Capture Target

Chapter 44 — Y2: The New Normal



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Six… seven… eight… oh heya!  Nine… ten… phew!  You’re here early.

Sorry, I’m a bit busy -- wait, no, just did that leg, gotta swap… One… two…

Look, this isn’t eroge porn-land.  Five… six…  If I want to keep my body in prime fuckable appearance, I need to exercise!  Nine… ten.  Phew.  And exercising sucks.  It’s hard work being the best slut you can be!

I’ve got several more reps I’ve planned to do, but feel free to join me in the shower after~


Haaaa~  That was a relaxing shower.  Now then!  Parasites:  Those kept, and those lost.

After the battle I was knocked out.  I was also drained of several vital nutrients that my parasite-suit had absorbed during the battle, and they needed to be replenished as soon as possible.

My friends were more than happy to drag me away from the death site of the nucleus, considering the smell that it was starting to exude as it rapidly began to rot.  There would be more work to do over the next few weeks, but they already had that all planned out.  They needed to purify the land, do patrols to find and destroy the forest's attempts to regrew the Parasitic Nucleus, help clear out the mini-bosses that the Nucleus had created before it was destroyed… busy work, basically.  Even in the game this stuff wasn’t required, but it ramped up the money you could get from land in the second landmass, so it was worth the time.

And while they were doing that, I was stuck in a hospital.

Literally stuck.  Though I wasn't aware of it at the time, they had pictures of me being, quite literally, strapped down to a table.

Why?

Because I didn’t want them to remove my parasites, that’s why!

Remember the collar-parasite, the one that was on the back of my neck shaped like a plus?  That thing was why I went so crazy for parasites in the first place.  It makes it easier for them to control and manipulate what I want -- it does the advanced processing that translates ‘parasite say sex’ to ‘more parasites sounds like a smart idea’.  The main ‘suit’ that was attached to me plugged directly into it, as well, treating my spinal cord like a computer socket.

Which is, by the way, super hot.

That said, even now I can say it’s a good thing they removed most of them.  As it was, I was more beast than human, and while that’s fun for a bit, in the long term it really reduces your options for sexual pleasure.  

…And for, uh, having friends.  And stuff.

A-anyway!  They removed what they could -- which is more than I wanted, even at the time -- but they couldn’t remove everything.  Some parasites had gone from ‘attached’ to ‘fully merged’ with my body.  For example, my lovely tail~  It was no longer a parasite, it was me.  The additions to my mouth and throat were stuck as well, along with the first parasite that slunk into my brain at the start of year two.

There were a few others as well, actually; those three were the big ones, but I had a few parasites -- well, okay, calling them ‘parasites’ is actually incorrect at this point, the proper word is symbiote.  These are additions that were grown because of my parasites; they interfered with the signals in my body and cells, causing mutations to naturally develop.  Well, as ‘natural’ as biological genetic manipulation can be, anyway.

For example, I had some additions to my spine.  You couldn’t and can’t see or even feel them, but it was basically a super-highway of neural information, that was used exclusively by the parasites I had at the time.  Similarly, my liver had been completely replaced with a combination of parasites and mutations, so that it --

-- what?  No!  It wasn’t a sex organ, how would that even work?!  The liver is a blood filtration device, how would --

No!  I don’t want to hear your theories!  I might find them hot, and I don’t want to!

LALALALALA, I’m not listening!


…If you try sharing those thoughts again, I’m going to kick you in the balls.

Good.  Okay.  Removing my fingers from my ears now…

Good! Good. I don’t have to abuse your groin.  Instead, I can suck you off once we’re done.  So long as you don’t try that again.

Now, my liver!

It had been replaced, initially in a patchwork fashion and later wholesale, by parasites that had snuck into my body.  They initially were only there to ‘improve’ it a bit -- and by that, I mean encourage certain hormones and protein production, to help the parasites grow and enhance their control over the host -- but once the suit was attached to me, they took on a more… active approach.

As in, any part of the liver that was human, was rapidly replaced by highly optimized, mutated versions.

Naturally, they couldn’t remove my symbiote liver.  Or even return it to normal -- my body treated this new organ as my normal liver.  Damage it, dose me with healing potion, and it just healed up the exact same way it was.  It actually came with plenty of advantages!  It worked more efficiently, it could clean itself out much more quickly, it could catch a variety of poisons, and it ensured that whenever it had a combination of chemicals it could manipulate, it would produce sex hormones to flood my bloodstream with!

