The Search (1)
Giantess... Come to think of it, Franc had a complex about her size, didn't she?
On that first forced summoning she'd endured the Dead Forest, where the dead rose again as undead. Infected by the undead variants and subspecies born there, she'd become an Aberrant—and then the mutation had taken her, and she'd turned into a giant.
I looked at her with worry as she covered her face with both hands. She caught my gaze, forced a smile, and spoke.
"I'm all right."
"You don't have to push yourself."
Trauma—a wound of the mind—is a frightening thing. A real psychological injury. Trip the switch and a mild case ends the way mine does, in anger or a spell of dizziness. Push it further and the reaction turns abnormal. You rampage. You fly into a rage. You withdraw. You freeze, too afraid to move. In the extreme it can spiral into severe depression, and I've heard it can even end in suicide. Not something to take lightly.
"I really am all right. I have you now, Seoha."
Franc offered a small smile and the slightest shrug, then ran her hand along the Blue Space Wall, speaking as if the thing still amazed her.
"Did you succeed in upgrading the Space Wall? A translucent wall floating in empty air... I can't begin to guess what principle could make something like this possible."
The way she tapped it with the back of her hand made it obvious she was trying to change the subject. I was still a little worried. But if she was all right because I was here, then I'd simply have to stay beside her from now on.
"Dwell on it and it wins."
I shrugged and grinned, and Franc smiled brightly.
"Is that how it works?"
"Anyway. You've got your head on straight, so we should probably get a message through to reality, right?"
"But you want to search for the imugi, don't you, Seoha?"
"Yeah. Once we go back we'll have to rest for at least five days. Leaving things like this makes me uneasy. The Lord of the Great Sea told us to stay on our guard, too."
"Then let's see this connection through to the end before we return. Letting Hwayeon and Yeongeun know you're safe matters, of course, but I don't think those two will panic. They may worry a little. Nothing more."
"They're both strong-hearted."
"Yes. So once you've found Baekcheong and settled this at last, please go back first and set their minds at ease."
"...You want me to go back first? Then what about you?"
The suggestion that I return alone caught me off guard. Franc only smiled, gentle as ever.
"I'm an Extreme-Rank Variant now. Short of something truly extraordinary, nothing remains that could threaten me, does it? When you return, I'll wait there for you to come back. Evacuate everyone in the building first, then come back for me and take me out with you."
Ah. If we went back to reality like this, Franc's weight would bring the building down.
I didn't like the thought of leaving her alone and returning first. The way she'd looked a moment ago only fed the worry, and I was still frowning when she met my eyes with a soft smile.
"Don't worry. I won't go anywhere. I'll wait."
"...Let's set that aside for now and find Baekcheong first. Which means this downpour has to stop."
At that she turned her gaze past the translucent blue wall, out into the typhoon and the driving rain, then looked up at the sky.
"If this typhoon and the flooding weren't caused by some dragon god, then as you suspected, the imugi Baekcheong is behind them?"
"Has to be. And a phenomenon that doesn't end even after ten thousand kilometers is obviously wrong. I'm sure it's like those mazes in martial arts novels—an illusion meant to make you wander."
I was skeptical that such a thing was even possible, but the fact remained: I'd traveled eight thousand kilometers and still hadn't escaped it. A formation or an illusion array that could fool even my Spatial Perception... hard to believe. Still, I had to accept that an ability existed which could trap someone in a fixed space and make them wander.
"Then the priority is finding whatever's generating this storm. The most suspicious thing is Baekcheong himself. The second is that mountain we saw—the one that seemed to rise all the way to the sky."
"You think it's a sacred mountain, and anything that comes close loses its way on its own?"
Franc nodded. That was the only thing she could suspect. I leapt down from the Space Wall and landed on her enormous chest, and she flinched, carefully leaning back.
"Yes. That too. You said you were swept away by the water and vanished somewhere, but if Baekcheong can command wind and rain to this extent, I'm certain he's survived somewhere and is sustaining this phenomenon."
Sitting on her chest, I found the vibrations that rolled through me every time she spoke a rather entertaining sensation.
"So what do we do? Spread Spatial Perception and scour every direction until I dig the bastard out of hiding?"
"That would take far too long. And given that it fooled even your sharp senses across those five hours of travel, I don't think Space Leaping or Spatial Perception is the right approach."
Then what was she planning? I cocked my head at her, and she drew a smile across that pretty face.
"There's one thing among the conditions making up this situation that we can see for certain, isn't there?"
"...The storm clouds?"
"Yes. We simply erase the storm clouds filling the sky."
Hmm. The mess we were in was a flood born of water, so if I cleared the clouds dumping rain overhead, something about the situation might actually change.
