Lucy's Conquest Route (2)
After Wednesday's classes let out, I went to see Professor Lim Sol.
We'd fallen into the habit of reaching out whenever one of us needed something. Nobody had laid down a rule; it was simply easier that way. I had no shortage of fires to put out, and Lim Sol always had research of her own.
"Yeah, you're here? I'm at a critical moment — give me a second!"
She was holding a bizarre magic circle steady with one hand while feeding it into a holographic device with the other.
Beep-beep-beep! BEEEEEEP!
A grotesque noise erupted from the machine, smoke curling up from its housing.
"Ah, shit. Failed again."
She shook out her hands and scattered the circle with a pulse of mana before finally looking at me.
"So why'd you come today? Oh, want me to suck you off first?"
I missed the Lim Sol who used to get flustered just hearing the word breasts. Maybe it was the genius in her, but she adapted to even this sort of thing with a speed that felt almost wasteful. And now that she'd gone so matter-of-fact about it, I could feel my desire taking a nosedive. What was that about? Maybe I'm just a fickle bastard...
She didn't even wait for an answer. She pulled off her robe.
"Hold on a moment, Professor. I didn't come here for research today."
"Huh?"
Lim Sol, who had been loosening her jaw and practicing O- and Ah- shapes with her mouth, made a small sound of confusion.
"Could you take a look at this communication orb for me?"
It was the one Felix had given me. Receive-only, but still.
"Hmm, a communication orb? Looking at the spells on it, it's receive-only — no transmitting. Plus it's single-use. Why'd you bring me this piece of junk?"
The woman didn't even have an equipment status window, and she'd read every spell on the orb at a glance. Her eye for this stuff went beyond impressive and into genuinely terrifying.
"Well... can you reverse-trace the transmitting orb linked to this one?"
"Reverse-trace...? I can, but what for?"
"Uh... it's a little hard to explain, but I'm not going to use it for anything weird."
"Hmm. Fair enough. You're not a bad kid. It's a shoddy magic tool, so the work itself is easy."
"Then could I ask you to take care of it? It's urgent."
This was more urgent than getting a blowjob from Lim Sol. Lucy was entering the dangerous stretch of her route. On paper, the plan was simple: Lucy gets kidnapped, Felix sends me the coordinates, I go save her. It had only just occurred to me that there was no guarantee Felix would actually make that call. If this were still a game, the coordinates would have arrived as a matter of course, just to keep the story moving. This was reality. I needed to prepare for every possibility. I should have thought of it sooner — I'd been too busy fooling around with a certain unhinged succubus all weekend.
"Honestly. You're probably the only person alive who uses someone like me for this kind of grunt work. Don't think I'll let it slide next time."
"I'm sorry. But I did bring something interesting, so could you let me off the hook with that?"
"Tsk. Fine. Wait there. I'll have it done in a second."
She seemed genuinely put out about having talent of her caliber spent on something this menial, so I soothed her as best I could. New magic or a fresh approach to mana manipulation would always put Lim Sol in a better mood. Showing her the one-shot magic-circle imprint I'd pulled off yesterday ought to do the trick.
She set the communication orb on her research desk and unfolded a spread of magic circles. I was watching them take shape when a voice rang out inside my skull.
"Whoa, is she even human? How can a human being use magic like that?"
"She's a genius too, you know."
I whispered it while Lim Sol was locked in concentration. A world-class genius, according to the game's lore — Liliana being stunned wasn't strange at all.
"So what's your relationship with that woman, anyway? Why does she need to loosen her jaw muscles to do research with you?"
I had nothing to say to that.
Lim Sol finished with the communication orb in no time. She set it so the transmitting orb's coordinates would keep registering even if the other side never pinged a location, and she even layered on a notification spell that would fire if the transmitter was destroyed.
Then I showed her the method for unfolding a newly learned magic circle in a single stroke.
Lim Sol went huh? huh? huh? on a loop, then shut her mouth and sank deep into thought. A moment later she shouted "Eureka!" and threw her arms around me, declaring that I really was useful after all.
Having apparently achieved enlightenment, she told me to get out so she could return to the research she'd been doing when I walked in.
