A Special Prescription for a Lazy Hero
"Sonia. You in there?"
A signal detected from outside. Inside the Stress Relief Device helmet fitted snugly over Sonia's head, the voice rang out with crystalline clarity — as if the audio data were being transmitted straight into her neural pathways.
The voice belonged to Luce, the otherworld adventurer who was Sonia's only real friend.
In the fabricated virtual reality, Sonia was no longer Sonia, D-class hero of Sky City.
Stripped of her unique name and free will alike, she existed solely as an Obscene Drone Unit — a machine that functioned only in obedience to her master's commands.
A glossy black latex suit sheathed every curve of her body in a breathlessly tight embrace. That pressure was no mere restraint; it was a badge of belonging.
From the plug port surgically fashioned into her navel, a thrilling pulse of pleasure flooded through her entire nervous system with every command her master issued.
From the moment she had remodeled her navel into a cybernetic implant — from the moment she had asked the built-in artificial intelligence to educate her — this had already gone far beyond simple roleplay.
Perhaps it was the shameful secret Sonia had yearned for from the deepest recesses of her heart.
To cast aside the agony of thinking and deciding for herself, and become a perfect machine that responded only to pleasure signals injected from outside. She had been drunk on that vicious, honey-sweet liberation when the voice of reality shattered everything and came pouring in.
Friend… Luce… but… right now I'm a drone… I have to… follow orders…
Sonia desperately repeated it to herself. That the version of her inside the virtual reality wasn't real.
That it was nothing more than a safe diversion for stress relief. But Sonia's body was already deeply conditioned to the machine's protocols.
The rational judgment that she ought to answer Luce's call collided violently with the instinctive craving to keep performing the role of "drone" she had been assigned in the virtual world — and the resulting confusion left her dizzy.
"W-wait just a moment. Luce…! I'm coming out right now!"
Had she remained inside the virtual reality device even a little longer, a very different story might have unfolded — but the Sonia of this moment managed, just barely, to suppress the desire that had risen to the surface.
She tried to sit up on reflex, but her limbs were firmly secured to an ergonomically designed reclining chair.
The soft restraints encircling her arms and legs were safety devices meant to protect her body from injury during intense virtual experiences.
In this moment, they felt like shackles she could not escape. The residual sensation of holding a standby posture while awaiting her master's orders in the virtual world tangled with the urgency of needing to rush to her friend in reality, and her breathing grew short and ragged.
She desperately groped through her memory. The emergency stop procedure the cheerful-voiced AI had explained on the day she first installed this device. The words she had half-listened to, figuring she'd never need them. Sonia managed to seize a faint scrap of that memory and force it past her lips.
"I-is it… this? Program… Stop?!"
The moment that word — like some kind of magic spell — left her mouth, a mechanical synthesized voice responded instantly from within the helmet.
> Program emergency stop. Initiating.
> Please exit carefully.
> ID card ejection in progress…
Thwip…
Accompanied by a short, dry mechanical sound, something was spat out from a slot on the side of the device.
Pfft. Thwack. Like a vending machine ejecting change, Sonia's hero ID card — which had been inserted like a debit card — bounced lightly free.
At the same time, every restraint binding Sonia's body released, and the helmet covering her head opened upward with a soft hiss of pneumatic pressure.
Through the chamber cover sliding open with a shhh, the living room of Sonia's apartment came into hazy view.
"Ugh… uwaah… I'm so dizzy…"
Hurled abruptly back into reality, a crushing wave of vertigo crashed over her. Everything before her eyes spun in circles, and the strength drained from her legs, leaving her reeling.
It was the aftereffect of prolonged neural stimulation. Staggering, Sonia called out toward the front door once more.
"I'm coming out right now, Luce! Just wait a little longer, please!"
She managed a few steps before collapsing into a dining chair in the living room.
Her legs trembled so badly she couldn't even stand properly. When she drew a deep breath, a hot, feverish heat surged up from deep inside her.
"Haa… hoo… heeh… heuh… ♡"
A moan slipped unbidden past her lips — unmistakably the residual echo of the sounds she made every time she climaxed as a drone in the virtual world.
Every nerve in her body was still standing on end, hypersensitive. Cupping her flushed cheeks, Sonia looked around. Outside the window, the world had already sunk into deep darkness. She was startled all over again by the realization that the "stress relief" she had started that morning had stretched all the way into night.
"…First, clothes… clothes… clothesss… nnh… ♡ It's already… night…? Time sure flies…"
Piece by piece, she began gathering the clothes she had draped haphazardly over the back of the chair and putting them on. The moment she fastened the brassiere decorated with delicate black lace — a piece that revealed her tastes perfectly —
"Ah… ♥"
The cold fabric brushed against nipples that had been thoroughly abused in the virtual world only moments before, and Sonia's shoulders jerked with a tremor.
