Episode 37: Day Unknown, Phase World (6)
I'd confirmed everything that needed confirming. Time to make the spear-thrower and the spears — craft as many as I could out here, then close in.
I undid my belt and bit off a big mouthful of what little remained, less than half. It was only two meals' worth, but with a fight ahead I meant to lock in the calories. I kept chewing leaves as well, and cut the branches with care so I wouldn't make any loud noise.
Using the sharp tip of the horn awl — already honed a little against the claw-spear — as a blade, I gathered the branches I'd marked in advance into one place. Even while I worked I kept my eyes on the island, and started building the spear-thrower and the throwing spears.
Hmm. From the wood on this tree, I can get twelve spears.
I'd made a spear-thrower once before, and with the strength I'd gained from controlling Phase Power, I finished one in twenty minutes. After that I reached for the branches, stripped them, straightened them into clean lines, and sharpened the tips into spears, never once letting my watch on the island lapse.
Then my gaze drifted to Franc.
She seemed determined not to get in my way, sitting at ease beside me and simply watching. Instinct dragged my eyes toward the gap between her slightly parted thighs — that axe-mark of a cleft — but I yanked my attention back to the island at once.
Right now I was winning the fight against instinct so I could stay alive. What worried me was what would happen once I made it back to reality.
...This is a real worry, damn it! If Franc stays beside me the whole time, I won't even be able to jerk off!
What am I supposed to do? I like her enough to want her with me from here on out, sure. But those medical magazines Dad was always reading said it isn't healthy to suppress your sex drive unconditionally.
Every time Franc shifted, I caught her secret places with a hawk's eye — and somewhere in the middle of all that, I finished twelve throwing spears.
I ought to test-fire one, right? I stood, fitted a spear to the thrower, and took my stance, aiming at the trunk of a tree roughly three hundred meters off.
I drew a deep breath and set my Phase Power spinning. A trickle of it suddenly gathered in my eyes, and the target snapped closer, as if I were looking through a telescope.
Oh — sniper mode! That's a function too? Well, spinning Phase Power raises physical ability, so of course channeling it into the eyes would sharpen my vision.
I breathed slowly, following the throwing guideline, metering the force... Huh? Why does the aim point keep wobbling like this? I'm locking my arm down as hard as I can.
I was hesitating on the edge of the throw when Franc stepped into my line of sight and showed me herself holding her breath — hard. Then she took a throwing stance of her own. Was she telling me to stop breathing and aim?
...Ooh. The moment I hold my breath, the wobble in the aim point shrinks like crazy. Good. Deep breath, hold it... and—
Thwack! ...Crack!
"Whoa."
This throwing guideline is seriously broken, isn't it?
It hit the knot I'd aimed for on the first try. I clicked my tongue at the spear as it snapped under the impact and fell. Franc, who'd been watching beside me with bated breath, had her mouth hanging open — even from her side, it must have been a startling result.
I threw twice more, punching clean through the branch I'd targeted and even a leaf, then turned to Franc and said it, smug as anything.
"This ought to be plenty against a Lowest-Rank Variant, right?"
Franc smiled, soft and bright.
I'd made every throwing spear this tree could give me, so I meant to take the nine and move on to the next tree — but the moment I tried, I realized I had no decent way to carry them. Nine spears, each thick and long enough that I could barely grip one in a hand. Hugging them in both arms would be hard enough, and even if I managed it, they'd get in the way of swimming.
I had to take them with me somehow, so I stripped off my school-uniform jacket, bundled the wooden spears in it, and slung the bundle over my shoulder. It did the job of a strap, more or less.
A really long cord would be nice. Should I file a suggestion that they add cords to the uniforms, for the sake of everyone who'll be forcibly summoned to the Phase World after me?
My high school had nine hundred students, and once you counted faculty and hired staff, it was well over a thousand. Fold in everyone twelve and older but under thirty-five across the same foundation's elementary school, middle school, and university, and you were well past three thousand. They said that, on average, one person in a thousand got dragged into the Phase World once every hundred days — so from the foundation alone, at least three people every hundred days. Nine a year. A cord would help those people enormously.
Turning that idle thought over, I shouldered the wooden spears with one hand, gripped a log with the other, and swam. Sure enough, the weight and bulk of the bundle fought me the whole way. It was brutal.
Mmm. I still need to make forty more... Make them a few at a time and ferry them over?
A hassle. But that was the way.
