Chapter 3-Facing Reality

All around me are the bits and pieces of meat my body didn't digest yet,

and its sight is enough to make me want to throw up again. The shock of

learning that this is reality was just too big. I don't want to believe it, but my

instincts tell me that everything that happened so far has been real. I really ate

a human and killed dozens of animals...

I died somewhere between the bath and going to sleep. Don't tell me it was

actually in the tub? Did I fall asleep and drowned? Or slipped and hit my

head? Either death would be more than lame and not even funny as a joke.

At least I certainly can't laugh about it.

So this means I can't go back? I'll never meet my parents again? Unlike

those protagonists who cross over to other worlds, who are all useless human

beings who seem to have no parents and no social life, I had a proper place in

the world. I was the sporty type, had friends at school and loving parents at

home. If I had continued with my track and field activities, I'm sure I could

have entered the Olympic Games eventually.

Granted, I've never been in a relationship and never even kissed, so I wasn't

a complete normI died a virgin!

It's been less than half a day, and my somewhat happy dream adventure has

turned into a nightmare. Only that this isn't even a dream, it's reality!

At least I wasn't dumb enough to try out dying in this world, to see if it

wakes me up. I don't know whether dying here will allow me to reincarnate

somewhere else or just ends my existence altogether. In the first place, am I

even still myself, considering it's an entirely different body and a different

world?

Argh, this isn't something a high school girl should be thinking about!

Well, I guess I'm not a high school girl - or a girl at all - anymore. I'm

something like an evolved slime with a body that defies the laws of physics.

I hold my head, feeling like it should start aching at any moment. This is

too much for me to handle. What should I do now?

My body is shaking. I did so many dangerous and horrible things, thinking that it's just a strange dream. Even though they weren't humans, I took more

than a dozen lives without batting an eye.

But it was for survival, so I should be forgiven, right? Except for that lasts

one, which was just an experiment.

Ugh, I'm a horrible human being.

Except, I'm not human! I want to cry!

That wolf beast is still inside me, in a different part of my insides that I

didn't vomit out. It's dead. I have a dead animal still inside me, beginning to

rot.

The noise of a nearby buzz saw derails my train of thoughts. It's one of

those cyber-dinos! It must have been attracted by the smell of my discharge.

Cutting a path through the forest with its massive jaw, it approaches my

location.

I have to run; I can't fight that. Now that I know this is reality, I'm seriously

scared of dying. I don't want to die again without having done anything with

my life!

The tree line breaks apart to reveal the beast, its massive head turning

slightly sideways to see me with one of its lens eyes. It's completely lifeless

and not a hint of malice can be sensed from it. It's merely a machine that kills

without emotions.

Much like how I must have appeared to the last few animals I killed.

It seems to have decided that it wants to eat me, as it begins to charge

forward with its jaws wide open. The machinery in its mouth, serving the sole

purpose of cutting and rending victims into small pieces, approaches me with

a dreadful finality.

I know I can outrun it, but now that I'm aware of my situation, and the fact

that I can die, my legs won't move. I'm afraid of messing up my escape and

dying anyway. What if I stumble? What if I get caught by surprise by some

other monster while running away in this unfamiliar land? There are so many

ways my life can end.

Something I can only describe as a black rift in space slashes through the

air and goes through the neck of the cyber-dino. It walks a few more steps

before the head comes off cleanly, revealing the inner mechanisms of its

body such as severed tubes and cables. Then it falls forward and slides across

the ground before coming to a stop right in front of me. The buzz saws in its

mouth slowly spin out, but there's no fire or an explosion. Just a machine ceasing to function.

"Ah, there you are, Chaos-chan!" A familiar voice remarks and I look in

the direction it came from. The demon queen is standing a short distance

away and waving at me. She's being accompanied by a figure wrapped in

heavy dark blue robes with a bandaged head, who's holding a gnarled wooden

staff. Maou-mama walks towards me, an apologetic look on her face. "Are

you unhurt?"

I look at her blankly. Why is she here? Did she come to get me? So was

this actually just training and it's over for today? Or was this all just a test?

Regardless, Maou-mama is like a radiant angel coming to save me from this

cruel world.

Ah, crap, I think I'm tearing up.

"Mama!" I finally call out, before jumping up and running into her open

arms.

"M-ma-?! Ahhh, what a great child!" Surprised at first, she expresses her

delight at being called mama. She embraces me softly and strokes my hair

with tender love. I'm seriously crying into her voluptuous chest now, though

from relief rather than from fear.

"It must have been scary, right? I did not intend to put you through this..."

She actually sounds sorry. Hm? Something feels wrong here.

