The Western Mountain (1)

The moment we entered the Phase World, rough water rose to greet me. An eighty-meter giantess had appeared at my side, and the current had surged in to meet her.

Swept along, I reached for Franc. She reached back and caught me with care. Cradled in her hand, I cast Space Leaping upward, and a clear blue sky opened over my head while clouds soft as cotton candy spread beneath my feet.

I set a Blue Space Wall right under us. Franc stepped down onto it and wiped the water streaming from her face. From atop her palm I swept my soaked hair back, and Darky crawled out of my arms, clinging to my waterlogged clothes and breaking the moisture down.

"Franc, do you have a plan for what we should do?"

"Ah? Um... I'm sorry. I poured all my focus into Miniature Art and never had the chance to think."

"I keep telling you, you don't need to apologize for that. Let's head to where we ran into that bastard Baekcheong first. Even underwater, if a snake dozens of meters thick and hundreds of meters long passed through, some trace of it ought to remain. Finding that seems like the right place to start."

"Ah, that's a sound idea. If we find no trace there, we'll have to call Album Cetus."

"Yeah."

Ever since I'd become an ability user, simple memorization had sharpened, and I still held every route giant Franc and I had traveled. At full speed, west from here was only about five hours.

I held onto Franc and Space Leaped until my TP fell to a third. Then she set me on her palm and ran across empty air. When her TP dropped to half, we spread a Blue Space Wall and rested until mine was full again. We kept at it for eight hours, and it took a little longer than I'd planned. Only when a bright full moon rose and starlight without number began to fall across us did we reach the place where we'd fought Baekcheong.

"I'll look over the area with Spatial Perception. Franc, use Sight Analysis and check everything you can see past five kilometers."

"Leave it to me."

We weren't going to search with our eyes anyway. Spatial Perception and Sight Analysis didn't care whether it was night ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠or day, and five days had already been wasted. We had to look without stopping.

At Franc's request I made dozens of places where she could set her feet, then swept the water. Lake, sea—what was I even supposed to call this? The mud was settling, the color slowly returning to blue. I ran my senses through it. Hmm.

I'd talked a confident game to Franc, but the confidence thinned once I saw the ground. The tsunami that had swept inland had driven mud in with it, and everything she and Baekcheong had torn up in their struggle lay buried under silt. Memory insisted this was the battlefield. What Spatial Perception showed underwater was not the wasteland clearing nearly a hundred kilometers across. Only trees uprooted and snapped by the wave were sinking into the mudflat.

A faint curve of the round site remained. Even scanning carefully... Ah. There. The place where Baekcheong had thrashed after Franc seized his horn.

Silt had made a mess of it, but an irregular pit had been gouged out. This was the place. Here she had torn his horn free, and right after, lightning—thunderbolt, bolt, whatever you wanted to call it—had erupted at a speed I couldn't even perceive and scorched me, Franc, and Darky alike.

Then the traces the tsunami had carried off... those. Here and there I could see where the six severed sections of his body had been driven by the fierce current, snapping trees as they went. Connecting those six sites to the place we'd found one of Baekcheong's horns confirmed it. He had been swept east.

I started east, and Franc followed, constantly scanning around us. I wasn't only chasing the broken trees left by the severed torso. I concentrated, searching the water with Spatial Perception along the direction I guessed his main body had moved, afraid I might pass over some faint trace.

"Ahh, figures. Nothing. I've never even learned tracking... Should I just call Album Cetus after all?"

I sighed, watching the morning sun rise and scatter a blazing red light, as if dawn had decided to dress itself as sunset.

"Anything inside your Phase Power detection range?"

"Nothing. It's perfectly clean."

Franc hadn't found a trace either. She let out a deep sigh, sat on the Blue Space Wall as I had, and stared blankly at the rising sun.

"That bastard hated the water so much he fired lightning from a distance. I can't see him floating around and swimming on less than a quarter of a body."

For twenty hours I connected the spots where we'd found the body sections and searched everything inside that line. I found several traces of Baekcheong's severed flesh tumbling about, but nothing of the main body—the part that actually mattered.

"At this point, I believe we should consider a third party's involvement."

"A third ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠party... a third person. Baekcheong. An imugi. The Lord of the Great Sea... a race that serves the Lord of the Great Sea?"

"...?"

I'd named a whole people out of nowhere, and Franc turned to me with a puzzled look.

"The race that serves the Master of the Sky was Hiarid's Flauvis, wasn't it? They fought the Sabi tribe tooth and nail, then climbed onto the Floating Sky Islands and hid in the clouds. And the Sabi are the ones who serve the Lord of the Great Sea. That lord called Baekcheong a creature that served only him, but it's hard to believe the Sabi, who serve the same lord, have nothing to do with him."

