Chapter 376: Acquiring Subspace (1)
Rawar Naidu—a B-Class subspace ability user whose combat prowess might as well not have existed.
I had barely sat down in my office when she came in, turned out like a soldier in desert camouflage.
Rising from the sofa, I swept her Phase Power with Spatial Perception on the spot, and—
"Huh."
"...?"
Ah. That slipped out.
The woman who had entered with Hyeryeong's aunt—brown bob, brown skin, features distinctly Western—looked puzzled at the sound I'd made, then wiped the expression from her face and bent at the waist in a stiff bow.
"Thank you for the invitation, Master of Grand Blue."
"Your English is fluent. I hope the trip gave you no trouble?"
"None."
Rawar's voice sat a little low, and from the bluntness of it to the uniform, the rigid face, and the squared-off posture, she was a soldier through and through. She seemed strangely tense, so I ran one more short, quick scan of her whole body with Spatial Perception before I spoke.
"B-Class. Your Phase Power comes to exactly three and a half million."
"...?!"
I said it while staring straight through the Phase Power pattern gathered in her head—in her brain and her eyes, specifically—a pattern I had never seen before, and Rawar flinched and went still. Her face asked how I could possibly know, with a thread of fear worked through it. I gestured at the sofa.
"Sit, first."
Even under the smile I put on to seem friendly, Rawar didn't drop her guard; she lowered herself carefully, and Hyeryeong's aunt followed, taking a seat and turning toward me.
Rawar was a mature woman of thirty-two, and not even the bulk of a military uniform could hide an explosive figure. A black bindi was set between her brows. What was a bindi supposed to mean, again... Married women wore them, and black was for widows, wasn't it...
"I would like to know why you wished to see me."
I was still turning that over when Rawar, face set, put the question to me first. No ritual small talk to ease the air—straight to the point. I glanced at Hyeryeong's aunt and found a faintly troubled look on her face. Troubled... Did that mean Rawar wasn't a fit for Grand Blue, or that her response wasn't a friendly one?
"Ms. Rawar Naidu, I had personally hoped to meet you after you'd looked around the Grand Blue Building, but you seem to be a straightforward sort, so I'll speak plainly."
I could see the secretary coming up with refreshments, so I broke off; a moment later the elevator chimed and she wheeled a cart in. Eyes lowered, movements exact, she set out the tea and sweets with care and withdrew without a sound. Rawar never so much as glanced at her. Her gaze stayed fixed on me alone, steady as a plumb line.
"I invited you because I want you in our Grand Blue."
"...What happens if I refuse?"
She had put the word refuse in her mouth. I studied her color—the set expression, and something that looked like anxiety. Or fear.
"You go back where you came from. Nothing more. My reputation seems to have traveled in a rather ugly direction, but as a rule, so long as a person does no harm to me or to what's mine, I count myself among the harmless."
I thought it a decent answer, and still her face stayed hard... So that wasn't what had her on edge? If it wasn't my shitty reputation that frightened her, then what did?
Her color hadn't changed at all, and I suddenly remembered what Hyeryeong's aunt had told me—that Rawar was on bad terms with the boss of her raid team. In the meantime, Rawar made her refusal plain.
"...I cannot leave Shinar. I am grateful for the offer, but I decline."
She lowered her head slowly and raised it again. I ran Spatial Perception over her once more, taking my time. No device on her, nothing mechanical. Her Phase Power was gathered only in the head, nowhere else. For belongings she had a few cards and some cash, a wallet holding a photograph with a man I took for a boyfriend, a comb, and a handful of ties in a pocket, the sort you'd use to put your hair up.
"I heard you've fallen out with the boss of your raid team. Is that the reason?"
Her face darkened in an instant. So that was it. Through Spatial Perception I caught Hyeryeong's aunt letting out a small sigh she meant no one to see. She had known already.
"Shinar's boss is a close friend of my husband, and my creditor. With all of my family still in India, I cannot join Grand Blue. I ask you to accept that I came in person to pay my respects, as courtesy for the invitation you sent."
