Chapter 122

Chapter 122

Episode 122: Deficiency My petrified limbs wouldn’t move no matter how hard I tried. I had some experience with being restrained, having been through some rough plays, but this felt different. Perhaps this was the kind of frustration one would feel if their limbs were severed. It was a rather strange experience to have my limbs, which always moved as I pleased, paralyzed in this way. “…Umm.” The person who did this to me was probably Caldin. He was the only one capable of subduing me. Certainly, from his perspective, it wasn’t a bad method. If he had simply used handcuffs, I would have used Aruem to break free. Of course, he wouldn’t know about Aruem’s existence, and probably just petrified me to thoroughly restrain me. As a bonus, he might have intended to use my immobile body to relieve his sexual desires. Why else would he only petrify my limbs? I’m not the only one who thinks so. I doubt he’d get an erection looking at my limbs turned gray, but the world is wide and tastes are deep, so there might be people who could. “…Still, I need to escape first.” For a moment, I was tempted to just stay still, but I quickly changed my mind and commanded Aruem.

-Aruem.

As I commanded in my mind, Aruem, who was now like a part of my body, sleeping in my stomach, wriggled and began to crawl out. Her movements seemed more intense than usual, and I struggled to suppress the groan that escaped my lips. “Ugh, a little slower….” Something was strange. Was Aruem always this strong? ….Looking back, it didn’t seem so. This was likely due to the effect of absorbing some of the internal energy I had cultivated. In the world of memories, there were martial arts taught to animals, so why not a slime? Of course, there were limits to how strong a slime could become,

-Glug.

Aruem emerged from my body with a sound like boiling water. It was nice to see the light pink slime after so long. And, it was still my favorite color. After admiring the slime’s color for a moment, I commanded Aruem again.

-Lift me up.

I strongly visualized each word that made up the sentence, releasing it in the form of thought. The way a tamer commands a familiar is not through language, but through images. Human language, with its complex structure, is a concept that only applies to humans, who are also higher mental beings and share the same language. In order for two beings who share a mind to communicate, a very simple gesture, an image, is needed. The one sending the image must send the most concise and detailed image possible, and the receiver must also have a good sense. Although taming is a technique located at the very end of familiar magic, not even treated as magic, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. That’s why there’s a separate title for tamer.

-Glug.

Fortunately, Aruem seemed to understand my command, and after making a gurgling sound once more, she thinly stretched her fluid and seeped behind my back. Then, she transformed her body, swelling up, and leaned me against the wall next to me. “Good, well done.” It was something I was realizing anew, but this light pink cutie was quite smart. Understanding the simple command to lift me up and finding the most efficient way to do it on her own was not an easy task, but she performed it without difficulty. She was probably smarter than an octopus.

-Glug.

As if she understood my praise, Aruem made a clearer sound and moved around my body. Then, she clung to my petrified arm and began to stretch her body.

-Glug?

