Ah, I Wanna Swear (2)
"Ah?!"
Franc's cry jolted me, and I whipped a look around. Damn it—Spatial Perception was off! Had it shut down because of the ability demonstration?!
I scrambled to spread it back out—and the pile of corpses was heaving?
"What the hell? The corpses are moving?"
"The zombies are going to rise! Be on your guard!"
"Z-zombies?"
The instant Spatial Perception caught the heap of aberrant corpses, I saw Phase Power seeping inward, trickling little by little into the pile.
Five... seven... twelve... they just kept gathering!
"Don't tell me this is a ghost-type."
When I'd looked into detection techniques, every ghost-line aberrant was Mid Grade or above, and ordinary attacks didn't work on them. If this was a ghost-type, I needed to run. Now.
I watched carefully for where the Phase Power was flowing. After a short wait, a land penguin whose belly had wasted to nothing began to twitch, shoving aside the rotting carcasses stacked on top of it.
Before long it hauled itself upright beneath the sun, grotesque, gurgling as it rose.
"Kh—!"
I ran the Mana Sieve through my whole body in a Physical Reinforcement pattern, clenched the claw-sword, and charged the land-penguin zombie. I had to break it before it finished pulling itself together.
That was when Spatial Perception checked the zombie penguin's Phase Power again. 187?! Insane—it had jumped in an instant!
The tawny fur it had worn in life was stained gray, the yellow beak bleached white, and the eyes that had been black were rotted cloudy, as if fog had settled over them. Half-rotten guts spilled in strings from the split in its belly, and nausea surged up my throat. I didn't have time to throw up. And yet—
"Kuh?!"
Fully upright, the thing stood nearly two meters tall! Before it died it had only been about a meter!
"Once they zombify, they usually grow anywhere from 1.2 times to as much as ten times larger!"
"That's cheating!"
Riding the Mana Sieve, I closed on the shambling zombie penguin in four seconds, gripped the claw-sword, and put everything I had into a descending diagonal slash from the upper right.
Skrrrk—!
"Kh—!"
The claw-sword bit into the zombie penguin's shoulder and stopped dead against a fierce resistance. I tried to yank the blade free where it had lodged around the chest, but it wouldn't so much as twitch, as if something had clamped down on it. I saw the thing's left wing flinch and tried to dodge, but my legs tangled and refused to move the way I wanted. Feeling the wing come swinging in, I threw dignity to the wind, rolled backward once, and scrambled clear.
Behind me the zombie penguin's wing tore the air with a hideous sound.
WHOOOM!
"Kh—!"
I was more than ten meters off, and the wind pressure still hit hard. Take that blow and I wouldn't have a bone left to pick up.
"Are you kidding me. I reinforced my body and swung the sword, and I still couldn't cut it. What the hell is that thing."
Greeeeh... gerrrrrk.
Claw-sword still buried in its chest, the zombie penguin began to totter toward me. Was it a mercy that none of the speed it had shown in life remained? Its Phase Power had climbed again in the meantime, to 518, and since it wasn't climbing any further, that seemed to be the ceiling.
"Phase Power of 518. That's Mid Grade!"
"Seoha!"
At the words Mid-Rank Variant, Franc flung both arms wide. She looked ready to call down lightning, so I shouted to stop her.
"Don't use it! It's slow. Let's read the situation first!"
A Mid-Rank Variant. Only then did it make sense that the claw-sword hadn't sheared through. Thinking back, it hadn't felt like cutting flesh at all. It had felt like cutting iron.
The same claw-sword had halved a two-tailed fox at the waist in a single stroke, but it was only a piece of a Mid-Low Grade aberrant, and that clearly wasn't enough against Mid Grade. My lacking Physical Reinforcement had done its part, too. The situation was hardly comfortable, but I still thought I could manage. First I sprinted to where I'd spread the land-penguin hide, snatched up several wooden spears—worse for wear after all the meat I'd skewered and roasted on them—and hurled them at the zombie penguin.
"Hah!"
Boosted by the body the Mana Sieve had enhanced, the wooden spears ripped the air as they flew and slammed into the thing—thunk, thunk—burying themselves in its flesh.
Gueeeeh... gweeeeee—!!
"Ugh—!"
The sound crawled over my skin. I fed more TP through the Mana Sieve and spun my Phase Power as hard as I could. The consumption would spike, but I didn't have a choice. TP started dropping by thirty-eight a second, and a cold sense of danger set in. At this rate I could hold it for a hundred seconds. No more.
...And yet the movement around me—the flow of things, if that was the word—began to slow. Franc's actions. The zombie penguin's movements. Ah. So this was that. The world slowing when I got extremely worked up, or extremely tense.
