2. The Mage Rises Again.
2. The Mage Rises Again.
"Kyaaak! What now, what is it again?"
She felt a terrible sensation of something soft and slimy, coated in sticky mucus, brushing past her ear. Her hand reflexively went to her ear at the tingling, goosebump-inducing sensation that resonated from her spine.
"Euuugh... What is this? Ugh."
A lump of flesh, with green and red properly combined, came out stuck to her hand. It was squirming like a slime, as if proving it had just been alive moments ago. Something transparent and sticky mucus was on its surface, but she had no leisure to confirm that.
"Ugh, I hate this, what is this."
She stretched her hand far away and shook it quickly to shake off the lump stuck to her fingertips. It felt as if the terrible texture of that flesh lump still remained on her hand, so Kyuri kept hesitating to touch the two charred, crispy goblin corpses in front of her.
She moved forward using her staff, but the memory of before wouldn't fade, and her hand hovered in the air. She had to grab them. She had to tear off those long ears so she wouldn't have to return to this place again.
She knew it, she knew it, but...
"Euuugh... I don't want to, touching it, hyaaahk!"
At the sound of grass suddenly coming from behind, she extended her staff and turned around. The bushes rustled with a crackling sound. Perhaps because when the sun sets, the mountain absorbs darkness more quickly, even though it wasn't that far, she couldn't identify what was beyond the bushes a little further away.
She tried to use magic to light a fire to brighten her view, but her magic power, which had already bottomed out long ago, caused the magic circle to fizzle out halfway through being drawn. While she wasted time like this, the darkness was gradually settling, and the location of the shaking bushes was slowly approaching her.
'It... it can't be a monster, right. Yes, it must be some passing wild animal, like a rabbit or something.'
She tried to calm herself down forcibly, but her trembling fingertips and shaking eyes proved otherwise. With each rustling sound approaching, she took one step, two steps backward.
With a puseureok sound, something black sprang out from the bushes at the same time.
"Kyaaaaahk!!"
Kyuri let out a high-pitched scream and bolted toward the village located at the bottom of the mountain. She tripped on tree roots on the steep, uneven slope, and her clothes got caught here and there, getting holes and tearing, but such things had long since disappeared from her mind.
What did it matter if the tip of her precious staff broke against a stone, or if the robe she had bought with her first money earned from the Magic Tower became rags? To Kyuri right now, it was more important to get back to the village quickly than the rabbit that was just wandering around grazing grass as usual, or the one goblin ear she had to bring back to ensure she wouldn't have to come here again.
*
It was about an hour later that she arrived at the village, gasping for breath. The sky was covered in darkness, and the world was trapped in pitch black, but as if this place were the exception, the village was shining brightly.
Merchants selling street food at the night market, lovers walking hand in hand through the streets, prostitutes shaking their revealing clothes to find tonight's customers, and adventurers relieving their travel fatigue while heartily downing alcohol and meat past their throats.
In the night streets, different from the morning and in some ways more lively, only one person walked along sluggishly, unable to do so.
Her hair, matted from running fast and covered in dust, was tangled and wet with sweat. Her robe, torn here and there, revealing pure white skin, could now be called rags. The sticky green blood and bodily fluids on her body gave off a terrible stench.
On top of that, the fact that she had to walk back into that place on her own two feet to be recognized as an adventurer was driving Kyuri crazy.
"Ha... I want to go back to the Magic Tower, seonsaengnim..."
She sat on the bench in front of the Adventurer's Guild, which could seat two or three people, and cried out, shoving the blood and flesh on her body at them, asking if that meant the request wasn't complete.
But it was rejected with the explanation that it was a test to judge whether she could properly subdue the monster and submit its materials, and she arrived at her current state.
"Mom, what's that noona doing?"
"You shouldn't look at things like that. Let's go quickly."
A passing pedestrian covered their child's eyes and quickly passed by the bench. Soon, loud mocking laughter rang out from the restaurant attached to the guild.
"Hey, mage miss, from what I hear, it seems like you failed the registration request. How about coming over for a drink?"
"If you want, I could lend you the seat next to me. Kyahahak!"
"That... won't be happening."
That last part was, in a way, the girl's last shred of pride. Although she looked dirty now, she was the chief disciple of Elain, the master of the Magic Tower, and a genius who had created four rings in her heart at the age of twenty. She was a being of a different caliber from them.
"Sorry, I can't hear you well with that small voice."
Kyuri bit her lip hard, forcibly swallowed the flowing tears, and opened her mouth as if spitting out the words.
"I said it won't be happening!!!"
She tucked her staff under her arm and kicked the bench. Laughter echoed in her ears following her footsteps. Just you wait. I'll climb to a place where you can't even look up to.