Perhaps she sensed something strange about my changed body. A faint feeling of bewilderment flowed into my mind. That flow of emotion felt somehow cute, and I smiled lightly to reassure Aruem. “It’s okay. We can fix it later.” It wasn’t like my limbs were severed, just petrified, so I should be able to fix it. Ordinary petrification would be impossible, but not in the Black Street. Caldin wouldn’t have cast an ordinary petrification spell on me, so I thought it would be possible. He wanted me, after all. He wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble just because he needed a strange statue or a living onahole with severed limbs. ….Probably, right? // Some time had passed, but Caldin had not yet returned. I was alone in the space that looked like a room in an inn, and occasionally I could hear people outside the door. Had something gone wrong? As time passed, my suspicion grew clearer. Was it really Caldin who kidnapped me here in the first place? Had something gone wrong along the way? There was a basis for such suspicion. The Caldin Family clearly had many members, so it would be normal for at least one person to remain and watch me, but the fact that no one was there was certainly suspicious. Of course, even if I felt suspicious, there was nothing I could do now that my limbs were petrified. “Sigh.” I sighed softly and examined my body again. There was no need to delve too deeply into the current situation. There was nothing I could do anyway, so there was no answer but to wait. More than that, the first priority was to find a way to deal with my current state. “Hmm….” Recalling Chenber’s explanation, petrification magic seemed to have a rather complex mechanism. There was no way a fledgling who had just entered the world of magic would know its structure. However, understanding the most basic principles was not difficult. Although I didn’t have deep knowledge of magic, I had inherited the memories of a woman who had dominated an era as a martial artist. The mention that a cure was possible and the necklace that maintained the petrification. Combining these explanations, the petrification cast on me was conceptually closer to freezing than petrification. Unlike petrification that simply turns you into stone, this state was maintained through the magic power constantly flowing from the core of the magical tool. The revealed result was similar, but the process and structure were completely different. ….This is why people need to learn magic. You can make things alive and petrify them, how amazing. It’s a subtle technique that you can’t even dream of with martial arts that only involve fighting…or a perverted taste. Ah, but I’m really making good use of the contraception effect of the Absorption Art, so I shouldn’t criticize martial arts for being shabby. In addition, the fact that I don’t get any diseases, let alone STDs, no matter how promiscuously I play, is certainly attractive. I would have lost about half of my life if I didn’t have the Yin Demon Art.

-Glug?

“Ah, sorry. I was just lost in thought.” Aruem made a sound as if telling me to come to my senses, and I smiled and replied. I don’t know if Aruem can recognize that I’m smiling, but she probably can.

-Glug.

Looking down slightly, I saw Aruem, who was now spreading her body wide and completely covering one of my legs. It would be convenient if she could heal me by covering me like that, but this wasn’t like dirt on my skin, so it was impossible. “…..” But let’s leave her alone because she’s cute. It feels like watching a cat lick my leg. Even without sensation, there was visual pleasure. The digression was long, but I had a way to solve this situation. Any magic, and not just magic, any phenomenon requires the power or energy to cause it. The first law of thermodynamics cannot be escaped even by magic. The core of a monster completely violates that as a perpetual motion machine, though. That part is a bit complicated. Anyway, any magic that maintains a phenomenon like this has no choice but to rely on the magical tool that creates the arrangement of magic power and supplies the magic power. And in this case, it would be in the form of a necklace. The person who devised this complex petrification magic wasn’t an idiot, and simply taking it off wouldn’t undo the petrification, but it was worth analyzing at least. I had nothing else to do anyway. So first, find the necklace and sense the flow of magic power….? “….Huh?” ….The necklace, it’s gone? // I turned my head from side to side, had Aruem look, and even circulated my internal energy, but there were only a few ornaments on my body, let alone a magical tool. What that meant was…. “….Well, I’m screwed.” My arm didn’t just turn into a stone for a while, it became stone forever….that’s not it, right? Surely. Would it really? ….Let’s stop with the mental gymnastics. Anyway, this was a really big deal. There was no source of magic power, but the magic was being maintained? That was impossible. And that meant that the petrification cast on me wasn’t something that could be undone at any time, but that I had completely turned into stone. It was possible that the magic of the Juma Association was so great that it could break even such preconceptions, but the probability was not very high. Just as the science and technology of my previous life existed on top of the simplest physical laws, the magic here could not violate the simplest basic laws either. As an experiment, I circulated the internal energy in my body, but there was no reaction even when I flowed internal energy through the meridians. I thought that if it was frozen with complex magic, I would be able to catch some flow of magic power, but I couldn’t feel anything like that. Fortunately, the shape of the meridians still remained, but if my body didn’t move, having meridians was useless. “Wow, that’s awesome….” I uttered a soulless exclamation and leaned my head against the wall. If this was not a temporary change but I had really turned into stone, it was quite a difficult situation. But there was no particular reason to worry about it. If a cure wasn’t possible, I could cut it off and regenerate it. I wasn’t a salamander, so I wondered if that was possible, but there was magic and divine arts, so there was no reason why it wouldn’t be possible. Mien looked about three times younger than her age, so she should be able to regenerate an arm. And if all else failed, there was the cheat-like method of Rebirth. Reconstructing the body by cultivating the extreme of Qi Gong was not easy, but if I used shortcuts, it was certainly possible in a short amount of time. ….There was a very obvious side effect of being dangerous, though. Of course, neither of these methods was something I could use right now. I needed to contact Mien or Quersjev, and in order to do that, I first needed to know where I was. As that thought occurred to me, I looked down at Aruem.

