Chapter 390: The Sabi Race (8)

A long, thin hiss.

Baekcheong faced us without a flicker of surprise, as if she had known we were coming all along. She drew herself into a coil and flashed open hostility our way.

What Mana Vision showed me was the worst of her. Scales that had once glittered azure and ivory had gone dull and clouded, and in dozens of places they had not merely peeled away — the flesh beneath had been gouged so deep that organ and bone lay bare, grievous wounds carved into her body. The horns were already gone without a trace. The lush white beard that had hung beneath her jaw was nothing but scorched roots, a pitiful remnant.

What seized the eye, more than any of that, was the torso, where bone, viscera, and white muscle stood fully exposed. Her head, faded and wounded as it was, remained relatively whole. The midsection was another matter entirely: a spine and ribcage abandoned halfway through being made, flesh plastered on in ragged clumps. Just as Darky had said, she was in the middle of regrowing the length I had cut from her. Hideous muscle throbbed and writhed, leaking thin blood.

Bone formed, and in its wake came organs, then vessels, then muscle knitting itself on — a grotesque procession. I met those murky eyes, thick with a chill killing intent, and glared straight back, then swept Spatial Perception through her stomach. Sure enough, the corpses of one hundred and five lizardmen were bloating her belly. Five of them wore robes the same color as her scales. The priestly caste, by the look of it.

The moment I saw those hundred and five bodies drying into mummies inside her gut, I knew Darky had been right.

"You really are disgusting. You ate every last one of the Sabi who were trying to keep you alive, just because you didn't want to die? Hoarding energy so you could regenerate? Fuck. You're a complete psycho bitch."

A slither.

A thin voice, as if pressing down upon the spirit itself, spread through my head. Regret and bitter resentment poured from it so thickly that a chill climbed my spine, but I drove my mana aura to its limit to push back against that voice and shouted at the bitch who never said anything but what she wanted to say.

"So this is driving you absolutely fucking insane, is it? Too bad. This time there's nowhere to run, and nobody left to help you. This right here is your grave. Heh heh."

Amin-La? So that was the name of the Lord of the Great Sea? A simple taunt landing this hard surprised me a little, but I clenched my teeth against the skin-crawling voice booming through my skull and shouted back.

"Even when you were in one piece you couldn't do a damn thing to us, and now you think you can kill us looking like a zombie?! The only thing piercing the sky is your bluster — a pig with a head full of udon!! The one getting smashed isn't me. It's you, you fucking snake-headed bastard!!"

A sharp rush of air.

"Hah!"

A shriek like a death cry stabbed through my head. Baekcheong gaped her maw and lunged, and Franc detonated her Phase Power like a storm and shot for the serpent's skull. At the same time I thickened a Blue Space Wall into the shape of a prisoner's shackles and bound the tail-end of her body.

Her body jerked to a halt, caught in the Blue Space Wall. She let out a shriek three or four times worse than a ghost's wail, then began to gather lightning where her broken horns had been.

"What a bumper crop of bullshit!!"

Still carrying the speed of her charge, Franc drove a rolling spin-kick into the point of Baekcheong's jaw. The blow buried the serpent's head in the passage wall and cracked the stone. Through the billowing dust came the snap and crackle of scattering sparks — and then a bundle of lightning poured down on where I stood.

I had been watching for the dodge from the moment that enormous tide of Phase Power began to whirl through her body. The instant I caught the lightning bursting free, I triggered Space Leaping and came out at her rear, clear of the strike. In the same breath I fired Mana Bullet mk2 into the cross-section where raw muscle and organs lay exposed.

A thin hum. Then a ripping shriek. Over the regenerating cut, a dozen meters of space warped, and the torso caught in that range came apart as it was. Baekcheong loosed a razor-edged scream.

I kept my nerves drawn tight against the metallic shriek ricocheting through the tunnel and poured attacks in to sever the regrowing body again — and then gooseflesh prickled up the nape of my neck, my arms, the line of my spine.

What? What was about to happen?