I stayed put. I had every intention of collecting what I was owed, and I received a blowjob from Lim Sol. This was because I was the protagonist. It was absolutely not because I couldn't control my sexual appetite.
"You horny bastard. You filthy piece of shit. You disgusting contractor. You perverted male."
Liliana, of course, had no access to my perfectly reasonable internal logic, so I had no choice but to sit there and take the slander of a particularly stupid succubus.
"You wouldn't know this, but that woman came onto me first, okay? And this is a freedom revolution so I don't get treated unfairly."
"Lee Ho-yeon, who sees women as sex toys. A criminal who uses a pure mage who knows nothing but magical research as an outlet for his lust."
"Would you cut it out already!"
"Oh, please. Making her suck your dick as payment for helping with research — if that doesn't make you a horny bastard, what does?"
Fine. She's right. What are you going to do about it, you succubus bitch. If a succubus's contractor is in heat, she should be happy about it. Is this something I should be getting chewed out for? Is this my fault again?
"If you ever try to demand that kind of thing from me, you're dead."
"Yeah, yeah. Not interested."
I was actually interested.... If I said I take back what I just said right now, would she let it slide?
Not a chance.
"So what's the communication orb for?"
"It's a long story. If an alert comes through on this thing, I have to go fight a Demon."
"...? What kind of bullshit is that?"
"It's a long explanation."
I walked Liliana through the whole tangled mess — Lucy, who currently wanted me dead, her twin younger sister Rumi, and the Demon named Felix.
"I cannot understand you as a human being. Can't you just grab that Demon bastard and beat him into the ground right now? Why are you twisting everything into such a mess?"
"Because that's how I conquer her route."
"And what the hell is a 'route'?"
Explaining that would mean starting from the transmigration. We'd arrived at the dormitory anyway, so I cut the conversation off and went inside.
Poof!
Liliana snapped back into her original form. My eyes went to the F-cup chest that had come out to greet me on pure instinct — and then I found her staring at me like she intended to tear me apart, so I looked elsewhere.
Fuck. I'm the contractor here.
"I'm gonna go stream. Good luck."
I'd shut the conversation down while making it painfully obvious I didn't want to tell her anything, and she seemed a little sulky about it. Aigoo, this brat of a succubus, I swear. Somehow every pretty woman around me thought being pretty meant they got a free pass. The problem was they knew it too well.
And that, right there, was the truth of life. Yeah.
"Been a while. Might as well check Everyday."
Everyday — the community forum used by the cadets of Victoria Academy. Pretty much everything ended up on there: academy gossip, sure, but hunter-related news as well. The most recent post snagged my attention immediately.
Liliana's name recognition was already starting to climb. I'd clearly underestimated a succubus's destructive power. By day, a Victoria Academy cadet; by night, a sexy succubus cosplayer. That concept was all but confirmed by now, and the appeal of that contrast was spreading beyond the cadets to ordinary people.
"Her popularity is insane. Should I try male cam streaming too?"
It'd probably do well. I just didn't have the time, which was a shame.
What was this bastard spreading tabloid trash for? Though even I had to admit the photos had come out well. When was the next PR activity, anyway? I felt a pang of guilt just sitting on a student council title without doing any actual work.
I flipped through the pictures, then backed out to the main page. The hottest trending posts were stacked right at the top.
"What now."
A title that aggressive left me no choice. I clicked.
Inside was a photo of Mun Su-rin eating with a man.
"Ah. That's the vice president."
The post was full of people frothing about a thing between the president and the VP, or a political marriage between two good families. Mun Su-rin was never going to end up with the vice president.
Because he was uglier than me.
Game over.
Paparazzi were starting to latch onto her. The worse this got, the more it would grind her down mentally — and it would peak once a stalker entered the picture. I needed to take care of her before it reached that point.
I made one last stop on Everyday, opening the club recruitment board. I typed Nolza Club into the search bar, and a promo post came up.
"Whoa. It finally went up."
That club president whose name I didn't even want to remember had tried to screw me over one last time by scrubbing Nolza Club from the system. Promo posts never got any visibility, and the club didn't exist on the academy's official list. No wonder new members never showed. I'd been marching down to the club office every single day since I found out, and it looked like today was the day they'd finally fixed it.
