Succubus Kim Rina
Ogre.
A three-meter mountain of pure muscle.
Strength to match that bulk, of course—plus speed that had no business belonging to a body that size, and intelligence far higher than anyone would ever expect from something so massive.
The nickname “King of the Forest” suited it perfectly. The ultimate hunter.
Officially classified as an A-class monster, but in truth it sat right on the edge of S-class.
And yet, when it came to what it actually dropped, the thing was pure garbage.
The Magic Stones harvested from ogres were lower quality than those from any other A-class monster. Its hide and bones ranked a couple of grades below those of an A-class Drake. The odds of it carrying an artifact were slim. Its only clothing was tattered leather scraps, and its weapon was almost always just a wooden club.
There used to be a rumor that an ogre’s manhood was good for virility, but that had long since been proven false.
That was why Gates with ogres in them were never popular.
For Keepers, it was an incredibly frustrating situation. You got excited at first because an A-class monster had shown up—only for it to turn out to be useless trash. Giving someone hope and then snatching it away is the worst thing in the world.
Anyway, to deal with that ogre, GGC had mobilized every single Keeper they had. It was a monster you simply couldn’t take down any other way.
“Does Unnie really need to come in with us?”
Nayeon’s voice drifted from inside the tent. She must have been helping Nari set hers up. I’d been thinking the exact same thing, so I pricked up my ears.
Did the Guild Master really need to enter the Gate at all? Soyeon had already been left behind because she was too weak.
“Everyone else is working hard. I can’t just sit this one out.”
“But you’re only going to stay at the base camp anyway.”
Nayeon’s blunt honesty made me flinch even though I was only eavesdropping. It was true, but it was the kind of thing you could only say to your own sister.
“I still have to be here. Even if I’m only in the rear, that’s my job.”
The Guild Master’s tone was firm. She wouldn’t be much help in actual combat, but the feeling of being inside a Gate versus outside one was completely different. Somehow, just being present inside the Gate really did feel like part of a Guild Master’s duty. Ideally she’d stand on the front line with everyone else, but that was honestly impossible.
“…Okay. I was just worried you might end up like me.”
“That won’t happen. The others will protect me.”
Her voice carried absolute trust in her crew. I edged a little closer and caught sight of Nayeon’s back and the Guild Master’s face. Just like her voice, her expression was full of quiet certainty.
I almost felt moved.
Then Park Changsik’s case flashed through my mind. After going through something like that, could she really trust her crew a hundred percent? I didn’t think I could. So was this just an act?
…Even if it was an act, I still had to let myself be moved. If she was putting on a performance, the least I could do was play along.
“Alright. Don’t worry. I’ll protect you no matter what.”
Nayeon seemed just as moved as I was. She looked ready to throw her life away for her sister. Of course, she’d probably looked that way even before the touching moment.
“Thank you, Nayeon.”
The Guild Master smiled—a soft, genuine smile she only ever showed her little sister. Watching the twin sisters in secret, I found a fatherly smile spreading across my own face without meaning to. For a moment it didn’t even feel like we were inside a Gate where ogres roamed.
To keep them from realizing I’d been spying, I carefully backed away, then walked forward again making deliberate noise.
“Guild Master? It’s Lee Jungmin.”
“What is it?”
Her voice was as calm as ever. I’d honestly expected her to look flustered, but her face had already returned to its usual poker face.
“Meals are ready. Please come eat.”
“Food? What’s on the menu?”
“Steak.”
“Oh, steak!”
Nayeon’s eyes sparkled. On the first meal of a Gate expedition, people usually ate well. You tended to use up the perishable food first, and fresh ingredients always tasted better. Steak was a particular favorite among Keepers—even an amateur could get pretty close to restaurant quality.
“Shall we go, then?”
I liked steak best of all myself. Eating a steak grilled right there in the middle of a dense forest was pure bliss.
The three of us headed for the dining area. “Headed” was a generous word—it was maybe ten steps. Everyone sat down at the tables and received their portion of steak… and only then did I notice someone was missing.
GGC’s full crew plus the owner of the Ogre Gate made twenty-seven people who’d entered. Right now there were only twenty-six.
“I don’t see Han Sarang.”
“I’ll go check her tent.”
One of the crew members headed for the tent in the corner. A moment later Han Sarang came running over, face flushed red.
“I’m so sorry. I suddenly fell asleep… I’m really sorry.”
“As long as nothing’s wrong, it’s fine. Let’s eat together.”
With Nari’s words, we all began our first meal of the expedition.
“I don’t really remember either.”
“I just… fell asleep.”
Han Sarang spent the entire meal explaining why she’d been late. Aside from that, it was a delicious meal. The only flaw was that it had gone a little cold.
Oh, and one more strange thing: Elena kept staring holes through Han Sarang. When I asked her what was wrong, she dodged the question completely.
“No one following me. Good.”
Kim Rina cut through the forest. She had been hiding inside Han Sarang’s mind and had just slipped free. After putting Han Sarang to sleep with a sedative and casting a spell to blur the presence of mana around her, she had stepped out into the open.
She had been carefully harvesting Han Sarang’s lust since the day before, so when she left she was able to suppress most of it. Even so, a fair amount of fluid still leaked from Han Sarang’s body. On a normal day it would have been a full fountain, so this was relatively little—but the wetness alone was enough for anyone sharp to notice. Especially a certain blonde woman who always walked around buried in a strange robe; she would have caught the scent for sure.