"If you want, I can pay the debt off for you. If your family wishes to emigrate, Grand Blue can handle the procedures in their place. Should the situation be an unjust one, we can help you however you need—I'd be grateful if you understood that."
"...My family and I are Indian."
Ah. Dead on arrival. I'd had a feeling it wouldn't take, but offering once more seemed the mannerly thing, so I tried again.
"I'm a little ashamed to put it this way, but the woman who will be my mother-in-law is the president of this country. If you wished to naturalize, I could smooth the way as much as you like... though that doesn't seem to be what you want, either."
"I'm sorry..."
She did hesitate when I pressed, but every answer that came back was a no.
Nnngh. A bit of a waste. Looking at her posture, her manner, she acknowledged my authority without a trace of servility—a nature that would break before it bent—and she was very much to my liking...
"All right. You've refused, and it wouldn't be polite to keep urging you."
If she didn't want to, there was nothing for it. The temptation to simply lay a mental manipulation over her was real enough, but I shook my head and cast it off.
I stood, a little regretful, and Hyeryeong's aunt—looking faintly deflated—rose with me, and so did Rawar, her face still dark. Rawar made it plain she meant to leave at once. I suggested that while a plane ticket was arranged, she might look around the inside of Grand Blue.
If she walks out right now, I'm in trouble. I have to see her use that subspace, one way or another.
Perhaps she felt it would look wrong to refuse even this; Rawar accepted the guide without protest, and Hyeryeong's aunt and I took her to where the spoils were kept. While she was distracted by the byproducts of an imugi, that great serpent, and her attention on us went slack, Hyeryeong's aunt apologized.
"I'm sorry."
"You knew all of it, didn't you, Aunt?"
"Yes... The debt she spoke of was a debt of the heart from the start. There was nothing to be done about it."
"What happened between her and that raid team's boss? Ms. Naidu's face stayed dark the whole time."
Rawar's face, its Western lines cut sharp, was dark even now, as if a storm cloud hung over it. Short of a long, hard grinding of the heart, an expression doesn't die like that.
"When we made our offer, Shinar's boss, Rikshasha Sarai, told us coldly to do as we pleased, so I looked into a few things..."
Hyeryeong's aunt let the words trail, brow drawn tight, then went on with her eyebrows pinched.
"During an exploration, there was an incident in which Boss Rikshasha Sarai's husband and Ms. Rawar Naidu's husband died in the same place. At the time, Shinar's boss had not entered the Phase World, on account of her duties, and Ms. Naidu had formed a team with the two of them and gone in."
"...And this Rikshasha Sarai laid that at Ms. Naidu's feet, and Ms. Naidu simply swallowed it?"
"Taking together everything the Intelligence Division provided, that does appear to be the truth. During the exploration, because of a reckless proposal of hers..."
"I don't need the details. She isn't going to be one of mine, and I'd rather not fuss over it. Anyway, if she's carrying a debt of the heart that can't be settled, nothing I do will work."
Hyeryeong's aunt had been watching Rawar's back with a slightly uncomfortable look. She heaved a deep sigh and apologized again.
"I was still searching for some way to win her over when she arrived earlier than I expected... I'm sorry I couldn't tell you beforehand."
I watched Rawar's back as she looked over the byproducts of rare aberrants in the spoils room, then waved Hyeryeong's aunt's words off.
"Don't trouble yourself over it. It would have been nice to have her, but it doesn't matter if we don't. We've managed well enough so far, haven't we?"
I hadn't made her one of mine, but the original purpose still had to be met.
I went over to her, told her I had a great deal of interest in the subspace ability she possessed, and asked whether I might watch her put something in and take it out. I had been ready, if she asked why I was curious, to say I had never once seen a subspace ability and wondered what it was like—but it seemed more people than I'd thought had been curious about subspace abilities before me. With the face of someone well used to that reaction, Rawar gave a light nod and showed me an old olive-drab four-wheel-drive jeep appearing out of empty air, then going back in.
It simply manifested in midair, and then—before I could so much as blink—vanished from in front of my eyes. Every time she used the ability, Phase Power compressed hard around the bindi between her brows and spread outward like shafts of light, and the instant I saw it I had no idea of the principle or the method, and still a strong certainty hit me that I could use it too. Was this another ability bound up with space?
