Jasmine's No-Panties Ass GIF
"Unnie, there's something I've been really curious about."
"What is it?"
"...Do you really go around without wearing panties?"
"Excuse me?"
First thing in the morning, Fruity took one look at me and started spouting complete nonsense.
What the hell is this kid even saying right now.
I glanced around, half-wondering what was going on, and spotted Citrus snickering away in the corner.
Of course it was you.
"Where on earth did you hear a ridiculous rumor like that? I wear them properly, thank you."
...Though the bra is the stick-on kind, and it doesn't even stay put that well, so I haven't worn one since the first day.
Panties, though — those I put on every single day without fail.
Do I really look like some kind of exhibitionist?
...Okay, I do kind of look like an exhibitionist.
Thinking about it again, the outfit was genuinely embarrassing. If Jasmine hadn't burned the maid uniform before I possessed her, I would have been walking around in a normal maid outfit.
...Not that the maid uniform was exactly normal either.
"B-but this photo. Your clothes just happened to slip down, and your butt was completely..."
"Where did you get this photo?"
"Hiek?!"
Obviously Citrus. Seriously, this little citrus-scented brat — maybe if I stripped her and took photos, she'd finally stop with the pranks?
Of course, she clearly hadn't considered the possibility that Fruity would show the photo to the actual person in it — namely, me.
Either way, the moment she took it, she was already out.
"Citrus, I'll see you later. We're going to have a nice, long talk."
"Okay..."
"If you're that curious, look for yourself. If you look carefully at the inside, you can see the straps, right?"
"Huh?"
The clothes in that photo slipped down at the drop of a hat. Having my panties peek out every little while was its own kind of problem, so I wore underwear that wouldn't show.
...A T-back, specifically, so the panty lines wouldn't show on my butt.
"I-I'm so sorry. What kind of stupid thoughts was I even having..."
"Even if someone else really wasn't wearing panties, asking about it like that is still rude."
"Yeees..."
Though anyone who actually went around like that would be an exhibitionist.
Maybe some people figured it didn't matter since there were no men around anyway.
...No, wait — girls date each other all the time here, so showing off to other girls is probably just as taboo.
"Master, is this going to take long?"
"No. Just talking about something."
"That's unexpected. You barely talk to anyone but me."
Raising Powder's affection wasn't some separate side project for nothing. Without me, this guy was cold enough to pass for a block of wood.
Is the protagonist who's supposed to charm countless connections into becoming his fighting force really going to be okay like this?
"Shall we go?"
Honestly, what we were heading out to do was something I could have handled alone. But after nearly dying in the last Deadly Battle, a lot of things had been on my mind.
As much as possible, it seemed better to share whatever I could share.
"Welcome!"
Naturally, it was the convenience store. The random items we needed to buy today — that guy had already stocked all of them.
The reason we'd stopped by anyway was to spend the coins we'd earned this time.
"There's a purchase limit."
"It says they refill once a month."
Since Deadly Battles happened once a month, you could think of them as refilling every time a Deadly Battle rolled around.
Technically, the first thing you should buy from Deadly Battle rewards was skill materials — but early on, the story was a little different.
There was one character here with pretty solid performance.
None other than Minty, the terrifying mint-chocolate obsessive.
She started as a low-born 1-Star, so if you rolled the gacha early on, you'd just pick her up for free. But ultimately you had to buy her star upgrades here, and the guides all said to buy her up through 5-Star without fail.
"Squeeze-tube mint chocolate essence...? Do you like this kind of thing?"
"No."
"Ah. Affection Gifts, then."
He's getting sharper.
As if anything sold here was going to be ordinary merchandise.
Anyway, those raised affection by five each, and this time we could buy up to five of them.
"They're insanely expensive."
"We still have to buy them all."
That was how she'd hit 5-Star in four months.
There were other characters added here, sure, but none of them were as good as Minty. She was free, but purely in terms of performance, Minty was basically a human right.
"With what's left, Cotton Candy... yes, focusing on those should be fine."
And we'd be meeting her soon enough anyway because of the first event. She was the leader of the Dessert Research Club — the guild that showed up right after the Queen's Royal Guard.
...I really don't want to do that event.
Looking at the event itself, it was rich and fun — a genuinely good event. But being stuck inside the game made me resent it so much. Knowing I was about to witness every bizarre food abomination imaginable was already giving me a headache.
"By the way, what were you talking about earlier?"
"Just something I wanted. I asked her to get it for me."
"...Is that so?"
Well, how about that.
Still, having something he wanted was a good sign. People needed hobbies and interests.
...I don't have time for any of that, though.
