Reborn as a Female
"Ah, missed it again. These drop rates are actually insane…"
The moment the Capture Failed message flashed across the screen, my hand went to my forehead of its own accord.
The face reflected in the monitor's glow looked utterly hollowed out. After hours of grinding the same stretch of field for Real Mobs, my eyeballs felt ready to fall out of my skull.
The game I'd been glued to all night, Real Mob, was the adult title currently setting every community board on fire.
On the surface, the framework was identical to any other monster-collecting game. You wandered the fields hunting wild Real Mobs, snared them with capture Binders, trained them, and battled other Tamers.
…The problem was that the process of forcibly contracting and bonding with those Real Mobs came loaded with a suspiciously explicit "adults only" suite of options.
"Come on, a five-percent capture rate is just cruel! You make Mythic Class Real Mobs this hard to even encounter, and then—"
I grumbled, but my fingers were already flying across the keyboard again.
The reason the game had blown up was simple. The character designs and presentation were so good it bordered on unfair.
In particular, the beautiful female-type Real Mobs that looked over ninety percent human were single-handedly draining the protein reserves of countless players through the monitor alone.
Find a Real Mob you liked, capture it, and do whatever you wanted with it—once you fell into that loop, reality vanished completely.
Click.
I finally shut the computer down at four in the morning.
When the monitor went dark, a crushing silence and bone-deep exhaustion flooded the room. I collapsed onto the bed, and my heavy eyelids dragged themselves shut.
Ugh… I'm dying. And I've got lectures tomorrow.
I stared blankly at the ceiling, lost in thought.
What if, though. What if a world like that actually existed?
Not this boring reality of job anxiety and endless assignments—what if I could step into that world where Real Mobs and Tamers coexisted?
"I could catch Real Mobs and spoil them rotten every single day…"
I muttered under my breath and pulled the blanket all the way over my head. The fatigue of the real world pressed in, and my consciousness slowly sank beneath the surface of sleep.
I want to go… to that world.
That was the last thing I remembered.
And when I opened my eyes again—
I was no longer the hollow-eyed college student lying in bed.
I had woken in a forest as a female Real Mob with light green hair and soft animal ears—a creature that looked ninety percent human.
The first thing I felt upon opening my eyes was a strange, ticklish sensation swaying above my head.
I reached up to touch my hair… and my fingers closed around a pair of impossibly soft, fluffy animal ears perched right on top of my skull.
…What the hell is going on?
I tried to speak in a panic, but what came out of my mouth was not human language.
"――."
…Huh?
I looked down at my chest. A curved upper body, a slender waist, smooth white skin. The shape was unmistakably human—yet light green animal ears sat on my head, and a long tail swished left and right behind me.
Wait. Light green hair, animal ears, a body that looks ninety percent human…?
A Real Mob.
Monsters whose appearances closely resembled humans or animals, yet possessed infinite potential for combat and other uses—making them prime targets for human capture.
And looking at the body structure… this form was clearly female.
Okay, getting isekai'd is fine, but why the hell did I have to come back as a female Real Mob?!
I cried out in pure injustice, but all that left my mouth was a meaningless animal cry.
"―! ――!"
Grrrooowl—
A pitiful rumble rolled through my stomach. The laws of the wild were merciless.
No matter how superior a Real Mob's physical abilities were to a human's, wandering aimlessly through the forest looking for food was no easy task. I had been staggering through the trees, worn down by hunger, when—
From far off came the sound of someone pushing through the undergrowth.
"Augh… I ran away from home all fired up about becoming a Tamer, but I can't find a single Real Mob that looks like I could actually catch it. If I go home like this, I'm gonna get beaten to death…"
A human in worn leather clothes, a bulky backpack slung over his shoulders.
From what he was muttering, he'd run away from home to become a Tamer and thrown himself into a Real Mob field—yet he didn't have a single Binder ring on his fingers. A complete novice.
A person!
Hope surged through me and I scrambled out of the grass. I looked human enough—maybe, just maybe, we could communicate.
Hey! Help me!
"―! ――!"
I gestured frantically, trying to explain my situation. Listen to me—I used to be human, I woke up like this, and I'm about to starve to death.
But what the man saw in me apparently meant something entirely different.
"Huh…? A humanoid Real Mob? And it's coming to me first—wait, did it choose me?"
"――!"
"Every weak-looking Real Mob just runs the second it sees me, but this is perfect! You're my first Real Mob!"
It wasn't working. Nothing was getting through!
No matter how desperately I tried to form human words, everything came out as those characteristic Real Mob cries—sounds without meaning.
I'm screwed. We can't talk…!
I turned to flee in despair—
Crunch.
The man pulled something from his pocket. A sweet, savory biscuit aroma bloomed through the entire forest. A single piece of bait designed to lure hungry Real Mobs.
Gulp.
