Chapter 123
“Why are you here?”
Dryer had collapsed in front of my house.
My first thought was that the real thing looked better than in her memes.
The second was how she had gotten here.
Dryer, the gallery's beloved user, was a succubus and lived in neither a human nor an elf city.
I never thought I'd actually meet her...
“Haa, haaah...”
“Uh, no, please stop making those strange sounds.”
Was she showing off that she was a succubus by birth?
Her breathing sounded alarming.
When I touched her forehead, a blazing fever hot enough to feel like a ball of fire was weighing down her entire body.
“She'll die if I leave her like this.”
There was no other way.
After much deliberation, I picked up Dryer
and carried her into the bunker.
“She'll be okay, right?”
This was only the second time I'd let someone else inside.
I wasn't sure this was the right thing to do, but Dryer had accounted for the greatest share of my safety from the beginning.
If not for her horns, I might have died long ago.
If someone gives you something, then at least as a person, shouldn't you repay them in kind?
“Mmm...”
“You seem better than before.”
With even her breathing sounding erotic, I put this living ㅇㅎ), rear-warning tag on the bed for now.
She looked better than before.
But it was still serious.
Just in case, I put a wet towel on her...
-Sizzle...
“Oh, shit.”
The wet towel made a sizzling sound.
Especially around her face, which was burning hot.
In contrast, her fingertips and toes were relatively cooler and appeared faint.
“I don't know much about a succubus's health.”
Succubi were rare to begin with.
Even dark elves and rabbit beastfolk were numerous compared with succubi, which said enough.
I was overwhelmingly short on information.
All I knew at most was that desire was their staple food.
To check, I opened Dryer's post history.
[Recent posts by ‘Dryer’.]
Yesterday) My body, my body won't cool down...jpg [764]
3 days ago) I'm starving to death ㅠㅅㅠ.jpg [561]
7 days ago) Why am I hungry...? ㅠㅠ?...jpg [402]
“Wow.”
All her latest posts were featured posts.
“No, I'm kind of jealous.”
I have to stir up controversy just to make a featured post.
Her level of attention was truly overwhelming.
Which made it even more puzzling.
“Didn't selling the alcohol in the marketplace solve her hunger?”
After that, Dryer had stopped posting lewd pictures altogether.
Yet the more recent the posts were, the more frequent and revealing they'd become.
Most of the titles about being hungry caught my eye.
“Hmm, looks like she had trouble finding food.”
If my guess was right,
it seemed she could no longer fill her belly with people's desires.
And now that I'd picked her up, I couldn't just leave her to die.
“I can't lose Dryer.”
Besides, few gallerybros had contributed as much to the gallery as she had.
Just then, while I was pondering with Dryer in front of me,
“Gasp.”
I heard a noise behind me.
I turned and saw Penny, who had dropped the bread she'd been munching on.
Her rabbit eyes, round as saucers, were striking.
“Malphite, who's that woman?”
Then, for the first time, Penny questioned me in a fairly high voice, sounding almost accusatory.
“Dryer, a beloved gallery user.”
“Why is she here?”
“I picked her up outside.”
“But she's a succubus. You can't just bring in anything you find. It's dangerous.”
Anything, huh.
But come to think of it, Penny had been picked up too.
Still, this didn't seem like the time to bring that up, so I held my tongue. Penny looked up at me and asked:
“You're not hurt?”
“I'm fine, but Dryer isn't doing well.”
“Phew, good. If you're not hurt, that's what matters. Let's put that thing back outside. It's yucky.”
Penny came over and tugged on my collar as she spoke.
Come to think of it, this was also the first time Penny had expressed her opinion so clearly.
She'd always said everything was fine no matter what I gave her or did, but surprisingly, she had definite likes and dislikes.
It was then.
“Malphite, behind you!”
Penny suddenly jumped in surprise, pointed behind me, and cried out urgently.
“Usually, by the time you hear that and turn around, it's too late.”
I turned around anyway, following Penny's pointing finger, and
“Huh, wha—?”
My field of vision suddenly floated.
By the time I came to my senses, wondering what had happened, Dryer was right in front of my face.
“Haaah, Head Mod... finally...”
With an extremely flushed expression.
She had me backed against the wall, fluttering her eyelashes.
“Gasp, nice.”
“Malphite!”
The greatest crisis of my life had arrived.
*
What is the greatest crisis in one's life?
Of course, it differs from person to person.
For some, it might be the moment before getting hit by a truck.
For others, when a bullet grazes their ear.
Perhaps, during the golden years of one's life, it could be the sound of three gunshots from behind, aimed at you.
“Now... I'm sorry, but I can't hold back anymore.”
But in my case, it was a little different.
In my case, it was now: a black-haired, milky-skinned virgin succubus who used to sneakily post NSFW pics in the gallery and then run away in embarrassment, pinning me against the wall with an aroused expression,
which could be said to be the greatest crisis of my life.
“Ngh, get away...!”
But I had Penny as a card up my sleeve.
Who was Penny?
She was an archdemon powerful enough to tear her way out of a rift by herself.
And the moment Penny witnessed this scene...!
“Ngh, nnngh... Why won't you budge!”
She grabbed Dryer's clothes and pulled.
Amazingly, that was all she did.
No matter how hard she tried with the body of a middle-schooler, there was no way she could push a succubus back.
“Mmm... Go away, little girl.”
“Eek!”
Fortunately, Dryer merely shot Penny a glance, sent her out of the room, and locked the door.
“Damn it! Open the door!”
Though that seemed to make Penny even angrier.