The spot I'd chosen to throw from was a tall tree growing where the water ran four meters deep, about three hundred meters from the island. From up in that tree, Telescopic Vision would put the whole island inside my range, and the height made it a decent perch for sniping with the spear-thrower.
At first I'd planned to swim them over three or four at a time, but the splash of my flailing kicks was too loud, so I held my breath, moved underwater, and shifted every wooden spear in one go. I could do it because Detection let me read the terrain around me. Underwater, even with your eyes open, a meter ahead is usually the best you get.
And I learned something while moving them. Hold your breath and spin your Phase Power, and your dive time stretches. Of course, the longer I stayed under, the steeper the drop in Phase Power — but Phase Power that let me hold my breath underwater for over a minute with no special training was honestly incredible.
The Grand Theory of Phase Power Omnipotence.
Anyway, the water between the tree and the island was a full four meters deep, so any Aberrant that couldn't fly wouldn't dare come close on a whim. If one paddled over with that clumsy swimming of theirs, I'd be grateful. Swimming hard toward me was basically shouting, please hit me.
Phew. Hoo. Hah.
Out of breath, I set the pile of wooden spears down, surfaced to catch my wind, and dove again. Then I picked the spears up and walked. The weight of them let me stroll the bottom in comfort. That was nice.
Walking the bottom had burned a fair amount of Phase Power — enough that I'd need an hour's rest — so I switched on Telescopic Vision and surveyed the island. So far, it didn't look like the Aberrants had noticed me. Rest a bit, refill what I'd spent, and get ready for the fight.
I reached the tree I'd marked, climbed to the spot I'd already picked out, and the island and all nineteen Aberrants came into view at once. While I rested, I checked their Phase Power.
The lowest was a Large Field Rat Aberrant, at 3.6. One of the Two-Tailed Foxes sat at 6.4.
...What? Why is their Phase Power that low?
I swept the rest of them again with Telescopic Vision. Of the nineteen, the one with the most Phase Power was a Headless Mantis — the bigger one at 68, the slightly smaller one at 56.
From what number do they start counting as Low-Rank? For something I'd call a Low-Rank Variant, the Phase Power seems a bit low... I'm over 400 myself, but I've got so many variables that comparing them to me doesn't make any sense.
I chewed. I undid the belt, tore off another mouthful, and plucked moisture-leaves, quietly topping up calories and water.
Their Phase Power all looked strangely low, but an Aberrant was still an Aberrant. My heart had been pounding since earlier, what with the fight ahead. I tried to calm it and think through how the battle might unfold, then gave up.
I like to think I know my own limits, at least a little. If I go and wring my brain out making a plan, and then things don't go according to that plan, the odds I'll panic and botch the whole thing are over ninety percent. Still, I ought to think a little, so first I'd set a priority on what to kill.
Forty-eight wooden spears. Nineteen Aberrants. Leave them alone and they'd eat each other until only one Headless Mantis remained. But my hunch was telling me I couldn't just let them devour one another like that.
This hunch of mine does whatever it damn well pleases.
The one time it had actually helped was when I went to giant Franc's corpse. Otherwise — when I ran into the Rogue Imugi, or the Supergiant Turtle, or when Franc was inside the Soul Stone — it hadn't so much as twitched its nose. And now it was nagging me to hurry up and kill them? What was that about?
Anyway, whether I killed them or they ate each other, Phase Power would spill out every time an Aberrant died. So wouldn't killing them the hard way be pointless? Something might absorb that spilled Phase Power and evolve into yet another Low-Rank Variant.
...Is something really going to get furious mid-brawl and — pop! — evolve? They say the gap between Lowest-Rank and Low-Rank is heaven and earth.
I was a little scared. But looking at Franc beside me, watching the Aberrants with a serious face, steadied me.
That was when my Phase Power finished recovering.
Time to start.
I climbed onto a branch that forked out like a slingshot and gave it a testing stamp with my foot. It didn't so much as budge under my weight — solid. The stance worked too: left foot forward, right foot back bracing me, good for launching a spear with my right arm.
The Aberrants were arranged clockwise from the Long-snouted Lean Wolf nearest where I stood: Two-Tailed Fox, Large Field Rat, Land Penguin, and up in a tree a Chicken Aberrant, with another wolf beside it again. All of them stationed along the water's edge.
The distance between me and the Long-snouted Lean Wolf was about a hundred and forty meters. The farthest, the Chicken Aberrant, was around two hundred and fifty. Three practice shots, a hundred percent hit rate. Anything shorter than that would be a walkover.
