Chapter 348 — The Fifth Entry (1)
Pitch-black darkness wrapped around me and reality fell away, and the instant I entered the Phase World my senses flooded with golden-furred monkey aberrants — a whole mass of them, from Low-Rank Variants up through the upper-mid ranks.
In shape they resembled Himalayan monkeys, but the human-sized ones hadn't built anything like a nest. Dozens of them were packed into one spot, huddled around a single point. Some lay sprawled, some roughhoused with their own kind, some picked through one another's fur — and into the middle of that I popped into being, as if I'd dropped out of the sky. Every gaze snapped to one place, as if they'd agreed on it beforehand.
That place, of course, was exactly where I stood.
I'd come in at the same spot as the fourth entry: that monkey mountain, no grander than the hill behind a neighborhood, where I'd evolved Miho and gone home. I was certain I'd erased those aberrant monkeys that day with the Wall of Space. How were there still this many left?
Kyaaaak! Kyaa-kyak!!
I'd half-raised a hand to scratch the back of my head when the frozen golden monkeys shrieked as if their throats were tearing and exploded outward in every direction. It had the feel of a flight for their lives. Exactly fifty-four of them fled pissing and shitting themselves, big and small alike, scrambling away in a panic — and watching it left me with a strange feeling.
"Oh my."
"Whoa. One little flick of the hand, and you send hundreds of apes running!"
Franc only looked mildly startled at the troop fleeing without a backward glance. Darky, for his part, climbed onto my head with a deeply satisfied expression, the very picture of now that's my master. I was in a complicated mood, so I poked the little guy in the side just to be mean.
"Eek?!"
"Why are they so frightened that they flee like that?"
"They must remember me. I thought I'd killed every last one of them back then, but I guess a few survived."
"Ah..."
I caught the squirming Darky in both hands and tickled his sides, then frowned as a thought snagged on something.
"Wait. Something's off."
"Yes?"
"Think about it. Back then I killed every monkey aberrant Spatial Perception picked up. There shouldn't have been a single one left that remembered me. So why are they this scared of me?"
"Might it be the aura coming from your body, Seoha?"
Aura... The Phase Stone, maybe?
"Maybe the Phase Stone that formed in my heart makes them mistake me for a High-Tier Variant."
I'd offered the reason that came to mind, but Darky — who'd only just escaped my teasing — moved his little lips as if to say that wasn't it.
"That ain't the reason, sir. Low-Rank Variants fear High-Tier Variants, sure, but not enough to run scared like this. This is all 'cause Master's foooorce is just that strong!"
"It's not even 'force.' What the hell is 'foooorce'?"
"That's what the Jedi use, the midi-chlori—"
"Stop right there."
I reached up, seized Darky, and clamped his mouth shut. Let him keep going and we were going to have a real problem. I let go of him, still kicking inside my fist with his mouth covered, and watched through Spatial Perception as the monkeys spread down the mountain and fled in every direction. Whatever had them so terrified, the golden ones poured every shred of focus into running at full speed, never once looking back. Was my aura really that threatening to aberrants?
Then Franc's brow tightened, and she murmured.
"Monstrous aberrants are not worth sparing. They never are."
"Hm?"
Her mood had dropped so suddenly that I looked around to see what was wrong, and an absurd scene met my eyes.
Kii. Kiii.
A baby monkey lay flung on the ground, crying. However terrified they'd been, they'd abandoned a newborn and run. The older young, the ones with the bigger heads, were squeaking and scrambling after the direction their mothers had vanished, but one infant — even smaller than Darky, caught in my hand — had sat down and was wailing, apparently unaware its mother had left it behind.
I walked toward the wrinkled little thing, and Franc, her pretty face still creased in a frown, followed.
"Looks like its mother abandoned it. But... this one isn't an aberrant. There's no Phase Power in it."
Franc had been watching the abandoned infant from a little way off. She turned to me, not understanding.
"Will it become an aberrant as it grows?"
"Who knows. Maybe it soaks up ambient Phase Power a little at a time as it grows. Or maybe it takes Phase Power off other dead aberrants."
"If one becomes an aberrant merely by growing, then this world ought to have almost no ordinary animals left, should it not?"
"It might depend on whether the parents are aberrants. Born to ordinary animals, you stay an ordinary animal. Born to aberrants, you naturally become one."
Franc still looked unconvinced. She crouched in front of the golden infant, which was curled up, glancing this way and that and crying.
Kii?
It didn't seem to see well. It noticed Franc crouching in front of it a moment late, then toddled over as if it had decided she was its mother and hugged her knee.
"Oh my."
"Heh heh. Pale-gold hair, white skin, white clothes — it must've mistaken you for its mother."
