Chapter 180: Three Men Make a Tiger 5
Chapter 180: Three Men Make a Tiger 5
Cyber wraiths.
No—wraiths who staked their lives riding the guillotine's edge just to post comments, even against espers who could trace IPs through psychometry.
The moment a scrap of bait hit the water, every flavor of gutter vocabulary exploded.
'Am I supposed to think this is impressive?'
—Gallery bait, a summary
[Prize-related Academy Announcement.jpg]
So what you're saying is this tournament is basically a fight to the death for the Sincere Mating, Beast Copulation, Public Breeding, Intense Sex Voucher officially notarized by the Continent and the Academy?
└ Look at this madwoman going out of her way to pick only the filthiest words lol
└ Isn't this, like, defamation by stating factual truth?
└ This cunt sneaking in "stating factual truth" is next level
—We, the united Seonghwa Gallery, actively support the Academy
[Notice Regarding Filing of Cyber Defamation Complaints.jpg]
I'm not supporting shit you cunts lol
You didn't know one of Dream Demon's Incarnations is a Seonghwa Gallery high-rep fixed-nick,
and you spread your cunts wide flapping your gums and got your heads cracked open? That feels great, hit recommend lol
Starting with me
└ This isn't a bot, I'm so happy I pushed it about 1000 times
└ That is exactly what a bot is you crazy bitch
└ Is this fucking real
└ If you'd noticed how clean the comments were around the handsome Dream Demon you'd have figured it out you moron lol
└ Whoa fuck, I was wondering where all the fixed-nick bastards disappeared to lately
└ Doh-muhng-chya~
A few words snagged at my attention in the middle of that, but those were questions I could tease out of her later for fun.
I lay sprawled on my stomach on the bed with Han Ye-ji, side by side, peeking at each other's smartphones and giggling the time away.
They'd only just started accepting applicants, so Han Ye-ji, slated to be seconded to the tournament operations team, was still in permanent free-time mode.
A man and a woman lying side by side browsing an anonymous internet forum was a little ridiculous, but if the two of us wanted to look at it and laugh, who was going to stop us?
"Whoa, Constellation. Did you see this one?"
Her shoulders touched mine, her dangling feet fidgeting and tickling my calves.
This being the gender-reversed world and Han Ye-ji being close to a clueless late bloomer, it wasn't some secret seduction. She was probably just web-surfing, kicking her legs out of habit.
Time spent leaning against each other with zero sexual intent, just peering at our smartphones and hunting for funny material.
I'd drifted naturally into the Seonghwa Gallery and browsed through an array of posts. Comics I didn't know, variety shows I didn't know, games I didn't know. The second-hand joke derivatives from that material were beyond me.
But the lowbrow sex jokes that swapped cunt for cock—no matter how much the world changed, those were impossible to miss.
"What?"
"I thought it was a joke, but there are a ton of inquiries asking if messengers—I mean animal Incarnations—can participate too. If enlightenment happens inside a dream, then wouldn't any sapient being capable of dreaming be eligible?"
"Hm, they should be, right?"
The internet's cyber wraiths and tabloid reporters had the lewd formula of male Dream Demon + one night = sex driven into their skulls as fixed dogma.
But a tiny minority of animal Incarnations—talking wolves, unicorns, that sort—were thinking differently. If a Dream Demon Constellation who handled dreams granted enlightenment through the medium of dreams, they were asking, couldn't every being capable of dreaming receive that blessing?
'Would it work?'
The Academy staff were handling the tournament prep themselves anyway, so wasn't my job exactly this—spending time with my Incarnation? Might as well settle my curiosity on the way.
"They're smart enough to understand speech, sure, but do they actually dream?"
"Those ones I don't know about. The ones who've become Incarnations probably do, don't you think?"
Han Ye-ji's gaze shifted, just slightly. No longer Lee Ha-rin's pet but now a Retriever famous as an Academy fixture. She said that with it only taking a break two or three times a week, it felt like a roommate.
It seemed to notice we were talking about it, glanced our way, then when the conversation paused it slid the door open with its front paw and padded out to get back to its own business. In my previous life this would've already been a segment on some TV program. I turned my eyes from the sight back to the site.
The gallery had caught fire again over an angle nobody had thought of before.
From the one asking whether an animal Incarnation fighting a human Incarnation counted as animal cruelty, all the way to the joke that if an animal Incarnation won, Constellations would start flocking to the zoo to sign contracts.
—So, by the way, are any of the contestants hot?
[Best-of post compiling the prize list.jpg]
What happens if you win all your matches, get a private audience with the Dream Demon Constellation,
and then just "your pussy's third-rate, fwoosh" and bail?
Do you get contempt from the Constellation and chased out of the dream?