I swallowed hard without meaning to. The moment my eyes locked onto the biscuit, the novice Tamer's expression shifted. An innocent smile with just a hint of cunning underneath.
"Do you… want this?"
He broke off a piece and dangled it right under my nose. My brain knew better. This was an obvious trap. Only a brainless wild Real Mob would fall for bait dangled this blatantly.
Hold it together. I'm an intelligent human being. I am not falling for food like—
"―"
But my body was already drawn by the biscuit's scent, tail wagging wide open as I pressed right up to the young man. Whether it was Real Mob instinct or sheer starvation, I couldn't even tell the difference.
"Good girl~ Here, eat up."
He held the biscuit a little closer. Entranced, I opened my mouth and leaned toward the food. The sweet butter flavor spread across my tongue—
Click!
"Huh?"
A heavy, cold metallic sensation closed around my neck.
With the hand that wasn't holding the biscuit, the man had flung a Binder that wrapped around my throat. The Real Mob Binder expanded instantly to fit my neck, then locked shut with a sharp snap—sealing itself like a collar.
Wait—this is a Real Mob capture Binder…!
"――?!"
Fwoosh—!
Crimson mana light poured from the ring-shaped collar and enveloped my entire body. A crushing sense of restraint hit me, and I felt a translucent tether form between the novice Tamer and myself—something like a Master-Servant Contract.
"Got it—! My first Real Mob! And a humanoid Real Mob that looks exactly like a person!"
The runaway youth whooped with delight, fussing over the ring locked around my neck. And I just stood there, still tasting the sweetness of the half-chewed biscuit, collared and dazed.
…I got captured over a single piece of biscuit?
My first encounter with a human in this other world. Just like that, I became a runaway youth's first Real Mob—and began a new life with a collar around my neck and every last human right stripped away.
Only after the Master-Servant Contract had been slapped together so haphazardly did I finally notice the state of myself—something hunger had completely blinded me to.
Hold on… even for a female Real Mob from an adult game, what the hell is this outfit?!
My clothes were nothing short of extreme.
A tiny tank top that barely covered my chest, and bottoms that consisted of a short skirt just covering my hips plus a scrap of fabric that was basically underwear. The slightest movement left skin fully exposed. I was more than a little rattled.
But my "Master"—the runaway youth—didn't spare my outfit a single glance. He just kept playing with the leash connected to my collar, giddy with excitement.
"Hmm, green hair and animal ears… from today on, your name is Pulnyangi!"
Pulnyangi?! His naming sense is completely hopeless…
I scowled at him in pure disbelief. I radiated every possible signal of rejection with my entire body… but no matter how I reacted, my master just laughed like he found it adorable.
"Oh, you like it that much? Looks like it really suits you!"
Nothing got through. Because all I could produce were those meaningless cries, even my emotional expressions were being interpreted however he pleased.
While I was still seething with injustice, my master gathered firewood from the surrounding forest with practiced hands and lit a fire. Then he pulled a small pot and ingredients from his backpack and, just like that, whipped up a surprisingly decent soup.
"Here, Pulnyangi. One biscuit wasn't enough, right? Eat this."
Gulp.
The rich aroma of the soup hit my nose. Before I could even think of refusing, I lunged at the pot and emptied it in a frenzy. After days of starving in the wild, every swallow of warm, savory broth felt like it was bringing me back to life.
Right… in the Real Mob game I knew, mobs never got anything close to proper rights. They were treated as total slaves more often than not.
I scraped the bowl clean, thinking it over.
Sure, the name "Pulnyangi" was ridiculous and getting captured still stung—but at least he was feeding me well. Maybe I'd lucked into a kinder master than expected.
That thought did not last long.
Because the dessert for this meal… was me.
Gulp.
"Hmm… according to the guidebook, humanoid Real Mobs need to stabilize their mana through Essence Exchange with their master…"
The young man finished eating, swallowed hard, and approached me. As a complete novice Tamer, awkwardness and tension were plain on his face—but his eyes were full of an unreadable curiosity.
His hand reached for the scrap of fabric barely covering my chest.
Wait—what do you think you're doing…?!
Without hesitation, he began peeling away the scraps of cloth that had been just barely concealing a female's private places, one by one.
"―! ――!"
I panicked, swatting his hand away and trying to back off. Even if this was a female Real Mob's body now, my body had reflexively rejected a stranger's touch.
"Ah—Pulnyangi. Stay still!"
He barked the command, flustered but firm.
In that instant—
Throb—!
"――-?!"
The capture Binder around my neck clamped down cold and tight. A crushing wave of mana restraint slammed through my skull, and every muscle in my body locked up as if turned to stone. The moment I tried to defy my master's order, the Master-Servant Contract bound to the collar forcibly suppressed my body.
I couldn't move a single finger of my own free will.
In the end, face flushed and breathing hard, I could only helplessly accept the novice Tamer's hands as they stripped me bare.
