Debuff (3)
My consciousness was sucked down to a single point. Then, all at once, my breath caught hard in my throat.
I still couldn't see a thing in front of me, but I'd expected as much, so I didn't panic. I pulled a portable oxygen respirator from Subspace Storage, clamped it over my nose and mouth, and barely managed to scrape up a millet-grain of Phase Power — just enough to activate Mana Vision.
Crimson walls of flesh filled Baekcheong's mouth. I took in the sights, then asked Darky.
"Darky, this doesn't bother you?"
"I'm a slime, so I don't gotta breathe, Boss."
"So you could survive out in space?"
"There's nothin' in space! I don't wanna live somewhere like that!"
"I meant you could survive in an environment that harsh. I wasn't telling you to go live there."
Darky waved me off. I crushed the Blue Stone I'd set out ahead of time.
Blue Phase Power swirled through the narrow space. I shaped it into a box of Blue Space Wall, tweaked the form a little, and stepped inside. If Baekcheong's body got sucked into Subspace Storage, the earth would come pouring down. Better to protect myself first.
"Your way of talking keeps changing. You still haven't locked in a character?"
"Maybe 'cause I turned from Darky into Cleary... ehehe."
I poked the forehead of Darky, who was shamelessly sticking their tongue out, punched a small hole in the wall, reached through it, and pressed my hand to Baekcheong's tongue. In that state I called up Subspace Storage and stuffed the corpse inside. A portion of the frozen Phase Power vanished in a soft rush, and the storage capacity hit one hundred percent.
I'd wondered what would happen if an object's volume exceeded the space left. Now I had my answer. Whatever wouldn't fit stayed behind, and only the part that could go in slipped neatly inside. The half-regenerated junk had broken off on its own, so I wouldn't need to keep pulling it out and stuffing it back in.
A deep rumble rolled through the ground. Where Baekcheong's corpse had been, an empty cavity opened — but the shape that held for a moment collapsed in a rush, and a mass of earth poured in to fill it.
I looked at the soil packed tight around the Blue Space Wall I'd spread, rested a moment, and secured the TP I'd need to cross into the medieval era.
"Huh? Oh."
"What's wrong, Boss?"
"When I put that Baekcheong bitch's corpse in Subspace Storage, it seems I got back enough mobility to match the Phase Power I spent."
"Ooh!"
Was it because I'd spent the frozen portion? If I had to describe it, it was like taking a torch to a massive block of ice and melting only part of it. A quick check showed Spatial Perception had recovered out to six hundred meters. At that range, I ought to be able to use Space Leaping too.
At the edge of my perception I raised an amber Space Wall, a cube two meters on a side, carved out a space, leaped into it, and retrieved the Blue Space Wall. That was how I started moving. Twenty-odd repetitions later, I finally climbed out onto the surface, the sun sinking toward the western horizon. In my normal state I could have gotten out in two leaps. Instead, this. I let out a long breath.
"Whoa. That huge mountain's completely gone, Boss?!"
"Not completely. Still — a mountain that stood nearly fifty kilometers high, dropped to ten. That's a bit of a shock."
The place Darky and I had emerged was somewhere around the ridge of the collapsed mountain. Standing there, the remnants of the utterly ruined Mt. Veltical filled my view at a glance. Less the trace of a fallen mountain than a landscape you'd have to call the aftermath of a landslide in a downpour. A slope that had been fairly steep had gone remarkably gentle, and dark brown soil lay fully exposed. One look, and it clearly wasn't normal.
I Space Leaped into the sky a few times and looked over the ground. A dark brown wasteland, without a single blade of grass, stretched all the way to the horizon.
Behind us, an enormously vast hole — apparently connected to the sinkhole that had opened at the summit of Mt. Veltical — was blasting water upward in a torrent that put Niagara Falls to shame, shoving the soil aside and birthing rivers and lakes as it went. Even now the water was spreading in every direction. If all of it was being driven east, then beyond the eastern cliffs it would never dry. That land would be drowned forever.