I set my palm into the groove I'd carved so the thrower wouldn't slip, and loaded one spear. My first target: the most ordinary of them, the Long-snouted Lean Wolf. Personally, those bastards were the ones I liked least.
Suddenly I remembered the turtle with the mysterious voice, telling me not to hate.
Mmm. This isn't hate. This is so I can live.
Rationally, too, they were the closest, mid-range in Phase Power, and unlikely to be fast — the best subjects for a probe. More than that, I'd already steeled myself, and switching targets now felt awkward. So I'd just shoot.
Of the three Long-snouted Lean Wolves left, two were sprawled out, panting and wary of the other Aberrants, and one was drinking. Right beside it, some unidentifiable bones and chunks of meat were floating. Was that water even safe to drink? It had to be rotting.
I suddenly remembered giant Franc's corpse, still intact after two days, and the giant mole's carcass. They were Aberrants. Their digestion was probably nothing like a human's.
Any more stray thoughts and I'd lose focus, so I drew the spear-thrower in my hand all the way back past my shoulder. Target: the one among the three showing me the back of its head, lying prone!
I stared down the target and spun a small amount of Phase Power into my eyes. My vision magnified, and the back of the wolf's skull swelled large. Then I adjusted the red line starting from my right arm until it sat on the wolf's head.
Sights aligned.
I spun Phase Power through the right arm gripping the thrower and put strength into it. Tendons stood out along my forearm. Then, just as Analysis directed, I took the optimal posture for the throw and sent Phase Power through the deltoid, the brachialis, and the forearm muscles, out through the wrist into the hand. The instant it came back, I swung arm and torso together with everything I had and let fly.
Shweeek— crack!!
With a rough sound of wind being split, the wooden spear screamed along the red line marked in my vision at a terrifying speed, smashed the Long-snouted Lean Wolf's skull, and buried itself in the ground beyond.
Nice!
All I'd done was raise my strength with Phase Power, and I'd shattered that hard skull in one blow! If it could smash a Long-snouted Lean Wolf's skull like that, the others would take a spear clean through the torso. Good. Confidence surged.
I watched the wolf that had died in a single hit for a moment, then Franc, who'd turned her head toward me without bothering to hide the admiration in her eyes. I sent her a confident smile and turned my gaze back to the island.
At the sight of the Long-snouted Lean Wolf dead on the spot without even a scream, the other two wolves and a Two-Tailed Fox not far off flinched and locked their eyes on the headless corpse. The wolves that had been standing on either side of the target — which had shuddered, then gone limp after its head burst — couldn't seem to grasp what had happened. They sniffed at the smell of brains sprayed everywhere and looked utterly bewildered.
Seeing them go on alert, I ducked and hid among the leaves, quietly watching what unfolded on the island. Franc's body wouldn't be visible, so she didn't need to hide with me.
Meanwhile the two Long-snouted Lean Wolves and the Two-Tailed Fox scanned their surroundings, but none of them seemed smart enough to backtrack the spear's trajectory. The Large Field Rat I'd met up on the cliff had sniffed and sensed Phase Power and all of that.
Funny thing, though. The two remaining Long-snouted Lean Wolves started glaring at the Aberrants around them and growling. They seemed to think one of the nearby Aberrants had killed their packmate.
Can't you see the wooden spear stuck in the ground right in front of you? It ought to be soaked in my scent.
Ah. It was wet, so the smell must have washed off.
A good idea struck me.
I focused, spun Analysis — which had dropped to 126 percent — and used Search to comb every bit of the small brains inside the skulls of two Large Field Rat Aberrants.
Screeeeeech!!
Skreeee!
Got it! The same reaction as the one I'd met on the cliff!
The effect was almost too immediate, though. Well, if it worked, it worked. I scanned the brain of one Land Penguin and one Two-Tailed Fox too!
Kyaaaang!!
Rauuuuung!!!
The Two-Tailed Fox howled in a voice thick with rage, and the Land Penguin spread some bizarre cry while flapping its oar-like arms. Jaws gaping, whole bodies shaking violently — all of them filling up with fury. Rather than searching for whoever was firing Phase Power into their heads, they seemed to be getting set off by each other's howls.
Kwong-wong-wong, keong-keong!
Skreek! Screeeeeech! Skriiak!
The Headless Mantis twitched, its scythe-like forelegs quivering. Instinct must have caught the killing intent.
A-olk-olk-ong-olk!