Spatial Perception told me Phase Power was spinning in my head. That was what had been accelerating my thoughts.
The zombie penguin had slowed to nearly eight-tenths speed. I forced strength into my trembling legs, sprinted hard, and circled around to its right. It tried to turn after me, lumbering and slow, but I was already at its back. I jumped with everything I had and drove a dropkick into the zombie penguin's spine.
"Go down!"
Wham! Crash!
It pitched forward, and just as I'd hoped, the claw-sword buried in its chest punched up through its back!
Guuueeeeh...
True to a zombie, it didn't seem to feel pain. Even run clean through, it thrashed and tried to stand, so I circled to its front and kicked the spine of the protruding blade as hard as I could.
Shhhk.
The hilt was planted in the ground, and the zombie penguin's massive body served as the fulcrum, so the edge of the claw-sword sheared on through its torso as the lever turned. But the brace was unstable, and the zombie's body was brutally tough. The claw-sword barely cut before the reverse leverage spat it free with a slick pull.
"Huh?! Damn it! Th-this is—!"
"Seoha! A zombie's weakness is generally the head! Cut the neck and it stops moving!"
"R-really? Got i—whoa!"
I felt the zombie penguin's wing swinging for my ankle and jumped clear in a panic.
I—I almost got fucked.
I snatched the claw-sword back up. This time I meant to burn every bit of Phase Power in ten seconds. I drove the Mana Sieve at full output and split the neck Spatial Perception had mapped for me.
Krrrk—crack!
The claw-sword caught on the neck bone, and an overload slammed through my wrist like it was about to snap.
"Ghhhh—!"
Geeeerrrrgh...
It—it isn't cutting!
I felt the zombie penguin thrashing violently and had no choice but to jump back, dropping the Mana Sieve I'd been accelerating on TP down to its normal speed. The thought-acceleration seemed to end with it. The world flowed at its old pace again.
It hadn't even been thirty seconds, and I'd burned 1,988 TP—more than half my total Phase Power. I wasn't going to be able to use that often...
Chest gouged crosswise and neck half severed, the zombie penguin tried again and again to stand, gave up, and began crawling over the ground with a grinding creak. Half-rotten entrails dragged from its torso, and nausea climbed my throat all over again. What was I supposed to do with that? Forget the neck—did I need to smash the skull? But it was that hard. How?
That was when I spotted the spear-thrower lying near the traces of the campfire. I ran over, took the thrower and the least-ruined of the wooden spears, and drew a deep breath. I wouldn't get many chances. I seated the spear, spun the Mana Sieve at full power, and aimed at the skull of the zombie penguin still crawling toward me—huh?
Where had the throwing guideline gone?
Ah, screw it!
"Haaaah!"
Shwip! Crack!
The distance wasn't far. There was no guide marker for the throw, but I didn't miss. The wooden spear seemed to get sucked in, punched through the zombie penguin's skull, and buried itself in the ground. Melted, milky brain-matter leaked in strings from the hole in its head.
The zombie penguin simply stopped moving.
"...Puhah! Huff, hah, hah. Figures. Maybe I've just got no talent for close combat."
Heart hammering, I kept the Mana Sieve turning and wiped the sweat from my brow. The joy of having taken down a Mid-Rank Variant was nothing next to the self-loathing of having spent nearly eighty percent of my TP to kill something that only moved that slowly.
"Seoha..."
Sunk in that miserable feeling, I stared at the ruined corpse of the zombie penguin. I'd understood in my head that I was a klutz, but now that I had actual numbers to compare, it felt like the world was telling me not to even dream of close combat. It left a foul taste.
"Didn't they say it takes five F-Class with similar numbers to bring down a Mid Grade aberrant? And I'm E-Class. Work it out and I've basically got the Phase Power of six people, and I still burned half my TP. On a zombie penguin that could barely shamble, no less..."
"..."
Franc's face laid bare, with painful clarity, that she had no idea how to comfort me. At times like this, changing the subject was probably best.
"Still, making the claw-sword right away was the right call. Yeah?"
"Yes, exactly! A-and... wouldn't it be all right to be a little prouder, Seoha? Its Phase Power may have been 518, but it was unmistakably a Mid Grade aberrant. You never completed combat training—you're an ordinary person—and you still brought it down safely, without a single scratch. You did well, Seoha! You said spent TP recovers one percent a minute, so it ought to come back quickly!"
"...Thanks for trying to cheer me up."
Franc had gone out of her way to comfort me. Even so, I couldn't make myself feel like I'd done well.
