Chapter 66: Succubus and Cosplay
Honestly, after being reincarnated into a fantasy world.
If I said I had never once looked forward to meeting a succubus, wouldn’t that be a lie as a man?
‘It’s not like I’m the only one, to begin with.’
Let’s put our hands on our hearts and confess honestly.
Can you really say with confidence that, as a man, you’d never imagine something like that?
You can?
Really?
Then you are not a man.
Or you have a peculiar preference and want to meet an incubus instead of a succubus.
In any case, I won’t run away behind a lie.
To be honest, ever since I realized I had been reincarnated into a fantasy world, I had secretly agonized over thirty or forty-five different ways to deal with a succubus if I ever met one, half in anticipation and half in fear.
Whether the succubus was the type that could transform.
Whether she was the type with a physical body, or a mental parasite type that lived inside dreams.
I think I analyzed things like that too.
‘Along with the fact that, if I got unlucky, my life could really be in danger.
Though after I learned that demons had become almost impossible to find these days, I stopped caring.’
And yet, that succubus I had stopped caring about.
I never imagined I would meet one in this sort of way.
Not in a dream, not as a temptation, but while receiving an apology, no less.
Thanks to that, one question was answered.
‘Succubi in this world are the type with physical bodies.’
So I, too, intended to sort out this situation through a conversation with physical substance.
First, I needed to correct the misunderstanding of this succubus who had been apologizing nonstop for a while now... What was her name again? Lilith? Yes, Lilith.
“Please calm down for now.
We’re not some kind of racial supremacists, and just because the winner isn’t human, we have no intention of saying anything bad or canceling the award.”
In fact, plenty of demi-humans besides humans had participated in this contest.
To begin with, Shylock, the big boss of the merchant guild that hosted the contest, was a goblin, wasn’t he?
In other words, there was no need to be human, and we weren’t going to discriminate just because someone was of another race.
“But I’m a demon?”
“Um.”
True?
That might be a liiittle different?
“No, no. It’s still fine.
At least here in the Kingdom of Justia, it’s fine.”
This wasn’t empty talk. It was true.
What had my first debut work been about?
Wasn’t it the Demon King’s image restoration movement?
Wasn’t it a moving story about a betrayed Hero completing his revenge and finding happiness?
Either way, it was similar enough.
In any case, because of the influence of that Demon King’s image restoration movement, the image of demons had also improved along with it.
Like the cliché, “Actually, those guys were pitiable too,” they had half come to be seen as victims of the era.
Rather than being treated as monsters or devils, they had been placed in the category of people, as something similar to demi-humans.
So I couldn’t speak for other places, but in our Kingdom of Justia, someone wouldn’t be bullied or treated as barely human just because they were a demon.
“You haven’t committed any crimes, have you?”
Ah, of course, if she was a criminal, there would be no mercy.
Whether demon or human, that would be a matter for arrest.
“No! Absolutely not!”
Lilith, startled, waved both her hands and her head vigorously from side to side.
Thankfully, she said she wasn’t a criminal either.
Considering the racial traits of a succubus, I did have a small suspicion that she might have caused an incident while trying to drain someone’s essence, but—
“For the past several decades, unless there were special circumstances, we’ve lived by taking only the essence of animals...”
“Then there really shouldn’t be a problem.”
If she hadn’t really touched people, it should be fine.
“But why did you enter this contest?”
No, it absolutely wasn’t that I was criticizing her for entering.
It was simply one of the questions I had meant to ask from the start.
And if she was going to tremble and blame herself like that, it also made me curious why she had entered in the first place.
I asked out of pure curiosity, without any ulterior motive.
But Lilith’s answer was not pure.
“Because... we wanted to eat people’s essence...”
“What.”
A sudden confession here?
You said earlier that you only ate animal essence,
but now you were planning to attack people? You demon!
...Of course, I did not shout anything like that.
First of all, if she had harbored such wicked intentions, there would be no reason to confess it to me like this.
To begin with, what did submitting an adult comic to a contest have to do with attacking people?
And looking at the situation, wasn’t it more or less obvious?
According to the big data I had collected from countless works featuring succubi, the truth was...!
“You were planning to spread adult comics, then secretly collect the essence released by people who became aroused while reading them, weren’t you?”
“Gasp! How did you know?!”
“And the reason you specifically drew adult comics was because, in order for you to absorb the essence, it had to be released through the influence of a succubus, even if only indirectly?”
“Gasp! Are you perhaps a succubus too, Author—no, an incubus? How do you know so much?!”
“As expected!”
My guess had been right.
Directly touching someone to drain their essence was a no-go.
Lilith must also know that if she messed around carelessly and got caught, her wrists would be chopped off.
That was why she had taken such a roundabout, complicated method.
It was so much like a dirt-poor beggar meta that I felt sorry for her.
