A Cowardly Method, but There's No Choice
It wasn't quite like the first day, but he got through the massage in one piece all the same, and the next day arrived.
There should have been a schedule. A sudden meeting canceled every shoot on it, and Arang was left alone in the house. She passed the morning no differently than any other—conversation, a finished meal, getting ready—and then she went out. The only change was the way she kept rubbing at herself. Squirming might have been the better word.
Haah... Why am I still working, even after ending up in this world?
When a Hero leaves for a personal meeting and abandons her Sidekick, what is the Sidekick supposed to do? Most ordinary people would picture him resting, or finally having a little time to himself. They would be wrong. A Sidekick exists to support a Hero, which means he has to be good at everything, from every angle. He is expected to push his abilities out into one great hexagon of stats; the bare minimum even to stand at the starting line is a small hexagon.
That was why anyone who actually understood the workload never applied in the first place. Pay rose or fell with whichever Hero you were assigned, and if the work was grueling on top of that, who would step forward of their own accord?
Someone like me is the odd case.
Arang opened his laptop and, in the gaps between tasks, memorized the materials the Association had handed him. Most of it concerned major Heroes, Villains, Kaijin, or powers that stood outside the established order. This world was not made of Heroes, Villains, and Kaijin alone. There were also the Unknown—those who had inherited strength and knowledge from other dimensions.
By what path, and by what means, anyone had come to obtain otherworldly power had never been made public. That information was kept in absolute secrecy, and even the Hero Association knew almost nothing.
I do, though.
Having played the game, he knew perfectly well how the otherworldly power in the hands of the Unknown had crossed over to Earth. He had not the slightest intention of telling the Association or the government.
I couldn't explain where the information came from. More than that, it wasn't something a mere Sidekick could possibly know.
He'd be lucky if they didn't kill him, or turn him into a living experiment.
The keys kept clattering. There were documents to process, and plenty of work still waiting after them.
I can't hack, so I'll just have to gather information like my life depends on it and get ready. Scrape together everything I know. Build connections while I'm at it...
This game had endings. Split between a bad ending and a happy one, they were simple, in the way of an adult game: annihilation at the hands of the Outer Gods descending from the sky in some future yet to come. Stop it, and you reached the happy ending. Fail, and you reached the bad one. Of course, now that he knew the world inside the game had been made by a goddess, he couldn't be sure things would follow the original scenario. She wouldn't want him dead.
For now, I do what I can.
With so little life left to him, training Angel came first.
She said the house would be empty until tomorrow afternoon anyway... I should get ready.
Finished with the paperwork, Arang closed the laptop, rose, and prepared to leave.
Once he was dressed, Arang headed straight for the neglected outskirts of Neo City. The farther in you went, the better the facilities; the farther out, the worse they became. Neo City was simply too vast to lay infrastructure across its whole span, and the arrangement also steered wealth toward those who held power. A tangle of reasons had turned the city into a strange place where paradise and hell sat side by side.
But Arang knew the truth of it. Even the rundown outer districts were living in their own way. Deeper into the slums, an old temple appeared, so long abandoned it looked as though not a soul could be living there.
They're getting by in their own way, too.
The neglected had resolved to build a paradise for the neglected. He stepped into the largest building, and inside stood something like a ticket booth. He went up and rapped the glass. A face emerged from within—an old man, skin deeply wrinkled.
"Password... required... to enter..."
He could barely get the words out, forcing the conversation along in broken pieces. Arang looked at him as if this were nothing new, and quietly recited the line.
"The heart of the poor shall be emptier than all things."
The old man closed his eyes and nodded. The booth collapsed into glittering dust and vanished, and a passage leading underground opened in its place. Arang didn't hesitate. He took the stairs straight down.
Good thing I remembered the password.
Back when he had played as the protagonist, he had come here often in the early game, hunting useful goods at cheap prices. Ability users appeared even in the neglected outskirts. They had formed organizations of their own and built a facility spanning the whole outer district—not on the surface, but below it.
At the end of the long descent stood a massive iron door. He opened it, stepped through, and another city filled his eyes.
Pantera... Seeing in person what I only ever knew as a game screen hits differently.
The organizations that had made the place called it Pantera. The name didn't mean anything in particular. They had simply invented something that sounded plausible and stuck it on. In a way, a meaningless name suited them perfectly.
He entered the underground city in earnest. Shops and street stalls crowded the roads, and here and there stood buildings raised for people to live in.
I don't need gear yet... I'll have to use a drug. Something like an aphrodisiac.
