Dark Matter Slime (1)

After class I spoke to Han Go-eun and her little crew, who were packing their schoolbags in a bright chatter, already giddy at the thought of playing at a ski resort over the weekend.

"I'll look up where we're going once I get home and leave a message in the group chat, so head back and get ready."

All I had to do was tell Suhan to book a decent resort and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a hotel.

"Okay! We'll be waiting!"

"Don't wait up. I might be a little late."

"Hehe."

Su Yu-ri stuck the tip of her tongue out and giggled, and when I absently ruffled her hair she squirmed in embarrassment and hid behind Han Go-eun.

We passed through the school gate together, and the kids—apparently set on packing for the trip at once, just as I'd told them—each grabbed a taxi and sped off home. Lydia, who had stayed with me until then to see them off, climbed into the car that had come for her and asked,

"You're not heading home? If you're going somewhere else, shall I give you a ride?"

"I'm fine."

"Ah, yes. Then I'll see you tomorrow!"

"Sure."

I sent Lydia off last. Something in her face looked faintly regretful. Then I powered on my Certifier and called Hiarid, who would be at the affiliated research lab of Uihan University.

"I've got something to take care of, so quit helping with the research for today and come to where the Dark Matter Slime is locked up. You know the place?"

She'd said she was picking up Korean little by little at the lab, yet she only spoke it when we were on a call. In any case, I summoned Hiarid against whatever might go wrong, then took Franc's hand.

"Let's go see the slime, then."

"Yes."

I meant to Space Leap with her hand in mine, but a stroll through the sky didn't sound half bad, so I raised a Wall of Space and leapt into the air. It drew the eyes of students on their way home. I'd grown used to being stared at. It didn't bother me.

In less time than it took to blink I was a hundred meters up, and the feeling struck me fresh. The first time around, I'd nearly died jumping from a cliff some seventy meters high into the dragon pool at its foot, then climbed that same cliff afterward with sweat pouring off me—and that felt like yesterday. A little strength, a push off my feet, and here I was at a hundred meters.

I was looking down at a city packed with matchbox buildings when Franc leaned her pretty face in close.

"What are you thinking?"

"The first time I fell off a cliff in the Phase World. That cliff was a little over seventy meters, and now I can clear it with a light jump. Got me feeling sentimental. Heh."

I preened, and Franc giggled, smiling beautifully.

I spun Mana Sieve into physical reinforcement, loaded both legs, and kicked hard off the Wall of Space. Wind like a typhoon shrieked past my ears. As I raced toward the place where the Dark Matter Slime was confined, Franc climbed onto my back and whispered at my ear.

"Seoha will only grow stronger from here. Isn't it a little early to grow sentimental?"

"You've got a point."

In another sense, she was right. Honestly, ever since the Wall of Space and Space Leaping had come to me, I'd been privately smug that I wouldn't lose to anyone—and that smugness had been smashed to pieces the moment I met the Dark Matter Slime. I'd thought the Wall of Space the ultimate ability, one that ignored every matchup in existence. That incident had taught me there was no such thing as a mad power that chewed through every affinity. Whatever I could see and copy, I would copy; I would forge stronger skills besides; and I would climb toward A-Class.

I reached the slime's prison with that resolve, and a scene I couldn't simply look past opened in front of me.

Above Iseongsan in Hanam, an opaque amber sphere three meters across hung in the empty air as if someone had nailed it to the sky. It was the Wall of Space imprisoning the Dark Matter Slime—the one and only Highest-Rank Variant to exist in reality, its presence now known across the entire world.

I'd figured people, other countries, wouldn't just sit and watch. I'd simply expected them to send Yeongeun something like a request for help with an investigation. I hadn't expected this.

Nine vision-analysis ability users—who, even at the most generous reading, looked like Southeast Asian mixed-blood—were staring holes through the Wall of Space that held the Dark Matter Slime, scattered all across Hanam. A villa rooftop. An empty apartment. A van parked at the roadside. A sedan. A parking lot in the industrial district. The outdoor terrace of a café. Quite literally everywhere, people disguised as ordinary citizens or tourists, carrying comms gear and busily passing something along.

The devices came in every shape: briefcase units, communicators masquerading as ordinary sunglasses, bone-conduction units implanted in the body, even ultra-thin pieces the color of skin. Some of the vision-analysis users weren't alone—teams of two or three paired with physical-reinforcement users. Some had civilian support. Some were a vision-analysis user by themselves. Whether a person alone still counted as a team, I wasn't sure.

