Chapter 89: I Need an Explanation

「…… What’s with this situation?」

Awoken by the surrounding noise, the first thing that I saw was absolute chaos. On one side, old man Kent was restrained with “Bind” and his butler Barry was clinging on to him and crying. Meanwhile, Urania was scowling at both in utter fury and the unknown girl was endlessly apologizing while curled up behind Urania.

「… What’s with this situation?」

I couldn’t help but mutter the same words one more time. These members here aren’t particularly weird themselves. I already extracted the magic power clinging on old man Kent‌, and the butler Barry being by old man Kent is nothing out of the ordinary. While Urania should have gone to a different floor, she probably already finished dealing with them and went looking for me.

I’m surprised to see that the girl is awake, but other than her fear-driven repeated apologies, she seems to be doing well. My healing of her was somewhat forceful, so I was worried about that, but it seems like there wasn’t any damage to her. We must watch over her for a while to make sure of it, but, somehow, I have a hunch ‌she’ll be fine.

「Urania.」 「Lily!」 「Uwa!」

In the meantime, I called Urania to ask about what happened here and, with the fury in her face suddenly gone, she dove into my chest with a relieved smile.

「So you’re finally awake.」 「Sorry about that, old man Kent. It looks like I overslept. Are you al-… well, you don’t look alright. Would you like a “Heal”?」 「Hoho, don’t mind if I do. My back’s quite sore, you see?」

Rather than the back, the wounds he got from the magic power rampage should definitely feel worse, but old man Kent just went along with my casual tone. I’ll immediately “Heal” up his back and all of his wounds. Still, it feels weird that old man Kent is more bothered about his back, which he didn’t even particularly complain about before, instead of the pain running throughout his entire body. Huh? Is that some sort of footprint on his back…?

「Fuu~, amazing as usual.」 「Say, why were you tied up?」 「Nn, it’s punishme-「Mo-more importantly, Miss Lily. What happened to your body?」

Did I just hear Urania speaking…? Before I could finish thinking, my mind froze from Barry’s question. Body? My body… It’s just normally……

「Ah!?」

I pictured my current appearance. I undid 【Human Transformation】 and went into succubus form. After that, I exhausted myself and, if I remember correctly, fell asleep without returning to human form. This is my true form, so there’s no way that I’d automatically return to human form just because I fell asleep. My current body is that of a succubus.

「Ahh, well… this is…」 「A wing of thin skin and a black tail…… The distinct features of the devils and demons heard in legends.」 「……….」 「Don’t make that grim face. We know that you aren’t a being of evil. There’s likely a reason for that appearance of yours‌.」

I didn’t really intend to hide it in particular, but I still have some doubts about me being a Nightmare or otherwise a Succubus. What I mean here is… are Nightmares ‌monsters? The eggs we found at the sacred mountain. “Grim” and “Fyne” seem to have concluded the roper hatched from those eggs, but I’m not convinced that something ‌born from an egg would go out of its way to parasite on bandits.

And then the mystery that is my existence. I was reincarnated into this world after dying on earth. Exactly, reincarnated. Yet despite that, instead of being born as a baby, I became the character that I once drew in the past. Since I died and became a different existence, it shouldn’t be wrong to call it a reincarnation, but I have a hunch that this differs totally from a normal one. There are beings in this world ‌born in a fully grown state. Monsters. I don’t know how much mana they needed to bring forth a being like me; I have a large total of magic power and several powerful skills. I can’t imagine it to be small, it’s likely that an amount that would break the sacred mountain’s ecological balance would be necessary.

「Well, I’m not… a normal human.」 「I won’t inquire about the details. However, it would be best to avoid displaying that appearance to other people.」 「Is that… because this form would cause a problem?」 「It’s hard to deny that, but no. The issue here is the color.」 「Color?」

It seems like the color black isn’t too welcomed in this country. There’s a shunning of the color black to where the term 『black serf』 existed. It’s not really that much of an issue for commoners, and even among the nobles, the discrimination of black fur or hair is outwardly refuted.

However, that’s only outwardly. It’s widely believed that ‌people ‌born with the color black on their body had committed great sins in their past life. While I have no memory of doing some great sin in my past life, if Toria’s testimony of me earning an absurd amount of EXP from my doujins are true, then that makes me a great sinner that slew gods.1

「As long as nothing like this happens again, I’ll be fine.」 「I hope so. Incidentally, about that girl, how should we handle her? 」

Hearing the old man’s words, I turned around. Losing the cover of Urania’s shadow, the girl that curled up earlier is now cowering as she crouches with her hands over her head.