Talent Pipe Space (2)
"Incredible... but do things like this even count as talents?"
As I combed through the list with meticulous care, I noticed something odd.
There were entries mixed in that felt entirely alien to the concept of a talent.
No matter how I looked at it, some of them clearly belonged to a different category altogether.
Take [Unity of Sword and Body], for instance.
That was a term straight out of martial arts novels, describing the transcendent state where the blade and the wielder become one.
Wasn't that closer to the pinnacle of martial mastery than a talent?
Yet there it sat, brazenly enshrined in the list, so apparently the system classified even this sort of thing as a talent.
Wait, am I really allowed to take all of these?
Because the definition of "talent" was so broad, the list stretched on without end.
It ran the full spectrum, from trivial gifts like weed-pulling to awe-inspiring physiques like the Heavenly Martial God Body that made your chest swell with grandeur.
And there were no restrictions on selection whatsoever.
In other words, every talent displayed on the monitor could be tossed into the shopping cart(?) without a single limitation.
"So this is the kind of day that comes around eventually, huh~"
With a spring in my incorporeal step, I began picking out talents one by one.
There could be trap abilities or cursed entries hiding in there, so caution was warranted...
And I might get punished for being greedy, so I'll just take a reasonable amount.
For starters, since combat situations were a real possibility, anything combat-related was essential.
But I wanted to live as a physical powerhouse rather than some wobbly, frail thing, so instead of psychic-style talents, I went straight for ones that were visibly tied to the body at a glance.
...
Being a soul meant no hunger, no fatigue — so I put that to use and spent a long stretch of time carefully curating my selections.
I'd told myself to rein in the greed, but when I snapped out of it, I'd already chosen roughly five percent of every talent on offer.
The sheer number of talents was so vast that even that sliver amounted to a staggering figure.
...That's a lot, looking back on it. Will this be okay?
What if they cancel everything for being greedy?
But when I actually tried removing some, they all seemed genuinely necessary.
Ah, whatever. Five percent is practically restrained.
I boldly pressed the button at the bottom of the screen.
Kyururuk!
"Gah!"
The moment I hit it, the monitor sank into the ground and vanished in an instant.
In its place, a palm-sized cube popped out and began bobbing lazily in midair.
Inside it, black and white paint writhed against each other, each struggling to claim the other's territory.
"So I just touch this? ...Whoa!?"
Weeeng!
All I'd done was brush it ever so slightly with a fingertip.
A shrill, grating siren split the air, and the darkness that had filled the space began to glow blood-red.
An alarm?
I couldn't parse the exact situation, but one thing was certain: this meant nothing good.
It had the unmistakable menace of someone who'd touched what should never be touched.
Kararak!
While I stood there flustered by the flashing crimson light,
a single mechanical tendril coiled up out of the black-and-white cube like a serpent and skewered me straight through.
Mercifully, there was no pain — but the shock was very real.
Before I could even react, white paint began pumping into me from the cube.
"Gyaaaaah—!"
Whatever its hurry, the thing forced its way in without the slightest regard for my suffering.
Instinctively, I understood: it was the talents I had chosen.
I should have picked fewer!
It felt like someone had jammed a syringe into my body and started pouring molten lava through it.
A searing agony crawled along my veins.
But there was no undoing it now.
All I could do was writhe in torment amid the raging torrent of incoming talents.
...
"There's so much power!"
The agony that had stretched each second into eternity finally came to an end.
And the fruit of that suffering was, truly, sweet.
I trembled at the overwhelming talents now clinging to my soul.
They hadn't fully settled yet — apparently that would take more time — but given a little while, I'd absorb every last one of them.
With this much power, it won't matter what kind of world I'm born into...
Kuuung!
Right in front of me, just as I was painting rosy pictures of the future —
a small-framed girl came crashing down from above.
Despite her delicate appearance, she carried a considerable mass; the metal pipes dented deeply where she landed.
I staggered under the incoming shockwave but quickly found my footing again.
Thud. Thud.
The girl, still hunched from the impact of the fall, stepped out of the deep crater.
