82. Suck Harder. So You Can Feel It Better
82. Suck Harder. So You Can Feel It Better
I generally kept my private life to myself whenever possible, but Tachia was the one exception I'd made.
She'd given me an Ego Weapon forged from mithril — an item of astronomical value, completely free of charge.
If she'd asked me to cough up my organs for not returning the thing on the spot, I wouldn't have had a leg to stand on, so I had absolutely no reason to hold back when recounting my activities in detail.
"...You didn't bring the weapon?"
She tossed out the question while smoking a cigarette as I filled her in on my recent situation.
I immediately stopped my story and prepared to answer.
"The weapon, you mean?"
"Yeah, Ego Weapons usually get obsessively attached to their owners. You got a taste of that too, didn't you?"
"Hm, I'm not so sure. I haven't really felt anything like that..."
I'd definitely heard something similar when I first received the Ego Weapon, but I'd never once felt like my safety was threatened or experienced anything like hostility while using this little one.
If anything, it vibrated pleasantly when I maintained it, and whenever I was in danger, it detected the threat and blocked it on its own before I even realized, saving my life on several occasions.
"...No signs of obsession at all. Don't tell me you left the thing abandoned at home?"
"Ah, no. I didn't just abandon it. It's like this, you see..."
It'd be better to show her rather than explain this one.
With that judgment, I swung my hand through the air, and the weapon slipped out from the distorted space along that trajectory and into my grasp.
-Wooong.
The shaft hummed pleasantly the moment it settled in my hand.
The blade reflected the sunlight looking perfectly fine, suggesting it had been preserved in flawless condition as usual.
"...Subspace?"
"Ah, yes. I became able to deploy it about two months after you transferred this child to me, Tachia. To be precise, it's less like expanding space and more like I'm carrying it around inside my body..."
Let's just say a space developed within my body exclusively for storing this little one.
Thanks to this function, I could pull out the weapon anytime without carrying it around everywhere, which meant even when unarmed I could bring at least half my combat strength to bear.
"...Even though you've been walking around with it to the point the subspace function woke up on its own, you're telling me there have been zero problems so far?"
But what actually concerned Tachia wasn't the weapon's growth; it was my well-being.
She frowned and rested her chin on her hand, as if events had diverged from her own predictions.
"Um, Tachia...?"
"Any other unusual signs?"
"Huh? Ah, yes. I'll explain right away."
That point nagged at me a little, but the expert on this weapon wasn't me, it was her.
Figured I'd play along for my own sake, so I decided to explain this and that regarding the spear.
"Before, it only ever returned to wherever I was, but these days, as long as it isn't too far from me, it's also become capable of moving on its own according to my commands. And also, maybe thanks to this child's influence, the speed at which I master self-taught spear techniques has increased... Ah, and if I borrow the help of this child and a mana core, forming a circle is possible too."
"So you're telling me you, who couldn't handle mana until recently, can even use circles now?"
"Yes, though conveniently enough, it's impossible for me alone."
Circle formation is a technique that serves as a measure of attainment for 'Mana Users' who handle and utilize mana.
Considering that technique is generally only possible for those with enough skill to enter a Mage Tower, achieving it even through the power of tools could be seen as remarkable in itself.
"Can you try using it here?"
"I think that'd be difficult. If I had armor with a mana core embedded in it, maybe, but as things stand, I lack the aptitude to handle mana..."
Magic and aura were things those blessed with them had to learn over long periods of time, so how could a rookie adventurer who'd barely scraped together a house possibly handle mana independently?
Of course, I could go home and come back wearing armor, but Tachia seemed unsatisfied even with that much waiting, casually tossing out a suggestion.
"Open your mouth for a second."
"Huh? Open my... Mmph!"
She smoothly plucked the cigarette right out of my mouth, then took advantage of the gap while I was speaking to pop it right back in.
My face flushed as I belatedly realized what she'd just done, but she just pressed my chin down gently with her finger and flatly stated her business.
"Quietly suck on it."
"Mmph, mmph..."
"Don't worry. It's nothing weird."
No, that's plenty weird.
That wasn't a fresh cigarette, it was the one she'd been smoking herself.
"Cough!"
But the embarrassment from that was only momentary.
Along with an unconscious breath, pain stabbed into my lungs and my body immediately crumpled to the floor.