When I'd been pissed off earlier, I'd just been ready to slam magic artillery in every direction and punch a hole in the ground. It hadn't occurred to me to fire one into the storm clouds and wipe them out.
But I'd climbed a hundred and fifty kilometers—practically outside the planet—and still hadn't risen above those clouds. No. There was a good chance that had scrambled my senses too, and I'd never actually reached that altitude.
I'd heard that clouds freeze into ice crystals at about one and a half kilometers above the ground. The place I'd taken for a hundred and fifty kilometers up had very likely been only around one and a half.
...If everything was scaled down to a hundredth, did that mean the distance I'd traveled so far was only about a hundred kilometers? Nah. No way it was that simple.
I paced back and forth, the feel of Franc's chest against my soles, sorting through the thought—then turned to where she lay half-reclined, and found her watching me and her own chest, her face flushed.
"What?"
"Yes?"
"Huh? Your face is red, so I thought you had something to say."
"A-ah, no! It's nothing..."
The way she fidgeted with her fingers, she was plainly mortified. Either way, we had no food. I needed to resolve this while I could still move.
Before that, I turned Spatial Perception on her, to get a precise read on what her body had become.
I'd examined her with it earlier, but that was before we'd met the Lord of the Great Sea. She'd said she felt nothing wrong, yet what a person notices in themselves and what someone else sees can differ—and gaining a physical body might have changed the abilities she could use.
"Did anything change when you got your body back?"
I asked while trying to look inside her again, and Franc suddenly flinched. Her chest heaved. I swayed like a man standing on a suspension bridge. Fun.
"Nnh?! Ah, um. I'm fine! Nothing's gotten worse!"
Red-faced and flustered. I figured she was just embarrassed that I was walking around on her chest, and let it go.
But...
Pfft. Not a single hair on her, and with her face flushed that red she looked exactly like a beet—eep. Franc's eyes sharpened. Better change the subject before she got angry.
"How are your abilities? Giant Franc was a Physical Reinforcement type, and it didn't seem like you used lightning. Did the lightning disappear? What about Spatial Perception?"
She shot me a glare that said I was being insufferable, dipped her head, clenched and unclenched a fist, then furrowed her brow. A fist the size of a house wavered in front of my eyes. A little scary.
"...Mm. Spatial Perception works, but I don't think I can use lightning anymore."
"Spatial Perception works, but lightning doesn't?"
The Phase Power inside her right now was the same as an Aberrant's. In this non-combat state it sat gathered in one mass, but the moment she entered a fight it would shift into a Physical Reinforcement type. Her body, too, was like a human's and not. Even set beside Hwayeon and Yeongeun, her muscle density was compressed to an absurd degree. I was curious just how much instantaneous force that body could put out.
And yet she couldn't fire lightning anymore, while Spatial Perception still worked? How did that make any sense?
Hmm... If I analyzed the structure and the workings of Mana Sieve and taught them to her, could Franc become like me?
Curious, I watched the Phase Power gathered near her heart—and Franc's face went as red as a face can go before she slowly, sneakily tried to cover herself.
"Ugh. P-please stop looking..."
"Huh?"
"Looking at my body with Spatial Perception, I mean."
What was she talking about?
"How did you know I was examining you?"
"I just... feel it. I can just feel you looking at my body, Seoha."
She covered herself in embarrassment, so I leapt, kicked off the Space Wall, and came back down. Franc avoided my eyes and squirmed. A body that enormous wriggling with shyness was strangely cute.
"Ah!!"
For an instant a shock like a hammer coming down on my skull swept through me.
So that was why giant Franc had come at me in a blind fury at the start—because she'd known I was examining her body with Spatial Perception? And come to think of it, that bastard Baekcheong had been wary of me from outside my range, too!
I asked while scanning Darky's body from end to end.
"Hey. Darky, you don't feel anything?"
"Huh? Whatcha mean, Boss?"
"...Never mind. Forget it."
So Highest Tier beings couldn't sense it, but Transcendent-grade ones could—and were likely to react, sensitively, and take it as a hostile act?
"Myrddin sensed my Spatial Perception, and Morgan le Fay noticed too. Figures the ones who can detect it are the ones who've gone past ordinary."
"That does seem likely."
I'd thought I could snap the Rogue Imugi, Baekcheong, like a child's wrist. Reality was less kind. If Darky hadn't been there, it would have been mutual destruction.
If Transcendent-grade was already this much, then the Raknur Nuhodi had called powerful—and the Meo Azitos, who'd carved out a name of their own among them—how much stronger were they? If their grunts were High-Tier Variant level, Highest Tier and Transcendent-grade ones probably weren't rare above that. And if every one of those Transcendent-grade bastards was on Baekcheong's level... this was going to be exhausting.
