Benya = The Surprisingly Top-Tier Player
In the meantime—after I'd successfully cooked up the Ouroboros Chimera by diligently roasting and basting five sacrificial scapegoats who weren't exactly pitiable to begin with—I figured it'd be a waste to just let something I'd made go to waste, so I put the finished product to work. I had the limbs gripping weapons while the wheel spun. Where the heads had been forcibly jammed into each other's bodies, I installed eyes, ears, and a nose instead along the sides of the rolling torso and the 'inner' side of the rotation—in other words, the 'spine'—creating proper sensory organs.
My plan was for it to roll around in Ouroboros mode as a default, then detach one unit when needed to fight in a human-centipede configuration. But the more I tinkered, the more my inner creative urge came gushing out. Before I knew it, I'd crossed the line of no return, strapping a mouth-mounted charged particle cannon onto the human centipede and even attempting to bolt a rocket launcher onto its shoulders......
[GIF: The Ouroboros Chimera wriggling as it rolls about in grotesquely twisted form, a machine gun in one of its five arms, a rocket launcher in another, a beam rifle, a supersonic blade, and so on clutched in the rest]
OC btw
This is the Ouroboros Chimera I built out of the guys who tried to feed me a simmering pot of dick-broth stew
Midway through building it the inspiration just came gushing out and I kept slapping more and more parts on it—keep this up and it might be good enough to serve as my personal bodyguard, just like Ggomuli, no?
Plus, unlike Darvena from last time, this one's way cheaper on upkeep, so I can deploy it right now if I want
Whaddya think??!??
"Aww, but I worked so hard on it."
"Doctor, whatever are you talking about?"
"Hm? Oh, right, you wouldn't know. I was bragging about my Ouroboros to the other players......er, Consuls, and all I got back was abuse."
"......"
"Why do you look at me with such eyes, my assistant?"
"......"
"Don't look at me like th—ACK!!!"
"Phew."
From the other users in the gallery all the way down to the branch staff, Ilena included—everyone, it seemed, was simply incapable of grasping my brilliant ideas and the philosophy distilled within them. I could only swallow my tears and savor the bitter taste of it.
Naturally, at the sight of me sulking like that, Ggomuli—having slipped out of its mini-aquarium to serve as my cushion-and-body-armor in place of a marimo ball—extended a tentacle and began patting my head. As for the personalities and memories the original sacrifices had possessed, I'd flushed every last shred of them down the toilet on the grounds that they were utterly useless. What remained was an Ouroboros Chimera injected with clone personalities carrying only combat and basic daily-life instincts, and it sidled up to me and bowed its head as though begging for praise.
"Ahhk, Ggomuli! Ulongi! I love you two!"
-wriggle wriggle
"Grrulk."
Watching those two—practically my own children, given that I'd literally made them—I could feel the strange maternal affection that had come with my TS transformation being stirred up to its fullest.
And so, one way or another, this whole incident wrapped up—or at least, that was how it felt. Of course, it goes without saying that the situation wasn't truly resolved at all. It would be fair to say the real work was only beginning......
"I believe in you, Assistant."
"......"
"Mayor Pedo—I mean, Planetary President Heisenberg is right there beside you, isn't he? Fighting!"
"Phew......"
After all, that so-called 'real work' was nothing but political maneuvering this and inter-faction coordination that—or else matters involving money. It was the sort of territory that a mad scientist by disposition like me could neither touch nor should touch. So I delegated full authority over this domain to Ilena and to Mr. Heisenberg, newly evolved into a planetary president, and resolved to spend my leisure time in style: sprawled atop Ggomuli, kicking my feet, and shitposting on the gallery.
And so I munched away at the potato chips stocked in the branch office, wacjac-wacjac, crumbs falling here and there only to be immediately devoured by Ggomuli wrapped around my body—and every so often, I'd toss a chip to Ulongi as it went about cleaning and tidying my room. It was an immensely peaceful stretch of time, which made it all the more stark a contrast with......
[Image 1: Benya's Ouroboros Chimera, currently being treated as a cursed image on the gallery]
[Image 2: Ggomuli instantly subduing a squad of Marine officers as it wriggles]
or so I
used to think
back in the day
Watching her take the bastards who screwed her over, make sure they couldn't even die, and turn them into her own chimera—genuine, honest awe
Now THIS is what it takes to deserve the name Demonia
Ah. So I was merely the culprit all along!
What use is there in living!!
"Ugh, Ulongi and Ggomuli are adorable, how dare they hate on them?"
"Ge-ek."
Grumbling at the Ulongi-and-Ggomuli hate posts that greeted me the instant I opened the gallery lasted only a moment. I scrolled on to the concept posts to check up on how the other users were doing.
The Ssubong Kid Is Fucked, Goddammit!!!!(Comments: 2,105)
[LIVE] Ugh, fuck, I invested in a mercenary company and the bastards ran off with the payment—currently in pursuit to tear their heads off(Comments: 5,589)
Figured picking up an ancient relic and selling it would be a nice payday, but an ancient virus broke out inside and I had to shut down an entire base wtf lol(Comments: 1,337)
My beautiful adjutant who got hit with a curse just turned into a frog, what the hell am I supposed to do(Comments: 2,015)
FUCK YES—she's a frontier city at last, and I successfully built our branch HQ INSIDE the city walls!!!(Comments: 3,144)
Ugh, seriously, goddammit
They told me the planet was terraformed to hell and back but never actually settled, and I didn't get what that meant until I arrived
Monsters straight out of a fantasy novel roaming in every direction, plus colossal beasts that could swallow a king dragon whole—so I had to solo the monster-hunter meta the whole time
And because of how the place was set up, the city wouldn't take in outsiders easily, which meant I had to rack up a certain level of achievements and points to get in
Found out later that the point-relay company bastards were skimming off the middle, so I had to earn nearly three times the required amount just to barely scrape in
Obviously illegal, so by the time I figured it out and went to beat the ever-loving shit out of them, they'd already bolted and vanished
fuck, so frustrating, goddamn it all
Still, from now on me and my branch are proud, fresh-off-the-boat city residents, so at least I won't have to eat shitty roasted lizard in the wasteland every damn day
Ahhk, ahh-hhk
"Everyone's really living such hard lives, huh."
It had been plain from the titles of the other users' daily-life posts alone—and the one thread I'd opened with no thought at all turned out to be stuffed to the brim with a desperation and penny-pinching misery far rawer than anything in my own existence.
"Ggomuli, Ggomuli, isn't it actually impressive that we're top-tier by comparison?"
-squish squish
"Yes, I knew you'd see it my way."
Compared to all those countless ordinary users scraping by like that—well, if nothing else, I truly was top-tier, no question about it. And with that realization came a curious little surge of confidence.