And yet no one was chasing Kim Rina.
That sex-crazed bitch must think everyone else is permanently in heat like her. Tsk tsk. This is why people need to stay calm.
Of course, considering that Kim Rina herself was more devoted to lust than anyone alive, she was also the reigning champion of double standards.
They said they were hunting ogres…
Right on cue, an ogre appeared in front of her, mid-meal. It was eating a massive wolf. The ogre never noticed her approach. Of course it didn’t—she was currently using lust as a resource to power a presence-reduction spell. With ordinary magic the ogre would have sensed her already. Hell, a “real” ogre from outside the Gates would have noticed even with lust-based magic. But the half-baked ogres that spawned inside Gates had no concept of “lust,” so they could never detect it.
In that sense, Kim Rina was nearly omnipotent against Gate-born creatures.
“Die.”
She stretched out her hand. Pink spikes shot straight at the ogre’s head. From the ogre’s perspective the spikes appeared right in front of its face—there was no time to dodge.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud.
The ogre’s skull turned to pulp. She then pressed her palm to the ground and poured mana into it.
Sssssss…
The earth went soft like soup, and the ogre began to sink. Once it had completely disappeared, she lifted her hand and the ground returned to normal.
“…That part’s a little rough.”
The lust she’d spent killing the ogre would recover soon enough. The mana she’d burned on the cleanup, though, would take much longer. At this rate, five a day was her limit.
“That might be enough, though…?”
Kim Rina asked her lust-fueled mana where the other ogres were. It was similar to receiving a divine oracle. Lust fundamentally held high authority over mana—in other words, lust itself could be considered a kind of divinity.
Some people had noticed that and begun gathering lust, trying to imitate divinity so they could claim higher authority over mana. Ultimately, they were trying to become gods.
That was how the beings called demons were born—those who had acquired high authority over mana through pseudo-divinity. People called them demons. Demons collected all sorts of resources besides lust. The most famous were the Seven Deadly Sins—Pride, Greed, Envy, Wrath, Lust, Gluttony, and Sloth—but many other emotions and concepts had been used to mimic divinity.
Succubus Kim Rina was a demon who used lust. She had never reached true godhood, but in terms of divinity she held roughly a rank of five. So mana gave her fairly solid information. She could tell exactly which direction and how far away the ogres were. As solitary wolf-type predators, their numbers were lower than expected.
“Three days should be enough to clean them up.”
Kim Rina sprinted toward the nearest ogre.
“That way, I think…?”
There was no confidence in my voice. Normally when you received an oracle there was a clear “this is it” feeling. Right now everything felt hazy. I’d never met an ogre before, so I’d borrowed Keira’s memories, but even then the oracle stayed vague.
“(Just go for now. Unclear oracles are normal. Besides, creatures inside Gates are a little different from those outside.)”
“Really? First I’ve heard of that.”
Garam questioned Elena. If Garam didn’t know, it was probably something no one on Earth knew.
“(Creatures inside Gates don’t reproduce.)”
“…Huh?”
Garam’s face lit up with sudden realization—then he hurriedly argued back.
“Wait, ogres definitely have dicks. There was even a craze for a while because people thought they were good for virility!”
“(Well… the equipment is certainly installed and ready for use. But have you ever actually seen one use it?)”
“Th-that’s… no.”
Garam finally conceded. Elena’s world, Keruon, had been dealing with Gates for well over a hundred years. When someone from a world like that spoke, what could Garam really say?
“(So to receive a proper oracle, you first have to find an ogre. And you can’t treat monsters from different Gates as identical, so using an ogre you’ve seen in another Gate to locate one here is hard. You’ll keep getting vague oracles like this.)”
“…Pretty unfriendly for something called an ‘oracle.’”
When it had pointed me straight at the terrorists, it had felt more broken than any other ability. Elena smiled at my grumbling. Right now we were Ogre Search Team One—just me, Keira, Elena, and Garam. So I could freely look at her pretty face with the hood of her robe pushed back.
“(Oracles are always like that. It’s hard for mortal humans to grasp Ru’s high and deep will. Of course, in this case we should probably just say your divinity is too low, Jungmin.)”
“Would the original Elena be able to do it?”
“(Me…? Hmm… I think I could?)”
Wow. Oracles really were as broken as I’d first thought. From now on my goal should be raising the proficiency of my Summoning Gate. That way Elena would be able to handle the +4 divinity she received from Ru. If she could freely use divinity, oracles alone would make a lot of things easier.
But deciding something and actually doing it were two different matters. I still didn’t know the cooldown on the Summoning Gate that called otherworlders, and the Gate that connected to other worlds could only be opened once a day. Proficiency only rose with use, so at this rate who knew when it would improve. The one silver lining was that I could open Gates freely even while inside a Gate.
Well, other people could open Gates freely inside Gates too. The problem was that if you opened a Gate inside a Gate and crossed into another dimension, the place you returned to could get messy, so most people just didn’t do it.
“That way, right? Let’s go. I’ll handle the fine details.”
Keira strode off in the direction I’d pointed. Reliable as always. My oracle was fuzzy, but her magic?
“Alright. Let’s move.”
At that moment I still believed without a shred of doubt that we would find the ogres quickly and leave the Gate. Even if not, I never imagined it would take a full week.