Intrusion (1)
Intrusion (1)
This year's first-year tower entry followed the same schedule as last year.
A five-day program, set in a broadleaf forest spacious enough to hide in a cloak.
Survival and competition, right there in that place.
Cadets unaccustomed to living outside civilization ran into plenty of trouble, but for Lee Ha-sol it was no great hardship.
Before she entered Siyoram, she'd drifted through the gray zones alongside a Tower Faith subjugation squad, and all that practical experience was paying off now.
Besides, her situation now was far better than it had been back then.
Gale.
The unique ability that manifested during an isolated dungeon dive was outrageously powerful.
Output alone was barely worth comparing.
A single arrow she loosed casually now carried more lethal devastation than the hundreds she used to fire in the past.
The detection ability that connected her to the wind was so wide-ranging and precise it practically laughed at most detection-type unique abilities.
She'd always had a decent eye herself, and from the moment it manifested, she'd recognized Gale's performance was on a different level entirely.
'Still, was it really just luck...'
Even that thought was wrong.
Lee Ha-sol carelessly splashed water over her shoulders.
Ordinarily she wouldn't wash in a situation like this, but the lingering stench of the boss monster she'd defeated earlier clung too thickly for her to stand it.
The dirt washed away, revealing fair, pale skin. Lee Ha-sol shivered.
It wasn't from the cool lake water.
Lee Ha-sol closed her eyes. The moment she turned her awareness inward, she felt Gale surging upward, growing at a breakneck pace.
Inside the Tower, where the Blessing of Growth was amplified.
Even accounting for how rapidly growth accelerates right after a unique ability manifests, the skyrocketing performance of Gale was almost dizzying.
'Looks like I'll have to go through a long recalibration once I'm out...'
- Rrrumble...!
Which is why.
Lee Ha-sol could only reel in shock at the presence that abruptly materialized from nowhere.
Mana fluctuations? Not even a trace. Not the slightest tremor in the winds she sensed from afar.
Her Gale, currently spiking to its absolute peak, had failed entirely to detect it.
'There wasn't even an omen?'
Even more shocking was the complete absence of any forewarning.
If the interval between omen and phenomenon had just been too short, she could have forced herself to make sense of it, but there was no omen whatsoever.
Truly, all of a sudden. Without warning, the empty air darkened to black.
A darkness like a hole punched in the world—a black so absolute no shade of black in existence could match it.
Something spilled out from inside and fell into the lake.
Splash! The spray shot up and struck her bare skin. By that instant, the wind had already become arrows at Lee Ha-sol's will.
Dozens of arrows rained down upon the being that had plunged into the lake.
Wind gathered on her outstretched arm as well. Crash! The wind erupted into a storm, and the lake's surface churned violently.
The output was enough to rip even a large-type monster into hundreds and thousands of pieces. Lee Ha-sol was on the verge of releasing that trembling storm—
'Huh?'
—the instant she was about to let it go.
A flash of white resolved in Lee Ha-sol's vision. Not a color she was accustomed to. But not a color so common that she could ever forget it, either.
"...Ha-yul?"
Horrified, Lee Ha-sol clenched her fist. The arrows that had been about to slam into Lee Ha-yul scattered, barely missing him.
A small wave of relief washing over her, Lee Ha-sol shook her arm, carefully unwinding the storm that had coiled around it.
"Why is Ha-yul here..."
Right now the first-year tower entry is in progress—so why is Ha-yul, who should be in the middle of the second-year schedule, here? And of all moments, right when she'd taken the briefest pause to wash...
She'd meant to say as much, but her breath caught hard and no voice came out.
Lee Ha-sol's face froze rigidly at the sharp, coppery scent stabbing into her nose.
Red bloomed across her vision.
That pure white hair was mottled red all over. As if someone had dropped pigment centered on Lee Ha-yul, crimson spread through the clear lake water.
It was strange.
They were inside the Tower. When a cadet was injured, it wasn't blood that burst out—it was brilliant light clusters—so why...
"...Wo, unds..."
Was "wounds" even the right word? The thought surfaced reflexively.
Through the still-transparent lake water where the blood had not yet fully dispersed, she could see a state that the phrase "completely mangled" didn't even begin to cover.
What caught her eye most was the cleanly vanished pair of arms. And the two legs missing from the knees and calves downward... torn away, leaking sluggishly...
- Urk, guh-hurk...
Just then, Lee Ha-yul's shoulders heaved.
From his convulsing mouth, blood and chunks of flesh poured out. Every time his shoulders bucked, more of what had once been a body fell into the lake.