Without fail.
The tears flowing from the corners of her eyes sparkled in the night light and oxidized in the air. Turning today's tears and humiliation into fertilizer, the girl would advance further. Perhaps even higher than her own seonsaengnim.
What the girl failed to realize, soaked in emotion, was not her own incompetence or the gazes of the many people, but only the sticky mucus that had dripped from her ear.
Sagak, sagak, seureureuk.
Having already invaded through her ear, covering the ear canal and cochlea with sticky mucus, and finally reaching the brain, the Tentacle rejoiced.
At the prey it had finally reached.
*
The Tentacle that entered the girl's head first seeped into the folds and crevices of her brain. What could it eat?
Mana.
That was its food, the finest nourishment that would make it grow. However, this prey, which had already exhausted all its mana, would need a long time to recover it. It didn't know exactly how much time that would be.
But one thing was certain: the Tentacle's hunger was not small enough to wait for that.
By sticking to the surface of the brain, it could receive various information. What the girl was seeing, feeling, thinking — even that. And each time, it could tell which part of the brain was receiving the most stimulation through its own surface.
One.
One.
And one.
The Tentacle sharpened its senses and memorized them. Thinking, 'Perhaps I'll need this someday.'
Surrounded by people, the girl arrived at the inn and began to wash herself. She threw off the clothes dirtied with sweat and bodily fluids, and removed her pure white gloves one by one.
As befitting a mage who didn't see sunlight and spent most of her life indoors, her slender, pure white naked body was revealed. On it, two pretty, light pink tips above, and one below.
Chwaaak.
Warm water soaked her entire body, washing away all the filth. The discomfort she had been enduring finally disappeared, and the corners of the girl's mouth lifted slightly.
At that moment,
Sareureuk.
The Tentacle felt its hunger relieved — a little, really just a little. With a sensation like a tiny cracker crumb eaten in a state of extreme starvation, the Tentacle wriggled its body and moved toward the part of her brain that had been stimulated when she washed herself just now.
She rinsed her body with water, scrubbed with soap, and rinsed again. The grimy appearance from before was gone, and finally, a figure that would not be strange to call a mage of the Magic Tower was reflected in one corner of the mirror.
"Ah... I feel alive."
Realizing how much the filth had been tormenting her, the girl felt joy that it was all gone now. Her pure white body, which she took pride in, her two plump breasts emphasizing femininity. And the two light pink nipples standing on top of them.
As she lowered her hand and inadvertently brushed that place, the girl felt an unfamiliar sensation for the first time in a long while. Rising from the tailbone of her spine all the way to her head. A strange feeling, yet something she didn't dislike and wanted to keep feeling.
She needed to dry her hair quickly to avoid damaging it, but her hand was already heading toward her nipples.
The moment she gently pressed her nipple with her slender index finger and thumb.
"Ah-eut♡"
An obscene moan she couldn't believe came from her own mouth escaped. The sensation she was feeling for the first time, along with the body's reaction that followed, was a little frightening to the girl.
But she began to stroke her breasts softly with her hands, occasionally pinching her nipples, and for the first time in her life, she started to masturbate.
It was clumsy and inexperienced, but for a girl experiencing pleasure for the first time, it was more than enough stimulation.
From below to above, gently, sometimes gripping a bit harder, she gave various stimuli to her breasts. Thus, she built up her orgasm little by little. Like climbing a mountain, the tingling stimulation grew stronger, until at some point —
"Ah-eut, aah, ha-eut♡♡"
The girl experienced her first climax. Her now-moist genitals, her slightly heated breath, and even her languid mind.
"What is this, what did I just do?"
She roughly dried the moisture from her body with a towel hanging on one side of the bathroom and fled from it. With her mind dazed from her first masturbation, she forgot to dry her hair and hid her body under the covers.
But inside the folds of Kyuri's brain, there was a Tentacle that had nearly fully satisfied its hunger and seemed plumper than before.
From when she started touching her nipples until the climax, there was a part of her brain that reacted periodically. The Tentacle, which had moved to investigate that area, felt its hunger relieved to a degree incomparably greater than when she was washing off the filth earlier.
If this level of food could be supplied just a few more times, it wouldn't have to starve anymore. So, as Kyuri climaxed, the Tentacle seeped deeper, deeper into the folds that had glowed even more brightly.
Sareureuk, seureureuk, sagak, sageurak.
The brain Tentacle had finally found the element that would not only satisfy its hunger but also grow this body. Something that would surely bring no disadvantage to this girl either.
The best element for the parasite residing in her brain and her to coexist.
That was pleasure.