Capture Target

Hm… no… no… hey, what do you think about this one?

To show off my tits, obviously.  Come on, what else would it be for?

…Okay, that’s a good point.  It would look hot on my legs too.  Hmmm.  

Tattoos are always interesting.  Honestly I kinda get why some people just don’t get them?  The body changes as it gets older, and it’s a permanent addition that needs maintenance if you want it to still look good.  I mean, ‘magic’ takes care of a lot of that, but even if it didn’t, what I don’t get is people judging others for having tattoos.

…Now judging them for specific tattoos, I could understand.  Like.  If you see somebody with a tattoo of a burning flag of your nation.  Then, yeah, some questions would make sense.  But otherwise, it’s not like it causes you any pain, and it’s their own body, so --

-- ah, yes, right, sorry, sorry, preaching to the choir, I know.  I just like talking.  In case, uh.  It wasn’t obvious.

…Oh speaking of talking!  Right!  Parasites!

---

So, by that point, I had both my mouth augmented and my sexy tail mark one.  So, naturally, I had to get more --

-- oh stop that look.  Yes, I didn’t want more at the time, but come on!  They were hot!  Made me better at sex!  And felt so good to have!  Who wouldn’t want -- argh fine!

One of the first things I did was, actually, check and see what it would take to remove the parasites I already had.  The one in my brain would take a massive amount of effort if I wanted to remove it -- far more than we could afford at the time.  It would go down once the nucleus was defeated.  The tail and mouth parasites, however, would be cheaper.

…But they were still out of our budget.

Now, we’d been making enough money to keep going at our usual stupid pace in the land grab.  Gaining more land than we should at a rate faster than is normally sustainable.  But only just.  I want to be clear, we had saved money whenever we reasonably could, but, uh… Callisto wiped that out with all the augments she purchased.

Which I was kinda upset about at the time, since this was the first time that Callisto embezzling our budget actually affected our plans.  Mind, not upset enough to make it worth dealing with Callisto, but it was still irritating.

We could either slow down our attempts to grab land, or we could ignore the two parasites I had collected and hope to avoid collecting more.

Interestingly, the person with the strongest opinion on this matter was Takeo.  I had him put a bag over his head if I was forced to talk to him due to his seduction aura, but he was of the firm opinion that I should take a short break and have them removed.  

“...Look,”  He said after a while of me being… unconvinced.  “Almost every time you get that brain slug and start picking up parasites, things backfire.  Horribly.  You become utterly possessed by them, you end up becoming so obsessed with pleasure you devolve into little more than an animal, and, in one case, you became this weird parasite queen hybrid thing that ended up conquering so much land that the entire local population had to retreat.”

Naturally, I picked up on the most important part of that.  So I asked, “...Wait, I can trigger the parasitic queen event?”

…Okay look, see, that expression?  That expression you have right now?  I’m pretty sure it’s exactly the same one Takeo had under his bag, but let me explain!

The Parasitic Queen event is something that requires a few very specific events to take place, can only happen in a new game plus, and changes the entire storyline!  No Evil God of Chastity and Purity!

Just, uh, you know.

A parasite queen that starts taking over the gods themselves and turning the entire reality into a breeding ground for her children.

But if I could control myself after triggering it, then that would solve the problem!  I had actually explored the idea before, but had shelved it due to the difficulty of triggering the events required.

…Takeo was, uh.

Unimpressed.

I could feel his flat glare at me through the paper bag.

So I quickly changed the topic, to distract him.  I asked him how the timelines where I didn’t push, and got the parasites removed went.

…And at that, he tried to deflect.

He clearly didn’t want to answer, but I was still actively keeping myself suspicious of him.  So I pushed until he tugged off the bag and snapped at me, saying, “Oh fine!  Every time you look after yourself like a sane person, we never get anywhere close to defeating the Evil God.  But around half the time you push it with parasites you end up going nuts, and then we never even get to the fight with him!”

My first thought was:  ‘Wow.  He has really pretty eyes...’

My second thought was:  ‘Oh no he removed the bag!  His aura is affecting me!’

I quickly jerked away from him and averted my gaze and thought over what he said.  …I, uh, had to ask him to repeat himself, because I got distracted halfway through his rant, but I did actually think it through.  And what it came down to was basic probabilities.

There were two options:  I could wait to remove the parasites, or I could not.

