75. Erosion (1)
75. Erosion (1)
Fear, despair, death, pain.
Due to the countless negative emotions, Viviant's brain shut down its power to protect itself.
When Viviant, who had fainted like that, came to, she couldn't see anything.
'W-what happened...?'
She remembered the last thing.
As Gluttony, a giant, terrifying creature that looked like the very embodiment of fear, approached her, she lost consciousness.
She couldn't see anything, but she knew she was trapped in a very narrow space.
It was sticky, moist, and warm.
She didn't know how to describe it.
The problem was that it was so narrow she couldn't move her body.
'And I'm naked...'
She could feel slimy, soft, and sticky sensations all over her skin. She wasn't wearing any clothes.
She couldn't see, her ears were blocked by something so she couldn't hear, and her nose and mouth were also blocked, which was quite suffocating.
'Should I be thankful that I can at least breathe? No, wait a minute... is this...?'
A sticky, narrow space that felt like it was pressed against living flesh.
The monster Gluttony that had been in front of her.
Viviant realized what kind of place this was.
'N-no way, is this inside that monster's, its stomach...? I can't stay like this!'
Viviant moved around to escape the monster's stomach, but she couldn't do anything.
"Hiiik!"
Something that felt like a tentacle restrained Viviant's body as if telling her not to move.
'I have no mana, and no Holy Power...'
She had used too much power while fighting, so it would take a long time to replenish.
'I'm going to d-die before I recover...'
Viviant thought her body was heating up because of the monster's stomach acid.
However, there was something Viviant was mistaken about.
The place Viviant was in right now was indeed inside Gluttony, but it wasn't the stomach where it put the meat it ate.
Viviant was a creature more precious than anything to Lea right now.
It had simply restrained her to safely bring her to Lea.
Because Viviant currently had a very unstable mental state, she mistook the heat in her body for stomach acid, but that wasn't the case.
Her body wasn't heating up from stomach acid; it was heating up due to aphrodisiacs.
Gluttony was not a creature with a fixed form by default. Therefore, it had a place to store other living creatures.
It didn't originally have one, but Evolute had modified it.
Thus, Viviant was captured by Gluttony and transported as is, and during that time, Viviant had no choice but to tremble in fear.
==
Lea was bouncing on her feet, waiting for Gluttony to arrive.
"Is it finally time to see it? Status Window!"
She looked like someone waiting for a game console they ordered to arrive.
"Grrr..."
"You're here!"
As soon as Gluttony arrived at the Museum, Lea ran to it.
Even though she was hungry, Lea petted Gluttony's head for bringing Viviant, even going as far as to engage in cannibalism to do so.
Gluttony enjoyed Lea's petting and opened its body.
Jjeoeok. With that sound, Viviant appeared in front of Lea.
"Oh..."
Lea was impressed by the scenery inside Gluttony's body.
Tentacles that were slightly different from the ones in the Museum.
'Is this what they usually call vore?'
Lea had many thoughts seeing Viviant trapped inside Gluttony.
Just a short while ago, Viviant was a truly beautiful woman.
She was just a haughty, prickly, Hollywood-style beauty.
'If this were normal Earth, she would have been a human I could never even face, let alone see in my entire life.'
Now, she was right in front of her eyes.
And in a quite beautiful state, captured by a monster, at that.
The problem was that the standard for that beauty wasn't the human standard, but the creature standard.
==
'Is it cool?'
When Gluttony opened its body to show Viviant to Lea, Viviant felt the wind and realized it at the same time.
'It opened? I, I have to escape!'
She tried to move her body to move toward where she felt the wind, but her body wouldn't move as she wanted.
Sseuk.
"Hiiik!"
When something grabbed her hand, Viviant flinched in surprise, but that surprise didn't last long.
'A human hand?'
The hand grabbed Viviant's hand and pulled, and Viviant slowly slid out of Gluttony's body.
'I, I got out!!! Who is it? Who helped me? Is it the Captain?'
The hand stroked Viviant as if comforting her warmly and removed the tentacles that were stuck to Viviant's face.
'Ugh!'
Viviant couldn't open her eyes due to the sudden light and squinted.
