New Technique
“Lord Ludwig? Where are you headed?”
“Mm… the Korean government put in a support request. The appearance rate of magic beasts has been climbing sharply lately, so it looks like they’re short on manpower.”
Magic beasts, monsters, creatures—whatever name people gave them, they all shared a few traits. Unlike ordinary animals, they could appear in a place without any normal reproduction. The fewer people nearby, the more often they showed up. And every last one of them carried a fierce hostility toward humans.
Villains didn’t appear all that frequently, so these creatures remained the heroes’ main enemies. A few of the stronger specimens possessed enough power to level an entire metropolis. One famous record even claimed that a vast underwater nation had been wiped out by a sea serpent of unknown origin—though the tale was so outlandish that many dismissed it as pure myth.
“I’ll be back within a week.”
“We’ll be waiting.”
Once Ludwig left the mansion with his attendants, I pulled out my phone and wondered how to spend the free time. I pressed my fingerprint to the sensor and waited; Laplace booted up and greeted me cheerfully.
Welcome, Master.
“Have you found the cause of the recent surge in magic beasts?”
Normally I would have had to type every word, but thanks to the latest leaps in technology the voice-recognition system had grown far more precise. For a while now I had been able to talk to Laplace out loud. Voice recognition had existed even when I first arrived in this world, yet back then it was clumsy and unreliable. These days the rough edges had been smoothed away, so simple commands were easier to handle by conversation.
I have not yet identified the exact cause, but I have discovered several phenomena that appear to be linked to it.
“Oh? What are they?”
Anomalies detected in the city’s water and sewage pipes, as well as in the subway maintenance facilities. A significant number of water mains ruptured and were repaired only recently. The subway itself was forced to halt operations for roughly thirty minutes after a recent earthquake.
Yet when that quake struck inside the subway tunnels, almost no one on the surface felt so much as a tremor.
“So… you’re guessing the cause of the sudden increase in magic beasts is underground?”
Correct. Simulations based on data gathered from multiple sources indicate a high probability that these phenomena are the direct or indirect result of interaction with magic beasts.
“But you still don’t know exactly what kind of phenomenon?”
Possible scenarios include a colony of subterranean magic beasts establishing itself beneath Seoul, large-scale movement of beasts through underground routes, or uncontrolled beasts pouring in through fissures opened by the earthquake. Without additional data, however, I cannot provide a definitive answer.
“…Keep digging. And check whether anyone inside Leviathan is already looking into related incidents.”
Understood.
I was still deep in conversation with Laplace about the recent anomalies when footsteps approached nearby. I switched the phone off. Most of the attendants had left with Ludwig, and at this hour everyone else would be buried in work. Only one person was likely to be here.
“Huh? Seo-hyun! What are you doing here?”
“…Don’t tell me you just woke up.”
“…Huh? What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s two in the afternoon.”
“It’s summer break.”
“…”
Well… it was summer break…
Yeah, right.
“Follow me. Today’s training load is doubled.”
“Ehh? Why?”
“You already know that giving me the ‘I’ve lost everything’ face won’t work. Besides, who was it that asked for training in the first place…?”
“…”
“Fine. I’ll teach you a new technique I’ve been thinking about. That should make up for it, right?”
“A new technique?!”
The moment the words left my mouth, Yulia’s eyes lit up. No one aiming to become a hero would turn down a chance to dramatically raise their own power. Of course I couldn’t personally wield her unique ability, so what I offered was pure theory—plus a little of the practical insight that had grown naturally from spending so much time with her.
If anyone else had made the same suggestion, they would almost certainly have been called rude or told to mind their own business. The only reason I could propose such methods of ability use was that most of my earlier suggestions had succeeded and translated directly into real gains for Yulia. That track record was also proof of how much she trusted me.
“Shall we start with the basic theory?”
“Is this… actually possible?”
Yulia stared at the mouse scurrying cheerfully around the desk. Two full hours had already passed since she began practicing the new technique Seo-hyun had suggested, yet the results so far were next to nothing.
I’ve raised atmospheric pressure to extremes before, but creating a vacuum is a first…
What she was attempting was to suck every last bit of air out of an open-topped glass cylinder until a vacuum formed inside. Success would be marked by the mouse collapsing from oxygen deprivation. The ultimate goal was to refine her control until she could generate a vacuum space with her unique ability alone—no walls required.
If she pulled it off, the applications would dwarf anything she had managed so far: asphyxiating an opponent by vacuuming the air around them, knocking flying magic beasts out of the sky by creating vacuum pockets, even nullifying flame-based abilities. The only problem was that none of it was easy.
Living with Yulia for so long had taught Seo-hyun something important: she couldn’t truly manipulate individual gas molecules. Instead she treated the air itself as a single mass and moved that mass around. Creating a true vacuum, however, demanded an entirely different method of control.
So Seo-hyun had proposed reversing her usual approach. The idea itself was sound, yet her lack of practice with the inverted method had so far produced nothing usable.
How am I supposed to do this?
Yulia wondered what Seo-hyun would try in her place. The core issue was simple: the moment she moved air to create a vacuum, the surrounding air rushed back in and filled the empty space again.
Seo-hyun said to reverse my perception.
It wasn’t impossible. A handful of unique-ability users in the world had inverted their own perception and unlocked completely different applications of their powers.
But even for me, this is tough…
She had never attempted anything like it, and almost no one used the technique. She had only ever heard of it; she had never seen it done.
Reversing perception…
Yulia closed her eyes, thought for a moment, then raised her hand toward the mouse.
I don’t know if it’ll work, but I think I’ve got the feel of it.
Born into a prestigious house and gifted with talent that outstripped everyone around her when it came to unique abilities, she refused to kneel here—no matter how unfamiliar or difficult the challenge.
“Huu…”
She drew in a deep breath and locked eyes with the mouse. They had only met today, yet after two hours of wrestling with the little creature she could tell it no longer flinched when it looked at her.
All right. Let’s try it.
She gathered her focus exactly as she had the very first time she ever used her unique ability. These days she could wield it as naturally as her own limbs without conscious effort, but right now she needed a method of control utterly different from anything she had used before.
I’m not pulling gas toward the place I want. I’m pushing it away.
Whenever she created wind she always drew nearby air toward her target. Most wind-type ability users, by contrast, simply shoved the air that was already around them. That meant she had been using her power in an unusual way from the very beginning—possible only because of her exceptionally high degree of dominion. The result was finer control and far less power loss.
This time, however, she needed the opposite.
She deliberately dulled her senses and stopped paying close attention to the air particles she normally steered as if she could see them. Once she could no longer properly perceive the air itself, pulling it to a desired location became impossible.
So how do I use my ability under these conditions?
Because she had possessed overwhelming dominion from the start, she had never needed the lower-level techniques. Pushing wind was inefficient—so much air simply escaped in every direction. Yet for people whose senses were not as specialized as hers, it was the only method available.
Ah. I never knew.
Her innate talent had let her skip the early stages entirely. Knowledge that even complete beginners understood had never once occurred to her.
So this is how you push the wind…
In that instant she fully grasped the method.
And at that exact moment—
Thud.
Inside the glass box, the mouse that had been staring up at her toppled over.