Before I knew it the sun had gone completely down. I looked up at a night sky turned pitch black, and across a cloudless heaven the stars lay spread like a carpet. The bright, clear moon among them reminded me of the Lord of the Great Sea's eyeball, and my mood soured a little.
Would the Lord of the Great Sea show? I watched the sky for a while, but the god I'd half-expected never appeared.
I remembered the old story — that a god vanishes once the believers who have faith in them are gone. Was the Lord of the Great Sea not the god of the Sabi? Or were there other races who believed, so the god was not wholly forgotten, and thus had not been extinguished?
Ninety thousand was by no means a small number in this era, and yet the Lord of the Great Sea had not stopped Baekcheong. What did that mean?
I looked over the river — easily several kilometers wide — and the collapsed mountain, searching in case any living thing remained. Honestly, I was looking because I wondered if Dok-ak might still be alive. But I searched the stretch that ran straight down from the summit of Mt. Veltical and the whole area around it, and I saw nothing living.
If my Spatial Perception had been intact, I might have found something still alive, buried under this soil. That was only a might. The place I'd been buried was over twelve kilometers deep, which meant the slopes of Mt. Veltical had been buried just as deep, or deeper. There was no way anything was alive.
Just in case, I asked Darky.
"Hey. Anything giving off Phase Power inside your detection range?"
"Nnn. 'Cause of the seal, I can't sense a thing. I can barely even feel you, Boss."
"Figures..."
One snake brat, and a place had become the grave of an entire race — ninety thousand of them. I bowed my head and offered a brief moment of silence.
Before crossing into the medieval era, I settled on a spot I'd found while scouting earlier. High enough ground, and not underwater. Having once experienced a life-or-death free fall from several kilometers up, I never wanted to cross back to reality from high in the sky again.
One experience of my balls shriveling was plenty.
"The Sabi are pretty pitiful too, Boss."
"Huh?"
Darky, who'd poked only their head out of the pocket, looked over surroundings so ruined that desolate was the only word for them, wiped under their nose, and spoke.
"If they hadn't lived alongside that imugi called Baekcheong, the whole race wouldn't have gone extinct. Those white lizardmen and the blue-green lizardmen cooperated with you somehow, to save their own people... uh, um."
"If they hadn't cooperated with me — if I hadn't shown up — they wouldn't have died either."
"A-ah, buh— th-that's not what I meant! If we're bein' blunt, that Baekcheong bastard pickin' a fight with you was the cause, Boss!"
"Enough. You don't have to comfort me. I'm not going to look away from what I did, but I'm not about to clutch my head and wail, 'It's all my fault~!!' either."
"Ehehe. You're so cool, Boss."
"That's why Franc and Hwayeon and Yeongeun cling to me. Heh heh."
I'd gotten needlessly smug and praised myself, and Darky's expression soured a little. They stuck their snout out in a pout and muttered, quiet.
"...Jinx-syong."
"Hm? What's a jinx-syong?"
"Oh? Ah, n-no! That was, uh, short for 'Boss is the coolest and, um, sexiest'!"
That didn't seem to be what it meant. For some reason I felt like I'd been insulted. I narrowed my eyes and glared at Darky's tiny head, and they avoided my gaze, creeping bit by bit back into the pants pocket.
The sight was cute enough that I snorted a laugh. I stuck a hand into the pocket, grabbed the now-smug Darky's soft, squishy body, and pulled them out — and they put on a crying face and started begging in earnest.
"I-I'm sorry~! It was a joke, a joke! Kyak! Eek. If you squeeze me like that it feels wei— gwek?!"
The texture was more addictive than popping bubble wrap, and the cute little scream didn't help. Listening to both, I focused my mind to cross into the medieval era.
I came through into a medieval era where the world lay buried under white snow, climbed the dirt hill Franc had unintentionally left in the shape of her own backside, and looked around.
I'd been heading south after leaving Camelot when Morgan le Fay's tricks wrecked my mood and I turned back, so if I went north from here, Camelot would be waiting. Running would be faster than repeating Space Leaps. I was about to launch myself when Darky started whining.
