Chapter 53: Instinct
Chapter 53: Instinct
Sometimes instinct awakens something in you.
Maybe it was a scrap of knowledge the Incinerating Tyrant had left behind.
The realization hit the moment I materialized a clone in front of the woman resting against the gym equipment.
Ugh, sweet...
A sweet scent rose from her.
Not that nonsense about the fragrance of a woman damp with sweat, or pheromones, or you smell like flowers.
This was a sweetness so sharp it stung the nose and pricked the eyes.
Not some faint floral note, not the hunger-triggering smell of bread fresh from the oven.
It was an aura so overpowering it felt like someone had spilled perfume concentrate—sharp enough to sear the nostrils and make the eyes water.
"...The men's-only floor is elsewhere."
She spoke to me while massaging her calf.
She hadn't seen me appear—she must have assumed I'd walked up to strike up a conversation.
Every curt, matter-of-fact motion—kneading her leg, stretching—radiated that intense scent.
A pitch-black fragrance, a cloyingly sweet hue.
A strange sensation, as if sight, smell, and taste had fused into a single sense.
Something no human could ever perceive—a subtlety only a Dream Demon could register, one that defied language.
No, calling it subtle wasn't right.
It was far too overwhelming for that.
"Hey, why do you run so hard?"
That sweet scent had to be the fragrance of Nightmare.
Like a duckling that instinctively paddles the moment it hits the pond, I simply knew the instant I faced her.
She would be the most perfectly suited Incarnation a Dream Demon like me could ever have.
But why hadn't a woman with this kind of talent already contracted with another Dream Demon?
They weren't that numerous, but I knew of at least ten Dream Demon-type Constellations offhand.
"I said, the men's floor is, ugh..."
Our eyes met.
"I have to, exercise, I have to at least exercise."
Jet-black irises shifted into violet.
It wasn't just her eyes.
Her pupils and hair gradually dyed themselves that color, and her sweat-slicked skin visibly paled toward white.
Her irritated voice flattened into a lethargic drone, then dissolved into a sleep-drunk mumble.
What the hell?
I rifled through every scrap of knowledge in my head.
The foundational Dream Demon lore the Incinerating Tyrant had shared with me.
Basic stuff—it hardly took any time to call it up.
"Wow, that's impressive..."
"Last month, my parents died in the mass air raid. I never really dreamed of being an Incarnation, and I didn't want to be a soldier like them either, but... I just couldn't sit around studying like nothing happened."
She'd gotten drunk on Dream Demon mana just from standing face-to-face with my clone.
I hadn't cast a spell on her, hadn't linked our dreams, hadn't forged a contract between Constellation and Incarnation.
She'd simply looked at me, and that alone let her comprehend a Dream Demon—sending her halfway into a stupor inside my dream.
Like a prodigy in a fantasy novel who copies a sword technique after a single glance,
or spontaneously forms a magic circle after one meditation session.
She'd glimpsed my clone and, on a purely unconscious level, grasped the foundational techniques of a Dream Demon.
That isn't human talent.
Obviously not. No human is born with freakish gifts like this.
This was the sort of ability only test-tube super-babies in the Incinerating Tyrant's future empire might have possessed.
Maybe she'd been a Dream Demon in a past life.
"But I don't know any sports. My mother told me to do what I wanted, but I never had any real dream for the future. So I just studied normally, went to college... I don't know how to do anything except run."
"Alright, I get it—"
"But there's no way anyone becomes an Incarnation just by running. And if I don't do anything at all, my chest gets so tight. Honestly, I don't even know if I want to be an Incarnation... I just keep moving so I don't have to think."
Drunk on sleep, drunk as if on alcohol,
she kept muttering with her head drooped toward the floor.
"This is a real headache... Hey, hey?"
I waved a hand right in front of her face—no reaction.
Hoping for a response, I tugged at strands of her hair, patted her cheeks. Nothing.
Hell, I even grabbed one of the breasts straining proudly beneath her gym clothes and gave it a firm squeeze. Still nothing.
Doesn't she need to be in her right mind to form an Incarnation contract?
I'd have to pull out, then message her once she came to her senses.
The moment I thought that and dissolved the clone, the world spun.
A familiar sensation—sinking into a lucid dream.
The spinning view steadied after a few blinks.
A dim underground tunnel, flickering half-shattered lights, the musty, damp smell unique to subterranean spaces.