Assuming Takeo’s memories were accurate, then if I waited to remove the parasites, there was no chance of us defeating the Evil God of Chastity and Purity.  And if I did remove them, then there was a fifty percent chance of managing to not go crazy -- which would give us a chance.

And if Takeo’s memories of past timelines weren’t accurate, and couldn’t be used to predict the future… then there was no point in even considering his claims in my actions.  At least not beyond a cursory glance of potential pitfalls.

So if we accounted for them, we had either no chance, or a fifty percent chance.

And if we didn’t… well, I wasn’t one to be patient and do the ‘smart’ thing, anyway.

Takeo was not pleased when I expressed my logic to him.  He glared at me and said, with an annoyed grumble, “Is it too much to ask for one timeline where you don’t rush headfirst into danger?”

-- I felt myself blushing, after I heard him say that.  It meant he was concerned

about me.  He was worried for me.  I could feel his [True God’s Aura] working on how I perceived his words, but that didn’t mean I could ignore it!

Thankfully, I had my secret backup plan.

Yuu, upon seeing me slowly blush as I stared at Takeo, with Takeo staring back at me, ‘accidentally’ tossed some hot tea onto my lap.  “Oh no,”  She said, with an impressive deadpan.  “How terrible.  My apologies, my lady, you better get up and get changed.”

…Okay so my secret backup plan wasn’t an actual plan per say, but it still worked, so I’m going to take it!

Yuu had been spending months now, serving Takeo, and she was well and thoroughly infatuated with him.  Just by being in his presence.  And she did not like how I was looking at him.

…I realized after leaving the room that Yuu had saved me from accidental continued seduction, so I didn’t punish her, and let her get away with it.  As far as I was concerned, if Yuu managed to monopolize Takeo, then I would be safe, right?

…Wrong.

But that’s for later~

---

In the end I decided to not worry about the parasites, and just continue to focus on the Land Grab.  Removing them would get much cheaper after we dealt with the Parasite Nucleus, so I had rounded up my allies and pushed them to focus on it.

Shimizu would alternate between exploring with me, Yuki, and, actually, Sumiko, who we dragged out of her milking station and lab to help out.  She couldn’t be trusted to explore alone given how hard it was for her to control her cock.

Her recent evolution of [Physical Enhancement] to rank C during the fight against the Tentacle Beast made it actively harder for her.  The trait boosted all physical capabilities -- which, naturally, included her cock.  Because eroge porn slut world.  Her need to take breaks when having sex was reduced, and her libido was increased.

It was becoming an increasingly obvious problem, but her cock was also increasingly addictive, so, uh.  None of us really.  Stepped up and tried to stop it.

…Anyway.

Yuki and I could explore on our own if we were careful, and used bombs liberally.  We funded the bomb creation by bribing Shimizu’s fangirls-slash-harem to mine some Yin and Yang shards for us to ensure we had enough.

Eh?  Oh, no, not with money.  We didn’t bribe them with money, we were basically running at zero profit with our speed of land gain.  We bribed with Shimizu’s cum.  So long as she didn’t feed any of them too much of her lovely, addictive seed, they wouldn’t go too crazy over it.

…Okay, yes, I see your expression, and looking back on it, that wasn’t exactly the most moral option to take.  You’re right.  We were getting a bit desperate, and we did our best to limit harm, but we still should have done better.

See, after Takeo confronted me, I got the idea of asking him about how his timelines tended to go.  Not full details, not by any means.  I didn’t want to risk being near him long enough for that.  No, I just wanted the rough timelines.  As in, ‘by what time do we need to defeat the Parasite Nucleus in order to have a good lead on our goals’, and ‘by when do we need to focus on the Memetic Mistress to ensure we stop her before our third year starts’.  

And it turned out if we didn’t defeat the nucleus by the end of the seventh month, then the Memetic Mistress would be left unchecked at the start of year three -- which would result in really bad things.

And that would be fine.  We had two and a half months to find it, after all.  The problem was, while we knew its rough location… that’s all we knew.  There were maybe a dozen different specific spots it could be located in, and we needed to claim the land it was on in order to find it.  Takeo had no clue where it was, it shifted every timeline, but by the time a month had passed?  We realized we were no closer to finding it than we were at the start.

It gets worse, though.

Remember, there are two holidays every year; one takes place over the entirety of the twelfth month, and one takes place for one week at the halfway mark -- six months in.

During those holidays… we can’t take part in the land grab.

