Chapter 106: Ah, How Can I Resist Cheon Yu-hak’s Birthday Party! (7)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 106: Ah, How Can I Resist Cheon Yu-hak’s Birthday Party! (7)
What are the odds of beautiful noonas hitting on two guys who just finished brawling in a park in the middle of the night?
In my opinion, the probability is as close to zero as it gets.
“Hey, boys. We’re actually conducting a survey for people who are feeling intense emotions right now. Could you help us out? If you follow us for just a bit, we’ll give you something really good. Come with us for a second, okay?”
“…Do they really think kids will fall for something that half-baked?”
…Is this a pyramid scheme instead of a pick-up? If so, I guess it makes sense.
“What are they going to do if they don’t fall for it? We can just do this.”
As she spoke, the woman began to radiate a mana-infused smile toward us.
“There, that’s it. Good boys. Just look deep into my eyes.”
To be honest, she had a fairly attractive face, but the purple energy swirling around her eyes made the experience far from pleasant.
The moment our eyes met, my Fiery Eyes and Golden Pupils reacted. It seemed her gaze itself was a type of Magic Eye—the Magic Eye of Charm.
“See? I told you this would be faster. We have the Magic Eye of Charm, even if it’s a bit low-quality. Why bother putting on an act?”
For the record, I had Sun Wukong backing me and had recently acquired the Fiery Eyes and Golden Pupils. As for Lilac, his Holy Sword energy made him immune to most forms of mental interference.
However, she didn’t seem to consider for a second that her Magic Eye might have failed. She giggled and approached Lilac.
“Wow, but both of them are actually pretty decent. Can’t we just have a little taste before we hand them over?”
A taste of what…?
“No. I’ll snitch on you immediately. We were told to maintain their quality as much as possible, and you’ve already brainwashed them.”
“Oh, come on. If we both keep our mouths shut, no one will know. Even if they have to go, they should at least get to pop their cherry first, right?”
These crazy bitches.
Lilac must have sensed the danger because he widened the distance, and I went ahead and pulled out Ruyi.
“Huh?! What are you guys?! How can you still move?!”
It felt a bit odd to be on guard against villains who never appeared in the original work, but honestly, these two didn’t seem like much.
If anything, the natural charm Lee Yu-na constantly radiated was much harder to resist than their Magic Eye.
“…I heard you mention the Magic Eye of Charm. You do realize that using a Magic Eye for purposes other than self-defense is illegal, right? If you don’t resist, I won’t resort to violence.”
Lilac tried to persuade them with a textbook response, but naturally, very few villains would ever comply with such words.
“…Hmm, they didn’t say anything about not wounding them, right?”
“Ugh, seriously. This is why I said we should just finish this quickly and leave.”
I didn’t expect them to try and fight instead of running away.
“You should have just let the Magic Eye work~ Then it wouldn’t have had to hurt.”
“You could have gone out feeling good. This is your own fault, okay~?”
With seductive smiles, the two women took flight using their wings. Mana began to swirl in their hands.
But they were weak.
Even from my perspective, not just Lilac’s, these two were incredibly weak.
They were so weak it was almost absurd that I’d felt even a moment of tension from their confident attitude.
<Condensation, Electrification, Diffusion.> It took them an eternity to complete the circuit and construct the magic formula for <Lightning Bolt>.
For context, Lightning Bolt is a 2nd-tier low-level lightning spell. While it possesses decent power as an offensive spell, it certainly wasn’t a technique that required this much time to cast.
I watched blankly, wondering if they had some hidden trump card, but the two women—still brimming with confidence—simply discharged the lightning from their hands.
And, of course, Lilac sliced through the incoming bolts with the light of his Holy Sword.
“…Eh?”
“…Huh?”
They began to stare at us with genuinely bewildered expressions.
“…Are we weaker than we thought?”
“Now that I think about it, we’ve never actually been in a real fight before.”
…Are they idiots?
“No, wait. It’s because we’re low on life essence, isn’t it? This is the human realm, after all.”