After the demonstration I showed her a few particular places in Grand Blue—the treasure vault where the Restoration Wardrobe was kept, the warehouses of Business Support Buildings 1 and 2, heaped with mountains of every kind of byproduct—then thanked her for coming in person and gave her, as a gift, two Lapolis flowers, which bloom only in the Phase World.
They were expensive flowers, with an automatic sterilizing function, a freshening effect, and a fragrance that cleared the head when you breathed it in. For a woman whose heart had been worn so thin, they ought to do some good. I watched Rawar, grateful for the gift, leave with Hyeryeong's aunt, and then I unfolded a Space Leap to the house in Shinchon-dong.
I can look at other people's ability patterns and copy them, and so use Physical Reinforcement, Elemental, and Healing/Recovery—but that doesn't mean I can wield an Elemental user's fire, water, wind, or earth, nor light and darkness, nor lightning.
Physical Reinforcement is no different. I only watch how Phase Power moves inside a Physical Reinforcement user's body and imitate it for a similar effect. I can't use techniques like Hwayeon's, strengthening regeneration, or resistance to disease and poison.
Healing/Recovery is the same. I mimic the way a Healing/Recovery user employs their ability and get Healing Touch and Healing Wave out of it, but I can't use their skills for curing disease, or for purification.
Healing Wave does have a function for treating illness, but to be precise it isn't so much treatment, or healing, as the feeling of putting things back into a sound state. As if time had been rewound. There is, though, a technique for releasing Phase Power outside the body and cutting harmful effects off before they can land.
Anyway—the moment I saw Rawar storing something in her subspace, I felt that this was one of the space-related abilities I already possessed.
Eager to test it, I got back and sprawled out in the living room, and Franc, mid-spar with Miho, flicked a glance my way. In that gap Miho tried to shoot up between her legs, and Franc clipped her with a light knee and sent her flying.
"Kweeeek~!"
A bright chime, then a rattling crash. Miho pinwheeled through the air, took a pounding from the arrows of light that chased her, and went down; she bounced across the floor like a rubber ball, tottered as if dizzy, and flopped out flat as a frog.
"Ugegek, kyak!"
"Miho, Hiarid. Let us rest a moment."
Feeling Franc approach after calling the break, I drew a deep breath, settled my breathing, and focused. Watching the inside of my body with Spatial Perception, I moved my Phase Power and drew it up toward my head.
"Whyyy?"
Mm... If I shifted all the Phase Power in my body into my head, it didn't seem as though it would all fit.
"It seems Seoha means to imprint an ability. He must concentrate. It would hardly do for us to be noisy at his side, would it?"
"An awakening?!"
"Oi. Imprinting, she said! Imprinting!"
First I had to reproduce the exact conditions of when Rawar used her subspace ability, which meant driving as much Phase Power into my head as I could.
"Hush..."
"Shh!"
I ignored the restless mood around me and moved the Phase Power spread through my whole body, and it began to huddle cozily around my heart and the Phase Stone wrapped over it.
Not the heart. The head.
I did my best to show it the way with the Mana Sieve, but the little things that had been docile enough until now were strangely disobedient today. Told out of nowhere to gather in the head, they gave off a feeling of pure dislike, as if to say, Why are you telling us to gather in that place where the water's bad?
...It had been a very long time, not since the first round, that I'd felt the will in my Phase Power. Bad water... It felt like having it confirmed all over again that my head wasn't up to much, and that made me a little sad.
Like it or not, I kept urging them on with the Mana Sieve, and they dragged themselves over the way a man trails after his girlfriend's shopping—limp, drooping—and settled into my head one by one. After several minutes of coaxing and sweet-talking, I had gathered the Phase Power into my head, only for it to pack not just my head but my neck as well. The feeling was exactly like being sunk in cold water from the neck up, and that part alone itched.
Next... I had condensed the Phase Power at the brow, hadn't I?
Reproducing Rawar's movements exactly, I focused Phase Power between my brows, and my eyes went sharp with pain. A cold soaking into the eyeballs, you might call it. On top of that they itched strangely, so I cracked them open—and a cold blue-green space was rippling in front of me.
