CH 121

What remains in the empty hands

Translated by SoundDestiny

Edited by Klepon

Bari,Bari, Bari.

Guchi~tsu―― gudju ~tsu―― buchi~tsu――.

Eating.

A small, black, devil-like demon with feathers. Senna absentmindedly took the demon in her mouth, which uttered a muffled ‘Kyikyi’.

She grasped the arms and legs that resisted her attempts to escape, and tore and chewed the flesh.

The thin arm protruding from her mouth was twitching like a broken screw-wound doll.

She bit down on it, as if it were a bother. The sole that slipped out of the end of her mouth twitched for a while after it fell to the ground.

“…u,ufu..”

Spilling a sexy exhale, Senna licked the tip of her mouth.

Senna – the succubus queen – did not have the power to use the dark magic of drain.

This was because the dark magic of 『Sucking Drain』, which sucked the life force from other creatures, and the dark magic of 『Enchantment:Charm』, which made the opposite sex captivated, were different skills that could only be exercised by the original succubus.

The Queen, who was in a position to follow the Succubus’ ways, was unable to exercise those magic arts.

Therefore, Senna used other methods to perform her sucking.

One was to have a succubus who could use 『Drain』suck the semen and accept it as [Life force energy]  from them.

The other was to prepare a [bag suitable for storing semen] and put the whole thing inside the body.

Little Succubus was a man-made demon.

A demon created by the dark magic dedicated to Queen Succubus – the 『Lust Familiar Works:the Birth of Demon』.

Born for the Queen, died for the Queen. That was all. Therefore, it was not strange that the creature Little Succubus had an ecology that was convenient for Senna.

Gurgling and chewing on her cartilage, Senna looked at the devastation around her.

Around Senna, demons of the same kind and their race similar-looking demons were all lying on the ground.

Silvery white hair mixed with dull blonde. Healthy brown skin. Human-like appearance that could be confused in a human world.

The golden eyes were a little cloudy, but Senna thought that when she was alive she must have had beautiful twin eyes.

“But too bad. They’re all dead. This is why Little Succubus has no tricks up their sleeve. If you’d have let one of them live, I would have loved them all along the way.”

Little Succubus, was only a confusing imitation of a succubus.

The beauty of the modelling that Senna had put her heart and soul into is as it should be.

If the semen was stored in the body hit the limit, all energy would be used to maintain the stored semen. This would make the temporary initial ‘illusion’ effect wear off and the body return to its original form that of an ugly black demon.

In addition, they were unable to ‘add or subtract’ like the original succubus and often killed their targets in this way.

For the Queen, who also sought beauty in her meals, that was the biggest challenge.

“Demon’s semen doesn’t taste very good, does it?”

Even so, there was a rather compelling reason for daring the demons to attack.

The most significant reason, after all, was fear of reprisals.

There was nothing wrong with a fight between demons. Queen Senna, the chief of the Succubus, who wielded a peculiar dark magic, would not be put off by the safe demons that dwelled in the forests near human settlements.

Most of the Little Succubus, the little whore released into the forest, also completed their objectives and did not take the trouble to collect their semen against the pacifist demons.

However, it was hardly a good idea to try to incite the little succubus against a human opponent. Humans were cute creatures who were faithful to their desires and greedy for sex, and could be easily tricked by a succubus, but they had an extremely advanced learning ability.

By analysing and collecting results, they could easily uncover what succubus had tried to hide.

“Succubus Queen. My existence cannot be made known. It would be a great blow to the succubus to know of my existence, which has not been preserved in any book.”

Little Succubus, and the Succubus Queen. Even with the 『Intelligence gathering:Ultimate Technology』, which could search and browse books from all over the world, it was not possible to grasp the existence of the Succubus Queen.

This was because she – Senna – had been careful and discreet and had kept her own existence hidden.

If she let the little succubus attack humans, and if by any chance one of them was captured by humans, it might become known that there was an infestation of a little demon similar to succubus.

Succubus had the means to defend themselves by using their beauty as a weapon, but this could not be achieved with the defective little succubus.

If, relying on the information obtained from the corpse of the little succubus, a weakness of the original Succubus was also discovered, it would be a real eye-opener.

