Reunion with the Imugi (2)
"Gah!!"
The instant I Space Leapt, a tail the length of a fifteen-story apartment building came whipping in at me like a lash. I kicked off a Wall of Space in sheer panic and cleared it by a hair. Long and massive as a high-rise, the tail howled past beneath my feet in a violent rush of wind, and the sight sent a chill racing down my spine.
"Shit. Did that thing sense where I was going to leap?"
KAAAAUUU—!!!! As if she had been aiming for that passing tail all along, giant Franc charged in at a speed I could barely track and drove forward a pretty fist that had never known a single callus.
KWANG!!!! Her fist, laden with Phase Power, collided with the tail wrapped in its energy field, and a blue shockwave burst outward. I rode out the impact on my mana aura and fired a razor-honed Sword Energy Bullet straight at the blue-scaled torso.
The vivid blue crescent flew in again. The Rogue Imugi flinched and writhed its body, trying to slip the shot.
Dodge, and I'll just fire another...
Darky's warning made me start. I looked up — and the storm clouds were already gathering again!
The Rogue Imugi snarled, "Krrgh!" and had no choice but to fall back. I left it to giant Franc, shot up into the sky, and swept my left hand, spraying Mana Cannons into the clouds and detonating them — only for the clouds to stop rolling in from elsewhere and start generating rapidly right overhead.
I glared at the thing as it whipped its slightly tattered tail like a lash, eyes bulging, and at the same time discharged electricity from its scales, trying to smash giant Franc. Sure enough, the Rogue Imugi's TP was leaking away in a steady stream.
"That bastard's making the storm clouds. It's burning TP to spin them up fast, then using the clouds as a medium to throw lightning!"
Then I've got a trick of my own.
I drew a deep breath and poured out half my remaining TP — twenty-five million — to throw an enormous Wall of Space across the sky over the battlefield. The amber wall wrestled the squirming storm clouds for position, then began devouring them. I clenched my fist.
"Yes!"
When the amber Wall of Space blanketed the sky, its presence made the Rogue Imugi and giant Franc pause mid-fight and look up. The storm clouds kept forming only to be swept away and erased the moment they appeared, and the Rogue Imugi's TP drained without end.
SHAAAAA—!!!! It seemed I had done the right thing. The Rogue Imugi spat a sharp metallic hiss, furious, and tried to pull back. Like hell I was letting it run.
I Space Leapt behind it and leveled the Cheonchongun Sword, pinning the Rogue Imugi between me and giant Franc. Sandwiched there, it fixed its gaze not on her but on me, flicking its forked tongue, while giant Franc behind it kept the slightly ragged tail in check after their clashes.
The Phase Power inside the Rogue Imugi was dropping fast, about half a percent a second. Once the storm-cloud deployment was underway, it apparently could not be shut off midway — the power kept bleeding even now. On top of that, the bastard's aerial maneuvering burned Phase Power too. Hold this, and the Rogue Imugi's TP would bottom out first. And then all that would be left was beating the thing to death.
"Got you, you bastard!"
The Rogue Imugi seemed well aware the situation was turning against it. Its eyes grew steadily more vicious, and yet it did not rush in recklessly, which I did not quite understand. It was checking me, strangely. That look... right. It felt like someone staring at a live explosive — the nerves of a thing worried it would blow if it got too close.
Well, if it wants to drag this standoff out, then thank you very much.
Krruuu—. Giant Franc, though, had no love for a standoff. She began creeping toward the Rogue Imugi in a posture thick with feral instinct.
No — don't. Wait a little longer and we take it easy!
Damn it. No choice.
Since it had come to this, I decided to try something I had been wanting to test on the Rogue Imugi at least once, ever since I gained the Wall of Space. Picturing a nail driven clean through the coiled bastard's torso, I focused my will toward its body.
Shwik—?!
"Huh?! Son of a—!!"
Transcendent-grade or not, the Wall of Space did not work on that Rogue Imugi at all. The wall formed normally, but it could not pierce the scales — the cohesion came undone instead, and it smeared outward like crushed butter before vanishing entirely. The Wall of Space had worked to some degree even on the Grand Turtle. Not that it had no effect at all. The blue-green scales heated oddly, navy shifting toward a pale blue-white. Still an effect. So I would bury it in volume.
