Episode 7: Day Two — The Giant (3)
After the giant vanished, I sat there for a long while with my mind gone utterly blank.
Other High-Tier Variants might come this close to where I was hiding, just to drink or wash, the way that female giant had. So what if they did? If that giant decided she wanted me, something like me was already as good as dead. I'd read on the personal site of some ability user swollen with his own fame that most High-Tier Variants had senses sharp enough to catch a human's presence from a kilometer off and come charging. Hang around here, and one of them might bolt in like lightning and gulp me down in a single swallow.
…Then why hadn't the female giant come charging? By that logic I ought to be sitting in her stomach right about now. No matter how I turned it over, I couldn't make sense of it.
"Haa…"
The wounds covering the female giant's body. The way she'd kept watch on her surroundings the entire time she washed. The sight of her back as she vanished into the forest, swinging a log club dozens of meters long. The thoughts tangled and knotted until they were a hopeless mess, and a few guesses stirred a fear in me that kept my body from moving.
"…Hoo."
I scrubbed at my face with dry hands and hung my head. I thought I understood now why the adults said it was so hard to survive your first forced summoning, and why the survival rate never even cleared half.
Still, if I awakened as an ability user, my odds would go up… right?
Among the firsthand accounts recorded in Survival Studies, there was one written by a man who'd gained an ability and a technique in the shortest time on record. It said he'd acquired them four days after entering the Phase World. He'd gained the power to control wind up in the highlands, lived in remarkable comfort and safety for eleven days, and then returned. When something too tough to handle showed up, he simply flew into the sky and fled; anything that looked like an easy mark, he raised blades of wind and hacked to pieces.
The ability user had been a veterinarian, and perhaps that was why he passed his time in relative safety, taking rough guesses at the Aberrants' vital points and blowing them apart. The record said that when he came back to the real world fifteen days later, he'd even brought several Phase Stones out with him. While most people were busy just staying alive, that man had gone around hunting Aberrants with his ability.
But that was the story of a true handful. Most accounts said people came into their abilities somewhere between the tenth and twelfth day.
And me? In a place where I had no idea how many Aberrants of that insane a rank were wandering around, even if I awakened an ability first thing tomorrow, could I last fifteen days?
No chance…
I'm going to die here…
Despair sent tears streaming from both eyes. I cried as quietly as I could, until my sleeve was soaked through, and only then did I feel a little calmer. Despair still outweighed hope, but I was alive, and while I was alive I ought to try everything I could…
If I got lucky and survived, my account would be entered into Survival Studies, and my name would become at least somewhat famous, wouldn't it? Then I'd be popular with girls. I might even get a girlfriend.
I cranked the happy circuit as hard as I could. Thinking about all the things I'd do once I had a girlfriend — this, and that, and other lewd things besides — the gloomy thoughts began to fade. The body I was imagining for this girlfriend I was determined to land had been influenced to a considerable degree by the female giant's naked form, but hey, if it felt good, it was good!
All right. Let's pull it together!
My moods were lurching so hard I felt like I was coming down with a light case of manic depression, but what mattered was that I had some energy again.
My stomach had been growling nonstop since the female giant disappeared, so to get some calories in me I unbuckled my belt and tore off about a knuckle's length with my teeth. I'd bitten down too hard and seemed to have torn off more than I meant to, and my teeth were numb and a little sore. On top of that it was… stiff, hard to eat, and the taste was not something I could honestly call good…
…Does this taste like chemicals?
Scowling, I kept working the scrap of leather belt around in my mouth, and frowned harder at the proof that I'd torn off more than I'd intended.
Some ration belts came with a cutting function worked into a groove in the buckle, so that if you couldn't find a proper tool you could still slice the belt into knuckle-length pieces. I'd figured what use a function like that would ever be, and bought an ordinary one. Now that I'd actually been dropped into the Phase World, I missed that function more than I could say. Even if I hadn't used it to cut the belt, I could have smashed the buckle and used it like a knife.
The longer I chewed, the worse the foul stench of leather rose, and the chemical taste turned my stomach, but I kept at it with the thought that what I was chewing wasn't leather. It was my lifeline.