I hadn't told my lovers what Nuhodi had said about the Meo Azitos. Now I was wondering whether I should. Going after them might have to wait until I'd built more strength and proper gear.
...Once I got back, I'd sit down with them and talk it through.
Krr-koong. Rumble...
The sky flashed white, and a peal of thunder rolled out. I glanced up at the downpour hammering the Blue Space Wall as if it meant to punch through, then looked at Franc.
"So you can only use Spatial Perception, and the rest is just a plain... you know?"
I'd nearly let the word Aberrant slip, and barely swallowed it. From the bitter smile she gave, she'd caught what I'd been about to say anyway.
"Yes. Like an Aberrant, my Phase Power is gathered at the center of my body. And."
She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. The Phase Power that had been clustered in a neat little mass rippled, then began to spin hard, the way a Physical Reinforcement user's did.
"When I heighten my emotions, the Phase Power seems to move according to type. Then I can spread it through my whole body, if only a little, like your mana aura—or concentrate it at a single point."
A faint blue light spread from her tightly clenched fist. To anyone else's eyes, that light would probably look like nothing more than a heat haze.
"Oh. Then can't you move it however you want, like Mana Sieve? You could use other types of abilities too, right?"
"Mm. Not quite. When a person moves, they can only move as far as their joints allow, yes? Phase Power seems to work the same way."
"Ah."
Her explanation clicked straight into place. I clicked my tongue at the disappointment, and Franc smiled.
"In your case, Seoha, it's an ability so rare it amounts to one in billions. Something like that could never be common."
The praise left me a little awkward. I scratched the back of my head and got to my feet.
The hurricane born of my rampage was on a course for the Space Wall hut. I couldn't tell whether this was its destination or only a stop along the way, but that thing had to go first. The storm clouds after that.
"I'll go erase the hurricane and come back. Rest here."
"All right. I'll stay and check my abilities. Please be careful."
I waved back at her, took Darky with me, and Space Leapt out of the hut.
Far off, the hurricane churned like a Dragon Fist Gale magnified several hundredfold—a terrifying scale that would have carved catastrophic casualties out of any real-world metropolis.
Hmm. One round of magic artillery into that and I'd have felt refreshed. But I'd promised the Lord of the Great Sea I wouldn't use those, so I'd have to erase it with Mana Cannons and the Space Wall.
I chained Space Leaps toward the hurricane, and sure enough—for all the distance each leap should have eaten—the gap didn't seem to be closing. When I'd had nothing to measure against, I hadn't noticed a thing. With a reference point sitting right there in front of me, I could feel it plainly.
Standing on the Space Wall, bracing against the rough wind and rain, I looked back. The huge hut came into view... and the sense of distance kept flickering. Strange.
I turned and studied the hurricane. Its distance felt ambiguous too. Confirmation, again, that something was scrambling my senses. Space Leaping worked by gauging position through Spatial Perception and moving from there, so once my senses went confused like this, its effectiveness dropped off a cliff. Now that I knew the weakness, I'd have to make time to fix it.
"Darky. Can you see the hurricane and the Space Wall hut clearly right now?"
"Yessir. Huh? Ehh?"
He'd answered simply enough, then looked back and forth between the hurricane and the translucent blue hut and froze, dumbstruck. So it wasn't just me. Darky's senses were being interfered with too.
"F-feels far. An' close, too."
"Yeah, yeah."
Rather than Space Leaping, I should lay the Space Wall down like a road and move along it. If the path I'd taken was marked, I could blunt the confusion at least a little.
Amid the driving wind and rain I focused on keeping my balance, struck out Space Wall, and broke into a run—only for Darky to urgently thump the back of my head and stop me.
"Boss, Boss!! It's curving!"
"Huh? Ehh?"
I looked back. The path I'd made of Space Wall was visibly bending to the right.
"What? I ran straight!"
And the hurricane had somehow ended up on my left!
This time I laid the path toward it first. Six kilometers, straight out, and this time it ran true in a clean line...
"Why is this only sixty meters?!"
My stride was five meters a step. Twelve steps, and the blue path was already at its end. So this really was shrinking my spatial sense to a hundredth?!
"Seems like it's wreckin' your sense of distance!"
If I kept going like this with no countermeasure, I might not make it back to Franc. The fear hit all at once.
Then I'd just do it from here!
I'd meant to get close, stack amber Space Walls, and simply erase the thing, but with interference like this I had no choice. To break it down I'd have to fire a Mana Cannon mk1. Mk2 compressed by will, pushing its disintegrating force to the extreme, so its range was narrow.
Skillfully, perfectly, I condensed four hundred thousand TP according to my will and formed a Mana Cannon mk1.
