“No, why me of all people?”
The first thing that came to mind the moment I realized I had been possessed into a novel was sheer absurdity.
The very fact that I had been possessed into a novel was absurd enough, but more than that, I couldn’t help wondering why it had to be me.
What, had I sent the author a 5,700-character note or something? Was I the novel’s only reader?
I hadn’t even left a single hate comment. I had just quietly lain down in bed and fallen asleep, so I never imagined I’d suddenly end up possessing someone inside a novel.
“…No, I guess there’s no point worrying about it now.”
Looking at water spilled on the floor and wondering, “Why did this spill?” is stupid. You should be thinking about wiping it up instead.
In that sense, there was something I had to try right away.
“Status window. Status. Stats.”
-…
“Tch, figures it doesn’t work.”
I muttered it just in case, but nothing happened. Well, it would be strange for some ability the protagonist didn’t even have in the original work to suddenly fall into my lap.
After scratching my head in disappointment for a moment, I picked up a mirror and checked every corner of my body.
“Wow, this body is damn good.”
I had somewhat guessed as much from how light my body felt when I first opened my eyes, but the specs of this nameless demon race body I had possessed were pretty impressive.
Its build wasn’t as huge as a bear’s, but firm muscles were set all over the body, so it didn’t give off a weak impression at all. Most of all, the specs of the third leg were incredible.
“…This thing looks like it’s about eighteen centimeters?”
And that was before it even got angry(?), so I couldn’t even imagine how much bigger it would get once it did.
Ah, for reference, the reason I could see my third leg with my own eyes right now was, naturally enough, because I was stark naked without a single thread on.
I hadn’t taken my clothes off. I hadn’t realized it until I looked down because I’d been so flustered, but I had been naked without a thread on me from the moment I first opened my eyes.
I wondered if there were no clothes to wear at all, so I rummaged through the room and managed to salvage about three sets of cloth clothing that looked to be in decent condition. So it wasn’t that there were no clothes; apparently, this guy simply tended to sleep naked.
In any case, after roughly getting dressed and looking into the mirror, a handsome man—the kind you’d turn back to look at at least once if you passed him on the street—was blinking his eyes and staring back at me.
“Damn, at least I really like the body itself.”
I smiled, feeling rather satisfied, but the smile didn’t last very long.
“…The problem is that this body belongs to the demon race.”
The demon race. As the name suggested, a species considered humanity’s archenemy.
The academy that serves as the setting of Kallios Academy is literally “a place that trains soldiers to kill the demon race,” so there was no need to explain humanity’s hatred toward demons.
Could I hide among humans and live? Impossible. Humanity wasn’t full of idiots, and they had more than enough countermeasures prepared for situations where demons tried to infiltrate them.
There were only so many ways to hide this damned purple skin, and humanity had long since developed methods to defeat every single one of those limited means.
Of course, since the novel had gone on hiatus midway, there might be other loopholes that hadn’t been revealed yet, but since I didn’t know them, it was meaningless.
Then could I go to demon territory and live among other demons? That was also impossible. First of all, I didn’t even know exactly where I was, and demons were bastards who came equipped with self-reliance and survival of the fittest as their default settings.
Meaning even if I somehow managed to find another demon, the chances of that demon being friendly toward me were infinitely low. Most likely, they’d try to kill me because I’d be competition.
“…I’m fucked.”
Even if I had possessed some ordinary rural farmer A, being human would have been much easier. At least then, I could just live normally while working.
But me? If I slipped up and got caught by a person, I’d be killed on the spot.
Even if I somehow killed that person, someone else would notice that the person had disappeared and come looking. Even if I killed them too, another person would come…
If that repeated, then in the end, a subjugation force would come find me and cut off my head like it was nothing.
A sigh escaped me on its own at the grim reality, but from past experience, I knew all too well that nothing changed by merely lamenting my situation, so I thoroughly searched the cabin where I had woken up.
“Is this everything?”
And as a result, the additional things I managed to find inside the cabin were a somewhat worn watering can that looked frequently used, a swordsmanship manual, and a magic book.