-Glug?

The light pink slime that was covering my leg seemed to sense my gaze, and wiggled her body, making a sound like boiling water. Just as a tamer uses images when giving commands to a familiar, a familiar can also send images to a tamer. Usually, it’s in the form of abstract emotions, but there’s a restriction that the familiar must be intelligent enough to understand and follow commands, but Aruem should be fine.

-Go outside and tell me what you see.

I sent a clear image for each word to Aruem. Then, Aruem rolled the core in her translucent body from side to side as if thinking for a moment, and then re-condensed her widely spread body as if she understood.

-Glug.

Aruem then moved smoothly, climbed up the wall of the room, and stood above the window. And after a while, she projected the images she saw outside into my mind. The angle and direction were different, but a familiar street scene came into view. The unique dark and decadent atmosphere. I was still in the underground plaza. “…That’s a relief.” I checked the image Aruem sent and felt relieved. I thought the worst case scenario might be a remote village I had never heard of, but surprisingly, I was still in Karaldin. …But this is really working. Honestly, I didn’t think Aruem could do it. I didn’t mean to ignore Aruem, but who would have thought a slime would be so smart? Is it okay for a creature with only a core to be so smart?

Still, a good deed was a good deed, so I sent Arum praise once more. “Good job.” “Kkyureuk.” As if in response, Arum also made a sound. …Though I couldn’t understand what she was saying. // My curiosity about the situation I was in was resolved surprisingly quickly. “Creak.” I was idly counting the patterns on the ceiling while leaning against the wall when the sound of hinges echoed in my ears. Hearing it, I naturally turned my head to the side and looked at the open door. The person who appeared beyond the door was completely unexpected. Black-blue hair, tall height, and a fairly handsome face. “…Levote?” Taliman Levote. The young man who fought Caldin in the Stage. The moment I saw him enter through the door, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been hit in the back of the head. Why was he holding me? Since my last memory before passing out was wisely beating up Caldin, who was using drugs, I naturally assumed that Caldin had kidnapped me. Besides, my limbs were so stiff. “Oh, you’re already awake?” -Click. Taliman, who had closed the door, greeted me naturally as he looked at me. There seemed to be no hostility in his expression. But I wasn’t in a situation to accept his greeting. I wasn’t feeling fear, but questions continued to pile up. Why was he holding me? Just as my head was about to become complicated, “First of all, sorry for bringing you here so suddenly… ‘Ugh, shit!'” Taliman, who had been leaning against the wall in a relaxed posture and starting to talk, suddenly recoiled in shock and drew his sword. He stared at the floor in that posture for a while, then sighed. “Crazy, you scared me. Why is a slime here?” -Sreung. The slime that surprised him was probably Arum. Taliman, having identified the unknown opponent, let out a sigh of relief and put his drawn magic sword back in. A swordsman who fought a Lycanthrope on equal terms being surprised by a slime was quite a comical sight from a third-person perspective, but I couldn’t laugh at the skit. Because… “Ugh, shit!” That’s Korean. “…Ahem, sorry. I just don’t like gross things.” Taliman apologized to me with a dry cough, but I didn’t care about that. Ah, damn it. Why did my limbs have to be paralyzed now? …I need to top that guy soon. ———= Author’s Notes ———= The last sentence is Ryla’s gag, half-serious and half-joking. The reason the protagonist is so relaxed right now is partly because she knows how to fix her condition.