Chapter 177: Three Men Make a Tiger 2
Chapter 177: Three Men Make a Tiger 2
Rumors spread, but my daily routine didn't change much.
No lunatic with more guts than brains ever actually walked up to me and asked, with the utmost courtesy,
"Constellation, might I be permitted to suck your dick just once?"
Just because some scandalous rumor or gossip piece about a celebrity gets published doesn't mean some bastard sprints up to them and demands a quickie to their face.
And I wasn't a celebrity—I was a Constellation. Who'd be insane enough to try that?
'Try that around here and you'd get stabbed.'
Lee Ha-rin would probably skewer them before anyone else could even react.
That thought drifted through my mind as I laid my hand on the glimmering stone.
A yank at the nape of my neck, then a new world unfurled before me.
Walking through a modern city and seeing androids strolling around gave me the strangest sensation.
I'd seen two-legged werewolves and elf girls, wizards and space battleships even,
yet somehow a tin-can robot walking around was what struck me as the most novel.
Maybe it was because of the robots in that old FPS game from before my world was destroyed—the ones that looked exactly like these guys.
"Constellation, you've arrived."
A robot roaming the hallway politely guided me to the door. When it opened,
I saw Kim Ha-eun planted in an office chair, hammering away at a screen.
Peering over her shoulder, the display was cluttered with graphs I couldn't make heads or tails of.
"What are you working on?"
"City infrastructure maintenance. The magic power supply is still low, so we're bringing things online in sequence. I'm running repairs in a set order, sort of like a game."
"Looks way too complicated and obtuse to call it a game."
"Oh, it's not like that. Here—would you like to sit?"
The moment she heard me say that, she rose from her chair.
Seeing her tapping away, I didn't stand on ceremony and took the seat.
For a second I wondered if I was interrupting her work,
but then it hit me: she'd been holed up in here for over fourteen hours a day.
She'd declared she'd overwork herself as city manager as an act of penance,
but watching her now, she appeared to be genuinely enjoying herself.
The look on her face as she launched into an explanation
reminded me of Lee Ha-rin when she starts talking about Constellations.
She'd pushed herself to the brink of self-harm insisting she had to kill monsters,
and now that she'd settled down, she'd thrown herself headlong into a hobby.
'Well, better she gets absorbed in a wholesome hobby.'
It sure beat the drug-fueled orgies the Northern Continent Incarnations got up to.
"See this area here? The display changes a bit, right? The assist programs only kick in when you're sitting in this chair."
"Huh. They've got some peculiar tech."
The moment I sat, a layer of holographic overlay shimmered onto the screen.
Like a privacy filter that blocks side views—you had to be in the chair to see it.
Green and red text bloomed over the incomprehensible graphs.
[Mana Shortage] [Robot Mobilization] [Facility Activation]—a dizzying array.
One look at the buttons floating above the city blueprint, and only one thing came to mind.
'Isn't this just a tycoon game?'
It was a dead ringer for a city-management simulation.
The mana that naturally coalesced around me as a focal point was displayed as a numerical value in the upper right.
Activated buildings glowed with a green border, inactive ones with red.
And on top of that, operational walking robots, AI drones—all neatly organized.
I could see how a person could get completely sucked into this.
It wasn't just stuff moving on a screen.
If you had a sim game where bipedal robots and AI drones flew around right before your eyes, building a city in real-time—who wouldn't love that?
But that wasn't why I'd come here today.
"What's this building?"
"Which building do you mean?"
Since I'd taken the chair, she could no longer see the screen.
Kim Ha-eun, edged out of her seat, craned her neck over from the side.
Still in that position, I reached out without hesitation, grabbed her arm and shoulder, and tugged her toward me.
Holed up in here every day playing city tycoon—no wonder her mana was low.
The only way she could feed on mana was through me, and she hadn't come to see me.
For a Dream Demon, that meant she was inevitably wasting away, like someone who'd been starving for days.
"Ah, Constellation...!"
Flump. A solid, heavy mass of flesh dropped onto my thighs.
Her waist kept getting slimmer while her chest and hips appeared to be expanding.
The whole setup—a Dream Demon who manipulated Nightmares—felt increasingly absurd.
Honestly, I'm pretty sure I'm actually a Sex Dream Demon,
and the whole Nightmare thing is just a skill for manufacturing sex dolls. That's the only explanation.
Instead of sharper eyes or an awakening talent for magic,
the mana I produced made breasts swell, skin glow, and waists cinch in.
In what universe is that a byproduct of a nightmare-manipulating Authority?
"Even if you're having fun, don't you think you've overdone it? Your mana's practically bottomed out."
Kim Ha-eun slumped over my lap like a scolded child.
No hint of resistance. She just surrendered her body to the position.
A light pat to the elegant arch of her back,
and even from that slight impact, the plush flesh of her ass wobbled, soft and rippling.
Come to think of it, had she really gone days without seeing me?
