"Good morning, Shusawa. Haha, I read about yesterday.... Shusawa? What’s wrong, are you okay?"
"Huh?"
I turned my gaze toward the guy who slapped my back in greeting.
He was a well-built man.
His short-cropped hair was typical of athletes, and his refreshing looks screamed "sportsman."
Niekawa Kazuki. The ace of the kendo club. Whether it was his toned body, his face, or how he wore his uniform, he was extremely popular with the girls.
Despite that, he wasn’t the type to act arrogant about it, and he had plenty of male friends too.
Even from my perspective, he was a bright, fun guy to talk to. Right now, I was incredibly grateful for someone like him.
"Hey, Niekawa. What do you mean ’are you okay?’ all of a sudden?"
He must have forgotten something, because he was walking back toward the dorms from the kendo dojo. I greeted him as cheerfully as I could.
Yet he only twisted his face in concern.
"What do you mean ’all of a sudden’? Anyone would ask after seeing your complexion. I heard you got carried by Lot yesterday, so I was planning to tease you mercilessly, but..."
"Ah, yeah. I can’t complain about getting teased for that. Getting carried by a girl to the infirmary? As a man, that’s pretty pathetic. I’m prepared to get roasted about it in class."
I desperately kept the meaningless conversation going.
I didn’t look around. Especially not at the girls from the same school. Never.
Why were their skirts so short? Why did they smell so good? Were they trying to tempt me? Don’t fuck with me — I’ll violate you.
The urge to extend my tentacles and violate every girl in sight was overwhelming. I desperately suppressed it.
I had a strong feeling that once I went down that path, I would never come back.
"No, more importantly... Shusawa, are you still feeling sick?"
"The midterms are coming up soon, right? If you keep this up, you’ll get a failing grade in English. We just became second-years — that would be bad. I figured I’d have to get notes from you and the others, so I can’t let you rest."
"...Normally I’d say ’just study by yourself, you idiot,’ but — can’t be helped! I’ll lend you my notes!"
"For real!? You’re that generous!?"
"...So hurry up and go back to your dorm room and sleep. Like you said, midterms are coming soon. If you push yourself and make it worse, you really will fail."
Niekawa patted my shoulder.
His action was 100% good-natured, and I was grateful. No wonder he was popular — he treated everyone, boys and girls alike, like this.
But right now, I wished he would just leave me alone.
If I stayed alone in my room, I felt like both my body and mind would gradually transform into something else.
Because, right?
The hardest thing right now wasn’t desperately restraining myself from violating every woman I saw — it was ignoring the question Why the hell am I holding back?
If I stayed at school and interacted with others, I might convince myself Yeah, that makes sense and start attacking women indiscriminately. I was certain of it.
So I smiled and told him I was fine——
"Mu—— Senjumaru?"
——I ran into the silver-haired girl.
Leas Lot. She had been running in the opposite direction of the school, probably on her way somewhere. She stopped when she saw me.
Her long silver hair and her skirt (which was quite long for a modern high school girl, covering her knees) fluttered from the sudden stop. She carried a faint, pleasant scent as she peered worriedly at my face.
"Ah, yesterday was——"
My heart pounded.
It was like watching a late-night ramen commercial.
The visuals, the slurping sounds — they forcibly awakened my appetite. They crushed all reason that said Why would you eat at this hour? and left only the swelling desire to devour everything.
Her white skin, her flowing hair, her legs hidden by her skirt — they relentlessly stimulated my desire.
My instincts screamed from deep inside my chest: See? She looks delicious. Just eat her. That’s what your tentacles are for, right?
I hunched my back and pressed down on the tentacles trying to crawl out, crushing them with my uniform. I didn’t think it would actually work, but it was better than doing nothing.
"Ah, this idiot again—— Lot! I’ll take this fool back to his room, so please don’t worry!"
"Ah, I don’t mind, but—— are you sure you can handle it alone? I can help."
"No, no, don’t underestimate an athlete! Besides, this guy would be embarrassed to be carried by a girl again. You look like you’re busy too. I’ll contact him and let the teacher know you’ll be late!"
"——Sorry, I’m counting on you."
She looked at my pale face with concern for a moment, but soon turned her back and ran off.
It didn’t look like she had forgotten something. I wondered where she was headed—— While I was lost in that idle thought, Niekawa picked me up like a backpack and started running.
"O-ugh... uuu..."
"What’s with that groan? If you feel like throwing up, say something or tap my shoulder. I’ll put you down on the side of the road. Don’t you dare puke on my back! Absolutely not!"
He must have mistaken my strange voice for the precursor to vomiting. His tone was half worry, half annoyance.