Naturally, this was inside my own dream.
First time seeing it in a year, and I loathed the sight—so I stirred the dream immediately.
The ancient concrete tunnel warped in an instant into an elegant penthouse.
The stale, wet air turned crisp and clean; shattered passageways gave way to expensive designer furniture.
And seated in the middle of it, dazed and drowsing—a woman whose name I still didn't know.
Should I just force a contract while she's doped on mana and half-asleep?
A civilian who couldn't even control Dream Demon mana, let alone call herself one, had ridden the trace amounts of magic clinging to my dispersing clone straight into my dream.
How far was her unconscious mind going to take this? It was incomprehensible.
Back when I read novels as a kid, whenever the overpowered protagonist pulled off something amazing,
everyone around him would gasp, Whoa, incredible! Total bullshit.
Seeing it in real life, I was too dumbfounded to speak.
All the while, her body kept shifting, little by little.
"Wh-Where is..."
Her chest swelled until her gym clothes strained, and her formerly tan skin bleached as pale as mine.
Her straight hips and waist cinched inward, her whole figure morphing into something resembling a Western porn star.
The pale violet hair only amplified the impression.
Watching her flustered—examining her hands, her body, clutching a lock of hair to confirm its color—I made up my mind.
"Welcome, my Incarnation."
Snatch-and-grab contract. Let's do it.
※
My head was a fog.
I'd felt like my heart might burst before, but this—had it actually burst? The disorientation was so profound I couldn't get my bearings.
Just looking at the long, long, pale limbs that swam into my vision told me that much.
Skin as white as if I were a mixed-race Northerner-Westerner instead of an Easterner.
A chest so swollen I couldn't see my own toes,
hips that had widened enough to make sitting even slightly crooked strangely uncomfortable.
Relief: my pelvis hadn't spread into the exaggerated width of some Western Continent women.
No muscle, but exactly the sort of idol-like beautiful body men go crazy for.
Obviously, it was worlds apart from the body I'd lived in for twenty-three years—a body that had known no exercise beyond morning jogs for exam-student health management.
"Welcome, my Incarnation."
That wasn't all.
"For a child as gifted as you to seek me out—truly, I'm overjoyed."
The beautiful man before me.
Unfathomably more beautiful than any handsome man I'd ever passed in a gym.
Some Incarnations and Constellations were said to be so beautiful they couldn't be captured in photographs—I guess that was true.
So beautiful I couldn't doubt for a second that the man before me was a Constellation.
"You say you have no talent, but that's simply not true."
"Y-yes..."
The breathtakingly beautiful man whispered.
Words as sweet as his voice.
But so sweet they kept pricking at my suspicion.
Not distrust of the man before me. Not that.
Me? Talented enough to become an Incarnation?
Doubt in myself gnawed at a corner of my chest.
I'd studied diligently enough to get into a prestigious high school, but I hadn't been the one who landed the top GPA rank there.
I'd made it into a well-known university in the Eastern Continent's capital region, but I hadn't wallpapered my transcript with A-pluses and scholarships.
I was someone who worked hard but never reached the pinnacle. Exactly that level.
If you asked whether I was in the top 1%, I could answer confidently,
but if you asked whether I was the best, I couldn't bring myself to nod.
"Why so listless? On such a happy day—the day your talent was discovered."
"My... talent?"
Middle school, high school, university—all of it lived in that ambiguous middle.
A life where I could never claim to possess anything that truly set me above everyone else.
And yet the man before me kept whispering words far too sweet.
"Yes, your talent."
Before I knew it, his voice was murmuring right beside my ear, making my back snap ramrod straight.
The tickle at my earlobe dissolved into a nameless, electrifying sensation that trickled down my nape and spread to my fingertips and toes.
"Look at your hand. Aren't you thirsty? Something cold to drink... yes, you've been exercising, so a sports drink would be just the thing."
The moment I heard those words, my throat abruptly parched itself into sand.
Before I could even sweep my gaze around the room—something that looked like a luxury hotel suite—a chill settled in my palm.
A frost-cold plastic bottle of sports drink rested there.
"Yes, I find that drink quite good. Aren't you hungry?"
"Does the lighting feel too dim?"
"Do you like the sofa's color? I prefer fabric sofas to leather myself."
Every time the man before me whispered, the world reshaped itself.