Reality had no skip button, so we had to farm dungeons ourselves. That said, being able to split people up and farm multiple places at once was nice. It was a bit of a grind, but long-term it was a pretty solid setup.
Originally I'd planned to acquire the bare minimum of characters and dump all resources into them. Lately, though, I'd changed my thinking — we needed to acquire every character we could.
Fortunately, this game added Affection Gift farming alongside most characters unless they were limited, so practically speaking you could obtain most of them through Affection Gifts. Drop rates and daily attempt limits got in the way, of course — but at least we had no attempt limits, so we could just keep running until we broke through the drop rate.
Raise those characters just enough, send them out farming too, and the farming speed multiplied.
...It does feel a bit like working them to the bone. But what choice do we have? If we lose because we're short on resources, this whole place goes down with us.
If they didn't like it, they could go be Minor Units. Being a Major Unit came with the duty to protect Perfumery — that was just how it worked.
Saying it like that almost makes us sound like nobility.
"Do you always buy everything like this?"
"No. I told you before that one hundred affection makes a 4-Star, right?"
"Yeah."
"Getting to one hundred affection takes twenty gifts total, so you only need to buy twenty."
"Hmm, I see."
"That's when the performance is good, of course. If they're mediocre, buying just four and running them as 2-Stars is better."
Even if you just wanted to send them out to work, they needed decent stats — and 2-Star was when the stats climbed most satisfyingly. Level them up to around 2-Star and they'd make perfectly serviceable farming characters.
"Okay, got it."
"Shall we head to the lake for a change?"
"The lake?"
"Yes. I find it calming there."
Last time I'd made him answer only what I asked mid-combat, which had been inconvenient. Now I needed to teach him to brief combat information on his own. And once he started making his own judgments to some degree, he could split the field of view with me and issue commands too.
"Right now, the ones out in combat are... Powder's there."
Powder could tank and deal damage, so she'd be running the highest-difficulty spots. A bit of difficulty would make explaining things easier.
I looked at the system screen he was viewing alongside him and felt a strange wave of nostalgia.
It's identical to the game screen.
The familiar UI, the familiar camera angle. When I'd glanced at it before, I'd thought it was just similar — but this was practically a carbon copy.
I walked him through the systems he already knew one by one, and he learned by doing them himself.
"Yes, Master! Moving as ordered."
The peculiar part was that skill and movement commands simply became audible speech. The body moving on its own was funny in its own right, but — well. That was apparently why even high-star units still made mistakes.
The ones fighting out there were still people. There was no way they could perfectly execute complex commands heard through their ears. So sometimes they'd use something different from the order given and waste mana in the process.
...So that stupid AI was actually accurate lore.
"Okay, I understand."
"And skill ranges show up like this, right? If there are multiple range circles, that means multiple attacks."
"Yeah."
"But if those circles overlap, that overlapping zone is where you take every single one of those attacks. So even against a small enemy, you can position them to eat multiple hits that way."
Looking at it on a screen was definitely more comfortable than eyeballing it on the battlefield. I'd used this interface for nearly two years — if I weren't familiar with it, that would just make me an idiot.
Can't I get one of these for myself too, not just the protagonist?
"I think that's enough. We only talked for a bit, but quite a lot of time has passed... Shall we call it here for today?"
"Yeah."
"...It's still strange. Someone this blunt..."
"What is?"
"Last time, when I almost died, you were completely terrified."
"Of course I was. If Jasmine had died, I probably would have died right along with her."
"...Don't say things like that so casually. Even if I die, you have to survive."
"No."
"Even if I ask you to?"
"Yeah."
Normally he'd go along with whatever I said, but when it came to me dying, he absolutely refused to accept it. Every time I asked why he was so fixated on me, he just said something weird that I couldn't make sense of.
What a difficult guy to deal with.
"Even if I say it's my wish?"
"Yeah."
"Then I guess I have no choice but to stay alive?"
"You have to."
...Is that such a bad thing?
Thinking about it, why had I been going on about sacrificing myself for these idiots? In the end, me surviving was what mattered — and I could use that a little if I needed to.
"So even if Master dies, if I can save myself, I should?"
"Obviously."
"...That doesn't make sense. If Master is gone, then the Master who likes me is gone. And you'd still want me saved?"
"I'm basically a fake anyway."
"That again."
I don't get it. I was an idiot for trying to understand this guy.
The night had gotten dark. Time to go home and sleep.
"I'll wash your hair for you."
"I can do it myself, you know."
"You'll go bald."
"......."
Baldness is non-negotiable.
Defeated by his baldness threat, I surrendered the freedom of my hair yet again that night.