Anyone looking at my abilities would call them cheating. Spatial Perception let me sense an aberrant's movements in real time, and accelerated thought let me think 1.2 times as fast. On top of that, detection-type or not, I could use the Mana Sieve to reinforce my body—short of a true Physical Reinforcement user, but still to a seriously powerful degree. To have all of that and still flail around burning most of my TP...
Hah.
"Which is exactly why you'll get much better if you train, Seoha!"
"Mm. Thanks."
Watching Franc keep comforting me, keep encouraging me, the gloom thinned a little.
Right after I'd killed the zombie penguin, Phase Power had spread from its corpse—and, as expected, none of it came into me. Just as Hwayeon had said yesterday: count that zombie penguin as an ability user and it was F-Class, and I was E-Class, so its class was lower than mine and I couldn't absorb it.
Tch. I'd barely managed to kill the thing and gotten nothing. No Phase Stone, either.
I went back to the land-penguin pelt, dropped onto it, and turned over what the fight had taught me. I was pretty sure Analysis hadn't triggered during that battle. Back when the ability was still Search, how something moved—attack paths, the motion itself—would hang in front of my eyes like a hologram. I couldn't see any of that now, which was why I'd nearly failed to dodge the zombie penguin's wing.
"Seoha? Has something else gone wrong?"
I must have put on a grim face without realizing it. Franc had gone tense, watching me.
"Yeah... I think I need to check Spatial Perception again."
"What?"
"I just assumed that once the Search ability merged, it had become Spatial Perception, but..."
When I explained what had happened, Franc's face turned grave as well.
"You mean the Trajectory Eye is gone...?"
"Trajectory Eye... now that's a technique name with some weight to it."
"D-does it?"
"Yeah. Peak chuunibyou. Incredibly cool."
Three years ago, I would have lost my mind over it.
"Urk—!"
Franc's face crumpled for a moment at chuunibyou. She pouted briefly, then spoke again.
"When you threw the spears those two times, you couldn't see the trajectory at all?"
"No..."
"It's true that the first time you threw the wooden spears, the grouping was completely random..."
"Even if it evolved into Spatial Perception, in terms of actual use this is basically a drop in efficiency..." Losing an ability that useful stung.
I glanced toward the heap of corpses, then spoke to Franc.
"For now, let's make some dry logs and get out of here as fast as we can. More zombies could rise. Or a ghost."
"Yes. It is an immense relief that no ghost-type appeared."
"Tell me about it."
I'd wanted to study Elemental types, but the zombie rising had me badly on edge. And if my mind drifted elsewhere, Spatial Perception didn't seem to do its job properly either. This place was no good.
Time to get ready to run.
I climbed a tree standing at the island's edge and hacked away branches as thick as my torso, dropping them to the ground. Once I'd heaped the logs into a pile, I rolled my shoulders for no particular reason and muttered.
"This ought to be enough for Mana Sieve practice too, right?"
"Seoha. You've got this!"
"Yeah!"
I brought the land-penguin pelt over, sat, and started with a small branch, trying to push Phase Power into it through the Mana Sieve. Sure enough, it burst with a pop. The puk, puk of them exploding sounded so much like the logs going fuck, fuck at my failure that it felt insulting.
I kept at it, busily tearing off water-heavy leaves and eating them, and only after I'd spent two-thirds of the piled logs did I finally catch the knack and turn out a first finished piece. You couldn't just jam Phase Power into one spot at random. You had to run a hand over the whole log, as if stroking it, and feed the Phase Power in evenly.
"Hmm. I've gotten the moisture out, at least... so why does the log feel harder?"
It was definitely still a log, but when I knocked on it, it was as hard and heavy as striking rock. Was this thing even going to float?
"Try setting it on the water."
At Franc's word I tossed the log in. Splash! It went under and never came back up.
The sun was already high overhead, and I had nothing to show for it. Log Kickboard No. 1, nearly four hours in the making, sank deep—deeper—and thereby proved its worth. Nos. 2 and 3 demonstrated that they were no different, and I arrived at the understanding that however many more I made this way, the result would be the same as Nos. 1, 2, and 3.
"..."
"..."
"This is bad."
"This is bad..."
Lunch was long past. It felt like the sun would be setting before long. What was I supposed to do...
"Do I just swim for it...? I don't even know how far it is to the next island..."
While I sat there stuck, Franc seemed to hit on something. She clapped—pak—and shot off somewhere. She was back almost at once, both hands fluttering as she spoke.
"Seoha, the logs from before! The ones up in the tree look nicely dried!"
"...Ah!"
Right. The first time I'd looked the island over and made the wooden spears, I'd set some up on a branch nearby. The kickboard problem was solved, and I let the relief show, but inwardly I sighed. Swim again? A thick, unpleasant reluctance welled up in me.
Showing it would only worry Franc. I kept still.