Chapter 71: Daily Life 2
Chapter 71: Daily Life 2
Offering up one's body—devotion in the literal sense.
But the word doesn't only mean giving your body.
As I understood it, it meant giving yourself over so completely that body and soul alike were offered up in earnest.
Lee Ha-rin's Talent, unlike Han Ye-ji's, meant exactly what the word said.
Every time she offered a Constellation a sacrifice, tangible or intangible, she received a formless reward.
For someone who tunneled into ritual magic to the exclusion of everything else, it was a perfect match.
I didn't know exactly what the database meant by a "formless reward."
But seeing how she ran around without ever tiring, it was probably physical and magical recovery.
In any case, with her Talent and her Extreme locking her into ritual magic, nothing could suit her better.
Come to think of it, both Han Ye-ji and Lee Ha-rin had gained Authorities through the Dream Demon's essence.
And both Authorities fit them like custom-made gifts.
The system called it a Talent Awakening—so it wasn't purely random acquisition?
Lee Ha-rin believed she had been used by me and had served me in her dreams,
that her value had been acknowledged, and that her Authority had been bestowed as a reward—and the corners of her lips refused to come down.
That was how daily life with my three Incarnations gradually settled into place.
During the day, I sought out one of the three depending on my mood.
If I felt like walking the city streets and snacking, Han Ye-ji.
If I wanted to chat about Constellations and Incarnations over coffee, Lee Ha-rin.
If I wanted to people-watch the gym girls of this gender-flipped world, Kim Ha-eun.
Sometimes I lay in bed exchanging letters with the elf girl.
And once evening passed and night fell, I visited all of their dreams, fair and square.
A fried Dream Demon cat can't pack a whole lifetime into a single night's dream.
But I had enough magic power to turn three hours of dreaming into a full night.
Slip into Han Ye-ji's dream, indulge her clingy affection, toy with her chest.
Slip into Kim Ha-eun's dream, let her have her way with me as she pleased.
Slip into Lee Ha-rin's dream, receive her devoted service, and act sickeningly sweet. The routine.
Daily life, pleasure, comfort—all of it happened inside dreams.
'No wonder Dream Demons never bother coming out into reality.'
Even with only three Incarnations, I was already this lost in the dream world.
So what kind of level were the other Dream Demons at—the ones who had gathered up whole stables of Incarnations with lucid dreaming talents?
Leaving aside the one idiot who got himself killed by me, I could make a rough guess.
They'd probably built their own personal metropolises inside dreams and lived there twenty-four-seven.
As long as you had enough magic power, dreams could influence reality.
Even a cheap 500 pt Dream Elixir was enough to manage your physical body in the real world while you stayed inside the dream.
They wouldn't enter their Incarnations' dreams like I did—they'd inflate their own dreams to a colossal scale and invite dozens, hundreds of Incarnations in.
A dream more excessive than reality—still a distant story—but at least I felt like the direction for growth had come into view.
"C-Constellation... this tastes way too weird?"
"That's because you're thinking too much."
Thinking those thoughts, I shoved the Dream Elixir into Kim Ha-eun's mouth as her face went through a kaleidoscope of disgust.
Having three specially managed Incarnations was one thing,
but thanks to Lee Ha-rin, whose name was beginning to spread across the continent through her ritual magic, points were fairly abundant.
Not to the point of flinging around six-figure sums like pocket change, but comfortably enough to use up consumables worth a few hundred points as I pleased.
The Dream Elixir was a potion that let the dream body influence the physical body.
I picked up another one of the round, pitch-black pills, like something out of a martial arts novel.
For Kim Ha-eun, who was shaking her head from side to side like a baby refusing pureed food.
"You're not a child. Open up."
"Ugh— no, this is seriously weird—"
Kim Ha-eun's magical Talent was on a level the other Incarnations couldn't touch.
She was the one who'd awakened an Authority not even in a month, but on the very first day.
Given a little time, she'd probably be a name that rang across the continent.
Imagining the points she'd bring in made my heart pound.
Given a little time, that is.
"Agh! It's bitter and spicy and sweet and sticky!"
"Stop imagining things. The more you say it, the stronger you feel it, right? You've still got three pills left."
Back when I was only half a Dream Demon, I'd digested the Dream Elixir one pill at a time over several days to become whole.
Kim Ha-eun was in the middle of chewing and swallowing ten of them a day.
The problem was the excessive magic power.
I never expected to use the phrase "too much of a good thing" in this context.
If I had to express a Dream Demon's senses in human words, she was like a typhoon.
If my magic power was a drizzle and a neighborhood stream, Kim Ha-eun's was a tropical rainforest squall and the flooded Amazon.
It surged at a violent speed, but there was no controlling it with any precision.