I fell back a step to read the fight, and swept Spatial Perception across the whole of it. Baekcheong was getting the life beaten out of her by Franc, thrashing to throw off the Blue Space Wall. Ignoring the current snapping off the serpent's scales, Franc drove punch after punch down into the crown of her head, and every time a fist landed it sounded like a claymore going off.

The lightning only ran along the outside of the scale-leather armor Franc wore. Over her bared face, hands, and feet, a fierce blue Phase Power blazed and shoved the lightning aside. She wasn't taking any damage at all, which was the only reason she could keep it up. Franc's knack for hammering the same spot over and over, married to that ferocious offense, set Baekcheong's body heaving harder and harder, and the Space Wall binding her began to shriek as if it might rupture.

In a place where not a single ray of sunlight reached, a snake head bigger and thicker than a double-decker train car was getting pummeled by a Franc only some three meters tall. Unreal, maybe — but I still couldn't see whatever was feeding me this sense of crisis.

Damn it. Where? What the hell is making me feel like this?

I went back to finishing the job, pouring out Mana Bullet mk2 with the range pulled in tight enough not to bring the tunnel down. Pain slammed into Baekcheong from the wounds at her head and her severed end at once, and she began to scream herself hoarse. A gargling howl tore out of her.

"Hiyah!!"

Crack. Crunch. A shattering boom. The moment Franc's fist drove into the crown of Baekcheong's head and sank in to the shoulder, the serpent's tearing scream burst out like an explosion, and in a frenzy bordering on madness she shattered the Space Wall to pieces.

A Transcendent-grade throwing everything she had into a death-struggle — yeah. That was something.

She swung that grotesque body — flesh plastered over bone, organs spilling, blood spraying — at me, and in the same instant reared her head to drive it into the tunnel ceiling. I slipped the strike with a simple Space Leaping. Franc launched herself off the crown of the skull and dove into the wound I had torn open.

A ragged scream. The moment Franc began attacking from the inside, Baekcheong shrieked like needles were sprouting in my ears and twisted like a snake with its head cut off. I watched Franc burrow through the organs toward the heart, then threw myself back to dodge the truncated body as it whipped around at me again.

As I did, I compressed Mana Cannon mk2 with every ounce of will I had and fired it at the crown Franc's fists had left in tatters.

A sharp hiss. Whether she had sensed the danger or not, Baekcheong jerked her head aside on instinct and opened a gap. I took that gap, forged a single enormous shackle, and clamped it between head and torso.

CC into a teabag. That's just the rules.

The moment I ran my mouth, Baekcheong — bound once more — writhed her whole body like a worm and screamed viciously enough to bring the tunnel down.

I opened a Space Leaping into the gap she left wide in the process, moved in beside the hole Franc had punched through her skull, and fired a Mana Riser to tear the wound wider. Baekcheong couldn't even scream. Her eyes rolled back as she twisted and wrenched herself like something insane.

The bucking head flung me off the skull. Her screams and frenzy set the tunnel shuddering with a rupturing groan, and the unease climbed. Still, I could see the end. A little more, and I could kill her.

While the pain of her crown being torn open had blown her reason clean away, I fired Mana Bullet mk2 into the torso again. A pitch-black hole burst open, and the already-short tip of her body was severed once more.

A body that had once stretched past four hundred meters was now not even forty. Not a snake. A stump of one. Pathetic beyond words.

A rumble. And then a vibration began to roll through the vast tunnel, cold enough to chill the chest.

A wet slash. A choked shriek. In the moment I glanced at the dirt sifting from the ceiling, Baekcheong's scream began to go wrong. Franc had been rampaging inside her body for a while now, ripping the heart, the lungs, the organs to shreds. That had to be why.

Outside, I was gouging the skull and cutting the body. Inside, Franc was wrecking the organs.

Maybe that was it. Baekcheong, a collar of Blue Space Wall around her neck, suddenly whipped her body in every direction, spraying blood and viscera, then began to howl as if in a fit.

What?! That was the sound of someone offering a living sacrifice!!

