Day Unknown, Phase World (3)
"Franc. Let me make this perfectly clear. You can't go throwing lightning around whenever you please."
At my words, her face asked why. There was a stubborn will in that look — the sense that if an Aberrant appeared and so much as threatened me, she would roast it with lightning on the spot.
"Do you have any idea how much of the Phase Stone's energy you burned through in less than a minute just now? Care to guess?"
She mulled over the problem I'd set her, sneaking glances at me, and her expression made it plain she hadn't the faintest idea.
"Honestly, the only point of comparison I have for Phase Power consumption is myself, so I can't give you an exact figure."
My grave face made Franc tense right along with me.
"Let's say the Phase Power I had when I first awakened was 100. Over the past few days, mine has climbed to 475."
Franc sat formally in midair, listening to every word with perfect gravity.
Sitting properly in midair... I wanted to laugh, but a serious mood had settled, so I held it in.
"The Long-snouted Lean Wolf carried 22 Phase Power in its body. The large field mouse female had 19, the male 17. I wish I could have checked the Rogue Imugi and the Supergiant Turtle too, but they were too far away for me to read their Phase Power."
Whatever had startled her this time, Franc's eyes went wide again.
"And the amount of Phase Power you consumed just now, generating electricity for about thirty seconds..."
Franc swallowed, hard.
"...was 38,755."
Franc's mouth fell open. She shot upright and began stamping her feet, her whole face crying what do I do, what do I do. Fair enough. It was more than eighty times my own Phase Power, and set against the male field mouse, over two thousand times as much.
"Of course, compared with the Phase Power stored in the Soul Stone, that consumption is nothing more than a spoonful scooped from an enormous bathtub. But we don't know how to replenish what's been spent. And it isn't as if the cost will always stay this low."
Franc nodded, her face crumpling. She looked as if she had never dreamed she could burn through that much Phase Power in barely a minute. Her lips pushed out, just barely visible, and beneath brows drawn up in distress she blamed herself for wasting so much on something useless. And yet, when she stole a glance at me, it felt as though her worry for me outweighed any worry for herself...
"The Phase Power inside the Soul Stone isn't leaking anymore, but seeing as that amount is the time you can keep existing, I don't think you should use it carelessly. If we're not careful, it could run dry before we make it back to reality. What do you think, Franc?"
At my question she thought for a moment, then made a subtle expression I couldn't read, and nodded. With a wary surely not turning over in my chest, I pressed her for a promise.
"I'll say this in advance. Even if I end up fighting an Aberrant, you are absolutely not to start blasting lightning."
She flinched, her face asking how did you know? Then, without making the promise, she turned her gaze aside and began to pretend she was busy with something else.
"Haa... I'm not saying you must never use it. I'll do everything I can to find a way to replenish Phase Power, so just hold off until then."
She smiled, bright and sweet. The smile said she agreed. Her eyes said that the moment I was in danger, she would loose it anyway.
"..."
I kept staring into her eyes with a dissatisfied look, and she, perhaps realizing I had seen through her, slowly avoided my gaze.
Nothing I can do, is there...
No matter how many times I emphasized it, no matter how firmly I wrung from her a promise never to use it, if she changed her mind and tried to call down lightning, I had no means of stopping her. Of course, if I begged hard enough, she would probably go along with what I wanted...
Hmm. Her will came down to this: if I was in danger, she would use her ability. Rather than forcing this and that on her, it would be better if I simply grew more careful myself, and gave her the sense that she didn't need to use her power at all. And while I was at it, find a way to replenish the Soul Stone's Phase Power.
"Sigh, all right. But I can control Phase Power now, so my physical abilities have improved, and I've got Analysis besides. I don't think something on the level of a Lowest-Rank Variant is even my enemy anymore. So please — really, truly — don't use lightning unless I'm genuinely in danger. And even if you do, don't overcharge it. Only charge it to about the level you did earlier. You can promise me that much, can't you?"
I persuaded her along the lines that I needed combat experience too, and this time I smiled brightly with an expression that said if she only agreed on the surface, there was no telling what I might do. Perhaps she felt the threat in my face. Franc nodded vigorously, as if to say she understood.
Whew. It was good that Franc worried about me, but I wished she would understand that I was worrying about her, too.