"You believe the Sabi moved Baekcheong?"

"If it's a third party, like you said, that's the only thing that comes to mind. The Flauvis who serve the Master of the Sky have wings and fly wherever they please. So maybe the Sabi who serve the Lord of the Great Sea can move freely through the water?"

"That does seem likely..."

"Ahh. I should have asked Hiarid where the Sabi were before we came in."

Ugh. Why was my head this stupid?

Hearing the lament, Franc's head turned smoothly west. Without meaning to, I followed her gaze to the mountain standing alone at the end of the western horizon.

"..."

"..."

"Shall we go?"

"Let us go!"

Nothing to lose. Let's go.

"First, let's refill the TP we spent."

I stretched out across the soft northern hemisphere of Franc's chest and thought. Darky had said that the farther west we went, the stranger he felt, as if someone were watching. At first I'd assumed that was Baekcheong. Maybe it wasn't.

While we rested and recovered TP, Franc told me to eat something, morning or not. I pulled out a portable burner, boiled three packs of Haenghaeng ramen, topped them with sausage, dumplings, and mushrooms, and took out some kimchi. Darky gulped audibly beside me, so I fetched another bowl and portioned some off. As I slurped, she let out a small sigh and muttered.

"Goodness. You ought to cook rice, not ramen..."

"When am I supposed to set the rice, wash the ingredients, and prep all of it?"

Franc seemed sad she couldn't cook for me because of her size. I was a little disappointed I couldn't eat a breakfast she'd made, but ramen boiled after so long still tasted good. I didn't really have any complaints. Transferring the noodles back onto the mess-kit lid, I said as much.

"And you're the one who told me not to pack food for you, because the Subspace Storage would fill up with it."

"I can maintain my present state with Phase Power even if I eat nothing for a month or two. If we packed food for me, Seoha's Subspace Storage would have to be filled entirely with what I need to eat."

"Space opens up as you eat!"

"There you go again!"

We'd had this argument before we entered. Franc, still learning Miniature Art, insisted she would stay as she was—meaning she would not eat—until her body shrank. I'd argued that I would make cookware and tableware sized for her, so we ought to eat together. Neither of us would yield, and after an hour of wrestling over it she started looking at me the way one looks at a little brother who won't listen, ready to scold me.

Somehow her manner was growing to resemble my older sister's, and the feeling went so sour that I eventually gave in. Kind, gentle Franc taking after that witch of a sister left a bitter taste. Preparing kitchenware and dishes for an eighty-meter giant was a job in itself, and I couldn't wait around for them to be made, so I'd backed down. Even so, I had a feeling we'd bicker about it every time we ate.

I ate my fill and set the mess-kit ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠lid down. Darky's eyes flashed, and he lunged in, devouring every last drop of ramen broth in an instant. I might not even have to wash up.

I looked at the kit, cleaned until it gleamed, then stroked Darky's head and told him he'd done well as he scrubbed his face with both hands like a cat washing itself. At first I'd worried that putting water or anything dirty in would mix it with the other things in the Subspace Storage and make a mess. That never happened. Whatever I put in locked into that form the moment it entered subspace. Even if I filled all the remaining space with water, nothing else would get wet.

"How long until your TP fully recovers?"

"Um... about eighty minutes left."

An hour and twenty... Through the subspace portal I'd left open, I spotted the thirty-seven swords my sister had brought. They all looked more or less the same. I'd asked her to get them in a hurry, so she'd probably taken them from the weapons company that supplied ours.

Until Franc's TP fully recovered, I figured I should practice the sword-energy shots I'd loosed at Baekcheong with the Heaven-Gathering Cloud Sword. I drew a longsword that felt right in the hand, and Franc's and Darky's eyes turned to me. Sensing what I meant to do, Franc moved behind me. Darky clung to my leg, squirming as he shifted into armor.

I took a deep breath and started to push TP slowly into the blade... then decided that wasn't it, and shoved in as much as I could, the way I had back then.

Crack-crackle!

"...?!"

"Oh my."

The instant I crammed the TP in, a blue bolt of lightning shot up from the hilt along the blade, and hairline cracks chased after it. I stared for a moment at the sword, scrap in an instant, then stuffed it into subspace and pulled out another.

Crack—!

"..."

I took out several more and experimented. Whether I forced the TP in hard or fed it in slowly, lightning shot up without fail, and the blades didn't just split. They snapped.

Clang!

"Whoops. Hand slipped."

With a sound like a plate shattering, I sighed and chucked the longsword—broken clean in half—into subspace.

"Is the weapon just too weak?"