“Yes, this time it was only an emergency measure. If I can collect the semen with the power of a succubus alone, there’s nothing better than that. I had no choice but to use them to fill in the gaps.”

Senna’s eating of the little whore was also intended to remove evidence.

Once eaten, there was no evidence left behind. When the carcass of a demon that was squeezed dry was discovered, it would only be thought to be the work of a succubus.

Once the traces of the little whore were erased, the rest was out of the question.

“But still, poor boys. I can’t believe that their last opponent is such a man-made little succubus.”

Senna smiled sadistically as she picked at the small deflated part.

Senna lovingly fingered her silver-white hair, which was a mixture of dull gold.

Silver-white hair. Healthy brown skin. And above all – a shape that closely resembled that of a human being.

Unknown to Senna, a demon from a settlement that should’ve been  devoured by Little Succubus was protected by Shigenobu Torao.

Mishuyu’s settlement was attacked by the Little Succubus.

A literal over-run, showing an overwhelming difference in power. The man-made demons, ruled by instinct and appetite, could never have had a ‘beautiful meal’ from the outset.

Little Succubus, who at first was trying to collect the semen through sexual intercourse from the charmed in a gentle manner, eventually began to use force, perhaps because the tedious work was becoming too painful.

The peaceful settlement was instantly transformed into a hell. The more the group of beautiful women attacked the males, the more their faces transitioned into ugliness.

The fight against the Little Succubus, whose enchantment had broken, was a complete contest of strength. The young males fought desperately to protect the women and children and to defend the settlement.

Suddenly driven from their homes, the demons scattered and fled, and Mishuyu was separated from the herd.

The subsequent consequences no longer needed to be reiterated.

A man-made demon, created by the succubus queen, could not possibly take a back seat to the peaceful inhabitants of the forest.

Above all, the little succubus was a demon specialising in taking sperm from males. No matter whether the enchantment was broken or not, that much was an unshakeable fact.

An examination of the bodies would make this clear. They were not defeated by the beauty of the little succubus. Most of the males who fell here were physically deprived of their parts after being murdered.

There were only a few individuals who had been exploited and killed through sexual intercourse. They fought for their lives for their herds and their ‘sperm’ was collected as a mark of defeat.

“Hmm, well, there’s enough to go around. It looks like I won’t have to feed from the succubus for a while now.”

She crushed the black mass in her grip and rolled the dripping white muck on the tip of her tongue in a slurping motion. Having finished preying on all the little succubus, the succubus queen fluttered her hair and stretched out without a care in the world.

“I’ve trashed the forest, and the guild seems to be on to us, so it would be wise to leave as soon as I’m done.”

After checking that there was no trace of the little whore, the Queen clapped her hands in front of her chest.

“Yes, that’s right. I think I should go to the castle… for the first time in a while. –I’d like to see how the Demon King is doing.”

◇◇◇

Emerging from the bushes was a female demon, much like Mishuyu.

Silver-white hair mixed with dull gold. Healthy brown skin and a scowling, childlike face.

Her supple body was stretched and developed compared to Mishuyu’s, but her flesh was apparently not as voluptuous.

From a human value point of view, she should be described as having a rather poor body. Her breasts were small and her waist was thin. She had the appearance of a childish woman, but between her legs there was a tuft of body hair the same colour as her head, like a cotton cloud.

Combined with the long hair on her head, Torao had a vision of Mishuyu’s, and by extension Misuzu Nekoyama’s future.

“…myu,shuu?”

The voice sounded familiar.

The demon, which looked much like Mishuyu, looked around with fluffy gestures.

Which premonition, good or bad, struck Torao at that moment? Before he could be sure, the hand he had been holding broke free.

“Myu—shu—!!”

This time Torao wouldn’t let go. He thought he had made up his mind.

He would definitely protect Mishuyu. That was what he thought he was determined to do.

Torao would give everything for her. That was what he should have expected.

“Mishuyu.”

But for Torao, it was not possible.

All of this was erased before his eyes by the word illusion.

Sense of helplessness. Sense of loss. Something sludgy, colourless and temperature less, seemed to be spilling out of his body.