But apparently, living your whole life eating only animal essence left you with no joy in life.
“To explain it by human standards, animal essence feels like living on nothing but watery soup with no chunks in it.
The taste, nutritional value, and sense of fullness are all rather lacking...”
“So animal essence tastes like that...?
I can’t perfectly sympathize, but if my meals came out like that every day, I do think it would be truly horrible.”
“Right?!”
I think I’ve mentioned this before.
Among desires, there are three tier-one desires: appetite, sexual desire, and sleep.
They’re commonly known as the three great desires.
Could a person live their entire life giving up one of those three great desires, appetite? Without even a cheat day?
That was asceticism practiced by religious people who suppressed desire, or by hardcore gym fanatics.
If ordinary people tried it, they wouldn’t even last a few months before meeting one of two endings.
Either they would become extremely irritable, or the light would leave their eyes and they’d turn into dead-fish eyes.
Sometimes, they’d experience both.
And succubi had it even worse, because draining essence was a hybrid of sexual desire and appetite combined.
You might say that meant good fuel efficiency, but on the flip side, it also meant they had to feel double the thirst.
Succubi were not cars, so they could not endure on regular gasoline alone.
Sometimes, you had to feed them premium gasoline too.
“That’s why we entered the contest. Of my own will.
More precisely, of our own will.”
“By ‘our,’ do you mean you didn’t make it alone?”
“Ah, yes. I live together with other succubi in the same situation.
I received their ideas and made it together with them.
I was the one who drew it, so I came as the representative.”
Oho.
So it wasn’t a solo author, but an author team.
No wonder, for something supposedly drawn by one person.
That... how should I put it? The spectrum of preferences and the compositions had been extremely broad and diverse.
If multiple people had come up with the contents together, then it made sense where all those various ideas that had shocked everyone came from.
Since they were succubi, it was only natural, if anything, that they understood what was erotic.
“Um... That... I’m sorry! It’s okay if you cancel the award!
If everyone finds out demons like us submitted something like this, they’ll be disappointed...
We’ll also cancel the publication plans for [Journey to Find My Wife]!”
“What? No, what are you talking about?
Why would we cancel this?
You may be the original creators, but you can’t take this away from the people!”
“...Pardon?”
And while I had briefly fallen into thought like that.
Perhaps Lilith had taken that brief silence as the wrong signal, because she trembled and said she would cancel publication, so I hurriedly stopped her.
No, how could they take this away when people were enjoying it so much?
Do you know how much commotion there had been to secure this? If they arbitrarily took it away, an even greater disturbance would break out.
“But that commotion was because of us too...”
“It was something that would have happened someday anyway.
And even if you cancel this, now that people have had a taste of it, another adult comic will come out regardless.
In that case, it’s better for you all to enjoy your rightful rights.”
I’m pretty sure I had clearly said several times that I viewed both adult comics and this [Journey to Find My Wife] favorably, so I didn’t understand why she was trembling so much.
Had she become timid from living in hiding all this time?
Hmm...
Well, in the past, if they got caught on even one pretext, they would have immediately been turned into a succu/bus.
So I could understand why she was being so cautious.
“As I said earlier, our Kingdom of Justia no longer finds fault with people over something as minor as the fact that your true identity is a succubus.
Naturally, both the award and the publication will proceed as planned.”
So I conveyed, more firmly, that it was all right.
And then I asked this pitiful succubus an additional question.
“This plan of spreading adult comics and collecting the essence people release afterward.
From what I can see, it seems like an extremely indirect and uncertain method. Am I right?”
“That’s... right.
It’s hard to harvest because we can’t be sure where or what kind of person will read it.
And with an indirect method, the amount of essence we can obtain decreases...”
I knew it.
So basically, it was that.
Like scattering bait over a wide area and praying that just one would bite somewhere nearby.
Even if one did bite, the efficiency wasn’t very good.
If it were a snack you picked up while walking down the street, maybe, but wouldn’t it be a little difficult to make it your staple food?
Of course, if the genre of adult comics grew larger and spread more widely, who knew what might happen.
But it was still in its early days, and the succubi seemed less like they had done this with great confidence and more like, “Let’s at least try this.”
‘If I leave them like this and the results are worse than expected, they might quit being authors like fragile sunfish.’
I couldn’t let such precious authors go like that.
Therefore, as a commemoration for winning the contest—or perhaps in the spirit of welfare—
I decided to create a method for them to absorb essence a little more directly and legally.
“If people released essence while directly thinking of you all, would the efficiency rise a little?”
“Of course it would!
Not just a little—it would rise by an incredible amount!”
Good.
Then this method might work.
Looking into Lilith’s eyes, where a faint trace of anticipation was beginning to settle, I made one proposal.
“In that case, would you perhaps be interested in trying... cosplay?”
I had just happened to need some promotional models.