NOVEL NEXT Chapter 31 — Y2: Preparations and Plans
Hehe, parasites, possession, psyche manipulation and more~ Oh I had so much fun during the second year, I’m not even sure where to begin!
Eh? Oh, yeah, obviously I still have it. We never did figure out how to remove my first parasite until I grew used to it~ Really it’s just a matter of controlling yourself.
Or, well.
Letting others control you, so you don’t have to worry about it.
Either works! Just takes time and a flexible mind~
So, second year, with Yuki out to enslave me while Shimizu prevents her from going too far. Now, in theory year two is the same as year one, but if you want to beat the Evil God of Chastity and Purity, there’s a few more ‘technically optional’ goals you really should accomplish.
Finding the gun is goal number one; thankfully, that was done already~ Unfortunately, that’s also the easiest of the goals.
You also need to form a treaty with the Assemblage of Apparitions… or, as everybody who lives - er - unlives there calls it, Ghost Town. That’s where the majority of smart ghosts and spirits reside.
Then there’s the Parasitic Nucleus. That thing is in a different location every playthrough, and needs to be burned with fire. …and replaced with an annoyingly complicated recipe.
And finally, there’s the Memetic Mistress, an entity that’s composed entirely of thoughts, that needs to be found and captured. Which is a problem when she can duplicate herself into any other person given enough time alone with them. She adores sending memetic virii out into the wild. Maids that make more maids, bimbos that make more bimbos… things like that.
Now technically you don’t need to do all of this in year two. In fact, you don’t actually learn you need to do any of this until year five, when the Evil God of Chastity and Purity is so close to reviving. But by then you’ll have three other landmasses worth of tasks to clear before the year is over, and trying to do it all in one go is… theoretically possible but practically insane.
It’s better to do all of the prepwork that you can as soon as you can, and just save the final steps for year five. That makes it actually feasible to complete.
Now, I had no idea where the Parasitic Nucleus was. I knew its various spawn points, but there were twenty five of them or so, and you couldn’t even confirm its location until you claimed the spot of land it was in. It was better to just grab as much land as fast as possible and, if somebody else found it first, purchase the land from them.
…which was going to cost a mint, but it was doable.
There was a similar problem with the Memetic Mistress; she existed in precisely one of several hundred ruined armors that exist all across the second land mass, and she would hypnotize anybody who came across her. There were ways of tracking her down after she started spreading, but until she did, we had no clue where to begin.
So that left the Assemblage of Apparitions as our first goal in year two. I aimed for us to get a peace treaty within two months… fully expecting it to take at least four.
Countess Callisto was a bitch to deal with.
Before doing any of that, however, some organizing and preparing needed to be done. It might seem like I had an excess of forces now, what with Takeo, Yuu, and Yuki now all on my side, but that was rather… misleading. Takeo was on his ‘vacation’, and while he might help out in a pinch, he was mostly just lazing around. Yuki was out to enslave me, and Yuu was…
…I don’t want to be rude, but, uh, Yuu was useless.
In fact, all three were more of a drain on my resources than a boon. Takeo had his distracting as fuck seduction aura, Yuki and her obsession with enslaving every girl she saw, and Yuu couldn’t even help with the land grab! Sevens just tossed her to me because she didn’t want to bother with punishing Yuu herself!
I made a quick tactical decision to sacrifice Yuu for the safety of the rest of my team.
I assigned her to take care of Takeo’s needs and to keep him away from the rest of us while he ‘rested’.
I fully expected to see her writing love poetry before a month passed. I’d have more sympathy, but she did whore me out, so eh. And she stiffed me on my pay, too! Served her right.
Yuki, on the other hand, was just going to be a problem. And Shimizu wasn’t going to be of any help with that, given how she’s practically given her permission to fuck with me whenever she wants to.
…I mean, I act like I was complaining, but I hope it’s clear by now that Shimizu would stop her if I actually asked. But having a sadistic roper girl stalk me for random fuckings? Hot.
Very hot.
