Chapter 215: Sex Education 1
Chapter 215: Sex Education 1
Predictably, the Academy erupted into chaos.
A Constellation had descended without ritual, without ceremony, without the faintest warning.
Imagine a four-star general materializing in an enlisted barracks while the troops are still folding blankets. That was the level of reaction.
Never mind that the Constellation in question was practically an infant in soul-terms, barely bloomed into existence.
"Hello, honored one!"
"Oh, so these are beastkin. If the ears are mounted on the crown, anatomically how does it—"
The first to arrive were the Security Force beastkin, their physical abilities leaving everyone else in the dust.
Whether they'd caught a scent or detected magic power, they came charging into the cafeteria.
The beastkin guards stood there, panting, fumbling for their radios, still gulping air.
And standing before them, eyes gleaming at their ears and tails with pure scientific curiosity, was Shepherd of Electric Sheep, already firing off questions about beastkin nature, anatomical differences from humans, the structure of tails, ears, claws.
The beastkin, subjected to a scholarly interrogation by a Constellation who'd materialized in their cafeteria, could only stand there in bewilderment—
"You'll get better anatomical knowledge from the internet than from a security detail. Here, eat this."
"Hmm. This is a crustacean. Has the heat turned it red, or has the red broth stained the flesh?"
The interrogation didn't let up until Song Ye-na shoved a chunk of plump shrimp meat into her mouth.
Did she have some kind of compulsion where seeing knowledge in physical form forced open her jaws?
Blocking the questions by depositing crab and shrimp directly into her mouth did the trick, but by then the commotion outside the cafeteria had already grown, and the Academy's board of directors came pouring in.
"Greetings, Constellation!"
'These ladies work hard, don't they.'
Socially speaking, they were the top 0.1 percent—women who never had to bow their heads to anyone.
Even the gold-badge elites of the four continents deferred to an Academy directorship, but the moment they stood before a Constellation and a war hero who'd saved the continent eighty years ago, their spines bent of their own accord.
The suited directors swarmed in, and eyes naturally followed them. A crowd was already murmuring outside—it's not every day you see the entire Academy board stampede into a cafeteria. Running into directors around campus was common enough, but seeing every last one of them gathered like this, charging into the dining hall without warning, well, that was practically unheard of.
"What sort of dish is this, incidentally?"
"...Just boiled crustaceans."
Even so, Shepherd of Electric Sheep's interest remained fixed on the seafood. Specifically, on the staggering volume of broth produced by steaming forearm-sized shrimp and head-sized king crabs, and on the noodles so utterly drowned in that broth they could no longer be called ramen. Her fascination with the Academy's highest officials, it seemed, ranked well below her fascination with food she'd never encountered before. She paid no attention to the row of Academy dignitaries lined up before her; she was busy examining the protrusions on a crab claw thicker than her finger.
"How'd you get here, anyway?"
So I tossed out the question myself, rather than let the Academy directors keep being ignored.
They were important people, sure, but when a Constellation blows off your greeting entirely, you don't exactly launch into a barrage of your own questions—they were just standing there, reading the room.
"When the Elf Constellation graciously expanded the space, the nanobot resource surplus allowed for additional terminal deployment."
"What?"
"I am, at base, a terminal designed to carry out information collection and processing simultaneously."
So just like I made Clones out of magic power, she could produce copies of herself using nanobots or something. Made sense, honestly—a replicating robot was easier to swallow than a Dream Demon projecting duplicates. For someone who grew up in the 21st century, science clicked faster than magic. Same way a space battleship makes more intuitive sense than someone levitating and slashing the air with sword qi. Her priorities were probably structured as: her own past first, curiosity about fantasy and martial-arts worlds second.
"In that case, your lodgings...?"
A white-haired director slipped the question in, and the eyes that had been studying crab shell swiveled toward her.
No matter how little interest she had in Academy people, she couldn't not care about where she'd be staying. Some realization must have dawned, because color returned to the faces of the women who'd been sweating through the awkwardness—
"Why is there discussion of lodgings?"
"Pardon? Well, naturally, a Constellation must have somewhere to rest..."
"This is an information-gathering terminal. It has no need for a location in which a biological organism rests."
The board members' faces went dark.
A Constellation showing up unannounced was one thing. But failing to provide hospitality? That was a serious diplomatic incident—the kind that could get you shot at by extremists instead of taxpayers. Even after I'd said "It's fine" and "I don't want the hassle" a dozen times, hadn't they still tried to send me to some palatial residence complete with servants? I'd outright refused, accepted lodgings and security but no staff, and still people complained. Not about me, of course—about the Academy supposedly failing to show a Constellation the proper respect.