‘Because that’s what it is, isn’t it?’ The value of Torao’s existence was crushed in front of his eyes in an instant.

No matter how outrageous it became, there was no holding back a person that was running happily.

The important person Torao had been looking for all his life. A family and companionship that he could not replace, no matter what he did.

“Myushu! Myu, myu! Myshu!”

Was it because he had been in contact with Mishuyu all this time? He immediately intuited that she was Mishuyu’s lost family.

Mishuyu raised her voice loudly, as if to prove her presence.

The female-type demons, which had been skittering about with sleepy eyes, recognised the voice and raised their voices in the same way.

“Myu, myu myu!”

The whistling cry that spun like a whistle seemed to resonate and echo far away, like ripples on the surface of the water.

In time with the sound, Mishuyu began to spin round and round. Sometimes she danced , sometimes she just spun.

Mishuyu, who was a little staggered from going around too much, stumbled over her own legs and flipped over after taking a wrong step.

“Myugyu!?”

“Mishuyu!”

Torao found himself running up to Mishuyu and holding her up.

He didn’t know why he did that. His body was moving before he could think.

Torao ran his hand over Mishuyu’s forehead, who shook her fluffy head, and performed a light healing spell.

Mishuyu looked up at the heavens with a pouty face, then looked at the face of Torao, who was holding her, and happily showed her double teeth.

“Ta,O—”

‘She’s fine, that’s good.’

Mishuyu was the Mishuyu she had always been.

Once she found her friends, she did not forget about her previous encounters and relationships.

The Mishuyu-like demon, which had been singing, gazed sleepily at Mishuyu and Torao.

It did not seem to blame them. No hostility or harm was felt. It was simply checking the scenery reflected in its eyes. That seemed to be all.

A little bit of a bad feeling rose up in Torao.

There was no indication that she was going to do anything against Mishuyu or himself.

In the first place, it was unclear whether she was even properly aware that Mishuyu was one of her own people.

If she ran away with Mishuyu in hisarms, he would not be separated from the girl he held in his heart.

“Myumyu?”

“Myu Myu!”

“Myushu, Myushu!”

Perhaps attracted by the earlier cry, several demons that looked very much like her emerged from behind the bushes.

All of them were female. Some of the smaller individuals had a penis-like object hanging from the base of their legs, so it seemed that there were also male-types.

There were only a few of them. All of them were smaller than Mishuyu.

Torao, who had acquired the skills of tiger metamorphosis as a saint of the royal court, was an opponent who could break through without difficulty.

“……I don’t think I can do that.”

He put away his claws that were about to come out. Torao could not use force and despised the feelings of others with their selfish theories and desires.

The same thing would be done to the man Shigenobu Torao hated more than anyone else. Before ethics, emotions had negated the outburst.

“…Fuu..”

The sigh that escaped was not that of resignation. He seemed to be truly satisfied with the answer he had given himself.

He put his hand on Mishuyu’s head, which was wriggling in his arms. When he ruffled her silver head, she looked up at him ticklishly.

“To–a-O—”

“Mishuyu.”

Shigenobu Torao struggled to suppress his determination, which was almost dulled in the face of his smile.

“Go on. Your friends are waiting for you.”

Was it strength that pushed Torao’s back?

Avoiding looking at Mishuyu’s face, he put his hand on her shoulder. His hands were trembling with emotion, but he did not shed a tear.

When they met, they appeared more pathetic than anything else. For Torao, he wanted to be emphatic when he said his goodbye.

Mishuyu then ran towards her friends, perhaps having lost interest in the Torao who did not look at her.

When Mishuyu looked back several times as if she was regretting leaving, Torao lightly raised his hand. That was all he did.

“……Mishu,yu.”

An unintentional voice leaked out.

After watching her back as it moved away, Shigenobu Torao sat down on a stump, as if hanging down, with a thump.

The warmth in his arms was silently fading away like sand.

The sense of loss that developed with a break-up was something he could never get used to, no matter how many times he experienced it.

