Chapter 69

Chapter 69

In the now-empty first-floor hall, I sit at a table, waiting for Emily. Preparations are mostly done. All I took from the organization members was an easily concealed dagger and a cloak that doubles as an overcoat. Plus, I’ve put the clothes I wore when I arrived back on underneath. It felt good to wear nothing under the coat, a sense of liberation, but still, it’s a waste to throw away clothes.

-Clatter.

I take out some smoked meat and beer, intending to have a light breakfast, and place them on the table. Memories of yesterday flood back. Come to think of it, I think I was lying on this table yesterday, taking dicks in both my mouths, top and bottom, simultaneously. I was so drunk around that time, I don’t remember it well. Now that I think about it, it’s a little disappointing. Being penetrated in both holes at the same time, it’s been a while, and it felt really good. I wonder when I’ll get to do that again. Maybe they’ll do it for me again in the underground plaza of Karaldin. Lost in silly thoughts, I cut a chunk of smoked meat in half and place it next to the table.

-Gulp.

Immediately, Aroom, who had been on my shoulder, swiftly descends to the table and begins to absorb the smoked meat. As the light pink slime turns red, the chunk of meat disappears as if melting away.

-Glug.

Aroom’s size has decreased considerably due to using Crystallization several times yesterday. It was originally small enough to fit inside my stomach, but it’s even smaller now. Even though it’s a species modified not to dissolve people, Aroom is still a slime. It’s not that it can’t dissolve things, it just doesn’t dissolve food selectively. I can’t just feed it small amounts of semen every time, so I have to give it meat like this sometimes. No, this is actually its staple food. Still, Aroom is easy to raise. It’s good at telepathy, and it’s not picky about food. Nobles prefer powerful monsters, but raising those costs quite a bit of money. I don’t have that kind of money, so I’ll have to be satisfied with Aroom.

-Creak.

While we were enjoying our meal together, I heard the sound of a door opening and felt someone’s presence behind me. Turning my head, I saw Emily looking at me with a slightly tired face. “You’re here?” I give her a light smile and wave. When I greet her first, Emily sighs in relief and approaches me.

-Thud, thud.

“Why the long face?” “It’s all because of you! How worried do you think I was yesterday…” “Ahaha, you don’t really need to worry about that.” As I say this with a laugh, Emily sighs again and sits down across from me. She glances around with a worried look and asks me again. “…So, what happened? What about those guys from yesterday?” At that question, I hesitate for a moment, intending to answer casually. Then, I feel self-reproach for hesitating to answer. It’s a ridiculous thought. Why would I hesitate? It’s obvious what happened, what’s there to hide now? Am I worried that Emily will be afraid of me? …To be honest, that’s right. If someone kills nearly twenty people and then calmly eats a meal, anyone would feel uneasy. Especially Emily, who has lived a normal life in both her past and present lives. But if I was going to hide it, I should have hidden everything from the start. Emily already knows about my perverted tendencies anyway, so what difference does adding one murder make now?

-Clink.

“…I took care of them all.” I hand Emily a plate and a chunk of sliced smoked meat, answering briefly. Although there was no change in my outward expression as I answered, I was hoping in my heart that she would just let my answer pass. The moment I face that true feeling, I realize. Perhaps Emily has entered my heart more deeply than I thought. Is this how close friends are? “….” Emily’s expression momentarily stiffens at my answer, and she flinches, but that was the only reaction she showed. Emily raises her hand to smooth her red hair once and nods heavily. “….I see. Thanks for your hard work.” Emily’s lips are twisted into a bitter smile as she offers her comfort. In that ambiguous smile, there was no fear or aversion towards me. Realizing that, I couldn’t help but feel relieved. // After finishing a simple meal inside the now-dreary bar, we head to the hideout Shanstedt told us about. Contrary to what I expected, Shanstedt didn’t show up until we left the bar. According to the original plan, it would have been better to kill him too, but I decide to leave him alone. There’s no reason to go out of my way to kill him. He doesn’t know our names, so there’s nothing to worry about, but we need to resolve this quickly and return to Karaldin. Adventurers usually avoid requests related to the underworld, but someone else might come looking for us. …Still, there probably aren’t any idiots who would investigate a vampire for just 200 rads. We walked through the streets and alleys of the Nordic District. As is the case in any slum, there were many children on the streets. Since we both look like easy targets, I was worried that we might get pickpocketed along the way, but thankfully, there were no pickpockets. As we passed through a deserted alley in the Nordic District, Emily asked me a question. “By the way, what happened?” “What do you mean?” “I’m curious about what happened after I left.” At her words, I pondered for a moment. This is still too early for Emily to hear. It’s a world filled with the dirty desires of adults. Turning my gaze to Emily, I saw that her cheeks were slightly flushed. She seemed to be pretending not to know with her expression, but she was clearly radiating curiosity. There was no angry expression. …Could it be that she guessed and asked? Well, she probably guessed and asked. She was a man in her past life, and she spent several nights with Charka, so she probably has a rough idea. What happens when a pretty girl like me enters a rough space filled with crazy men obsessed with women. “Well, I got treated a little roughly.” “H, how…?” I hesitated, wondering if I should tell her in detail, but it seemed okay to tell her. After all, Emily is no longer a virgin, and she needs to know roughly what it’s like to seriously train in the Demonic Art and the Essence Absorption Technique. How difficult it is to deal with multiple men in this world. “Just, I got stripped naked and poked for a long time…? They poured alcohol on my butt and plugged it, then they all rushed at me. There were about seventeen of them, and each of them probably came four or five times?” “….Huh?” Emily’s expression turned blank in the middle of my explanation, but I had no intention of stopping. I continued, as if recalling a pleasant memory. “Those guys are usually a bit rough. They’re uneducated, violent, and selfish. They poured alcohol on my butt first, and then less than an hour after starting, they pulled the plug out of my butt and poked me there too. They told me to crawl on all fours like a dog, and I got pierced simultaneously in my mouth and pussy, and they even stepped on my head once…?” But the moment I said that, Emily suddenly hugged me.

