Episode 4: Day One (3)
"A wish? Fuck — like anything that convenient would ever exist!!"
The curse tore out of my mouth before I could stop it.
Calm down. Pitching a fit and boiling over would only cost me.
Anyway, I remembered what was supposed to happen once you were summoned to the Phase World. Your recovery climbed. Your body restructured itself to take in Phase Power, shifting into a constitution that could wield it with ease. And that, I was pretty sure, was the answer. A moment ago my heart had been hammering like I was about to drop dead of cardiac arrest, my whole body had ached as if I'd been beaten for three nights and four days straight, and my eyes, nose, mouth, and ears had stung and throbbed until I was certain I was finished. Yet after maybe ten miserable minutes of walking, some of my strength had already come back.
Recovery enough to walk while leaning on a branch. Stamina I couldn't have dreamed of before.
That was when it hit.
"Ghk—?!"
As my stamina slowly returned, the pain nerves that had gone numb seemed to snap to a full, vulgar hard-on, and agony so fierce I couldn't even breathe came crashing in. I shook and trembled for a long while, fighting to steady my breath, and only then did the yellow haze and the stars glittering in front of my eyes begin to fade, air finally scraping its way down my throat.
Pain was still pain.
"Heh heh."
The thought that I, too, was gradually turning into an ability user dragged a stupid, broken laugh out of me. I hadn't even been in the Phase World for an hour, and already the changes that would make me one were underway. Even in the middle of agony bad enough to kill, a grin kept leaking onto my face.
All those fantasies about what I'd do once I got sucked into the Phase World were fantasies, plain and simple. Why else would people coin that filthy little phrase — life is live combat, you dumb fuck? Because there are too many idiots who don't understand that life is the real fight, so somebody had to mash it into one ugly word. And here I was, living through that real fight, casting off the dumb-fuck shell. How was I supposed to keep from laughing?
The fact that it hurt enough to kill me, though, hadn't changed one bit. If dying-of-pain had stages, one through five, and stage four was actually dying of shock, then I was flickering somewhere around stage three.
And then, out of nowhere, the worry hit. Can I even survive this?
No. Think positive. If there was ever a moment that called for positive thinking, this was it.
Right — if I could hold out like this for fifteen days, dodging Aberrants the whole way, then I could become an Anomalous Ability User who wielded Phase Power!! Awaken an ability or a technique early, and enduring would only get easier! And thanks to the Phase Power flooding the Phase World, my body would keep changing too! It was already changing!
Running the happiness circuit — that old loop of wishful bullshit — I began inching back from the waterfall, where there wasn't a single place to hide. The roar stabbing at my ears was the least of it. One wrong step into the dragon pool and the falls would hammer me, drag me all the way to the bottom, and never let me surface again. A permanent goodbye to the living world.
The pool was so deep the water was pitch-black, and wide — obscenely wide. From this bank to the far edge had to be a good two hundred meters. At that size, you could almost call it a small lake…… The shallows at the rim were a clear blue, but the color blackened exponentially toward the center, until the middle of the pool was dark as pure ink.
There wasn't actually an imugi in there, was there — one of those great serpents cultivating itself for centuries just to become a real dragon? They called a place like this a dragon pool for a reason. A dragon's mere. A dragon's pond. Sometimes a dragon's plunge……
A chill crawled up the back of my neck, but I didn't look back. Slow, steady, using the wooden stick as a staff, I put distance between myself and the pool. I walked in a daze, and somewhere along the way the nose I'd flooded with water stopped throbbing, and the beaten-all-over ache in my body eased, if only a little. The bone-splitting soreness had faded enough that, so long as I had the patience for it, moving wouldn't be much of a problem.
A real ability user's recovery was something else. If this was what it looked like while I was still becoming one, I couldn't wait to see what it'd be once I actually was.
Body still trembling all over, I searched desperately for a place that looked safe enough to rest.
"……Nothing."
To the right, nothing but cliff. To the left, a wide river, and beyond it a dense forest.
"Haa."
The sigh brought a slosh of water shifting inside my ears. How was I supposed to get that out? Every time I moved my head it swayed, and it was getting on my nerves……
In the end I collapsed under a tall tree nearby and decided to rest there. I was uneasy, but rather than keep stumbling around in search of somewhere better, it seemed smarter to pull myself together here and then climb for a proper rest. I was a little spooked that something might come bursting out of the water — but once I'd sat down, I had no desire to get back up.