When his beloved girlfriend, Misuzu Nekoyama, rejected him. When his reliable girl friend Kanami Inugami abandoned him. When Saki Shirayuki, a cheerful mood-maker, put distance between him and her heart.

“Mishuyu……”

Torao tried to disguise his desolation by calling her name, at least to fill this gaping hole a little.

“Toa,O—”

“Eh….”

Someone responded to his monologue.

He felt a presence and looked up to see Mishuyu.

Mishuyu, whom he should have parted from earlier, was standing in front of him.

Mishuyu smiled at the stunned Torao, showing her double teeth.

“To—a,Oo—Ta–,O–”

When she put her hand on the protruding clenched fist, a small piece of something rolled off in Torao’s hand.

In the palm of his open hand, a beautiful green stone remained. As soon as he realised that it was a gift from Mishuyu, he felt as if a ray of light had shone through the dark, cold desert of his heart.

A shiny, smooth stone, shimmering green. Torao could even see how pathetic his face was.

Torao wiped the look of despair off his face and changed his mind. What was this “I want you to let me be” bluff? Turning away and running away wouldn’t change anything in reality. And it would never get better.

Shouldn’t Torao at least face her with a sincere smile at the end?

“Mishuy—”

As soon as he looked up with this thought, Torao lost his lips to Mishuyu.

Mishuyu softly put her arms around his neck and hugged him. The pale kiss seemed like an eternity, but in fact it was only a moment.

The feeling was fleeting and vanished, but there was definitely something hot enough to burn on the tip of the mouth that had been touched earlier.

“Toa,O–Ga,GanBa,E–!”

(Torao, ganbare: Goodluck/Do your best)

She showed her double teeth and flexed her arms.

The pronunciation was faltering, like an extended squeak, but to Torao it certainly sounded like a word of encouragement.

Mishuyu spun around and ran off without looking back.

She turned her back and darted into the herd. After seeing her off, Torao looked down at his hands. He gripped it tightly and pressed it against his hotly beating left chest.

“—-Aaa”

Hot. Breasts, lips. The residue of the memory of having touched Mishuyu scorched every part of his body hotly.

From the lips that were touching, there was a warmth that seemed to melt into him. The left breast that he put his hand on still seemed to be thinking about her and burning an urge.

Mishuyu’s last words remained in his mind over and over again.

To be realistic, Mishuyu would not have intended to give a pep talk.

A goodbye and a thank you. If there was, that was about it. To be honest, it was doubtful whether she even liked him in a romantic sense.

Just before they parted, Torao said to Mishuyu, [With Mishuyu, I’ll be able to do my best too].

Torao was sure she was just imitating that. She was just repeating the words she had remembered, in her own way.

Even knowing this, Mishuyu’s last words penetrated deep into the heart of the heartbroken Torao.

“I can’t keep dwelling on the past……”

Every day he clung to a past he could never get back and continued to regret. He knew it was pointless, but he couldn’t stop.

Like anyone else, Torao was unable to unleash emotional violence on the source of his resentment in the name of retaliation.

In his head, he could envision unparalleled tragedies, but he never got around to putting them into action. Never had a character that was serious and innocent at heart been so alien to him.

“But so what?…… Even if I rip that guy to shreds, it doesn’t mean that the unsullied, angelic Nekoyama-san will come back…..”

There were countless delusions about how to deal with the unpleasant annoyance even calling that person name.

But in conclusion, he didn’t remember shedding a single fang. There should have been plenty of opportunities, but in the end, the man Shigenobu Torao was not as evil as he thought he was.

◇◇◇

The sun was still high when Torao left Mishuyu, but he realised that it was about to set.

A fiery sunset covered the area. Torao wondered how long he had been here.

Squinting at the dazzling western sun, Torao stood up.

Soon the night would fall. The forest at night was full of dangers. So much for sentimentality.

When he returned to Tetsutetei Tetteh Inn with the night wind at his back, he found Niigaki Takeo outside.

He looked anxious, looked puzzled for a while and then immediately let out a sigh of relief.

“You were coming back late, so I thought I’d come and pick you up. Anyway, I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“You’re overreacting. I’m a one-hit-wonder saint myself, so I wouldn’t get caught up in incidents like that.”

