Save the World with Eroge Skills
Save the World with Eroge Skills
[Skill Body Modification activated!]
Along with the notice window appearing, my body began to appear before my eyes like a 3D model.
The very familiar UI, the model layout, and everything else looked exactly like a character customization window.
After confirming that the parts I touched in the window changed exactly in tandem, I closed the window.
Good.
Body Modification worked without a hitch.
Then it was time to check the other skills too.
Let's see, Sensitivity 3000x...
If I cast that on myself, I'd probably die of shock just from breathing.
Since I wasn't a Great Demon-level being, my chance of dying was 100%.
So I'd leave that one alone.
Absolute Hypnosis was also a bit tricky to test right this moment.
It was only meaningful if I cast it on someone besides myself, but there was nobody around me right now I could use it on.
So the next skill I tried out was Time Stop.
Time Stop.
The notoriously risqué and lewd skill often seen in ero-games.
Stopping time, moving around all by myself, and then... well... you know?
If this one worked, it would be beyond broken!
What was its actual performance like?
[Skill Time Stop activated!]
The skill activated, and the next moment.
The entire world fell silent.
A complete stillness. Not even the tiniest noise reached me.
I looked at the pendulum clock hanging on the wall, and the second hand had stopped dead in place as if nailed there, completely motionless.
Seeing that, I burst out laughing.
Time really stopped!
If I could move all by myself in this state, now—!
Now...
Wait a moment.
I couldn't move either, could I?
What do I even...
What kind of crappy...
Ah, you son of a bitch.
What the hell am I supposed to do if it stops me too?!
For a long while I struggled, researching a way to move only myself inside the stopped time. And the result was:
I realized that if I canceled the time stop on the space in the direction I wanted to go, I could move.
Cancel the time stop, take one step.
Then recast the time stop on the space I left behind where I'd canceled it.
Cancel and cast.
Cancel and cast.
By repeating that process, it began to resemble the ability from the ero-game skills I knew.
But this...
This was real bullshit.
The mental energy drain was enormous.
I had only taken one loop around the road in front of the restaurant, and my mental energy was already completely exhausted, leaving me feeling extreme fatigue.
[Insufficient mental energy. Unable to maintain skill beyond this point!]
With the Status Window's kind explanation, the Time Stop was forcibly released.
My clothes, already soaked with sweat from the ominous prophecy, got even more damp because of the insane mental energy drain.
Sprawled out on the bed, I caught my breath roughly and wiped the sweat from my face.
What kind of Time Stop is this?!
Shouldn't it just be that when you activate the skill, everyone else stops and I'm the only one who can move around?
What the hell was with these restrictions, seriously?
Was it because it would be too broken if I could spam it freely like in the ero-game, so they did a balance patch on it?
I didn't know.
Anyway, apart from Body Modification, all the other skills were a little tricky to use effectively.
Still, it was a relief that Body Modification, which I considered the most essential, seemed freely usable without any particular burden.
Lying on the bed, I threw off my sweat-soaked top and started tearing my hair out again.
Okay.
Now that I'd confirmed the skills worked properly.
Their characteristics, their restrictions...
Now I had to figure out how to find the four-armed witch with these skills.
And this was the most completely shitty part.
Obviously, using these to create lewd situations with women wouldn't be difficult.
But I had to find and treat a witch with the power to destroy the world?
That was hard.
I couldn't even get a grasp on where the hell to start.
I racked my brain desperately.
Since I had Absolute Hypnosis, how about finding someone likely to know about the witch, hypnotizing them, and making them spill all the info they knew?
...That'd probably end badly.
First, the likelihood that the witch was thoroughly hiding her appearance was extremely high.
If she was a witch powerful enough to destroy not just the empire but the entire continent, she'd be a witch of immensely formidable skill.
But if a witch like that had been openly revealing her four arms and hideous left face all along, rumors probably would have spread long ago.
Because her appearance was that grotesque.
Yet in the 20 years I'd lived in the Arkal Empire, I'd never once heard about a highly skilled witch with multiple eyeballs and four arms.
Therefore, she was definitely hiding it.
And she'd be hiding it extremely well.
What did that mean?
Suppose through some means I went and found the head of an information guild, a Magic Tower Master, or some highly experienced witch or mage and cast hypnosis on them.
Even if I told them to spill everything about a four-armed witch, there was a high chance those people genuinely wouldn't know and wouldn't be able to answer.
No matter how powerful the hypnosis was, it couldn't make someone suddenly know information that wasn't truly in their memories, right?
On top of that, mages and witches were people who held fairly high status within the empire, and the head of an information guild meant a figure from the underworld—how was I going to handle the aftermath of casting hypnosis on people like that?
The risk was enormously massive, but it was a method that made obtaining the outcome I wanted difficult.
So this was a pass.
I also thought about the possibility of the witch being a black mage, but no matter how much I thought about it, that likelihood was too low.
Four arms, multiple eyeballs, a black mage witch capable of single-handedly destroying the empire?
There was no way she wouldn't be notorious.
If I hadn't heard of her, then she wasn't a black mage.
If she wasn't a black mage either, there were two possibilities.
Either she was a witch conducting research while hiding her identity tightly within the Magic Tower.
