Reunion with the Imugi (1)
After two tense days and nights of walking, the lake country finally ran out, and a typical northern forest began to rise in its place—trees grown thin, long, and narrow, some of them forty meters tall.
Underfoot, a sea of forest stretched to the horizon. Overhead, wool-gray clouds had swallowed the whole blue sky, hiding the great mountain I had set as my landmark, and a damp wind pushed in behind them. With gray filling my vision, a quiet gloom settled over me.
Giant Franc, for her part, did not seem to care. She strode between trunks that had grown nearly as tall as she was, shoving aside every tree that got in her way, toppling them, striking them until they snapped, and carving a path without hesitation.
Her face was set hard.
Before we reached the cliffs she had sometimes worn a look that said bored, or restless. These past few days, the farther west we moved, the more that expression had locked down. The fight, I thought, was not far off.
Thud-crack, splinter. A deep boom, then a long rumbling groan.
Size aside, watching a naked woman lay waste to a forest felt like it was going to warp my sense of the world, so I cleared my head by imagining the measures I would need once Franc's mind returned.
Living with an eighty-meter bride would take a great deal of care, for a start. Every piece of clothing would have to be made to order, and if a house was going to fit an eighty-meter frame, it would have to be built even larger. There was land enough, at least. Small mercy.
Or should I leave the mansion as it was and build a house beside it, sized to Giant Franc's body? That would mean at least a hundred meters—taller than that, even. One hell of a construction project.
Giant Franc, who had been walking along in high spirits and hacking a single road through the forest, stopped dead. The moment I saw it, I leapt high into the sky and looked in the direction she was staring a hole through.
And I found it.
Roughly 350 meters long, its body some 24 meters thick. A pair of deer antlers swept back from near the temples, and the head and the trunk were a serpent's. Above the line of the mouth the scales were a dark blue; below, ivory. White fur about three meters long grew thick from the lower jaw down to the nape, and the hide was scaled like any snake's. Those scales—a sea-blue somewhere between deep green and pale green—threw such a violent contrast that they would have caught the eye from hundreds of kilometers away.
The goddamn Rogue Imugi that had threatened my life.
The moment I saw that thing coming from far off, tearing a path through the forest the way Giant Franc did, the morning of that downpour came flooding back through my head, and a tremor I could not sort into rage or fear began to rise from deep inside me.
I clenched the hilt of the Heavenly Cloudgather Sword at my waist and let out a rough snort of contempt. Darky did not even have eyes, and still fumbled a mouth open and shut as if the Imugi were right there.
"Th-that's the Imugi, ain't it?"
"Yeah. Even from this far, it shows that well. One filthy huge bastard."
Even from three kilometers up, I could see its heading and the path it had already torn. I was surprised the clouds were running higher than I had thought, but that was a useless thought. I shoved it out of my head at once and dropped down to where Giant Franc stood.
She had been glaring in the direction the Rogue Imugi was crawling right up until I landed beside her. Then she began to move slowly toward it. Her movements were stiff, and goosebumps had risen across that soft, smooth skin. She was extremely tense.
Looking at her like that, I figured even a sure thing would fail. I had no choice. I dropped down into the cleft of her breasts and fired Healing Wave, stage two.
A sharp gasp tore out of her.
A blue ripple had suddenly spread from between her breasts, and it startled her. She let out a rough breath and took one step back. Those huge blue eyes, blinking, were cute. I grinned at her and started walking in the direction the Imugi was coming from, and Giant Franc hurried up and planted herself in front of me.
She would not step aside. She only stared down at me, and I realized she did not want me to fight.
"Why? I'm not weak, either. I only held back because I didn't want to hurt you. I'm pretty strong too, you know?"
She did not listen. She blew out a rough breath and tried to push me away with her palm. I dodged the arm, ran up the forearm, reached the shoulder, and leapt for the ear canal. Her shoulder flinched. She turned her head as if to look at me, but there was no way she could see me stuck to her ear.
The vacant look almost made me laugh. I held it in, switched on Mana Voice, and spoke straight into Giant Franc's ear.
It was less a word for Giant Franc than for the gray-white energy hiding motionless inside her heart—Franc's spirit. Words that carried a will: if I had to leave her and go, I would rather die here too.
