Chapter 76: Business
Chapter 76: Business
"Do whatever you want."
I'd tossed those words out to take the weight off her shoulders.
I never imagined they'd echo back this loudly.
Kim Ha-eun brought it up the day after she'd vented her desires so roughly on my clone.
"My Constellation, I want to start a business."
I thought it was just another ordinary day, but Kim Ha-eun suddenly sent up a prayer as she was getting ready for the Academy.
I was skimming through different screens but focused on her as she unloaded the thoughts she'd been holding in her heart.
"You told me to move as I wished, didn't you?"
[The Constellation, Lethargic Nightmare, answers affirmatively.]
Her face was set with firm resolve.
Judging by the notes and documents scattered all over her living room, this wasn't a plan she'd cooked up in a day or two.
Since I had no intention of shoving anyone into a warzone, I listened closely to what she had to say.
My instant, positive reply seemed to relieve her a little, and she kept talking.
"The way I see it, no matter how outstanding my talent is, I don't think I'll ever feel satisfied."
Burning with curiosity, I sent my clone down onto her living room sofa.
Sitting face-to-face with me across the coffee table, she handed me a few papers.
Excel sheets packed with complex numbers.
Sorry, but I can't actually read this stuff...
Still, I nodded along as if nothing was wrong, putting on a little show of understanding, and she continued in a noticeably brighter tone.
"In just a few months, a student who only ever studied at a desk has caught up with people who do physical labor for a living. I know I'm moving at a fast pace. I understand that my transformed body and my ability to wield mana like my own limbs are all thanks to my talent."
'I can't even wield it like a limb...?'
"But it's still too slow. I know it's arrogant, I know it's a presumptuous thought that doesn't know the meaning of satisfaction, but one side of my chest burns so hot. How long would it take for me to learn weapon arts and magic and become a worthy Incarnation?"
That absurd genius of hers—growing her mana alongside her stamina when I'd thought she was just building muscle at the gym.
This had to be why other Constellations mass-produced Incarnation contracts.
A tangled mess of emotions almost pulled my brow into a frown, so I rubbed my forehead and cut in as she spoke.
A Constellation jealous of his own Incarnation—that's just ugly, even by low standards.
I pulled myself together and answered her.
"Yeah, it'd take a long time. If you headed for the battlefield, it'd be at least a year."
No matter how much of a genius she was, graduating from the Academy took half a year.
Then there was the time needed to enter the military as a recruit and get assigned to a unit, and from there you had to think about how long it took to reach the front lines—a year was probably a conservative estimate.
And right now, Kim Ha-eun was telling me she couldn't endure that one year.
"A year... Yes, a year is too long. If a year passes from now, will I still be able to burn with the same rage? I'm afraid my heart will grow dull, and I'll become sluggish. I want to ride this momentum and throw myself into it while I still have the driving force to move."
What Kim Ha-eun wanted wasn't to personally beat monsters to death.
As she'd said before, even without military force, she could support the slaying of monsters through political or financial power.
Contributing to the hunt, in any way at all, was her genuine aspiration.
Becoming a politician to increase the military budget, or a businesswoman to join the defense industry—either path would gratify her heart.
becoming an influential politician or business magnate would take not just years but decades, so that was definitely not the route she was eyeing.
"So, what do you want?"
With my short reasoning and limited knowledge, I couldn't predict what she was planning.
So I was genuinely curious what she intended to do in this peculiar world teeming with Constellations and Incarnations.
"I thought of it earlier, while talking to an Incarnation of the Beating Lionheart."
The purple-tinted mana curled and swirled, blanketing the living room like a fog.
A level completely incomparable to my mana, which was basically just pale purple wisps of thread.
If my mana power was a loose thread, hers was a silken veil that wrapped the entire room.
The thing shimmering dimly inside the mana veil was... a military uniform?
"I want to use the power of a Dream Demon to help military veterans."
※
A battlefield full of flying bullets and bombs inflicts intense PTSD on a human being.
No matter how outstanding a soldier is, staying in a horrific warzone will break their mind.
I think I read somewhere that U.S. special forces members enjoyed shooting prisoners because of PTSD, or playing a game where they'd rip someone's head in half with machine-gun fire.
I vaguely recall reading a rumor that they even rolled over and shredded bin Laden's head with gunfire after confirming the kill.
If that's the case in a modern war of guns and bombs, what about a world like this one, where you face down writhing masses of flesh?
When the front line gets pushed back, you could be caught in tentacles of meat and melted alive, or have your limbs torn off and eaten by a giant beast—those battlefields would be infinitely more horrifying.
Therefore, for as many people who serve in the military, there are countless veterans.
People who've lost arms or legs, people who've damaged their eyes, organs, or bones, and people whose minds have been shattered.
The lucky part is that the welfare for veterans is extraordinary, I guess.
The faith in Constellations bleeds into admiration for Incarnations, and that admiration ripples outward into respect for the soldiers who fight alongside them.
Plus, treatments using psychic powers and magic do exist, so you could be thankful for that.
But that doesn't make the countless veterans disappear.
There are Incarnations who can reattach severed limbs, and ones who can cure the alien diseases brought by monsters, but one particular type was always in short supply.
A type overwhelmingly scarcer than any other Incarnation.
A Dream Demon's Incarnation—someone who could swallow up their trauma.