At that level it ought to disintegrate at least two kilometers of space wholesale. But if I launched it on Spatial Perception, it'd just fly off somewhere wrong again, so I took the overhand pitching stance I'd seen on TV and aimed for the hurricane.
Miss, and I'd throw another.
"Go!"
I switched Mana Sieve over to Physical Reinforcement and hurled it with everything I had. It flew straight for the tornado. I tracked the trajectory and immediately prepared the next one.
Fwoom!!
"Wha—?!"
"Whoa?!"
The detonated Mana Cannon mk1 didn't burst as a flat, disc-shaped black hole. It erupted like a black hole made of light—a circular halo, and around it dark matter being dragged in—and erased a portion of the hurricane.
Darky startled at the sight of it wiping the storm out in that form, and so did I. Originally, mk1 formed a white circle at the center, with a second circle drawn around it as if concentration lines were bursting outward, swallowing everything nearby. The form had changed completely.
After a dazed moment I gauged the blast of the four-hundred-thousand TP shot. The radius wasn't as wide as I'd thought. Not exact, but... a kilometer, maybe?
Mana Cannon mk1's range had increased by a kilometer per five thousand TP. By that math it should have burst out to something like a hundred kilometers.
"Weird. When I fired a twenty-thousand TP Mana Cannon at the sunken lake in Asumpre, the range was four kilometers. Did something change when a Phase Stone formed in my heart...?"
The hurricane was a massive vortex, tens of kilometers across at a rough guess. Tearing away one corner didn't even seem to leave a scratch. It restored its shape in no time, then rumbled and spat lightning along with the thunder.
"Kinda feels like the hurricane's mad."
"The thunder sounds just like a howl, doesn't it?"
I felt a fresh pang of regret over the magic shells and magic artillery the Lord of the Great Sea had restricted. One shot of those and this would have been clean.
...Petty dragon bastard.
I cursed the Lord's stinginess under my breath, divided my TP by amount, and hurled dozens of Mana Cannon mk1s at the hurricane to see how they'd changed.
The one fired at fifty thousand TP had a range of about five kilometers—the widest of the lot. Its shape was exactly the Mana Cannon I remembered. Inject any more than that, though, and the form began to change while the range started to shrink.
So fifty thousand TP gave the widest range and the weakest power. Past that, the more I poured in, the more the range contracted—but from the way the blast's shape changed, I could tell the power was climbing.
Then I threw an mk2, and this one... even with four hundred thousand TP dumped into it, it only nibbled the surface. The range didn't even seem to reach three hundred meters.
The consolation was that the more TP I gathered, the faster it got. Mk2 had the strongest power, so I'd have to split the two according to the situation.
Since I'd condensed a Mana Cannon by will to make mk2, I wondered if the opposite—widening the blast—might also be possible, and tested it. An expanded mk2 was no different from mk1. A bit of a letdown.
The hurricane that had served as my target had had its body torn apart dozens of times, and its force had weakened considerably. Wind and rain that had seemed like a gale past forty meters a second dropped to a breeze, with only the occasional stronger gust.
Shaaaa—
And thanks to that, the rain that had been flying every which way—at least leaving me some visibility—now fell like a curtain and blotted the view out entirely.
"Agh... nothing's working! I just want to be happy, and the world won't even help me out!"
"Boss, Boss. Happiness comes from the chest, so how 'bout you go find yours with Lady Franc?"
I was taking the downpour head-on, feeling like a man training under a waterfall, when Darky came out with something completely out of nowhere. Chest? Happiness?
"What are you talking about?"
"Lady Franc got huge, an' her chest got huge too. You ask her to press 'em together with her arms, then get in between, an' wouldn't you be happy?"
...!!
"You... you're a genius?"
How had he even thought of that? Right. Rather than feeling the soft give of Franc's ample breasts only with my back or my feet, if I felt it with my whole body...!
Just imagining it, endorphins surged with anticipation.
Set on erasing the hurricane and getting back, I couldn't see it, and Spatial Perception couldn't detect it either—but I used the thunder that occasionally rolled in from far off as my marker and fired without pause in the direction I'd been launching.
"Hraaaaah!!"
Fwoom, fwoom... Boom! Kra-koong!! Rumble...
Mana Cannons detonated without end, and thunderclaps burst along with them. I didn't stop. Some eight hundred shots, fired wild over thirty minutes, and the wind died completely.
At this rate, the hurricane ought to be gone.
Next, the storm clouds.
I'd gotten carried away and spent Mana Cannons recklessly, and my TP had dropped hard. I turned back toward the Space Wall hut where Franc was waiting, figuring I'd rest while I was at it. Absolutely not because of her chest.
A breast sandwich. Or a breast bed. Or breasts...
Heh heh.