Chapter 46: Succubus King

Chapter 46: Succubus King

"I heard, Furuya-kun, that you told the Soya Family’s daughter about what happened with your foster father."

A few days had passed since the case of the woman who runs away from boobs in the city of Shinonome was successfully resolved. I was currently behind the school building of the School for Exorcists.

I had been eating lunch here, trying to escape the questioning of my classmates from class D and the stares of "so that’s the pervert who sexually harassed a monster…" that stabbed me everywhere I went, but was unfortunately found by my grumpy childhood friend, Kuzunoha Kaede.

It seemed like she had just come back from her parents’ house yesterday. It felt like a long time had passed since we last saw each other.

By the way, I was currently performing a seiza on the cold concrete behind the school building.

I couldn’t resist the mysterious pressure emanating from Kaede when she unreasonably demanded me to perform a seiza as soon as she found me and as a result, I was now enduring the pain in my legs while holding a half-eaten Anpan in my hand.

Kaede looked down at me with her arms crossed and spoke,

"Didn’t you tell me before that you didn’t want anyone to know about the curse or about what happened with your foster father? What changed?"

"No, that’s why I said that if you ask Soya you’d understand. We had to get the professional exorcists to cooperate no matter what in order to exorcise the monster of Shinonome city."

Soya had apparently also contacted the Kuzunoha family through her family that day to move the professional exorcists to the scene as quickly as possible.

"It’s true that your grandmother warned me not to tell anyone about how I had exorcised my foster father due to whatever obligations the Great Families have toward each other and various matters between the Twelve Heavenly Masters. However, I didn’t tell Soya about the details so it shouldn’t be a problem right? Besides, it was an emergency."

"Right, there’s nothing wrong with that. It seems like the Soya Family’s daughter knew exactly what she was doing and gave only the bare minimum of an explanation to the emergency team of exorcists and her family."

"In that case–"

"After that."

Kaede dismissed my explanation and changed the subject with maximum grumpiness.

"I received a puzzling report from the exorcists who were present at the scene. They said that during the battle with Monster A of Shinonome city, there was a big earthquake and the ground cracked apart. Despite official records showing no earthquakes in that area."

Oh, shit.

"I couldn’t believe my ears when I first heard about it. What did you do?"

So many things had happened that I completely forgot to report the strange phenomenon my climax exorcism ability caused to Kaede.

My body quickly broke out into a cold sweat.

However, I decided that the longer I dragged it out, the more likely Kaede was going to kill me, so I gathered up my courage and explained everything to her.

About how during the battle with the woman who runs away from boobs, I heard the ‘voice’ even though I wasn’t dreaming. I also told Kaede about what the voice had told me.

I was able to see pleasure points even on nonliving objects for the first time. However, I couldn’t reproduce that ability anymore.

"Why… didn’t you tell me such an important thing!"

After Kaede heard my report, she angrily grabbed my hands.

She looked like she had all sorts of abuses for me swirling around in her head, but she pushed them aside for the moment and concentrated on examining my hands.

Th, that was close. If Kaede had prioritized her scolding over the checkup, that would have been mental torture.

After a while, Kaede let go of my hands and tilted her head suspiciously.

"…your seal doesn’t look like it has loosened up at all. Well? Do you still hear the voice?"

"N-no, that night was the only time I heard the voice while being awake… in fact, recently, I don’t feel like there’s anyone talking to me, even in my dreams."

I replied so nervously. Kaede pondered for a moment then,

"I’ll discuss this with my grandmother first. Alright? Report any change, no matter how small, to me immediately. Understood?"

I felt the pressure of knowing what would happen if I failed to report back again, so I nodded honestly. At the same time, I felt a little uncomfortable about how Kaede and her grandmother were so wary of that voice.

"There’s something about that voice that makes me feel like it had helped us back then though, don’t you think?"

The things it said made no sense though.

However, if it hadn’t been for that voice and the change in my climax exorcism ability… I was certain that things wouldn’t have ended so nicely.

"Furuya-kun."

Kaede peered at me with a chillingly serious expression on her face which was so beautiful it looked almost artificial.

"Never allow yourself to be misled by that voice. The things it says might be the devil’s sweet words. Literally."

Kaede lowered her voice as if to remind me, then continued,

"Anyway, you need to be more careful about things like that in the future… it might become more difficult but, you need to do your best."

After leaving behind some suggestive words she turned her back to me and walked away briskly, probably to report to her grandmother as soon as possible.