"Wasn't this training?" I separate from her and look her up and down. She

seems a little fidgety and her eyes are swimming around. What's going on?

"Well, yes and no... I mean... Mama made a little mistake, you see... We

were meant to go to another place together, but I have bad control over

transportation magic, so we were separated." She looks away with a sheepish

smile, trying to avoid eye contact.

Look at me, oi.

"Oho, I see... a mistake, huh?" I cross my arms and look down at my

mother with a deadly glare. Now I'm seriously pissed.

"Teehee~" She sticks out her tongue and winks in a cutesy manner that

makes her look like a child. It unexpectedly suits her otherwise mature

appearance. But for the current me, that's the last straw.

Something audibly snaps in my head.

Since a certain demon queen has terrible control over magic and

accidentally threw a level one character into a level eighty area, even though she only wanted to teleport somewhere together, I'm now all the way back in

the throne room of the palace again. At least she was able to find me just in

time, or I would have come after death to haunt her.

By the way, the person in the dark blue robes who came with her was

introduced to me as the court magician named Mithra. He has the unique

ability to teleport people without using a magic circle, and when he does it,

it's also much more stable than Maou-mama's. Instead of the flashing lights

and violent pulling forces, there was only a gentle stream of colors and a light

breeze.

Using Mithra's abilities, Maou-mama was able to find me, even though a

teleportation accident like mine apparently always results in the person

ending up somewhere completely random. The place I just got rescued from

is called Yagrath, also known as the Dark Continent. And there are no

transportation circles on that entire continent, so even if I had known

teleportation magic, I wouldn't have been able to return from there by myself.

If Mithra didn't exist, I would have been stranded there forever.

"You did well in surviving for so long. Many expeditions have ended in the

jaws of the vularen packs that roam Yagrath, and even powerful lords were

ground into mincemeat by quakemaws." Maou-mama comments as we walk

through the palace. I assume vularen are the wolf-beasts, and judging by the

description and their names, quakemaws must be the cyber-dinos.

I killed a whole pack of those vularen single-handedly, but normally they

would be considered pretty dangerous? Aren't I pretty amazing then?

I'll keep that to myself for now.

"Now, Mithra will send us to the right place, so that we can begin your

training." With these words, Maou-mama motions to signal the court mage,

but I interrupt her.

"I just came back, mama. I'd like to rest a bit first." Even though I'm in

perfect shape physically, I'm mentally exhausted. I'd love to take a long bath

and lie in bed until I get over the fact that I died and reincarnated in the body

of a monster.

"I understand that you had a tiring experience, but it is best we start early

before too many false preconceptions about yourself become ingrained into

you." Stroking my cheek softly, the demon queen explains why we have to do

it now.

But I have no idea what she means by false preconceptions about myself.

Something like how my body works or my position in the food chain of this

world?

"Mithra, bring us to the Blood Pits of Rodens." Gesturing at the cloaked

mage, my mother orders him to use his magic.

Blood Pits. That sounds exactly like the place I want to go right now... not!

Once again, I'm enveloped by a stream of soft lights. Maou-mama and

Mithra seem to be standing on an invisible floor next to me, as we don't

actually move physically.

Within seconds, we arrive at our destination, and the stream of light fades,

revealing a muddy trench. The ground is plastered with wooden panels, and

the walls have been dug out from the dirt ground. There is an overwhelming

stench of blood and decay from all around us.

"... what are we doing here, mama?" I turn to her and see an excited

expression on her face, as her eyes are fixed on something behind me.

Turning around and looking up, I find a giant man three times my width

and two heads taller hunched over and towering over me. His skin is light

bronze and covered in scales, with shoulders directly connected to his head

and lacking a neck. And he has the face of a crocodile's.

It's literally a humanoid crocodile!

I very nearly turn into Hedgehog Mode to instantly kill him before I get

attacked, but I don't feel any hostility from him as he turns his head to look at

me with a yellow-green eye featuring a vertically slit pupil. There is curiosity

and wonder in his expression, though since he's still basically a crocodile, I

can't be too sure about that.

"Nilotec, how is your father?" The demon queen greets him in a somewhat

casual manner. She knows this bipedal crocodile.

"As always, he's grumpy and complains about the foot he lost in Your

Majesty's last campaign. But the old snapper's actually happy he was taken

along instead of being kept in his fortress." Speaking in a low growling voice

that seems to suggest anger, his words hold a completely different meaning;

he seems to be a pretty friendly fellow. Then he turns to me. "This your new

child?"

"Indeed. She is a really good girl." The demon queen practically raises her

nose in pride, a big smile on her face.