Even so, I didn't stop scanning my surroundings, the waterfall's roar in my ears for background music. Spacing out and getting ambushed would be a disaster.
"Ugh……"
I felt like I was about to lose half my mind. I was unbelievably exhausted, but I needed to move a little. If I didn't, I really would pass out. Maybe I should turn this branch — this staff — into a wooden club that doubled as a spear. Just stripping the twigs ought to do it.
It looked like it had a decent spring, so I gripped it in both hands and gave it a swing.
Whoooosh!
The sound of it tearing the air was pretty damn ominous. And right alongside that chill, a crackling pain like a cramp shot through my arms, and a sixteen-bit stream of curses spilled through my teeth. Swinging a club in this condition — I was the lunatic.
I barely managed to settle the pain and started slowly stripping leaves and twigs. Then I grabbed one about as thick as my little finger and pulled…… pulled……!
"Ah, shit…… this thing's tough as hell!"
No. I'd made it past the life-or-death crisis, so I needed to watch my mouth. If swearing turned into a habit and I slipped up in front of my sister…… Hoo.
But for a mere twig, it really was disgustingly tough. Yanking on it with all my strength barely tore it — it felt like pulling on a scrap of cloth. Of course, part of that was me, drained and gasping……
"How the hell am I supposed to strip these twigs?"
I managed to snap one thinner than my little finger by gripping it and twisting it round and round like I was cranking a lever, but doing the rest that way looked impossible. They looked like they'd pop clean in half if I just put some strength into them……
I gave up on tearing them off by hand and looked around for something I could use as a tool. What caught my eye, piled where the dragon pool fed into the river, was a river stone. I picked up one with a decent edge, stood the branch upright, and brought the rock down.
Thock. Thock. Thock-thock-thock. Thock. Crack!
"Kack!"
Ow, shit——!!
I looked at the back of my hand where the stone had struck it — swollen red, slightly gouged, blood showing. Bad shape or not, I'd just smashed my own hand. Why was my damn head this stupid? I could've set the staff on the ground and chopped the twigs off that way. Why the hell did I have to hold it……!
"Tss…… Ha. They really do say a fool's head pays for his stupidity. Khh—"
Ah. Not the head. The body. Figures.
Looking at the scraped, bleeding back of my hand, a sudden sense of being wronged surged up into rage, and I hurled the stone that had tasted my blood as hard as I could, spitting curses after it. That eased my chest a little.
"Hoooo."
I picked up another stone, pinned the branch between my legs, and somehow managed to snap off every twig. After a long while of hammering until they were more or less gone, what I had left was a rather vicious staff, bristling with points all over.
"Whoa. Look at those points. One good swing with this and that damned mutt'll be sprawled out with all four limbs a bloody mess."
Chopping the twigs off with a rock had left me something like a wooden club with big thorns jutting out everywhere. It was nothing special, just a stick of wood, but having a weapon sent a thick rush of baseless confidence surging up. Length-wise it ran a little taller than I did, so about 1.7 meters? The end was thick enough that my hand couldn't quite close around it…… I wished it were a little thinner.
I gripped it and shook it this way and that, and I liked the heft, and the vicious whistle of the wind. It flexed and whipped as it bent. Hold it at about shoulder width, thrust or swing, and I felt confident I could casually wreck that dog that had chased me, intent on eating me alive.
I looked up at the cliff rising on my left and muttered.
"But I can't climb that cliff…… so I can't even get my revenge on that mutt."
I wasn't giving up, though. I'd go back. No matter what…… Once I had an ability, I'd go back and beat the thing to death.
After making the wooden weapon, I leaned my back against the trunk and sagged there for a long rest. My ragged breathing returned to normal, and the heart that had been hammering thud-thump, thud-thump like a maniac found its old rhythm again. Sitting there with the waterfall in my ears, the forest thick with green, the pouring roar, and a small birdsong from somewhere, I almost felt like I'd wandered into a forest resort……
But I'd been on edge the whole time, watching for any Aberrant that might come charging in, while I turned a branch into a spiked staff — so the mental fatigue hadn't eased. If anything, it had piled higher.
Finding a safe place to rest would be much better after all.
I looked up at the cliff and clicked my tongue. When it felt like my stamina was slowly coming back, I pushed myself to my feet — and my limbs shook under me.
"Aigoo. My arms and legs are still trembling."
