Eroded Memories of a Girl (2)

I came to with a start, as if waking from a dreamless sleep. A strange sense of unease followed, like a chunk of my memory had been sliced away. The last thing I remembered was being attacked by the creature from the glass jar and falling over.

‘Ugh… I can’t… breathe…’

It was only natural. A sticky, viscous slime covered my entire face. But the sight of the laboratory visible through the slime’s transparent protoplasm was anything but ordinary. It was a complete disaster, nothing like the scene I remembered last.

My clothes were in utter disarray. My robe had been half torn off, one strap of my camisole had slipped down my shoulder, and the hem of the camisole was completely flipped up, exposing my bare sex since I wasn’t wearing any underwear.

Even in my panic, I used what little oxygen remained to fuel my brain and think quickly. That was when I realized it.

I wasn’t right after being attacked by the creature.

I must have… rewound time right before I suffocated to death. Without using Kaira’s Secret Diary.

There wouldn’t have been time to cast Kaira’s Secret Diary while rewinding, and even if I had, I’d just need to rewind again in a few seconds, making it pointless.

Only then did I notice the wetness between my legs. I tilted my slime-covered face downward and looked at the space between my thighs. The entire laboratory floor near my legs was soaked with a yellowish, sticky fluid.

I felt sorry for Naixon. I had ruined his precious laboratory.

There was no need to wonder what had happened. Pathetic as I was, I must have surrendered to the despair of death and climaxed. With a completely ruined, disheveled expression on my face.

The thick puddle of urine and love juices soaking the floor couldn’t have come from just one or two orgasms. How many times had I come?

It meant that all the previous versions of “me” who had lost their memories after rewinding time had each succumbed to the pleasure of falling into death’s abyss.

No matter how many times I rewound time, they must have kept climaxing in ecstasy, spraying piss everywhere and masturbating furiously. That was the kind of person I was now.

Of course, I probably rewound to a point where I still had some sanity and tried to find a way out at first. But the fact that I failed to remove this creature from my face despite repeated attempts meant something.

The thought of rewinding the slime’s time to erase it crossed my mind, but the previous “me’s” would surely have thought of that too.

The strange powder dried and crusted on my palm—despite not enough time having passed for it to fully dry—must have been the result of those earlier attempts.

A being that couldn’t be erased by rewinding time.

Come to think of it, something like this had happened once before. After I sold my body to the soldiers guarding the road to my hometown in an alley outside the plague-ridden village.

I definitely felt time rewind, but I couldn’t restore my hometown to its former state.

‘Now that I think about it, when I revived those merchants I was escorting… I deliberately attached myself to them before rewinding.’

The limits of the ability I had used so casually since my university days finally became clear in this final moment when I felt like I was about to suffocate and die.

It was a matter of perception. I could only rewind the time of something I truly believed was a single mass, a single entity.

That was why I couldn’t rewind something as vague as “hometown.” At that moment, all my eyes could see was a filthy alley. Unless I had sent up a drone to view the entire village from above.

This wriggling creature was the same. My brain simply couldn’t perceive this thing—covering my head, melting and scattering like water when touched—as “one single thing.”

‘This really is the worst possible opponent…’

Before I suffocated to death, I desperately manifested Kaira’s Secret Diary to remember this fact, then rewound my body’s time.

Because I had rewound in such a hurry, I didn’t even have time to taste the pleasure of dying.

The laboratory was in a completely different state of chaos than right after the attack. My clothes and the floor were soaked through. And above all… the preserved memory inside Kaira’s Secret Diary told me everything immediately.

I had rewound my body’s time again and again—perhaps dozens of times—just to avoid suffocating to death.

Thanks to the preserved memory, I felt a little calmer now. If I just sat here helplessly and felt like I was about to suffocate, I could simply rewind time and come back to life. As many times as it took. Until Naixon found ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me.

Thinking that way made me feel at ease.

I could treat it like breath-holding training. Hold my breath until it became ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠unbearable, then rewind time. That was all. Thanks to the preserved memory, I wouldn’t panic or have to reassess the situation every time. It wouldn’t be difficult at all.

…Or so I thought. As if anything would ever go my way.

‘Wh-what… is this…?’

The inside of the creature was changing.

Some of the parts touching my face had begun to violently caress it.

It forced my mouth open and tried to invade the inside, then extended pseudopod-like slime into my nostrils. Startled by the sudden change, I flailed my legs, trying to tear the creature off.

Of course, my hands couldn’t grasp it. Fortunately, the attempt to enter my mouth and nose soon stopped, but that couldn’t be all. Obviously. A thin pseudopod, like strands of the slime’s hair, touched my eyes, gently pushed against my eyeball, and slipped inside.

‘Ugh… huh?! W-wait, th-this is dangerous…’

An indescribably unpleasant sensation, as if someone had plucked out my eyeball and was licking the inside.