Or it was a future where a witch who'd been quietly secluded in some hard-to-find forest was discovered, persecuted by everyone, became twisted, and went on a rampage...
Where the hell was I supposed to find a witch like that?
A highly skilled witch determined to stay hidden—how the hell was I supposed to find her with nothing but ero-game skills?!
I was going crazy.
Seriously going insane.
Please.
You dumb-ass rock head.
Anything, please, just one good idea...
Spit out one idea.
The moment I was agonizing and whacking my head.
With a flash, one idea occurred to me.
Did I necessarily have to find the witch myself?
Couldn't I just make the witch come find me?
I'd spread rumors!!
I had the Body Modification skill, didn't I?
Instead of using it in a racy way, I could use it to heal people, right?
I could heal sick people's illnesses, and for people with physical defects I could make their bodies grow anew!!
If I became rumored to be that kind of incredible healer, wasn't there a chance the witch would come to find me without me needing to search for her?
Even in a half-crazed state, if she was asking whether she was ugly, that meant she had a deep trauma about her appearance.
Then wouldn't she try to grasp at even a straw?
The capital.
Go to the capital, where rumors could instantly spread nationwide, and do healing work!
If I did healing work and became rumored as an incredible healer, the witch hiding somewhere would definitely hear about me too.
Then she'd either secretly come to find me, or write and send a letter, or try some sort of contact.
Then I'd gladly accept, go to her, cure her, and the world-destruction event would end!
Of course.
Things might not go as I predicted.
No.
Rather, the chances of it going wrong were even higher.
First, if the witch I was looking for was a secluded one, the chance she wouldn't hear my rumors was greater.
And on top of that, even if she did hear the rumors, her appearance wasn't just ordinarily grotesque—would she trust me enough to seek me out?
That was also doubtful.
And I also had to consider this.
If some nobody suddenly showed up healing people with unheard-of abilities...
Would the world really treat him favorably?
Of course, most of the people I healed would view me favorably, but not everyone would.
There'd definitely be people trying to raise suspicions, and a high chance some would wonder about the origin of my abilities.
It seemed like I needed some kind of excuse to use as a shield when I got caught by people like that...
Wait a moment.
Couldn't I just say I was a saint?
How many saint stories had I heard that started with: One day, an ordinary saint, saintess, or hero living without knowing anything was chosen by a god?
Even within the empire there were many orders, so the stories were all different depending on the order.
This was it!
'One day I suddenly went to sleep and woke up, and someone issued me a strong command to heal people.'
If I said it like that, there was a high chance it would work on the people suspecting me, wondering where the hell my abilities came from.
The principle of the healing made no sense?
It didn't matter.
Because originally, saints were all nobodies who performed miracles generally impossible to understand!!
Of course, the crucial thing here was that I'd pose as a saint, but I absolutely must not get elevated as a saint of any specific religious order.
Why?
Because I had no faith.
Strangers might call me 'Saint' this and 'Saint' that, but if genuine believers saw me, there was a high chance I'd be exposed.
On top of that, I didn't have stigmata like all the saints from every saint legend I'd ever heard about.
Of course, I could just create stigmata with Body Modification, but...
The decisive factor was that I had no holy power.
A bastard who couldn't use holy power, had no faith, and just barely had a stigma?
That was heresy.
100% heresy ending at the stake.
So I absolutely shouldn't make any stigmata.
I'd just be vague, not specify which order's saint I was, do healing work until the witch came to find me and I cured her, then read the room and bolt!!
Originally, most saint legends of various orders ended exactly like that too.
After imparting teachings to the people, the saint, saintess, or hero returned to the god's embrace and disappeared. And that was the end.
I just had to disappear in the exact same way!
Then I wouldn't ever face charges of having pretended to be a saint using ero-game skills!
...Shit.
Even though it was my own plan, it was truly a complete and utter mess.
It was such a mess that even I found myself doubting whether the chance of success existed at all.
But even though the chance of success was definitely slim, I still had no choice but to try.
Saving the world with ero-game abilities.
Because it was the only method I could devise to achieve this absurd goal.
While I was agonizing like that.
"Amael! Wake up! Let's get ready to open!!"
The boss's voice rang out.
While I was experimenting with skills and agonizing over this and that, the entire night had passed.
I hadn't slept properly and had consumed a fair amount of mental energy using Time Stop, so I was endlessly tired, but there wasn't a moment to waste.
"Boss!!"
"You're unusually energetic today! Yeah! What is it!"
I smiled back at the boss, who was grinning at me warmly.
Boss.
I was truly sorry.
"I quit as of today!! I'm sorry!!"
I bent my waist at a perfect ninety degrees, hoping desperately not to get hit, and yelled those words.
Of course, I did get smacked once.
Fortunately, maybe because my work hadn't been bad up until then, they settled my wages, and we parted on decent terms.
I sprinted straight to the train station from there, and with the money I'd saved up working at the restaurant, I bought a ticket for the fastest train bound for the capital, Mars, and started heading up to the capital.
Since it was a situation of charging toward an uncertain future holding a half-baked plan, the anxiety was heavy, but because I was so exhausted, I managed to fall asleep not long after.
And when I woke up again.
I had arrived in Mars City, the capital of the Arkal Empire.