I took a deep breath, relieved from the pressure of my childhood friend who was like a vicious typhoon.

"Oh right, speaking of forgetting to report things."

I suddenly remembered that there was another person I had forgotten to update on the woman who runs away from boobs incident, so I took out my phone. It was my kouhai who was in her third year of middle school at the School for Exorcists, Tachikawa Mei.

I still wasn’t quite sure if her shape-shifting talismans had helped me or just stirred things up but that didn’t change the fact that I owed her.

I thought that since it was Mei she would come visit me pretty quickly, but since she didn’t, I had forgotten to thank her.

Brrrr. Brrrr. A ringing tone came from my phone as waited for Mei to pick up. Then,

–Ring! Ring! Ring!

"Hm?"

An unfamiliar ring tone came from Kaede who had walked some distance away.

For some reason, Kaede ran off in a panic and quickly disappeared.

Did she receive an urgent exorcism request or something?

"Looks like being a professional exorcist and a student at the same time really keeps you busy."

Eventually, I heard Mei’s voice on the other end of my phone saying, "H-Hello, this is Mei."

"Ah, Mei, sorry for calling you so suddenly. Would you rather I messaged you?"

Mei sounded unusually out of breath on the other end of the phone. Although there were no restrictions on cell phone use in either middle school or high school at the School for Exorcists, she could have been in a place where she couldn’t answer my call easily.

"N-no, no, there’s no problem at all. But why the sudden call?"

"Well, didn’t you give me those shape-shifting talismans the other day? I wanted to thank you for those."

After exchanging a few more words with Mei, I thanked her again then ended the call.

Right at that moment, the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch break. I hurriedly began returning to my classroom while muttering, "Shoot, I talked for too long."

I was a few steps up the stairs of the suddenly bustling first-year school building when I got a call on my phone.

When I looked to see who it was, the screen displayed Soya Misaki.

I picked up the phone with a feeling that this was going to be something important.

"Hey, Furuya-kun! Why aren’t you in class D!? Where are you!?

Soya’s loud voice came over the phone with a force that deafened my eardrums.

"The results of the first assessment were all announced just now! All three of us have been granted temporary licenses!"

Feeling influenced by the high excitement in Soya’s voice, I ran to class D.

"Furuyaaaaa–!"

However, when I returned to the classroom, it wasn’t Soya who greeted me but the guys of class D.

"How did you get a temporary license! I thought you were expelled for sexually harassing a monster!"

"It’s not like you’re an ace from class S! How could it be possible for you to suddenly get a temporary license on the first assessment! Don’t tell me the rumors that you exorcised the monster of Shinonome are actually true?"

"Karasuma being Karasuma, only told us irritating things like ‘This is our team’s true power, you ignorant fools.’ You better explain yourself properly this time!"

About a month had passed since our grade formed teams.

Since the announcement of the assessment results this afternoon was the first time our real-world abilities were being evaluated, all the classes were feeling rather high-spirited. However, the uproar in class D was extraordinary.

I supposed the guys’ explosive questioning was to be expected since I had glossed over their suspicions about my act of public indecency in Shinonome rather sloppily. However, the commotion which was on the verge of turning into a riot was quickly extinguished.

"Sock Coffee Filters, Crossdressing Shotas, Tooth Brushing the Bottom Mouth–"

Soya’s voice pierced through the noisy classroom. Each time, one of the guys would tremble his shoulders in fear then fall silent. Eventually, silence fell over the entire classroom.

Soya, who was standing next to Karasuma, smirked and said,

"Well then, I wonder who’s fetish each of those belongs to?"

Silence.

The boys who had been shouting loudly around me a moment ago quietly returned to their seats while trembling. The power Soya had over others due to her demon eyes was terrifying…

Soya averted her reddened face downwards while fanning herself with her hands as she said to me,

"Furuya-kun, we did it!"

After we received our official temporary license certificates from the teacher, Soya pulled me out into the hallway and gave me a big smile. There was no trace of the somberness I had seen in the hospital room the other day so she seemed to have fully recovered.

"Hmph, it was only natural for us to get it. In fact, I’m not even sure why I got this comment."

Karasuma who had been pulled out into the hallway together with me tapped the cautionary comment written on her temporary license certificate.

There were various things written in red but in summary, it said, "Your contribution to the successful exorcism of a sixth-rank was significant. However, since this has only been one successful case so far, you can still be easily demoted in the future depending on your performance and behavior." Well, I supposed this was a reasonable warning.