So, we dealt with Callisto after around four months.  We had started making real progress on finding the nucleus roughly two weeks later.  One month after that, we had no idea how much closer we were to finding it.

There were six weeks left for our soft time limit.  And of those, one would be taken up by the festival.

We had barely a month left.

So I had us speed up.

---

Speeding up and pushing like that is a risky idea.  The pace we were going at was already pushing the boundaries -- claiming roughly two land areas per person per week was double the rate of an average participant, which was a lot.  It wasn’t quite two per person, as Shimizu had to be with somebody else to vent her lusts and Yuki and I weren’t quite as combat capable as Shimizu was on her own, but it averaged out to four or five areas a week between the three of us.

…No, I’m not counting Sumiko.  Sure, she could come along, and sometimes did as a tool to help drain Shimizu, but she was better served being in the lab and making item after item.  We actually got her one of the best cauldrons early in the year to help with that.

Regardless, we were claiming roughly four or five areas a week.  This was about as fast as we could safely go.

I had a lot of knowledge of the game mechanics; chances of rare and dangerous encounters, how much health or time is needed to safely explore an area, what can and can’t be done by individuals with certain skills or talents… we were going at a pace where we could deal with the risks with a safe margin of error.  A rather generous margin of error, actually.

So what I did was I spent a few time slots talking it over with Sumiko, and we shrunk that margin of error.

…Quite a lot, actually; by around three quarters.

This meant that those rare, random encounters -- like, say, with tentacle beasts, or unusual events -- would be much more dangerous, as we didn’t allocate the resources needed to deal with them.  On the other hand, these events rarely just removed somebody from the land grab; instead, they increased corruption at an… unsustainable rate, if you weren’t careful.

Too much corruption, and your characters ended up causing more events to happen that would delay them, and would be much less useful against the Evil God of Chastity and Purity.

…But we were on a time limit.  So I decided it was worth the risk.

So on top of already having three parasites taking up space in my body, I was also pushing the limits of safety by speeding up our gains.

Shimizu, even with her [Lewd Luck], could deal with it with her B-rank [Swordsmistress] and C-rank [Physical Enhancement] talents.  Yuki could manage risks with her bullshit seer powers; even though it didn’t work on anything outright lewd, she was smart enough to figure out ways to use it regardless.

…That, and, frankly, [Sadistic Mistress] helps a lot, too.  It ensured attempts to melt her mind wouldn’t really… work, as she preferred to dominate.

As for me?

…Yeah, I didn’t have anything but a talent for dealing with emergencies, and a lot of knowledge.

Which meant, naturally, on just the second day of going out, I failed to notice even

more parasites before it was too late.

See, parasitic creatures, after the Parasite Nucleus alters the landscape, tended to be relatively fast and tricky.  They were almost as much neural matter as they were flesh.  It left them with weak defenses, but the ability to dodge most physical attacks with… relative ease.

I, however, had [Fire Magic].  And I had been using it a lot since we started going after the nucleus, to the point where I actually managed to feel it evolve!

From C to B rank [Fire Magic]!  I was ecstatic as I felt it flow through me in the middle of a fight against a… weird… empty dog suit thing.  I quickly managed to defeat it with my increased fire-related power, and then promptly did a little dance to myself at gaining a useful trait upgrade.  Instead of, you know, last time, where I got [Seduction] instead.

So I didn’t notice, until it was too late, how a tentacle from a nearby tree sneaked up under my skirt and ripped through my panties to fuck my slit.  …Before quickly removing itself.

Remember the parasite that was in my mouth?

Yeah, I now had two of them.  One in my mouth, the other, up my snatch, which only made the pleasure I could get from that hole much greater.  Just like the one in my mouth, it could squeeze and milk cocks better than I could ever manage on my own, and it came with its own sense of hunger.

Thankfully, this time, there wasn’t a horny herm nearby to fuck me insensate, but I was a bit worried.  Just a bit.  It was still early in the time slot, though.  Just my first exploration of the day.  …So I decided to push on.  The parasite probability math I did earlier still applied, after all, and chances of encountering parasites like this was rare.

It only happened twice the first time because I was with Shimizu; her [Lewd Luck] screwed with the probabilities.

Other than that, I had encountered parasites only three more times, and had caught them before they had attached themselves to me.

So I was fairly confident that I could manage another exploration or two.

This was…

…Okay.  This was a mistake.  I can admit that even now.