I kept sweeping their brains with Search, peering through them cell by cell as if I were using Clairvoyance, and one of the Two-Tailed Foxes started foaming at the mouth, whipping its head around, and barking like mad. Its companion froze in confusion, clearly unable to understand why this one had suddenly gone off — and then one Two-Tailed Fox charged straight at a Long-snouted Lean Wolf.
At that, the remaining fox, flustered, chased after it on impulse. Good call. Stay alone and all you'd do was hasten your own death.
Skreeeeeeek!!
Chijijijijik!!
One of the Large Field Rats, its brain under stimulation, charged a Land Penguin too. Once those two ran, the rest followed, rushing the Land Penguins. At the sight of the rats coming at them, the Land Penguins flapped both arms and charged right back.
"A complete success, huh?"
Watching the Aberrants suddenly split into two camps and fight among themselves, Franc looked dumbfounded. She turned to me with a look that asked me to explain what on earth was going on.
"On the first day I climbed the cliff, I found a Long-snouted Lean Wolf that was alone. I was scanning its whole body with Search when I happened to scan its brain, and I remembered how it had started barking like crazy in that instant. So I figured if I used it on these ones, I might piss them off enough to lose their reason and set them on each other — that's why I scanned their brains. And the result, as you can see, is a success?"
She widened both eyes at my story, impressed. The look said I was something, setting Aberrants on each other.
Ahem. A little embarrassing.
I turned my gaze back to the island and read the situation through Telescopic Vision.
The Long-snouted Lean Wolves were showing explosive power as they met the charging Two-Tailed Foxes. The foxes bunched the tips of their tails to points and stabbed this way and that; the wolves batted the tails aside with their hard heads and lunged in, and the foxes — who only knew how to stab — were on the defensive in an instant. But they were so fast that the wolves' bites kept missing, the foxes' attacks weren't landing on the wolves either, and it was settling into a long fight.
On the other side of the island, four Large Field Rats and three Land Penguins were fighting. Of the six Large Field Rats, two already had their spines shattered and were sprawled off to one side, dying, while four circled the three Land Penguins, nicking them little by little. The two with shattered spines were probably the ones I'd enraged by stimulating their brains. That was the result of charging in thoughtlessly, blind with fury.
The three black chickens kept cocking their heads, looking down at the fight that had suddenly broken out below.
Can't read the situation? Then I'll make it readable for you!
I carefully loaded a wooden spear onto the thrower I was holding, took my stance, and aimed at the one of the three chickens whose body was fully exposed.
Suuuuup.
I inhaled and held it, concentrating. The red line stabbed into the chicken's torso like a laser sight. I adjusted posture and force so the line — a curve close to straight — would punch through the body, drew my right arm far back again, and loaded it with strength.
Then I threw with everything I had, using Phase Power!
"Hup!"
Fweeeeng— thwuck!!
The spear tore the air at lightning speed, blew the black chicken to pieces, punched through the leaves behind it, and vanished into the distance.
Kooooook?!
Kikook?!
The remaining two startled at the sight of their companion dissolving into a spray of feathers and meat, flapping their wings and beating them in alarm. My arm was starting to ache.
I spun Phase Power to recover the muscle fatigue with natural healing, and began stimulating the brains of the flapping, thrashing chickens as hard as I could with Search.
Cock-a-doodle-dooooo!!!!
Kyaaaaaaek!!
The two Chicken Aberrants let out screams like pigs squealing, then, as if they'd lost their minds, kicked off the tree and dropped toward the Headless Mantis.
"Hah. Look at that."
Wings spread wide like a gliding eagle, the two chickens — Chicken Aberrants, the dinner kind — charged the Headless Mantis recklessly. Should I call that flying, or gliding? Even as a glide the speed wasn't all that fast, and the claws thrust forward weren't particularly sharp. No great reason to be wary of that kind of Aberrant.
Anyway, the two glided thirty-three meters and thrust their claws with all their might at the Headless Mantis's back.
Skakak! Pasasak!!
The smaller Headless Mantis turned quietly and swung the scythes on both arms twice each — four swings — and in that instant the chickens became eight pieces, scattering blood and entrails in every direction as they fell.
"Whoa. The Headless Mantis's movement is no joke."
Right after that, both Headless Mantises seemed stirred by the combat instinct, and each charged — one toward the Large Field Rats and penguins, the other toward the Long-snouted Lean Wolves and Two-Tailed Foxes. For a second I thought they were coming my way, and my heart clenched. They didn't fly over. Lucky.