"Cough! Hack!"
"...What, you've never smoked before?"
"N-no, no. I used to smoke, back in the day... Hack! Gack!"
I coughed and tried to shake off the agony, but the suffocating feeling didn't easily fade, as if needles were embedded in my lungs.
I'd smoked for a few years in my past life too, but wasn't this stuff incomparably stronger than what I'd smoked back then?
"Th-this is pretty strong stuff you're smoking."
"Well yeah, anything less than this barely even registers for me."
Tachia said that as she took the cigarette she'd put in my mouth back into her own.
Even though it had been in my mouth, if only once, she showed no hesitation whatsoever in putting it into hers.
"Anyway, this should be enough, so try doing what you usually do on that scarecrow over there."
"...Hey, Tachia."
"What."
"That cigarette, the one I had in my mouth..."
"What about it? You wanna suck on it more?"
"...No, it's nothing."
Right, thinking about it, Tachia was always this kind of person.
It was embarrassing in many ways, but she'd said there was a reason she'd given me the cigarette she was smoking herself.
I immediately gripped the Ego Weapon and prepared to form a circle targeting the scarecrow set up in the backyard.
Under normal circumstances, if I exerted my will to use it, this child would match it on its own, and all I had to do was activate the mana in my armor to link that power.
-Thump.
But at this moment, having smoked Tachia's cigarette, I felt something arise within my body that replaced the armor.
Beyond my heart pounding fiercely and the sensation of blood circulating through my body becoming vividly clear, a feeling of something seeping out from within as though breaking down the boundary between flesh and skin...
-Bzzzz!
When I operated that sensation as if substituting for the armor's mana core, the heat haze forming on my arm soon solidified, taking the shape of a translucent ring.
This was precisely a circle. The phenomenon where mana operated by a Mana User condenses into ring form when excessively concentrated at a single point.
And since mana itself was energy that could be converted into physical force, forming a circle meant being able to output excessive power at that specific point.
-Bzzzz!
But why was it?
The power of this circle felt stronger than usual... Was it because the circle had formed via my body instead of the armor?
"Swing it with everything you've got."
"Ah, yes!"
Whatever the case, it was clear some kind of new opportunity had presented itself.
I immediately poured the power of the circle formed on my hand into the spear, and thrust it at the scarecrow with all my might.
And then, 'BOOM!' a thunderous roar echoed fiercely.
The power that burst forth alongside it went beyond devastating the scarecrow, collapsing even the brick wall situated behind it and laying absolute waste to the entire front.
"Wha, whaa?"
Yeah, it was far stronger than usual.
The power to blow away a range exceeding ten meters from the point of the thrust exceeded even most attack magic by a large margin.
On top of that, if I could land it instantly right after forming a circle with no casting time, it might even be possible to kill a Hero instantly under the premise of a surprise attack.
"Is your body okay?"
"Ah, yes. The recoil's a bit severe but I can endure it."
But the scariest part was that a technique of this caliber carried virtually no risk at all.
Usually, powerful techniques came with proportional danger... No, come to think of it, do circle users just spam stuff like this like normal attacks?
Had I, however temporarily, gotten to experience that through Tachia's help?
"Th-that stuff just now, was it some kind of doping?"
"Eh, sure. Let's roughly call it that."
Roughly call it that, she says.
Just from the firepower, it wasn't something you could roughly brush off, but if it wasn't doping, what the heck had caused the output to spike that high?
"Circle formation's confirmed, now swing that spear a bit more. I need to check how many techniques you've developed with that spear."
"Ah, yes."
I felt curious, but since it had been a while since we met, there were more things to confirm than that.
Afterward, following her instructions, I swung the spear without mana manipulation and performed a martial routine against the scarecrow, and Tachia, who'd been smoking while watching, occasionally tossed out questions.
"...That spear seems to have helped you pick up techniques quite a bit?"
"Yes, it corrects my posture immediately if I assume a wrong stance."
My basics for the spear were already set thanks to the class system supported by the guild.
But what made me capable of holding my own to a certain degree even against Heroes could largely be attributed to this spear guiding me toward the correct posture.
At first, it had felt awkward since it pulled against me with force contrary to my intentions, but once we reached a certain level of sync, I could now wield it as if it were originally my own technique.