Every time I opened my mouth, Giant Franc hunched her neck, but she did not shake me off. Only when I finished and dropped away from her ear did she scowl, rub the ear, and pick at the canal with her little finger.
"……Don't think she got it."
"I know."
Even so, looking at her, the muscles locked by tension seemed to have loosened. Giant Franc, who had been staring down at me, turned her back and started toward the Rogue Imugi.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Following behind her, I heard only her footsteps ringing through a forest where silence had settled. Between Giant Franc and the Rogue Imugi lay an enormous clearing—no, a plain. If we kept walking straight at each other, we would meet out there.
As I drew closer to the Rogue Imugi, an unidentifiable gaze settled on me, and a strange pressure came with it. My body began to stiffen, little by little. Every fine hair on me stood madly on end.
It was not to the point of my body locking stiff and my breath choking off, the way it had the first time around, but the sense of my own flesh fearing some presence left a thick, unpleasant feeling. I would not be able to move properly like this. I cycled Mana Sieve, shook off the sick feeling, and focused Mana Aura. The hairs lay down. The burden hanging on my body eased, and my movement turned smooth again.
"Haaah... still one irritating bastard."
No doubt about it. Until a moment ago I had been about seventy percent sure it was the Rogue Imugi. Now I was at a hundred. What I had been feeling was that thing's presence, and its energy.
The sensation and the terror of our first meeting came back to me, and with them the despair of swimming that wide lake that had seemed as if it would never end. Rage stacked itself up in my chest, layer on layer. Come to think of it, was mind control a lost cause? I would have to pour everything into a proper revenge.
I would carve the rage I felt that day thoroughly into that long body!
The excitement of finally meeting the Rogue Imugi again, the fear that it was unexpectedly not Supreme-rank but a Transcendental aberrant, the joy of a chance to repay the humiliation of our first meeting—my pounding heart rang in my eardrums. Wondering if this, too, was a kind of love, I followed behind Giant Franc until the northern forest ended, and a slightly sloping, uneven yellow-brown plain opened before my eyes.
This side of the ground sat higher, so the forest curtain standing in a line on the far opposite side spread left and right, and I could make out a speck—blue above, white below—crawling out of it.
"Darky."
"Yes, Master."
"If you happen to take the Imugi's lightning, and it's beyond what you can handle, don't force yourself to protect me. Just run."
Darky could not answer—only a worried hum, and a hesitant fidget—but rather than press for a reply, I fixed my eyes on the Rogue Imugi coming toward us.
Kreeee—
How was I supposed to fight the Rogue Imugi? Lightning was the only ability of its I knew. I did not know how fast that body moved, or whether it had anything else. The C-ClassSolid Snake I had met during the ability verification last June had moved at a terrifying speed no snake should have had, and it had used ultrasonic attacks besides. Looking at that, I could not afford to think of an imugi as just a snake. An imugi is a dragon that stopped halfway to becoming one, to begin with.
And then there was the sky.
I looked up at a heaven full of ash-gray cloud. That sky could only help the Imugi use its lightning. No way it worked against the thing. And while my Mana Bullet Mk. II and my Sword Energy Bullets were certainly close to bullet speed, I could not swear they were faster than Giant Franc.
She would obviously brawl in close quarters. If she and the Imugi ended up tumbling over each other, and a Mana Bullet or Sword Energy Bullet I fired happened to hit her, it would be a catastrophe.
"No help for it. Mid-range combat through Space Leaping is the only way..."
"Dangerous, that! Wouldn't it be better if you watched Lady Giant Franc fight the Imugi and backed her up from behind?!"
"You're right, rationally. But my abilities are awkward for support."
Call it a support ability and all I had was Healing Wave, and that could restore the Rogue Imugi bastard too. Even while I thought it over, Giant Franc and the Imugi were closing straight toward each other, and the distance shrank in a blink.
Not enough time to think.
"Tch. If it doesn't work, I'll just take Giant Franc and bolt."
"Right you are! Runnin' from someone stronger ain't shameful. Boss is gettin' terrifyingly strong, so countin' on another day is a fine plan too!"
Surely even that Rogue Imugi could not fly, or chase me if I committed to a Space Leap and ran. Watching it swell more terrifyingly the closer it came, I was on the verge of growing a hatred of reptiles I had never had.
