The Fucking Huge Lowest Layer Part 2: Mimicry

◀ Previous Chapter: [The Fucking Huge Lowest Layer Part 1: Descent]

The warrior man drew the world's strongest greatsword with a godlike speed that the eye could not even catch.

The sound of the draw alone made the fucking huge blood clot move. It extended a joint from the edge of the pool of blood toward us. It was a blood-colored joint shaped like a claw.

"Quaes."

The warrior man called out in a low voice from the depths of the earth.

"Old man, do you think ash will work on this thing?"

Quaes was already moving. Without waiting for an answer, he pulled a bag of ash from his waist, opened it, and scattered the white powder onto the tip of the joint it had extended. It was ash. The ash hit the tip of the joint and spread thinly.

It did not try to take the ash inside. It pulled the joint back once, as if disgusted, from around where the ash had been scattered.

"No good, it doesn't work."

Saying that, Quaes gripped his small bottle of oil again and stepped forward three paces, low and sliding. The first half-step, the second step, the third step. In the middle of the third step, he pulled his arm diagonally backward, intending to draw a beautiful arc as he released the oil into the air.

Quaes's arm was pulled back.

Before that pull had even finished a three-thousandth of a beat, the joint at the edge of the fucking huge blood clot had finished drawing the remaining half of the arc Quaes was about to draw into the air, 0.001 seconds faster than Quaes. One movement had split its head and tail into two bodies, existing in this universe simultaneously. Quaes's arm was still in the middle of pulling back, the joint had already finished releasing, and the back half of the arc that Quaes was supposed to draw had been completed on the edge of the blood clot before Quaes could do it.

The warrior man saw it. By the time he thought he had seen it, it was already over. It was a matter of a three-thousandth of a beat. Quaes's third step was about to hit the ground—it should have hit.

The sound of Quaes's third step, his boot striking the ground, vanished completely from this universe.

There was the sound of the ash, the sound of the leather armor rubbing, the sound of the second step, but only the sound of the third step that should have followed it slipped away to the other side of the galaxy. The sequence of footsteps had lost one beat.

Quaes's foot was frozen in mid-air.

The warrior man watched Quaes's frozen face from the side. Quaes's mouth stopped as if he were about to say something. No voice came out. He was looking at his own hands. The arc his arm had been about to draw had vanished entirely from within his arm. His empty arm remained in the air, still in the pulled-back position.

"Quaes, get back."

The warrior man said briefly.

Quaes tried to take half a step back. But at the tip of the foot he tried to move, its segment had already moved ahead with terrifying speed to block him. It had already blocked the spot where Quaes was going to step back. Quaes hit his body against the placed segment and stopped.

◇◇◇

Sibyl moved.

Leader. I'm going to stop that.

Sibyl did not wait for an answer. She repositioned her hook spear in her right hand, lowered her long, elephant-sized tail behind her, and dashed at subsonic speed toward the right side of the mass.

Sibyl's grappling technique was the secret art of the strongest school in the wetlands, where the hook spear and tail were unleashed in different directions simultaneously. The hook spear from the front, the tail from the back; the two movements pinched it at the same time.

The tip of the hook spear tore deeply into a thin part of the mass's edge.

The moment it tore, the edge of the mass extended a segment, perfectly tracing the swing of the hook spear. The mass was trying to copy the movement of Sibyl's hook spear.

However, on the side of the tail—nothing happened.

Sibyl's elephant-sized tail had wrapped around another part of the mass from behind. The edge where it was wrapped did not twitch at all. Damn it... it was quietly, stopped. Not with terrifying speed... not with crazy speed... it just didn't move. It didn't extend a segment, it didn't trace, it did nothing at all.

The part of the mass's edge that was wrapped by the tail had stopped.

Until then, the mass had perfectly copied every movement directed at it, one after another. Quaes's arc, Sibyl's hook spear. But only the part wrapped by the tail did not extend a segment, did not trace, and stopped as if dead.

The male warrior caught that instant accurately in the corner of his vision. He caught it, but he did not put it into words. Sibyl did not put it into words either. Before she could finish off the stopped mass, Sibyl uncoiled her tail and stepped back half a pace. The cold delayed her next movement by an ice age. The mass's stillness ended in an instant.

Sibyl.

Yeah.

On the right side of the mass, the tear made by Sibyl's hook spear remained. That tear was already closing up with terrifying speed.

◇◇◇

Quaes was still stopped, his body pressed against its segment.

He was still clutching the small vial of oil. It was the last one. He threw it with all his might toward the center of the mass.

The thrown vial reached just before the edge of the mass.

Then, a joint of the mass extended toward the small bottle. As if tracing the arc of Quaes from the inside—an arc it had just learned—the tip of the joint pushed the bottle's trajectory back outward.

The bottle bounced in a different direction just before reaching the edge of it. The bouncing bottle flew toward the warrior man. The arc of the bottle grazed his left shoulder and passed by. A thin film of oil smeared onto the edge of his leather armor's clasp. The bottle fell to the ground beyond him and shattered.

In the meantime, its joint quietly opened the center of Quaes's body from the inside.

It opened, or so it appeared to the warrior man. In the middle of Quaes's body, the joint moved as if opening something from the inside out. For a fleeting moment, the outline of Quaes's body was pulled inward.

Quaes said nothing.

He began to collapse on the spot, incredibly slowly. As he collapsed, his mouth started to say something one last time—

The left side of the mass's edge moved. It was the same place that had opened Quaes. The edge of the mass extended a joint and began a tracing motion. A low, sliding movement, stepping three paces forward. That beautiful arc of ash and oil. The mass was rearranging Quaes's movements onto its own edge. With Quaes's stride, at Quaes's speed.

The warrior man's body was pulled back toward that edge, still in his stance of stepping forward. He did not look at where Quaes had fallen. Before he could even look, the mass was already finishing the next arc.

▶ Next Story: [Part 3: That Which Cannot Be Imitated]

◀ Previous Story: [Part 1: Descent]

▶ Magazine: [The Massive Lowest Layer, 3 Parts Total]