I had originally meant to rest in a nearby tree around eight, but one incident after another had piled up, and I passed the spot without stopping. In that state, noon came and went.
More than half my Phase Power remained, and my body wasn't in bad shape, but still — better to rest when the chance was there. Fortunately, a tree nearby had grown large enough for that. I tucked the log — heavy now, having drunk its fill of water — under my arm and perched on a branch at a comfortable height.
"Ughhh~, two days of swimming and I feel limp as waterlogged cotton."
I had kept myself from bloating, so my condition hadn't changed all that much, but fat had burned at a ferocious rate and my body-fat percentage had plummeted. It was practically nothing left but bone and muscle fiber. My weight had dropped again, down to forty-five kilograms — truly nothing but bone on my arms and legs. At this rate, wouldn't I be too light to put any real force behind a fight?
Franc was looking at those arms and legs with a worried expression. Was this gaunt appearance of mine the reason she had been ready to spray lightning at any Aberrant...?
Still studying my limbs, she flew down gracefully and settled beside me. The sight was so beautiful it felt like a tonic for the eyes.
Franc really is my happiness supplement.
Feeling the warm sunlight pour down, I kept bringing moisture leaves to my mouth, raised my body heat with Phase Power, and set about drying my clothes. Nothing was chasing me now, so I would rest like this until evening and practice spreading Phase Power evenly through my whole body. I wanted to distribute it perfectly through my brain as soon as possible and make Search complete. A pushy little hunch had gone off as well, telling me to finish the ability quickly.
I had wolfed down forty palm-sized moisture leaves and even torn off about half a mouthful of my belt and eaten it, and I still felt hungry. For a moment the horned puppy came to mind — the one that had gorged itself to a disgusting fullness until its belly was taut.
"..."
Awkward at the thought, I tried to rationalize that the horned puppy had surely been in the same situation as me, and called to Franc.
"Franc."
She turned at the sound of my voice, and I went on.
"I'm going to practice Phase Power control now. I'll do it alongside sensing the surroundings with Search, keep at it until evening, rest a little, and then start swimming at night. I wanted you to know."
Franc nodded, wearing a look of proud approval.
...Somehow a desire began to creep up in me — to pin her beneath me and carve into her body the fact that I was a man, so she could never make a face like that again. Franc, laid under me, eyes faintly brimming, whispering, "I shall believe in you alone, and follow only you."
Ahem!
Ah, anyway. I was settling into position to begin control practice when Franc waved both hands wildly in front of me, as if telling me to wait.
"What is it?"
She set one hand above her brow and mimed looking around, then pointed a finger at her large breasts, eyes sparkling with a slightly excited light.
...She probably wasn't asking me to look at her chest. Was she saying she would keep watch, so I should focus on practice?
"You'll take the watch?"
Franc nodded, bright-faced. I was glad for the thought, but it wouldn't do. She had no way to wake me.
"Suppose an Aberrant shows up, or some giant animal. How are you going to tell me?"
Still, if I refused her outright and coldly, she looked ready to tear up, so maybe I ought to ease into it. Franc studied my expression for a moment, then brought the index fingers of both hands lightly together. She meant she would use electricity, it seemed.
"No! We agreed you wouldn't use it!"
At that she puffed out her cheeks and pinched index finger to thumb. Was she trying to say the consumption would be tiny?
"Even if the consumption is small, use it once and it becomes twice, then three times, and it stacks and stacks until your Phase Power shrinks!"
She scrunched her face a little at my words — an expression that conceded the point without being convinced. I spoke gently, as if to soothe her.
"I understand how you feel, Franc. Keeping watch from above, you could gain a field of view that far outstrips my Search range, and if nothing went wrong you wouldn't even spend Phase Power. So you're thinking it would be efficient, aren't you?"
She nodded with a brightened expression, confirming the guess.
"Even so, no. Until we find a way to replenish Phase Power, anything that consumes it is forbidden."
When her suggestion wasn't accepted, disappointment returned to her face. She thought for a moment — and then, suddenly, a faint and wicked little smile spread across her features, and she began pressing her body against mine!
I couldn't feel the texture, but she tucked my left arm between those large, soft-looking breasts and nuzzled against me, and somehow it felt as if her chest were actually touching my arm.