Shaaaa— Krrhhhh—
Before I knew it, only seven kilometers remained. Giant Franc and the Rogue Imugi faced each other and held a brief standoff. The Rogue Imugi stared at her for a moment with bright yellow eyes, then lifted its head and looked straight at me with a gaze I could not read.
The hell are you looking at, asshole.
That was what I wanted to say. And it looked like that bastard remembered me, too. Was failing to catch me and kill me that day frustrating enough to stick with you, you son of a bitch?
The feeling of being slow-roasted by electricity underwater rose up. I forced my twisting face smooth and stepped slightly forward, meaning to read the Rogue Imugi's information with Spatial Perception. And didn't the thing raise its head like a cobra and threaten me.
Shhk—!!
"Whoa—?!"
Kaaauu—!!
The Rogue Imugi narrowed its pupils to vertical slits and let out a metallic cry. I flinched back in surprise, and in that instant Giant Franc roared and took a fighting stance.
What the hell. Did that bastard actually notice my Spatial Perception?
Myrddin's words came back all at once—that those who had entered the Counter-Realm would notice me examining them with Spatial Perception. I had written it off as coincidence. But had that rogue bastard stopped at that distance because it did not want to come inside my Spatial Perception range?
In a short span, countless thoughts rose and sank. I forced a stop on the ones trying to turn into distractions and looked at the thing. It had coiled its body and was watching me, wary. It was absurd, and ridiculous, so I put my honest feeling into a sneer.
"Unbelievable. You feel the range of my Spatial Perception and get wary of me? A Transcendental, and this is you... The title's wasted."
And I'm only B-Class.
Giant Franc's brows twitched. Teeth bared, she kept growling at the Rogue Imugi, but aside from that first metallic cry the Imugi stayed quiet and stared only at me. I could not tell what it was wary of me for. Was I more of a threat than Giant Franc? At a glance, was she not obviously the more threatening one?
Then I noticed that what was gathering overhead was not gray cloud but pitch-black storm cloud, and a cry of shock tore out of me.
"You fucker!"
I snapped my head up and spat curses at the sky. That bastard was calling the storm clouds! When the curses flew, Giant Franc looked up too, then roared and charged the Rogue Imugi.
Kraaa—!!!
Shiiiiik—!!
The Imugi likewise raised its scales, let out a sharp cry from its bearded maw, and began making a strange rattling sound. I wondered where it was coming from, and then I saw the scales moving as if they were opening and closing. The result of that movement soon showed itself as something I could see. An eerie current began radiating from the blue-backed scales.
"You think I'm letting you fire that lightning?!"
A thought flashed past—Wait, isn't Giant Franc supposed to be the one taking that lightning?—but leaving the thing as it was felt dangerous, somehow!
I raised my Mana Aura at once, pushed Thought Acceleration and Physical Reinforcement to the limit, condensed TP at my fingertips, gathered the Phase Power of the natural world to sheathe that TP, and hurled mana shells into the sky without rest.
Rrrrrumble...
Explosions kilometers across bloomed without number, stitching the sky into ruin. Shockwaves bursting from the shells blew away every storm cloud that had been sluggishly gathering. The moment I confirmed blue sky showing through, the sounds of blows and blasts drummed on my eardrums—thud, crash, a hum, a boom, a heavy whump.
I turned my head, and there they were. Giant Franc and the Rogue Imugi, the seven kilometers closed in an instant, locked in a melee.
How was I even supposed to describe it. For a snake, the Rogue Imugi moved that incomparably massive body with unbelievable smoothness, slipping Giant Franc's Phase Power-laden fists and kicks, and Franc chased, putting in attacks at a dazzling speed. She must have been badly excited. Her attacks were far too straight, and because of that the Rogue Imugi writhed and dodged every one of them.
The Imugi's movement was three-dimensional. As if gravity barely touched it, it floated low in the empty air and undulated like something swimming underwater, while Giant Franc's attacks were two-dimensional, made of nothing but points and lines. On top of that, the gap in weight class, and in the reach of a body that could actually attack, was extreme. It was her one-sided assault, and still she was landing almost no effective hits.
Damn it. If this were a Franc who still had her reason, this would not be happening! It was only a mercy that the Rogue Imugi was splitting its attention to keep me in check. If it were not...
Anyway, if this state dragged on and that Rogue Imugi adapted to the clash, it would only get more dangerous. It would be hard, but I had to find whatever support I could manage and help Giant Franc.
