Luge swore in his heart by the ethereal Light of Spirituality that so often watched over him that this voice, sounding as though its speaker were on the brink of death, belonged without question to Half-Man. It was delivered through that same technique of mental-power communication, in a distinctive drone one could never forget after hearing it just once—no matter how the words and clauses were assembled, they inevitably came out as a lifeless, mechanical recitation.
Luge turned his head slowly.
The voice continued speaking. Luge used it to sense outward with his mind, but since it wasn't actual vocalization, he had no way to pinpoint the direction by sound. He lifted his feet and began pacing through the corner of the Great Cave that had once belonged to the Gray Longneck Holy Lord's snake nest, tightly gripping the wondrous space fragment in his hand.
Suddenly, the voice fell silent.
Luge stopped in his tracks, closed his eyes, and pressed the multicolored fragment against his forehead.
When he opened his eyes again, he looked straight down at the ground beneath his feet.
"Oh? That works too..." the voice reappeared.
Luge bent down and began clearing away several large bones underfoot.
Until an eye was staring directly back at him.
"What does he look like now?"
The unblinking solitary eye stared straight up at him, blurting out the question with neither prelude nor context.
Looking down at what lay before him, Luge recalled Half-Man's instructions.
He roughly understood what the question meant, though he wasn't quite sure how to phrase his answer. After a moment's thought, he said, "He... can already sit up."
Did that count as an answer? But it was probably what the other wanted to know, he figured.
Then, he cupped the half-skull in his hands.
After hearing his reply, the other remained silent, as if having lost all desire to communicate. Luge felt that if the eyelid could move, it would surely have closed, steeped in the air of having resigned itself to fate.
"Are you... are you still alive?" Unable to get answers from Half-Man, Luge intended to fish for some information here.
"Of course."
Only after a long while did the half-head break its silence to drop that reply.
As Luge walked back toward Half-Man, he kept looking for an opening, but the other offered no further response. After several attempts, he prudently kept his mouth shut.
Since he couldn't pry out anything more, he picked up the pace.
He didn't dare push too hard, having only dared to chat in an inquisitive, casual tone. Probing indirectly was his limit; he worried that if this mysterious head went back and tattled on him, things would get very awkward.
His short legs ran until they smoked, driven forward by curiosity.
Moreover, he discovered that the more vigorously he exerted himself, the better the potion he had drunk took effect. Even some of the old scars he had carried had now vanished.
When he arrived at the crossroads, Half-Man had already appeared, sparing him any wait this time.
Without a single word, the half-head floated straight over, and a brand-new, handsome man assembled before his eyes.
"Clever little kobold, you did well."
A moment after attaching the head, Half-Man communicated through mental power once more.
Luge blinked. The head showed no trace of anything amiss, looking entirely like a fresh, undamaged piece. Yet the figure still flickered in and out of sight, as if ready to vanish at any second. There was another point as well: perhaps he could no longer be called Half-Man from now on.
*Crack!* The half-head was snapped off again.
The kobold opened his mouth, then slowly and earnestly closed it.
The man surely had a sound reason for doing so. A creature of modest experience like himself only needed to watch. Just as he thought this, the half-head drifted wobbling into his hands, though this time the eye was closed.
"Next, let us attempt to complete this peculiar gift. This space fragment already has a certain compatibility with you. We can treat it as a seed, and I will help you smooth out its tremors," Half-Man said.
Luge felt the multicolored space fragment in his hand suddenly shudder, and he instinctively gripped it tight.
As he applied force, the fragment shrank smaller and smaller, disappearing in the blink of an eye as if burrowing into his palm.
He could sense that the fragment had merely brushed against his mental-power sea before drifting away, rather than digging into his physical body.
A tiny, multicolored speck of light now connected to his mental-power space.
"Very good."
Even Half-Man seemed not to have expected things to go so smoothly.
Luge tried to probe the small thing connected to his mental power, unconsciously closing his eyes and slipping into a state of meditation. After touching it several times, an expanse suddenly opened before him—it seemed to be an independent little space. With a single thought, he opened his eyes to find the long staff in his hand gone; under his mental-power perception, the staff had already appeared within that space.
*It seems I won't be needing a storage pouch anymore,* he thought.
Half-Man before him clearly took note of all this.
"Now, you may roll your die. Throw the die into that space. I believe you know what to do," Half-Man said.
Luge felt somewhat apprehensive.
"There won't be any trouble, will there?" he asked.
"That space is currently in an extremely peculiar state. It is not so simple as merely serving as a storage pouch; you can attempt far more useful things with it, and perhaps there will be an added surprise. Much like you, this world needs surprises."
Half-Man's tone was the same as ever, yet his words felt somewhat more human than before. Luge wondered whether it was merely his imagination.
Since things had come to this, he gritted his teeth and decided to give it a try.
He took out the Demon's Dice. With a thought, the die appeared within the space, yet nothing changed.
"Not storing it away," Half-Man suddenly interjected. "Do not take it into that space as you would with a storage pouch. From right here, cast it inside."
Luge nodded in vague comprehension and started over.
Holding the die in his hand, he tossed it gently forward, while his mind naturally linked to that space. A tiny multicolored opening appeared before him like a doorway, though so very small that even mice would have to line up in single file to pass through.
As the die passed inside, the tiny spatial doorway snapped shut.
Without waiting for instructions, Luge focused on sensing the conditions inside the space, closing his eyes simply to aid his concentration.
The die tumbled within the space, finally coming to rest with the one facing up. Unfortunately, there was no target here upon which it could bestow blindness.
"It's blindness," Luge said, coming back to himself.
"Very good. Continue, until you reach the demon bargain face."
Following Half-Man's words, Luge resumed rolling. Since the first throw had caused no mishaps, he gradually grew bolder.
Whether he should feel delighted or terrified, on the third toss he rolled the five representing the bargain. This proved that Half-Man's earlier claim—that the die rarely brought misfortune on the first few rolls—was sheer nonsense. Of course, there was no refuting it either, since Half-Man had said "rarely," not "never."
The long-awaited face had been rolled, yet the legendary bargaining demon was nowhere to be seen.
The marvelous space connected to Luge began to ripple and tremble continuously, gradually defining clear directions of up, down, left, and right. Amid the shaking, the die began to spin endlessly in midair. He felt that the space had previously resembled a tangled mess—like a knotted ball of silk yarn that had the concept of space and decent capacity, but could hold very little. Now, amid the tremors, it was gradually being combed out, its countless irregular branches pried open and smoothed straight.
Bit by bit, a tidy space the size of a room successfully took shape, and it continued to expand. At the same time, a conspicuous dark-red fissure appeared in the corner on one side of the room.
The rumbling tremors of the space persisted for a long time, only coming to a halt after it had expanded to the size of a small village.
"You have sensed it by now, haven't you? A fissure leading to the Abyss should have formed within that space of yours. It is a doorway, and part of the gift. The casting material for your Demonskin came from the rump of a brute demon. So long as you cast Demonskin, you can easily disguise yourself as an imp to go exploring. Along with your most adept Fetid Skin, everything is the perfect match," Half-Man said.
Chapter 40