"C-cold?! B-Boooss! My body's gonna freeze solid!"
"You're fine. A person's body doesn't freeze at this."
"If you get down to it, my body's liquid, though?! I'm freezing! Freezing solid! Crick-crick, freezin' solid!"
"For crying out loud."
Turning from Darky into Cleary — that didn't change the personality too, did it?
Caught in my hand and exposed to the winter wind, Darky thrashed and laid on the suffering like they were dying, so I had no choice but to tuck them into the inner pocket of my jacket. Their expression went slack and gooey at once, and they started squirming.
Thinking it over, the day had fully set, the temperature was dropping, cold was rising off the piled snow, and a biting wind was blowing as if it meant to freeze flesh. I was wearing a Thunder EL tights suit and circulating Phase Power to shield myself from the cold, but Darky, with their Phase Power sealed, had no protection at all and would have a hard time of it. Night only made the air colder.
I felt a little sorry for having held them in my hand as punishment, so I raised a weak mana aura and covered them with it. The squirming in the inner pocket tickled.
Regulating my TP use, I kept the mana aura up to guard my body and, using Space Wall as footholds for the first time in a while, started running north.
I ran into a winter wind the aura reduced to a slight chill, and the end of things with Morgan le Fay kept nagging at me. The last I had seen of her, in the instant before I crossed back to reality, she had been on the verge of a fit. She had been, quite literally, a madwoman. My wariness of Morgan — the woman they called a witch, back in reality — had shot up hard.
They say a heart startled by a soft-shell turtle flinches at the sight of a pot lid. That proverb fit this moment perfectly.
She was a witch. Who knew what strange tricks she might pull? Being on guard was only natural. And my condition right now was anything but normal.
Telling myself I'd go straight to Myrddin's house the moment I reached Camelot, I traced my memory and raced north like a sports car on an open highway. A faint light entered my eyes near the pitch-black horizon.
That light would be Camelot. So... had it been six months? I'd packed some snacks into Subspace Storage. Future junk food ought to make a decent bribe.
I leaped a low hill buried in snow, and a wheat field filled my view — harvest done, nothing but open ground. Beyond it stood the walls enclosing Camelot, a city as bustling as any modern one. Torches were set at regular intervals along the top, and between them smaller torches were on the move. Guards on patrol, by the look of it. I rose higher into the sky and vaulted the wall.
A thin tch.
"...What was that?"
The instant I crossed, I'd felt something like a thin membrane tearing. I stopped and looked back. Nothing was there. Even scanning the surroundings with Spatial Perception, all I picked up were patrolling sentries and, in the houses near the wall, couples diligently engaged in the work of producing the next generation.
I watched the sentries making their rounds in teams of three, torches in hand, then switched Mana Vision back on and looked again. A pale, whitish membrane came into view, giving off a faint violet light.
Whoa. A barrier? No way Myrddin or Morgan put this up... right?
The violet, in particular, nagged at me.
There was a fairly large hole in the violet membrane where I'd jumped through. It covered the entire city, centered on Camelot Castle, and before I knew it my gaze had turned toward the castle. While I hesitated and watched, the hole filled in an instant and returned to a clean, unbroken state. Thinking once more that I needed to be careful, I headed for the hilltop on the city's outskirts where Myrddin's tower stood.
I arrived in front of Myrddin's house and looked over the five-story round brick building. A faint light shone through a window on the third floor. Myrddin hadn't seemed to like me scanning the area with Spatial Perception, so I suppressed the urge to look inside the tower that way and approached the entrance.
The tower's door was reddish-brown wood, reinforced with iron plate. I grabbed the round knocker on the lion's-head fixture in the center and knocked.
"Ugh..."
I knocked and waited, and Darky let out a suppressed groan, as if in pain.
"What's wrong?"
"It's just... I'm feelin' this sticky, gross sensation, different from Baekcheong's..."
Whoever I was about to meet was definitely no ordinary being. I slipped a hand into the inner pocket, gently stroked Darky's head, and soothed them to hang on just a little longer.
