Why the Hell Do I Need to Know Demon Organ Fat Density!
Whew. Thankfully, my silver tongue had pulled off another miracle.
When I casually slipped in a few words, Rahel raised her axe high and dragged that thug of a son out of the cabin by the scruff of his neck.
Of course, those “few words” weren’t some grand lie. I’d simply taken cold, hard facts and sprinkled the tiniest bit of seasoning on them.
Something like a tear-jerking tale of how “that bastard kept extorting my blood, sweat, and tears crops under the pretext of taxes, so I had no choice but to serve tea to Roselia with a business smile.”
It wasn’t the complete truth, but it wasn’t entirely unrelated either. Probably. Maybe. It might actually have been true.
The moment Rahel stormed out like a hurricane, Cecilia slithered over and released my bindings.
“A-are you okay? Your wrist…? Sigh, that barbaric beast of a woman. Leaving bright red marks on our Mujin’s pretty wrists…”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
I lightly rotated my stiff wrists. After being tied up two days in a row, I seemed to have built up a tolerance; it didn’t even hurt much anymore. The human capacity for adaptation is truly terrifying.
Having my wrists freed was nice, but what felt even more refreshing was imagining the fate of that thug who used to treat me like a pushover. It was as if ten years of pent-up indigestion had finally melted away.
Crunch!Thud!!
“GYAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”
Right then, a heavy smashing sound came from outside the cabin, followed by a man’s agonized scream that shook the entire forest.
He’ll… he’ll be fine, right? He’s a civilian—neither a woman nor a demon—so she’ll probably just knock him out instead of killing him. I thought I heard a couple bones break, but whatever. Bones are supposed to break and grow back when you’re young. Considering all the crops he’d extorted from me over the years, that beautiful impact sound actually felt like soothing ASMR.
“Tsk, our Mujin… you shouldn’t play with such a primitive beast. W-while she’s distracted… s-should we run away together?”
Cecilia wrapped both my hands in hers and looked up at me with those hollow eyes.
“Ugh, if we do that I’ll get ripped in half for real. You can just phase through the walls with your permeation ability, but I’m stuck in a physical body.”
“I-I’m fine… I’ll protect you.”
“How are you going to protect me when physical attacks don’t even work on you?”
“Hmm… maybe I pop out with a ‘boo!’ and scare Rahel into a heart attack… hehe…?”
Yeah, zero credibility. More importantly, I should use this strangely intimate moment to clear up the question that had been bothering me.
“Hey, Cecilia. You know Roselia, right?”
“…Ah, that bitch?”
The instant Roselia’s name left my lips, a grotesque vortex swirled through Cecilia’s empty eyes. Of course she knew her. She was the perverted stalker who had spent the entire past year watching my every move from beneath my floorboards.
Then that meant—
“You knew she was a demon too… right?”
“…No, even I didn’t know that. If I had… w-would I have just watched…? I would’ve twisted her neck…”
Cecilia chewed on her lip.
“Every time that bitch pranced around in front of you… there were countless times I wanted to burst through the floor and tear her apart. Haah… if I’d known, I should’ve just jumped out back then… B-but… secretly watching you was… just too thrilling…”
Cecilia began muttering, her eyes losing focus.
“Cecilia.”
“Hm? Ah, ahh… sorry. I spaced out for a second…”
“Then let me ask you this. Did you ever look into Roselia’s background?”
At my question, Cecilia’s expression subtly hardened. There was no way she hadn’t. She was the stalking genius who had already finished investigating every single female ant within a ten-kilometer radius of me.
“O-of course I did… But there was seriously nothing suspicious at all. The villagers all vouched for her—she was just the ordinary daughter of a shopkeeper… and she got along well with everyone…”
Hmm. Even the great Cecilia hadn’t noticed anything. That made sense. Even I had spent an entire year without feeling the slightest sense of unease. The friendly smile and tone she showed whenever I visited the crop shop had been indistinguishable from an ordinary village girl.
But was that even possible? Could a high-ranking demon perfectly mimic human behavior and ecology?
That left only two possibilities.
Either the demon had killed the real Roselia, worn her skin like a suit, and was acting with flawless perfection…
…or the majority of the villagers had already been replaced by demons, so any clumsy acting went completely unnoticed.
A chill ran down my spine. If it was the latter, this podunk village wasn’t a village at all—it was a massive demon den. Maybe I should raid the crop shop first thing tomorrow morning.
I was seriously turning this over in my head when—
Bang!Clang—!!
The village chief’s son’s agonized screams that had been echoing outside suddenly cut off. Then came the dull sound of something breaking and the metallic clash of steel against steel slamming into the cabin.
Wait, was that son a demon too? That was clearly the sound of blades colliding in actual combat.
“This… sounds like someone’s fighting, doesn’t it?”
“L-let’s go check, Mujin.”
We kicked the door open and rushed toward the noise. The moment we reached the orange-tinted clearing in the sunset-lit forest, the scene before me was slightly outside my expected range of chaos.
“Rahel! What’s going on?!”
A dozen or so second-class demons radiating thick black demonic energy had formed a tightening encirclement around Rahel, who was holding her massive axe. I had expected demons to show up, but why were they attacking at this exact moment?
More importantly, where was the chief’s son? Don’t tell me he really was a demon wearing human skin—!
Ah, there he is.
