Chapter 89: Elf Noona 1
Chapter 89: Elf Noona 1
My clone body reset spotless every time I formed it, but one look at Fang—fur torn out in patches, drenched head to toe in blood—and you knew, yeah, we'd been at this a while.
The wolf's face was a mess. Several fangs had been knocked clean out.
Gums that had been gushing blood were visibly knitting shut, and patches of torn-away hide were healing over right before my eyes.
Was this guy a werewolf or a troll?
"Hoo. That was cathartic. Drink?"
Still, seeing that one ear was sheared halfway off, both canines were shattered,
and Ttaengchili here had every last inch of fur matted with gore, his tail drooping a little... yeah. Deeply satisfying.
On closer inspection, the tail itself was noticeably shorter, too. How many times had I bitten the damn thing?
Even in an unconscious world, the sensations would be vivid, yet there he sat, battered to hell and laughing like he'd just had the time of his life. I genuinely couldn't relate.
Where I came from, fighting meant seizing food, surviving. For this werewolf, it seemed more like a hobby.
He plopped down onto the grass—which had become a splatter painting of blood and tooth fragments—and conjured up the same liquor from earlier.
The guy who'd been pounding it down so boisterously finally spoke, visibly struggling to get the words out.
This was the same bastard who'd thrown fists without a second thought and hacked off the tip of his own tail just to slam me into the dirt. What could possibly be so hard for him to say now?
"So, I've got a favor to ask."
"Asking for a fight wasn't the favor?"
At my question, the werewolf scratched his head with that massive paw and laughed, a little sheepishly.
"Hm? Males settling things between themselves—how's that a favor?"
"You goddamn son of a bitch. Seriously."
I cursed him out of sheer disbelief, and he cackled, telling me rough talk like that suited me way better than polite speech. Which only pissed me off more.
But if I slugged him again now, we'd just lose all reason and be right back at it.
I sipped the liquor and glanced down at my own body—chest, forearms, thighs, all of it monstrously thick.
My form had gradually reshaped itself to match whatever women wanted.
Which meant that here, it had remodeled itself into a hardened warrior's body because that's what this werewolf wanted.
No exaggeration—my forearm or thigh was thicker than Kim Ha-eun's waist.
Staring at this muscle-bound build, like some champion out of ancient Greece, I took another drink. The guy finally opened his mouth.
"It's just... the favor... hoo, fuck. Anyway. There's a favor."
"What?"
"I need a woman."
"What kind of limp-dicked bullshit is that."
It was so out of nowhere that it left me at a loss—but the explanation that followed at least made it comprehensible.
Classic hot-blooded shonen manga logic: trade punches, share a drink, then launch straight into talking about women and dealing with sexual urges. Incredible.
"So you're telling me there's nobody who catches your eye?"
"Yeah, and it's not like the point shop sells sex slaves."
The Loyal Fang in front of me was a bipedal werewolf.
Not some guy with animal ears tacked onto a human body—an actual elongated wolf that walked on two legs.
Naturally, the woman he wanted was also a wolf that walked on two legs.
"I've heard there are beastkin among the Constellations, so I looked into it a little, but it's all just hume girls with ears stuck on. The point is—there isn't a single person in this world who could be my mate."
"Mate, he says. What a load of horseshit. Not a minute ago you said it was about sex."
"As if a hume could understand our mating season."
He scoffed, blowing air through his nose, and knocked back one drink after another.
If I'd come to this world and there wasn't a single woman around, wouldn't my first move have been to make a woman out of a clone?
For me, human, elf, even the beastkin this guy described—human face with animal ears—all perfectly fine. Cute, pretty, it works.
"So what exactly are you asking for?"
"A male's sexual urges are a natural thing. I've been suppressing it using the point shop, but I can feel it eating away at my body. I don't want to defy the laws of nature with some tool like that. From what I know, shamans who handle dreams can pull out beings that exist in other people's dreams."
To put it simply: Ttaengchili's peanuts were in serious danger.
I was grinning from the alcohol, and he suddenly raised his voice.
He was drunk on fighting and booze too, and his words rambled a bit, but the gist was: as a fellow male, have some sympathy.
He was afraid that if he kept suppressing it with drugs, his sex drive might just vanish entirely.
"It's not that I find hume looks hideous! But when I see a hairless female, I can't help thinking—did she catch some skin disease and lose all her fur? I can't help it."
What can you do if smooth skin registers the same as a skin disease and kills your arousal on the spot?
I couldn't help feeling a little pity.
※
What Loyal Fang wanted was a permanently maintained clone body made of dreams.
And not something inert like a masturbatory sex doll—a being that could think, speak, and share emotions.
I didn't know whether the point shop sold masturbation aids, but it definitely didn't sell living creatures.
Creating one would also help develop my own abilities, so I accepted the request.
Being stranded in a gender-reversed world, I felt a certain kinship,
and aside from him suddenly swinging a beatdown at me, he was boisterous and free-spirited—I liked his personality.
Should've brought this up a little sooner, you pitiful bastard.
He said if I helped him out, he'd send beasts that could help my Incarnations—a clear profit.
Would've been even better if he'd made the request before I sank 1.2 million points into that stamina-buff pendant.
I'm not a once-in-a-century genius like Kim Ha-eun, so I'd have to wait about three weeks to earn points next month.
But sitting on my hands for three weeks felt wrong, so—
"So, what's the occasion today?"
I immediately rode the World Tree's branches to the Unfading Giant Tree's space.
There wasn't any particular reason.
Setting aside the special case of The Incinerating Tyrant, she was the first Constellation I'd ever established an exchange with.
I just felt like chatting about meeting a second Constellation.
