The Con
The Arandel family was a territory ruled by a Succubus Lord who held the rank of countess.
Among her daughters, the eldest and the second were locked in bitter competition over the matter of succession.
The second daughter, desperate to distinguish herself in the interdimensional war of conquest, had overreached — and beyond a Gate, she had run straight into a band of Hunters.
And now she was their captive.
It had been a truly foolish act. Had she simply abandoned that last scrap of greed, the Hunters never would have taken her like this.
That foolish succubus currently locked in a quarantine cell of barely seven hundred square feet — that was me.
I was a little different from other succubi.
Whenever I crossed through a Gate on campaign and sifted through the memories inside human minds, reading the stories those humans carried, I found it endlessly entertaining. It felt as though I were reading each human's life like a book — the same sensation as losing myself in a novel.
And somewhere in those memories, I discovered something humans possessed that surpassed even the demonkin.
The internet.
Videos, books, images — everything. If there existed a network holding such vast quantities of information, I could obtain far more entertaining and valuable knowledge than by catching humans one by one and reading their memories.
That I could make use of it now, after being imprisoned — well. It was rather ironic.
After my capture, various humans came to interrogate me.
They made no attempt at physical torture or harm. They wanted only one thing from me: cooperation in opening a Gate so that humans could cross over into our world.
Their tone carried a half-threat, but they also promised to grant me anything I desired. So when I said I wanted to use the internet, they provided me with a smartphone and a computer.
At first I couldn't understand the language, so I amused myself watching videos — but wanting to grasp the text mixed into those videos more quickly, I studied human writing with desperate intensity. Literacy was essential if I wanted to enjoy the various entertaining content on the internet, so I learned to read at a rapid pace.
And eventually I was killing time with community sites, games, comics, animation, movies — all the many forms of content humans had created. I was studying human culture in order to understand humans, all while thinking that someday an opportunity to escape this place would come.
One day, an expedition staff officer named Yurin came to see me.
She introduced herself as the daughter of the Hwaryong Guild's representative — the one who had imprisoned me — and said she needed my help.
A representative. That meant the highest seat. In the dramas I'd watched, the representative always occupied the top position. If the daughter of someone in that highest place received my help, I figured I could make my living conditions here considerably more comfortable.
At first I simply intended to solve whatever problem this woman had.
Until I heard what she had to say…
"There's something I want to ask you. The Yin Crest… you know about it?"
"That's something only a succubus carves into her partner. How do you know about that?"
Despite the fact that answering a question with a question was considered rude among the human behaviors I'd learned, the woman in front of me paused as if briefly deliberating, then spoke again.
"Is there a way to remove a Yin Crest?"
I was startled.
This sounded as though she were talking about a Yin Crest carved onto a man's abdomen — not one on a succubus. In this world, cases of a succubus carving a Yin Crest onto a man were virtually unheard of. As long as the rule of succubi was never to make the first move, one had to carefully cultivate a man until he confessed — and given the nature of succubi, who seduce humans brought to the Demon Realm into becoming their own, a long period of time was naturally required. I had never even imagined it possible to create a partner on Earth.
Yet this woman knew about the Yin Crest. And she was asking if there was a way to remove it. The implication seemed to be that she knew a man who had one carved into him.
In a way, this was a tremendous opportunity for me.
"Hmm… well… have you ever seen someone with a Yin Crest?"
In truth, there was no way to remove a Yin Crest. Especially if it had been carved to claim someone as a partner — then it was all the more impossible. Even so, I couldn't let this opportunity slip away, so I decided to play along and appear as cooperative as possible.
"…"
The woman wore an expression of considerable deliberation.
"I just wanted to know if there's a way to remove one when it's been carved, that's all."
And she mumbled it as though what she'd said so far was something she couldn't speak of openly. That caution made it feel like a story that needed to remain secret.
Finding out what this woman was hiding turned out to be easier than expected.
"Hmm… I'd probably need to see it for myself… There are Yin Crests that can be erased, you know. Of course, I'd have to erase it myself, so the problem is that you'd need to bring the subject here."
She was the one who looked desperate, not me. She would almost certainly take the bait I'd cast after fretting over it. Her complexion had gone pale, and her body language showed she didn't know what to do.
After a brief deliberation, the woman in front of me spoke.
"Actually… there's a man with a Yin Crest… Could you keep this a secret?"
What I'd just said, and her request for secrecy. Park Yurin had summarized it quite briefly, but the information contained within was rather shocking.
This woman clearly had a man with a Yin Crest in her possession. And she had come to me in order to have it removed.
Joy at the thought that a way to escape this place had appeared nearly pulled a smile onto my lips. I held that joy in check and told her to come anytime — though I hoped she would return as soon as possible.
"Then… I'll come back here in three days…"
"There's plenty of time, so come whenever you like. It doesn't matter if you're a little late."
I couldn't afford to say anything that made me look anxious, so I put on an air of leisure and composure as I deceived her.
Even if I returned to my territory after losing all my forces, I would fall behind in the succession — but that was still better than breathing this unpleasant Earth air day after day as my body grew weaker.