This was a world where all kinds of Constellations gathered: elves and dwarves from fantasy worlds, swordsmen and Taoist practitioners from martial arts worlds, and scientists from futuristic sci-fi universes.
But even so, the only Constant that dealt with the human soul and mind was, in the end, the Dream Demon.
The Incinerating Tyrant's world might have been the most advanced of them all, but even there, the human mind was the exclusive domain of Dream Demons, whom they called Dream Walkers.
The numbers of Dream Demons were already small to begin with, and most of them were holed up inside their own dream worlds, refusing to come out.
They'd just grab onto any Incarnations who accidentally stumbled into their dreams and never exert any influence on the real world.
That's when I appeared—the Irregular.
A strange Dream Demon who operated more in the real world than in the dream world.
"So, is this what you came up with?"
"Yes, just as you said, my Constellation. I'll do exactly as I wish."
In stark contrast to that serious conversation, Kim Ha-eun pushed the coffee table aside and knelt in front of me.
It wasn't to plead or persuade me. Her hands shot out without a shred of hesitation and pulled my pants down.
Was it because I disliked complexity when making a clone and just threw on an elastic-waist pair of pants and a comfy shirt?
The moment I slightly lifted my hips and thighs, she stripped off both my pants and underwear in one swift motion.
A deep breath in, and a shaky gasp out.
"Just... as I wish..."
She buried her face into my groin and spoke with a bleary voice.
Kim Ha-eun's ability to control mana was superior to mine, but maybe the difference came down to that between a full-fledged Constellation-Dream Demon and a half-pint Dream Demon.
She always got high the moment she touched my mana.
"I'm going to swallow the trauma of retired soldiers and ex-Incarnations. For the sake of those who want to return to active duty. All the pain and horror they witnessed on the battlefield will become my power. I'll be able to strengthen myself twice as fast as training alone."
Saying so, Kim Ha-eun pulled something from her pocket.
A small object, placed on the table with a soft clatter.
A Fragment of Nightmare.
'Geez, her talents just never end...'
I thought the only way to make a Fragment of Nightmare was to stimulate the trauma, balloon up the Nightmare, and pop it like a balloon.
But Kim Ha-eun could acquire Fragments of Nightmare in a far more refined way than I had ever conceived.
If my method was like a beast roughly tearing into meat and gulping it down, hers was a surgical deboning and dissolution.
A gap in mastery so wide you could call it the difference between a caveman and a civilized person.
As I fiddled with the Fragment of Nightmare between my fingers, something hot and slick coiled around my lower half.
A wet, lewd gluck and a hot breath that tickled my lower abdomen.
Just as she wished, I directed my mana downward.
Mana so shabby it couldn't even compare to what Kim Ha-eun had shown me.
But when my right foot dug into the space between her legs, I felt a humid, damp sensation.
Even that tiny, faint trace of mana made her writhe and twist like a cat high on catnip.
"For that purpose, I'd need to gather mana a little faster, wouldn't you agree?"
She took me in deep once, slathered my shaft copiously with spit using the flat of her tongue, then dragged her lips along the length as she slowly let it slide back out.
It wasn't just her that was drenched now.
"I'm going to do exactly as I wish. I trust you'll play along."
She wasn't looking at my eyes, but directly at my member, whispering softly. Her fevered breath tickled my groin.
Like a cat intoxicated on catnip, she writhed and then shoved her head back into my crotch, like a dog eating from its bowl.
Her purple hair gave my thighs a pleasant tickle.
As I closed my eyes and savored the languid pleasure, the wet, obscene noises— gluck, schlurp— feasted on my ears.
"Pwah— Because this is the fastest way."
She murmured the words in a manic voice and plunged her head back down.
I let my mana seep into her, just a little, making contact.
Then, as if bewitched, she started retching and gagging but still went on whipping her head up and down.
Even when the massive illusion-made flesh stabbed deep into her throat.
Was the sensation of mana surging and crashing deep inside her more blissful than the pain of getting her throat so severely battered?
Tears welled up in her eyes and started streaming down her cheeks, but she didn't stop.
Geurgh— guk
The sort of harsh gagging sound you'd only ever hear in Western porn echoed through the room.
Her throat, now completely mixed with saliva and my pre-cum, started making the most obscene, wet noises.
When I gripped her head against the strange pleasure I'd never felt before, she grabbed onto my thighs instead and shoved her own head down even deeper.
'Uh, wait, am I the only one feeling good here?'
The unfamiliar pleasure was undeniably sweet.
The problem was Kim Ha-eun's expression.
The area around her eyes had turned so red it almost drowned out her pale skin.
Then there was her face, smeared and filthy with the saliva that had dribbled out while she was getting her throat poked.
Faced with such a debauched sight—the sort that didn't even register as dirty anymore— I could feel my erection swelling even larger.
There's no way a woman feels pleasure from getting her throat jammed?
Is the ecstasy mana provides really that intense?
With a pleasure that sent a sharp, electric thrill up the length of my back, I didn't hesitate to unload my semen.
Part of me wanted to soak in the pleasure longer, but this wasn't the dream world.
The oral sex was so rough that I half-worried she might suffocate.
"Haaaa— As expected, the mana..."
She puckered her lips around my shaft and sucked hard with a final loud slurp before spitting it out.
Then she cupped both hands to catch the messy mix of semen and saliva and started examining it.
This was definitely supposed to be the real world, but I could visibly see the liquid in her palms evaporating and starting to vanish.