Chapter 113: Avoiding Battle, Erosion, and Saya-chan

The next day, Hao Ren sat motionless upon the gray rock. The tight-fitting undershirt he had shamelessly wheedled out of Liber was gone, revealing his lean, muscular torso. It was clear that Hao Ren had used the garment as a medium for his craft.

As a practitioner of the Nen-Aura Fluctuation school, Hao Ren’s aura recovery rate was peerless. After sitting for nearly two hours, his aura was fully replenished.

Once his aura was topped off, Hao Ren teleported away to place his Mobius Loops. Over the course of twenty hours, he had woven a spiderweb-like network that covered nearly the entire left side of the island within his scouting radius, save for one cavern he dared not enter.

Hao Ren had tossed a loop into the cave entrance and fled. To his senses, the cavern was packed with an overwhelming number of living entities engaged in a frenzied, chaotic brawl. It was so densely crowded that anyone suffering from trypophobia would surely have been reduced to tears.

Snakes and bees—both, it seemed, highly venomous.

Snake Master Babu and Poison Bee Woman Pence could fight it out. When the time was right, he would swoop in to reap the fruits of their labor. Once the remaining six days passed, he would finally complete this wretched test.

With his philosophy centered on avoiding combat, Hao Ren activated his [En].

Then, he was startled into a shiver.

Hisoka was twirling one of Hao Ren’s loops on his index finger.

"Damn it! This is unscientific! The [Zetsu] on the Mobius Loop is flawless!" Hao Ren began clawing at his hair; if he pulled any harder, he’d be facing premature balding.

The [Zetsu] effect of the Mobius Loop was actually quite effective, and Hisoka hadn't detected its presence at all. However, a Blood Butterfly, hypersensitive to the scent of blood, had been circling above the loop while accompanying Hisoka through the brush. This had piqued the curious Hisoka’s interest, leading him to begin toying with the loop.

Though the loop could not protest with lines like "Oh, no, not there," which might have further ignited someone’s sadistic urges, Hisoka was a complex hybrid of sadist and masochist. The fact that the loop had activated [En] only made Hisoka’s playing feel all the more irresistible.

"Should I go save that loop?" The moment the thought crossed his mind, Hao Ren slapped himself across the face.

He absolutely must not reveal himself in front of Hisoka!

If there were any Nen users in the world of Togashi who could counter Hao Ren, one was Machi, the Phantom Troupe's medical specialist, and the other was Hisoka, the group's resident pervert.

While Hao Ren’s ability appeared to be spatial leaping, it was, in reality, merely the extreme shortening of the distance between two points on the same plane; he never truly left the plane. Thus, Machi, whose Nen threads could wrap around the globe, and Hisoka, with his bottomless supply of bungee gum, were Hao Ren's greatest enemies.

He would be tracked by Machi no matter where he ran, and he could be yanked back by Hisoka regardless of his location. Hao Ren had no desire to take that risk.

However, lacking materials as he was, a Mobius Loop was quite valuable to him. Was he really being forced to take off his own trousers?

Just as Hao Ren was fretting, the lush green forest on the edge of the island’s right flank was being encroached upon by an unidentified, dark red substance.

The Amori brothers were bound to trees composed of flesh and viscera by dark red tentacles, their spirits utterly crushed.

"Why aren't you magical girls or female knights? What a disappointment..." the white-clad girl, Saya-chan, sighed, shaking her head with an expression of profound heartache.

"Shiro-chan, what do you think?" Saya-chan asked the large white dog beside her, which was drooling over the three men.

Shiro-chan extended a front paw, pointed at the trio, and then at its own mouth, clicking its canine teeth together with delight.

Well, well, the creature was quite intelligent and hungry.

Saya-chan smiled and patted the dog's head, saying, "No, no. Eating such unappealing males will just give you an upset stomach. Last time you ate that uncle, it gave me a stomachache for days, and my cycle was delayed. It’s so annoying."

These words and actions were quite different from the original Saya-chan; they sounded more like the ramblings of a fujoshi from Hao Ren’s circle of otaku friends.

Had she eaten something tainted?

As it turned out, she had.

In the *Saya no Uta* side-story, the original Saya was merely a mass of tentacles hoping to live a happy life with Fuminori Sakisaka. However, a player named Guo Baobao, a complete stranger to the source material, had assassinated Fuminori while he was out working.

It was just one of the main quests, after all. As a player from the real world, what did it matter if she killed an irrelevant NPC in a side-story? Especially since, in the eyes of the perception-disordered Fuminori, she was just a tumorous mass of walking, reeking slime. Seeing the disgust in his eyes, Guo Baobao had sliced his throat without hesitation, letting the blood flow freely.

Guo Baobao hadn't done anything inherently wrong, but among the options to eliminate Saya and Fuminori in the main quest, her biggest mistake was dealing with Fuminori first. Having never encountered this "depressing" visual novel in the real world, Guo Baobao had looked upon Saya’s tentacle form with contempt.

As a result, having lost her lover, Saya learned the emotion called "rage" for the first time. Guo Baobao was then dismembered and devoured alive by Saya, leaving not a scrap behind.

Just as this special entity, summoned from another world via the "Silver Key," finished digesting Guo Baobao's final drop of grey matter, she received a notification from the Mainframe, learning of the existence of the Mainframe Space.

The Mainframe used Guo Baobao's flesh and blood as a blueprint to craft a human body for her, based on the image of Saya as seen through Fuminori's eyes. It transformed her true form into a skill and heavily nerfed it—perhaps the Mainframe didn't want these side-stories being ruined and run wild by Saya.

And so, Saya was transformed into a low-level player possessing a fraction of Guo Baobao’s personality.

Incidentally, Guo Baobao had been the founder of a well-known fujoshi website—a hardcore fan of Japanese anime who loved shipping male voice actors and lived by the motto, "No beauty, no boys' love."

...

Talent: [Shub-Niggurath] (???): The user transforms into a mass of tentacles with five times the total attributes (excluding Charisma) and extreme reproductive capabilities. This form possesses three basic skills: "Devour," "Spore Diffusion," and "Perception Alteration." These skills cannot be described in specific terms, as their effects shift according to the user's will. In the "Shub-Niggurath" form, an energy bar ten times the user's current Constitution appears. When inactive, the bar depletes at a rate of 1% per minute. When the bar hits zero, the transformation is forcibly canceled. Combat activities accelerate the depletion based on the intensity of the action. The energy bar can be replenished using any living organism as raw material. If the devoured organism is a dying, special plot NPC or a player, there is a chance to acquire one of their skills. The cooldown for this skill is one side-story. During the cooldown, the user may force a transformation at the cost of a permanent 10% reduction to all attributes (excluding Charisma). Doing so will result in a penalty, extending the cooldown to two side-stories, during which a forced transformation is impossible.

P.S.: Anyone suggesting to "collect" Mana is absolutely insane. Hao Ren isn't Mikiya Kokutou; does he want to raise her himself and become a "ghost father"? Clearly, the release of *Future Gospel* just got someone a little too excited!