She barely reached my shoulder in height, yet her figure traced the graceful curves of a beautiful young woman.
Her palm-white face, its delicate features arranged in perfect harmony, would have been more than enough to call her a beauty.
But the cross-shaped pupils set in the center of her large eyes lent her an unsettling, mechanical otherness.
"...Who are you? Have I, by chance, done something wrong?"
"Verifying extraction targets..."
"Um, excuse me?"
I tried addressing her cautiously, but she showed no intention of answering my questions.
She simply stared at me, expressionless, unreadable.
An eerie pressure froze my body in place.
Then, at last, she spoke.
"Type: Talent. Total count of confiscated talents: 52,320."
A single, mineral-cold voice, utterly devoid of emotion, like a judge delivering a verdict.
Her cross-shaped pupils locked onto me.
...Did I really choose that many?
"Commencing recovery procedure."
"Hold o—"
Kwajik!
Without so much as hearing my protest, she drove her fist into my abdomen.
A speed even my talent-reinforced perception couldn't register.
The girl appeared in front of me as abruptly as a film strip tearing, and struck my nonexistent body with pinpoint accuracy.
Glug, glug.
The section punched through ruptured spectacularly, and instead of blood, a white fluid came gushing out in torrents.
Without a doubt, part of my still-unabsorbed talents.
"...No."
Stumbling backward on shaking legs, I clamped my palms over the wound.
But my hands were far too small to plug a hole in a broken dam.
Under the pressure, the talents began erupting out of me explosively.
"No... no! My talents! Those are mine!"
Countless talents drained away like so many grains of sand through open fingers.
A thirst that seemed to wither my very soul.
I desperately scooped up the white fluid pooling on the floor and gulped it down.
If only to reclaim even a sliver of what I'd lost.
"Recovery procedure in progress... I will stand by until the target's complete dissolution, to prevent damage."
The girl muttered her incomprehensible jargon at me, her face as blank as ever.
But I, scrambling frantically to seal my wounds, had no leisure to be angry.
Calm down. This body isn't real flesh and blood anyway. A wound like this is something I can handle!
As time passed, a measure of composure returned.
I didn't know why, but with the girl simply watching me, this was my chance.
I curled my body up as tightly as I could to minimize the outflow, and focused my mind.
...I can feel it! So this is my soul!
Perhaps because my talents were so densely concentrated?
Astonishingly, an indescribable sensation brushed against my awareness.
My soul, deteriorating in real time through the gaping holes in my body.
And at the same time, an instinctive movement straining to repair it.
It was agonizingly slow, like a snail's crawl — but with materials at hand, reinforcing that movement was possible.
I gathered my consciousness into a single point and willed it, hard.
Tsuzuzuzu...
When I cautiously cracked open my clenched-shut eyes, the fatally gaping wound in my abdomen had somehow healed over, clean and smooth.
Not one more speck of talent leaked out.
Tat!
Without a second's thought, I spun around and bolted.
I have to find the exit!
Negotiation was useless.
I had no idea what was actually going on, but I wasn't about to expect a reasonable explanation from someone who'd tried to kill me on sight.
...
Since my body(?) no longer demanded oxygen or anything of the sort, I kept up a full sprint.
How many years had it been since I last moved this fast?
I even felt a strange exhilaration, surrendering myself to the recoil springing up from beneath my feet, pushing my speed higher and higher.
But running through a vast, boundless space without a single landmark, I couldn't even guess where I was.
Damn it. She's still on me.
I glanced back over my shoulder.
I'd been running for a good hour at least, and the girl was still faithfully following, maintaining a steady, comfortable distance.
Somehow, it felt less like a pursuit and more like she was observing me.
Hwiik!
Tup!
At last, she flipped neatly over my head and landed in front of me.
Utterly composed, in stark contrast to me, gasping under the weight of mental exhaustion.
Her mechanical indifference made my skin crawl.
"Query. By what method did the target heal its soul?"
So my body really was in a soul state, after all?
Unexpectedly, she had addressed me.