Ability users, whether Yeongeun had sent them or they'd come out of Grand Blue, had drawn a tight cordon around Iseongsan. With the sphere floating that high, though, they weren't amounting to much of a blockade.

"Nine whole teams, eyes on fire, staring at the Wall of Space. Hard to tell if they're trying to analyze the Dark Matter Slime or my ability."

"......Nine teams?"

"Yeah. Maybe it's to sand down how out of place they look, but every one of them is either East Asian mixed-blood or East Asian. Spread all over Hanam."

Franc narrowed her eyes and began studying the city in earnest, as if trying to pick out the ones I'd named.

Now what. Who did I tell? Arresting and detaining foreign ability users was the Alliance's work, or the government's. Should I tell Yeongeun?

Hm. My sister had said they were treating the Dark Matter Slime as something like a strategic asset, so Yeongeun it was. I powered on the Certifier and called her. She might already know. I'd tell her anyway.

But could ordinary vision analysis—not the kind warped out of Spatial Perception, just the plain sort that could only grasp an object—pierce my Wall of Space and pull information on the Dark Matter Slime out of it?

The call connected, and a hologram window rose before my eyes.

She must have been in the middle of important business. In the hologram her hair was pinned up neatly, silver-rimmed glasses on her face, and behind her a wall bore a relief of twin phoenixes gleaming gold alongside the mugunghwa, the national flower. I smiled ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and waved, then turned the Certifier's display by hand to show her Iseongsan and Hanam.

"What do you see right now?"

"My eyes are also seeing nine East Asian mixed-blood vision-analysis users. What should we do? Want me to grab them?"

I'd spoken to her the way I spoke at home, without the formalities, and an uncomfortable cough drifted out of the hologram.

Whether it was the reactions around her or the vision-analysis users themselves, Yeongeun let out a small sigh, then quickly brightened into a smile and made the request. I told her I would, started to unfold a Space Leap, and stopped, caught on something I wanted to know.

"Hm. If a vision-analysis user looks at my Wall of Space and the Dark Matter Slime, is there actually anything they can learn? As I understand it, of the two kinds of detection, vision analysis is just a telescope, and aura sense is an X-ray."

So even if they examined it that way, there was no chance they'd learn something like the composition of the Wall of Space—something even I didn't know—and even if they did, I couldn't see it becoming a problem.

"Then why are they staring like that?"

So that was it. I was taking the Wall of Space down after today anyway. It hardly mattered.

"You're not handing them over to the ability users on Iseongsan?"

"Got it. Take care, then."

Whether my speaking to her so casually truly discomforted the room, little coughs—an ahem, a hack—kept filtering through for the whole of the call. And the reason things had come to this went back a month.

"Let's see. Shall we start with the closest?"

I couldn't let them watch me bring the Dark Matter Slime to heel with mental manipulation, so clearing them out came first. I Space Leaped to the bastards who had parked a specially modified van in the industrial lot and were studying the Wall of Space from inside it, then moved the van itself to the summit of Iseongsan—the place the Grand Turtle had crushed into a hill. After that I took the three in an empty apartment in Hanam, the ones on a building rooftop, the one on a café terrace, the van left at the roadside, the bitch dressed up as a tourist—every last one of them—and dumped them on the summit.

All twenty-four had clustered on one patch of the hill, murmuring, faces thick with bewilderment. I switched on Mana Vision, threaded Mana Voice through my throat, and looked at them.

No one said a word.

The spies—robbed even of the communicators now in my hand, proof they had been operating as ability users in a foreign country—looked at one another uneasily, glanced around, and, having apparently given up on running, let their shoulders slump and sighed. In the middle of that, Hiarid descended from the sky, beating four wings of pure white. Right on cue.

"Good. You're here. Take everything those people are carrying. Leave the clothes. And......"

The buzz-cut mountain of muscle had scraped the bone above his ear and set a bone-conduction unit into the cavity. That one, I'd simply have to erase.

"Hiarid, grab that buzz-cut. Hold him so tight he can't move."

"Hurgh?! What are you trying to—mmph!"

Hiarid went to the man I'd indicated, seized the crown of his head and his jaw, and lifted. His head locked into place just so. He let out a shrill scream, thrashed, then shouted in a panic.

"P-please! Please wait just a moment!"

Oh. He speaks Korean too?

"Wait or don't wait—thrash around and the Wall of Space might erase your brain, so how about you hold still?"

At that the buzz-cut's body went stiff as a board. The rest of them clamped their mouths shut as one and stared at me and the bald man with terror in their eyes. Under those stares I erased the unit seated in his skull with the Wall of Space, cleanly, and a thin spit of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠blood ran from his scalp.

