Chapter 5: Pre-Preparation
Shan, who had been patiently waiting for the host to choose her, quickly moved on to the ritual the moment Tiss selected her as the host.
Right below the right breast.
The space created on the opposite side of the heart would be the place Shan would share with me from now on.
[It's surprisingly clean inside. Cozy.]
“Of course. This body is the best host.”
[... I’ll admit it’s not just empty words.]
The surgery had been refined to perfection for today alone—clean, with no lingering aftereffects beyond the faint traces of stitches.
[Hey, I worked so hard to gather this... should I just throw it away?]
“There’s no choice. And I have no intention of discarding it.”
To fit inside my small frame, Shan had to relinquish most of the flesh she had cultivated through offerings and faith over the years.
“Shan.”
[Huh?]
“It’s too late to regret now.”
Calamity parasites root themselves in a host’s body and begin the optimization process.
That was why Shan had been able to delay her decision until now, using the excuse that she wasn’t the ideal host.
If the host had been healthy and simply forced to take over the body, the accumulated power would have been lost. In the worst cases, rejection by the new host’s immune system could even result in death.
Of course, I had grilled the guy so thoroughly he couldn’t think of anything else, but I didn’t mention that part.
[Th-that... Tiss, what are you even saying?]
“I mean it literally. The contract should have been made with more care.”
[Ah...]
Shan could only manage a short sigh.
Pfft.
In the end, laughter escaped her.
“I’m joking. If what I really want to say can’t be changed just because I worry about the past, then it would be better to spend that time worrying about how to solve it afterward instead of getting stuck in the past.”
[R-right? There’s... there is a way to solve it, isn’t there?]
Click. Click.
What was that?
Something round had been visible for a while now.
Not just visible—I could feel its texture.
At first I thought it was a side effect of the surgery.
“Shan.”
[Huh?]
When I called her name, she saw the round thing turn and realized.
So that’s Shan.
“Amazing. I can see Shan in her full form.”
It felt as if a CCTV had been installed inside the body.
Even without seeing the guy, I could tell exactly what she was doing and what expression she was making.
[Kyaaa!!!]
Startled.
Why was she screaming all of a sudden?
[What are you looking at right now?!]
“Why are you suddenly like that?”
[Y-you don’t even know what privacy is? H-how dare you peek without permission.]
Permission or not, the place the teacher was in was my chest.
“What’s wrong? You said it was cozy and nice, didn’t you?”
[That’s different from this. Ah, even if sensitivities differ because of the paper, without asking... Lady, isn’t this too much?]
“...What?”
Wait a second.
What did she mean by calling that round fluffy thing “lady”?
“You’re a female?”
[I-I am! Why!]
It wasn’t impossible.
She had simply never thought about it, but Shan was a descendant of Abaddon.
Abaddon herself was a female who gave birth to children, so it was only natural that the guy had gender.
It was fortunate, really.
Even if it was a calamity, thinking a male was inside would have felt a bit... gross.
After promising to find a way to stop the live stream of Shan’s appearance, I could finally relax.
“Shan, just in case, let me ask.”
[Huh?]
I mercilessly asked while watching Shan float question marks above her head, waiting for my words.
“Is this really maximum output?”
[Yes! How is it, the power of this body! Amazing, right? Hahaha... You can bow down!]
“...?”
I tested the power that had entered my hands the moment I became Shan’s host.
I asked the disciple to bring the barbell from the training room, added the weight plates, and lifted it with both hands.
The bar itself weighed about 20 kg, and with the plates on both sides, the total came to around 80 kg.
It was a level a normal adult male could handle.
At first it seemed light, but gradually tension built in my arm and shoulder muscles.
Already?
Hah hah.
Sweat soon formed on my forehead, and the heavy pressure from the arms pressed down on me like a weight.
This is a bit... disappointing.
Of course, it was stronger than before I accepted Shan, but this was far from enough for even a normal hunter, let alone a regular adult.
Compared to the overwhelming strength from the tutorial where you had to lose in the first fight, this was too ordinary.
Hah.
“You’re not very useful, are you?”
I had thought everything would be solved once I became a host, but this way it was impossible to fight the invaders directly.
I would have to revise the plan.
Kung!
I heard an effect sound in my head.
Seeing Shan in frustration, I naturally imagined the fluffy thing shedding tears drop by drop.
[Hu...! H-how... how can you say such... painful words.]
Shan, shocked by my words, kept muttering that it couldn’t be.
[Th-this body is a descendant of Abaddon! I’ve received a lot of faith and offerings for a long time! B-but still, you’re saying it’s weak?]
Even considering that I had been a hikikomori in the room, it was far too weak.
There was no trace of the monstrous appearance from the tutorial.
“Probably because you’re a genius and a parasite at the same time.”
There were various types of monsters, but among them, parasites specialized in controlling and dominating the host they entered.
Naturally, the core of parasites was much weaker than other monsters.
And Shan possessed intelligence enough to communicate.
Monsters tended to pour stats into their strengths, believing each had its own advantage. High intelligence meant weak combat, strong power meant low intelligence, and so on.
