A Strange Space, A Strange Man (2)

"Wha—?!"

A sharp jolt slammed into my backside.

One moment I was being sucked somewhere, the next I was flat on my rear end.

"W-where am I...?"

I looked around.

A blindingly white space. Like an operating room, a steel bed and surgical lamps sat in the center. And above all, someone had cranked the air conditioning to full blast — it was so cold my skin prickled with goosebumps.

But something felt strangely off. Cold was one thing, yet it was as if the chill itself was touching every inch of my body...

"Wh... huh?!"

I looked down — and the clothes I'd been wearing were gone.

Which meant I was sitting stark naked, without a single thread on me, in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a place I couldn't even begin to identify.

"Hah!"

And it wasn't just the vanished clothes. Pale blue flames were burning all over my exposed skin. No — as if the flames were replacing my skin... no, no, now they were dying down, and my original skin was coming back.

It was the strangest sensation. Not hot, exactly — cold. Something felt like it was being poured into me. I had no idea what it was. But whatever it was, I knew one thing for certain: for some reason, it left me with an overwhelming sense of fullness.

"Calm down."

That was when I heard a stranger's voice.

"When you cross over into another world, your body gets rebuilt into one that can accept mana. That feeling of being filled up? That's your mana coming in."

"Wh-who... are you?"

A strange man with skin pale as paper and an enormous build — who knew when he'd appeared.

"Kyaa?!"

The instant I remembered I was completely naked, I scrambled to cover my chest and crotch with my hands.

But the man didn't seem to care in the slightest. He just peered down at me, murmuring to himself.

"Hmm... I've sent out a hundred Status Windows, and about ten people answered the summons, but only one actually arrived, huh? So no matter how well you meet the conditions, surviving dimensional travel is a whole separate matter after all..."

"E-excuse me!"

"Hmm?"

"Where is this? A-and could I get some clothes...?"

"Oh, right, I never introduced myself, did I? I'm... hmm... actually, no. There's no point exchanging names — it just makes people get attached. Let's skip that."

"What? No, I mean, could we start with the clothes—"

"—What you need to know is this: you're in another world, and I summoned you here. Do you remember how you got here?"

This man just barreled ahead with whatever he wanted to talk about.

But still — another world? Wasn't that the kind of setting straight out of some dime-a-dozen fantasy webnovel...?

...No, come to think of it, a Status Window had popped up out of nowhere in front of me, and I had selected [YES]. At the same time, something had sucked me in, and then I'd been here. My clothes were gone, and I'd felt that strange sense of fullness spreading through my body.

...Just listing the events in order, every single one of them belonged in a fantasy webnovel.

"Good. So at least you can piece together what happened."

Whether I answered or not, the strange man just kept rambling on to himself.

"Don't worry. I came from the same place as you. You're speaking Korean, so you're Korean, right? What a coincidence! So am I."

"What?"

"Hm, well, this makes it awkward to explain that the Status Window has an automatic translation function and lets you use every language in this world. Once you're already speaking the same language, the translation feature kind of becomes irrelevant, you see."

"Um... I—I don't understand a single thing that's happening right now...?"

"You don't need to understand everything right away. All you need to know is, first, that I'm the one who summoned you here. And—"

"—WHAT?! No, wait — then send me back to my house!"

"...Second: there is, as of yet, no way to return from this world ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to the original one. And please don't cut me off. It's a pain to explain things twice. Later—"

"—What kind of nonsense is that?! You dragged me here, and now you're telling me you can't send me back?!"

"...Just don't ask me to repeat myself."

"Mmph?!"

The man crouched down to my eye level and pressed his palm against my jaw, gripping my chin. I couldn't move my mouth at all.

"So shut up and listen to the explanation. Okay?"

"..."

Under that rough, overwhelming strength, I couldn't even manage a nod.

"Right, where was I? Crossing over from there to here is possible, but the reverse is impossible! This is important, so remember it."

His gestures demanded a response, but his palm stayed clamped around my chin.

"Mmph?!"

As if that weren't enough, he pressed me backward against the wall — rebellion was out of the question, and I couldn't even move properly.

"That's why I summoned you! The Status Window told me there are other summoned people besides us. Though apparently not a single one of them has made it back."

"Mm! Mmph!"

"So here's what I thought: if we remodel the body enough, maybe we can make it back home from here. But the question is what to remodel and how, and experimenting on my own body alone has its limits, so..."

The man's eyes glinted, cold.

"I'll use you as a test subject. Don't worry! If the experiment succeeds, you get to go home too! So let's do our best, hm?"

"Hah!"

My eyes snapped open.

Unlike before, there was nothing here — not a single light, just a pitch-dark room. The room they always threw me into when an experiment ended.

"Ah... that was a dream."

Of all the dreams I could have had, it had to be that one — the moment I first fell into this place. It left my mood filthy.

If the strange man's words were true... then that had already been two years ago.

"Urgh... ugh."

Thick, coarse bristles clung to the skin around my mouth.

Undoubtedly the strange man's scheme.

It came back to me. Because of [Estrus], my head had gone blank, and I had wrapped my own lips around that detestable man's cock, debasing myself, slurping and swallowing his cum.

"Tch."

When I pressed down hard on my lower belly, thin, watery semen gushed out from between my legs with a wet splattering sound.