The moment the Headless Mantises barged in, as if they'd promised it, the ones that had been bleeding and fighting until a moment ago ignored their previous opponents and threw themselves at the mantises like mad dogs.
Figures. That mantis is the biggest and ought to be the strongest, and I thought it was strange the other Aberrants were still alive. They must gang up whenever it comes at them.
I'd thought they were just stupid. Unexpected.
The Headless Mantis cut on a diagonal with its scythe-like forelegs and stabbed, attacking the Aberrants that lunged in, while its other six legs thrust like spears at anything that approached. A fierce fight. Impressive. Even fighting one against many, the movement flowed like water. The other Aberrants were drenched in blood in an instant. If I just watched, the Headless Mantis would kill every last one of them.
Before the fight I'd ranked, in my head, the ones that would be awkward to face, and sure enough this was the combat power of the one I'd felt was the greatest threat. It had looked like a Low-Rank Variant, and those forelegs didn't look like something a crudely made weapon could block.
I knew perfectly well I was clumsy with my body. I didn't think I could take that thing with a single horn awl. I'd figured out how to temporarily reinforce my body with Phase Power, but next to a Headless Mantis — the kind of thing they called an instinctive fighter — I'd be less than a child.
In that moment the Headless Mantis's back split in half, and something like dragonfly wings spread wide and buzzed.
"......"
The instant I saw those wings, a sense of crisis started flashing its warning lights. S-so it could fly after all. Quick on its feet, and it could fly — I had to kill it now, while things were chaotic. Whether the others absorbed the mantis's Phase Power and evolved was secondary.
They were distracted by the fight. I stood, loaded a spear onto the thrower, settled my stance, and sent one wooden spear at the Headless Mantis with the higher Phase Power.
Fweeng— zak!
The Headless Mantis must have sensed the wooden spear flying at its belly from the left. It twisted its upper body left and swung its right foreleg, shearing the spear apart.
Insane! It cut that down?! That had to be at least the speed of an arrow from an Olympic compound bow!
But because it had twisted hard to cut the spear, a gap opened, and two Large Field Rats climbed onto the Headless Mantis's belly and started tearing into it.
Kiiiiiii!
Screaming, it flapped four translucent wings — bigger than the Large Field Rats — and its shell like mad, and the two rats were struck by the wings and dropped to the ground. At the same time, the Headless Mantis's long, awl-like hind leg punched through one Large Field Rat's torso.
Skreek! Skrik!
"Tch!"
Better to fire several in quick succession than one at a time!
I grabbed two spears, loaded one immediately, and threw it at the belly again.
Fwing— skak! Fweeng! Sseok!
"Oh, come on!"
Ping, fwing, ping! Sseok, ssak, sseukak!
I followed with three more without pause, but the Headless Mantis had judged the throwing spears a greater threat than the other Aberrants, and knocked them aside first. In that gap, while both of its forelegs were occupied, three Land Penguins — blood streaming from countless cuts — leapt as if flying and crushed the Headless Mantis under their bodies!
Rauuuung!
Rauooong!
Kiiiit!!
Gwiiii!
Even so, the Headless Mantis split one Land Penguin's belly about halfway open. But with the remaining two pinning it under their heavy weight, it seemed to have no way to resist. A Land Penguin's weight looked like more than that thin body could bear.
Kiiiik!
Skreek!
At the same time, the two remaining Large Field Rats clung to the Headless Mantis's forelegs, gnawing to sever the arms, and the two Land Penguins, weight loaded on its torso and belly, pecked at its back with their beaks while swinging both wings to beat it. A Headless Mantis that couldn't move, only take the beating.
"That side's done. One left!"
The smaller Headless Mantis's situation was dire. One Long-snouted Lean Wolf was dead, its waist snapped in two, and the other had blocked so many attacks with its head that the hide of its skull had been cut, peeled, and torn dozens of times, the bone exposed, as it dodged the Headless Mantis's onslaught. One eye had popped out. A wretched sight.
Kiing! King!
Compared to that, the two Two-Tailed Foxes were fine. They darted nimbly between the Headless Mantis's legs, whipping their tails hard and aiming for its belly, but the spear-like legs kept intercepting, and the attacks failed again and again.
I watched the Headless Mantis's movements, which looked ready to split the two foxes and one wolf apart at any moment. Thinking of the big one, which had sheared apart an honestly thrown wooden spear without much trouble, I'd need to throw them in rapid succession at the highest speed I could. Fortunately, I had plenty of spears.