"You're a terminal. Is it all right for you to eat?"
"Verification of texture and flavor data is also necessary. Stored food matter can be disassembled, so it's irrelevant."
The Academy board's political headaches weren't my problem, so I ignored them. They could sort that out themselves. Wasn't my place to meddle.
※
From middle-aged women carved with wrinkles to elderly women crowned with white hair—a cluster of old people groaning together in shared distress wasn't a pleasant sight.
They'd spent enough years tumbling through politics to pull off persuasion in the end, at least. Apparently they'd only heard she was "childlike," and the moment they saw her disassembling shrimp whiskers and crab legs while rattling off data, they shifted their approach entirely, appealing to sentiment instead.
And that was how Shepherd of Electric Sheep ended up staying right above my own quarters. It was a compromise that satisfied the Academy's need to provide security and honors befitting a Constellation, and her own calculation that she'd be able to observe every species on the continent without leaving her seat. The Constellation security detail alone would draw every kind of beastkin and mage, and Han Ye-ji's security team had plenty of martial artists and knights mixed in. On top of that, my network included animal Constellations like Loyal Fang.
"Hmm. These are familiars? Truly fluffy creatures."
Watching her study the familiars they'd apparently rounded up for her—the very same familiars who usually spent their time wandering—I got the sense she genuinely cared about nothing except information gathering. They'd given her a top-tier bed in a lavish room, and she ignored the furniture to follow a dog that had strolled past the window.
"Come to think of it, why does it feel like I haven't seen those three in ages?"
"Ah, Constellation? Those familiars have been helping the security team search for outside intruders lately."
"Really?"
I'd assumed they were just mooching snacks off Academy cadets and lazing around, but all three were actually earning their title as "familiars." Maybe there'd simply been no reason to bring them along when meeting me. They were furry bundles of supernatural ability who'd do security work on their own if you let them. No real need to drag them over by force when they roamed so efficiently on their own.
"Hmm. Magical power capable of controlling not just humans, not merely half-beasts, but full animals..."
The sight of a beautiful woman kneading a big Retriever's cheeks. Now I understood why advertising's three B's were Beauty, Baby, and Beast.
So for now, was it just a waiting game? Hadn't Svetlana hauled off Kim Jae-eun, that Seonghwa Gallery regular, to the coastal cliff gate? She'd said they'd come in through that gate, so maybe they'd left through it too. In which case that Incarnation was probably at a Northern Continent military base right now, grinding through paperwork. Until the Electronic Spirit leveled up from enough hands-on experience, was this just a waiting game?
The android's attention drifted from dogs to cadets sprinting across the parade grounds, to birds arcing overhead. Watching that relentlessly inquisitive demeanor—could you call it innocent? exasperating?—the contract terms I'd offered her suddenly surfaced in my mind.
'If an android has a soul, does she have an Origin too?'
Knowledge about the world that ended—more precisely, knowledge about why it ended. Even if she didn't consciously know, if that knowledge was etched into her soul, that would make things so much simpler.
Still, one thing nagged at me.
'And do androids develop sexual fetishes?'
It was a plain fact that Dream Demon magic stimulated lust and carnal desire. Kim Ha-eun, her body reshaped into a Dream Demon's, had awakened to a submission kink that went way past masochism. Song Ye-na, my magic still lingering in her Origin, had evolved from a swordswoman into a voyeur. Ellis, now liquid-bodied, had gone into heat with just a trace of my magic mixed into her. While those thoughts were running through my head, Shepherd of Electric Sheep returned from chasing birds and approached me. Despite her stoic expression, her eyes were wide and bright. She'd clearly chambered a question and was ready to fire.
I faced her with a faint sense of fatigue.
For an information-processing android, she had a face that seemed far too personal—warm with its own agenda. Her lips, redder and more alive than any human's, parted as she spoke.
"If the Constellation is a Dream Demon, then how do your Incarnations develop? Is it sex, as expected?"
"Ah, fuck."
"Hmm. A matter humans must conceal, but for a Dream Demon—is it not natural, even a point of pride?"
"Hold on—what exactly did you look up before asking me that?"
"Pardon? I observed that the Dream Demon species, encompassing both incubi and succubi, specializes in erotic dreams, with dream-sex as their primary specialty. There were also materials of the nature 'Succubus's Cunt Is AmAAAAAzing,' though those were rendered in illustration rather than live footage—"
Don't parents always say "Where do babies come from?" is the hardest question to answer? I was already getting dizzy just fielding this no-filter onslaught.