"That's fascinating. A spear that automatically corrects the user's movements."
"That's because the soul that served as the material has its own history. Even without memories, its instincts remember that stuff."
"...The soul that served as the material?"
"The material for an Ego Weapon is based on a human soul, after all."
At that instant, my breath stopped cold.
Tachia saw my reaction and smoothly removed the cigarette from her mouth.
"Did you seriously not know?"
"N-no. Rather than not knowing... I just hadn't been paying attention to it."
Thinking about it, it was an obvious reality.
An Ego Weapon, as the name implied, meant a weapon with a soul dwelling in it, and the medium for creating that soul wouldn't be conjured from nothing.
In that case, was the soul in this weapon a once-outstanding warrior or something?
"Well, I've more or less seen your level, so let's call it a day for today's tests."
While I was lost in such thoughts, Tachia declared the end of the evaluation, smoothly closing the distance between us as she spoke.
"There's something bugging me for a sec, so open your mouth."
"Huh? Again?"
"I'm not sticking a cigarette in there this time, so stop griping and open up."
"...Y-yes, ma'am."
I was a little worried, but having received help in many ways, I couldn't exactly refuse.
The one saving grace was that when I opened my mouth, what Tachia put inside wasn't a cigarette.
It was her finger.
"Mmph!?"
"Stay still. Don't bring your teeth down."
"...Mmph, mmph."
"Good, now lick it with your tongue and try sucking harder. You'll feel it better that way."
Uh, Tachia. Your wording's a bit dangerous there.
I know there's a reason you're doing this, but please have at least a little self-awareness.
Anyone watching might get the wrong idea about you breastfeeding a grown man.
"...Hey, are you cursed?"
But her following words ripped such worries out entirely.
"Curse, you say?"
"Yeah, and it's a seriously nasty kind of energy I'm sensing. Did you accidentally run into a living corpse somewhere?"
A curse placed by a living corpse. The moment I heard those words, the first thing that came to mind was one of the Four Horsemen I'd encountered three months ago.
The Knight of Famine, Gorgon Zola.
A bastard who might have killed me right on the spot if things had gone slightly wrong.
"...Is it serious?"
Come to think of it, auditory hallucinations and impulses had occasionally flared up since that time.
Maybe that was the influence of the curse, I thought as I asked back, and Tachia returned an answer along with a plume of cigarette smoke.
"For some people it could turn them into a wreck, but if you've been fine for months after being cursed with no problems, you can just carry it around."
"Huh? It's a curse, and I can just carry it around?"
"The curse is basically just someone whispering inside your head, right? They say it can trigger impulses and stuff, but those impulses could actually become a driving force for your growth instead."
A curse becoming a driving force, huh...
Slightly bizarre, but thinking about it, hadn't I felt a sense of urgency precisely because of those whispers, which made me work even harder at beating down fallen Heroes?
"Well, if you ever feel like you're really going insane, you can go to a priest and get it cleansed, but if that's not the case, just treat it like you're carrying around one extra sandbag and keep going. You'll be fine."
"...So to you, Tachia, a curse is just treated like a sandbag."
"Look at how long I've been around. It'd be weird to freak out over a measly curse placed by some corpse."
Ah, yes. So you're quite older than you look, then.
True, I'd already vaguely guessed she was a 'Transcendent' capable of twisting Airi's prophecies.
I didn't know why she'd moved to this isolated district to convalesce, but I'd already deduced she was no insignificant figure.
The weapon in my hand alone was something that even most master craftsmen couldn't make...
'Yeah, so I can kill the mother who abandoned me with my own hands.'
...Wait a second.
Now that I thought about it, I'd had such a dream today.
A dream where Gorgon Zola's curse eroded me, exactly as Tachia described, and that erosion was projected into my dream, affecting that child as well.
"Hey, Tachia."
A chill ran through me as the memory belatedly surfaced, and in the midst of that, I held out the Ego Weapon in my hand toward Tachia and asked.
"Is it possible, for an Ego Weapon to also be affected by a curse?"
-Drop.
The cigarette fell from Tachia's mouth the instant I uttered the question.
In the silence that followed, Tachia stood there staring at me without even realizing the cigarette had fallen from her lips.
No, to be precise, she was staring not at me but at the spear in my hand.