The Sabi Race (7)
"I don't think Miniature Art is simply shrinking the body by some fixed ratio."
Franc had gotten so small she had nothing left to wear, so I'd torn up some of my own clothes and had her cover her chest and her lower half. No sooner had I done that than she came out with this, dragging in the scale-hide she'd been wearing — Baekcheong's.
"Then what is it?"
She held the hide out and asked me to cut a rectangle about two meters long and one meter wide. I did as she wanted. Then she drew what looked like a garment pattern in white marker — lines, small circles, large circles — and asked me to cut along the lines and punch the holes.
I brought out Mana Laser mk2, cut along every line, and popped the holes through one after another. Next she wanted things she could use as leather cords.
"The body got smaller, but the density of the flesh — is that the way to put it? Muscle and tissue compressed little by little, the density rose, and the body's toughness increased enormously."
"Huh? Then your weight, too..."
I stepped in to try lifting her. She scrambled backward in a hurry and started treating my approach like a threat.
"Ah— no! M-my weight is not that great! It is far less than when I was a giant, but even so... a-anyway!"
"When I lifted you yesterday I didn't think you were that heavy. How much... how much stronger did your defense get?"
The moment I brought her weight up again she started glaring daggers, so I changed the subject at once.
"My defense has grown stronger as well, but more than that, body weight and muscular force don't increase at the same ratio. So as my weight fell, my strength seems rather to have risen."
"Like an ant lifting dozens of times its own weight?"
"Something like that, yes."
She answered while picking up four scraps of Baekcheong's hide, stacking them, seizing both ends, and pulling with everything she had. The leather shrieked — and slowly tore.
"Holy shit."
Not one sheet. Four, stacked, and she ripped them by the ends? Baekcheong's hide — the stuff that holds even against my Space Wall?
Come to think of it, there was a movie where a man in a special suit shrank and started pulling off superhuman feats. Was that the reason there, too?
Franc picked up the rectangle of hide, now fully cut and holed, threaded leather cords through each of the smaller holes and tied them, fussed with it a moment, then slipped her arms through the openings, poked her head out, and cinched the rest. What came of it was hard leather armor.
The shape was rough, but Franc was no professional armorer, and she had no tools. Making armor with nothing but cord was impressive enough on its own. Even so, the dark blue scales proved they had once belonged to an imugi: the way they threw back the sunlight was dazzling enough to hurt the eyes. Beneath them, the beautiful lines of Franc's body showed through faintly, and the two together made the thing look like a genuine masterpiece of armor.
"The way those scales flash every time you move is gorgeous. But you worked so hard on it — once Miniature Art runs out and you get big again, won't the whole thing just rip?"
Praise the work and the corners of Franc's mouth climbed until her smile nearly reached her ears.
"I believe Miniature Art will last roughly thirty-one hours. If I recite the esoteric art once more partway through, the time resets, so if I keep refreshing it before the duration ends, it should be fine."
"Whoa. So that's what they meant, about the duration changing with how well you've mastered the art?"
Listening to me, she took off the leather armor she had just put on. The makeshift covering over her breasts slipped, and in the sunlight her lush, full breasts appeared, and nipples as ripe and tempting as cherries. I was taking in those breasts — they held their shape, and looked as if they were brimming with spring — while Franc undid the leather cords she had threaded through the holes, worked at the finishing, and said,
"According to Nuhodi, I needn't worry about the duration. When the esoteric art of Miniature Art nears perfection, I won't even need to recite the incantation — I'll be able to change my size as I please. And shrinking this much didn't cost so much as ten thousand TP. So the expenditure is no burden at all."
"Well, that's handy."
Watching Franc trim the cords bare from the waist up, wearing a smile as soft and warm as Mom's, I felt a flicker of debate over whether to throw her down and take her again. But Baekcheong would be coming up soon. I had to keep from letting desire run wild.
Instead I stepped around behind her, where she was stacking several cords to reinforce them more firmly, and kneaded those breasts — larger than Hiarid's — however I pleased.
"Honestly."
Her seated height was close to my standing height, so when I slid my hands in from behind, under her arms, two cherries thicker and larger than my thumbs settled into my fingers. She didn't say so, but she must have wanted the contact. Franc only laughed, a soft breath as if it tickled, and did not refuse my hands.
I groped Franc's marshmallow-soft breasts to my heart's content, buried my face against the nape of her neck, and was breathing in the scent of apples when I sensed something wrong with Darky, still inside the jacket I had taken off.
Pulled from the inner pocket, Darky had gone back to his original slime form — but he had turned blue, as if dyed in Phase Power, and was pouring out a blue light so beautiful it ached.