See, there’s a trait that parasites have, that start to kick in when you have too many of them.  Parasites have just enough neural matter to affect your own thoughts.  Normally, unless it was a brain slug, it wasn’t really enough to notice besides a new sense of ‘hunger’ now and then.  And brain slugs had obvious, specific effects on you, and rarely pushed out beyond that niche.

But now I had four parasites.  Three that were attached to my body, and one to my brain.  The three on the outside worked together to -- essentially -- degrade my decision making when it came to parasites, and the Nucleus in particular.

Sure, I did have the brain slug medication.  And when taking it, it helped me focus.  A lot.  But it only worked for an hour every time, so I had to know in advance when to take it.  And the problem with having parasites mess with your mind, is it makes it harder to realize you need help to resist them.

The Nucleus ensures all parasites work together in its area of influence; it calms them down, makes them cooperative.  And the three I had on and in my body were all sending those soothing instincts up and down my nervous system.  So I wasn’t as worried as I should have been at getting more parasites.

And the one in my brain?  That one just ramped up all thoughts of pleasure.

For the pussy parasite, I already knew that the two other parasites I had -- my mouth and tail -- felt so fucking good.  So the temptation of more… along with the calming, soothing instincts the nucleus was starting to have on me… meant that I wasn’t thinking entirely clearly as I continued to explore.

So I got another one that day.  As I was clearing out an area with my enhanced fire magic, I was getting distracted by the hunger of my new tenant… so I didn’t notice, or perhaps didn’t want to notice, yet another tree tentacle slipping up my skirt.  

So I got another brand new parasite.  Identical to the ones in my slit and mouth, just up my ass.

By now, I was realizing that I was in big trouble.  At least part of me was.  But I was also so… so… hungry.  My slit and ass were hungry, and they triggered the hunger of my mouth and tail.  It felt like I had four stomachs, all hungry for cum and pleasure, and it was distracting.

And for some reason, I thought that the best place to feed would be somewhere nearby.  Out here, in the wild -- and far away from anybody who would notice.

I still knew I had to explore, so I was managing to get my goals done, at least, but my hunger and desires were ramping up.  Amplified by the slug attached to my brain.  I’m -- not even sure what happened, really.  All I remember clearly is a growing sense of hunger and need until I stumbled upon an area and just -- whited out.  It was like my senses were going overboard, and I couldn’t process everything.  Too much information was being dumped into my brain.

All I knew for sure was that I felt good and sated and right.

I woke up covered inside and out in the goop that the tree tentacles loved to use, and I realized, somewhat distantly, that I had another parasite.  A third one for the day.  It was the same color as my tail parasite, a leafy purple.  It was attached to the back of my neck, shaped like a plus -- it reached up to the base of my head, down a bit to my spine, and around my neck like a choker.  Or a collar.

I felt good.

Relaxed, for the first time in a while.  Like things would be alright.  Even the threat of the nucleus, though I knew I had to hurry, didn’t seem like a huge deal.

What really should have warned me was my reaction to my new blessing.

[Blessing:  Perfect Host]
[Requirements:  Have more than five parasites that have 80% or greater compatibility with you, that are 60% or more merged to your body, without losing complete control.]
[Effects:  Parasites have reduced nutritional requirements.  Parasites instinctively know you are an ideal host.  Parasite compatibility doubled.  Parasite merging speed doubled.  Increased understanding of parasite instincts.  Increased control over fully merged parasites.  Your parasites will not compete with each other, and instead synchronize seamlessly.]

That is a blessing from the goddess of parasites and merging, Trinity.  And it was one of the most dangerous ones she could give.

To repeat myself, the last effect is ‘your parasites will not compete with each other, and instead work together’.

Normally different, or even the same, species of parasites have subtly different desires.  These clash, sending mixed signals to your brain.  This is actually what caused the white I mentioned earlier; it was from all my parasites clashing and sending mixed signals to my brain.

But now that wouldn’t happen.  Now they would be unified.

All that extra neural matter that was sinking into my body, all united.

So when I thought through the effects of that blessing, my thought was, ‘Oh.  That’s nice.  I can be a better host for my parasites~’

And that should have been a huge alarm bell.

…But while it would take a while yet for me to fully succumb?  My path was already set in stone.  Without even realizing it, I was destined to become a parasite puppet, and one of the last guardians of the Parasite Nucleus.

It was so much fun~!