His concern wasn’t misplaced. Indeed, something unrelated to my will was trying to come out — not vomit, but tentacles. As if reluctant to let Leas get farther away, they wriggled and crawled out of my body with wet sounds, saying it wasn’t too late yet.
The pleasure of it.
The discomfort of feeling pleasure from it.
I shivered and exhaled a groan as I desperately forced the tentacles back inside.
Fortunately, I somehow knew how to retract them. Just like no animal doesn’t know how to use its own limbs, I instinctively understood how to handle the tentacles. I had come to understand it.
By the time I was trembling in fear at how little fear I felt toward that fact, Niekawa had reached the front of my dorm room.
He rummaged through my bag without permission, took out the key, and entered my room like he owned the place.
"Hey Shusawa... Why is your laptop smashed? I don’t think ’the laptop broke’ is supposed to mean this."
"...I fell and punched it."
"Punched straight through it."
Niekawa laid me on the bed, muttering that I’d been having nothing but disasters lately, what with the Monster Villain incident.
After that, he checked the fridge, sighed at the complete lack of food, and poured water into a glass.
"Here, water. I’ll buy something easy to eat around lunchtime. Hold on until then."
"Yeah... Sorry."
"Don’t worry about it. If you feel bad, then rest properly and get better soon."
With that, he left with a cheerful smile and no sign of annoyance.
Damn it, I could kind of understand why he was popular. If I were a girl, I might not fall for him, but I’d probably think Niekawa-kun might be pretty nice...
I let out a dry laugh at the pointless thought. Fortunately, being alone seemed to calm the earlier impulses.
But what came next was simply boredom.
"...I did break the laptop after all."
Nothing good ever happens, I cursed as I scrolled through social media on my phone.
If I kept lying down and mindlessly scrolling like this, sleep would eventually come. When that happened, I’d forget everything and just sleep.
While thinking that, I browsed the timeline.
It was the usual — illustrators posting art, announcements about new games, and other relatively unimportant stuff. For a moment, the talk of previous lives and Monster Villains started to feel like a bad delusion.
While I was escaping reality like that, a new tweet appeared on the timeline.
Without any particular emotion, I casually looked at it.
’Sacred Saber has started fighting!’
It was a tweet with a photo attached.
A picture of Sacred Saber holding her sword, facing off against a Monster Villain holding something like a syringe. The moment I saw the post with its many likes and retweets, my brain began working at incredible speed.
——The Poison Monster Villain.
——The enemy that appears in the prologue from Sacred Saber’s perspective, who manipulates poison.
——She protects the onlookers and gets stabbed with the syringe, becoming immobilized.
——Right before she’s violated, Sacred Knuckle, who still lacks real combat experience, appears and defeats it.
——It is their first pinch... and also the last victory the girls achieve in the game’s story.
A flood of information and gameplay footage asserting itself in my mind.
But unlike before, I wasn’t struck by intense pain. I didn’t know if it was because I had gotten used to it, or because becoming a Monster Villain had made my body tougher.
——But none of that mattered.
With wet, sticky sounds — schlorp, squelch — tentacles crawled out.
I no longer felt like stopping them. I didn’t want to stop them anymore.
In my mind floated an illustration of Sacred Saber with her armor stripped away and her white dress-like clothes torn. Her humiliated, frustrated expression was about to become reality.
If I intervened now—— The moment I thought that, my reason evaporated instantly.
"——That scene doesn’t belong to some mob enemy! I’m the one who’s going to do it...! Don’t get in my way, you weak-ass Monster Villain!"
My deeply rooted desire had begun to move.
My body and mind were eagerly awaiting the moment of full bloom. There was no stopping it now.
——Besides, let’s be real.
If simply holding back a little was enough to stop this, then monsters called Monster Villains would never have appeared in this world in the first place.
Even if I held back, I wouldn’t turn back into a human.
So yes — this couldn’t be helped.
Me violating women. Me humiliating the heroines of justice. All of it... wasn’t my fault.
It was all the fault of whichever Diabolic planted the Seed of Desire in me.
Besides, I had tried so hard to endure it, hadn’t I? Then I deserved a little reward. Yes, that’s right.
After working hard, you should eat something delicious. That goes for food and women alike. It’s common sense. Obvious. Natural.
In my mind appeared the silver-haired beauty I had just met that morning — Leas Lot. No, the heroine of justice, Sacred Saber.
I was sure I had awakened my previous-life memories just so I could violate her.
"Ah, let’s go, Sacred Saber——!!"
With a cry of joy, tentacles crawled out with a creak and rip sound.
My uniform disintegrated with magical power, and countless thin tentacles covered my entire body. Only my eyes and mouth were exposed. I looked like a mummy with tentacles instead of bandages.
It was the very picture of a Monster Villain.