Chapter 178: Three Men Make a Tiger 3
Chapter 178: Three Men Make a Tiger 3
With the same heavy heart as a mother telling her kid to quit gaming and come eat—
Wait, in this world, would that be the father?
Anyway, I packed that exact sentiment into a firm smack across a plump rear end.
What followed was a natural act of mana replenishment. No delicate way to put it: sex.
Sex with beautiful women as a daily routine. A decadent everyday life, honestly.
Just a few years ago, I was creeping breathlessly through pitch-black ruins,
telling good canned food from spoiled by touch alone.
"Um, Constellation? An invitation has arrived."
Now my routine is sex with beauties and listening to rumors about my miraculous cock-headed elixir.
Fucking bastards, seriously.
"None of the Constellations I actually know, right?"
"No. The Incinerating Tyrant and The Sword That Severs the Yoke haven't contacted us. There is one letter from Loyal Fang, though—"
"Gimme."
Lee Ha-rin pulled a pure-white pigeon from her bosom.
Before I could wonder why it was coming out of there,
the pigeon perched on my forearm and stretched one of its legs way out.
I untied the letter fastened to its leg with a thin thread.
The letter opened easily, with no cipher or lock.
[Since you're known as an elixir-shitter now and people are annoying you, if you aren't into furries, keep your lower half under control and don't make a nuisance of yourself.]
The sheer aggression of those words left me blank for a moment.
"This fucking asshole?"
"Wh-what?"
"Not you, not you."
It was blunt to the point of rudeness, but the information wasn't useless.
It meant that alongside the various human, elf, dwarf, and beastkin Constellations,
Constellations with fully bestial forms were also showing interest in me.
They probably weren't species-crossing perverts, so more than sex itself,
they were interested in the byproducts derived from it.
...Surely no animal was seriously angling for me.
Beastkin women with animal ears fell within the realm of possibility,
but the moment skin was replaced by fur, it crossed into impossible territory.
"Still, I'd better pay him back."
On the back of the letter I wrote You son of a bitch,
then summoned a whole host of minuscule beings from Nightmare.
About twenty fleas or so.
"Off you go, back to your master."
A legion of fleas settled primly onto the re-folded letter.
The pure-white pigeon stuck out its leg without a trace of suspicion.
I'd probably drop by tonight for a drink and sort things out.
In any case, in barely a single day, the rumor had spread and spread until it was ludicrously out of hand.
I'd gone into the Dream City, spent time with Kim Ha-eun,
gotten a good rest, and woken in the morning to find this mess.
Even setting aside Loyal Fang's mischief-filled letter,
dozens more were already piled up in a heap on the table.
"Didn't I turn down all the pointless invitations last time?"
"Yes, these are the new ones that arrived starting yesterday."
"Ah, fuck. That many, huh."
Reading them out of curiosity, most were the same.
They said they had a very pretty and well-mannered Incarnation who was stuck hitting a wall.
Whether they couched it in wuxia-flavored phrasing or aristocratic language,
they were all asking if I could help break through that wall.
Well, I suppose even they'd be tempted.
Even when you have talent, ten-plus years of training is no short time.
No—Song Ye-na, evaluated as the pinnacle of swordsmanship talent, took over a decade.
Swordsmen less capable than her would need at least twenty years.
A single night could net you twenty years of gain?
Imagine telling a salaryman that if he sleeps with a beauty,
he'll get twenty years' worth of salary and a higher position.
What salaryman could turn that down?
And that's just company rank and money, an immense temptation already—
how much more staggering would it be if it meant bringing forward the achievement of enlightenment?
From a Constellation's perspective, if your Incarnation grows twenty years' worth for free, how many points is that worth?
So naturally, they send the invitation first and think later.
Because outright saying "let's have sex" to a man counts as sexual harassment,
they dress it up as a consultation for an Incarnation whose growth has stalled.
"So, what shall we do, Constellation?"
"Unless it's something urgent or important, just stash all the generic invites in some corner."
"Understood."
I had no reason to accept any of them.
If I were a bit more hot-blooded, I might've shouted "harem sex!"
and scrutinized the Incarnations' looks while indulging in every race under the sun.
But I was already way too satisfied with my current life for that.
With the Elf Constellation, that makes five counting my four Incarnations—isn't that already a harem?
'When the nukes fall, there's no honor or anything.'
True to the name 'Lethargic,' I'd developed a craving for stability and peace,
while desires like a hunger for strength or glory never so much as surfaced.
I had my own perfect, secure hiding place in the dreams.
"So, aside from the invitations, nothing else in particular?"
"No. Just the Academy's matter of additional support for the patient ward, and related to that, envoys from each continental government have arrived, but it's nothing you need to concern yourself with, Constellation."
"Good. I like that."