-Whoosh.

Red hair obscures my vision, and the unique scent emanating from Emily’s body tickles my nose. I was caught off guard because I never expected Emily to react like this, so I stood still, at a loss. “….You can stop talking now.” Emily’s voice was trembling slightly. Only then did I reach out and hug her back, a bitter smile on my lips. “What, why are you comforting me about something like this….” But Emily didn’t loosen her arms around me. So, I reach out and hug Emily back. “…I actually like that kind of thing. It’s quite enjoyable and thrilling when you actually do it. Anyway, I did it because I wanted to. So there’s no need to comfort me.” That was the truth. Ever since I was reincarnated into this world, I’ve been twisted all along. I don’t intend to fix it. And maybe I’m not twisted at all. Demonic Arts don’t have the power to reverse a person’s essence. They just make you look inside yourself a little more. If this is my inner self, I have no choice but to accept it. “U, um. I know that, but….” Emily replies in a hesitant voice. “….You don’t deny that I’m a pervert.” “W, well, that’s true. Well… I’ve heard it a lot.” As I playfully retort, Emily stutters and nods. Still, she didn’t loosen her arms around me. I just did it because I wanted to, there’s no need to comfort me, but She was comforting me. “….” When I was twelve years old, no one hugged me like this. Keir hugged me in a different way, but I knew all too well that he didn’t put any comfort into that act. But it was also true that I relied on his cheap comfort, which couldn’t be called comfort. If I had met Emily earlier, would things have been different? If I had grown up normally with her in a rural village, would things have been different? ….It was a scenario I didn’t want to think about much. Even so, things probably wouldn’t have changed. I would have ended up like this anyway, and nothing would have changed. This was probably destined to happen from the moment I gained the knowledge of the Essence-Absorbing Witch. So, I’m okay. “There’s no need to….” “I just…wanted to do this….” “…Okay, I understand.” Still, let’s be satisfied with being held in Emily’s soft embrace and feeling her warmth for now. There’s no point in trying to fix my twistedness now, and there’s no reason to be sad about it, but ….A friend’s embrace is warm. // After hugging me for a while, Emily said this. “But, to be honest, I got a little turned on when I heard that.” “….Huh?” That was a bit of a shock. No, it’s possible enough, but What am I supposed to be if you hug me so much and then say that? “….Give me back my emotion.” “Hic!? S, sorry. Are you angry?” “No, well, not to that extent.” “T, that’s a relief then. Hmm… I wonder if it’s a little weird to get excited hearing something like that…?” Emily tilted her head with a serious expression. At that sight, I sighed softly and replied. It’s not weird. No, is it weird? Anyway, it wasn’t that weird from my perspective. Either way, it was better than disliking it. “It’s a relief if you get excited. That means you don’t dislike it. What I said, you’ll have to experience it all anyway.” “….Pardon?” Then Emily’s face turned pale. “What good is there in decent men sharing one woman amicably? They’re all either missing a screw somewhere, or they’re bad guys. Or, it’s a place where there aren’t that many women.” Practically, the best places to train in the Demonic Art are brothels that send women to group customers, like the one I was in, or military units. Either way, the more men there are and the fewer women there are, the more essence you can obtain. The Demi-walkers’ lair wouldn’t be bad either, but it would be a bit difficult physiologically. That’s almost bestiality. And either way, you have to have sex dozens of times a day. You can’t do it unless you enjoy it. “Th, that’s…a, a joke, right?”

“Of course, there’s no need to do that yet. If you don’t do it after the Iron Body Armor reaches a certain level, your body won’t be able to handle it. Still, you should at least be able to take on ten men. You know that it’s impossible to build up Qi through Qigong in this world, right?” “…B, but…ten people?” Judging by Emily’s serious expression, she was probably thinking about Tsarka. But to consider that orc as just one human is an insult to Tsarka. “Ten people is like thinking of Tsarka as three people.” “Ah, then that’s a relief… No, it’s not. That’s impossible… I’m definitely going to die…” Emily replied with a look of disgust at my words, but in the end, humans are creatures of adaptation. “It’s okay. You’ll get there as you do it.” “…Really?” “Probably.” We chatted like that and walked down the road again. ———= Author’s Note ———= Thank you so much for the coupons…Buff and Jackpot were also selected. Personally, I thought this was a very minor and strange story, but I was surprised that so many people read it. Thank you all.