“You know, that one-hit wonder, the Saints, just recently three of them almost went missing all together.”

Niigaki was referring to the earlier disappearance of the otaku group.

Torao did not know the detailed inside story, but all three had apparently returned safely, and he did not think it was necessary to be so concerned.

“Since then, Inugami has been even more adamant about the [absolute prohibition of going it alone]. The air was a bit tense just now because you hadn’t come back.”

Even though she was under the influence of the 『Underling Training』, the schoolgirl Kanami Inugami was a girl who hated crookedness.

She had presented returning to her original world without losing a single person as her top priority, and must have been aware of Tsubasa Ryuzaki, who was isolated and alone, and Shigenobu Torao, who was heartbroken and often acted alone, as people to watch out for.

It was dumb or stupid not to realise that the most important person to watch out for was lurking close at hand, but there was nothing that could be done to pursue that.

Anyway, Kanami Inugami was a girl who was a massive fan of public morals and rules.

She tacitly approved of Torao’s solo activities because she strongly insisted that Niigaki would take him back responsibly before anything happened.

On the surface, she said she approved , but we didn’t know how she felt inside.

“If anything happens to you, I don’t know what Inugami would say.”

“I see. I’m sorry for worrying you.”

When Torao bowed lightly, Niigaki  made a gesture as if to brush it off with his hand, saying, [Don’t worry about it].

In the meantime, had the seeds of anxiety spread within the inn? The door of the inn opened with a bang and a female student in school uniform jumped out from inside.

With her magnificent black ponytail fluttering, she was about to run off into the darkness, but stopped with her eyes fixed on Niigaki and Torao, who were standing just outside the premises, perhaps having noticed them.

When Niigaki raised a fluttering hand to signal, the pony-tailed girl made an exaggerated nodding gesture, turned around and walked back into the inn.

Niigaki greeted the series of figures with a distant look.

After a deliberately created silence passed, Torao was about to call out that it was time to go back, when Niigaki preceded him.

“…… sorry about that.”

“It’s me who’s at fault. Niigaki did me a favour and convinced Inugami-san to leave me alone.”

“No, it ain’t. I’m not talking about today, I’m talking about a long time ago – the turning point that led to this.”

‘What does Niigaki mean?’ When Torao tilted his head in confusion, Niigaki made a hesitant gum-chewing gesture.

“Kirishima. Even though he had no choice but to do that, saying something like acknowledging Kirishima in front of your eyes…”

“Aaa..”

In the current situation where they were crammed into a small room, it was impossible to discuss even the most trivial matters.

Perhaps because there was no one else around, Niigaki began to talk about such things.

“I was in a bit of a hurry for an answer in front of the weirdo Walkins, though. In hindsight, it might have been a poorly thought-out move.”

“…… I think it was a good move. I don’t think that a fight on the spot would have turned out well. He wasn’t someone you could confront head-on and do something about it.”

“Still, I knew I had to apologise to you. I understood what was going on with your mental state, and that’s why I said what I did. To be honest, I might have been a bit crazy at the time.”

“It was a night of suspicion and malice, because it seemed like it all came flooding in at once. I don’t think any of the boys could have kept their composure in that place.”

Mutually, the words stopped.

But surprisingly, the air was not awkward.

“………..”

It was  a past Torao didn’t want to remember. If possible, he wanted to forget it without rehashing it.

Just remembering it made his stomach heavy. He was so angry that he even felt scared, wondering if human beings could be so dirty.

Torao clenched the stone to give him some courage.

But he knew that it would be even more painful to leave it as it was now, as indigestible.

“Niigaki’s amazing.”

“An?”

“Inugami-san and Shirayuki-san both went through that, but Niigaki is carrying on as before -as if nothing had happened.”

Niigaki looked at Torao suspiciously, as if to say, [You’re being sarcastic]. Torao shook his head in response, saying that he was not.

Although they had known each other as friends for less than a year, they had a reasonably strong friendship, including their life in other worlds.

He apparently understood that Torao wasn’t being bitchy or sarcastic.

“Ha!　You’ve said it a million times. I couldn’t stay calm either. Not to mention Inugami – especially Shirayuki, who I’ve known for a long time. It took a certain amount of determination to face reality.”

and Niigaki continued.