“Ah, no wonder it was so hard to use magic. That’s why the Queen told us not to fight~”
Are they a comedy duo instead of villains?
“Hey, Lilac. That spell just now… it would’ve killed a normal person, right?”
“Yeah. Since it was a lightning-type spell, a non-awakened person would have died.”
The Magic Eye and the spell were only manageable because we were awakened. If their opponent had been an ordinary human, it would have been lethal.
Judging by their conversation, it didn’t seem like we were their first targets, either.
“Then I guess we can just catch them first and think later.”
“It does seem like we need to have a talk with them.”
Sensing our shift in attitude, the women hurriedly spread their wings and began to flee.
“Ah, shit! What is this!”
“Hey! Stop talking and run! They don’t have wings anyway, so they won’t be able to catch us!”
I had been mistaken for a moment because I only saw the wings and no horns, but based on their talk about lacking life essence, they were likely succubi. You know, those lustful demons that appear in every novel.
Given the lack of horns, they were probably very low-ranking succubi, but regardless, I couldn’t just let them go.
While there are occasional exceptions, demons are generally classified as humanoids.
I needed to find out how many other victims there were, and more importantly, if an incident I wasn’t aware of was unfolding, I wanted accurate information.
But honestly, I didn’t think these two were capable of causing any major disaster.
They seemed to be trying their best to escape, but for creatures that could fly, they were agonizingly slow.
Lilac dashed forward, and I quietly raised Ruyi.
“Get them. Ruyi.”
Ruyi extended in an instant, transforming into a cage that snared one of them. Simultaneously, Lilac leaped into the air and grabbed the other fleeing woman.
““Eh?””
They were caught so pathetically that I stayed on guard until the very end, but they were dragged down without being able to offer even a shred of resistance.
“…I mean, they really got caught just like that?”
Well, I suppose it’s because the villains I’ve dealt with lately have all been A or S-rank. For extras who didn’t even make it into the original story, this was probably the standard.
I successfully restrained the one Lilac brought back as well.
To be more precise, there was some resistance during the process, but it wasn’t meaningful resistance.
“Hey, boys. We’re not bad people, okay?”
“That’s right. We just liked you guys so much that we were playing a little prank. Why don’t you let us go so we can talk?”
They liked us so much they shot lightning at us and showed off their flying skills?
Even a snake oil salesman would come up with a more plausible excuse than that.
“Okay, let’s do this. We won’t run away, so just let us go. If you do, we’ll give you something really good. Okay?”
The way she flaunted her chest was quite a sight.
Since she had a pretty face, it might have been somewhat effective if she’d at least turned off her Magic Eye, but her persistent use of it only made the attempt feel repulsive.
Lilac seemed to feel the same, as his face was twisted in a grimace.
Now, what to do with them?
I needed to get some information before contacting a professor or the Chairperson.
If I were alone, I would have considered torture or other methods.
But having Lilac right next to me made me hesitate.
“Hmm? Was there someone else assigned to this sector besides us?”
While I was pondering, one of the captives sniffed the air, looking puzzled.
“…Huh? No, the Queen said the two of us would be enough for this area.”
Looking at them, I felt like they were stupid enough to spill everything even without an interrogation.
First off, did “Queen” refer to a Succubus Queen? A Queen-class succubus does appear exactly once in the original story, but there was zero chance she was the culprit behind this incident.
“Oh? You’re right. It’s faint, but I smell one of our kind.”
Because she was currently hiding in the bushes, watching us.
Ah, fuck. Right. Lee Yu-na.
“Ah, see? But it feels a bit different.”
Are things really getting this tangled…?
“Oh, what. It’s the scent of a defect. But for a defect, the scent isn’t half bad.”
“Right? But for a defect mixed with half-human scent, the fragrance is very…”
I hurriedly checked the bushes where Yu-na was hiding.
She was holding on for now, but there was no telling how long she would last.
Her birth was a subject that was practically taboo for her.
Should I just kill them so they can’t blabber anymore?
“Guh…!?”
“…Kyaaa…!?”
The moment that thought crossed my mind, the women began to scream before I could even lift a finger.