"Hhk—?!"
At the sight of that blue-green space gaping like a maw, I startled hard and lurched back as if I might topple. The surprise broke my concentration, and in the same instant the scene before my eyes vanished without a trace, the way a shadow goes. That startled me all over again.
"Seoha?"
"Master, what's wrong?"
"Huh? Yeah. Wait. Just a second."
Don't tell me that was subspace. The thing you can shove objects into and pull back out of whenever you please?
I focused Phase Power at my brow again... and perhaps because it had all scattered, the scene from before didn't appear. I hauled back the Phase Power that had slipped off like a part-timer at the end of a shift, focused it between my brows, and the cold blue-green space spread open in front of my eyes once more.
Looking closely, it resembled a portal from one of those games where you tear across every corner of the world hunting demons. I craned my head this way and that to see past it, and the portal moved to follow my gaze.
So it isn't fixed?
The instant I thought I wanted to look into every corner of the space beyond the portal, the portal suddenly swelled, and a tremendous space inside came into view. It was like the interior of a shapeless pocket, a deeper color than the subspace's entrance, with the feel of the deep sea about it. I could see it with my eyes, but Spatial Perception didn't register the subspace at all... So there really was something acting upon space itself?
Either way, this did seem to be subspace. As a test I took off my jacket, wadded it, and flung it into the blue-green portal—and the jacket I had thrown began to float inside the pocket-space, still balled up exactly as it was.
"...!"
"The clothes disappeared!"
"Whoa. Whoa! Whoa!!"
Miho and Darky both came scrambling over to where I had thrown the jacket and flailed their hands at empty air like a pantomime. For a second I flinched when the two of them charged as if they'd dive straight into the portal, but they tore through it with no effect at all, like running through fog.
"Can you see something in front of me right now?"
I asked Franc and Hiarid, who had come up beside me and were watching with curious faces, and they tilted their heads as if to ask what something I meant.
"Something...? Whatever do you mean? There is nothing there."
"I sense nothing either, Heavenly Lord."
While Miho and Darky turned their round eyes on me, I was looking at the jacket floating inside the subspace. And the moment I thought I ought to take the jacket out, it was somehow already in my hand.
Four pairs of eyes that had been watching me with curiosity widened as far as eyes can widen, and Miho opened her mouth.
"Master, did you learn magic?"
"Huh? You learned magic, Boss?!"
This time Darky's eyes went round as well, Miho's question leaving them wondering if it really was magic. The answer didn't come from me. It came from Franc, beside me.
"Subspace. A subspace ability!"
"Yeah. Putting things in and taking them out is stupidly simple."
"You said a guest would be coming—so the lady from India, Rawar, has been and gone?"
I nodded, watching Miho catch it from Darky after she had hooked them without meaning to.
"Mm. She seemed like a serious sort of person, so I offered to scout her, and she turned me down. After that I showed her around the company, asked her to demonstrate the subspace, and copied it from what I saw."
I answered Franc, and I was about to gauge the subspace's capacity when a thought struck me and my eyes landed on Miho and Darky scuffling.
Could a living thing go into the subspace too? I'll have to try it in two days, when I enter the Phase World.
To check the capacity, and how large a thing the subspace could hold, I went outside and started shoving in the construction materials piled off to one side, grabbing whatever came to hand. At first I lifted them one by one and tossed them in, but after putting things in and taking them out a few times, I realized that so long as my hand was touching it, I could store it or pull it back out no matter how big it was.
Riding the thrill of it, I crammed in everything I could lay a hand on, and I found that TP was spent every time I put something into the subspace or took it out—the greater the bulk, the more TP it cost. Storing a single truck of roughly fifteen tons only erased about 15,000 Phase Power, so was it one point of Phase Power per kilogram? Nothing I'd call a burden.
Curious how much volume there was, I packed in a huge amount of water, confirmed it was the same 0.125 cubic kilometers of space Rawar had, and went red in the face from the shame. I had been smug, certain a wider space than hers would come of it.
Yeesh. That's a solid month of kicking the blankets.