Reunion with Tarkan Was the Worst
SKRRRCH!
A stubby fist had seized the young swordswoman by her beautiful hair and was yanking it for all it was worth.
"Gyaaaaaaah!!! I'm thorryyyyy!!!"
"Yeah, well. Take a hit first."
"Emily! Our Arin's still a kid — that's just how she is! You're actually going to kill her at this rate..."
The magical girl was busy disciplining Arin with a face like a thunderstorm, and Hecate was wringing her hands in a panic, when—
THUD!!
"Everyone. Quiet."
"..."
"..."
Dyer had finally had enough. He stepped in and put a stop to them.
"We did not gather here to brawl over petty nonsense."
"Oh, come on, Dyer! You heard what this green little brat just said to me!"
"Emily."
The middle-aged man turned a grave look on her and pinned her with it.
"That's enough. We don't have time for this."
"Ugh... fine..."
In the end, Dyer simply let his presence crush the air in the room, and she fell silent.
"...And here I thought the guy was whipped. He's got the reins in a death grip, huh."
"Arin. You're about to get hit again."
The young swordswoman, only just released, murmured it in genuine admiration of his force of will.
"All of you, listen!!"
THUD!!
The leader of Redanis drove his blade into the floor and made his declaration.
"..."
"..."
The moment he spoke with the full weight of a commander, every gaze in the room locked onto him.
"Who are we?! Refugees! Losers! People sacrificed in the civil war between the Kingdom Alliance and the corporations, and in the Dragon Empire's wars of expansion!"
"We have nowhere left to go! Our homelands are gone, and the Alliance is nothing but garbage that doesn't even look after its own people!"
It was the earnest cry of a man who had once been a war hero, and they nodded along, conceding the point.
"Those kingdom sons of bitches..."
Emily, the magical girl who had once been a beacon of hope for the people, ground her teeth as the hunger for revenge burned through her.
"Incompetence, arrogance, corruption... none of that will ever stop an empire."
Hecate the necromancer — who had defected out of sheer disgust with the upper ranks — muttered it under her breath.
"Well. I can't exactly let the bastards who threw my master away live, either."
Even Arin, the swordswoman with a blade slung over her shoulder and one leg bouncing restlessly.
Every last Finger was a victim of the Empire and the kingdoms.
"And... Ryushia. The one who was meant to be our executioner has turned her blade on us."
"Hah! We fed her, we housed her... and it all meant nothing!"
Dyer and Emily spat their hostility at the traitor Ryushia — but Arin, at least, answered with a look of pure distaste.
"...You fed her anesthetic and put her under with some freakish surgery, yeah."
"What?"
"I'm right, though. You pick up some kid in the name of revenge and remodel them into a tank, and that's just great, is it?"
"...Our forces are nothing compared to a regular army. If we want to fight, it was a choice we had to make."
"That's exactly my point!! That's what I can't stand! You set yourselves up as the victims — so why are you out here making more of them?! I genuinely don't get it!"
"You're still too young to—"
Hecate tried to scold Arin, hoping to defuse the ugly turn the air had taken, but—
"I don't care! Forget it!"
WHOOSH!!
"A-Arin!!"
The girl was still in the thick of adolescence, and student soldiers, conscripts — none of it sat right with her. She spat her fury and vanished, and Hecate scrambled after her.
"That damn brat, I swear..."
"Calm yourself, Emily. She's still too young to accept sacrificing the few for the sake of the many."
"...Haa. This is exactly why cheap pity is a problem in a war."
Dyer and Emily were still working through their own tangled feelings when—
"Stop. Right there."
SQUISH!
Out of nowhere, a colossal pair of breasts filled the young swordswoman's vision, and she planted her face straight into them.
"Urgh?! Wh-what is this?!"
"Ah. I forgot to mention."
"Mm."
As Arin squirmed, buried in that cavernous cleavage, Hecate spoke up as if the thought had only just occurred to her.
"Allow me to introduce you. This is Tarkan, the (former) Ninth Finger."
"Death. However. Woman. Resurrection."
"...What?"
Only then did Arin realize who the woman blocking her path actually was.
"I resurrected Tarkan's corpse, you see."
Back when Jinwoo's Luminous Dragon had brought Tarkan down, Hecate had picked through the ruined battlefield and recovered what pieces of him she could. The blast had been so violent that nearly seventy percent of Tarkan's massive frame had been annihilated. So she had taken the remaining thirty percent and, one way or another, fused it with other experimental bodies to restore him. The result—
"The frame came out so much smaller that resurrecting him as a female body was the most practical option."
"That is so."
"Hold on. That mountain of a man turned into this stacked purple-skinned lady...?"
Arin could only gape, taking in the figure in front of her.
Blue hair. Smooth purple skin. Sclera as black as pitch, and full, sultry lips in a vivid blue. Breasts of a frankly sensual size, and abs carved into a sharp eleven-line that put the whole physique on display. Thick, muscle-wrapped thighs, a plump and generous rear — and bikini armor that was halfway to wearing nothing at all.
"Okay, this is a bit extra. You turned that muscle dude into some kind of succubus?"
Arin grimaced, recoiling from a transformation that had gone several steps too far.
"Hecate. Told me. To wear it. Said it suits me."
"Lady, have you actually lost your mind?"
Watching Tarkan deliver all of this with a perfectly blank face, Arin felt a headache coming on all by itself.
"Well, if she was going to be a woman anyway, a sexy outfit just—"
"Don't even start! That reliable macho guy turned into a female in a filthy outfit!!"
