Chapter 165: Bounty Hunter 4
Chapter 165: Bounty Hunter 4
Had I ever struggled this much to move since becoming a Dream Demon?
My limbs refused to obey, heavy as if I'd shackled weights to each one. At times it felt like trying to run while thrashing at the bottom of a pool. At other times, like being rolled up in layer after layer of thick cotton blankets and crushed under the pressure.
Had my magic power been forced out of me, like mud washed from a furrow by a stream of water?
I wrapped my magic around my body once more inside Ellis's unconscious mind. Every second, I could feel my reserves draining like a diver's oxygen tank running empty.
'Huh. Nothing in here but actual water.'
Water was all I could see. Not a stream or a lake or an ocean stretching out before me—my entire field of vision was simply filled with it. If I had to put a name to it, this was the kind of dream where you're sinking into the sea. Above me, light shimmered as though the sun still reached down from the surface. Below stretched a dark abyss of deep ocean, untouched by illumination.
'All of this water is magic power... The hell. This world, I swear.'
Kim Ha-eun had gathered an impressive amount of magic power in just a few days—the girl clearly had talent. But seeing a reservoir on this scale, I couldn't help comparing the two. If Ha-eun was a PhD publishing landmark papers at a prestigious university, Ellis was more like a prodigy who'd won a Nobel Prize before she came of age. Then again, she had been an Incarnation famous enough to leave her name etched in the Academy's records for years. That kind of genius would be a given.
When I gazed up toward the sunlit surface, multicolored bubbles shimmered in the current. Those would be the memories sleeping inside Ellis's unconscious. But I wasn't here to peek at them. I turned and willed myself downward into a controlled fall. Beyond the unconscious mind, into the space where a human's Origin resided—I had a feeling I would find it only by descending to the very floor of this lightless abyss.
The one mercy was that the sheer volume of magic power here—enough to trigger thalassophobia in anyone—did not treat me as hostile. I could move freely, more or less. True, I still had to wrap magic around myself the way a diver needs a tank and a drysuit just to function, but that couldn't be helped.
From below the surface into the water, then deeper still into the abyss. Down into darker and remoter depths.
I sank into that profound, unfathomable sea without once losing my way.
'Is that it? Subtle.'
There, in the deepest part of her unconscious mind—in an abyss where even the seafloor was invisible—rested a pearl that shone like the sun on the surface.
'...Can't do much about it right now, can I?'
The Origin belonging to the female disciple of the Yoke-Severing Sword had been a somewhat empty space. Ha-eun and the disciple had even sparred inside it. Ellis's Origin was the complete opposite. So much magic power flooded this place that it overflowed backward into her physical body, packing every corner until not a single empty space remained.
'As small as possible—'
Drawing all that magic power out was impossible. I had no choice but to delicately touch the Origin itself. I pictured soap bubbles. No, balloons. A space helmet. A fish tank. I shaped a spherical shell of magic power to disperse the pressure and covered the Origin as slowly as if I were fitting a lampshade over a fluorescent tube.
Crrrak—an uneasy noise echoed through the water. Maybe because I'd already poured in so much magic power that my whole body felt drained, I still managed to completely coat the bright, luminous Origin.
'So it melts off under pressure?'
The pale-violet barrier dissolved like an effervescent vitamin tablet, seeping gradually back into the dark water. Clearly, the protection wasn't permanent. But I'd already spent nearly all my magic. Nothing to be done.
Feeling rather like a beast reeled in by the scruff of the neck or a fish hooked on a line, I ascended as fast as I could through the black abyss.
'I really hope the bends aren't a thing here.'
I still couldn't fully repair her Origin. The best I could manage was fooling it with my own magic power.
※
A savory, faintly sweet aroma pricked at my nose. The sweet scent rising from bacon still felt a little wrong to me, but watching a fork press into bacon and a soft-cooked egg perched on crusty bread had a magic all its own—the kind that stirred a Constellation's appetite even when eating was unnecessary.
"So, can you taste it?"
"...Yeah, Dad."
A worried, apron-clad middle-aged man.
A middle-aged woman with her arms tightly crossed, biting her lip.
And a girl-shaped liquid raising her fork and cutting firmly into the bread.
Her trembling hand pierced the small morsel of bacon and egg and brought it to her lips. The yolk dripped, the food scattered, but neither Ellis nor her parents paid it the slightest attention. The fork disappeared silently between those delicate lips. The morsel crumbled and dissolved like sugar dropped into hot water. But what she felt was nothing like what she normally experienced. It would have tasted familiar—or at least, it would have tasted like the familiar.