KAAK—! I deployed Walls of Space like nails and hammered them in like my life depended on it — ten stacks, twenty stacks, over and over — and the moment the Rogue Imugi realized I was the one doing this to it, a bristling metallic shriek tore out of its throat. In that instant, when its attention locked entirely on me, giant Franc noticed and closed in like an assassin. Just before the Rogue Imugi sensed her and turned its head, she leapt for its belly.
A snake's known weak points are the belly, and the face where the sensitive organs cluster. The face holds the pit organs, Jacobson's organ, the brain — everything you would call a vital — and the belly is thin enough to tear with relative ease. Whether those weaknesses held for the Rogue Imugi, the thing twisted its torso in a hurry to evade giant Franc's silent, assassin-like strike.
KRAAT—!!
"Huh?"
The belly had not been the target to begin with. Giant Franc read the dodge, sprang onto the Rogue Imugi's torso, and sprinted straight up it, latching onto its head and seizing the short, blunt horns that looked like deer antlers.
SHIAAAAK—!!! KAAAAUUU—!!! Hanging from the horns, giant Franc began pouring strength into both arms as if she meant to snap them. The Rogue Imugi thrashed its head like mad and at the same time whipped its tail into Franc's back and its own skull.
PUNG! A wet rip — THUD! BANG! KIAAAAAT—!! SHAAAAK—!!!
"You snake bastard!"
To the sound of a bursting drum, giant Franc's back tore and split, blood pouring out, and I thought I was going to lose my mind. I kicked off a Wall of Space and leapt, firing Sword Energy Bullets like a madman at the tail as it came whipping in, flexing supple as a spear — and the Rogue Imugi hastily dropped its tail and flashed aside like a sidewinder.
SHIAAAAAAK—!! KRUAAAA—!!!
"Haaaaah!!"
Giant Franc strained to break the Rogue Imugi's horns. The Rogue Imugi thrashed to shake her off while dodging my attacks. I swung the Cheonchongun Sword and poured Sword Energy Bullets into its body like a lunatic, trying to cut down the blows aimed at Franc.
The three of us locked together for only a moment before the Rogue Imugi's movements began to tangle. Beneath the storm of Sword Energy Bullets pouring down like the wind-blade tempest Miho used to throw, the blue scales that scattered jewel-bright light started shearing away.
The Sword Energy Bullets, upgraded to Mana Bullet Mk.2, were genuinely effective. Dozens of cuts opened across the torso, blood began to show through the wounds, and the Rogue Imugi's momentum grew steadily more savage. It was about to abandon any rational way of fighting and go purely on instinct.
CHWAJAJAK, JJAK! JIIIIK—! Hit by several more, the Rogue Imugi no longer cared if its tail burst. It whipped up a gale, lashing violently to swat aside the bullets I was firing, then threw its head all the way back and drove the back of its skull into the ground.
KUUUUUNG!! KUK—!!
"Franc!!"
SHAAAAAAAA—!!!! The earth screamed, and a blast of dust erupted. Caught between the ground and the Rogue Imugi, giant Franc took a heavy impact and spat a stream of blood from her mouth.
KUNG! KUNG! KWAAANG—! KWANG! KWAGWAGWAK...! The Rogue Imugi hammered its head down again and again like something insane, and it did not stop there. Electricity several times more vicious than before began radiating from its skin.
KRUAAAAA—!!! GYAAAAAA—!!! The fiercer the assault, the more blue veins stood out along giant Franc's arms and forehead where she clung to the horns. The more she was hit, the harder she seemed to clamp down. Slamming and lightning both — as the savage wounds multiplied across her body, rage filled my chest.
"Goddamn iiiit!!!"
I roared like a scream and sprayed Sword Energy Bullets, hacking the Rogue Imugi's body to pieces, and madness began to spill from its eyes. No matter how it attacked, giant Franc would not come off, and I was pouring attacks in on top of that. It seemed to be taking everything with no answer at all.
Its Phase Power began spinning like a hurricane. Change followed in the air around it — the electricity shifted into lightning, and a lightning storm rose. The storm was steeped in Phase Power too, and because of it the Sword Energy Bullets I fired bent and ricocheted every which way.
KUK—!
"Whoa—!"
One of my own Sword Energy Bullets cut across Franc's shoulder as it passed. I stopped attacking in shock.
D-damn it!
I stood there awkwardly, unable to commit to one thing or the other, while the spin of its Phase Power grew faster and the lightning storm outside intensified as if it might become a typhoon. At the same time the Rogue Imugi's eyes filled with lightning-light, and sparks began to crackle across the white horns giant Franc gripped in both hands.