"Ghk!"

I reached out, mended it with a simple Healing Touch, then drew Mana Vision up another notch and fixed the terror-stricken faces with a stare.

"You know what my ability is, don't you? Try any clever little trick and get caught, and your head comes off."

"Ah. We... know. Yes."

A brown-haired man who looked, at a glance, like mixed Western and Eastern blood answered in halting, clumsy Korean. I sent Yeongeun a text that I'd gathered all of them at the summit of Iseongsan. These people still seemed to see me as the God of Destruction, and they were terrified out of their minds. Fear like that made them easy to handle.

Hiarid flung the still-rigid buzz-cut aside and came over, so I told her to keep them from running until the government agents arrived, and if they showed any sign of fleeing or trying something, to leave them half-dead. Then I approached the Dark Matter Slime imprisoned in the Wall of Space.

As I drew near, the slime that had been sitting quietly began to surge and sway, and I felt it through Spatial Perception. I couldn't read anything like emotion in the movement. I dismissed the countless overlapping Walls of Space until only a single layer remained, studied what was left, and spoke.

"At least this isn't it welcoming me. That much is certain, right?"

Franc drew closer as well, watching with open curiosity.

"Yes. Ha Cheolsu's mental manipulation shouldn't have come undone yet. But...... do you think it will work? Overwriting the mental manipulation, I mean."

"Even if it doesn't, who cares. I'll plant obedience, write an obedience algorithm, and give it orders."

"Ah, an algo-rithem?"

"......Algorithm."

"Ah—algorithm. Yes, I know it."

Since when did she have a scientifically illiterate trait? Franc flushed under my steady look and scrambled to change the subject.

"Th-that aside, it's remarkable. An ordinary slime usually shows a digestive organ or a core, but this one seems made of nothing but liquid."

"A magical creature, maybe? It seems to carry the same annihilation attribute as my Wall of Space, and I can't make myself believe it's an aberrant that occurred by any normal means."

Franc's eyes went round at that.

"Was it unaffected by your Wall of Space because it has a similar ability?"

I'd shown my lovers the footage from when I dealt with Ha Cheolsu, and every one of them had been stunned to see the Wall of Space not work on it at all. I answered while I watched the slime slosh this way and that like slightly viscous water, twist up like a cruller, then flop and spread.

"If it isn't that, there's no explaining why the Wall of Space still doesn't affect it at all."

"Hmm......"

Franc swept her hair back a little, drew her brows in, and stared at the Dark Matter Slime as if to pierce it.

"Come to think of it, there's something strange."

"What?"

"The Grand Turtle made no attempt to protect Ha Cheolsu from the Wall of Space, nor from the missile blast, and yet it blocked the Mana Bullet—and only the Mana Bullet—with its own head. Ha Cheolsu, who would have given the order, was out of his mind. How did the Grand Turtle move to protect him?"

"Hmm."

"Because the Dark Matter Slime knew a Mana Bullet would hurt it? Or because it sensed the danger on instinct?"

Franc tilted her head, looking just as lost, and I frowned at the questions stacking up as I looked the sloshing slime over from top to bottom. Infer from the Grand Turtle's behavior, and it was safe to treat one thing as certain: the Dark Matter Slime took damage from Mana Bullets. The questions only multiplied.

I wanted to know how Ha ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Cheolsu had returned to reality with his mind already gone. I wanted to know how a Mana Bullet and the Wall of Space differed. I wanted to know whether mental manipulation could strip off Ha Cheolsu's yoke. And, just as Franc had seen, there was nothing inside that translucent liquid that could be called an organ—so I wanted to know what it even ate to live. The Mana Bullet was the same puzzle. I'd thought it the same ability as the Wall of Space, in that whatever it touched was erased as if taken apart. Maybe it was an entirely different ability......

Nothing but questions, piling up without end. My head had tangled itself into such a knot that thinking was becoming a chore, so I went down to look through the baggage I'd taken off the people who had come to spy, partly just to air it out.

Coming down onto the hill that had once been Iseongsan, I thought I caught a fishy reek of blood. An earth-attribute ability user had turned the ground over once and covered every stain the Grand Turtle had left, but the amount of blood that thing had dumped had to have been obscene. I crouched, poked through the spies' gear, and picked up a briefcase communicator to have a look. A comms unit this big—surely it had some other function?

Rrrrip! Skrrrt!

"Kyaaah!"

A woman's scream tore out with the sound of cloth ripping. I turned my head. In Hiarid's hands, the clothes of an exotic woman ability user from Southeast Asia were being shredded to pieces.