That sensation ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of my insides emptying out — the thought of the semen being expelled — left a strange, lingering feeling of loss somewhere deep in my chest.

The [Estrus] and [Lewd Body] the strange man had carved into me made me think of semen as a delicacy, made me crave it like a drug addict chasing a fix.

And this was the result.

[Interspecies Breeding (Permanent)]

No matter how many times I cast Recovery now, I could never erase it.

In fact, from the moment I'd confirmed it, I'd been spamming Recovery nonstop — but all that did was drain my mana down to 9%. The Status Window didn't change one bit.

Come to think of it, I only just now noticed — back when [Interspecies Breeding] was added, my points had been 7, but somehow they'd dropped to 3.

...Don't tell me that bastard slapped a (Permanent) on it and burned through points I didn't even know how to use yet?

So the next time something else gets a (Permanent) slapped on it... my points hit absolute zero?

And I still hadn't even figured out how they were supposed to increase in the first place?

"Rot in hell..."

"Ooh, someone's full of energy this morning?"

"Hii—?!"

The strange man was standing right in front of me.

No idea when he'd come in. No — actually, he always did this. Crept up silently behind me, then startled me out of nowhere.

And every single time, the same thing followed.

"Now, it's experiment time. You can stand up on your own, can't you?"

"..."

"Good girl. You finally understand on the first try."

Of course I did. The moment I so much as twitched against him, a fist came flying.

Being hit in the face was the tolerable option. On the days he punched me in the stomach, for some reason the pain refused to fade no matter how much I cast Recovery, and I had to endure the whole day's experiment feeling like I was about to vomit at any second.

Even so, I'd tried to escape. More than once.

Forget finding a way out — the man's single careless gesture was always enough to catch me, pathetically and effortlessly.

And then that day, I'd be beaten until I lost consciousness.

No matter how loudly the voice in my head screamed that I had to resist him, that even if nothing else worked I should at least throw a punch, the terror beaten into my body overrode everything — and my flesh moved on its own, no matter what my will demanded.

The cell I lived in and the laboratory were barely a few steps apart.

I followed the strange man into the laboratory.

-Grrrrrlll...

"...?!"

A low, bestial growl that crawled straight up my spine echoed through the room.

The cell wasn't the only thing inside the laboratory.

There — for God only knew what reason — an enormous gray-skinned monster stood chained at the neck, snarling.

"Oh? Ah, right — you've never been out here before, so you wouldn't have seen one. That's a monster called a Grazely. If it sounds suspiciously similar to 'grizzly,' you'd be right. Just look at it — it's literally a bear."

"Uh... uh...?"

I'd never actually seen a bear up close, so I couldn't say for certain — but that thing was far too big.

Then the strange man's hands touched my chest and my pussy.

"Nnh...?!"

"The experiment's about to start, so let's get you warmed up down there first."

"S-stop...!"

The stage jumped two levels at once — are you kidding me?!

"Perfect timing, actually. A Grazely crossed my path while I was coming through the forest."

Whether I wanted to hear it or not, the strange man kept pinching my nipple and my clit with his fingers, pushing me, inch by inch, toward that enormous bear-like thing — a Grazely, was it? A monster?

I tried to brace my legs, but the hellish teamwork of [Estrus] and [Lewd Body] melted the strength right out of them, and I was shoved forward, helpless.

"It's Grazely mating season, as it happens... and I injected you with [Interspecies Breeding] yesterday, remember? You can probably guess what today's experiment is."

"N-no!"

"The goal of this experiment isn't simply to see whether you can conceive a monster's offspring."

"I said no!! Nnh...!"

Recovery...!

If I just cast Recovery—

Come on, now what?!

This was the first time my mana had ever dropped below 5%. And that message was the first I'd ever seen it.

"Hah... hah?!"

The price of my drained mana wasn't freedom — it was my reduced resistance shoving the estrus stage even higher.

"One of my hypotheses about otherworld summoning is that the reason a summoning works in the first place is that the summoned person is 'an otherworldly being existing in the otherworld.' In other words, to spell it out — you and I both are, by this world's standards, 'otherworldly beings existing in the otherworld.'"

"Let... go! Let go of me!"

"And yet here we are, physically present in this world. So what does that make us? 'Otherworld beings existing in this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠world.' Are you following what I've said so far?"

"What are you even talking about...!"

"So my hypothesis is this: the moment we stopped being 'otherworldly beings existing in the otherworld,' we lost the ability to cross dimensions."

I couldn't understand a word of it, and I had no clue what he was even saying.

God, he was an abysmal explainer.

And on top of that, the estrus stage had climbed again.

"Nnh... ngh...!"

It was getting hard to hold on to my sanity.

I needed a cock.

"Which means the first thing we have to do is become beings that genuinely belong to this world. That's what the body modification is for. And the clearest way to confirm it, of course, is to see whether reproduction is possible. In your case, I went a step further and made you compatible not just with the people here, but with entirely different species as well."

I couldn't hear a word he was saying anymore.

Whatever it was, it was surely more of his usual pointless drivel — he always ran his mouth like this. Not worth listening to.

What I needed right now was a cock.

Nothing but a cock to pierce my pussy and flood my womb to the brim with cum.

And from somewhere close by, the thick, musky scent of a fully erect cock drifted over me.