Franc shot me a sulky glare, then reached down and lifted the golden monkey. It wasn't even twenty centimeters long. For a second I tensed, certain that Franc — who hated aberrants — was about to crush the infant flat. Her gaze had been that empty of feeling. The sudden height seemed to frighten the baby. It grabbed her wrist with its hand-like feet, clutched her fingers with both hands, and started squeaking and crying.
"Darky. Can you understand what that baby monkey's saying?"
"A cry with no meaning and no sense to it, sir!"
Darky must have locked onto a soldier persona after watching some drama where the hero was military and the stage was the army. Easily swayed by media, that one.
"Figures. Look at it — it's a baby. No way it has a mind."
By then Franc had finished examining the infant and quietly set it back on the ground. When it tried to cling to her again, she rose into the air out of reach. From the look on her face, it didn't sit well with her that this was an aberrant's offspring and yet nothing but an ordinary animal, devoid of Phase Power. Slipped from her hands, the baby looked around, groping with thin, frail fingers, searching for Franc. When it couldn't find her anywhere, it began to cry, mournful and small.
Kii~! Kyik! Kiii...
Sooner or later it would either become an aberrant or, failing that, get culled by the troop. There was something pitiful in the sight, but no reason to care, and once we left, the ones that had fled would come back anyway. I swept that weak, pitying feeling out of my heart and started walking. Franc followed, looking a little uneasy.
Kyaooooong!!
I pinned the thrashing two-meter silver leopard cat by sheer strength and kept forcing TP into it. Its skeleton began to change. The forelegs turned into hands, the chest swelled, the waist drew in, and hips and backside started to round out. The spine straightened and the shoulders spread wide, but the two tails stayed two.
Silver fur covered the whole body, and the face was still a cat's, but the body had taken the shape of a human woman. The opposite of Miho, who was human in every way but the ears and tails — this silver leopard cat was a beast that had simply acquired a human frame. It was, quite literally, a cat-person. A feline human.
Limbs broken, trails of blood-red light streaming from its eyes, it bared its teeth at me in threat. I looked at the thing and spoke.
"This one's Physical Reinforcement too. Regeneration's high."
Kyahaah... clack-clack!
"Shut your mouth."
I didn't like the rotten-meat stench of that muzzle shoved in my face, the clacking teeth, the metallic screech. I raised a fist wreathed in mana aura and brought it down on the skull. It collapsed with a deflating hiss, then shrieked and twisted its body. Even then the broken limbs crackled and popped, bone grinding as they tried to knit back into place. It was regenerating far faster than the others, so I simply drew the Heavenly Gathering Clouds Sword and cut the limbs off.
It screamed, flailing the stumps and spraying bright blood. I confirmed a Blue Stone had formed in its heart, split open the newly swollen chest, and pulled the stone free. The moment it came out, the leopard cat stopped dead, like a doll with its batteries yanked. Then powder began to drift from the body like smoke.
The leopard cat slowly came apart and vanished. I straightened the back I'd been bending to inject TP, and a crackle climbed my spine.
"Ugh. Body's tougher than ever. Why do my bones keep cracking like this?"
"Because you are not a Physical Reinforcement ability user, Seoha. You reinforce your body through the Mana Sieve, and so the difference from a true Physical Reinforcement user shows itself in that way."
I patted my lower back and handed her the extracted Blue Stone. Franc opened the bag I was wearing and dropped it in.
Moving west, I seized every aberrant that caught my eye, forced TP into it until it evolved, and harvested the Blue Stone. Now that I knew Blue Stones were an energy source more efficient than Phase Stones, I meant to make some money on the side while I dealt with the Rogue Imugi. Forcing evolutions and pulling stones, I'd gathered more than eighty.
Killing them that way had started to drag my mood down at first — Muscle Bear and the White Thorn Turtle came to mind — but I reminded myself that aberrants and I existed to kill each other, and kept at the work. Unlike Muscle Bear and the White Thorn Turtle, these ones sprayed killing intent without pause, as if madness had burst out of them, and the gloom vanished quickly. Not a single exception. Every last one of them radiated murder.
I learned something else along the way. Pull the Blue Stone after killing them, and they left a corpse like any other aberrant. Pull it while they were still alive, and the body slowly broke apart and vanished, ash drifting away. I didn't know why. Neither Franc nor I had the expertise for that. At first the drifting remains — debris, powder, whatever it was — had given me an unpleasant feeling. But once I saw that they vanished without a trace in barely a dozen seconds, and didn't even scatter Phase Power, I started favoring the method. No corpse to dispose of.
Kill them outright and harvest the stone, and the spreading Phase Power would only make the surrounding aberrants stronger, while the body remained as food for the others. On top of that, my traces might be exposed to something I couldn't identify. So I kept catching them alive, force-feeding them TP until they evolved, and the moment a Blue Stone formed inside — extract, then collect — repeating the cycle as I made for the forest where I had first met Franc.