The prayer ringing through my head — thick with killing intent, resentment, and grief — set off the worst omen I had ever felt.

Was this what that bad feeling had been?!

The instant I saw white light gathering at the stump of her horns, I knew that was the source of the dread and threw myself forward. Too late. A storm of Phase Power burst from her body along with blood and organs and blasted me away.

Phase Power howled like a storm through the tunnel, and the tunnel was not a small one. Baekcheong watched me get thrown on it. In those eyes, overflowing with madness, I felt a killing will: she had given up on living, and meant to take us with her no matter what.

"Fuck!"

To cut the prayer short, I capped her head in an amber Space Wall, then bound her through and through with Blue Space Wall, like meat on a skewer. The prayer did not break.

Phase Power poured from every part of her body the way blood jets from a severed artery, crashed outward in waves, and began to vanish. As if it were being sucked down a hole. I opened a Space Leaping onto the place where her horns had been, gathered every drop of Phase Power I had into my fist, and brought it down on the shimmering white light.

"Shut up!!"

A seal?! What the hell was she trying to do?!

I clenched my teeth and brought the blow down again, hard enough to crush her skull. Inside her, Franc returned to her original size and began severing organs and shattering bone.

Even as she screamed that skin-crawling scream, she kept reciting. Franc burst out through her flank, face set hard, planted her foot, and drove a palm-heel into the spine. The spine shattered outright, and a spray of blood flew.

There was no time to measure anything. I went all in, shoving every last TP I had into Mana Cannon mk2 and compressing it.

Throw this oversized Mana Cannon, grab Franc, and bail with Space Leaping.

In that instant, my eyes met Baekcheong's.

She's smiling?

She smiled through a sheet of blood, eyes lit with a madness I would not want to meet even in a dream. She declared it with certainty, Phase Power welling out of her as if she were vomiting her very life. I moved to throw the Mana Cannon mk2 — and a cold like ice water, like needles stabbing, swept my entire body.

"Huh?"

The Phase Power inside me had frozen solid. Even under the guidance of Mana Sieve, it would not budge.

This…… was the seal? She had sealed my Phase Power?!

The moment the Phase Power locked, the Space Wall was the first to go. It turned to blue Phase Power and scattered in every direction. The Mana Cannon, a breath from completion in my hand, smoked away and was caught in Baekcheong's raging Phase Power, scattering to the four winds.

Darky, who had been wrapped around my body, reverted to a humanoid shape, dropped to the floor, and trembled. Franc, mounted on the back of Baekcheong's neck and mid-punch, startled and stopped her hand.

A sound like thunder began to roll through the tunnel. Cracks like spiderwebs raced across walls that shook so hard I could barely stay on my feet, and dirt poured through the gaps in a rush. From deep in the tunnel, booms came one after another. Through them, the dying Baekcheong's voice, thick with resentment, reached me in broken pieces.

"Shit!!"

She was trying to bring down Mt. Veltical?! The Sabi lived beneath that mountain?!

"You crazy bitch!! You're going to kill the Sabi who worship the Dragon God, too?!!"

A heavy thud. The instant she spat that last word and her head dropped lifelessly to the ground, Baekcheong — literally — stopped breathing.

What she had begged of the Lord of the Great Sea was a seal on our Phase Power. Then this vibration — was it the Phase Power she had been spraying like blood?!

Kh! With my Phase Power frozen, I couldn't open a Space Leaping!

I tried to reach Franc with another. Same result. The Phase Power wouldn't move, as if it had frozen solid. I tried to raise a Space Wall over my head. Nothing!

In a panic I snatched up Darky, twitching on the ground, and hesitated — up, or down? — and Franc, dyed red with Baekcheong's blood, came running and shouted.

Get clear to where, in this? Spatial Perception was shrinking by the moment, and every tunnel I could still read was cracked and a breath from collapse.

"How?! The whole tunnel system's coming down! Where the hell are we supposed to run?!"

No time for words. She snatched me up and broke into a full sprint. It didn't last. The tunnels began to collapse all at once, together.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

A roaring cave-in.