All that time I'd been scrambling to capture the Heart of the Exiled Serpent—
whenever I dropped into the city I'd share some mana, sure,
but I'd never actually met her outside, gone to a restaurant together or anything.
A nagging suspicion made me open my mouth.
"You haven't just been holed up in here because I've been busy, have you? Not going outside at all?"
"Of course not. I still went to the dining hall for dinner in the evenings."
Her voice carried a peculiar note of conviction.
Mixed with an ambiguous emotion in her tone,
I lobbed a different question back at her.
"...How many times?"
"Pardon?"
"While I was out running around, how many times did you actually go to the dining hall?"
Obviously, using the dining hall leaves a record.
The Academy wasn't some soup kitchen handing out free meals to anyone.
You had to carry your ID, authenticate, and then eat.
And she didn't have the guile to lie to me anyway.
"Thr—"
"Three times?"
"Twice. I went twice."
Think about the timeline. I'd captured an Incarnation in a Northern Continent town,
invited mages and alchemists for research,
and teamed up with Ellis to take down the Heart of the Exiled Serpent.
That whole stretch took at least three weeks—long enough for summer to fade and autumn to creep in—
"Twice?"
"I mean, after becoming a Dream Demon, I stopped really needing to eat, so... I kept losing track of meal times."
Her excuse had some merit.
A Dream Demon's body didn't need food. It needed mana.
If she wasn't hungry, and she was totally absorbed in city tycoon, never glancing at the clock,
she wouldn't register little things like oh, it's getting late, or hmm, I'm feeling hungry.
The whole nagging her to eat dinner every night thing—
I'd only said that because I was worried she might actually let her real body waste away.
But that wasn't the important part here.
The important part was that she was currently draped over my lap.
Which meant I now had a perfectly legitimate excuse to smack that ass.
This huge, Western-porn-worthy dumptruck of an ass.
"Um, Constellation? Even if it's not the dining hall, the robots here can prepare meals for me."
Right on cue, a tactless robot trundled in carrying a tray with a sandwich on it.
I gave a lazy wave of my hand. It got the message and backpedaled straight out the door.
For a cheap tin-can robot, it was fucking sharp.
Maybe it caught on from the position we were in.
Gulp. I heard her swallow hard.
And honestly? It *was* because of this position.
Just like a man's eyes are naturally drawn to the sway of a large chest,
having her flopped over my thighs planted a raw urge in me to give that ass a good spanking.
Really doesn't let me go around proudly calling myself a Dream Demon of Nightmares.
"Well, you see—kyak!"
Smack. One hit, timed to the moment she opened her mouth.
I wasn't trying to hurt her, so I swung with a limp wrist.
Her ass quaked like nothing compared to when I'd just been patting her back.
Her breasts squished against my thighs, molding this way and that,
and her backside juddered like a hunk of jelly dropped on the floor.
"Haven't been eating, but the weight's sticking."
"I *did* eat!"
Smack. Smack.
I drummed my fingers against the plush swell of her ass like I was tapping a beat on my knee.
Even through pants and underwear, the flesh clung to my fingertips in a weirdly pleasant way.
It was a whole different dimension of sensation from tapping my own thigh.
Her voice had cracked for a moment—she'd thought I was scolding her.
Once she realized I was only smacking her at a level that didn't hurt,
the apology in her expression drained away, replaced by bewilderment.
Like she couldn't fathom why a man would be spanking a woman's ass.
'Well, to be fair, Lee Ha-rin and Han Ye-ji let their hands wander to my ass often enough.'
In this world, a man spanking a woman's ass
got read as either corporal punishment or a sadistic streak.
No guy here probably ever stopped to appreciate the way the flesh rippled.
A twinge of regret over that, and I went ahead and yanked her pants down.
Han Ye-ji, Lee Ha-rin, Kim Ha-eun—none of them ever wore uncomfortable pants around me.
Which made sense. When they were with me, it was more about relaxing comfortably than dressing up.
Thanks to Incarnations who preferred elastic-waist pants over belts,
I could shimmy them off with one hand in a single smooth motion.
Pale white ass cheeks, now glowing a warm pink in the shape of my handprints.
I hadn't hit hard enough to hurt, but I'd still smacked her a good fifteen or so times.
Of course that porcelain-pale skin was going to flush hot.
"Th-this is really embarrassing, Constellation..."
Her voice, thick with mortification, wafted into my ear.
She'd always been so obedient—yes, yes, understood—
seemed the surest way to discipline was just to shame her.
Then again, here she was, past twenty, getting her ass spanked by a man she'd already slept with
like she was some kindergartner.
Maybe if there'd been a sexual edge to it, she could've endured it better.
But I'd just been smacking away, purely for the sake of gawking at her bottom.
Figured I might as well give it one last smack before I let her go.
A shriek burst out—"Hyaat!"
Right. The second the pants came down, she'd gotten her hopes up for something lewd.