My breathing had gone back to normal, but the moment I stood and tried to move, my muscles seized and my lower back hurt so badly a raw scream nearly tore out of me. Even so, I had no idea when an Aberrant might show up looking to pounce. How was I supposed to rest easy in a place this wide open?
I'd ended up with a weapon, a means of self-defense, but if I wanted to rest in peace I'd have to find a space for it, or make one. And given my body and what I actually knew, finding a safe place would be better than trying to build a shelter, wouldn't it?
Leaning heavily on the wooden staff, I slowly started walking.
About two hours had passed since I'd dived off the cliff.
The heart that had been pounding fit to burst had settled back into its usual quiet, and the arms, legs, waist, and knees that had throbbed until I thought the muscles would rupture now only trembled a little. No real hindrance to moving. My recovery had climbed so fast, in so short a time, that it was a little frightening. I hadn't even been sitting quietly the whole while — I'd been wandering around looking for a tree that would be easy to climb — and still this speed……
Anyway, what I had to watch for, and stay alert against, were Aberrants and savage beasts. A tree seemed better than resting on bare ground, so I'd been looking for one that was easy to climb, when it occurred to me that if it was easy for me, it would be easy for other things too.
"That would be a problem."
Then what about building a house to keep myself safe?
I thought of the videos on the world-famous site Metuve.be — survival masters starting fires with their bare hands, piling mud into kilns, firing clay, and building houses. There was a channel called Primitive Technology, filmed by one man in nothing but a pair of pants: making fire, splitting and grinding stone into an axe, felling trees with it, raising timber, firing and plastering mud, making tiles, building a house. I'd watched what he did closely enough that I could probably imitate it…… but this was the Phase World.
Start a fire, build a kiln, fire clay, and put up a house, and an Aberrant would hit me and I'd be dead.
A tree it was, then.
I looked around again for something big enough to be hard to assault, yet still climbable. Did monkeys even live in broadleaf forest……? If there was an ape-type Aberrant out here, I'd be completely screwed……
"Nngh……"
I tried for a moment to dredge up my lacking knowledge, but nothing particular I ought to watch for came to mind. That didn't make the danger go away, which only made it worse. My head was neither good nor bad — average…… honestly a little…… quite a lot worse than that, grades hovering in the lower-middle of the class. I was sharp when it came to petty cunning, but with shock stacked on shock, my head felt heavy and exhausted, and my thinking had gone dull.
"Even if an Aberrant does show up, it'll probably be about the level of that dog from earlier. And I've got a wooden stick……"
A bit apart from the other trees…… that one would do. Nothing else stood within about thirty meters, so the chance of something crossing from tree to tree looked low, and the tree itself was enormously tall and thick. Climb that, and at least the wolf-types ought to be fine.
"Good."
Aiming for a thick branch about five meters up, I hung the spiked staff from my belt, plastered myself to the trunk, and started the grueling crawl.
Nngh. God, this is miserable to climb!
Even so, I crept upward like a cicada stuck to an old tree. Fortunately the clothes themselves caught on the jagged bark like hooks, and my shoes tucked between the plates with a solid grip, so the climb was at least manageable. Breath climbed all the way to my chin and drool trickled from the corner of my mouth, but luckily I didn't slip, and I made it onto the branch I'd aimed for in a single go.
"Huk, hoo. My — my arms, they don't feel like my arms……"
If I'd slipped halfway and fallen, I might have given up entirely.
"Hooo. Haa. Still, thank god for a sturdy school uniform, and indoor shoes that are basically real shoes."
Just in case, I gripped the trunk with both hands and carefully shook myself to test the branch. It didn't so much as budge, so I probably didn't need to worry about it breaking and dropping me. I sighed in relief…… Mm. Thinking about safety, maybe going a little higher would be better.
I let out a deep breath, then grabbed the countless branches sticking out everywhere and kept climbing, laboriously, on and on — until I glanced down and realized I'd come up so high that fear hit me.
How the hell am I supposed to get back down?
……Still, at this height, I probably didn't need to worry about ground-type Aberrants.
Reassured, I sat on the branch, leaned my back against the tree, and sighed. Then I looked down at my uniform.
"I ground my chest and stomach against that bark so hard, and not only is there no hole — not a single thorn stuck in."
Instead, thorns had lodged in my palms and made me scowl. Of all times to be dragged into the Phase World, it had to be when I wasn't wearing gloves……
I carefully pulled the thorns out of my hands, let both arms hang limp, and closed my eyes.
Haaaa……
Maybe because I felt this place was safe, my mind went slack and sagged.