"This... this feels dangerous."
I looked up. My Wall of Space and the Rogue Imugi's storm clouds were still tumbling over each other. It shouldn't be able to throw lightning in that state, right? The air had gone wrong. Should I grab giant Franc and get clear? The Phase Power inside the Rogue Imugi seemed to heave and spill outward in every direction. I tried to guess what kind of attack was coming, and nothing came to mind.
KSHAAAAA—!!! KRAKAKAKAK!! Ignoring the lightning typhoon forming around it, the bastard flipped, bared its ivory belly, and started grinding the back of its skull into the earth. Caught between that skull and the ground it scoured — with a ferocity no phrase like "the earth caved in" could capture — was giant Franc.
An ordinary thrashing and she would have been fine. Through the gaps in the dust cloud I caught glimpses of her: the skin of her back and hips flayed clean away, the exposed red muscle tearing and gouging, soaking the earth in blood while she herself was steeped in blood and dirt. Even so, the two hands locked on the horns did not let go. The wounds being carved into Franc's body made me see red.
I began condensing Mana Cannon Mk.2 along the Cheonchongun Sword, shoving in every drop of TP I had.
"Fuck it. If the Sword Energy Bullets won't work, I'll just split the bastard myself!!"
A thought flickered that this was dangerous. Then I saw Franc's back grinding away like meat on asphalt, and danger be damned — the certainty that she was going to die like this, and a rage that felt like it would burst my eyeballs, went into the sword along with every remaining scrap of TP. The moment roughly ten million TP condensed along the blade, I stopped caring what came before or after. I spat out my fury, Space Leapt into the lightning typhoon, and ripped the sword upward from below with everything I had.
Snap.
The sword flowed from below to above. Nothing happened. Only the sense of the blade's tip rising toward the sky the way a fallen leaf is caught in a typhoon — and of something drawing out of my heart in one long pull.
Midway I had heard a dry crack, something breaking. Had that been a hallucination?
When the tip of the blade pointed fully at the sky, the world split vertically. But the plain held nothing except the site of the Rogue Imugi's violent destruction. No phenomenon occurred at all...
KISHAAAAAAK—!!!
"Wh-what?"
A scream, unmistakably laced with pain. In that instant the lightning typhoon split in half and began to scatter, and the Rogue Imugi's torso — twisted and knotted every which way like the yarn Miho used to bat around — tore open with a long rip and fell into several severed lengths. A hopelessly tangled ball of yarn, cut through with a knife.
"H-how did that happen?"
I stood dazed, unable to believe the scene I had made, while the body, cut into eight pieces, thrashed and twisted like octopus legs thrown onto a grill.
From the thrashing Rogue Imugi's head, giant Franc sprang up in a wretched state, drenched in her own blood, and put distance between herself and the thing. Her once-full breasts had torn and burst, yellow fat and red blood and scraps of flesh dripping in strings, and the skin and muscle of her whole body looked as if they had been ground against asphalt — grievous wounds, her entire body a wash of blood. Nausea climbed my throat as I looked at her. Not because it was filthy, or cruel. The shock came from my woman being wounded like that.
I sucked in a breath at that horrific sight, and giant Franc hurled aside the short white deer-horn she had been gripping in both hands and let out a roar fit to split eardrums.
KAAAAUUUUU—!!!!!!
"No!! Get treated first!!"
Bright yellow eyes rolled back, the Rogue Imugi thrashed in a frenzy, and giant Franc roared and charged it. I shouted in desperation. Of course my voice was ignored.
"Oh, come on!! Wait!"
I launched myself after her — and from the pupils of the Rogue Imugi, which had reared up in a convulsion, a flash poured out bright enough to blind me.
SHAAAAAAAK—!!!!!!!!!! KRAKAKAKAKAK!!!
"Gyaaaaaaah!!"
The world went white under a flash that might as well have blinded me. At the same time, everything in front of my eyes went black. Something flowed through my whole body, raking through me and running out into my limbs. I did not feel pain, but I knew I had nearly lost consciousness for an instant. A dull impact wrapped me, and my vision brightened.
"Kuk — kkeuk. Keheok."
With that, my choked airway opened, and only then did my condition register through Spatial Perception.
My body, slammed into the ground, was a wreck. The rider suit made from the Grand Turtle's byproducts had burned black and was crumbling, steam rising off it, and through the gaps my torso showed, cooked red. My hair was singed and stuck to my scalp in a ruin, and my face was covered in the marks of severe burns. Darky's black, translucent body, wrapped around my torso and head, was boiling, bubbles popping and running down.