I knew I was a slut by then, so I didn’t even bother trying to stop it~
Anyway! Stopping evil god stuff.
I basically just told Yuki to do her own thing. Get land on her own, work together with Shimizu and Sumiko to make as much progress as possible, and in general expand our territory. This would turn out to be a terrible idea.
As for Shimizu and me, we were going to take a more focused approach. The Assemblage of Apparitions was fairly deep into the territory of the second land mass. Near the castle, actually… and while I had several good avenues of progression since Takeo surrendered all his claims to me, it would still just take some time.
So we got started.
Our little group grew… well…
Okay, not closer over the next month, but we knew each other better!
We basically ended up dividing into several sub-cliques. Myself, Sumiko, and Shizimu were one; we were the core trio, in a sense, though it was mostly me and Shimizu. Sumiko was pulling her weight now that she was more used to being cattle.
Shimizu, Yuki, and Takeo were another. …Though I didn’t realize why at the time, the reason was they were all gossiping about me. What’s with that look?! I’m totally worth gossiping about!
Hmph.
They would chat about whatever slutty situation I had ended up in recently. Takeo was sharing anecdotes from other timelines, and Yuki was salivating over her plans for me while getting help refining them from the two cock-bearers. Shimizu was having fun talking with both of them about me… manufacturing her own plans, or reining in Yuki’s, depending on the day.
Then there was Yuu, Takeo, and Sumiko. Those three were the ones that tended to stay on school grounds, and they basically just lazed around together or played board games. Takeo was a social enough person that he liked to talk with people even when on his ‘vacation’. I know, weird! Yuu was assigned to look after him, and while Sumiko could technically take part of the land grab, with her four massive tits it was just more convenient for her to stay in her lab, where she could easily get milked~
…
I say that, but, uh, that’s what we told her to tease her.
In fact, it's because she was so smart and quick with her hands that having her stay back and work on logistics and alchemy was not only the obvious choice, it was the smart one.
We still told her it was because her milky tits got in the way, though, because it made her flustered and wet~
Shimizu was also calming down again now that she had four girls to fuck! Well, three, if you discount Yuu, but… frankly…
…Let me tell you how I am absolutely certain Yuu’s life was going then.
Let me just get into character… ‘I’m a sexist pig who sold my ex for sex’... ‘I believe women are unable to control themselves despite the fact that I now am one’... ‘I speak my internal monologue audibly so that I can ensure you understand what I’m thinking…’ Okay! Ready.
Yuu -- ah, I mean, I, right, I… was… no, I mean am, I am… getting frustratingly used to wearing a maids outfit. It’s not even of the sexy kind I made me -- erm, my slutty ex -- wear when serving me and my friends! It’s just long, frilly, and feminine. Ugh. Girl stuff. Hate girl stuff. Like being pretty. And stuff.
…Yeah I can’t buy that when I hear it in my voice, either.
Ugh.
Okay, you know what, I’m going to start again. Narration this time! I’m sure everything I’m about to say is one hundred percent accurate, even if I have no way of knowing what happened.
Yuu was, at first, flustered and frustrated at being a girl. Doubly-so at being a maid. Triply-so at being made to serve his super-hot ex that he totally shouldn’t have been a jerk to, and regretted losing her every day.
But she found herself getting used to it rather easily.
While she didn’t have tits as awesome as her new ‘master’, at least she wasn’t as slutty as her, either!
…Or so she thought.
Yuu was convinced, absolutely convinced, that she wasn’t a ‘real’ girl for the first week of her employment under the perfect Lady Ambrosia. After all, she didn’t like girl-stuff! She made a point of spreading her legs like an asshole whenever she sat down, and like a moron ignored how it would let anybody see her panties if she wore a shorter skirt.
She was convinced in her superiority despite all evidence to the contrary! Because she was an ass!
Until a week had passed.
She had been serving Takeo for that week, and he mostly just had her clean things up and fetch things for him. Which was much easier than when his super-perfect-ex was around, and ordered her to actually do her job. How Terrible.