"I have seen research showing that the more Phase Power a weapon's materials contain, the more efficiently it accepts TP. The longsword you are using now is an ordinary blade with no Phase Power at all. Does it not seem to be cracking because it cannot withstand your TP?"

"Hmm... The Heaven-Gathering Cloud Sword was definitely a legendary-grade weapon steeped in Phase Power. It even cut TP consumption by twenty percent, so maybe that's why it endured what I pushed into it."

On top of that, it had been a rare thing. Put TP into it and its true name would stream forth. Push harder and a vivid blue light would pour out. To lose a weapon like that so pointlessly. It killed me. Fresh rage toward that bastard Baekcheong surged up all over again.

"My TP has fully recovered. Shall we set out?"

"Yeah. When we get back to reality, I'll find a new weapon and experiment then."

"Yes."

"How far have you gotten with Miniature Art?"

I asked from the hollow of her collarbone—more that than her shoulder—after burning through my TP with Space Leaping and passing her the baton so she could run on across the air.

"I can use it now, but my size has not shrunk much."

"Oh, you learned an esoteric art in four days?"

"Hehe. I studied under Nuhodi all through the night, you know. By her account, even this is on the slow side."

"You learned a technique from a field you knew nothing about in only four days. I think that's incredible. Understanding those strange spell-like characters and mastering an esoteric art from them—I couldn't even grasp the hundred and eight characters that were supposed to be the concept of the art."

"It is thanks to Nuhodi explaining the meaning and form of each character beside me. I have had it for a long time, which is why Hwayeon still has not mastered it."

"How is it when you use it? Nuhodi said the more you use it, the higher your proficiency, and you can shrink your size freely. I haven't seen you use it since we entered the Phase World. Does practice have conditions too?"

"No, nothing like that. My proficiency is still low, so the TP cost is far too great and the duration is short. In a situation where we are constantly spending TP, practice is difficult, so I am not doing it."

Right. Of course. Franc wanted to shrink as soon as she could. She wouldn't sit idle if practice were actually possible.

Anyway, this was incredibly comfortable. Her skin was soft, plush, and warm, and there wasn't much swaying. Franc's apple scent drifted up through the gaps in her clothes. This was another kind of heaven.

Darky, full from the ramen, had rolled down between my legs and started to doze. I set him on my shoulder and swept the surroundings wide ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠once more. My heart might be in heaven, but my head had to stay sharp and keep watch. Once was enough for what had happened last time. I scoured everything within Spatial Perception range and never stopped watching all four sides.

Franc and I took turns moving and resting. Each time we rested I worked a little Healing Touch into her scalp, and after a day of travel the western mountain began to come clearly into view. When it had grown large enough to fill a third of my sight, I poked the Darky sprawled and dozing on my shoulder until he woke.

"Uuung... Boss?"

Darky, who didn't even have eyes, rubbed at them anyway and lifted his head, giving me a sleepy look that asked why I'd woken him.

"Last time you said the farther west we went, the stranger it felt, like someone was watching. How about now?"

"Mmm... the weird feeling's still there, but I can't say I feel any eyes on us, Boss."

"Franc, do you feel anything?"

"I'm not sure what you mean by a strange feeling. I haven't sensed anything unusual since we entered the Phase World."

Even as she spoke, she seemed to be trying to catch the strange feeling Darky had mentioned. The way her brow furrowed, she had failed.

"Hmm. Maybe Darky's sensitive because he came from wild slimes."

Either way, Franc, who had been sprinting through the air on empty steps, ran out of TP. We spread a Blue Space Wall and decided to rest.

"Still, it's strange there's perennial snow piled up after that much rain. And the snow only covers the middle. From there to the peak it's dirt-colored again."

"It is winter, and the elevation is high, so the rain never reached it and the snow remained. The dirt color above that may be because it lies far higher than the clouds, so snow and ice cannot form there."

"You think so?"

The western mountain didn't rise like a pyramid so much as a triangular cone. Its midsection was hidden in cloud, and far, far above that the peak came into view. They say the highest clouds form at the top of the sky, usually about thirteen kilometers above the ground. If the snow-covered section sat at thirteen kilometers... adding the rest, the mountain had to be at least thirty-nine kilometers tall. The summit was dented inward, as if a meteor had struck it. Intact, it would have stood even taller.

"The part without perennial snow is so far off you can barely see it, and it still looks that huge. Makes me think there really might be something up there."

"A mountain of that size would certainly not stand empty, without a master."

"Anyway, the mountain's right in front of us now. Let's move carefully and stay on guard."

"Yes."

I held Darky in my hand, kneading his soft body, and opened the subspace portal. The silver Summoning Conch caught my eye at once.

I hoped the day would never come when I had to use it.