Ah — come to think of it, on the fifth day I had felt the sensation of breasts across my whole body, from giant Franc's corpse...
Embarrassed, somehow ashamed, I fidgeted and tried to ease a little distance between us, only for Franc to push her face suddenly close and put on a pleading expression.
Th-this attack is way too strong.
Flustered on the inside, I was telling myself no, absolutely not — and then, the moment those moist eyes of hers filled my entire vision...
I lost to her.
Forehead to forehead with Franc, I began analyzing her electricity consumption in detail. Thirty minutes later, I understood. The more electricity she generated, and the longer she kept generating it, the more her Phase Power consumption climbed — exponentially.
"You understand? Never generate electricity for longer than one second, and don't generate it at full power."
Franc planted kiss after kiss on my cheek, then nodded, eyes sparkling bright. Watching her drift lightly around me with a wide smile, I hoped my request had gotten through, if only a little.
...Somehow I could see in her an absolute refusal to compromise where my safety was concerned. I had sensed that tendency ever since the great wave came roaring over the land while we stood atop the cliff, but now it didn't even compare to then. It felt as if she paid no mind to her own safety at all, and looked only at me.
When I kept watching her with a worried expression, she seemed to notice, belatedly. She smiled gently, moved behind me, embraced me, and rested her chin on my shoulder. Then she kissed my cheek, lightly.
Should I take this as her asking me not to worry so much, and to trust her? There was no sensation, but it was an act that warmed the heart.
"Then I'm counting on you."
Franc nodded as if to say leave it to me, and rose into the sky.
The curves of her body seen from below, and the cleft of that parted valley, always set my heart pounding. I wanted to gaze endlessly at the valley between those legs, but I mustered my patience, closed my eyes, and began running Search limited to my own body.
I think the neurons in the brain are like a miniature of the universe. In a broad sense — their form, and the reason they exist.
Dad was an ordinary doctor. But he had swept up a Mom fifteen years his junior, and with her help, after tremendous effort, he expanded the hospital again and again until he had built a small general hospital whose technical skill was fairly well known in the city. That Dad filled the house with countless academic papers and medical texts, and on the hospital's days off, whenever he wasn't on a date with Mom, he practically never let a book leave his hands.
Influenced by a father like that, I read a great many books at a young age and set foot on the path of eighth-grade syndrome — but that's another matter, so I'll set it aside.
When I was little, it fascinated me to see Dad reading those incredibly thick, heavy books, so I would pull this and that from the pile beside him. One of them had been a medical text on the brain. Naturally I couldn't understand the squiggly writing, so I flipped through looking only at the illustrations, and what caught my eye was a single photograph of a nerve cell. Curious, I asked Dad what the picture was, and he told me it was a nerve cell made from skin cells.
Perhaps pleased that I had shown an interest in medicine that day, Dad told me all sorts of things. I forgot everything else, but there was one line I still remembered.
Emotion begins in the heart, but reason begins in the brain.
Why had that come back to me while I was controlling Phase Power and examining my brain with Clairvoyance and Analysis? Did Search operate not in the realm of feeling, but in the realm of reason?
When I used Detection, the cerebellum seemed to judge movement, and when I used Analysis and Clairvoyance, the cerebrum seemed to activate. Of those, when something like an image rose in my mind, the right hemisphere seemed to light up, and when I sorted information through Analysis and Clairvoyance, the left. I wasn't certain. I had actually thought the cerebrum handled all of Search, so I was quite surprised to find that the most important part — Detection — seemed to be processed in the cerebellum. Managing that much information in something not even half the size of my fist... I couldn't think anything but that it was incredible.
Hmmm... Phase Power that passed through my body and wandered as it pleased, once it rose to my head, never touched the brain itself and only traveled along the folds and crevices. Why was that? All I was doing was straining at control so Phase Power could circulate through every corner and wrinkle of the brain, and yet the ability was being reinforced and filled in. What was the reason for that, too? I found myself newly curious about the correlation between my ability and my brain.
For a while I examined my brain and spread Phase Power evenly, and when I opened my eyes, dusk had already settled around me.
Huh... It had only felt like two or three hours, and already six had passed? Startled, I pinched my cheek. Me — who couldn't sit at a desk for thirty minutes when it came to studying — had been absorbed in a single task for six whole hours.