The sun looked like it had climbed to the middle of the sky. It really was time to make a decision. Maybe because my recovery had improved, when I tested myself with a little movement my body felt decent enough, aside from a slight stiffness in my shoulder and thigh. I needed to get a look at my surroundings first, so I slung the sharpened wooden spear at my waist and started up the tree, slowly. From up high I'd be able to see in every direction, and I might spot somewhere unexpectedly useful.
Up to the middle of the tree the leaves had been thick enough to hide me easily, but as I climbed higher they thinned away, and by the time I reached the crown there was nothing left to block the view — only bare branches. Showing my whole body… I was too scared for that, somehow, so I just eased my head out where nothing obscured the line of sight and looked around.
Luckily the tree I'd climbed seemed a little taller than the ones around it, and that alone gave me a decent field of view. One side was walled off by a cliff, and on the opposite side all I could see was trees. No birds in the sky. Just sunlight beating down, harsh and bright. Back in reality it was early spring, but the weather here was late summer.
I flinched at the thought that the female giant might show herself and scanned the area for a while, but nothing stood out, and even when I strained my ears I couldn't hear so much as a beast. I'd wondered whether this place might be a basin, but it wasn't. When I'd leapt from the cliff I'd glanced around, and the horizon had stretched out before me.
I turned my head and studied the cliff again. It looked about twice as tall as the tree I was in now, and the ground seemed solid enough that it wasn't about to give way. The face had plenty of protruding roots and chunks of rock, and it was so uneven that a professional climber could probably scale it barehanded without much trouble…
"No, sir. I'm afraid that won't be possible."
I ran my eyes along the cliff. All I could see was the wall running on and on to the far edge of my vision, and to the left the waterfall right beside me blocked the view. Crossing the river to check the left side of the falls was an option… but the moment I pictured the female giant waiting beyond it, I didn't want to go over. Besides, I'd felt it when I fell in the river yesterday. The water was deep, and the current was strong. The middle of the river had been a deep blue-black, a color that stirred a fair amount of dread… I was scared to cross it, too.
In the end, my only option was to follow the cliff straight off to the right… And at this point, Aberrants were still the problem. There were no birds in the sky and no flying-type Aberrants, so I didn't have to worry about an attack from above. The ground, though…
The thought of the female giant set my chest trembling in two very different ways.
"Huh? Now that I think about it…"
The mud the female giant had been smearing over her body came to mind. If I put some on too, wouldn't the scent leave me? Then at least I wouldn't be drawing beasts in from a distance just because of how I smelled. And seeing as nothing had gone wrong while she soaked herself to the waist, it didn't seem like an imugi — one of those lesser dragons — or a true dragon was living in the pool.
So I'd save the mud pack for when I headed out.
As for a route, it was either follow the river downstream or move along the cliff… If I went down along the river and ran into a thirsty Aberrant, that would be instant death, so pass. In the end, did I have no choice but to move along the cliff? Drinking water… I'd figure it out somehow.
The moment I pictured the river stretching away, irritation surged up in me. If it weren't for that son of a bitch, I wouldn't be stuck in this shitty situation, and the more I thought about it the more my rage boiled over.
The top of that cliff is definitely a beginner zone packed with weaklings! You know how it is in online games! They stick one field in between and split the high-level zone from the low-level one!
"…Hoo."
Annoyed, I grabbed a perfectly good branch for no reason at all and tried to snap it. Snap it…
Damn, this thing is tough as hell!
I huffed and seethed, caught myself thinking what a dumbass stunt this was, sighed, and started down the tree. I hung from the last branch, listened for a moment, confirmed there were no beasts nearby, and slid down in one go.
The moment both feet hit the ground, my heart started hammering again.
"Calm down. Just calm down…"
Gripping the sharpened wooden staff in both hands, I kept my distance from the river and crept through the trees toward the pool where the waterfall came down. The tree I'd been hiding in was farther off than I'd thought.
Along the way I found a place where the ground had sunk in. Two footprints, each nearly as long as I was tall, were stamped clearly into the earth. This must have been where the female giant leaped across to the far side of the river. Please, let me not run into that female giant for whatever time I had left. She was a treat for the eyes, but I had no desire to pay for the show with my life.