The fact that a weak-bodied parasite had developed a brain capable of human-level intelligence meant they hadn’t invested much in the growth of physical abilities excluding the brain.
It was like exchanging intelligence stats for strength stats.
Perhaps Shan might be the weakest in combat power compared to other Abaddon descendants.
[Then... a-are you going to die? I gave it to you from the beginning?]
“...What are you saying?”
The tears dropping made the inside of my chest feel wet.
I patted Tiss’s right chest with my hand and calmed the guy.
“Although what I said is all true, that doesn’t mean I can’t win.”
Current Shan was the worst and weakest parasite.
But there was no need to worry.
“I will never disappoint your faith, so don’t worry.”
[R-right? I-is it okay?]
“So, calm down a bit. There’s a mountain of things to tell you and things to do.”
.
.
.
“From now on, Shan, tell me about this facility. All hidden spaces, your secret places—everything.”
By sharing what I knew, I told her that her help knowing this place well was necessary for my plan and asked her to actively assist.
[All? Th-then summarize... I-I’ll tell you the main points.]
Shan explained the structure of her kingdom with a map brought by the disciple.
[This structure... d-did you understand?]
“Kind of.”
Overall, it didn’t differ much from the information I already knew.
In the original story, I just needed to add the facilities and institutions destroyed by Tiss rampaging.
With this, I had the minimum means to resist the fate of failing in the tutorial.
“From now on, I’ll explain about the invaders. Listen carefully. If you have questions, ask right away.”
I decided to tell Shan more in detail about the identity of the hunters coming.
Although all would die at the tutorial point, according to later revealed information, they were not ordinary people.
There were three hunters in the invasion party.
“Just in case, do you know what a hunter is?”
[What do you think I am... a calamity tearing and killing monsters and drinking their blood... a walking biological weapon... that’s a hunter, right.]
“Really? You’re well informed. I’ll skip the basic explanation.”
It wasn’t important for us to explain hunters now.
First, I needed to tell the guy about the roles and purposes of the three.
Let’s start with the dispatched hunter, the leader of the invasion party and the only real hunter.
The guy’s purpose was to escape Siu or Sia.
The dispatched hunter was a hunter, but he was also a member of the secret society that searched for the prophecy children, so from the beginning he had come to find the protagonist siblings.
In the game, the dispatched hunter bought time for the hunter protagonist to escape from rampaging Shan and gave the secret society mark so that the protagonist could learn the truth that day later, and died.
Later, the grown protagonist met the secret society like the dispatched hunter by chance and the main story progressed.
[So, the core is to avoid the hunter’s eyes?]
“If it’s normal, yes. But the guy we really need to be careful about is different.”
[D-different?]
“Yeah. Two out of the three hunters coming are monsters.”
The dispatched hunter would disappear if he leaked our info.
What threatened us was not the dispatched hunter, but monsters disguised as humans.
[A hunter but... a monster?]
“Hunters classify them as such, and they’re commonly called disguisers.”
One of them was a monster from another Gregory cult that had come specifically to kill Shan from the beginning.
[I-is it that dangerous?]
“Disguisers are superior-grade monsters that can have high-level mimicry to deceive human eyes.”
The Management Bureau classified monsters that could disguise as humans as special entities named ‘Disguiser’.
Disguisers were all treated as superior regardless of combat ability, and upon discovery, formal hunters were sent to exterminate them immediately.
With the disguise ability as a trade-off, their actual combat power was lower than normal individuals, mid-grade level, but they were owners of high-level disguise abilities that could even deceive the eyes of active hunters.
It wasn’t that weak just because they were mid-grade monsters.
The main enemy normal hunters faced was also mid-grade monsters, and if they let their guard down, even flying machines could be taken down by hunters in one hit.
All incidents where the orphanage in the original story was destroyed were caused by these disguiser monsters.
The reason Shan and Tiss became monsters in the tutorial was because they had been injured by disguiser monsters and hunters and rushed to find a host.
[Then, the remaining one?]
“Probably, one like us.”
Information about the guy was almost none even in the game.
In the game, this place came with the dispatched, ended up in the ruined orphanage, and only appeared as a corpse infected with the parasite, so there was no way to know which character it was.
I didn’t know how strong it was or what character it was either.
We needed to use the complex relationships of these three well.
So, the best choice was to defeat the guy in this orphanage, which was Shan’s home ground.
“You have to be careful of the disguiser. That guy probably came to target Shan from the beginning.”
[Then, how do you plan to defeat that disguiser, Tiss?]
“I’m not planning a direct confrontation.”
At the tutorial point, even Siu, Sia, and me who were talentless couldn’t win against such a strong opponent in a direct fight, even if we died and revived.
“Shan, among the things made by humans to hunt beasts, what’s the most efficient?”
[Ar-arms... cannon?]
If it worked on monsters too, it was a good idea.
“The answer is traps. We just have to wait until the monster falls into it by itself.”
“From now on, no matter how weak I am, I’ll tell you how to hunt monsters without exerting effort.”