Arin had, in her own way, been fond of Tarkan. A taciturn type who revered martial strength, a muscle-bound little brother who could be oddly cute at times. They had sparred together. She had looked after him like an older sister.
...And now here he was, those obscene breasts swaying with every step.
The reunion with Tarkan was the worst.
"GYAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"
"..."
"Hecate. Ignore that one. Begin the operation to seize the Dragonian Fortress."
Dyer did his level best to ignore Arin, who was currently wailing with both hands clamped around Tarkan's chest, and issued his orders to the necromancer.
"Three hundred ghouls, two hundred skeletons, and Tarkan — will that be sufficient?"
"No. We'll send Luman, the Sixth Finger, as well."
"Hey!! I'll just go myself!"
"Very well, Arin. You'll handle neutralizing the enemy commander."
Dyer laid out the plan: Hecate's undead army, Tarkan, and Arin would be sent against the Dragon Empire's forces.
"As for Luman... yes. He's better suited to suppressing the Holy Kingdom."
He assigned even the currently absent Luman his post, handed out the rest of the missions, and nodded to himself.
"Good. Dismissed!"
"HEY!!! Give us Tarkan's junk back!!!"
"...Arin. Woman's body. Not. Bad."
The young swordswoman, however, was clearly not convinced, and she kept making noise about it.
"Ryushia. There's no way around fighting them, is there?"
"No."
Ryushia, heads together with Jinwoo, answered in a low, settled voice.
"Revenge only breeds more revenge... If what you said is true, they're victims of the war too, right? If we could just make peace with each other..."
"About that."
Ryushia had laid a great deal out for him. The founding of Redanis. The pasts of its officers. And how, exactly, they had ended up in a fight like this.
But to Jinwoo's question, her answer was absolute.
"Revenge... doesn't produce anything, is that it? Spare me the obvious platitudes!"
SLAM!!
"?!"
Ryushia brought her palm down on the desk with a look of utter conviction.
"Listen here — this body didn't come to produce anything. We came to liquidate!! This isn't a checkout counter. What the hell do a bunch of criminals think they're going to create? Terribly sorry, but we don't need a receipt!!"
"Your speech is straight-up Japanese yakuza."
Jinwoo stared at her, completely blindsided by the sudden ramp-up.
"I don't care what their sob story is! They wrecked this body to hell and back! Ran around raising hell! Take 'em down and they spit out diamonds! That's why we ice 'em, you got that?!"
"So... Redanis is basically a gacha mining site!"
Jinwoo nodded along as if that settled it, playing right into her rhythm.
"Then that sexy body and the half-naked outfit are all Redanis's fault too! Those bastards!"
"No?"
"?"
"?"
And just like that, the conversation started to grind its gears.
"Well, they didn't really do anything to my figure. If anything, they said my chest and hips were too big and would get in the way of combat, so they scaled them down?"
"That's the scaled-down version...?"
What Ryushia had just said was staggering. Originally, that already indecent body had been even bigger?
"The outfit... it felt weird at first, but the more I wear it, the more it just clings to me. Great ventilation, excellent stretch — it's like a second skin."
"Uh..."
If that was true, then Ryushia herself was simply indecent. The organization had actually been trying to cover up her more obscene qualities.
"Look!"
SNAP!
She beamed, caught the fabric of her leotard, and let it go — and the side of her breast bounced back into place, dragging his eyes with it.
"Heh. Well?"
"W-well what?!"
"Still not getting it? No matter what they put this body through, no matter how I look on the outside... they could never lay a finger on this noble, unsullied spirit of mine!"
"I think you've got a talent for exhibitionism."
"Pardon?"
Jinwoo just clapped a hand to his forehead.
"Well, if this outfit has one downside..."
Rustle.
Without warning, Ryushia turned her back on him and shrugged off her coat.
"My rear keeps eating it, so it chafes... it actually hurts a bit."
"Pffuh?!"
The backside she had just casually put on display was an act of violence. A back bared from the waist up, and a leotard stretched to its limit, swallowed by the generous flesh of her rear.
SNAP!
"Having to pull it out like this every so often is a little inconvenient."
She caught the fabric, tugged her clothes free of her backside, and muttered it like it was nothing.
"..."
Is she doing this on purpose? There's no way a woman would just casually do this in front of a guy, unless she was trying to—
"Why are you staring a hole through me? It's just a heavy lump of fat."
"..."
Never mind. She genuinely had no idea.
"I really~ don't understand why men like this sort of thing. I think Arkis has just the right amount of a pretty figure. Too big and nothing fits, plus you sweat, and it's just uncomfortable..."
SPRAWL.
And then she planted her legs wide like some middle-aged guy on the subway and kept grumbling.
"Shia. Close your legs."
"Ah, force of habit. A real man taking up two subway seats is just the unwritten rule..."
Did I just imagine that?
The inside of her thighs, laid out in plain view. The smooth line of her pubic bone. And, faintly visible at the crotch, the crease of a split—
"Ah, it ate it here too."
STRETCH!
Nope. He had seen it just fine.
"Haa... would you please be aware of your own body as a woman? This is way too embarrassing to look at."
"Huh? I don't see what's embarrassing about my body."
"..."
1. Ryushia's figure was actually nerfed by surgery.
2. The shameless, daring outfit was... all her own choice.
3. Ryushia is a manspreader who casually yanks her clothes out of her ass.
4. She's just a female.
"...The organization is to blame for all of it, really. I would never..."
"It's already too late."