Fwoosh! The submerged bits of flesh caught fire. They froze, crumbled into dirt, sparked with lightning and annihilated, tore apart and scattered on the wind.
Just as Lee Ha-sol's mouth fell open at the freakish phenomenon and its sheer unreality, Lee Ha-yul, staggering, collapsed into the water.
"Ah, aaaaaaah—!"
Her face bleached utterly pale, Lee Ha-sol tore out a scream fit to rip her throat apart.
Crash! The loosened Gale swept across everything in every direction.
The lake water was shoved aside in an instant. His naked form, until now obscured by the water, was laid bare, but she paid it not the slightest mind.
"Ha-yul! Ha-yul...!"
For Lee Ha-yul and him alone, that ferocious wind turned gentle as a fair breeze. The wind cradled Lee Ha-yul, keeping him from sinking into the lake.
"What in the world...! What on earth happened...!"
Lee Ha-yul, borne upon the wind. Now that he was out of the water, the state he was in was horrifically clear. Lee Ha-sol clamped a hand over her mouth.
At the sight—a condition no one could possibly believe belonged to a living being—her vision darkened black.
"...Hea, ling..."
Gale had no healing power whatsoever. She'd learned some magic, but she hadn't trained her healing magic to a level usable in a real crisis.
Medicine made from whatever herbs she could find around her. With something like that, she had no skill to patch up a body practically a corpse...
"Ah..."
In a fleeting instant, every possible avenue snapped shut.
She couldn't make sense of any of this.
What was this, all of a sudden.
Why was Lee Ha-yul here, was he alive?
She could hear a very faint breathing. A fragile sound that wouldn't be strange at all if it stopped at any moment—no, if it had already stopped long ago...
"Ah."
Lee Ha-sol, who had been darting her eyes around helplessly, opened her mouth. Lee Ha-yul's body, held within the wind, was gradually becoming lighter.
"Ah, aah...! No, no no no no... noooooo!"
A cracked, splitting scream rang out.
"Why is this suddenly...! I haven't, I haven't done anything yet...!"
Lee Ha-sol hadn't dared touch him or pull him close, just in case. Lee Ha-sol trembled violently, tears streaming down her face.
What am I doing right now.
What was all that grueling effort for, what was the point of laboriously gathering spirit medicines and healing draughts and everything else.
Even if Lee Ha-yul's body had healed up fine and made them all meaningless. Even if Lee Ha-yul's mind had healed and he'd lost all his memories of the past.
The reason she'd brushed all that aside and resolved to start over from the very beginning...
"...Huh?"
It had gotten lighter. The weight kept decreasing. Her mouth fell open as a chill scraped through her mind, then a certain dissonance struck her.
...He was getting smaller.
This was different from flesh sloughing away... from that sort of despairing image.
Lee Ha-yul, wrapped in the wind, squirmed faintly.
...Into a small frame that Lee Ha-sol knew rather well...
"Huh?"
Tears still streaming down, Lee Ha-sol blinked.
Besieged by a sequence of events her thoughts could hardly keep pace with, Lee Ha-sol's mind finally ground to a halt.
* * *
They say nothing ever goes the way you want, but still—how could it turn out like this.
Recalling that lesson anew, I squirmed a little.
A soft sensation pressed against my body. The feeling around my face in particular was nothing short of cozy.
A sensation both familiar and strange... human skin.
"You're awake?"
A whisper reached my ear. A familiar voice. From within the plush, cozy softness that made me drowsy, I lifted my face.
"Ha-yul."
'...Lee Ha-sol.'
The one holding me in her arms was Lee Ha-sol.
'I fell asleep again.'
When I'd first come to after losing consciousness, I'd found that I had somehow regressed in age and was cradled in Lee Ha-sol's arms.
From what she told me, she wrapped her outer coat around my now-smaller self, gathered me up, dug a hole, and hid us down there.
It was underground, but it wasn't cold. A gentle warmth circulated against my back. It was a heat-generating spell Lee Ha-sol had temporarily carved into a nearby rock.
But honestly, even without the spell, Lee Ha-sol's body heat alone kept me from feeling the slightest chill.
"Here, ah..."
- Aaah...
Something moist touched my lips. I reflexively opened my mouth, and a small piece of fruit pulp was placed on my tongue.
It was fruit Lee Ha-sol had brought in from outside.
"Does anywhere hurt? On the outside, aside from getting smaller, you don't seem to have any issues..."
Lee Ha-sol, who kept feeding fruit pulp into my idle mouth, examined my condition down to the last detail.