I controlled my Phase Power, spinning it through arm and shoulder, and fitted spears to the thrower at high speed, launching them one after another.
Fwing, ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-fwing!
Aim can be a little off — doesn't matter! Land even one!
The wooden spears tore the air and flew in a stream toward the smaller Headless Mantis. I'd meant to use every remaining spear, and as I kept launching them, the smaller Headless Mantis — which had been steadily alternating attack and evasion, suppressing the Aberrants — started twitching in broken movements, like it had a tic. Then it focused on the wooden spears pouring down like rain, dodging or batting them aside with its forelegs.
The legs that had been moving so nimbly kept hitching every time they cut a spear, and the two Two-Tailed Foxes seemed to take that as their chance. They circled to the opposite side from the incoming spears, stabbed the belly wildly with their tails, and bit the Headless Mantis's legs, trying to sever them in a desperate assault.
The Long-snouted Lean Wolf, its scalp nearly entirely peeled away, seemed to have run out of strength and collapsed. I spared it a glance, then kept launching spears without pause.
When I'd fired the thirteenth spear, the Headless Mantis cut down the seventh wooden spear, then turned its body to dodge the eighth coming at its belly — but in that instant two legs the Two-Tails had been chewing snapped, and it toppled sideways. The eighth and ninth wooden spears missed over it, but the tenth, coming right after, sank into the torso that lay on its side thrashing, as if sucked in. The twelfth and thirteenth that followed also missed, but the fourteenth drove across the belly and pinned it completely to the ground.
Papak! Bababak, gakak.
Chiririririr!!
Ranguuuung! Aooooong!
As the Headless Mantis scraped the ground madly with its forelegs and its intact legs, the Two-Tailed Foxes rushed in from behind and attacked it one-sidedly. One bit the mantis's arm and shook its head wildly. The other stabbed again and again with its tail at the joint between torso and belly.
The moment I judged the smaller Headless Mantis dealt with, I turned my eyes to the next target.
Good! The chickens, with their chance of flight, are dead, and third priority is those four Two-Tailed Foxes, quick on their feet!
I fixed my eyes on one Two-Tailed Fox shaking its head frantically, trying to tear off the Headless Mantis's foreleg. That one was at 6.4 Phase Power, the highest of the Aberrants on the island—
Huh? Twenty-two?!
A chill shot up my spine. I focused as hard as I could and threw.
Swaaaaaek!!
The instant I fired, I raked its brain wildly with Search. The thing must have felt pain from the movement of Phase Power inside its skull, because it tried to flip itself over. And in that instant, the spear arrived.
Thwuck!
Kyaaaaaang!!
The spear punched through the fox's small torso and still had force left, burying itself in the Headless Mantis's body. Right beside it, its companion was skewered on a wooden spear, screaming and thrashing, blood pouring from its muzzle — and the startled Two-Tailed Fox ran like mad and leapt into the water.
Splash!
Good. Go far enough that you can't absorb the Phase Power.
If it had run toward me, I would have shot it dead on the spot with a wooden spear. It went the other way, so I decided to let it go. Even with a firing guideline, once you factored in water resistance, hitting a fox from over three hundred meters would be hard.
I turned my gaze back to the big Headless Mantis. It was dead, breath gone, and one Land Penguin and two Large Field Rats were at it again, trading blows. One Land Penguin, belly laid open in a huge wound, was crawling back, spilling blood and entrails on the ground. That one would die even if I left it.
So — two penguins and two rats, beating on each other. Watching the Phase Power the dead Headless Mantis had exhaled flow into the four bodies, the sense of danger came back.
I took the two remaining wooden spears and threw one each at the two Land Penguins, whose Phase Power had climbed to 24, then combed both their brains with Search as if I were hunting lice. They shuddered, then were skewered by the incoming wooden spears and sprawled.
Raaaang! Gugugeugeuk.
I ignored the Land Penguins, pierced and trembling, letting out eerie breaths, and turned to the Large Field Rats. The two of them finally looked my way and squeaked like mad. But their Phase Power was rising at a speed you could see with the naked eye.
Throw now and they'll dodge.
I took my throwing stance, then swept their small brains hard with Search. They couldn't even cry out. Their bodies shook violently — not so much from pain as from a fury beyond words. And two wooden spears left my hand and flew.
Swaaaaaaek!
Only when two more Aberrant corpses lay there with their skulls smashed by wooden spears did the fight end.