…Okay yes that last one was counted as a problem by the doctors, but by that point I was such a slut I barely even noticed the change.  It was just ‘one more thing’ that made me get wet at the drop of a hat.  I already had like ten of those anyway.  Either way, I’ve learned to love it since then.

Even after they removed everything they could, I still needed some time in the hospital to adjust to my new reality.

For example, my mouth was a sex organ.  It had been making eating -- very interesting until a parasite specialist taught me how to turn it off.  She was really hot, and had like twenty fully merged parasites!  She taught me that it was… somewhat similar to a tickling reflex.  I had some control over turning it off and on, but not a lot.  If I was too horny, or the thought was bouncing around in my head, it would turn ‘on’ and make squirm with heat as I tried to eat a sandwich.  

And don’t even get me started about putting on lipstick.

Then there was my tail, which brought its own clothing issues, and my body's new curves, which --

-- hm.  You know, it’s been a while… let me note down how I have changed since the last time I wrote that down, yeah?  Oh, oh, actually!  I can include the others, too!  Yeah!  Okay, so, let me see…


Spoiler

Okay there, now --

…Really.  Really?  Fine.

Look, [Endurance] and [Stamina Enhancement] are two very different talents.  They have some overlap, but they’re different.

[Endurance] is about pushing beyond your stamina and other limits.  [Stamina Enhancement] is about having more stamina that takes longer to exhaust.

I’m pretty sure they’re similar due to a weird translation thing, but I never bothered to check.

So no, I do not have the protagonist’s cheat-talent.

Now.  My body.  There were a lot of things that I had to deal with now that it had changed, so let me go through what it felt like to get ready for the day~

The first thing I had to do was ensure that everything I had would fit.

That’s not me joking; I had a tail now!  Clothing doesn’t have a tail hole by default!  On top of that, my tits were massive now, and I really needed more bras.

At the very least the issue of the ‘tail’ was easy to fix.  It’s a little trick in the Alchemical Corruption series.  If somebody has an extra body part, like wings or a second pair of arms, they just need to put the clothing item in question into a cauldron alongside a sample of the body part they want to adapt it to.  Feathers would work for wings, reptilian transformations could use scales, and in a pinch a drop of blood would always work.  Put them in the cauldron, stir it around for maybe five-ten minutes, take it out and done!

…Though it would, inevitably, be tighter, skimpier, or shorter than when it went in.

You could even do this en-mass, though, uh.  You had to be careful to not mix the colors and the whites… otherwise you tend to get this ugly faded pinkish-red that screams ‘uncared for pink unicorn fur’ or ‘carefully applied tomato sauce stains faded by the eras’.

As for where the extra mass of the clothing goes after this transformation is done -- nobody knows! 

There have been multiple tests that show that doing something like this just… removes the mass.  Poof.  Scientists have done alchemy in enclosed ‘rooms’ that were on massive scales, that didn’t even let air out to ensure things were kept contained.  And when doing this with clothing, the enclosed room becomes verifiably lighter.

Yeah, it’s weird.  It’s probably one of those ‘lazy chief god’ things.

It’s convenient though!

So, first, I had to do that with my panties and skirts.  And spats, for the occasions I would wear them.  Not my bras, though, because I needed something else for them.

See, breast sensitivity, in this world, increases the bigger your tits are.  And on top of that, my nipples had grown, proportionally, with my breasts.  What this meant is that normal bras, those that weren’t specially made, the insides of the cups just constantly rubbed against my nipples in a very distracting fashion.  Usually a pleasurably distracting fashion, but with poor material it became just annoyingly itchy and rubbed them raw.

Fortunately, this was a known problem in the world of Alchemical Corruption!  It’s been called things like the ‘Slut’s Curse’, the ‘Sexy Blessing’, and the ‘Proof of Holiness’.  I mentally call it ‘this body is too fucking slutty for a normal life’.  Either way, it was a known problem with known solutions.  There were plenty of speciality stores and mail-order magazines that helped with this exact issue!

…These stores and magazines were, exclusively, made by sluts, for sluts.

So, yes, I could easily get my super-sized silk bras with discrete little secondary cups for my nipples.

No, I could not get a pair that didn’t look sexy as fuck.