Doom-doom-doom-doom-doom-doom-doom—
When I reached the falls, the water hammered so hard my ears hurt. The far side, hidden behind the cascade, nagged at me again, but there's a saying that curiosity killed the cat. I gave up on the idea of crossing and approached the spot where the female giant had sat, tense in case something appeared nearby.
The spray soaked me head to toe, but I ignored it and peered into the clear, transparent water. The marks where the female giant had sat were plain beneath the surface. The two round hollows, set in a figure eight, had to be the imprint of her backside, and that lip-shaped mark pressed between them… that was that part, wasn't it?
I swallowed hard at the unmistakable impression, then set to mixing water and dirt and smearing it over my school uniform.
"Mmm…"
Like this I was only coating the outside a little. That wouldn't do. I stripped off the uniform jacket, the shirt, and the pants, mixed up a heap of mud, set human dignity aside for the moment, and wallowed on top of it in nothing but my underwear, like a wild boar. Once I confirmed the mud was smeared over my whole body, I coated my face and hair as well, then went so far as to wash my clothes in the mud.
The feeling of mud sliding over my skin was unexpectedly mild and pleasant. There was a reason mud festivals were popular. Thirsty, I drank a little water and started walking along the cliff.
Something occurred to me. They'd said that none of the animals or plants existing in the Phase World would do you much harm if you simply ate them. There were Aberrants that pretended to be plants, but so long as you watched out for those, most things weren't bad for the body. If you were truly worried, you could light a fire and roast them a little. Lighting a fire in a place like this, though, was thoughtless. The smoke was a problem on its own, and if you lit one at night, uninvited guests might come looking from far off after seeing the light.
And even if you could eat anything, I didn't think the grass and leaves strewn everywhere would taste any good. They'd just be bitter, the way grass is. Still… the thought of enduring fifteen days up in a tree, eating leaves, made me look up at the big tree I'd climbed down earlier.
"…Maybe not."
Survival Studies also said that aside from a few types of safe locations, staying in one place for long wasn't good, so I did my best to console myself with the idea that moving was the right answer for now.
I didn't know the exact time, but judging by how the trees' shadows had stretched until they were about as long as the trees were tall, at least five hours had passed since I started walking. The sunset seemed to be coming on, little by little. I'd moved while extremely tense about running into an Aberrant, but whether it was the effect of being caked in enough mud to drip off my whole body, I didn't encounter so much as an ordinary animal, let alone an Aberrant. And with so much time gone by, the mud that had been running had dried and stuck completely. I had to wonder whether the scent-blocking effect still held in this state. More than that, though…
"My head is killing me…"
Maybe because I'd spent the whole day on edge, moving with care, my head was throbbing, and something itched inside my skull. I was pretty tired. The one fortunate thing, maybe, was that I was thoroughly broken in to walking.
Daydreaming and spinning fantasies while I walked was a hobby of mine, so even on ordinary days I thought nothing of strolling for three or four hours, and I used the trail that ran along the hill behind the house. I had plenty of strength for walking. Potbelly, legs thin and spindly, but I was trained for it, so even after four hours through a pathless forest my legs weren't particularly tired. The shoes I'd chosen for practicality deserved some of the credit, too.
Anyway, before long the sun would set and night would come, so I needed to find a place to rest before then. The straightforward option was to climb the big tree in front of me and rest there, right? It looked about as tall as the tree I'd rested in yesterday. Being pressed right up against the cliff made me a little uneasy, but if there was an Aberrant athletic enough to sprint along the cliff face and pounce, then there was no safe place in this forest to begin with.
Think long, act short! I fixed my only weapon, the sharpened wooden staff, at my waist and started the grueling crawl up the tree again. My target was a large branch at about the height of a fourth floor. If there'd been a spot where the branches grew opposite each other, the way they had on the tree I'd rested in yesterday, it would have been comfortable, but I didn't see anything like that, so I'd have no choice but to rest on the biggest branch.
I started up slowly, bracing my feet in holes and grooves, and it was easier than I'd expected. Had climbing a tree once already made it a little easier? I crawled up a bit more skillfully than yesterday and settled onto the branch I'd aimed for without trouble. It was bigger and wider than it had looked, and if I tied myself to the tree the way I had yesterday, I thought I could sleep reasonably safely.