"What the hell is this? Hey, Darky. Snap out of it."
I shook him gently and called again. He only wobbled like pudding. No response at all. Franc leaned her upper body in a little, looked him over from every angle, and asked, her face saying one thing had begun to look suspicious.
"Could it be this place?"
"This place? But those guys, and the rest of us, are fine."
I pointed at the Dok-aks and Delike, lounging lazily beneath the Blue Space Wall, and at Alkema, sprawled beside them in the middle of some meditation. Right after we arrived they had gone a little limp, as if drunk, but that had passed quickly. By now everyone seemed used to it. They looked no different from usual.
"There is one thing that's different, isn't there?"
"...That?"
"Yes. That."
When Baekcheong's lightning fell, Darky had wrapped around me and taken a fatal hit. His Phase Power had dropped to 100, and he had nearly evaporated, until I pumped him full of TP and he recovered what he'd had. That had to be what Franc meant.
Back then I'd half-expected that filling him with my TP might turn him into a highest-rank subspecies, or set off something else. Nothing happened. He stayed a Highest-Rank Variant. At first he had been blue, as if soaked in Phase Power, but with time he had gone back to his original translucent black...
"Darky started dozing the day after you saved him, Seoha, and he fell into that hibernation-like sleep while we were climbing Mt. Veltical. I think there is ample reason to be suspicious."
"Hm."
I examined him closely with Spatial Perception. His Phase Power had risen, if only slightly. That applied to everyone in the party after we entered the Holy Land, so I set it aside. Comparing him to before, his Phase Power was... how to put it. If it used to heave like waves on a rough sea, now it felt like looking at a lake with not a breath of wind on it. Put another way, Phase Power that had been lumpy and uneven had become perfectly even, as if a craftsman's hand had planed it flat.
Other than that, nothing stood out. Franc and I both turned Spatial Perception on him, hunting for anything strange or suspicious. The verdict we landed on was nothing wrong.
And the moment we reached it, as if he had been waiting, the beautiful light pouring out of him faded. The black drained away too, until he looked like a colorless, transparent lump of water, and he rippled on my palm.
Huh? The volume's gone down a little.
Darky, wriggling small and cute, gave one great surge — and slowly began to take a human shape. A head formed, then a neck; modestly swelling breasts and arms took shape, and a narrow waist and soft-looking legs appeared in turn.
In that human form Darky was a little smaller than before, and the appearance had changed completely. It used to be a passable mix of Hiarid's figure and Miho's face. What sat there now was a girl I had never seen, unbearably cute, looking about seventeen.
While I was looking over Darky, whose outside had changed entirely, she — sunk down on my palm with her eyes closed — opened her tiny mouth and yawned.
=Hwaaaahm.=
A fresh, cute voice I had never heard before rang in my ear. I looked around for the source, but the only one nearby was Franc, wearing the same startled face as me. Which meant the sound had come from this one. Well, she had already been half-managing a translation ability, so it wasn't that strange...
"Hey."
I reached out a finger and poked her tiny belly. A bright little laugh burst out — kyareuk! The sudden reaction froze me, and Darky looked up with a blank face, as if she didn't understand what sensation she had just felt. I was more surprised by the firmness against my fingertip the instant I poked.
"What? The texture's completely different. What happened to you?"
=Huh? Eek! Heeheehee! Kyahaha!=
To check, I picked her up and felt her all over. Every time my hand touched her she flailed both arms and legs and laughed like she was going to die.
Hm... If touching her before felt like firm pudding that wouldn't squash, now it felt like touching an actual tiny person. A soft chest, rice-cake abs, springy thighs...
"How can a liquid give off a texture like this?"
=Hiiie. I-it tickles! S-spare me! *hic!=
"What does it feel like?"
"Touch her yourself."
I handed Darky to Franc, who had been watching with open curiosity. Franc touched her carefully, then let out a breath of admiration.
"The texture is so fine it's hard to believe you're a slime. Darky. Can you tell what state you're in?"
Limp in Franc's hand and panting, Darky shivered at the question, then struggled upright, looked at Franc, and spoke in a startled tone.
=Madam Franc, that you?=
"Mm. It's me."
=Ya got small!! Ya mastered the esoteric art perfect, yeah?=
"Not perfectly, but I was able to shrink a great deal. More importantly, will you answer what I just asked?"
=Ah, yessum. Uuum.=
She clenched and opened her tiny hands, inspected her arms, felt her stomach and her legs, then lifted her gaze to us and answered.
