A Hand from a Higher Dimension

Damn it.

Haneul squeezed his eyes shut. Even as he did, blood came surging up from his arm and chest, staining the white snowfield a vivid red.

Had the scent of human blood drawn them? Four more Snow Wolves had trailed in behind the pack leader.

Grrr. Grrrrrr. The wolves' low-frequency growls traveled up through the frozen ground, reaching him as vibrations.

Hahk... hup... It was getting harder and harder to breathe.

Before long, six Snow Wolves had Haneul ringed in a circle. There was nowhere left for him to run.

Whine. Whimper. As the pack leader closed in, the very wolf that had first claimed Haneul as its prey tucked its tail between its legs and backed away in nervous little shuffles.

The leader, as though this were only its due, strode up with an imperious air and looked down at him through arrogant eyes. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠octagonal magic core embedded in its forehead cast off a mysterious glow.

To die like this... talk about unfair. Fury boiled up from somewhere deep inside him — and with it, Haneul's eyes flew wide open.

And in that instant, the image of the enormous pack leader was caught crisp and clear on his retinas. Along with it, just as sharp, he saw his own reflection in the beast's glistening eyes.

A bloody, terrified mess — what a pathetic sight I make. Huh? Wait a second—! Clicking his tongue at the sight of himself, Haneul was suddenly struck by a massive shock.

It had changed. Something was different.

Because exposure to Highland's environment hadn't changed his body one bit, he had assumed he'd failed to Bloom and had quietly resigned himself to the disappointment. But it wasn't his body that had changed. It was his soul — just a little.

To be precise, not his soul itself, but one of the Mental Images slowly turning within it.

A limp, gray hand. Gray needle and thread. Gray plaster paste to match. And last of all, a pair of firmly sealed gray lips. These were the four Mental Images his soul had always harbored.

Of those, the needle and thread, the plaster paste, and the sealed lips hadn't changed in the slightest — but the hand had. Beautiful color had been delicately layered over the once-drab, colorless hand.

Huh? What is this? Startled, Haneul blinked hard.

Meanwhile, the pack leader had shoved its muzzle right up against his chest and was working its nose. Grrrrrrr— From its gaping jaws, frothy drool dripped down in fat beads, soaking his face and chest until they were thoroughly slick.

Ugh. A foul stench jabbed at his nose.

The beast pushed out ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠its rasping tongue and lapped at the blood gushing from Haneul's forearm — savoring the taste as an appetizer, it seemed, before getting down to the main course of human meat.

Ngh. Nngh. When its tongue dragged across the wound, an unbearable ache bored dull and deep through his skin.

Even so, Haneul kept his eyes stretched wide, observing the creature's soul.

Every soul Haneul had observed until now had belonged to a human — and so, naturally, every one had resembled a human, its color a dull shade of gray. The souls of the Snow Wolf Tribe didn't stray far from that expectation. Their spirits took the shape of dingy gray wolves.

Just like I figured.

But then his point of view abruptly changed. The pack leader's soul had suddenly flattened into two dimensions.

One dimension is a point. Two dimensions make a plane. A picture drawn on a sheet of paper — that is a two-dimensional world.

And the pack leader's soul, as it appeared in Haneul's vision, looked exactly like such a picture on paper. Not only the soul itself had flattened; everything around it had gone two-dimensional as well.

At this very moment, the leader's spirit sat nested inside a fortress of three solid octagonal layers, safely shielded from all outside harm. Jutting from the fortress's outer wall were as many as three jagged horn-like spikes, which the wolf seemed to swing like weapons — striking at outside enemies, or hunting.

If the scene before Haneul's eyes were put into a diagram, it would look like this:

Now — if an enemy trapped in that two-dimensional plane wanted to attack the pack leader's soul, what could it possibly do? First, it would have to snap off the three horns. Then it would have to punch through no fewer than three layers of solid octagonal fortress before it could finally land a direct blow on the soul within.

If the Snow Wolf is a two-dimensional being and its enemy is too, then of course that's the only way. But then why can I look at this in three dimensions?

Haneul was utterly baffled. The pack leader's soul looked as if it had been printed onto a sheet of two-dimensional paper — while his own vision looked down upon it from three-dimensional space.

From the three-dimensional world — from above — if I just reach out a hand, I could touch that wolf's soul as much as I wanted without ever facing those sharp horns. And in that case, the octagonal defenses would be no obstacle at all, would they?

The thought rose unbidden in Haneul's mind. And the instant he grasped the concept of touching a soul, the rainbow-colored hand within his Mental Image swelled of its own accord and took on substance.

Of course, not one of the living creatures gathered in this place could properly perceive that hand. It was the same principle by which a wolf drawn inside a sheet of paper can never comprehend the three-dimensional world beyond it.

Haneul's hand existed a full level above the present world — a higher dimension, and no mere three-dimensional one at that — and so no one but Haneul could see the rainbow-colored hand reaching out of his Mental Image. Touching it was equally impossible. And so there was nothing, not anything in existence, that could stand in its way.

A single scene took shape in his mind: thumb and forefinger pinched together like a pair of tweezers, plucking out only the pack leader's soul from deep within its solid octagonal shield. That imagining became reality almost at once. The hand from his Mental Image plunged down from the higher dimension into the present one and — yank! — wrenched free the leader wolf's soul alone. Root and all, the way a farmer ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠clears weeds from a field. One move, and it was over.

Keooo— The pack leader, a beast with no rival in this entire region, died on the spot the moment its soul was torn away. Its massive bulk came crashing down on top of Haneul with a heavy boom.

Of course, he couldn't bear the weight.

"Khhk—!"

The scream was forced out of him from the bottom of his lungs. Several of his ribs had cracked. Had he not been wearing an A-grade vest, he might have been crushed flat beneath the beast's corpse and quietly suffocated. Such was the monstrous weight of the pack leader.