└ It's a reward though
└ Finals prize double event
└ So many goddamn masochist bastards
—Tournament participation mandatory prerequisite
[Women's self-pleasure toy internet shopping mall.jpg]
Toughen up your cunt so you don't get laughed at
Body-enhancement Incarnation special product: hold out for 5+ minutes
└ So you're confessing to a three-minute finish?
└ Three minutes against that product is putting up a good fight
└ How fluttery does your cunt have to be to three-minute-finish against a toy?
└ Bagging a virgin who doesn't know toys are scarier than men
└ Incarnations aren't exactly going to be fucking their cunts with a scrap of plastic
└ Eoh-heo, careful with the angle grinder
└ Eoh-heo's the fucking sound your grandpa makes while getting railed
└ The anger says you're the one who got sued
I let the posts that pulled a quiet snort of laughter out of me scroll past and pushed myself up from the bed.
※
"So you finally showed up to catch the fleas, you fucking piece of shit."
"Sending twenty for a body that size was sending too few."
"You've got a mouth on you, you son of a bitch."
"Are you even allowed to use the word son of a bitch?"
At odds with the rough language, the werewolf cackled as he cracked open a liquor bottle. Behind him, another wolf set down slabs of meat for snacking as meekly as anything. This guy was the only one in my orbit who commanded animal Incarnations.
He poured something like makgeolli into a broad wooden cup, knocked it back, and roughly swiped the sour liquor from the fur under his chin.
"So. Why'd you come?"
"Just got curious. Hey, lend me one of your Incarnations."
Dried meat and harsh liquor. Not the kind of delicious food that stays on your mind, but once you reach for it you keep gnawing at it bit by bit—it had that charm. I swallowed a thick strip of jerky that packed the mouth like a pork rib and went on.
"The fuck do you mean, lend. They're not objects."
"It's for a Dream Demon ability test. I want to see if I can use my magic power to bestow a blessing on an animal Incarnation."
If it worked on women, it ought to work on men, too. Even if a man won, I could just pump magic power into his Origin without any erotic dream. But whether that same logic applied to an animal, I had no idea—which was exactly why I'd come here.
If an animal Incarnation won the tournament and then spent the whole dream gnawing on a rawhide chew instead of collecting the prize, what then? I'd turn into a fraudster Constellation overnight. I'd come on a whim, but it turned out to matter more than I'd expected.
Did sapient animals possess an Origin identical—or at least similar—to a human's?
"Yeah? In that case, want me to get a doe goat ready for you?"
"Why a goat?"
"If you don't know, it's fine."
A brief flash crossed my mind: some corner of the internet, a reaction image with a whimpering Master-please-let's-do-that. What was it again—weren't goats used in bestiality prostitution or something? I'd seen some freak-news piece about a bestiality prostitution ring getting busted somewhere in Europe. So was this bastard cracking a sex joke, asking if I was going to fuck a goat?
"You fucker, way to kill my appetite, seriously."
"It was a joke, so don't throw the cup. The liquor's precious."
While I was wiping my alcohol-soaked hand off on the carpet, the tent flap pushed aside and a huge beast trudged in—a massive bull with black horns thicker than my forearm. No, there was some gold mixed in there—golden bull, then. Its characteristically large, round, bovine eyes gazed at me, wet and bright.
Just as I was registering, ah, this must be the animal Incarnation—a voice sounded inside my head.
"Whoa, shit. Telepathy?"
"Yeah. Of my kids, this one's the sharpest."
<My, you flatter me too much—embarrassing.>
The werewolf burst into gruff laughter, and the bull let out a chuffing, breathy laugh alongside him. I sat there a little dazed at the surreal scene, and the half-empty cup slowly filled with a trickle of liquor. I glanced to the side—my white werewolf was pouring, as natural as anything. Somehow I was the only human here, and yet every single one of them acted perfectly at home. Not that I could talk—a telepathic bull probably beat a werewolf for novelty any day.
<Then what may I help you with?>
"Nothing you need to do. Just stay still a moment."
I gathered my magic power while meeting those huge, bright, shining eyes. The more I thought about it, humans and werewolves seemed similar enough, and werewolves and animal Incarnations seemed similar enough. Anyway, wasn't this something a Beast Constellation could do, too?
With the sensation of sinking into deep water, I slipped into a lucid dream.
"Wow, this is gorgeous."
What spread before me was grassland. But different in texture from the grasslands of Loyal Fang—a golden plain. Not a dark green field under a full moon, but farmland ripened to gold beneath the sun, heavy with grain. Even when I reinforced my eyesight with magic power, the open horizon had no end. I'd heard that in places like America, farms stretched so wide that if a person got lost they'd need a helicopter patrol just to find them—maybe this was that kind of place.
Out in the far distance of the plain, I could see a bull roughly the size of a house, looking a bit bewildered. But I gathered my magic power once more and plunged straight toward its Origin.
The unconscious mind and the Origin, those were smooth sailing so far...
But could I actually use my magic power to enhance it?