I closed my eyes and opened them again, checking how far the ability's detection range had expanded.
Hm? Come on, it had only grown by three meters. Only three meters? Had that first expansion of thirty meters been a fluke? At this rate, unifying the range of Detection was going to take quite a while.
I looked around for Franc and found her watching the surroundings from the exact same spot as before I had started practice. With the day grown dark, I couldn't see the valley between her thighs very well. A shame. Ahem.
"Franc~!"
I raised my voice to call her, and hearing me, she descended quickly. And then a view unfolded before my eyes that washed the regret I had just felt clean away.
The lower she came from the sky, the more clearly the tightly shut folds between her thighs and the ridge of her pubic bone filled both my eyes, and those large, pretty, moon-round breasts, with the dainty little nipples tipping them, stood out so sharp it almost hurt to look.
I stared at her naked body with my wits gone, then belatedly came to my senses and blinked. When I lifted my gaze, Franc wore an awkward smile, her face troubled. At that sight, my own face burned as if it were on fire.
Franc's face was faintly luminous too. She seemed flushed — probably because I had been staring a hole through her body.
Ah... C-come to think of it, until now I had only stolen glances in secret. Looking this openly... this was the first time.
Unable to meet her eyes, I turned my gaze this way and that and opened my mouth.
"Uh... uhh. Mm. Practicing made the detection range grow a little more. I... I got the feeling that once I can sense the same range with my eyes open as I can with them closed, my ability might evolve to the next stage, somehow... So I think I'll need to practice control diligently whenever I have the time from now on."
Erk, why is my voice shaking like this.
Even though, had I been a woman, this would have been a situation to get considerably angry about, Franc rejoiced as if it were her own affair at the news that I had found a clue to my ability's evolution. Watching her smile brightly, as if what had just happened had never happened at all, my chest grew warm — no, hot.
Once again I lost my wits staring at her smiling face, and Franc, with a slightly shy gesture, smiled and lightly covered her nipples with her index fingers. For a moment I thought my nose was about to bleed —
Huk! It actually is!!
I hastily wiped the nosebleed with my sleeve and circulated Phase Power to the bleeding spot inside my nose, raising my natural healing and staunching the flow. Glancing at Franc as I did, she seemed flustered by the sudden nosebleed, but joy lingered in her eyes.
It wasn't that she was some pervert who enjoyed baring her naked body. Rather, the fact that I liked the body of her spirit enough to bleed from the nose at the sight of it seemed to have made her happy. I fanned my face with my palm, covered my mouth with my sleeve, and smiled as if embarrassed, and she smiled brightly back, looking a little shy herself.
"Ahem. Sorry. I only meant to practice Phase Power control for three or four hours, but I went far too long. Were you bored?"
She shook her head gently, smiling as if to say not at all, and she looked satisfied that she had been of help.
How had she grown up so kind, and cute, and pretty, and diligent, and proper? On top of that, far from getting angry at my lecherous behavior, she was being considerate in case I felt awkward... Could Franc be an angel?
An angel... hmm...
Something suddenly occurred to me. Lining up the actions and thoughts she had shown so far, I wondered whether she might not be a knight by origin.
She was British. When Aberrants appeared and ability users emerged, formal knighthood had been revived in Britain in earnest — though the same was true of other countries, so there was nothing strange about it. Occupations out of old stories had returned: the samurai of the country next door, the martial artists of China, assassins like those of India.
Anyway, the point was that some of her actions right now looked exactly as if she meant to serve me as a knight. ...Surely not? What was so great about me that I would receive an oath from someone like her? I had simply been forcing the pieces to fit, and that was why it felt that way.
I tried to dismiss it so, but then I remembered sitting in the room hollowed out of a tree and receiving her formal bow, and it left me a little uncertain.
Once we returned to reality, should I find the right moment and ask?
...A Korean high schooler, receiving the loyalty and love of a peerlessly beautiful British lady knight.
Heh. Heheh. Uheheheh.
My delusions were about to run wild, so I snapped back to myself — only to find Franc staring a hole through my face, curiosity in her eyes.
I-I must have been wearing the weirdest face imaginable!!
Gyaaah! I could die of embarrassment!