…Frankly, when I realized that, I was more upset by the principle of the matter.  I didn’t actually want boring bras; I had jiggling jugs and I wanted to show them off!  It was the principle of the matter; sluts in denial should have the right to stay in denial.

Not that I’d have said as much at the time, but still.

So.  After I got the clothing sorted, first came the bra.  This was an… issue, until I got used to it.  See, my tits were so big and sensitive that having a normal bra that just clipped in the back wouldn’t really… work.  Oh it could be done, to be clear, but I needed to place my breasts much more carefully into the silk fabric to ensure there would be no chafing or itching.  And chafing and itching are not sexy, so that was very important.

Instead, while the bras did hook together in the back, they also had a good degree of slack in the front.  So much so that it was almost humorous; with the right bra and with a bit of work, you could be wearing a bra and have it not even touch your tits!  It was set up so you could tighten them with a little device in the front.  

You could tug on these little hoops to tighten one cup or the other, and then attach them to hooks over the opposite shoulder; that way you could stabilize one cup, then the other.  And when you’re done, you can unhook both and turn them into a sexy little ribbon, instead!

So I would slip a new bra over my shoulders, and then carefully lift my left breast with my left hand, and grab my left bra cup with my right hand.  I would then carefully try to ensure that it was placed properly -- making absolutely certain to get my nipple in the teat cup, you make that mistake only once -- before tugging the bra cup tight and hooking the loop over my shoulder.  

I would then repeat the entire process with my right breast.  Then I would unhook both of the temporary straps and tie them into a sexy little bow that accentuated the bra and covered the device used to tighten the cups!  If I ever needed to reset it, there’s a little switch hidden that you can flick to loosen the cups.

This process was… not easy, to begin with.  For one simple reason:

Big titties are heavy.

I had to lift them with just one hand to fit the bra over it!  And my hand would mess with the shape of the breast, making it harder to fit properly!  Sure tits torpedoed out unnaturally in that world, but that only worked so much!  

Eventually I figured out how to tighten the cup in such a way that I didn’t need to lift my tits, thankfully.  As you can see, that particular problem slash delight only got worse with time.

Then came the panties.  The panties that were altered to have a tail hole.  That I had already had a hard time putting on because of my fat ass.  

I mean, sure, I could use tie-on panties, but that would be admitting defeat!

…Also, uh, I found that they tended to come untied at the most annoying moments.  Typically when around Shimizu.  As in, always when around Shimizu.  [Lewd Luck] is fun, but kinda annoying at times.

So instead I simply struggled to get the normal, elastic variant up over my butt.  …I make it sound more difficult than it actually was, but it did take some effort every time I put them on.  Never when removing them, though, oddly enough… 

…Wait, no, that makes perfect sense, pervert god.  Moving on.

When I had them on, I could feel them digging into my lower lips, just a bit.  Feel the friction with every step.  And thankfully, by that time, I was slutty enough to find that a pro instead of a con~  A fun little secret!

At that point I would have had on…!  Literally just my lingerie.

Yeah, getting dressed became more and more of a process the hotter I became.

There was one boon, though:  My tail actually helped massively with my balance.  Thanks to my [Perfect Host] blessing, now that it was fully merged, its instincts tied with mine… so it would naturally sway about or extend when my balance was off.  It’s an odd thing, having a tail when you previously had none, but I got used to it pretty quickly.  It made my heels a lot easier to run in!  I mean, still not easy, but easier!

Anyway, then I had to put on my top.  The white blouse needed to be buttoned up, and this took even longer than before.  Even before my enhancements, it took time to find the buttons and match them with the right button holes; it really didn’t help that my tits were too large to see what I was working on.

But now that my breasts were even bigger, it almost felt like I was trying to button somebody else’s shirt while blindfolded!

Even worse, as I buttoned up, the blouse started undergoing its ‘boob-sock-ification’, and hugging my massive mounds up and down.  This meant I had to figure out how to button up while said button was upside down!

Now, eventually, I got the hang of it.  It’s my body, after all.  Humans can get used to a lot of stuff.  But at the start, to get it to work I needed to either use a mirror or be lying on my back on my bed.  If it was a mirror, I got the dissonance of trying to match up my mirrored arms when fiddling with something I couldn't see just by looking down.  With the bed, I had to deal with the weight of my tits jiggling atop my chest with every frustrated movement.