=Feels like the body's settled, yeah. Had to keep focusin' if I wanted to hold this shape. Now I don't even gotta think about it, and holdin' it ain't hard!=
"When you say your body's stabilized, you mean you evolved?"
=Think so, yeah. Way I am now, I figure I could break down light-element too!=
Darky's answer startled me. That meant the Dark Matter Slime's weakness was gone?
=An' that lightning the blue-ass snake brat shot at the end — think I could block that now, too!=
She sprang upright on Franc's palm with a delighted face, did some bizarre dance, and snickered. Understanding what that meant, Franc looked faintly chilled. I narrowed my eyes as well. Taken the wrong way, this had just become serious.
She had said that a light-element attack couldn't be fully broken down — the opposing energy remained, and the backlash burst her apart in every direction. A little damage accumulated. That was the story. Now even that weakness was gone. And this was the one who hadn't been able to endure a Transcendent-grade lightning strike, saying she could block that too.
In pure defense, does that put her at the top of the family?
"Then can you break this down, too?"
Just in case, I formed a Mana Bullet mk2 in my hand and held it out in front of her.
=Hieek!=
With that strange shriek she scrambled up Franc's arm and fled to the nape of her neck. Her movement had become remarkably natural, and much faster — like a creature that actually had bones and joints. Clinging there, Darky shuddered at the Mana Bullet mk2 gathered in my hand, her face saying it was horrifying, and shouted.
=Th-th-that's too much, too much! No way! Don't shove that at me!=
Instinctive revulsion seemed piled on top of it. She was genuinely terrified. Good thing Mana Bullet mk2 still worked on her. Did that mean I was the only one left who could keep Darky in check, since I was the one with a decomposition ability?
I launched the Mana Bullet into the sky, turned my hand over, and called her. She hesitated, then climbed onto my hand, hugged my thumb, and nuzzled her face against it. I watched that deeply relieved behavior for a moment, then spoke to Franc.
"If the Dark Matter Slime's weakness is gone and even the form has changed, then she didn't become a subspecies. She became a variant."
"A variant... Certainly, a form this transparent, like a drop of water, is difficult to take for a Dark Matter Slime."
=I turned into a variant, yeah?=
You're asking me?
"For now — can you still turn into armor?"
=Yep!=
She answered energetically, flattened herself on my hand, liquefied in an instant, and flowed over my body. In less than a second she had covered the Thunder EL tights suit, and she spoke in a voice that shrugged, as if to say well?
=Hehe. Got faster!=
"You got a lot thinner — maybe because your volume dropped. You okay?"
=Thickness don't mess with decomposition no more!=
"Not bad."
If the weakness was gone and she could withstand even Transcendent-grade elemental attacks, then as armor she was close to the strongest there was. I smiled, turned her back into human form, and was feeling her here and there to check the texture when Franc — who had been watching us with a smile — suddenly went dead serious, whipped her head around, and glared down at her feet with a frightening look.
"What's wrong?"
"...The small Phase Power signatures near the one I believe is Baekcheong are vanishing, three or four at a time."
"What?"
Franc shot to her feet, hastily pulling on the leather armor as she spoke, her voice tight.
"It had been stopped in one place since Darky started acting strange, but a little while ago the Phase Power signatures around it began to disappear."
"Don't tell me Baekcheong is killing them. Why? Killing things weaker than yourself doesn't even increase Phase Power."
"I don't know. The signatures that were with it are already down by nearly half!"
A bad feeling crawled up my arms — goosebumps, the sense that something serious was about to happen. I shot to my feet as well and shouted toward Alkema, wandering the distant lakeshore.
=Y-yes?! Did you call for me?=
"The small Phase Power signatures around the one we're treating as Baekcheong keep disappearing. Besides calling storm clouds and wielding lightning, does Baekcheong have any other ability?"
=...I beg your pardon?=
At that vacant echo I focused Mana Sieve into my eyes and glared. She flinched hard and shook her head wildly.
=Th-there is none! There is none! To my knowledge, Lord Baekcheong's power is solely the calling of wind and rain and the summoning of thunderstorms!!=
=I-I am certain!!=
I focused Mana Sieve on her neck and bore down on her as if interrogating a suspect. She quaked like an aspen, yet nodded hard enough to snap her neck. By then Dok-ak and the Peak-Rank subspecies had sidled up and were glaring at Alkema too. Pressed from every side, she didn't look like she was lying. I frowned.
Then what? What the hell is he doing?
I scowled, frustrated by something happening outside my Spatial Perception, and Alkema, watching my face cautiously, ventured a question.
=Um... wh-what is... the matter?=
"I can't be sure, but it looks like Baekcheong is killing your people."