New child? Does it mean she's producing children all the time?

"So, the usual?" Nilotec bares his sharp teeth, and his lack of expressions only makes me think that he's trying to intimidate me. That must be his

version of a grin.

"No, she survived on Yagrath for almost half a day." At these words, the

croc's eyes widen as he turns his head again to look at me more closely. I

guess having the eyes on the sides of your head makes it hard to use both to

look at the same person when they're very close.

"Then we'll skip forward to the test." Now I can tell that he's joyful, most

likely looking forward to conducting this test.

I have a bad feeling about this.

Apparently 'the test' consists of dressing me in slave clothes and throwing

me into a small arena with about thirty captive humans. It's to test my combat

capabilities against intelligent and organized enemies, huh? They are all

wielding weapons while I haven't been given one myself, although that isn't

much of a problem for me.

The problem is the fact that my opponents are humans.

I'm standing amidst the prisoners looking just like one of them, so they

aren't aware that I'm their enemy. A middle-aged man wielding a wooden

club and wearing torn rags comes up to me with a haunted expression. He's

nervously peeking up at the demon queen's spectator's box, from where she's

watching with Nilotec standing by her side.

"Ya alright?" The man has a pockmarked face and bad breath, and I can

barely hold myself back from shirking away. He reminds me of the creepy

homeless man whom I once encountered on my way back home after going

out with some friends in the evening. I couldn't understand his boondocks

accent as tried to talk to me, while he followed me in the dark for a whole

block.

"What did they do to you, my lady?" A younger man dressed in ripped but

much more sophisticated clothes, wielding a sword and featuring much better

hygiene, approaches me from the other side. He seems to think that I was

tortured to the point where I lost my voice or something since I didn't answer

the first man.

Looking between the two, I assume that the former is a peasant and the

latter is a nobleman. And both think I'm a prisoner just like they are. But their

attitudes would most definitely change if they knew I was actually the

daughter of the demon queen.

"Alright." The crocodile calls out to me from the stands. Since his eyes

aren't the same as a human's, nobody can tell whom exactly he's referring to.

"Let's see how you'll deal with this bunch of humans."

Huh, what's with that phrasing? What exactly am I supposed to do here?

Fight them to the death?

"Is there a demon among us?" The young nobleman mutters while looking

around cautiously. It's clear he doesn't want to create a panic with that

suggestion, but the middle-aged man on my other side overheard it.

"What, one of us is a demon?" He shouts out in surprise.

Instantly, the humans all step away from each other and raise their weapons

in something that could only be described as a medieval standoff. Humans

are very quick to doubt each other, it seems.

"You! I haven't seen you around. Which squad are you from?" The peasant

turns to me while holding his club ready like a baseball bat, to whack me

with it if I make any wrong move.

"You lowlife, how dare you threaten a young lady." Stepping in front of me

and pointing his sword at the middle-aged man, the nobleman covers for me.

I really appreciate it, but would you do that if you knew I was actually the

demon among you? "Tell us your name and where you came from, my lady."

I wonder where he's coming up with the idea that I'm a noble lady. Maybe

it's because of my fair and spotless face. The other women in the arena look

much rougher, and all of them have tanned skin and straw-like hair - the

result of being out in the sun all day long and working the fields, I assume.

They should be suspecting me since I look completely different from them;

my facial structure and hair color is the way I looked before my death, but all

of these people look like westerners. How anyone here could mistake me for

one of them is beyond me.

"Hey, your hair is black." A woman remarks with a suspicious glare and

points her spear at me from a distance. I can hear others beginning their very

own inquisitions elsewhere, and voices grow louder everywhere in the arena.

"You're not from the empire, are you?"

Humans are just like that, aren't they? I've seen this happen before. When

people want to find faults with others, they will look for every little detail to

incriminate them with. While they aren't wrong this time, what if I was a

normal human who just happened to be different from the others?

The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

In a world where mob justice still exists, that's not entirely true. Because

here, saying 'a nail that sticks out gets pulled out and disposed of' would be

much more appropriate. After all, if it gets revealed that I'm a demon, they'll

lynch me.

"She's not saying anything. I must be right!" The pockmarked peasant

inches closer, ready to swing his club at my face.

"Cease this folly. Can you not see that the demons want to make us doubt

each other?" The young nobleman is trying to defend me, but more and more

people seem to have caught onto the situation and are turning my way.

Then I suddenly feel something piercing into my side. When I look down, I

see that the spear, wielded by the woman who first raised suspicions because

of my black hair, has been plunged into my exposed waist, all the way down

to the shaft.