"Aaaagh?!"

Franc, Darky, and I plunged with Baekcheong's corpse into a lightless abyss, falling without end amid a tide of earth.

Caught in Franc's grip, watching the enormous masses of soil and rock falling with us, I thought it through. Keep this up and we all died. Phase Power was locked solid. I couldn't use a single ability. Even if the fall didn't kill us, that much earth would crush us flat.

A way to dodge it? A way to block it?

Darky was a kind of protist. He could live without breathing, so he might make it somehow. Franc and I wouldn't.

What do I do?

I needed something to take the impact of the landing, and the damage and pressure of the soil and rock pouring down from above. Something soft, and hard at the same time……

Baekcheong!!

"Franc! Baekcheong! It's Baekcheong!!"

Even in freefall, one of her hands held me precious and tight while the other smashed the earth and stone falling overhead. At my shout an exclamation mark all but popped over her head, and she swam through the air toward Baekcheong's corpse, falling beside us.

"We have to get inside her mouth!! The flesh and the skull in there will take some of the impact!"

I had seen it when she was screaming: the inside of Baekcheong's maw was packed with soft flesh. I already knew how hard her bone was, and a skull would be harder than spine or ribs. Obviously. The soft flesh would eat some of the fall. The hard skull would stop the earth coming down from above. It wouldn't nullify the damage completely. It would still beat slamming in bare.

Franc kicked off a rock falling right beside us, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠used the rebound to reach Baekcheong's head, and clung on. One hand and a foot pried the jaws open, and she crawled inside.

She had returned to her original forty-meter giant form, but a snake's jaw is built to swallow things far larger than its own bulk. Getting in was no great strain. She set me down in the dead Baekcheong's mouth, at the throat where the soft flesh was thickest, then grabbed the upper and lower fangs and hauled the jaws shut.

Pitch-black. A strange buoyancy. The sound of collapsing bedrock, and of something hammering against Baekcheong, came one after another.

How deep was this, that the fall wouldn't end? The mountain was tens of kilometers high, yes, but this was taking far too long. The world spun around me. A cold weightlessness sat in my chest. About the time I managed to swallow, Franc curled in on herself and spoke, her voice tight.

"Thanks to Mana Sieve, I can shift a tiny amount. But not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠enough to open a Space Leaping, or an amber Space Wall. That damned bitch actually sealed our Phase Power……!"

"Got it."

Every ability I had began with moving Phase Power through Mana Sieve. Right now I was, literally, a regular guy who worked out a little. Nothing more.

Fighting that strange buoyancy, I forced the Phase Power to turn and wrapped myself in a weak Physical Reinforcement. Franc's face filled with worry. Carefully, she drew me against her chest and gathered both arms around me.

"What are you doing?"

She worked me deep into her chest with her fingers until I was buried completely in the flesh of her breasts. An instant later, a dull impact slammed through me and passed on.

The buoyancy was still there, so I couldn't tell what had happened — and then the impacts came, thud after thud. Up and down swapped places. The spinning felt uncannily like the roller coaster I had ridden at an amusement park as a kid.

Even wedged between Franc's breasts, the shock was this bad. I wanted to know what kind of impact she herself was taking, so I squirmed — and the pressure tightened a little. A signal not to move. I reached for Spatial Perception instead…… but with my Phase Power sealed, I could barely read two meters. I saw nothing.

The heartbeat coming through my skin told me Franc was unharmed, and relief had just begun to rise when — kh!

Another impact. This one drove me deep into one side of her chest. The sensation of my organs floating, the way they had during the fall, was gone. Had we hit the bottom? A fine vibration followed.

It had to be the soil of collapsed Mt. Veltical, and everything else with it, hammering Baekcheong's corpse above us, where we lay inside her mouth.

It would stop soon.

And as I expected, the vibration stopped quickly.

But the situation was the worst it could be.

We had been buried alive, deep in the earth at a depth I could not measure, unable to call on Phase Power at all.