My grim prediction turned out to be pointless. The village chief’s son had simply fainted. Seeing him foaming at the mouth and sprawled beneath an oak tree, it looked like his soul had already logged out from Rahel’s “physical therapy” before the demons could even touch him. His pants were also suspiciously wet.
Tsk tsk. Where had that imposing thug who had burst into my house gone? All that remained was a battered lump of meat.
“These vermin suddenly swarmed in like a pack.”
Rahel irritably shook blood off her axe.
“Before those filthy hands can touch Mujin… I should just tear them all apart… hehe.”
Cecilia let out a gloomy metallic chuckle and slithered forward from my side.
To be honest, a dozen second-class demons? For those two insane S-rank adventurers, this was easier than pulling weeds. Yet in this zero-tension situation, Cecilia suddenly made a very tempting offer to Rahel.
“Hehe… Hey, beast bitch. W-wanna bet… who can kill more…?”
“A bet?”
“Whoever tears apart more… g-gets to have Mujin all to themselves… tonight…”
Excuse me?
“Hey, you crazy bitches! Who said you could bet on m—!”
“Alright! Hehe! Deal!! I love it!!”
My desperate protest was completely drowned out by Rahel’s joyous roar.
“I can’t let that gloomy bug bitch have my pretty puppy! I’ll grind every last one of them to paste!!”
The moment the words left her mouth, Rahel raised her axe and charged at the horde of demons like a rabid boar.
“Hey! I never agreed to that bet!! It’s invalid! Invalid!!”
“Hehe… Even if you start first… the winner will still be me…”
Cecilia casually ignored my desperate cries, melted into the air, and joined the hunt.
“AAAAAAAAAAH!!!”
The demons’ screams began to echo magnificently through the beautiful forest.
I clutched my forehead and collapsed on the spot.
Haah. My life. Today, once again, I’m nothing but a trophy.
“No matter what, how could you snap both his legs like that?! I nearly broke my back carrying the village chief’s son to the infirmary!”
“Aww, did our pretty puppy’s back hurt? But Mujin. Weren’t you the one who exaggerated everything and begged me to punish him?”
Ah. She’d noticed.
With nothing left to argue, I simply flopped onto the bed.
Ugh… one day feels like a year. In the morning I played newlywed couple while grocery shopping, at noon there was an attempted beheading of a regular customer, in the afternoon a basement stalker was exposed, and in the evening I got caught in a blood-splattering brawl against a horde of demons.
A normal farmer would never experience such spectacles in an entire lifetime, yet they had stormed through my day like a typhoon. If not for these two, I would’ve just watered the fields, enjoyed a warm cup of tea, and ended the day with a peaceful healing life.
Haah… Seriously, the moment I meet these women, my life’s difficulty level shoots straight up to hell mode.
Of course, this hellish day still wasn’t over.
“Hey! I won! That last bastard—his right brain, gallbladder, appendix, everything was stuck to my side! My piece of flesh was at least five hundred grams heavier!”
“W-what are you saying… M-my large intestine was way longer… I also had two more vertebrae… than you…”
I’m going to lose my mind. For real.
These crazy women were having a debate for the ages about the anatomy of a second-class demon that had been split neatly in half.
They weren’t butchers from the meat market or mad scientists. They were seriously sitting there measuring to the decimal point—whose intestines were a few centimeters longer, whose liver weighed a few grams more.
“Even if you have two extra vertebrae, they’re just empty bone fragments! This side had an entire gluteus maximus chunk from the thigh attached! Don’t you know meat’s life is in the muscle mass, not the bones?!”
“Th-that’s just cheap muscle with no marbling… My side… had more visceral fat… so the density itself is completely different…”
Oh, for the love of god, please stop.
Listening to this gruesome butcher-shop debate in real time from the front row made everything inside me feel like it was dancing at the base of my throat, ready to surge back up.
Why the hell do I need to know the visceral fat density of demon organs?!
This wasn’t going to work. I decided to just pretend to faint and go to sleep first. The moment I gently closed my eyes—
Swish— Swish—
Both crazy women’s gazes simultaneously locked onto me on the bed.
Why are you looking at me…
“Hey, Park Mujin. You be the judge. Decide right now which of us is the winner.”
“Y-yeah… Mujin… y-you decide…”
Huh? Why the hell is this suddenly on me? They want me to judge? In this insane deathmatch where the prize is “exclusive rights to Park Mujin tonight”?
Of course, holding the referee’s stick brought me exactly zero benefits. Why? Because no matter whose side I took, the one who lost would completely lose their mind.
Screeech.
Rahel slowly ran a finger down her blood-stained axe blade and smiled eerily.
“Our puppy knows what choice will let you see tomorrow’s sunrise alive, right? Hehe.”
“Mujin… You don’t… have feelings for that horny beast, do you…? Right…?”
An active yandere holding an axe high and a passive yandere radiating pitch-black darkness.
If I sided with Rahel, Cecilia would strangle me in the middle of the night and drag me to her basement. If I sided with Cecilia, Rahel would neatly quarter my limbs tomorrow morning and plant them in flowerpots.
No matter which I chose, I would be torn to shreds by the remaining one. A one-hundred-percent pureblooded no-win scenario.
Haah. Fuck.
I should’ve just let those demon bastards drag me off and kill me earlier.