A far cry from the fist-swinging, no-questions-asked approach of before.
It would be a lie to say I felt no goodwill from it.
"...Are you asking me?"
Still, I kept my posture as respectful as I could manage.
Can't blame a guy for not wanting to die, right?
The problem was, I had absolutely no idea how to answer her question.
"Affirmative."
"Well, uh... it's really hard to put into words. It just... kind of happened, I guess?"
How was I supposed to explain this when I didn't know what I'd done myself?
Still, I mobilized every gesture and expression I had, doing my best to advertise my harmlessness.
"...Remaining talents: 19,205. No talents related to the soul. Presumed to be an innate ability of the individual. Raising alert level."
I'd only managed to make her more suspicious.
Swell.
"Um... these talents. Could I maybe keep just a few? Ten, even. If you let me, I'll hand my body over quietly."
"Denied. This is not a negotiation."
I'd thrown it out on the off chance there was room to bargain.
She cut my offer down with a clipped syllable and a single stroke.
Anger boiled up inside me.
"Damn it! You put a monitor right there in the open, practically begging me to take everything — and now this? Was this a sting operation?!"
"Negative. The one who tempted you was [the Serpent]."
Dutifully, she even answered my ranting.
"The Serpent? What's that supposed to—"
"Entering forced-extraction procedure."
Here she comes!
Before my question had even finished, the girl's presence erupted explosively.
An attack was definitely coming.
Calmly, I raised both hands to shoulder height and took a defensive stance.
Time had passed, and a good portion of my talents had been absorbed — this time, I wouldn't go down so easily.
Eyes wide open, tracking every movement!
Kwajik! Kwajik! Kwajik! Kwajik!
But an irresistible force pulverized my body in the blink of an eye.
A relentless barrage of blows, as if to prove she wasn't taking any chances.
Only after my body had been squashed flat like a pressed strip of jerky did her violence finally cease.
Gggeeee... it's not over yet!
A state no human being could possibly survive.
But perhaps because I recognized my current body as something soul-like, the pain was unexpectedly bearable.
I gathered my meat-shredded remains into one lump and began to slither, snakelike, across the ground.
"How?"
At last, a small change had entered the girl's toneless voice.
Bewilderment.
The petty thrill of finally drawing an emotion out of her lasted barely a moment.
She recovered her composure at once and, with deft, economical movements, began rifling through my soul — which had long since lost any human shape — stripping away my talents.
"17,850. 10,325..."
The talents vanished at a rapid clip.
Stop it.
Those are mine.
Those are MINE!
But my feeble, snail-paced crawling was the best I could manage.
This way...
Just as I lay thrashing in my agony,
someone's whisper reached me.
Below?
My eyes had long since been destroyed, but my senses, sharpened in compensation, instantly detected an alien presence directly beneath me.
A labyrinth of pipes, tangled and convoluted beyond reason.
Through a small gap in the maze, one of the mechanical tendrils I'd seen inside the black-and-white cube was calling to me.
Without a moment to think, I poured myself through that thin crevice like a slime.
Jururuk.
"...!"
The girl, who'd been counting off my talents one by one, reeled in shock and thrust out her hand.
But this time, I was a step ahead.
My body slithered slickly free even from her iron grip.
As a last resort, she flung something that glittered black, and it struck me true.
Shuuung—!
Ow!
It hurt, but I could bear it.
Escape first. Everything else later.
Sinking into the underground depths, I hurried along, guided by the writhing mechanical tendril.
Caught up in the frantic scramble, I lost track of time — and at some point, the tendril that had led me had vanished without a trace.
But it didn't matter.
The exit!
A black hole yawned open just a few meters ahead.
...Ominous as it looked, I had no other choice.
Krijik!
Had she already caught up? A tremendous ripping sound split the air, and the underground around me began to shudder.
No time to deliberate.
Better than dying here!
With one enormous inward breath, I hurled myself into the hole —
and like a television snapping off, my consciousness cut to black in an instant.
...
"Waaah!"
And so, I was reborn.
As a baby.