“Now it's just the two of us...”
“Gasp.”
Dryer slipped off her outer clothes, letting them fall to the floor.
Naturally, only the indecent underwear—or lingerie—I'd seen in lewd pictures remained.
“Nghhh...”
At that moment, my mind clouded over as if fogged, and my breathing grew ragged.
My heartbeat began rising exponentially...
Was this what being enthralled by a succubus felt like?
But that was all.
-Click
“Stop.”
I was able to regain my senses before long.
I quickly pulled out the shotgun mounted nearby and aimed it at Dryer.
Dryer flinched at that.
“Why isn't it working...”
Flustered, Dryer whispered in a mumbling voice.
She surely knew what a shotgun was.
Didn't it circulate through the gallery as a GIF titled something like ‘The Common Head Mod's Great Magic...jpg’?
Instead, Dryer tried a different approach.
“...Please don't.”
Looking up at me with a thin voice, she began inching closer and closer.
“I can shoot!”
I even loaded it and threatened her.
But Dryer only kept gauging my reaction as she came closer and closer.
In the end, I couldn't shoot.
“Thank you, Head Mod.”
Hearing her whisper beside my ear, I realized
that this would be my last moment.
I slowly closed my eyes and left my last words.
“Ah, I haven't finished reading all the featured posts.”
Still, dying from succubus-induced ecstasy would be the most luxurious death a human could enjoy, wouldn't it?
And it was at that moment, when we were close enough for our breaths to touch!
-Grab
“?”
What I felt with my eyes closed wasn't violent pleasure bordering on pain.
Instead, I felt a warm touch on my hand.
When nothing else happened even after time passed, I cracked open my eyes and saw
“Ha, ahh.”
Dryer, her face bright red, clasping my hand tightly.
“This feels so good...”
She trembled with a helpless expression, then collapsed onto the bed just like that.
Thanks to that, I was left alone, alive, muttering at empty air.
“What the hell...?”
Dryer, in the sexiest pose in the world, had merely held my hand and then fainted on the spot.
*
Her mind had reached its limit.
She could no longer think rationally enough to understand what was happening, even to herself.
But one thing she remembered clearly:
“...Warm.”
An intensely warm feeling had been conveyed to her.
It was like tasting meat after starving all her life.
It wasn't a single color.
It was as varied as a rainbow...
Or an ecstatic sensation floating beneath a warm lake.
“You're awake.”
“Eek!”
Then an unfamiliar voice reached her ear.
She instinctively pulled up the blanket and turned her head, seeing a man seated in a round chair.
How ugly was human desire?
Yet the moment she saw him for the first time, Lillian felt curiosity rather than fear.
“Ah...”
His completely white skin caught her eye first.
It was clear and fine, as though he'd never seen sunlight yet had been well-fed and carefully groomed.
His eyes were heavily shadowed, making him look tired, but he wasn't small in build either.
So Lillian asked without realizing it, dazed:
“Are you... human?”
A human couldn't avoid sunlight.
If he had never seen it, he naturally wouldn't have any food, yet he couldn't be tall and have clear skin.
And if he had eaten well, why were his eyes so dark, almost like a vampire's?
“Could you be... Head Mod?”
There was only one answer to all that.
The name Head Mod alone explained it.
And the bizarre man tilted his head instead and asked in return.
“Don't you remember?”
“If you mean my memories... yes, nothing at all...”
Nothing but warm, cozy memories.
Then the man made a deeply shocked face, as though asking how that could be.
“How could you do that?”
No, he actually said it.
“Y-yes?”
“Dryer, you forcibly groped and grabbed me, and mingled your hot breath with mine.”
“?!”
It took Lillian a moment to realize that this was a completely baseless fabrication.
More than that, she'd definitely heard him call her by that strange name.
There was only one person who could have turned her, the user unmistakably known as Dryer, into “Dryer.”
“You're Head Mod...?”
“That's right.”
“Oh my god.”
Seeing Head Mod in person made her feel strange.
He was an existence that definitely existed, but whose appearance she'd never been able to imagine.
“You're an ordinary human?”
Of course, his appearance, scent, and actions were anything but ordinary.
Still, she'd vaguely imagined him as something belonging only to the gallery, with no physical form.
“But didn't I post proof pictures in the first place?”
“...I thought they were fake.”
“No, why?”
“If you create things out of thin air and claim to be human, no one would believe you...?”
When Lillian quietly offered this honest opinion, he froze as if shocked.
It was strange to take that at face value in the first place.
Just then, Lillian drew herself into a small huddle.
“Uuugh...”
How had she ended up here?
At some point, even posting lewd pictures and consuming other people's attention and desire no longer filled her up.
Unable to find any solution, she'd been drawn here by the sweet scent.
‘But this place won't be any different...’
Lillian's expression quickly cooled.
It had been many years since she'd seen another of her kind.
There was no one of her kind to ask.
As she hid under the blankets with a depressed expression, Lillian realized.
“...I'm not hungry?”
She no longer felt hungry.
Realizing it belatedly, she was startled and rose from the bed.
“Gasp.”
Seeing her still in exactly that state, Head Mod sucked in a breath, but this was no time to care.
“My body is fine...!”
Neither her fingertips nor toes were transparent anymore.
No, beyond that, she could feel overflowing mana in her body.
“Aaaah...”
She wiggled her toes in joy, then realized
that Head Mod, watching her from beside her, was the key who had brought about her transformation.
The moment she realized that, Lillian curled the corners of her mouth slightly.
“I've figured it out.”
The being who would become her new staple food.
It was Head Mod himself.