But it doesn't hurt.

"Wha-?! How dare you!" Rounding me and swinging his sword at the

woman, the nobleman tries to scare her away. She lets go of the spear in

shock as if realizing what she just did. The young man turns to me with a

concerned expression. "Are you alri... ght?"

I pull the spear out with one hand and look down at my side, where the

hole closes up on its own immediately. There is no blood, and just like

poking a thick liquid, it returns to a smooth state on its own.

"Y-you... you are a demon!" Making a full U-turn in his attitude towards

me, the nobleman draws back with an expression of fear and hatred. In the

same move, he slashes at me and the sword cuts into my shoulder and goes

all the way down to my chest in what would be a grievous wound for a

human. My already ragged shirt falls off my chest and reveals the cut, which

is closing itself visibly.

What are these feelings I have right now?

My heart, which I shouldn't even have since I'm actually just an amorphous

being, is aching. The young nobleman stood up for me, but the moment the

truth was revealed, he didn't hesitate for a second to betray me. No questions

asked, no chance to explain myself.

The humans surround me completely, their weapons pointing in my

direction, and a mass of fear and hatred wash over me. It causes me to shiver,

and elation fills my mind; it seems that a Crawling Chaos basks in those

negative emotions as if it was nourishing sunlight.

And that's when I realize what the sensation just now was: Disgust and

disappointment. I find myself thinking that humans are only like this after all.

The encirclement, emboldened by their large numbers and the weapons

they wield, tighten the ring. Not a single one of them shows any apprehension

to participate in my lynching, as their faces betray their bloodlust and malice.

I feel my mind dull from the dark sensations that creep up within me, and

my heart grows cold and distant. My vision blurs, and the humans before me

turn into distorted figures only emanating a disgusting aura. Their negative

emotions flow into me like sweet molasses.

Simply irredeemable.

When I come back to my senses, I'm the only one left standing in the arena.

Several spears and swords are buried in my body, but I don't feel them at all.

At one point, without me even noticing, my forearms turned into large bone

blades - the one I used when I disemboweled the gorilla-like monster on the

Dark Continent. From their tips, red blood trickles down and seeps into the

dirt ground.

The dismembered and mangled corpses of the humans lie scattered

everywhere. And even though they are in such a state, there is no disturbance

in my mind. A part of me coldly analyzes the way in which I just killed thirty

humans, both men, and women. The rest of me doesn't even care.

They attacked me first, after all.

"That was incredible!" The demon queen applauds me from the spectator's

box with a radiant smile.

"I gotta say, she has great potential, Your Majesty." Nilotec has his arms

crossed and looks at the carnage I caused with what I assume to be a satisfied

expression.

Said majesty suddenly jumps down from the stands and walks towards me

with a spring in her steps. I remove the weapons stuck inside me by pushing

them out of my body, and by the time I'm finished, she's already right in front

of me.

"You did really well. None of your siblings passed this test as quickly as

you did." Maou-mama praises me and pets my head, even though she's

smaller than me.

I think I now understand what this whole thing was about. Its purpose was

to determine whether I would be able to kill humans or not. Morespecifically, how far I would let it come before I fought back and started

killing them. Maybe this test was conceived after some of her children

refused to kill despite their lives being threatened.

"What was this test for?" Looking around me once again, I take in the sight

of the massacre I committed. I'm asking just to make sure.

"That is no longer important." Placing a hand on my cheek, Maou-mama

gives me a beautiful smile. "You have shown that you are not bound by

anything."

I guess it's just as I thought and this was to test my resolve when faced with

humans. And after what I did here, I don't think I'll ever hesitate to kill

anyone again. That is, as long as there's no other choice.

When I think about it, under the same circumstances in my previous life, I

would most definitely not have been able to do anything. Being born in

Japan, I've always been far from war and death. Let alone kill them all, I

wouldn't even have fought back and most likely just been lynched. And the

same would have happened here if I hadn't been accidentally sent to Yagrath

and had to fight and kill for my survival there.

I think my inhibitions have completely disappeared with this. I've made my

peace with the fact that I've died and been reborn as a demon in a world

where it's all about killing or being killed.

"What's next?" I ask in a cold tone that surprises me. This shouldn't be a

reason for me to lose my emotions!

"We shall have dinner." Looking around us, Maou-mama states with a

happy expression. It's evident what will be on the menu judging by her gaze,

but I don't feel disgusted by the prospect. When I think about it, humans and

animals aren't that different - both are perfectly fine meat. It would be a waste

not to make use of all these bodies.

And I, for my part, am not a human anymore, so I shouldn't be bothered by

eating them anyway.