'To think I got this small again...'
The body under her eyes and hands as she passed them over me was exceedingly tiny.
A body that had resorted to cost reduction due to a shortage of materials—that's the state it was in. Which meant a significant portion of my body had been lost.
'Without Taesan, I'd have died before I ever had a chance to get smaller.'
With a strange expression, I wiggled my fingers.
Because of my tiny hands the sensation didn't feel very tangible, but with Taesan manifested, my skin had grown far tougher and harder.
My muscles and bones were the same. My durability had clearly risen compared to before its manifestation.
Thanks to that, even swept up in the aftermath of the Three Ends, my form had survived.
If it had been before Taesan manifested? A guess... no, a certainty obtained through Observation. I would have been annihilated, totally and utterly, without leaving a trace.
Really, an output beyond imagination. That was probably also why I fell into the place where the first-year tower entry was underway, where Lee Ha-sol was.
'Did it break through space itself? The space of this Tower at that?'
To begin with, the very idea of breaking the space belonging to a Tower is outrageously absurd.
'Shi... good thing I didn't test it outside.'
And that was back when I didn't even have Taesan manifested. I'd had this strong gut feeling for some reason telling me never, ever to do it.
One careless mistake and it would've all ended meaninglessly and miserably. A chill ran through me, as if my brain fluid was freezing, and I shuddered.
"Don't move."
Just then, Lee Ha-sol stroked my head.
"We still don't know exactly what state your body is in. I'm checking right now, so just stay still for a bit..."
Then Lee Ha-sol carefully pressed my head back down. My face was once more buried in that voluptuous softness.
It was a thoroughly embarrassing position.
...Lately my personality and inclinations have changed a lot, but I still know that burying your face in someone's chest qualifies as an embarrassing situation.
Sure, I let the people close to me hold me without reserve, but that's because we've gotten close.
To be honest, since my relationship with Lee Ha-sol isn't like that, I squirmed, trying to pull free.
"Don't tremble, it's fine. I'm right here beside you..."
- Mmnn...
But it doesn't work the way I think it will. The hand pressing and stroking my head, the soft and bountiful embrace receiving me warmly.
'What is this...'
All of it felt unfamiliar, and yet more familiar than anything.
- Thump... thump... thump...
The sound of a heartbeat, coming from within the chest I had my face buried in. Without a chance to resist it, I ended up feeling a sense of security.
My eyelids grew heavy of their own accord, and my body and mind grew languid, like cotton drenched in water. Being in Lee Ha-sol's arms made the world feel far away and peaceful...
"Back in the day, I used to hold you and put you to sleep just like this every day."
Lee Ha-sol, stroking my head, whispered in a voice thick with reminiscence. Inwardly, I nodded.
Security. Familiarity.
It seemed my body, not my mind, was the one feeling these emotions.
'...Sleepy...'
"If you're sleepy, you can go night-night."
Lee Ha-sol's hand slid down from my head and started patting my back. Even without the Confession Necklace, she eerily picks up on my state right away.
Squirming in her arms, I laboriously gathered my mana.
- Ha-sol, you're in the middle of the tower entry. Please don't worry about me and focus on your activities...
"Ah-ah, tch. And don't use mana. Unless you're really hurting, be quiet."
I got scolded on the spot. At the "tch" sound, I reflexively cut off my mana.
"There we go, good boy... I've already racked up plenty of points. I took a significant share in defeating the tower entry boss monster too. And I played an active part before that... so don't worry..."
Nodding contentedly, Lee Ha-sol adjusted her hold on me. My face burrowed deeper into the softness, and I felt her cheek come to rest on the top of my head.
There was no scent of flesh, but the warm body heat and the soft, cozy sensation washed over me...
'I'm sleepy...'
A heavy drowsiness, hard to fight off, kept crashing over me.
That's the problem with this smaller body.
Like any child, but this body in particular demands enormous amounts of nutrition and sleep, constantly and without fail.
On top of that, with a touch that was kind, and affectionate... added to it, I simply couldn't hold back sleep.
My consciousness kept blurring hazily.
The problem of Three Ends, the countless spaces I'd seen when I fell here, the woman with violet hair—all of my myriad worries receded into the distance.
In this moment, at least, I want to bask in this soft warmth...
- Crack-a-boom!
That was the moment.
A blatant thunderclap rang out, loud enough to reach even my dulled senses. The expression on Lee Ha-sol's face, who had been stroking my back, stiffened.
- Found you!
A ringing shout, and with it, the thunder crashed down. Crack-a-boom! The ceiling shook.