Meeting the Tentacle at the End of the World
Meeting the Tentacle at the End of the World
Reincarnated into another world, I became a hero and saved the world.
At first, it felt as if I had become the main character of the world.
Even though I had become a woman's body, my beautiful appearance, blessed mana, and physical abilities gave me the confidence that I could do anything.
However, as the war with the Demon King dragged on, my delusions gradually shattered.
My male comrades who shared the journey lusted after my body, and the citizens blamed me for the damage from the battles.
The wounds I sustained in combat were agonizing, and even in my sleep, I saw the scenes of the battlefield.
Even in such a grueling reality, I wanted to capture the Demon King and return home.
Because when I go home, my family is there, and my precious friend Mari would be waiting for me too.
And yet....
"Cough, why...?"
During the return journey after capturing the Demon King, my comrades suddenly drew their swords.
I prepared for an enemy ambush at the sight, but for some reason, the attack came from the direction of my allies.
An arrow shot by Iris, the party's archer, pierced my abdomen, and Selena, the mage, was preparing magic aimed at me.
As I collapsed, bleeding, Karl, who had taken the vanguard role, approached me.
"You still haven't grasped the situation? Hero-nim?"
Karl approached and kicked my sword away as he spoke.
Now that the Demon King is gone, the hero is the most powerful, something about political dynamics.
What Karl was talking about was very simple.
Eliminating the threat once its purpose was served.
The peerage and political influence I would gain after capturing the Demon King, and an assassination request from the nobles to check my military force.
"We were... comrades, weren't we...?"
I had expected there would be political pressure.
However, I couldn't believe that I would be betrayed by my comrades right after capturing the Demon King.
No, I didn't want to believe it.
"Kyahaha! Don't tell me you actually thought a country bumpkin like you could become a noble? Lily?"
Selena burst into laughter as if mocking my expectations.
"Still, since we have some affection.... I'll kill you gently. Lightly... just enough to burn to death?"
Selena's staff, having already finished its incantation, was aimed at me.
Karl took the holy sword he had stolen from me and walked away.
I endured the pain of my punctured abdomen and rolled across the floor to dodge the fire magic.
"Kyaaak!"
My body, thrown as if by the force of the explosion, barely stopped rolling in a corner of the labyrinth.
'Just... when everything was over... I just wanted to go home and live peacefully... why...?'
The pain of my burned left arm and leg surged over me.
I simply felt wronged by reality, and resentful.
Was it because I lacked strength? Had I committed sins in my past life?
I tried to find reasons in the painful reality, but I just couldn't understand, and as tears began to flow.
- Kugugung
"Ugh, the labyrinth's Alteration? Of all times! Iris! Aim for the heart!"
The 'Alteration' where the labyrinth's structure changes at regular intervals.
The maze paths shift, monsters awaken, and the corpses of monsters are replaced by new monsters.
And no one knows what happens if you fall into a gap in the labyrinth during this Alteration.
I could see Iris's face aiming at me.
'You don't even know how to pitch a camp tent? An idiot like you is the hero?'
'Here, this is an edible plant, and this one is medicinal.'
'Your bow-holding posture is wrong. Here, arm straight, gaze forward. I'll teach you.'
'The Elf Forest is... bigger and more beautiful than this. I'll show you when the war is over, Lily.'
You, who were prickly and had a bad personality at first, but became close with me as we traveled.
I thought you were a precious comrade, so why.
- Kung... Urureung
The moment the arrow was loosed from your hand, the ground collapsed with a sound, and my consciousness went dark.
- Tok... Tok...
"This place is...?"
When I opened my eyes, I was inside the labyrinth with the faint glow of luminescent moss.
'The arrow... did it miss...?'
Anyway, if I fell into the deep levels with an injured body, I would die soon.
Just as I was mocking this meaningless luck.
- Seuseuk
I heard something approaching.
'So I'm going to be eaten and killed by a monster.'
Monsters grow stronger by eating other monsters or humans.
Even reduced to a wreck, I was still a hero. My mana-infused body would be a delectable prey.
The sound gradually grew closer and then stopped beside my prone body.
- Kkureu?
A small, light-purple tentacle creature came into view.
"Do I look tasty? Heu...."
Would being eaten be painful? I hope it's not painful. Being chewed alive sounds like it would hurt.
A mouth-like part of the tentacle approached my abdomen.
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for pain—
"Huh?"
- Kkyuu!
The monster wasn't eating me; it was smearing something on my abdomen.
'Now that I think about it, the wound from the arrow definitely...'
The penetrating wound in my abdomen, which I had forgotten due to the pain of the burns, came back to me.
It was a wound where it wouldn't have been strange if I had already died from excessive bleeding.
When I struggled to lift my head, I saw the wound was covered in a light-purple mucus.
"This... did you do this for me?"
- Kkyuu?
Amorphous monsters like tentacles or slimes sometimes have regenerative properties, but to directly heal a human.
I felt dizzy from this unprecedented experience.