"Lucy told me about it, so it didn't even take a week."
I'd only found out because Lucy had been under the impression that new members weren't joining because of me. Either way, it was a relief to have it resolved. Once I drove Felix out, this would be my club — better to get this kind of thing sorted in advance.
"Hmm-hmm-hmm~."
Lucy hummed her way toward the club room. She was in a good mood; every time she shook her head, a sweep of blue hair followed a beat behind. She was supposed to study with Felix, so she'd packed a mountain of books. Her frame was small enough that the bag looked about the same size as she was, and she waddled along under the weight of it.
"New members are gonna come pouring in tomorrow!"
She, Felix, and Rumi would still have to run the interviews, but even that was something! The days of three people having pathetic small talk in an empty club room were over. It was time for Nolza Club to finally live up to the name.
Knock, knock.
She rapped on the club room door and went in. Nobody was there. Lucy opened the window for no real reason and let the air change over. Strangely, her chest always felt tight whenever she came to this room.
"Still. Thanks to you, I feel a little better."
The flowers in the vase Felix always watered and looked after — blue, the same color as her hair — soothed something in her.
"Lucy. You got here first."
A moment later, Felix stepped through the open door.
"Yeah. I brought a ton of books!"
"Nice. We've got plenty of time, so let's take it slow, one thing at a time."
Lucy pulled a textbook on mana research from her bag and sat down. With Felix there, the tightness in her chest seemed to ease a little.
"You can't do it like that here. The mana formula falls apart."
"Ahh. So you actually study, huh?"
"C'mon. This much is nothing."
How much time passed after that? They'd been buried in the work for about two hours when Felix said he was going to the bathroom and stepped out. The moment he was gone, the tightness in her chest came back as if it had been waiting.
"Haa. That's weird."
Ding.
"Ji-eun?"
Lucy checked the message that had come in from her friend Lee Ji-eun.
Lucy tilted her head. Ji-eun knew she and Lee Ho-yeon were in the middle of a fight. Why was his name coming up?
"Huh?"
Lucy was so startled the sound came out of her mouth.
She'd never heard any of this. Because Lee Ho-yeon had never said a word.
Lucy killed the messages. She lowered her head and pressed both thumbs into her temples, thinking.
"Something's... off."
Felix's reinforced hypnotic suggestion had been slowly wearing down Lucy's pride.
"Lucy! Are you okay? Want to take a little break?"
Felix had appeared at some point. She heard him — but strangely, his voice didn't sound as trustworthy as it always had. She needed to say something right now. Why wouldn't the words come out?
It's fine! Nothing hurts. Let's just get back to studying!
She needed to talk like she normally did....
"Ah..."
"Lucy?"
She turned her head and looked at him. His eyes were genuinely worried about her. His voice was soft and clear. She hesitated for a moment, then closed her book and stood up.
"S-sorry! Something came up. I think I need to go."
"All of a sudden? You don't have any schedule today. There's no way you'd have an urgent appointment."
Lucy had never once told Felix about her appointments or her schedule. He pressed her as if he already knew the facts.
"Actually... I think I need to go see Lee Ho-yeon."
"...Why?"
"I think... there might have been a misunderstanding. I'm not sure, but I need to talk to him."
"Are you going even if I say I don't want you to?"
Felix's voice had sunk deep, unlike usual. Lucy didn't catch it.
"...I'm sorry. But I'm sure... I've missed something. The rumors must have gotten twisted. I'll definitely fix this and bring Ho-yeon back here..."
Crack—!
A fracture split across the flower vase Felix had been stroking with one hand. Lucy flinched and took two steps back.
"Hah. This is why handsome bastards are such a pain in the ass. No matter how hard you grind their affection into the ground, one good deed and the favorability bounces right back. Fuck."
"...Felix? What are you talking about all of a sudden?"
"A face this good? I put a lot of work into making it, you know. Don't you think? Ah, whatever. I can't hold back anymore."
Felix shoved aside the flower vase he had treasured and rose from his seat. Lucy drew up her mana on pure instinct. Every one of her senses was screaming extreme danger.
Gulp.
The face that had always worn kind eyes and a gentle, soft smile twisted into something vicious, overflowing with lust.