"It's okay. It's okay."
A voice that was soft, warm, and cozy, making her want to be spoiled, and the touch of a hand stroking her hair.
Viviant knew who the owner of this voice and touch was.
She carefully opened her eyes, which had adjusted to the light.
Seeing Lea in front of her, Viviant immediately burst into tears and threw herself into Lea's arms.
"You've suffered. You were very scared, weren't you?"
"Sob...! Huk! I, I really thought I was going to die...!"
"It's okay now."
Viviant, who had been crying in Lea's warm embrace, quickly calmed down thanks to Lea comforting her.
"L-Lea-nim, how did you save me? By any chance, the Captain or the other Holy Knights..."
The moment she calmed down, as she was about to ask about the current situation, it dawned on her where she was.
"T-this is, d-don't tell me..."
Viviant began to tremble at the things she saw around her.
"D-don't tell me, Lea-nim is also with the monsters—"
No matter how she looked at it, this place could only be seen as a place where monsters lived.
Because the walls she saw around her were not normal walls.
Anyone could see that they were walls made of living organisms, and behind Lea, one human was stuck in the wall, looking as if their life force was being drained.
"Hiiiiiik!"
To be sure about her surroundings, Viviant turned her head sharply to check behind her and immediately went into shock.
Because Gluttony, the monster that had cut off her hand and brutally killed her Holy Knights, was there.
Viviant, whose strength left her entire body as soon as she saw Gluttony, eventually.
Shuiii......
She ended up wetting herself in Lea's arms.
"R-run, we have to run...!"
Viviant hugged Lea tightly with her one remaining arm and made up her mind to take Lea and get out of this place.
If she could get Lea out of here with her own life, she was willing to sacrifice her life willingly.
That was how much Viviant cherished Lea.
It hadn't been long since she met Lea.
They had only met face-to-face exactly once.
Even so, Viviant cherished Lea.
Lea seemed to comfort her through the days she had spent lonely, with her parents, the common sense she knew, and all the information she had known until now having disappeared, even though she said she came to this world with a friend.
The moment she was burning with the will to definitely make Lea escape from this place.
"Gluttony, good job. Go to Evolute, receive one of the Holy Knights caught this time, and eat it. Ah— and please leave Viviant's arm."
"Grrr!"
Lea spoke so naturally to the monster that had driven her and the Holy Knights to their deaths, and that monster also bowed its head to greet Lea as if it were natural, and disappeared just like that.
"Ah? Uh?"
Viviant, who had stopped functioning due to the information about what had just happened.
Lea continued speaking, ignoring such a Viviant.
"I'm sorry I cut your arm off. I'll reattach it for you right away. I specifically asked them not to eat Viviant-nim's arm."
Lea lifted up Viviant's arm that Gluttony had left behind.
Naturally, the precious scroll that Viviant's severed arm had been holding had been removed.
Paat.
Lea placed Viviant's arm, which had not yet rotted, against Viviant's shoulder and used Holy Power.
Lea, who had been trying to avoid using Mana and Holy Power as much as possible, healed Viviant's arm.
Viviant's arm was successfully reattached.
Lea pressed hard on the fingernail of the finger on Viviant's reattached arm.
Twitch.
Lea was relieved that the arm had attached well due to the pain felt in the finger, and Viviant came to her senses due to the unexpected pain.
"L-Lea-nim. W-what on earth is going on...? Why does that monster listen to Lea-nim...?"
"If you ask why... it's a complicated explanation, but simply put, that child is my child."
"What?"
"I asked for it because I wanted to have Viviant-nim. I asked them to kidnap Viviant-nim."
"What?"
"It could get complicated if I just kidnapped you from the city, but it's fortunate that Viviant-nim came all the way to the Colony, so I could kidnap you comfortably. It was quite troublesome with Gwen."
Viviant pushed Lea away as if to shove her off, terrified by Lea's words, which were spoken so normally yet were so terrifying.
Lea said, looking at such a Viviant.
"Viviant-nim doesn't know how much I've craved you until now."
Viviant felt an overwhelming fear that surpassed the fear she had felt toward Gluttony as Lea reached out her hand toward her.