"Tastes... the same as always."
"Ah... ahh—thank goodness. Really, thank goodness—"
Her transparent body remained as it was. Her lost sensory organs remained as they were. And yet she was looking at things with her eyes, tasting with her tongue, hearing with her ears—experiencing the five senses she had long since forfeited. Temporarily. Because I'd tricked her Origin. Tricked it, or maybe it was more accurate to say I'd planted a human lucid dream inside it. Either way, her human senses would hold as long as my magic power lasted.
"I'm a little sorry to bring this up at a moment like this, but this isn't a permanent cure."
"That's all right, Constellation. Now we know there is a way."
She had been weeping in her parents' arms, tears spilling freely. Then she wiped them away with a single breath and answered me with perfect composure. I'd expected them to cling to each other, touching cheeks and holding tight just to confirm the return of her senses. I'd thought it would take longer for her to calm down. But while her father was still sniffling and her mother had her head bowed low, Ellis made it abundantly clear why she had once been one of the Academy's most celebrated Incarnations.
"So. You said you were able to touch my Origin through the authority of a Dream Demon?"
"That's right. And like I said, this isn't a complete fix."
I'd given up on formal speech. The guards and the other guests had already overheard me cussing a blue streak outside the door. Beastkin and Incarnations both had ears far too sharp for their own good—they'd caught every word I'd muttered to myself. The polite register could stay inside my Incarnations' lucid dreams where it belonged.
Ellis smiled, a soft, knowing smile, then spoke words I hadn't seen coming.
"A Dream Demon, so you can manipulate an Origin... Perhaps the reason you're pursuing the Heart of the Exiled Serpent this time is related?"
"Mm. Not exactly the same, but... close enough."
Capture that bloated Heart of the Serpent and avenge the Tyrant's reserve guard. In exchange, the Incinerating Tyrant would send me knowledge about dream walkers. It was an unspoken deal, more or less settled between us. But Ellis, unfamiliar with the nuances of transactions between Constellations, appeared to have interpreted things a little differently.
Gone was the immature girl who'd whined about the bacon being too sweet and gotten smacked on the back by her father. She opened her mouth with purpose.
"Then if I were to capture the Heart of the Exiled Serpent and extract its Origin... would a full cure be possible?"
"...I can't make any promises."
Ellis must have assumed I was hunting the Heart of the Exiled Serpent to devour it. Fair enough. A Constellation hunting another Constellation wasn't the typical pattern—usually only Incarnations got caught. Constellations couldn't interfere with each other's Sanctums. And unless someone performed a direct Descent, even killing one usually meant destroying nothing more than an avatar. With two rare Dream Demons locked in pursuit, wild speculation was inevitable. A few small misunderstandings aside, though, one thing I could promise.
"It'll still be a lot better than what you've got now. Even if you don't get your body back, you might recover your senses."
If I could devour the Heart of the Exiled Serpent, my own power would grow significantly stronger. Which meant my ability to heal her would improve as well. I was only a half-formed Dream Demon. Consuming another Dream Demon was what had finally made me whole and allowed me to handle an Origin in the first place. Cannibalizing my own kind? Sure. So what? I'd killed three or four people over a single can of food before. After everything I'd lived through, crying about how frightening or distasteful it was to kill criminals just to strengthen my abilities didn't fit anymore.
If an interstellar war broke out, nuclear bombs wouldn't win it.
That was why I'd resolved to avoid direct clashes of Origin whenever possible.
'But now that I think about it... doesn't it just come down to extracting the Origin somehow?'
The prodigy standing in front of me, though, made me reconsider. You didn't have to be a Dream Demon to touch an Origin. The inefficiency was a species trait—I'd simply lacked enough magic power. Turn that logic around, and with an overwhelming surplus of magic power, even a non-Dream Demon could touch an Origin. The living proof was right here: Ellis, whose magic power had overflowed so violently it had touched her own Origin and wrecked her in the process.
"Then I'll bring it back myself. If it means getting cured, I don't need things like what's in the warehouse."
"Young lady! That's disrespectful in front of the Constellation!"
She'd spoken with the arrogance of someone who'd already decided the hunt was as good as won. Or maybe calling it arrogance was unfair—she had the power to back it up. Whether you called it cheeky or confident, her father had apparently had enough, because the man who'd been wiping away tears moments ago wound up and landed a loud smack across her back.
"Ack—Dad!"
"Wha—?"
Ellis, still not fully accustomed to having her senses back, jolted in surprise and her body rippled like a wave pool. With her liquid form still intact, the blow sent a few stray droplets flying.