'No, it must just be a trait to maintain the freshness of its prey.'
Spider monsters turn their prey into cocoons and keep them alive for as long as three months, providing fresh food for their young.
This tentacle monster probably has the same trait.
Or maybe...
'No way, it's not a means of reproduction, is it?'
The images of women used as monster breeding beds in the labyrinth flashed through my mind.
A warrior ruined by narcotics and body modification, craving only pleasure.
A mage driven mad by pain, turned into a living corpse with no reaction.
A nun whose mind was broken, tenderly embracing monster spawn.
Whatever the case, I loathed such an end.
No, maybe it doesn't matter anymore.
To me, who no longer has anywhere to return to, nor can return, does tomorrow even matter right now?
I simply waited for the moment this small creature would decide my end.
- Kkyu?
Two weeks had passed.
Well, since I couldn't see the sun inside the labyrinth, it might not be accurate time.
- Kkyuu!
"Ah... I get it! Stop pestering...."
Lost in thought, I put down the hem of the clothes I was wearing beside me at the creature's call.
Being cared for naked by this creature.
An everyday routine that had now become ordinary from our time together.
I wondered how it had come to this.
There had been many things since I first met this small creature.
At first, I was steeped in depression from the despair of betrayal and the pain of my wounds.
Worries like: when will this small monster eat me? It's not going to be used as a breeding bed and violated, is it?
But for some reason, I could feel this small creature following me around like a puppy.
Gradually, I grew accustomed to being cared for— receiving wound treatment, getting drinking water, and so on from this child.
Then... something happened that made me think I had been betrayed by the creature I trusted.
After the creature finished its usual routine, where it licked and cleaned the mucus off my wounds, then applied fresh, clean mucus—
Normally, the creature would squirm around the area or stay still beside me.
But today, it suddenly approached my lower body.
Then it extended its tentacles and began removing my clothes, and I panicked and screamed.
- "Kkyak! What are you doing?!"
Perhaps due to injuries from the fall, my lower body didn't move well, so I couldn't offer proper resistance and fell into shock.
- 'So it really was keeping me alive for reproduction?'
- 'My virginity... to a tentacle monster...?'
- 'But if it's this child... it healed me... and anyway, this underground cave is the only place I have to go... Wait, have I gone crazy?!'
While I was indulging in all sorts of shameful delusions, the child simply... gently cleaned the bodily waste that had soiled my private parts.
Only then did I realize that I had been unable to move for days and had been soiling myself as I lay there.
Perhaps that fact was more embarrassing than the shameless delusions.
Even with my half-paralyzed, dulled senses, I could feel the soft and gentle touch, and my dirty body was cleaned thoroughly.
- "Eut...."
- "Eung.... Heut...."
- "Kkyaat, that spot is sensitive...!"
At first, I held back my voice out of embarrassment, but gradually, sounds escaped me.
When the creature heard my sounds, it was gentler on the places where I seemed to be in pain or sensitive.
And somehow, I felt a sense of relief at that response and entrusted my body to it.
After a round of cleaning my body, the creature was squirming on the floor as usual.
Watching that scene, I pondered what kind of monster this creature could be.
'Light purple... with a faint citrus floral scent. A plant tentacle? But it doesn't have the characteristics of a plant-type monster... What on earth is its identity?'
"Lilac?"
- Kkyu?
When I carelessly voiced the word that came to mind from the creature's color and scent, the creature reacted as if asking what that was.
"It's a flower name. It's a pale purple color like your body, and has a strong fragrance. Eum.... I wonder if you even know what a flower is?"
- Kkyuuu?
"You don't know, right? Since you've only lived in this underground... Outside, there are grasses, trees, and flowers that grow by receiving sunlight. Light of a brightness incomparable to the labyrinth's luminescent moss shines down from the sky."
I drew the shapes of a flower, tree, and sun on the floor with my finger and told the creature.
- Kkyuu?
Seeing that, the creature wiggled its tentacles as if it didn't quite understand.
I stroked the creature and spoke.
"You are... eum... I don't know what to call you."
- Kkyuu? Kkyu!
The creature made sounds while pointing its tentacle alternately at itself and the flower drawing.
"Eum... You want me to call you by this? Laila?"
- Kkyu! Kkyung!
As if I had understood correctly, the creature made a somewhat excited sound and wiggled its tentacles.
"Alright. From now on, you're Laila. Please take care of me."
- Kkyuu! Kkyu?
Laila spun around, pointing at herself and the flower drawing, then soon pointed at me with a tentacle.
"Are you curious about my name?"
- Kkyu! Kkyuu!
Laila nodded her body vigorously as if affirming.
"Eung... My name is Lily. Lily Florence."
As I told her my name, I gently held the tip of Laila's tentacle with my hand and shook it.
"This is a handshake. It's an action people do when they meet and greet each other."
- Kkyuu!
That's how, on the day I was abandoned by the world, in the deepest place in the world, I met you.