=...Whaaat?!
Franc, leather armor fully on, dropped down beside me, pushed the flustered, helpless Alkema back, and spoke while looking at the tunnel.
"Only one Phase Power signature that might be Baekcheong is left."
"You didn't see the small ones moving like they were trying to run?"
"No. They all stayed still, and vanished like that."
"If the five priest-class Highest-Rank Variants had resisted, at least a faint vibration should have carried. They died without even that. And a hundred of the warrior class, just waiting quietly for their turn? It's strange. Really strange."
There was a soft, heavy collapse, like a sack of grain hitting the ground. I turned. Alkema had sunk down, despair on her face.
I looked back at the tunnel, trying to work out what could have happened, when Darky conveyed a thought in the tone of someone who had only just remembered.
=Back when I was wanderin', I saw an iguana that got hurt real bad... Somethin' cut it and tore it up, and a third of its body was gone, but it was still huntin' like that — catchin' other aberrants and eatin' 'em while it regenerated. Maybe that blue snake bastard ate 'em to regenerate too?=
"You're saying Baekcheong figured out we're waiting for him in the Holy Land, so he's eating the Sabi to regenerate his body?"
=Prolly somethin' like that, yeah? Snake-head can sense as far as Madam Franc, so he knows Boss is waitin' here. Figure he's given up and is throwin' one last fit.=
If I were facing death with nowhere to advance and nowhere to retreat, I'd use every means I had, too. Franc nodded seriously at Darky's words and said,
"Whether an imugi classed among serpents can shed part of its body is an open question, but we ought to leave the possibility open. And since he is already an aberrant that defies common sense, it would not be strange if Baekcheong possessed a similar ability."
At the talk of shedding like a lizard's tail, my eyes went, unbidden, to the tail sticking out from under the hem of the robe on the collapsed Alkema.
"...I was going to wait for him to come out and crush him, but since it's come to this, we'll go find him."
I didn't know what he was doing, but I had to stop him before he finished it. Still, I'd had a feeling something serious was about to happen. What was it going to be?
"Dok-ak. Hold this place with your subordinates. If something comes bursting out, put survival first and stay alive as long as you can."
"Kweeeek!!"
I turned from Dok-ak, who had cried out vigorously as if to say he understood, and was about to leave when Alkema came into view — sitting there, the soul gone out of her. She had followed in the first place to keep her people from causing trouble with me. If the Sabi who had been carrying Baekcheong were all dead, there was no need to deliberately bring her along.
I'd confirmed it while crossing the ridge of Mt. Veltical. From the tunnels inside the mountain out to the exterior, the thickness exceeded 6.75 kilometers at minimum. Once we went into a tunnel, we couldn't escape by Space Leaping. Of course, if something occupied the destination when I leaped, I appeared while annihilating all of it — but I hadn't tested that precisely, so I couldn't rely on it. I needed, as far as possible, to confirm the shape of the tunnel from where Baekcheong was up to the summit.
Memorizing the tunnel's form and position so I could chain Space Leaps and get out if something went wrong, I ran with Franc through a passage so pitch-black that not a point of light entered, and the memory rose of walking down the underground caves of Mount Elephantros together. What had that unidentified Peak-Rank aberrant in the lava cave been? Could it have been the phoenix said to be born of a volcano?
"An aberrant born together with a volcanic eruption would be no ordinary monster. If it can be helped, it is one I would rather not meet."
"Mmm. A phoenix is practically a spirit beast, or divine-beast class, isn't it? Don't you think taming one would help a ton?"
"An imugi, too, is treated in the real world as a sacred being on the verge of becoming a dragon, is it not?"
"...Yeah. That's true."
Part of it was Baekcheong's fault, that Rogue Imugi — but if even a phoenix, which generally carried a benevolent image, got a reaction like this, then to Franc an aberrant was simply an enemy. Or something close to hostile indifference. She was warm enough toward Miho, Hiarid, and Darky, the ones I'd brought under me. But thinking back to the times her instincts had shown through, maybe she was only enduring them for my sake.
The idle thought surfaced and I shook it off at once. I ran on, attention fixed on whether anything strange would catch inside my Spatial Perception, and realized the tunnel was spiraling like a spring around the sinkhole that bored straight down from the summit of Mt. Veltical into the depths. No wonder the total length ran past 1,700 kilometers.
After ten minutes at a dead sprint, something large and elongated began to register at the far edge of Spatial Perception. Franc and I, certain in our guts that it was an imugi, had not gone much farther before two enormous eyes met us out of the dark, shedding a sickly, muddy yellow light.
It was Baekcheong.