Trouble into Rage (1)
I Space Leaped twenty times, rested, then leaped twenty more, over and over—and in the pauses between, Miho worked water and wind to haul the Blade Flyer's carcass along. It let us cover a fair stretch of sea in half a day.
"Uegh. Uuugh. My chest is so tight, and I feel so sick..."
"I-I'm a little... urp."
By the time I'd leaped something like three hundred times, Franc and Miho gave out. They sagged, groaning that they couldn't take another one.
Darky squirmed out of my pants pocket, caught my shirttail, and climbed to my shoulder. He took in the two of them—faces gone a sick blue-green, swaying where they hovered—and asked as if the sight offended reason itself.
"Boss, how come grade-schooler Miho and Madam Franc are like that?"
"Space Leaping tugs at your guts a little. Chain them and it feels like you're about to throw up. Your stomach's turned inside out."
The idea of throwing up clearly didn't land. Of course it didn't. He doesn't have organs. It would have been stranger if he understood.
Hmm. Come to think of it, back when I was bound for Busan and practiced chaining leaps for the exercise, my stomach had churned just like Franc's. Now I was fine.
...Maybe because a Phase Stone formed around my heart. An aberrant that grows a Phase Stone gets far stronger than one that hasn't...
I reached up and pressed around my chest, but the ribs were in the way. No chance I'd feel it.
The Phase Stone that had formed inside me—18.54 million—was bigger than both fists together, and it sheathed my entire heart. A Phase Stone is a solid thing, something a hand can touch, and yet it wrapped my heart and I was perfectly fine. That was the strange part. Miho has one heart in her chest and another in her upper belly, with her Phase Stone formed between them. Hiarid's sits near her heart as well, but it doesn't enclose the heart the way mine does.
I shaped a chair out of a Wall of Space and rested until the two of them improved. The sky, which had been darkening by degrees, finally let fall the first drops.
"When I Space Leap, Franc, you and Miho just fly after me. You cover ground faster in the air than I do leaping, so that's the better way."
"Uuung... you could've said so a little sooner..."
"Uwaaaah."
I snorted at the pair of them, wobbling and groaning.
Rain spattering me, I seized the Blade Flyer's pectoral fin and started forward in leaps. Franc and Miho heaved deep sighs, faces like bile was climbing their throats, and flew after me.
Hmm. Leaping through the rain, I could feel the droplets overlapping the spot where I appeared break apart—no, vanish outright. Was that Space Leaping's original nature, or an effect of the Phase Stone around my heart?
Either way, when I leaped, I'd better land somewhere as empty as I could manage. If my luck ran bad, there was no telling what might happen.
"Master, you're fast!"
"Seo-haaa~!"
Huh?
At their voices calling from far off, I stopped and looked back. Franc and Miho were racing in at speed, kicking up a rough, towering wake behind them. A few seconds later they arrived in a gale and stared at me, startled.
"Huh? What?"
"Seoha, just now you Space Leaped so fast you left afterimages!"
"I think you did it twice in one second!"
Twice a second? I froze at Miho's words. Darky, clinging to my shoulder, flailed with no strength in him and worked his mouth.
"Uegh. Feels like my organic cohesion's comin' apart, sir... This what throwin' up feels like?"
Reeling, blissed-out and dizzy, he reached toward Miho as if begging to be held.
Wait. On the way down to Busan, even focusing as hard as I could, I was lucky to manage one leap a second. And just now I'd been spacing out and done two?
So I really had gotten stronger when the Phase Stone formed around my heart.
Miho reached out and gathered him into her arms. Darky clung to her neck and spoke with a shaken look.
"Even the first time I saw Boss, I figured you were strong. But right now, in a single moment, you got stronger again."
"Uuung. I can't really tell."
"Course a grade-schooler like Miho wouldn't know."
"Hmph!"
"Ain't teasin'. I've watched the sun rise and set two hundred thousand times. How many you seen?"
"Eek? Me... I think about two hundred."
Two hundred thousand. By simple reckoning, that put him past five hundred and forty-seven years old—and that startled me, too.
"Quit loafin' around playin' games and learn how to live. You're too damn ignorant."
"Nnngh."
At the lecture, Miho put on a slightly sulky face and swished her tails. Listening to the two of them, I shrugged.
"Miho's cute the way she is. She's got plenty of days ahead of her—she can learn slow and grow up fine. And Darky, you're mine now, so you don't have to worry about eating and fighting just to stay alive the way you did in the Phase World."
"Yeah!"
"Th-that's somethin' else... Boss is my ideal type, sir!"
Franc, who had been watching him from behind with a complicated expression, looked at me and burst out laughing.
"Truly. Seoha's popularity defies all imagination."
My slime's ideal type. Was I supposed to be happy about that, or sad?
This time I set my mind to it, and I could move at a terrifying clip—about three leaps a second. I'd figured my Phase Power would drain just as fast, but as Darky had said about me growing stronger in that brief span, the consumption seemed to have eased by a wide margin.