My eyes, which had never been violated even in the dungeons of Mittenburg, were being freely fondled by some unknown creature. The vision in the invaded eye distorted strangely.

If this slime applied just a little more pressure, my eye would pop right out.

‘Why is it doing this to me…?’

“Ugh, ugh, mmmgh…! Mmph…”

I felt something and let out a moan through my blocked nose and mouth.

The slime’s hair-like, thin mucus tentacle had reached the deepest part of my eye socket.

I had never studied anatomy, but it was probably where the optic nerve was. If this creature applied even a little force, I would go permanently blind.

It would heal if I rewound time, but the terror of having the inside of my body arbitrarily touched made it impossible to think so calmly.

‘Ah… ugh… ugh?! My ear? No, d-don’t, stooop…’

This time, something thin invaded my ear. Unlike the slight intrusion into my mouth and nose that had stopped, this pseudopod—or tentacle, whatever it was—stretched all the way to the end of my ear canal… and even deeper, to places where sensation should never be felt, spreading a sticky touch.

‘Hic?! N-no, no no no, th-that place, r-really… ah, ugh…’

Suddenly realizing what the tentacle was searching for, I thrashed my whole body in panic. The optic nerve at the back of the eyeball, the bundle of auditory nerves deep in the ear—at the end of both…

There were tiny openings that led directly to my brain.

‘Therefore, if it could directly affect the brain or spinal cord, wouldn’t it be able to control all reproductive behavior?’

Only now did I fully understand what Naixon had said. This creature… was a magical lifeform created to infiltrate the brain and take control of it.

‘N-no… no matter what, the brain, my brain… directly… this is really, truly dangerous…’

And then—

Something entered.

“Ugh?!?! Ugh, ugh… urgh?!?!”

The brain cannot feel sensation. But… even so, I knew. Something was digging through my brain.

A thread-thin tentacle, thoroughly, as if it had found a brand-new toy, inside my…

Hueh…? Ah? U-ugh, guh…? Ah…? Hehet?!

‘Wh-what…?’

My cognitive ability, my reason, thought itself, shook as if melting away.

Something ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had crawled around inside my body for a while, gnawing, stealing not only my body’s movements but my thoughts as well.

‘This is bad, this is really bad…’

And finally, I could breathe again.

“Haaah…”

It seemed the creature had consumed a large amount of its protoplasm to create the tentacle burrowing into my brain. The mucus blocking my mouth had disappeared.

Being freed from the mouth also meant I could make sounds.

I didn’t know if my voice would carry past the iron door, but I had to call Naixon somehow.

“?! ……?”

But no sound came out.

‘M-my voice…? Why won’t it come out…?’

No matter how many times I tried, it was the same. It was as if my throat, my entire vocal apparatus, no longer belonged to me. Then suddenly, a strange voice began to leak out.

“Eh, aeu? Uuh… Ah, heee…”

Stupid moans that couldn’t form meaning, and only faint, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠meaningless sounds too quiet to be heard outside, slipped thinly from my lips.

These weren’t moans I was making. At first I had tried to scream at the top of my lungs, then to cry out for help, but soon realized my vocal cords wouldn’t move at all and had stayed silent.

My body was slowly slipping out of my control.

Saliva drooled from my gaping mouth, soaking my half-removed camisole. My slackened lower body once again released a grand stream of urine.

“Hic?!”

Sometimes it even let out lewd cries, feeling pleasure on its own.

Once again, the space between my legs, my camisole, and my robe grew warm and wet.

I couldn’t tell whether the despair of having my body stolen was bringing self-destructive ecstasy to my masochistic self, or if the creature wriggling inside my head had touched various parts of my body and stimulated my pleasure center.

“Mmm… ngh…?! Hehe… Ah, ahaha♡ Nnghah… Haa, aha… Ugh?! Hoooo… Ngh, ugh…!!”

There was no way I couldn’t instinctively sense the danger of being endlessly forced into orgasm while my brain was being stirred.

I had to do something. I had to tear this thing off me right now…

I tried to rewind my body’s time once more but hesitated.

A thin something was densely embedded inside my brain, eroding it. The image of the Demon King’s soldier whose head had been severed by time itself flashed through my mind. Rewinding time recklessly in this state… would be dangerous.

My hands could still move. My mouth was open, even if I couldn’t control it properly. Right. Magic… I should try using magic. There had to be at least one spell I could use in a situation like this.

Yes, in a time like this, I—

I, me, I… I, I I I I I…

You, you, wh-who…?

Ahah, this body… feels, so, good…

Ah, no no no, n-nooo… Feels, weird… This, body, no, even my mind, being taken…

Taken…?

Is it… wrong to take it?

??

It’s good.

It feels,

so so so so

goooood… deheheheheheeeet…

Ehehe,

ahahahahahat…

It tickles,

it tickles,

it feels

good…

Brain, mel, melmelting, ting…

Good,

ahaha♡

Mmm…

I’ll give it to you…