Chapter 17: Letters I can read, but the names are a bit…

「Fhaa~h」

Basking in the sunlight pouring from the window, I wake up naturally. When was the last time I had such a pleasant morning? In the first place, in my past life, it’s either I sleep in the afternoon or I don’t get a wink of sleep, so sleeping in the evening and then waking in the morning is really something I haven’t done in a while.

After escaping from the bandit’s hideout, I did all I could just to endure my hunger. And even when I was traveling with Grim March, I got too excited about camping in another world and ended up being watched over with gentle smiles, displaying an embarrassing childish behavior.

In the first place, it seems that a Nightmare like the Succubi doesn’t truly need any sleep. Since my existence itself is half-dream, it’s the same for me whether I’m awake or asleep. Naturally, if my body receives a certain amount of damage, I’ll still need to rest to recover, so there will be times that I enter a dormant state. Still, if it’s just healing fatigue then I can recover overwhelmingly greater by eating someone’s Life Essence rather than sleeping,

Since the need to eat, sleep, and even sexual desires are all satisfied when eating Life Essence, Nightmares are really amazing creatures. It’s not the three greatest desires, it’s the only greatest desire. Eros Only. Oops, I also have intellectual curiosity. It’s not just eros. Rather, I’m actually a Succubus now, but I still haven’t done anything erotic at all…

The truth is, I still don’t understand the feeling of wanting to eat Life Essence. If you ask me how, somehow I know. I get my partner aroused, and just suck it out. The problem is, I don’t have that partner. Since I was a man before, I really don’t feel like doing something like that with a guy. But on the other hand, forcing a girl into doing that is, umm, how do I say this, something that I don’t really want to do.

In the first place, the girls I’m acquainted with are just Lysha, who already has a lover, and the guild receptionist Petra, who I really don’t really know much about. The disappointing Arisa?… Feels like I’m the one that’s going to be eaten up, so no way.

Well, for now, I can substitute Life Essence with just eating and sleeping normally. I don’t need to force myself to find someone. I may sound like a romanticist, but that’s something I want to do with someone I’m mutually in love with.

By the way, this inn’s called the “Grey Cat Inn” and as its name suggests, the owner of this inn is an old lady of the Grey Cat Ear-kin. The price is awfully reasonable being at six silver coins per night, the room’s clean and the food costs extra but is super delicious. The pot-au-feu like soup was so tasty that I ended up eating two servings of it last night. Though it was quite expensive at two silver coins per serving. Seems like they’re mainly profiting not from the inn itself, but from their delicious food.

Still, it’s impossible to stay here without buying their food. Why? It’s because even now that delicious smell is still drifting from the first floor’s kitchen, stimulating my empty stomach. Dammit… You’re too good at this, Owner….

I casually turned my clothes back to Magic Power, stripped naked, and used “Wash” Magic. As you may expect, it’s a magic used for washing but if you concentrate, you can use it even on your body, clothes, and basically everything. Maybe it can be even used on electrical appliances too, but since they don’t exist here, there’s no chance to try it out.

「Owner, Morning! Breakfast please!」 「Aye, Morning! You’re pretty lively today, Lily!」

Equally lively, the owner replied to me with a loud energetic voice. I asked for her name yesterday but she just said 「I’m just the inn’s owner so just call me that, okay!」 and didn’t tell me. By the way, she has cat ears on the top of her head, but other than that her face looks human. Even her body’s mostly human too, the difference is probably just her having a tail. Seems like Cat Ear-kins are mostly no different from humans.

「Mm~, smells good. Thanks for the meal!」

The menu today is grilled fish, yesterday’s pot-au-feu, and also some freshly baked bread. It’s a usual trope in stories that the food in Another World is bad and stuff, but I’m really thankful that it’s not the case in this world. Especially this pot-au-feu, the ingredients are just recycled leftovers from yesterday, but the changes in seasoning doesn’t make it feel like leftovers at all. This sort of attention makes me feel extremely happy.

「Lily, what’ll you be doing today?」 「Hmm~ I think I’ll go to the guild and try taking some requests. I don’t know a lot, so for now I feel like doing something.」 「Ha ha ha! That’s good. People grow by going through things, after all! Still, you’re a girl so don’t go taking a lot of requests pointing to dangerous places, okay!」

In the end, after having a second serving of soup and drinking an after-meal tea, I said so to the owner. It seems like the owner, who’s encouraging and warning me at the same time, was actually a former adventurer and was a skilled B Ranker before she retired. Still, my body’s supposed to have a small eating capacity, but it seems like the food here really makes me overeat.

And so, I finally made it to the guild. Since I’m at D Rank, I was looking at the D Rank Request Board but….

「I can’t understand a thing.」

It’s not that I can’t understand the request’s contents itself. Monster Subjugation, Herb Collection, and so on has the places, monsters, and such written at full detail. But the problem is, I don’t know where any of those places are and just looking at the monster’s names doesn’t really give me any idea of what they look like or what to expect.

「Hmmm~…… What’s a Growleu…? Is Ranpol a name of some kind of plant…?」 「A Growleu is a large wolf living in the Abyssal Forest, a Ranpol is a tree berry you can harvest in the same location.」 「Hm? Who’s that?」

While I was groaning in front of the Request Board, someone spoke to me. Who could it be? I turned to look towards the voice and standing there was a dog-eared girl.

「I’m, Urania. Same as you, D Rank」 「Mm? You know about me?」 「Everyone’s talking about you. A Mage who made Magecraft Adviser Philip faint, they say.」

I certainly did end up knocking him out, so I can’t really deny that. I can’t deny it, but it feels like something’s a bit different about that…?