That let me keep leaping longer. The Blade Flyer's carcass, though, couldn't withstand the repeated shifts, and it started to fray from the outside in. My clothes went the same way, as if the weave of the cloth itself were coming unbound, wearing thin like something I'd had on for years. I pinched a sleeve and tugged lightly, and the cuff tore with a rip—no. It came apart in my hand.
Well, damn. I'd better move slower.
Shaaaaa...
The drizzle thickened into heavier drops. The wind, by contrast, died, and the swells settled. I dropped my gaze to the rain hammering the sea, then turned to look back at Franc and Miho.
They'd fallen so far behind they looked like dots, so I slowed to a leap every two or three seconds—slow enough, in the rain, that they could catch up.
THOOM.
I set the 110-meter Blade Flyer down on the empty flight deck, and the carrier rocked so hard side to side it seemed about to flip. I thought I heard screams from inside the hull. The embarked aircraft, at least, must have been lashed down properly—they didn't so much as budge through the heaving.
"Hoo. An hour to get there, ten minutes to catch it, and half a day to come back."
Blood seeped from the tattered carcass and turned the deck into a sea of red, but the pouring rain washed the gore away. Sweet... no. I dragged my attention off the fishy reek of blood and spoke to Franc.
"Franc, take Miho and get some clothes on her first. I'm going to see Hwayeon."
"Yes."
"Darky, come here."
I set him on my shoulder and Space Leaped to the command room where Hwayeon was. Everyone gathered there turned to me at once.
Meeting their eyes, even the stiff-necked brass—and Michael Granado himself—couldn't hold my gaze, and dropped their heads. I ignored the ones watching me with a touch of fear and went to Hwayeon. From behind, an old Korean general, a man named Kim Haehyeon, came up with a young officer.
"Remarkable. To think you would dispatch a Calamity-rank aberrant so easily... A sight in no way unworthy of your fame as the strongest man in the world."
"Thanks. The Blade Flyer got pretty badly wrecked. That won't be a problem, will it?"
"Of course not. You brought down a Calamity-rank aberrant. Who would complain that the carcass is damaged? Hahaha."
The voice was laughing. The face was still strung tight. People being this afraid of me felt a little strange.
Anyway. I looked at America's Vice Admiral Robert Phillips and Russia's Vice Admiral Boris Isaac, and spoke.
"We've got nothing left to do here, so we'll head back first. As for disposing of the aberrant carcass... who should I leave that to?"
Just then Vice Admiral Robert Phillips met my eyes, flinched, and startled far too hard—like a man who had done wrong and knew it was coming for him.
Something had occurred to me earlier, so I read him with the senses that had sharpened when I gained Spatial Perception and mental manipulation.
...Hm. From the moment he first met me, he'd been oddly on edge, watching which way I leaned? And right now this isn't peace of mind. It's relief. Relief? Relief from what?
I had a bad feeling. Worth a jab. He was that scared, that tense—catch him off guard and he'd show me something, whatever it was. If I was wrong, I'd apologize, and that would be the end of it.
Mana Vision
With it burning in my eyes, I threw the words at Vice Admiral Robert Phillips without warning.
"President Trumpet must hold quite a grudge against me. And yet he hasn't been petty enough to scheme behind my back."
"Th-there could hardly be such a thing."
The instant he heard me, he flinched, startled, and couldn't meet my eyes. His heartbeat, which had been quiet, began to quicken.
The classic look of a man telling a lie.
It was so absurd I decided to check the others. This time I looked at Vice Admiral Boris Isaac.
"Vice Admiral Boris Isaac. Are you hiding anything from me?"
"...? His Excellency President Sladmir Puchin directed that we spare no cooperation with the chairman of Grand Bleu. Beyond that, there was not a single word."
The moment he took the question, his heart jumped hard, then slowly settled. The reaction of a man with nothing to feel guilty for, misunderstanding or otherwise. This one wasn't hiding anything, and nothing was weighing on him.
Vice Admiral Robert Phillips's heart, watching me take them one by one, started hammering as if it might leap up his throat. Of the three who had come from the G.S. Raid Team, the two besides Michael began to beat a little faster as well.
So they had something on their consciences.
I looked at Michael Granado, standing somehow strengthless against one wall, and at the others—the aqua-haired woman, and the red-haired woman in a black suit—and asked.
"Then it seems Mr. Michael Granado has something to say to me."
"...I don't understand what you mean. I fear you may be jumping to conclusions."
Michael Granado's physical signs didn't change. The woman standing behind him, and the civilian man, started with hearts beating faster and faster.
"Haa..."
I was already in a foul mood over the proof that I wasn't human, and this spectacle dragged it down hard. I let out a heavy sigh, turned to Vice Admiral Robert Phillips, and spoke with the irritation plain on my face.
"Mr. Robert. Talk straight. What are you hiding from me? Are you cooking something up with that G.S. Raid Team over there?"
I glared at him, a growl in my throat, as cold sweat began to bead on his skin. Hwayeon caught on to something too. Her face hardened, and she tucked Chief of Naval Operations Kim Haehyeon and the operations officer behind her back.
Darky, realizing my mood was turning foul, shifted in a flash from my shoulder into the form of armor.
