Prove Your Worth
Pwaaah!!
What burst forth in a spray of light was a massive water droplet. No—more precisely, a ghost shaped like one.
Its translucent body drifted this way and that, rolling and swelling like a cluster of bubbles rising through the sea.
“Kyuu!”
Even its cry was strange, like a dolphin calling from a bathroom. Distant yet somehow right beside the ear—an utterly ambiguous sound.
Someone well-versed in spiritual phenomena might have rattled off technical terms like “rap” or whatever, but unfortunately I possessed no such expertise.
I stretched out my hand toward Shiz. At once the enormous translucent droplet flew to me and coiled around my fingers.
A chill.
An inexplicable, bone-deep cold raised every instinctive alarm in my body. Shiz meant no harm, yet the reaction was forced at the primal level.
This was the effect of Wanderer.
Overall it felt little different from a ghost’s presence. Saturated with yin energy, its mere existence inspired awe and compelled living creatures to feel an involuntary dread.
If I had to put a label on it, it was like a tank skill designed to yank every scrap of aggro onto itself in an instant. In the way it branded its presence into the world, it was closest to my own Charisma.
The cold that drifted around us was merely a side effect of the gathering yin energy; its practical impact was negligible.
“Kyung! Kyu!”
In complete contrast to the heavy atmosphere it created, Shiz zipped about in every direction, spinning circles around me with pure delight—exactly like a puppy finally let out for a long-awaited walk.
“…Do as you like.”
“Kyu, kyuu?!”
I deliberately loosened the leash.
The perfect testing ground was ready. Even if she got hurt, as long as she didn’t vanish completely I could restore her at any time; I was standing by right behind her. Being newly born or whatever was no longer a danger to Shiz.
As I said, so long as she didn’t disappear I could bring her back even from death. More than that, I wanted to see just how fast she could grow once the restraints of “management” were lifted.
A phrase flashed through my mind with unnatural clarity—the words Reus Vagna had once spoken to me.
“Prove it. Show me that you’re worth something.”
“…Kyuing!!”
At my declaration Shiz swelled her body and began drawing my mana. I poured it into her without holding back.
Her once-translucent form darkened in real time, turning steadily black.
Because she was wrapped in my shadow, the influence reached her directly. The faint purple tinge mixed in suggested that Sadism was also taking effect.
After drinking her fill of mana, she writhed, then reshaped herself into an arrow and shot away at blinding speed.
The moment Subjugator began to climb, I funneled every scrap of its effect into her. Even from a distance the eerie cold grew sharp enough to prickle the skin.
“Hmm.”
But that was all. The pressure was real, yet only as a first impression. It didn’t take long to realize the thing was an empty shell—all show and no substance.
Part of it was that she had just been born, but Shiz was simply swallowing nearby spirits to bulk herself up. She used no other skills.
In truth that was the ordinary way of spirits. They drifted, seeking places thick with the same yin energy. When they found another of their kind, they merged.
They became stronger by joining. Up to that point they were no different from immature elementals.
“Stop.”
She halted at once.
Then the body that had swollen to the size of an elephant turned and came back to me.
“Compress.”
“Kyuuu…”
Apparently disappointed by my lukewarm reaction, Shiz began shrinking bit by bit.
She couldn’t reduce instantly because a huge mass of undigested spirits still thrashed inside her droplet form. Through the link I felt her panic at being unable to process them quickly.
In short, she had been drunk on the sudden sense of omnipotence and had simply absorbed everything in sight without thinking.
If her only purpose were to serve as a jar for spirits, her actions would have been correct—become both net and vessel and scoop them all up.
But the current Shiz could not realize her full potential without my support. Charging ahead drunk on power without reinforcing herself was nothing short of suicide.
She had to grasp her own limits with absolute clarity. I had said it many times: these things had to be hammered in at the earliest stage.
Once a bad habit took root through half-measures, most people found it nearly impossible to correct later. There was a reason the proverb still existed.
I gradually reduced the mana I had been feeding her.
“Kyu… uit…”
Each time, Shiz writhed in pain as the undigested spirits ran wild.
Of course they did. Spirits grew stronger the more they gathered. Faced with the threat of being eaten from within, what choice would they make?
Naturally they would join forces and search for a way out.
“Does it hurt?”
“Kyuu…”
“Do you understand what you did wrong?”
She managed a small nod with her body, as if even crying was too much effort.
Even with raised stats, Shiz herself was still level 1 and had used neither skills nor techniques while leaving her prey unprocessed. In short, it was like a bad case of indigestion.
In reality it felt more like a parasite that had grown fat on its host and was now trying to tear its way free—like something out of Alien.
I placed my hand on her body and fed her mana directly, carefully metering it so she could just barely handle the problem herself.
Then I offered the solution.
“Use telekinesis. Bind the ones thrashing inside so they can’t move freely.”
Telekinesis was a power well-known among psychics. The skill Telekinesis was its representative form.
It was the power of thought. The stronger the desire, the more it transcended mere supernatural phenomena and allowed physical interference with a target exactly as imagined.
Output varied with level and available mana, but considering that most poltergeist phenomena were caused by spirits, this power could certainly be put to practical use if handled correctly.
“Kyuu…!”