“I want  more than anything  to go back to the world. I have to go back. I left my family, my friends, my ex-girlfriend, everyone in that world. I just remembered that when I was on the verge of burning out.”

“You want to go back, so do I. …… but I couldn’t be as strong as Niigaki. The fact that he cuckolded Nekoyama-san depressed me so much that I couldn’t even stand up to him.”

The person who took Misuzu away from him. Somewhere in the corner of his mind, he may have suspected it.

However, he kept blaming himself for not admitting it, and eventually began to feel distant from his female friends who had been there for him.

He relentlessly tortured himself in a maze with no answers, and when confronted with a clear-cut solution, even his rebellious spirit was shattered and he had no other recourse but to crawl.

Opposite of Niigaki , who was calm.

Kanami Inugami. He also got his loved ones stolen from him, but he was not broken.

He didn’t get emotional and storm out, but grasped the priorities of the situation, and calmly chose to settle for a temporary reconciliation and a joint struggle.

Without Niigaki, the class would surely not have been able to recognise the symbiosis with Kirishima Ran, and the class would have completely broken up.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Niigaki sniffed, as if he had just missed a beat.

“First of all, you and I are in different situations. Nekoyama is your girlfriend. Me and Inugami are just friends. I just had a crush on her on my own. –If I had gone out with Inugami, I wouldn’t have been able to keep my cool like that.”

“It would be the same. I don’t know what Niigaki thought of Inugami-san, either–”

“No, not at all. There is no difference between a girlfriend and a friend, they are both important companions. But a girlfriend is the one you should protect first and foremost and always care about.”

Unintentionally, Torao was surprised. After seeing Torao’s reaction,  Niigaki continued.

“I’ll leave aside the process and cause at this point. If someone steals the person you have a crush on without your permission, it’s just the result of your own slow action. You can only curse at your own carelessness, that’s all there is to it.”

“It is important not to obsess about it forever, but to switch over. If they can make use of their reflections the next time, they will eventually get a good result.

“But being cuckolded by someone else is very different. And even more so if the woman had no intention of doing so. You can end up hurting the most important thing in your life because of your own carelessness. I feel responsible for it and regret it. It’s natural to keep blaming yourself for your own stupidity and to feel so depressed that you can’t help yourself.”

“Niigaki……”

Niigaki turned his head away and scratched his cheek, as if he was aware that he had said something embarrassing.

“Well, that’s that. The fact that you were demoralised is not something you should regret or be ashamed of. If you had been …… more aloof, I might have taken you to task. I’m not sure if Nekoyama was that good to you.”

She also cheered him up in such a way that he couldn’t help but be embarrassed.

That was the extent of her existence. Certainly, she was not an existence that could be so easily divided.

Because Misuzu was an irreplaceable and precious girl, Torao was hurt to that extent.

It reminded Torao of such obvious things.

“I see. If it was someone I didn’t care about, I wouldn’t have been so moved by it.”

“For you, Nekoyama was such an important woman. More than I think of Inugami.”

“Yeah, it could be. But–”

Embarrassed to formulate his gratitude as it was, Torao jokingly opened his mouth.

“But I never thought of stealing Nekoyama-san’s underwear and having sex with her, either.”

“For God’s sake, forget about that!　I don’t usually think about that kind of thing either. It’s just that at the time, I was so stressed out from all the training I was doing…”

It was Niigaki  who was enthusiastic about it. Suddenly, he stopped speaking and looked at Torao’s face seriously.

“It’s rare that you’re joking, but what the hell. You look like you’ve blown it a bit.”

Niigaki touched his face unintentionally.

Torao too, indeed felt that his shoulders were a little lighter, but only a little.

But he never thought someone else would point it out. He didn’t know if he had ever looked so lifeless or -.

“….. still, though the wound hasn’t quite closed up.”

He clutched the stone in his hand and looked up at the sky. Apparently, the encounter with Mishuyu had given Torao more strength than he had expected.

Seeing his friend, Niigaki let out a laugh that resembled an exhale, as if relieved.