She'd been watering the plants, vivid blue droplets floating around her shoulders, and came over to greet me warmly.
The crisp forest scent curled at the tip of my nose.
I'd been caught off guard by it once before, and feeling a little teasing,
I stepped in close, right up against her—but she let it slide past without so much as a flinch, completely unbothered.
"Just came to talk about a new friend I made."
"Ah? You've met other Constellations. Well, it's rare to see a Dream Demon wandering around outside."
"How rare?"
I rifled through a corner of The Incinerating Tyrant's knowledge.
Even in a futuristic sci-fi empire spanning planetary colonies, Dream Demons—called Dream Walkers—numbered maybe a few hundred per solar system.
I settled naturally onto a large leaf-cushion in a corner of the living room and started talking.
"Hmm, I've only heard stories, and the patrollers of my mother's generation might've encountered one or two while wandering the world? Dream Demons almost never come out into reality. I heard that even when the Demon King's army invaded, they simply chose to fall into a comfortable sleep inside their dreams."
She said it with a soft, gentle smile, but the content was a little bewildering.
Not running away because reality is harsh—just dying as they were. No wonder there aren't any Dream Demons active as Constellations.
Come to think of it, there probably aren't many who, like me, became a Constellation and then immediately switched species entirely.
A cup made of rolled-up leaves was placed on the low table.
A golden liquid, sparkling like a drink distilled from drops of honey.
I threw it back in one gulp without hesitation, and a sensation blasted from the tip of my tongue straight through the crown of my head—like a lightning strike to the brain.
"Eugh. Drinking it like that... it's incredibly sweet. Are you okay?"
"No, I don't think I am."
My mouth wouldn't be this sweet even if I'd stuck my face in a beehive and scooped honey like soup.
Watching her settle so gracefully in front of the low table, sipping her tea very, very slowly, I felt a fresh surge of indignation.
It hadn't steamed, and it looked cold, so I'd chugged it—and now look at me.
Just breathing felt like my nostrils were being pickled in honey. I caught myself panting with my mouth open.
She'd been drinking the beverage in slow, delicate sips and smiled faintly at the sight of me.
That soft smile was genuinely cute, but the feeling that I'd been pranked didn't go away.
"Honey tree sap is far too sweet. You're supposed to drink it together with slightly bitter refreshments."
Her pale white fingers tapped the low table twice, and a brown sort of tree-nut appeared on a dish.
Taking the honey-tree-sap incident as a lesson, I nibbled at the acorn-like snack with my front teeth. A savory, faintly bitter taste wrapped around my tongue.
Why does this snack taste like an Americano?
To put it in my cheap-palate terms: the acorn-shaped snack tasted like an Americano, and the honey tree sap was the coffee syrup.
One sip of tea when my mouth went bitter, one bite of the snack when it got cloyingly sweet.
Sweet and bitter took turns stimulating my tongue, and that horrifying honey-water vanished in no time.
"Seems it suited your taste?"
"Yeah, it's good with the refreshments."
"Really? Then how about this."
Smiling softly, she began laying out various things across the table.
Watching her, a thought suddenly surfaced.
I feel like... I'm being handled.
The plan had been to talk about Loyal Fang, then naturally steer the conversation toward sexual desire.
I'd intended to tell this girl—who barely seemed to understand love and had probably gotten only cursory sex ed—
about the beastkin mating season, verbally teasing and toying with her bit by bit.
But the shock of that cloying, tongue-coating sweetness had knocked me out of it, and before I knew it, we were talking about the refreshments she'd prepared.
What made it worse was that they actually suited my palate, which made it hard to change the subject.
She'd made these snacks herself from fruit picked in her garden just for me—how could I possibly refuse?
When I mentioned the plant taste might be too strong for a human, her ears drooped.
When I said the sweet-and-sour scone hit the spot, her ears shot right back up.
Seeing that, I figured—well, this isn't so bad either.
I felt like I was being steered somewhere, but seeing her smile so brightly, making no effort to hide whatever she was feeling, any stern thoughts I'd had just vanished.
"Speaking of which, did you receive the potted plants all right? I asked one of my children who lives nearby to send them to the Academy."
"Yeah, they arrived fine. I put them all in the spaces where the patients are."
From snacks to the garden's plants, and from there to the potted plants she'd given as a gift.
The sing-song lilt in her voice had faded at some point, but speaking in that pleasant, rhythmic tone, she was a natural storyteller.
So much so that talking face to face was far more enjoyable than writing letters to each other.
At this rate, we'd probably get to know each other nice and slow, on elf-time—
But a Dream Demon can't be beat, you know?
A Dream Demon had methods of his own.
"Ah, has the time come again already?"
"Yeah, I think it's about time to go."
Smugly smiling, she flicked her ears slightly.
It seemed she'd taken this whole thing as a kind of game—me trying to seduce, her deflecting—and now she was preening, thinking she'd won.
Maybe because she couldn't hide her feelings, she was even more obvious about it than my Incarnations.
As if seeing me off, she gently stroked my bangs.
I hadn't noticed while we were sitting, but at some point my seated height had become about equal to hers.
Pale white fingers swayed back and forth in front of my eyes.
"Goodbye—"
"Yeah, see you later."
Right before the clone vanished, I gathered up every last wisp of magic power remaining in it.
Then, just like that, I reached out and seized those pale white fingers.
She'd been pulling her hand back, seeing that the clone was growing hazy, and startled violently, her eyes going perfectly round.
Seeing that expression, I pressed a kiss to the back of her hand—like a brand.
A distinct mark of magic power, left vivid on that pale skin.
Startled, she shouted something, but the clone disappeared before I could hear it.