But things started to go weird for her a week in.
Yuu liked Takeo. As much as she could like somebody that clearly had no sympathy for her, that is. He was nice and didn’t overwork her, and comfortable to be around. So one day, while his absolutely gorgeous and impossibly amazing ‘master’ was busy being tentacle-fucked by the creepy roper chick, she was complaining to Takeo about her baseless irritations with her flawless boss. He just chuckled, glancing at her, and said, “Look on the bright side. At least you’re not as slutty as she is.”
That complement, innocent though it may seem, felt genuine to Yuu in a way that none had before! It struck through her cynical exterior and exposed her maidens heart!
Flowers bloomed around Takeo as she stared at him! The sound of birds singing echoed around her! Her heart started thudding so audibly she could swear that it was an actual drum!
Her face turned red, turned hot as a volcano, as she just bobbed her head, staring at him.
It was then that Yuu was doomed.
For she thought that he looked hot.
…What’s with that look? Everything I say is one hundred percent accurate, one hundred percent of the time!
Okay so I might be a bit biased against Yuu -- oh come on! I wouldn’t lie that
much!…I mean I wouldn’t lie at all!
Oh just -- shut up.
Even if you don’t trust the veracity of my words, which you absolutely should, you can at least trust that Yuu started blushing whenever she and Takeo were in the same room.
Now, the scary thing?
I checked with Sevens, and Yuu’s change in body didn’t change her sexuality. She was one hundred percent straight -- for a guy. She had no interest in men, only women. She wasn’t even interested in masculine features; she preferred her women short and soft and curvy, not tall and firm and muscled.
But all of that didn’t matter when it came to Takeo.
Because Takeo’s blessing of ‘I am… the harem master’ just superseded such qualms as ‘sexuality’ and ‘preferences’.
Do you see now why I was so paranoid about him?
A month after being around him, Yuu started paying attention to makeup! Her own makeup! That she put on her face! To be prettier! For him! Yuu!
Her sacrifice for the safety of the rest of us… okay, well, the safety of me, primarily… will always be remembered.
At least for a bit.
She was still an ass.
Now, on top of all of that, there was also the little matter of the Axiomanager that was laying around. Sevens. The poor, exhausted, ancient entity with infinite power that was living in our dean's old office.
I ended up visiting her about two weeks after the second year started, to ensure that the forms of surrender from Takeo and Yuki were properly processed, and she was passed out on the desk. Slumped over some paperwork, her hair a disheveled mess, snoring like a boar.
She had a cup of mostly-drained coffee so potent that it felt like my nose hairs were dying when I sniffed the air.
I had to wake her up, and when I did, she had the gall to glare at me! Me! Why glare when you can leer?! Her first words were, “...Oh. It’s you. Congratulations on ruining another timeline, slut. I don’t have time for your ditz routine today. Just -- tell me what you want so I can get back to work.”
…Normally I’d have been more insulted by her words, but frankly, the exhaustion just dripping from her every breath really made me feel for her.
I told myself that she was simply referring to past versions of myself. I was, obviously, Not A Ditz. Clearly. That’s what I told myself.
Hehehe~ Ah! Anyway.
I did manage to get the paperwork confirmed, and learned something both worrying and promising as I was leaving her office. Her words to me were, “Ah, and don’t forget. Ruined timeline or not, I follow the agreement that the Left and the Right came to. If you get caught breaking any student rules, I will punish you.”
Pay attention to her wording there. ‘If you get caught.’
In the game itself, once Sevens is in play, any egregious rule-breaking would be caught automatically after a few weeks of time. You would have to pay a fine or have some of your characters unable to participate for a while. No exception.
Because Sevens is an Axiomanager. She has, arguably, more raw power than the chief god does, so long as she avoids submitting fully to this world's limitations by becoming a slut. She can absolutely decide to ‘just know’ if somebody broke the rules.
But by saying she’d only have to punish me if I got caught…
…Well.
That had some promising implications.