At last, an opportunity to flee had presented itself.
The woman was far more unhinged than she appeared.
I had expected her to bring the man here in one piece. Instead, she had brought him unconscious, stuffed into a suitcase as though she'd kidnapped him — and a rather large suitcase at that.
There were signs she had cleaned him thoroughly, but a faint scent of semen and love juices clung to him. That scent of love juices was identical to the woman standing before me. I could roughly guess what she had done to the man.
It was rape — an act prohibited by law in the human world, without a doubt.
And when I read the words written on the suitcase, I felt a slight chill.
Caution: Adult Product?
It was as though that man were nothing more than her masturbation tool. To bring him here in a bag with that kind of labeling… And she seemed to have "used" him several times already before arriving.
When I first encountered adult videos on the internet, I had been appalled at the insane human practice of overlapping bodies purely for pleasure, not for the purpose of creating offspring. I couldn't understand what meaning there was in discarding something so precious.
Demonkin culture did involve violating captive human males, but pleasure was merely a byproduct. The true purpose was reproduction. After learning something of human culture, I found that humans often put reproduction second and pursued pleasure first.
But this woman had gone beyond even that. I was witnessing someone who regarded this male as a toy solely for her own pleasure.
A naked man delivered in a suitcase stamped with the words Caution: Adult Product.
The sheer madness of it caught in my throat and left me breathless. But I couldn't let this opportunity slip away, so I quickly collected myself and examined the man from various angles, as though focusing on the task at hand.
He looked better than I'd expected. There was a beauty about him like a work of art, yet the knowledge that he had been violated just moments ago stirred a sense of transgression. And looking at his face — his appearance rivaled the sex slaves kept by high-ranking nobles.
Gulp.
"This might be possi—"
Normally, touching a man marked with another succubus's Yin Crest was taboo, but looks of this caliber made that taboo easy to ignore. The thought that even with another bitch's crest on him, this was still worth it, suddenly spilled from my mouth.
But realizing my slip, I quickly continued.
"—ble, I think?"
Park Yurin seemed to have noticed the subtle gap, and she appeared to be glaring at me. Being skilled at acting, I met that gaze boldly and behaved as though nothing had happened, and Park Yurin seemed to decide she had been mistaken.
Phew~
And I began to focus on the work.
When I saw the shape of the Yin Crest, I was startled. This pattern closely resembled my own — similar to the Yin Crest designs belonging to the succubi of the Arandel family…
Before I'd been captured at the Gate, I recalled that my youngest sister Miel had acquired a partner. Among my sisters currently, only Miel had obtained one. We captured prisoners on campaign, but among the humans brought from Earth there were almost no males to my liking, so I'd sold them off. And sex slaves were far too expensive, so there was no other option.
Thinking the pattern must be Miel's, I looked closer.
It was Miel's.
I remembered that before I'd crossed the Gate to campaign on Earth, Mother had brought up Miel's partner and threatened to catch him and put him through a gangbang.
Ah…
Like puzzle pieces fitting together in my mind, the situation began to make sense. Miel and Miel's partner must have fled to Earth to escape Mother.
Originally I had planned to claim I would erase the Yin Crest and flee alone to the Demon Realm. But the thought occurred that if I brought this human back, I might receive a reward from Mother. Judging by this human's appearance, if I sold him off and claimed my share, raising enough money to compensate for the forces I'd lost would be no trouble at all.
I shouldn't flee alone — I needed to take the man with me. The ambition for the successor's seat that I had abandoned until now drove that thought into action.
And so I needed to deceive the woman before me even more thoroughly.
"Looking at this, the Yin Crest pattern seems to be from the Arandel family among the noble succubi. Succubi of the same clan inherit patterns derived from their mother, so I can recognize it. See here — the wing shape rises upward, and the heart is a bit pointed."
I laid out knowledge this woman couldn't possibly know, speaking as though I were an expert and showing off what I knew.
Park Yurin looked back and forth between my Yin Crest and the man's, wearing an expression that said she couldn't tell the difference. She looked as though they seemed identical to her.
I sneered inwardly at Yurin's expression.
Yeah, they're almost exactly the same. You've got a hole in your head for not noticing.
But there was no chance Yurin would catch on. I continued the act.
After behaving as though I were reading Yurin's mood, I spoke. I carefully asked her to deactivate my mana interference device, and Park Yurin released the device binding me.
I had been under considerable psychological pressure because of that device. I had been told dozens of times that the moment I removed it myself, an alarm would sound and the room would fill with high-pressure oxygen in under a second, with a kill team descending immediately. Removing it and leaving on my own was impossible. The magic needed to return to my territory required at least twenty seconds.
I placed my hand on the abdomen of the man bearing the Yin Crest, wore an expression as though assessing its condition, and began casting the spell.
And just as the casting was nearly complete—
A smile formed on my lips.
Whether that woman saw that expression of mine, I didn't know.
The scenery around us changed.
And I and this man were already in the Demon Realm.