very presence of her god.
"I have examined the state of my body, and there is nothing amiss. So please test the mental manipulation upon me once more."
"What? What test?"
"Would you not try on me the emotion you injected into Sophia?"
Damn... Seeing her like that—call it a sense of alarm—doubt began to stir only now, and I hesitated. At that, Choi Soohan started pressing me as if begging, and Yeongeun and Franc offered the view that since the person herself wanted it so badly, wouldn't it be better to just let her have it.
I kept my face set and hesitated, but she kept urging me, so I thought, whatever, and injected about 10 TP of obedience into her. Her irises took on a gray close to white, then returned to normal.
See it as often as I might, I couldn't get used to it. The longer I looked, the whole of the iris flooded over with a single color.
The gaze of Choi Soohan, now injected with obedience, shifted from that earlier upright and gentle bearing into something restless, unable to keep still.
"I-I see. It seems Sophia truly wished to follow Master's commands exactly as they were given."
"So it is obedience."
Yeongeun nodded along to Choi Soohan's impression. Position being what it was, she seemed to know her dictionary definitions well. Hwayeon gave a small nod as well.
"Then the first is obedience, and the second is devotion. Considering the two concepts, they are similar, but from the standpoint of one who must give commands, devotion seems the better."
"Because devotion is of a piece with voluntary obedience."
"What? No! You mustn't think of devotion that way!"
Franc heard Yeongeun, put on a look as if she'd just snapped awake, then scolded her with an angry face. What meaning was devotion supposed to carry, again?
"Huh? It's right enough on its own terms! The dictionary meaning of devotion is also offering up body and mind and doing all that is in your power!"
"Then that would mean parents who are devoted to their children are obeying those children! You've been thinking of devotion that way, Yeongeun?"
Huh? Ah, so that's how it comes out. Hearing Franc, I couldn't agree with treating devotion as a form of obedience either.
"Eeeing?"
"The Yeongeun who devotes herself to Seoha has a voluntary obedience too? Is that it? Is that what it is?"
"Mmmph!"
Pinned by Franc's point, Yeongeun seemed to have nothing left to say. She made a sheepish little face and apologized to Franc, admitting she'd thought wrong.
I watched the lovers' little scene, then took Choi Soohan's cheek again and released the obedience. She swallowed a small breath, closed her eyes, and opened them.
"Your head doesn't hurt, or anything like that?"
"It does not. I am perfectly fine."
"Good. That helped. You can go and rest now, if you like."
"Yes."
I said it while lifting a hand to stroke her ebony hair once. Choi Soohan, her face faintly flushed, bowed to me with crisp, exact movements, inclined her head to the lovers as well, and returned to her room.
Then only one thing remained.
"Hiarid, come here."
= Yes, Master. =
"Oh? You're going to experiment on Hiarid too?"
Yeongeun, having barely won Franc's forgiveness, looked back and forth between Hiarid and me while still holding Franc in her arms.
"Yeah. I need to check the burden I take when I mentally manipulate an aberrant."
I had to be careful, if I didn't want to end up the way Ha Cheolsu had.
Trying mental manipulation on Soohan, a B-Class ability user, the burden had been weaker than I'd expected, and that puzzled me. Which meant the burden of laying it on an aberrant would be different from that of an ability user.
Confirm only this, and tomorrow I would be able to take the Dark Matter Slime into my hands.