I wondered if it was an act to escape their restraints, but the way they emitted smoke and crumbled away like grains of sand was definitely no act.
“Wait, what’s happening to them all of a sudden!?”
“…They’re cutting their losses.”
Yes, that was the most logical conclusion.
The “Queen” controlling them must have realized they’d been caught and decided it was better to discard the mana than risk them giving up information.
“We have to save them somehow…!”
“Don’t be stupid. They’re not actually dying.”
“Huh?”
“They don’t have horns, but they’re demons. Demons don’t die easily. It’ll hurt because they’re being forcibly reverse-summoned, but they won’t die, so don’t worry.”
Creating a physical body for a demon to manifest in the human realm requires a significant amount of power.
It seemed they hadn’t formed their bodies with their own strength but had borrowed power from the Succubus Queen to do so.
“I see… that’s a relief. No, wait, it’s not. They got away.”
No, it is a relief.
I wasn’t saying that out of concern for them like Lilac was, but because if this had gone on any longer, Yu-na might have acted impulsively.
A half-succubus.
The origin of her talent and her birth, which she considered the most hideous part of herself.
That’s right. She was a half-demon hybrid born between a human male and a Succubus Queen.
Because of that, she loathed her beautiful appearance and her talent that leaked out uncontrollably.
A half-demon girl who dreamed of becoming a Saintess for the sake of the Hero.
It was a trope as classic as they come, but in a world that had become reality, it was a curse that weighed heavily upon her.
That was Lee Yu-na.
The biggest problem was that Lilac still didn’t know Yu-na’s true identity.
Lilac simply believed that Yu-na used drugs because she couldn’t fully control her talent due to her constitution.
— When you’re ready to talk, when you can truly trust me, tell me then!
— Yes, I’ll definitely tell you!
The promise the two of them made as children was fulfilled in the worst possible way in the original story.
Yu-na was robbed of Lilac and went berserk, swallowing demonic energy and awakening not as a half-demon, but as a full succubus.
Ah, seriously.
“Lilac.”
“Yeah?”
Now is not the time.
Originally, I was going to do a “Ta-da! Yu-na was listening the whole time!” reveal after this.
But no matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t do that when I didn’t even know what state Yu-na was in right now.
“You, go report this to the professors.”
“Huh? What about you?”
“I’ll stay behind for a bit and investigate. Even if it was a reverse summoning, it won’t leave zero traces.”
“Ah, I see. Okay, I get it. You have a way, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll look into it, so I’m counting on you.”
Hearing my answer, Lilac gave a bright smile and left the area.
Well, of course, I had no way of finding such traces, but I’d just brush it off later by saying they were more meticulous than I thought.
A few moments after Lilac left…
Lee Yu-na slowly stepped out from the bushes.
Her expression was icy cold, but within it, a fire of rage was undoubtedly smoldering.
“…You.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t look so scared. I’m angry, but I’m also grateful. Thanks to you, I realized that Lilac doesn’t have zero feelings for me.”
“That…”
“Well, I never expected you to interfere this much. Anyway, that’s fine. But the thing is.”
She took a moment to catch her breath before looking at me again.
“How much do you know? Why did you send Lilac away alone just now?”
Ah, I messed up because I was in too much of a hurry.
Unless I knew her secret, there was no reason for me to scrap my original plan and rush Lilac away.
At the very least, I should have followed him out of courtesy.
I could try to play dumb and say, “Huh? What do you mean?” but I didn’t think Yu-na would believe me.
And since I couldn’t exactly explain that I was a transmigrator, I had to come up with a plausible excuse.
Ah, fuck. But what reason could I possibly have for knowing the secret of Yu-na’s birth…?
As time passed, Yu-na’s gaze grew narrower, and a hint of disappointment flickered in her eyes.
Just then—
[The Touch of the Devil has extended a helping hand.]
A devil reached out to me.
[Would you like to enter into a contract?]
…Whatever. I’ve already played the mastermind; I guess I can be a devil’s contractor once, too.
You’re really going to help me, right?