A day of travel, sweeping the surroundings with Spatial Perception, which had widened on a cataclysmic scale compared to a year ago. I was feeding Darky his meal — the corpse of an aberrant I'd killed before pulling the Blue Stone — when I realized the Soul Stone's TP was still considerably depleted. I'd spent about three million taking down the Blade Flyer, and another five million or so on Muscle Bear, and I hadn't recharged it.
Of course, while making love with Franc, the considerable amount of semen I'd released inside her had let her absorb the Phase Power it carried and recover some. Even so, it hadn't restored even a tenth of what had been spent. I might as well charge it now. You never knew — it might help when I fought the Rogue Imugi.
"Wh-what? Right now?! Here?!"
"Yeah. Now. Here."
The moment I said I'd charge the Soul Stone with TP before going after the Rogue Imugi, Franc startled, covered her chest with both arms, and backed away in little steps.
"What's there to be shy about? Let's do something that feels good."
"Nnh. Nnnnh...!"
For safety's sake I raised the Wall of Space into a room five meters wide, five meters deep, and five meters high, then crept toward her with a lewd little smile. Franc crept backward in turn.
"Franc. You trust Oppa, right?"
"I-I do, but... this is the outdoors..."
On the verge of tears, she clutched the front of her round-neck wool knit and kept retreating. I shot in and snatched her by the waist. She startled, fawn-like legs kicking.
"Kya! Kyaa!"
"Struggle, and I'll get rougher."
"Aah!"
I soothed the Franc squirming in my arms, opened the pendant's socket at my neck, and took out the Soul Stone wrapped in cloth. The moment I picked it up she pressed her thighs together, and — gentleman that I am — I looked away.
The color seemed to have changed, though. The blue light was stronger than before. It had become a perfect teardrop, and smaller besides. Compressed, rather than merely reduced, felt like the better word. The gray-white light at the center, and the current rising with it, seemed larger, brighter, stronger. Could I call this a good sign? Just looking at it, it felt less like a yin phenomenon than a yang one.
As I turned the Soul Stone over in my hands, Franc had both of hers wedged between her thighs. Her body flinched, and even her ears had gone red. She was holding up well. All the experience points she'd racked up must have counted — she wasn't dropping into a convulsive heat the way she had the first time I'd touched the Soul Stone and poured TP into it. She wasn't unaroused, though. I stroked the platinum-blonde hair of the woman leaning against my chest and whispered in her ear.
"I'm going to put it in now?"
"Nnh..."
Face red, she kept glancing at Darky, who was staring openly from the side, and giving me a look — so I opened the backpack and stuffed him inside.
"Huh?! Master?!"
"Don't come out until I tell you. Crawl out halfway, or sneak a peek, and you're in for it."
"F-field trip request! Field trip request!!"
"Franc's embarrassed, so no."
"Lady Fraaanc..."
"Ah, no!"
"Whiiine. The madam's a tightwad!"
A tightwad... He must have really wanted to watch. Darky made a crying face and ducked all the way into the backpack. From the way he curled up inside with his knees hugged to his chest, he was thoroughly sulking. I'd feed him a little TP later and smooth it over. For now I looked at Franc and ran a lecherous hand over her luscious breasts and the soft of her lower belly.
Franc bit her lower lip, just lightly. Her senses seemed synced to the Soul Stone in my hand; her pale belly undulated the way it did when she was aroused. Through Spatial Perception I could see her petals twitching, dripping honey a drop at a time in anticipation.
"Can I start?"
She didn't answer. Don't ask. Just do it. That was what the silence said. She ducked her reddened face and gripped, tight, the right arm wrapped around her waist.
Hnnn. She does that, and of course I want to pin her down.
I wanted to tip her over, bury my face between her thighs, and snuffle like a dog — but I wrung out what little patience I had, shallow as dishwater, and slowly injected TP into the Soul Stone in my left hand. Franc's body locked rigid.
"Hah."
She sucked the breath in, and then her flesh writhed, lewd and helpless, the way it did at the crest. Feeling that writhing body in my arms, I could tell my patience was starting to run out. But we'd grown used to pleasure through all the times we'd made love, and so neither of us lost our reason. We endured, and I filled the Soul Stone with TP to its maximum in a single go.
If pleasure had broken us, it wouldn't have been a TP injection. It would have been a TP insertion.
The price was Franc, completely spent, gone limp — so I slung the backpack around to my front and carried her on my back. That much was nothing.
After the charging was done, Darky crawled out of the backpack and stared at Franc from atop my head, openly curious. Franc, utterly exhausted from a charge that had gone on through the night, never even noticed his gaze. She just hung there, limp.