......
Only then did I understand that Darky had spread himself to shield my head and body from the attack. He had not protected me perfectly, and the price was his liquid body boiling, its volume steadily shrinking.
"Krr... khek!"
I tried to speak, and my throat hurt. The inside of my nose and my throat seemed cooked. But Darky's Phase Power was vanishing bit by bit.
He's dying. Leave him like this and Darky dies.
I tried to move my arms. They would not move. I forced my head around, and what I saw was something like a stick, burned black.
That's my arm?
I turned my gaze toward where giant Franc and the Rogue Imugi were. Giant Franc had collapsed in place, her whole body burned. The platinum hair was gone, and the snow-white skin was entirely scorched and cooked — she looked like a corpse burned to death. But roughly twenty million TP remained in her heart. It was not decreasing, so I judged she had fainted from the shock. Which meant the dying Darky was the urgent one.
I tried to use Healing Wave, but I had only about three million TP left. Stage 1 required 5.84 million. At this rate Darky would die before I secured even ten percent of my Phase Power.
......
I turned my eyes and saw a single Blue Stone worth two hundred thousand TP sitting right in front of me. Without thinking I crawled like a maggot and swallowed it. TP flowed out of the stone and restored mine, but it was not enough. Every time I writhed, a sensation like insects crawling ran through my whole body. It did not hurt. Literally crawling like a bug, I kept eating the Blue Stones scattered around me.
By the time I had eaten about ten, my Phase Power reached 5.66 million. But Darky had literally less than fifty milliliters left, clinging only around my neck and shoulders, and his Phase Power had dropped to 100. I fired Stage 1 Healing Wave at once.
"Krrrrrgh!"
Burned flesh sloughed off from all the crawling, and my limbs — white bone exposed — slowly regenerated as horrific pain surged in. The stimulus made my mind flicker like a fluorescent tube with a blown fuse.
"Huk. Heok."
Fortunately, Darky's boiling, shrinking body stabilized, and the drop in his Phase Power stopped. A sigh of relief escaped me at what he had left — not even sixty. As long as he was alive, Phase Power was something I could always...
Damn it. Now giant Franc's Phase Power was starting to drop.
In the meantime my limbs had regenerated enough to hold a shape, and I scrambled up — only for the ground to come slamming into my face.
"Kuk!"
The ground had not hit me. I had keeled over onto it. My sense of balance must have gone wrong; I tried to stand a few more times and collapsed again, so I gave up on standing and hurriedly crawled around, wolfing down the Blue Stones on the ground.
Veins stood out on arms white as marble, the flesh somehow soft and yielding, and I worked them without pause, picking up Blue Stones and bringing them to my mouth. That damned Rogue Imugi's attack had turned my clothes and everything I carried entirely to ash, and the bag had vanished without a trace the same way — but the hundreds of High Grade Blue Stones I had kept inside it lay intact, scattered in every direction with me at the center.
The bag must have shattered and flung the stones I had gathered all over the place. Shit, they'd spread way too wide!! Why the Blue Stones had come through that flash unscathed was a question for later. The moment I had eaten thirty of them and secured six million Phase Power, I ran for giant Franc, balance recovered just enough to manage it, the stink of burning rising off her.
"Urgh..."
She did not look like a person who had been burned. She looked like a person swept through lava. Most of her skin and muscle seemed to have burned away and vanished. Even the abdominal muscle was nearly gone, and through the gaps vermilion organs writhed. White bone and viscera lay exposed here and there. My stomach twisted hard. I thought I was going to vomit.
This is Franc...?
Franc was, quite literally, hanging on by nothing but a breath. I drew a deep breath and swallowed whatever was trying to climb my throat. The moment I set a hand on giant Franc's arm, carbonized muscle crumbled and fell away. Nothing but bone. I gripped the bone again and put distance between us and the Rogue Imugi in three Space Leaps.
With every leap, burned flesh sloughed off. One more, and giant Franc might die too.
I laid that horrific body on the ground and immediately fired Stage 1 Healing Wave. The Phase Power that had been steadily dropping stopped its decline, and the muscle across her whole body — faintly, little by little, slowly — began to regenerate. Even so, she still seemed to be in danger. I broke into a run again, to scavenge the scattered Blue Stones and recover my Phase Power.