A sharp jolt of pleasure raced up her spine. Inside the bra cups, Sonia's nipples stood stiffly erect and peaked, even though no one's hands had touched them.
With nothing but a thin dress shirt thrown over that, Sonia staggered toward the front door.
If Luce hadn't come looking for her. If there had been no external stimulus, Sonia might well have remained buried in the role of "Obscene Drone Sonia" until the next morning — or even longer.
It was entirely possible that what began as simple roleplay would have progressed into a full-scale process of mental remodeling and brainwashing by the machine.
Sonia herself had no awareness of that danger whatsoever. She was simply reeling from the residual pleasure her body still remembered.
"I'm really coming out!"
"Take your time! No rush, Sonya!"
With a creak, the front door opened, and the first thing that caught the eye was a head of vibrant teal-green hair.
It was the energetic, healthy-looking girl — the adventurer Luce. As the leader of her own party, Luce spent most of her time far from Sky City, in dungeons or monster-infested regions.
After returning from long expeditions, she would take a few days of blissful rest, which was why Sonia had been seeing her face more often lately.
"I didn't come too late, did I? Were you sleep…ing…? Were you asleep? Then I'm really… sorry…"
Seeing Sonia's disheveled hair and outfit that was practically sleepwear, Luce trailed off apologetically.
Especially after the recent incident involving the Knight from Luce's party defaulting on her debts, Luce had grown even more cautious about asking Sonia for anything.
"Well… it works out for both of us, so don't worry about it. Luce!"
Sonia beamed, easing Luce's burden. When Luce hesitated, Sonia was the one who pressed her first.
It's not like Luce did anything wrong, right? Just hand it over already!
Encouraged by those words, Luce carefully set the enormous moving box she had been carrying down on Sonia's living room floor.
"Here's one. And more. The porters loaded me up pretty good this time. You know. That thing. Like last time…? I deliberately brought the stuff that looks like a lot of volume instead of the appraised ones… Anyway, I'm counting on you, Sonya!"
The place Luce mentioned — Alubi Dungeon — was a fairly well-known location among Sky City's adventurers and heroes.
The standard difficulty was easy enough that even ordinary porters could clear it if they geared up properly, but using the rare transit passes that occasionally turned up allowed even veteran adventurers to challenge a high-difficulty dungeon that would satisfy them.
Naturally, the area around the dungeon had become a hotspot thronged with people looking to recruit new party members or trade loot.
When a dungeon run ended and the spoils were divided, most adventurers grabbed the already-appraised items of confirmed value or the rare-grade pieces first.
Luce was a little different. When settling accounts with her party members and the porters, she would deliberately choose the unappraised junk and broken equipment as her own share.
She had filled two entire moving boxes with the stuff and brought it to Sonia.
She knew from experience that rather than clumsily trying to sell it at the market and getting scammed, it was far more profitable to leave it with Sonia, who had a knack for machine repair and appraisal.
"So, is here okay?"
"H-how on earth did you carry two of these…? Just leave them there for now. No rush, right?"
At Sonia's question, Luce nodded vigorously. Hearing Sonia say she would check through them slowly as a side job whenever she had free time, Luce apologized once more about the Knight incident.
Of course, neither of them knew that the person who actually ought to be apologizing was, at that very moment, quite likely clutching the cash she'd received for the loot at a brothel run by succubi, preparing for a sweet evening with the small, adorable little succubi.
"…Then I'll see you next time. Sonya! This time I'm going really, really far! It's not a dungeon — this time it's disaster-site security work. But hey, when Sky City comes looking for the great Luce, what can you do! The paper…? The contract said something-something about magical girls who raided a villain organization… Anyway, I'll be back safe~"
"Haa… just don't get hurt. Luce."
After a few more parting words, Luce left with a spring in her step. In the living room, only the two enormous moving boxes she had left behind sat forlornly on the floor.
Inside the boxes, everything from rusted blades to cheap rings and necklaces faintly tinged with magic was jumbled together in a chaotic mess.
And then — a glimmer. Something among the junk in the box gave off a faint light.
It was an old, worn medal necklace engraved with a cute little pony.
Until now it had been treated as nothing more than a lump of scrap metal, passing through the hands of other adventurers — yet the moment it entered Sonia's home, it began to emit a soft glow, as if some dormant magic had awakened.
Perhaps this was the kind of fateful encounter that only happened in novels — a once-in-a-lifetime power-up event that had come to D-class hero Sonia.
"Haa… from morning till night… all day long… so basically… I just spent the whole day on lewd masturbation… right…? Thinking about how I did nothing but masturbate all day makes me feel weird… I should sleep…"
Sonia didn't notice that miraculous light at all. Her mind was completely filled with the lingering afterimages of the dense, heated hours she had spent in virtual reality.
Having decided to leave today's fatigue for tomorrow's self to deal with, the D-class hero of Sky City made sure to lock the balcony window tightly — then burrowed straight into bed and sank into a deep sleep.