Lustful Touch would be cutting it too close. This was a moment to borrow the power of medicine. He hated the method. He was a man who had clung to pure love—who liked learning another person gently and warmly, stacking trust and affection one layer at a time. Even so, he had surrendered before death. How could he die, after a life he had finally gotten hold of? Forced on him or not, unwanted or not, once a new life was in his fist he didn't want to let it go. The human heart was a shamelessly fickle thing.
Let's see... it should be around here somewhere.
A fair way in, Arang looked around. When he had played, the shop where he often bought potions had been in this area.
Ah. Here.
After glancing about for a while, he found a place that looked like a small general store. To the eye it was an utterly ordinary one. The door opened with a homey little chime. The shelves held potions of every color, and the display cases showed liquors that looked expensive at a glance. Antiques turned up often enough, and, incongruously, a glass chandelier hung from the ceiling.
"Oh. A customer, after so long."
Behind the counter, a distinguished, slender middle-aged man with a white beard was polishing a bottle. He smiled and asked, all courtesy.
"Welcome to Clint's General Store, where we have everything except what we don't. My name is Arengel. I have the honor of serving as this shop's proprietor."
Clint's General Store. A shop known only to those who knew, said to deal in the widest variety of goods in the underworld. No one could say whose backing he kept, but anyone could tell he was no ordinary man.
"Good to meet you. I came to buy an aphrodisiac—something to induce heat. May I see the goods?"
Arang didn't drag it out. He went straight to the point. He had come to buy a drug, and once he had it he would leave. There was still more to prepare.
"Hmm. That's what you're after. You must work professionally in that line?"
Arengel asked it without losing his smile.
That line...
Close enough. He could roughly guess what the man meant. Among Villains and Kaijin, there were those who trained beautiful women, broke them to the bit, and sold them off. A Villain famous for exactly that existed, so of course Arengel would assume he worked in the same field.
He thinks I'm a Villain, or a Kaijin.
He didn't have to worry about being reported. He still hated strange misunderstandings piling up.
"Set your mind at ease. In the underground city, secrets are kept. I have no intention of running my mouth anywhere."
He reassured Arang as if he could see every thought in his head.
"Do nothing that loses trust. That is my motto."
Right. Arengel is that sort of man.
A merchant who kept a merchant's duty and his own convictions. He was clearly different from the others.
"Then I'll trust you. May I see the goods first?"
"By all means. As it happens, new stock has just come in."
With that, he drew a box from beneath the counter. Glass bottles filled it, potions of several colors—red, purple, yellow, orange, and white. Five in all, gleaming.
"Each potion differs in effect and strength. They're new products made by the Plague Doctor, so you may trust them."
"The Plague Doctor..."
The Plague Doctor was an alchemist registered as an A-Rank Villain. Her work had mainly been spreading plague, but the Hero side had plenty of people like her and better, so every attempt to cause trouble had ended in failure. After that she was said to have turned her ambitions toward other fields, though the game had never shown that far.
So she pivoted toward aphrodisiacs...
Either way, the drugs came from an outstanding alchemist. The effect would be certain. Only one thing mattered now.
"Are there side effects?"
"There is one... though it isn't terribly large."
"...What is it?"
The drug couldn't carry a major side effect. His goal was to train a woman and bring her to submit, not to ruin her.
"You might call it an extension of the aphrodisiac's own effect... Even after the drug wears off, the body grows more sensitive."
"...The body grows more sensitive?"
Wasn't that a rather large side effect? If sensitive applied to pain and everything else, it could be dangerous. When his expression turned a little grave, Arengel waved it off.
"Ah—the sensitivity is limited to pleasure and sexual acts, so you needn't worry overmuch."
"Ah. Then that's a relief."
Fortunately(?), the heightened sensitivity was sexual only.
Even better. If it's only that, I can keep the conquest going easily even after the drugs run out.
The decision came easily.
"I'll buy them now. How much?"
"Three million won for the lot."
"I'll pay by card. Ah—and could you change the record of the charge?"
"...The payment record? It can be done, but..."
"Then please list it as beauty supplies."
Arang drew a blue card from his clothes at once. His salary would take time to come in, and Yuyeong had handed him the card so he could buy whatever he needed in the meantime. A charge from some unidentifiable general store could not be left on the statement. Worse, if the goods were something strange like an aphrodisiac, he would be caught with no way out and stripped of his Sidekick qualification.
The reader gave a soft chirp.
"Payment is complete."
"Thank you. If I need anything else, I'll come again."
"You are welcome anytime. I hope you obtain what you desire."
Arengel saw him off with a smile to the very end. Arang nodded, left a farewell, and stepped out of the shop. He had bought what he meant to use. All that remained was to continue the training. He couldn't know when she would fall, but if this brought the end even a little sooner, that was enough.