Somehow, Living Life in Another World is Wrong, as I Expected Ch. 11.1 (Patreon)

Over the years, I made it a point to look into things that few people even think about. In some cases, I did so in order to confirm a piece of information I got. You can’t just trust people to tell the truth, especially when there is no real way to verify other than having been there yourself.

Makes you wonder how ancient historians wrote down what actually happened without first hand accounts. Then again, maybe that was the reason why mythologies exist. A constant stream of ‘this guy said it happened so it must have’.

At any rate, when it came to me, the most I could do to verify was make sure that the person I got the information from was legit or not. Most of the time, it was a coin flip. Rom, for example, I found out to be Valga Cromwell, a war prisoner from the Demi-Human War. Apparently, he had hated humans during that time, but he’d mellowed out and was more or less just happy taking care of Felt.

And now we come to the most important person that I could never confirm the identity of.

Felt. Orphan. Adopted granddaughter of Rom.

At a glance, you wouldn’t think about it too much. Orphans and medieval society go hand in hand, especially after war. However, some details left more to the imagination than not. For one, she was already with Rom when I first met them, having lived together for years at that point. 

Beyond the fact that Rom was a wanted criminal, who the hell looks at this guy and thinks ‘Yeah, I’m going to willingly give my kid and make them live in this dingy-ass loot house.’?! It’s ridiculous!

…Unless you’re desperate.

See, Felt’s age is another part of the puzzle. She was exactly the same age as a rumored child that the royals had spirited away for some unknown reason. Appearances didn’t make as much of an impact as it could have - being blonde and having red eyes is uncommon, but not unique to the Lugunican royals.

The secrecy that Rom treated Felt’s origin though, that’s what first clued me in. Even now, years later, he didn’t tell me anything about it, even as I subtly prodded. No one from my network ever discovered anything about her, other than what I already knew.

Therefore, with the knowledge that this was a light novel, I could only surmise that her identity really was the missing princess of Lugunican heritage, and that at some point in the future, she’d be revealed as such. I mean, it was pretty stock standard in terms of storytelling.

And that was why I stuck with them, at the start. Why I strong-armed them into working for me. In the hopes that Felt was the protagonist all along. That she’d lead me to the story once it really got started. Except she never did. And, over time, my reason for staying changed.

Had it been me from the past, I would have decried getting attached. But Yukinoshita and Yuigahama had shown me that if I were left alone, my own self-sacrificing tendencies would surface. For that reason, having someone look up to me? Rely on me, not unlike my own flesh and blood sister?

That was reason enough to curb those tendencies.

Karsten. Argyle. Astrea. Those three, I know they can take care of themselves. Rom and Felt? Not so much. Frankly speaking, without me, those two would likely be on the wrong side of the law more times than not. At least working for me, it was only a morally gray area of fishing for information that paid well. And it’s not like Rom could do any jobs other than construction, which the old man hated on a good day.

They relied on me to have good lives. And I relied on them to keep me in line from my own thoughts.

Seeing Felt’s face on a shapeshifter? After realizing that I hadn’t seen her since the fight started?

My vision darkened as white hot anger surged forward.

…

Capella Emerada Lugunica. Archbishop of Lust. That’s what she introduced herself as. I filed that away as there was a Emerada Lugunica that had existed in the past, though there were no records to say whether she was an Archbishop or not.

That could wait until later.

Instead, I focused on the way she laughed as she spoke. She was moving around a bit as she monologued, but a bit of focus was enough for me to force open a portal on the back of her neck. Once more, I ignored the pulsing of my Gate as I weakened the entirety of said neck.

Lugunica stopped in the middle of her speech as her entire head crumpled like a deflated balloon.

It didn’t splatter. It didn’t break. There was no satisfying crunch of bone that signaled a job well done.

What happened is that the head of the girl who looked exactly like Felt just…sagged. The neck folded in on itself, the skin rubbery and unnatural. It hung there at an angle, the chin resting against the chest, staring at the floor, while the rest of the creatures that had been birthed stilled in their movements.

Then.

Slorp.

Meat being prepared for gyoza, as my brain so helpfully provided. The neck snapped back up with a whip-crack speed that shouldn't have been possible. The flattened flesh inflated as if it were some weirdly shaped tire, until the face of the girl was looking at me again. Except that her eyes were overblown, expanded to such a degree that they looked ready to fall off at any moment.

The grin was wider now. It split her face from ear to ear, showing too many teeth. Literally in this case.

“My, my.” The thing wearing Felt’s skin cooed, the voice a horrific blend of a young girl and something that wasn’t meant for human ears,“You’re quite the passionate one, aren’t you? I like a man who knows how to use his hands.”

My stomach churned with disgust. Pure, unadulterated revulsion. The feeling of seeing something so fundamentally wrong that your brain tried to reject the visual input.