Through the Link she received my intent perfectly and activated telekinesis. The sensation of handling mana must not have been so different; she grasped it more easily than expected.
Individuals with high base intelligence were convenient that way. Teach them one thing and they would execute it without fail. They even showed the potential to go further.
It was still a clumsy imitation, but with time Shiz would develop her own unique way of using Telekinesis.
Because her body was semi-transparent and tinted black, I could watch the process with perfect clarity. Spirits of every color were swiftly bound by black force, either scattering or going limp as if their strength had drained away, then settling into her core.
Binding them with constant telekinetic pressure so they could not scheme was basic. Any that thrashed too violently to control were extinguished quickly and decisively.
She sorted priorities: the relatively docile ones were absorbed slowly, while the vicious and troublesome ones were slaughtered first and turned into nourishment.
When at last no spirits remained inside her shrinking form, Shiz gave a full-body shudder of relief and rubbed herself against me.
The chill and cold she radiated had grown incomparably stronger than before.
I had been so focused I had tuned them out, but now I noticed the system messages related to Shiz and Comet flooding one corner of my vision in a frenzy.
I dismissed them all and roughly checked Shiz’s compressed information.
She had reached level 4. Telekinesis had risen from 1 to 2, and Wanderer from 1 to 3.
I already knew low-level growth was fast, but seeing it gathered like this made the speed feel real.
Wanderer was a skill that simply meant “spirit,” so merely acting like one had apparently been enough to raise it by two ranks in that short time.
Telekinesis had climbed because she had just forced out performance beyond her base output against multiple enemies by relying on raw stats, stacking proficiency at once.
As for the skill Possession, I decided to leave it alone for now. Experimentation came first.
I gently pushed away the Shiz that kept clinging to my hand, craving warmth, and jerked my chin toward an area that still looked thick with spirits.
“Do better this time.”
If she truly did well, there would be a reward. The moment I sent that thought through the Link, the surface of the droplet trembled violently, swelling and shrinking in rapid succession.
“Kyuuuut!!!”
Then she shot away so fast she left no afterimage, soaring through the sky. Watching her with somewhat cooler eyes, I headed toward Comet.
Clank, whiiirrr—
In that brief interval she had already set up a makeshift workshop; the constant noise of machinery filled the air.
In the middle of it all, Comet looked like a toy whose batteries had died.
Through half-removed clothing her body was opened in a way no human form could ever manage. Inside, countless parts moved of their own accord like living things, adjusting and tuning themselves.
What drew the eye most was a sphere glowing with blue light. Within it, a spring and a ring spun endlessly, rotating and operating without pause.
Strangely, none of the parts ever strayed even a fraction from their designated zones. Comet sat cradling that sphere as if asleep, looking for all the world like a perfectly crafted work of art.
I wasn’t alarmed. At a glance she might have seemed broken, but through the Link I could clearly feel that Comet herself was unharmed.
That form was only a shell.
Just as with the mechanical tower of the Machine Tower of the Snow Country, the true body was the sphere; the human-like frame was merely a kind of armor that allowed smoother activity.
The process itself was simple.
The tiny insect robots Comet had prepared in advance located necessary parts. Once they settled in place, the shadow crows of the Hive carried those parts to her.
She immediately disassembled them, recombined only what she needed, and made them her own with swift precision.
The massive machines around her assisted the work.
Useless scrap was melted down and compressed into ingots ready for future construction, while anything useful was sorted and stored separately.
Ziiing, clack, thunk!
After the cycle repeated another five or six times, the machines fell still. Comet’s open body closed, returning to a complete form that would have looked perfectly human to any observer.
She opened her eyes as if just waking from sleep, noticed me watching, calmly adjusted her clothes, rose, and greeted me.
“Master, I have achieved 170 percent of the target metrics.”
With that she spread her hand and projected a hologram—a detailed report of everything she had built and every way her own specifications had improved.
“Furthermore, I have fully mapped the approximate geography of this dungeon and discovered several anomalous locations and entities that emit large quantities of negative-ion energy.”
I scanned it all quickly, then nodded with a satisfied smile. Comet’s lips curved in response.
“Well done. And I mean that—no empty praise.”
Comet was competent. Too competent. I finally understood why wealthy people spent fortunes hiring top-tier secretaries and contractors to manage their affairs.
I had asked for one thing and received results that went past three all the way to ten. Who in their right mind would be dissatisfied? On top of that she had secured high-quality materials ready for immediate use.
“Hive, you worked hard too.”
“Caw!”
I stroked the nape and beak of the Hive perched on my shoulder in praise, then patted Comet’s head as she watched expectantly. After that I began packing up.
I ordered every material handed over to the Hive for storage in the All-Things Store, and told Comet to recover the machines.
“Time to wake up.”
We had gathered what we needed. There had been unexpected losses, but we had also seen new possibilities.
Thanks to Comet’s efficiency we had even located what appeared to be the dungeon’s boss area, so there was no longer any reason to linger.
If the dungeon suddenly cleared it might throw unexpected variables into chaos, so I decided to head for Growl and Echidna.
With everything packed, I called Shiz—who in the meantime had absorbed more spirits and risen all the way to level 6—and set off toward the others.