The Prologue (also called The Exposition)

"That makes one Famiu silver coin."

"Nn? But the man in front of me only paid in copper?"

"That's only for citizens and not for dirty brats."

Excuse me? I washed myself at the river yesterday. I'm not that dirty! And I'm not a brat either!

"Ehh? Can't you let me in just once? Pretty please?"

Take this! The smile of a cute young girl.

"..."

"..."

"The silver coin please."

It was worth a try.

Maybe the guard didn't like young girls. Perhaps I should try again another day with a different guard.

I just want to enter the city, is that too much to ask for?

In this past week, I, unfortunately, learnt that other worlds are vastly different from fiction.

Not that I really expected it to be like fiction but it wouldn't hurt to be at least a bit friendlier, no?

Yes, another world. One week ago, I, a young male university student in the first half of his twenties, was on a trip somewhere on modern earth, when I got involved in an accident. I didn't die, mind you, but I was close.

And with one foot in the grave, I made a wish.

"Please let me reincarnate as a cute girl."

Thinking back that was a stupid wish, but normally you wouldn't expect anyone to even hear the wish in the first place.

Fortunately or unfortunately, someone heard it. I did not know who or what, but they did something.

While I didn't reincarnate since I didn't exactly die, I did become a cute girl.

Just not a human one.

If you asked me what kind of creature I am, I'd be at a loss of word frankly, but the closest would be a kind of monster.

A monster, the kind you often saw in various fantasy novels, not the horror ones. I would probably fit into the horror category as well though.

Outwardly, I looked similar to a human girl. Straight waist-long hair, the cute face of a girl that took the first steps towards adulthood, a slender build. Small, maybe 140cm at most. And while I was not completely flat, I was close.

But then the things that differed begun. My eye and hair colour was a soft pink. Honestly, I liked it, but it stood out like a sore thumb.

I also had slitted pupils.

And this was a problem. Humans didn't have these usually. But in this world monsters and dangerous animals often did.

Also apparently some of the demonkin as well, but I never met one so I couldn't say for sure.

At the very least it's a trait that generally only occurred in just about anything hostile to humans.

If we turn this around it meant that humans are hostile to those with slitted pupils.

In summary, most humans would try to kill me the moment they found out.

Why did the guard not attack me then? Well, that part was coming now. I learnt to hide it!

While I looked like a human girl, I wasn't one, and while it did come with a whole lot of problems, there were a few convenient things I could do.

The most notable was that I could transform parts of my body.

Yes, I could temporarily change the look of my eyes. The pupils only. Now I was just a girl with a weird eye and hair colour. But only for a few hours at most, since it tired me out. Incidentally, I couldn't change the colour.

Another thing I could transform would be my limbs. I could transform them into a bunch of tentacles to be exact. The ones that looked perfectly fine in just about any erotic media. I haven't found any actual use for them yet outside of being grotesque. They extended slightly further than my arms normally would and that's about it. Nothing else.

They were, in fact, less useful since you couldn't even properly grab anything.

Of course, I haven't used them in any kind of erotic situation yet, but that was currently the least of my concerns.

Outside of transforming I couldn't really do anything fancy. I was somehow able to sense the mana in the surrounding, most likely instinctively because I was a monster. I also had a mana crystal like most monsters in this world. The mana crystal collected the surrounding mana, so I was able to sense how something quite solid inside my body that was constantly absorbing mana. Mana was also coursing through any living body so it was possible to inspect your own body to a degree and something big and solid stood out after all. Especially in a small body.

I didn't know why the crystal collected mana though, maybe I could evolve into something stronger when it collected enough? Or it was just another form of energy for me like food. Currently, that seemed more likely the case.

On that note, yes, magic existed here. But it was not something you generally learnt from a wandering magician or so. Or even less likely, from self-study.

Only those with money could either enter a magic school or hire a personal tutor to learn the basics of magic. It came with a lot of prestige so many merchants sent their children to a school to learn magic. Being a magician came with countless benefits I heard. Too bad I wasn't one.

I'd love to enter one of those schools or preferably hire a tutor one day.

But for now, I was still trying to survive. In the one week I was here I managed to secure a base of operations and some food. I called it that but it was just a severely damaged hut in the slums outside the city walls. The slums were a dangerous place, where rape and murder was a common occurrence, but at least it offered you a roof. The outside nature only offered murderous monsters and animals, but no roof. Between a roof and no roof I obviously chose the roof.

The slums were also the only place where people did not attack me the moment they saw my eyes. Probably because they attacked me before they saw them.

So far I managed to avoid any unfortunate capture by dangerous men, but I didn't wanna bet that this would continue for long. That's why I wanted to get into the city. I couldn't really judge from the state of the slums and I haven't talked with many people in the first place, but from the looks of it, the current level of civilization seemed to be pretty far. It didn't seem to have reached the industrialization yet, but they were probably close. Or they just flat-out replaced it with magic technology? Whatever the case, public order seemed to be good inside the walls.

Oh, how I wish for a warm bed and a hot bath. 

Incidentally, my change to a monster occurred while I was still on Earth. People were freaked out by me and within a few minutes, got the police chasing after me. At the time I didn't understand what was happening and why I've become a humanoid tentacle monster.

In the end, I was caught by some suspicious-looking cultists who somehow managed to send me to this world in the name of 'exorcising' me.

They must have messed up really bad though because my memories became muddled. I couldn't recall most personal information about me, like my family, my birthplace, not even my own name. It's not like I could even continue using my old name anyway though.

It took me a while but I thought of a good one.

So yeah, nice to meet you.

My name is Yumi and yours?