The letters written in the swordsmanship manual and magic book were clearly ones I had never seen before, but I could read them naturally. So they do at least give me automatic translation as a possession perk. I’m so grateful I could cry.
By the way, I grew curious about what kind of guy the original owner of this body was. Normally, learning both magic and swordsmanship was something you just didn’t do, wasn’t it?
The question that suddenly occurred to me was quickly resolved the moment I opened each of the two books once.
“…He didn’t even read the magic book at all, did he?”
The swordsmanship manual had clearly been read many times, with grime from hands and pressed marks all over the pages, but the magic book had no hand grime at all. More than anything, the pages were stiff, as if proving they had just been opened for the first time.
Well, with a muscular body like this, swordsmanship did seem more fitting than magic.
Though considering that, it was a little strange there wasn’t even a wooden sword, let alone a real one… Well, since he was a demon, he probably couldn’t mingle with people and had been unable to obtain a proper weapon or something.
In any case, since I had finished looking through the entire cabin, it was time to open the door and go outside.
-Creeeak…!
When I carefully opened the door with a moderate amount of noise, what appeared before me was bright sunlight and, about ten meters away, the sight of a dense forest packed with trees.
“For now… this place must be incredibly remote.”
After lightly scouting the forest, I learned that there weren’t any traces of anyone passing through in particular.
There were no marks of grass being pressed down or broken, and I couldn’t see any signs of wild animals passing by, let alone people.
It did feel a little strange that there were no traces of even small wild animals passing through, much less people, but that didn’t mean I felt like entering that forest.
The fact that there weren’t even traces of wild animals passing through meant that if I wanted to cross that forest, I would have to push through every branch and thicket in my way.
Besides, I didn’t even know what was beyond that forest to begin with, so I didn’t particularly feel like leaving this place. According to the original setting, the demon race didn’t really need to eat or drink anything, so there was no need to move unnecessarily.
In the end, the only things near the cabin were a clearing with a radius of about ten meters, a fairly large pond located within that clearing, and a single flower that seemed to have been grown by the original owner of this body.
And the moment I saw that flower, I muttered blankly.
“…Seeing this flower makes it clear this isn’t Earth. I mean, I knew from the moment my skin was purple, but still.”
The flower before my eyes had an extremely unique form.
It was about one meter tall and had a flower shape similar to a sunflower, but the difference was that each and every petal was a different color, as if it came straight out of a cartoon.
The rainbow colors—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet—were a given, and there was black, white, gray, even fluorescent colors. No matter how I looked at it, it didn’t seem like an ordinary flower.
“Well, whatever.”
First, since there was a pond nearby and a watering can inside the cabin, it seemed to be a flower raised by the original owner of this body, so I brought out the watering can and watered it.
-Trickle, trickle…
-Wriggle…!
“Uwaaah?!”
But in the middle of watering the flower, it suddenly moved, startling me so badly I almost dropped the watering can on the ground.
From the moment each petal was a different color, I’d expected it to be an unusual flower, but I never imagined it would move like this.
-Wriggle?
For a moment, I wondered if I had seen wrong, but the thing—no, the flower—wriggled again and slightly moved the flower part to the side.
The gesture looked exactly like it was puzzled, so I opened my mouth, wondering if perhaps…
“…Can you understand what I’m saying? If you can, move your head—no, uh, your flower up and down once.”
-Wriggle.
“…Huh.”
I had only asked just in case, but the thing really did move its flower up and down in a short nod.
It was a little—no, quite a lot—flustering, but if I thought about it calmly, this was a pretty good thing.
I didn’t know how long I would end up living here, and if I had someone to talk to, it could have a very positive effect on my mental health.
Although it couldn’t use language, it at least reacted to what I said, didn’t it? Long ago, some castaway stranded on a deserted island even talked to a volleyball, so a plant that could understand words was several times better than that.
…Or was it? From another person’s perspective, would it be the same in that I’d just look like a crazy bastard?
Well, since I wouldn’t be seeing any other people in this forest anyway, it didn’t really matter.