First, split its attention!
Bracing for the Rogue Imugi's attack, I unfolded Space Leaping, closed the distance in an instant, and scanned the inside of its body. Judging by how it had been wary of Spatial Perception, this would definitely scatter its focus.
Shaaaak—!!
My Spatial Perception swept through its body, and sure enough the Rogue Imugi glared at me with clear irritation. Because of that, a tail longer than a bullet train came whipping in like a lash. Giant Franc kicked off the air, leapt, slipped it with ease, and smashed straight down on the point that served as its axis of motion.
Kishaaak—!!
The scales where her fist landed did not just tear. They shattered, and the ribs beneath seemed to break as well, caving in like the bumper of a car after a wreck. Then the returning tail struck Giant Franc, who was still hanging in the air.
Whud! Kaak—!
Giant Franc and the Rogue Imugi had traded a blow apiece, almost politely. She tried to press in with another attack, but when the Imugi swung its tail savagely and retreated, she had no choice but to falter and stop. Having opened the distance back to seven kilometers from me, the Rogue Imugi undulated its whip of a tail in a nervous fit, as if its temper had soured.
The battle of nerves resumed.
If I had kept supporting Giant Franc by raising Space Walls, the fight might have gone differently. A large part of why it had not was that the result of scanning the Rogue Imugi with Spatial Perception had left me blank, unable to move properly. Looking inside it, its Phase Power was, absurdly, over a hundred million. I and Giant Franc would have to add our Phase Power together just to reach a similar amount. Did that even make sense? How had that thing piled up so much Phase Power?
It was already astonishing that zombie Giant Franc had gathered nearly fifty million, and this Rogue Imugi bastard had over a hundred million...
While I was thinking that, the standoff seemed to end. Giant Franc kicked the earth hard enough to crater it and charged the Rogue Imugi at lightning speed. The Imugi radiated electricity from its scales, lifted its body about thirty meters off the ground, and lunged at her with a metallic cry. At the same time the tip of its tail undulated eerily, trying to run her through. Seeing that, I drew the Heavenly Cloudgather Sword, chained Space Leaps around to the Imugi's rear, and fired a Sword Energy Bullet.
Shwit—!
Unable to ignore the keen blue crescent of sword energy, the Rogue Imugi hissed, retrieved its tail, and twisted its body in a sharp U-turn—but Giant Franc clung on like her life depended on it.
Kaaaaat—!! Shaaaaak—!
As if annoyed by how doggedly she stuck to it, the Rogue Imugi gaped its maw wide. Then its blunt horns flared white, and lightning breath poured from its mouth toward Giant Franc with no warning at all.
Krazz-zzzt.
At this rate she would be swept helplessly into a river of lightning. I threw a fivefold Space Wall into the breath's path, but the wall that met it flared white and shattered to pieces without holding for even a second. It had not been entirely useless, though. The lightning breath, which had been flying gathered into one mass, scattered in every direction, and I could see its power drop by a wide margin.
Giant Franc seemed to realize it too. She punched through the breath, now spread in a radial burst, and finally landed a blow on the Rogue Imugi's ugly face.
Boom! Kshaaak—!!
Seeing its head snap sharply back, I moved to land a follow-up—then my face hardened at what Spatial Perception told me, and I looked up at the sky. Right above our heads, storm clouds were gathering again.
The reason that thing gathered them like that had to be so it could fire the lightning that had tolled like an enormous bell. Somehow I felt the storm clouds were the key to it throwing lightning. I shot mana shells into the sky again and cleared them, and the Rogue Imugi, which had been trading fierce blows with Giant Franc, turned toward me and spat an irritated metallic cry.
Shaaaaak—!!
"Crazy bastard. Are we supposed to wait around until you're ready to throw your lightning?!"
I kicked off a Space Wall and flew in again. The Rogue Imugi grew extremely wary of me, radiated a burst of current to check me, and used that gap to retreat fast. Electricity swept in and formed a net, like someone exhaling cigarette smoke, but Giant Franc paid it no mind. She punched through, tough as anything, and chased like a shot.
Noticing that about a third of the Rogue Imugi's attention had turned to Giant Franc charging right in its face, I gripped the Heavenly Cloudgather Sword and leapt once more—for the back of its head.