"However, nothing changes the fact that we got temporary licenses!"

Soya waved the certificate around like a kid as she continued,

"We don’t have classes this afternoon so let’s access the Society’s database while our temporary licenses are still with us!"

She ran down the hallway after saying that like she expected us to be demoted in the future.

"Hmmm, I can’t help feeling kind of nervous now that we’re actually searching for information on it."

We were currently in the School for Exorcists information center.

Together with Soya and Karasuma, the three of us presented the temporary licenses we just received and booted up one of the computers. Although we could also view the information from our mobile devices, like Kaede had done before, there were various procedures we had to go through when accessing information for the first time so it was more convenient for us to do it on the school’s computer.

"I don’t think you need to be so worried though since we only have temporary licenses, right? We probably won’t even be able to see anything important."

If you thought about it calmly, Soya’s demon eyes were a cursed artifact whose information was withheld even from the person cursed by it herself. Even official professional exorcists with permanent licenses probably couldn’t access its information, let alone the three of us who only had temporary licenses.

"But I’ve worked so hard to get my temporary license! I hope there’s at least some proper information listed on it!"

Soya typed "demon eyes" into the search field with trembling fingers.

I noticed that Karasuma hadn’t said anything this whole time so I looked next to us and saw her already using another computer to access the database ahead of Soya to search for "Kuzunoha Kaede three sizes".

"Hmph. No hits…"

What else did you expect, you moron.

I was wondering if I should tell Karasuma that it was impossible to delete your search history when she started to type in "Kuzunoha Kaede nipples color". However, at that moment, Soya raised a shrill voice with an "Ah–!"

I looked at her screen and saw that there was a single hit.

"There’s information on it!"

"Seriously?"

Soya immediately clicked on the search result.

What appeared after a few seconds of loading was a single line description.

Demon Eyes–one of the lecherous relics of the Succubus King. Also known as the Succubus King’s Demon Eyes.

"…what? That’s it? I mean, who is the Succubus King?"

Soya, who had been in high spirits a moment ago, now had a difficult expression on her face and seemed like she couldn’t decide whether to be confused or disappointed.

"When it says Succubus, it’s talking about the low-ranked demon race that was exterminated in medieval Europe… right?"

I tried recalling what I knew from my hazy memories but Soya couldn’t accept that the only information she could get on her demon eyes was that one line.

"What the heck does it mean by Succubus King!?"

She typed those two mysterious words into the search field. However, the only result was an error. Either the information itself didn’t exist in the database or it couldn’t be viewed with a temporary license.

"It said that my eyes are one of his lecherous relics so does that mean that there are more!?"

Soya continued to type in things like the Succubus King’s legs, buttocks, torso, arms, and hands into the search field.

Then, to my surprise, legs and buttocks found hits, both with the unintelligible explanation, "One of the lecherous relics of the Succubus King.

"What… so there are other artifacts similar to my eyes out there…? But there weren’t any hits for hands or arms…"

Soya glanced at my hands. I also tried searching for climax exorcism just to make sure but there were no hits. I thought we had similar curses but perhaps they were different.

"Oh, come on! There’s barely any information at all!"

Soya repeatedly slammed on the desk as if it were the desk’s fault.

Since it was a curse that even the Twelve Heavenly Masters hadn’t been able to break, I had already resolved myself but it seemed like we still had a long way to go.

"I’ve had enough!"

Soya shut down the computer and ran out of the information center with her cheeks puffed out in anger.

"Hey, where do you think you’re going!?"

I left behind Karasuma who was absorbed in searching for ero keywords in the Society’s database and chased after Soya.

"Let’s go to the bulletin board! I’m going to look for a job that will let us get our permanent licenses in one go!"

"No, no, no, calm down. Being in such a hurry won’t do us any good!"

I tried to hold Soya back. However, she gave me an ominous smile with her cute face and replied,

"Furuya-kun, you told me, didn’t you? That you want us to go all the way so I need to be resolved."

I groaned.

"Furuya-kun, you’re the one who needs to be resolved. Aren’t you going to accompany me no matter where I go?

It seemed like I might have spoken rather rashly the other day.

I let out a deep sigh in front of this reckless girl who was currently wearing a truly happy expression on her face.

However, I wondered why. Despite clearly understanding how much more troublesome things were going to become in the future, the regret I felt in my heart was nowhere as deep as the sigh I had let out.