A stream ankle-deep can be diverted with nothing more than a single stone.
But a flooding Amazon? A person doesn't redirect that water—it rampages as it pleases and reshapes the terrain.
That was Kim Ha-eun's situation.
The kind of "too much power, too little fine control" scenario you only read about in novels.
"How about closing your eyes and just swallowing?"
"Th-that just makes my senses even sharper... it burns!"
Kim Ha-eun looked at the Dream Elixir in my hand.
Black—no, looking very closely, a dark purple was mixed in.
A blackish-purple pill that looked more like poison than medicine. I'd swallowed it without a second thought since it was an item bought with points.
But Kim Ha-eun had looked at it and thought something like, 'The taste is probably horrific.'
After that, well—it went the same way as Han Ye-ji's lucid dream training.
Just like Han Ye-ji had created a watermelon that smelled like fresh-baked bread, her thoughts were warping the taste and smell.
The difference was that Kim Ha-eun had turned the pill into the most horrifying taste she could imagine.
Sweet and sticky, clinging to her mouth like melted taffy.
So sour it hurt when it dissolved in her saliva and touched her tongue.
When she breathed through her nose, it smelled like fish oil.
When she forced it down, it was so spicy her throat burned.
And once she'd finally choked down one pill, the aftertaste was bitter, like powdered medicine stuck to her tongue.
"Uh, maybe you should stop describing it?"
"But my tongue really hurts...!"
She crouched on the floor, clutching her mouth.
I could feel her focusing her magic power to an extreme, desperate to wipe the horrible taste from her mouth.
I'd bought the elixir to help her because she was suffering at the gym, and watching her squirm on the floor made me feel like absolute shit.
"Control—control the magic power and the dream...!"
Still, because of that horrific taste, her magic power control was visibly improving.
The rampaging magic power was falling under her command, piece by piece.
With that, the fishy stench faded from her mouth, the drool stopped running, and her cracked, retching voice returned to normal.
'Is this what Talent is.'
Magic power that had been raging like a storm falling into line like docile sheep.
A Talent that would've given me a crushing sense of deprivation if I'd been an Incarnation instead of a Constellation.
This was the Dream Demon's basic Authority—something I'd spent half a year buying with points and training.
And she was starting to replicate it on instinct in a single day.
'I really did pick a hell of an Incarnation.'
I liked Han Ye-ji, who clung to me like a sweet girlfriend and let me play with her chest.
I liked Lee Ha-rin, who answered Yes, yes! to anything I asked and served me with utter devotion.
But if the Constellation system resembled a game, you still needed at least one Incarnation who was strong in this direction.
The balance was so perfect it almost felt like a holy trinity.
I caught Kim Ha-eun as she stumbled to her feet and kissed her on the spot.
How could I stay still when she was looking at me with that sex-drenched face, eyes brimming with tears?
That small, pale face with only the rims of her eyes flushed red?
That face stirred something low and crude—search terms from some porn site flickered through my head.
Videos of deep acts, face-centric acts.
Her full lips tasted like milk chocolate.
"Mm, you like milk chocolate?"
"Puh-ha— yes, the slightly less sweet kind."
I let the strength drain from my body as she kissed me back without hesitation.
Maybe she had some lingering grudge over me forcing the pill into her mouth. Or maybe she'd gotten a taste for roughness after that first night.
One hand pinned my wrist, the other braced against my lower back—and she shoved me flat onto the bed.
'Well, this is new.'
Before coming here, I'd already spent my fill of hand-play while listening to Han Ye-ji grumble about her day.
So I stayed still and let Kim Ha-eun do as she pleased with my body.
Even if she was rough, it wasn't like it caused me any pain.
The worst she managed was tearing my shirt, or biting down just short of leaving marks.
I mean, rough handling of a man—this was Kim Ha-eun, who'd spent twenty-three years doing nothing but study, a total virgin shut-in.
The roughest sex she could manage was about that level.
No choking, no slapping my ass, no spitting curses.
Whatever else, I wasn't about to complain about not getting my backside smacked by a woman.
Not that she had the guts to do that to me, her Constellation.
With clumsy, forceful hands, she stripped off my pants and burrowed between my legs.
She buried her face so deep her nose was practically pressed between my balls.
No matter how talentless I might be in other areas, I was a full Dream Demon now.
I had enough magic power to intoxicate a prodigy half-Dream Demon.
She breathed in my scent, wet herself with her own fingers, then bolted upright and climbed on top of me.
The emotion swimming in those insolent eyes as she looked down at me was unmistakable.
Craving.
A craving for power? A craving for pleasure?
I had my answer just watching her drop her hips without the slightest hesitation and begin spilling moans.