But why wasn't anyone coming out, no matter how much I knocked? Dozing in front of the fireplace again?
I took the knocker and knocked once more, and from beyond the door a clanking, rattling sound drew closer. What was that? The strange scrape of metal on stone came right up to the door and stopped. Sensing a presence on the other side, I quietly took two steps back and waited, and the door slowly opened.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Standing behind the open door was a knight in sleek, refined full plate, hair black as pitch — a man so impossibly handsome that jealousy didn't even have room to rise.
His hair, tended every single day by the look of it, fell in a smooth trim to his shoulders. To put it in words, he was handsome enough that I might have believed the greatest sculptor of the age had poured his soul into carving the finest male statue in the world.
The regrettable point? Not a trace of emotion showed on that face.
He studied me with a still, emotionless gaze, and I studied him back. He was short — barely 160 centimeters — but his proportions were a precise eight heads, and even without a scrap of flattering light he was dazzling enough to hurt the eyes.
Inwardly I thought it was a good thing I hadn't brought Franc — no. I knew perfectly well she wasn't the sort of shallow woman to be bewitched by a face. Even so, that face was cheating. If my ability was a filthy cheat, then that face and those proportions were a goddamn filthy cheat.
I stood there in silence, facing the black-haired knight, and he spoke first.
"Who are you?"
Kh! Even the voice was nice to listen to. The world was truly unfair...!
I'd said I wasn't jealous, but honestly that was a lie, and it was irritating enough to annoy me. Still, I took comfort in being the taller one, and opened my mouth.
"I came to see Myrddin. Is he in?"
"...Sir Myrddin is receiving an honored guest. Turning away a visitor who has come calling is not a righteous act, but I would ask that you withdraw for today and return tomorrow."
How to put it. I'd assumed a man with a face like that would have his nose in the air, or pride enough to choke on. Instead, in a softly resonant low voice — as if mocking my petty little assumption — he gently made it clear I would not be admitted.
On an ordinary day I would have yielded. This was not an ordinary day.
"I'm in a bit of a hurry myself. Please step aside."
"I am sorry."
Soft, but razor-firm. At the refusal to move, I let out a small sigh, weighed Space Leaping against simply knocking the black-haired knight down, and chose a third option.
"Myrddin, you're in there, right? I'm not joking. This is seriously urgent, so would you let me in?"
At the sound of my voice the black-haired knight's expression changed, and that handsome mask twisted just a little. Fuck, he really was handsome!
"What are you doing!"
"I am exercising an incredible amount of patience and being extremely polite right now, you know? If you don't let me in, I might wreck the place!"
"Will you not cease?!"
Furious at being ignored, the black-haired knight let his gauntleted right hand hang loose and reached out with his left to stop me.
"Hup."
He was trying to come outside, passing the entrance. I sealed the doorway with Blue Space Wall as he was — and bound the man along with it.
"What is this?!"
...Goddamn. Flustered, that handsome face still looked like a photoshoot.
Frozen like a sculpture set into the wall, he mastered his confusion and hardened his face into something frightening. Then—
Wait?
"Hnnngh!"
A creak. A crack, a crunch. He was crushing the Blue Space Wall with nothing but strength. What?! Did a mere human have the muscle of an Extreme-Rank Variant?!
Mouth hanging open at the sudden, brainless display of force, I examined him with Spatial Perception. He was merely a C-ClassPhysical Reinforcement ability user.
"Yet another uncanny sorcery—! Are you a black mage?!"
"A black mage?! It's been over eight months since I graduated from virginity — what kind of personal attack is that?!"
Could this man sense Spatial Perception too?
I'd reflexively talked back at the black-mage gag, but thinking about it, what the black-haired knight meant probably wasn't the black magic I knew.
I moved to reinforce the Space Wall, already half-shattered by the knight's incomprehensible strength, when Myrddin's exasperated voice cut through and stopped us both.
...Lancelot?! This man was Lancelot du Lac?!