The air in the command room froze all at once. Michael Granado looked flustered—but not as much as Robert Phillips. Phillips was so tense he looked ready to bite his own tongue, and what came out stumbled.
"P-please, wait a moment. Wh-what are you saying..."
Mana Voice
It felt like they were trying to bury something, and the surge of disgust made me cut him off.
I threatened them with murder in my eyes, holding the fleet hostage, and their faces went pale at once.
I hadn't actually meant to smash anything. It was bluster, riding the nickname God of Destruction. But there really was something. And it was something bad for me.
I swallowed the killing intent that kept threatening to spill, and growled.
Vice Admiral Boris Isaac looked at Robert Phillips with an expression of sheer disbelief. While Hwayeon thought something over behind a cold, blank face, I opened my mouth again.
"...!"
"I really hate getting stabbed in the back. You'd better think hard about what I did to Japan when they stabbed me in the back, and then answer."
Robert Phillips opened his mouth to speak, saw the Wall of Space forming over my finger, and only gaped. Watching him work his mouth like a mute, my anger only grew.
He was still stalling, not a word of answer in him, and I felt my blood go cold. I was about to press him again when Michael Granado stepped in, blocking the admiral, and spoke with a flustered face.
"Please wait. There must be some misunderstanding. Calm down for a moment..."
"If we're hiding anything, it's only the order to figure you out down to the last detail—weaknesses and strengths, tastes and hobbies, the specifics of your abil—khk!!"
Mana Mode — Acceleration
I shot in like lightning, seized Michael Granado by the throat, and hauled him up. Closing that short distance in an instant kicked a gale through the narrow command room.
As the wind whipped my bangs, a premonition hit me. If I let this pass, a string of infuriating, irritating, troublesome things would unfold one after another. The first sure premonition I'd had in a very long time.
"K-kkh—ghk!"
"Michael!"
The moment Michael's throat was in my hand, the water-attribute woman behind him moved to use her ability. I Space Leaped behind that bitch, grabbed the back of her head, and slammed her face into the table.
KRAAANG!
"Aaaach!!"
Through the cracking panel and the aqua hair flying wild, I put strength into my hand and spoke.
The bitch with the back of her head in my grip, face planted in the panel, flailed both hands. Her forehead must have split. Blood began to pool, thick and wet.
The Russian operations officer dragging the completely frozen Vice Admiral Boris Isaac backward—stunned by how violent I'd turned—had good judgment. Hwayeon, too, sent our chief of staff and the operations officer to the rear, then started a call somewhere.
I ignored that and growled at Robert Phillips.
"...!"
As if he hadn't forgotten the warning from a moment ago, Robert Phillips couldn't get a word out. His trimmed beard trembled, and his mouth only gaped.
Mana Aura
Blue light poured from my whole body and began to dye the command room. I spread a Wall of Space, meaning to erase the island—the command-and-control room I was standing in included—and leave nothing but the people. On a carrier like this, if the island vanished, the ship itself stopped functioning.
That was when Robert Phillips shouted.
"I'll talk! I'll tell you everything, so wait!"
Face gone corpse-black, he hurried forward and pointed at Michael, whose throat I was choking and whose color was going blue, and at the bitch still scrabbling with her face planted in the table.
"I will tell you everything. So will you not release them?"
I hurled the two of them hard into the walls on either side. A crash burst out, the steel-plate inner walls caved in, and they dropped to the floor like crumpled paper.
Seeing Michael collapsed with nothing but groans, and the woman not so much as twitching—unconscious, maybe—Robert Phillips put on a grave face. Then, watching my expression grow colder by the moment, he went straight to the point.
"President Donald Trumpet gave the order to use the opening while you, Chairman, fought the Blade Flyer—to capture Boss Yoo Hwayeon there, and take her hostage."
"What? That son of a—!"
"Seoha?!"
"Seoha!"
Rage enough to drive me mad stripped my reason, and in the instant I moved to take a step, two familiar warmths caught me and held on. In that moment the reason that had nearly snapped held by a thread, and I barely, barely forced down the rage about to explode.
Even so, a maddening rage writhed in my chest, and I roared like I meant to kill.
My mana-laden voice tore through the command center and scattered in a chaos of echoes. Robert Phillips clapped his hands over his ears with a twisted face, groaned, then shouted in a spasm of terror.
"But I did not do it!! You may not believe me, but I tried to refuse the order!! Touch you, and America might be overturned right after Japan—how could I touch you?! Believe me!!"
I wanted to kill him for screaming it, and I was hauling in breath when he kept talking anyway, face gone blue-white, shaking all over.
"Ability users meant to seize your lover were supposed to board this ship, but I deliberately scattered them onto other vessels, and the only ones who know that now are Ariel Granado there beside you and the G.S. team's chief of strategy behind her! Your lover is a master of close combat who ranks at the very top even among B-Class! You know full well that a mere two B-Class personnel could never subdue her!! I did not want the lives of tens of thousands of our United States Navy sailors to vanish because I crossed you, and so I did not follow the order! Take that into account!"
Listening to him, I fought to master the boiling in my head, and thought.
So that was the premonition. If I let this pass, my family could be taken hostage.
Donald Trumpet, that... son of a bitch!