Whine? Hrrff—hrrff. The instant their leader dropped, the remaining wolves startled and sprang back.

Shaken as they were by the sudden calamity, they didn't dare lunge recklessly at Haneul. They feared that if they bared their teeth and charged, the pack leader — intent on devouring its prey — might take them for poachers and teach them a savage lesson for it. They had not yet grasped that their leader had just croaked.

Thanks to that, Haneul was given a moment to breathe.

Uuugh. I have to pull myself together. Crushed beneath the massive corpse with the air dammed up in his throat, Haneul still forced his mind into focus and took stock of his surroundings first.

And there it was — the soul of a second Snow Wolf, caught in his sight. This one, too, looked taxidermied flat inside a two-dimensional shape. Only, unlike its leader, its shield was a single layer of octagon, and it carried just one attack horn instead of three. Of course, the number of an enemy's defenses meant nothing to him. The moment Haneul summoned his will, the rainbow-colored hand slid in from the higher dimension and, with pinpoint precision, plucked out the soul of the wolf he had marked as his target.

Keuoo— Another soulless wolf died on the spot. With a dull thud, its carcass dropped into the snow.

Hrrff, huff, hrrff. The wolves were thrown into confusion by this unbroken string of catastrophes. In the meantime, Haneul had already plucked out the third wolf's spirit as well. Three carcasses now. The rest panicked, tucking their tails and stumbling backward — yet even as they retreated, they bristled their fur against the unknown attack and bared a full set of sharp teeth.

Kyaaaaooo—

The wolves' cries had changed completely from only moments before. If anything, the fear in them was even more obvious now. As proof of their unease, the octagonal magic cores set in their foreheads formed barriers of faint, pale light. In the same instant, the soul-shapes caught in Haneul's vision changed too: outside the octagonal shield encircling each wolf's soul, one more circle had appeared.

A shield on top of the shield? His guess was right. Drawing on their magic cores, the wolves had raised one more layer of membrane to guard their entire bodies.

But such a shield meant something only against an enemy of the same dimension. Against Haneul's attack — which burst down from one level above and flicked their souls away like lint — it counted for nothing at all. His hand went on plucking defenseless souls, smooth as anything. Within mere seconds, the fourth and fifth wolves were dead.

Kyang! The lone survivor tucked its tail between its hind legs and bolted.

Haneul grimaced. If he let that one go, it might come back with the rest of its pack in tow.

Uuugh. That, I can't allow. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Haneul raised his will. The rainbow-colored hand in his Mental Image — which had slipped back into the higher dimension at some point — came down into the world again, overtook the fleeing beast in a single flash, and popped the soul clean out of its octagonal shield.

Kyeng! With one last cry, the final wolf slammed face-first into the snow. Dead on the spot, same as all the rest.

A short while later.

"Ugh. Uuuurgh."

Haneul's jaw shuddered uncontrollably. Pinned under the pack leader's carcass and buried in the snow for so long, his blood had gone cold and was stiffening by the minute.

I'm going to die at this rate. Uuugh. Get up — get out of here, now. Nngh. Barely mastering the agony of his caved-in chest, Haneul succeeded at last in dragging himself out from beneath the wolf's body.

Six wolf carcasses lay strewn here and there across the snowfield without a single wound between them — and at the sight, an electric thrill ran all the way up his spine. An exclamation burst out of him unbidden.

"Aaaahh. Nngh."

Then, all at once, violent pain flared from his left arm. It was the very spot the first wolf had bitten — and the places where the beast's fangs had sunk in directly were beginning to swell up, visibly and alarmingly.

The swelling isn't the problem. His broken arm hung loose, swinging dead at his side. The blood he'd shed had already soaked a two-meter circle around him, and the loss left his head ringing.

No — stop the bleeding first, and fast. Fortunately, Haneul's vitality stat ran higher than most people's — which meant his natural healing worked unusually fast.

"Uuugh." Propping himself against a tree so his broken arm wouldn't jostle, Haneul wriggled and squirmed until he finally got his pack off. Then he opened it and pulled out the medicine pouches first.

So this one's the painkiller... and this must be the antidote injection for magic-beast bites? He strained to dredge up what he'd been taught in training. First he dumped a fistful of painkillers into his mouth and chewed them down. Then he took out the antidote kit and drove the needle straight into his flank.

Haneul had never been any good with needles. But there was nothing for it now. Most Highland magic beasts carried venom in their teeth, so the antidote had to go in the instant you were bitten — leave the wound unattended, and there ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was no telling when the poison would circulate through you and drop you flat.

Haaah. That painkiller works wonders. The pain from his broken left arm dulled to something almost bearable. Using his right hand alone, Haneul clumsily wound a bandage around the arm and strapped it tight against his body.

Next, he fished several Spatial Compression Vacuum Packs out of his backpack. He had already mastered how to use them back in training. Haneul flung a pack at one of the wolf carcasses — and the sheet spread wide like a net, swallowing the hulking body whole, a carcass several meters from nose to tail. In moments the vacuum pack had smoothed itself down, shrinking to about the size of two palms pressed together.

An entire grown Snow Wolf, crammed in whole — and yet the pack had condensed to something astonishingly small, no more than a centimeter thick. Even more staggering, the weight had plummeted as well: the pack holding the pack leader, a beast of several tons, was light enough that Haneul could raise it with one hand. Not paper-light, of course — the one with the leader's corpse inside weighed a good ten kilograms at least. But even so — where else in the world could he ask for a deal like that?

"Hup—there." Haneul drew a second pack from his backpack and bagged another carcass. He repeated the process again and again, until all six bodies had been packed away into six Spatial Compression Vacuum Packs, which he stacked neatly inside his backpack.