“Though, you really shouldn’t treat a lady so roughly.”

“A lady? Don’t make me laugh.”

I forced the words out, my throat dry. It wasn’t just the mana exhaustion. It was the bile rising in my esophagus.

“I’ve met cats with more grace and cockroaches with more dignity. You’re just a lump of meat with a bad personality.”

It was a cheap taunt. A petty, childish insult that I would have usually sneered at someone else for making. But right now, looking at that familiar blonde hair and those red eyes - eyes that should be looking at me with bratty defiance, not sadistic glee - I couldn't summon the energy for a witty repartee.

The creature wearing Felt’s face giggled. The sound was wet.

“So cold! And here I went through all the trouble of picking a face you seemed to care about. My Gospel told me you’d have a reaction, but I expected… more? Maybe screaming? Crying? Begging for mercy?” She tilted her head. Too far, doing a 360 degree turn of it as bones snapped.

“Or maybe...” She whispered, her eyes popping outwards, appendages exiting out of the sockets, elongating and turning into arms, shooting forward like a piston, “You just need a little push!” 

I threw myself to the right. 

The extended limbs smashed into the wall where my head had been a nanosecond ago. They weren't even hands anymore. The end of her arms had transformed into serrated, bony blades that impossibly sparked against the wood.

I rolled, scrambling to my feet. My knees protested, the strain of the El Shamak still sending tremors through my legs.

She’s playing with me.

That much was obvious. If she wanted me dead, she could have turned into something faster, stronger. But she was using a form that was intentionally inefficient for combat just to mess with my head.

Psychological warfare. It was a tactic I was familiar with. I’d used it enough times on others. Using social pressure, guilt, and awkwardness to force a result.But there is a fundamental difference between crushing a girl’s social standing in a classroom and whatever the hell this was. 

If she wanted a reaction, giving her one was the worst possible move. It was the same principle as dealing with the class queen bee. If you let them see you sweat, you became their toy. If you ignored them, they escalated. 

But if you looked at them with bored disappointment? That destroyed them.

So, I fixed my face into the mask I wore best. The dead-fish eyes. The look of a man who would rather be anywhere else, doing literally anything else.

“Is that it?” I drawled, forcing my trembling legs to stabilize. I dusted off my shoulder as if she hadn’t just embedded a serrated bone-blade into the wall inches from my ear, “I expected the Archbishop of Lust to be, I don’t know. More seductive? This is just gross. This is like watching a play with all the budget on costumes and none for the script. Boring as fuck."

The face of Felt froze.

The grin dropped.

“Haa?”

The voice was no longer the eerie overlap of Felt and a monster. It was low, guttural, and vibrated with genuine irritation.

“Boring. You’re boring!” She shrieked, the skin around ‘Felt’s’ mouth tearing as the jaw unhinged. “Meatbags are supposed to squeal! You’re supposed to tell me how much you love her, how much it hurts to see her like this! That’s how love works! It’s passion! It’s tragedy!"

The head lunged at me, nearly too fast to react to.

Just as I planned.

I opened an entrance portal, linking to the exit portal I had placed far, far above us.

As in, far above us.

The head was tunneled into the portal with no time to do anything other than give a shout of surprise. Near instantly, the rest of the neck turned into a series of noses, all desperately breathing in air.

Got you.

No matter what you are, you still need to breathe. And I doubt you could breathe anything up in the vacuum of space.

For a moment, I thought we had won.

Common sense dictates that if you remove a head from a body, the fight is over. It doesn’t matter how strong you are, or how much mana you have. The brain needs oxygen. The lungs need to push air. And while the body is clearly trying to breathe, the oxygen is still being pushed into the head, currently in a vacuum that sucks out that very air anyway.

She couldn't even retract the head, since the brain that would normally control that motion wasn't able to command it.

But as I learned long ago, expecting things to go according to plan is the hallmark of a fool.

A blade that resembled the claw of a dragon erupted from its own neck. It tore through itself, severing the connection between the head and the rest of the body.

The suction cut off instantly as the connection was severed. The headless body dropped to the floorboards with a heavy thud, while the severed neck and head were whisked away to freeze in the stratosphere.

"You're shitting me."

Black, tar-like meat churned and boiled at the severance point. It only took another moment before another head, perfectly matching the same one that had left through the portal, was once more in place. The rest of the mass that had come out of Kurgan compressed into the neck, before the entire thing converged into a lithe form. Lugunica cracked her neck, but the expression was different now. Gone was the exaggerated, mocking theatre. Her red eyes were narrowed, sharp and calculating.

"You tried to throw me into the sky. That’s unique. Most insects just try to burn me or cut me."

She looked at me. Really looked at me. It wasn't the look of a predator toying with food anymore. It was the look of a pest exterminator realizing the rat in the corner has a gun.

"Die."

…