With all four continents jointly resisting an otherworldly invasion,
the Academy had a plan to expand its building into a full patient ward,
and because my storage items had drawn too many people,
they even had a plan to build a formal unarmed-combat arena and charge a usage fee.
Situations that benefited the Academy and left me some crumbs,
but didn't require me to exert myself or do anything in particular.
I had nothing to do, yet my surroundings kept advancing.
An ambitious person might hate it for offering no chance to shine,
but for someone like me who settles into the status quo, it was the best possible state.
Just like this, the uneventful days would drift on—
or so I'd thought, and it felt like it hadn't even been a full day since.
※
The Constellation shall bestow grace upon the tournament's winner!
"What's the meaning of this?"
"Ah, it seems word got around about what you said yesterday, Constellation."
After I'd passed a perfectly ordinary day, the baseless rumor had evolved into something uncontrollable.
No, calling it baseless was a bit ambiguous.
The rumor originated from my own mouth, and it had hardly been distorted at all.
While I was walking around the Academy with Han Ye-ji after finishing a meal with Lee Ha-rin,
we'd chatted idly, and something came up.
'Constellation, because of Song Ye-na, I've been getting a lot of questions about Incarnation contracts—'
'Oh yeah? Maybe I should put one up as a prize for a match or something.'
Literally a throwaway remark in passing.
Neither Han Ye-ji nor I had meant it seriously. We'd just glossed over it, like, "Yeah, something like that."
Looks like I'd underestimated the hearing of the superhumans at the Academy.
Even the nearest people were cadets running hard on the training field a few hundred meters away.
A cadet circling the field hundreds of meters off.
Or Incarnations inside buildings tens of meters away.
Common sense said there was no way they could have heard
that tiny bit of gossip whispered right into her ear while we walked arm in arm.
'Damn superhumans.'
Apparently a few hundred meters' distance and thick stone walls
hadn't been enough to bury my whisper.
"So, what's the state of things?"
"The Academy has proposed cooperation regarding the tournament. Various Incarnations, including Miss Ellis and the water priests of the Western Continent, have volunteered for the executive committee."
"And?"
"Yes, if you simply grant permission, the tournament seems ready to proceed immediately."
Fucking bastards. Disgustingly competent.
While I was just screwing my Incarnations in the dream world,
in barely half a day—from evening to morning, during the night—
they'd planned a continent-level tournament, finished construction prep, and even selected an operating committee.
I'd felt it before, but the Academy's competence was freakish.
Something that would've taken half a year if you'd handed it to a Korean civil servant
somehow got knocked out in half a day in this world.
The only thing I had to do was decide whether or not to give the okay.
"So, what do you think?"
Naturally, there was no downside for me.
If a man won, I could just plant some mana in his unconscious and be done with it.
If a beauty won, I only had to spend one night with her in a lucid dream.
I wasn't a man of this world, so there was no need to reject a woman in the name of chastity.
All sorts of unique Incarnations would gather and hold a grand competition—seemed like it'd be fun to watch.
My thoughts began tilting firmly in one direction.
Watching espers through a video feed just felt like movie CGI.
Traveling all over the continents just to spectate Incarnations, though, was way too much of a hassle.
I didn't have the capability or justification to summon Incarnations from four continents for no reason.
But if I held a tournament?
Wouldn't I be able to sit comfortably at the Academy and take in everything,
from shamans to espers, live?
"I think, if you wish it, Constellation, you should hold the tournament."
As those thoughts were running through my head, Lee Ha-rin spoke up, tamping down her jealousy.
Hmm, was she imagining a woman winning and receiving a 'reward' from me?
"I'm truly sorry to say this, but... I believe it's also a chance to rehabilitate your image on the Eastern Continent, Constellation."
"?"
"Ah, because of the Dream Demon's small-city raid a while back and, this time, the Heart of the Exiled Serpent incident, some irreverent rumors have been going around."
Averting her eyes strangely, Lee Ha-rin spoke.
Guild-affiliated Incarnations had witnessed me stabbing terrorists in the side with a knife on the Eastern Continent.
And there was my violent display when I'd captured the Heart of the Exiled Serpent.
Since I hadn't kept it secret, word had spread by whispers across the Eastern Continent.
The Western and Southern Continents only knew me as the Healing Constellation,
and the Northern Continent thought of me as a benevolent figure who'd saved an entire city,
but on the Eastern Continent, the image going around was: cross me and you get a knife in the ribs first.
'That's fucking spot-on, though.'
No matter how I thought about it, the Eastern Continent, which had been my base of operations,
Appeared to have the most accurate read on me.
But Lee Ha-rin, her perception hopelessly distorted by devotion, apparently found that objectionable.
She was fervently insisting this was a chance to widely publicize the Constellation's benevolence.