Both left me flustered after I was done~

Next up came the thigh highs, with their lovely sensation as I tugged them up my legs.  Then the skirt, which were all, I remind you, shorter after I adjusted them for my tail.  And whatever skirt I was wearing had to deal with my jiggling rear!  It went from ‘miniskirt’ to almost a ‘microskirt’, and it felt like a single movement would flash my panties.

It wasn’t quite that bad, but it was close.

Then came my tie, which was easy so long as I remembered to keep it out of my cleavage, and, finally, my heeled Mary Jane shoes.

I was hot as fuck~  I could see just by looking in the mirror, how my blouse was almost, but not quite, straining to contain my breasts.  How you could see the straps of my bra if you looked just right.  How my skirt hid my panties, but by such a thin margin you would feel like wishing hard enough would reveal what you want to see.

And that was before my makeup!

…You know, going over all of it like that, dressing in skimpy barely-there clothing makes a lot more sense.  If all you need to do is wriggle into a set of outerwear panties and bra, slip on a pair of heels, and you'd be ready to go in half the time.

Not that you’d miss anything due to the time slot system, but that doesn’t remove the effort required!


All in all, I was ready to adjust to my new ‘normal’.  I had some parasites fully merged with my body, I had my new and improved figure, and we had to deal with the alchemical gold mine that was the dead Parasitic Nucleus's remains.

Things were looking up!

Which is why I was surprised, shocked, and angry when Takeo confronted me.

At that point, as far as I was concerned, Takeo had done three things of note:

He had helped in a single battle, and not even that well, due to a failure in communication and planning.  

He had been a constant lazy bum, having flat out said he intended to spend the next four years on vacation.  

And he had been a nag.

He was giving me constant warnings, without any real, actionable advice!  Just, ‘this is a bad idea’ or ‘that will end up with becoming sluttier’ or whatever.  It was aggravating to the point where I was considering just doing the opposite of whatever he wanted, just to get him to shut up.

The fight wasn’t… pretty.  It started with Takeo being mostly calm, and telling me that I had to be more careful, but I started getting snippy with him.  My obvious counter was that I couldn’t be more careful with him not doing anything to help, to which he said that I would be risking myself even if he did help, to which I countered by asking if I risked myself as much when he did, to which he said:

"Of course you do."

Our voices got louder as we escalated.  Frankly I don’t remember most of what we said to each other; just a rising anger as we argued.  I remember complaining that I couldn’t trust a word out of his mouth due to his aura, and I remember him saying he was sick and tired of me mistrusting him over something he had no control over.  I don’t even know how we got onto that topic, I just know we somehow did.

I only clearly remember the end of the argument.  I had asked him what I was supposed to do.  What was I supposed to do to ‘be more cautious’ when he’s the one that’s been through over a hundred time loops?  What could he say to me that wasn’t just him spewing complaints?

He said, and I remember this clearly, “I don’t know, that’s the problem!  All I know is that when you get your slutty mind out of the gutter and realize that you have more options than just ‘charge forward all alone’, things actually get done!”

I was going to counter that I didn’t just charge forward, that I knew and relied on my allies and friends, but Takeo just cut me off with a cold glare; he had had this argument with me before, it seems.  Or a similar enough one to know my thought process.  “No.  You don’t.”

I tried to respond again but he just stomped off after that.  Saying something about being too angry to continue.  I shouted something after him in frustration, but I don’t remember what it was; his words stuck in my mind.

It was frustrating because Takeo had messed up countless times, this time loop alone.  Oh, sure, he had a reason for all of them, but everybody has a reason for making mistakes.  One doesn’t make a mistake on purpose.  I had felt like we were doing rather well.  Not even eight months into the second year, and we had reduced our current problems down to just the Memetic Mistress.  It felt like there was a double-standard there.

And, to be clear, there was one.  Takeo was doing no better than me, yet he acted like I was the one making the mistakes.  He would apologize for that later, but at the time it was just making me angry.

…But… I was worried he might have had a point.  I tended to put myself in the front of every operation; the one pushing harder, the one risking themselves.  …I wondered, suddenly, why I didn’t multitask.  We had enough people to do it.  At the time it made sense:  Focus on one, then another, then another.  

But a large part of what needed to get done was just searching.  Claiming areas to see if we could find the Nucleus or the Memetic Mistress.  Instead, I had everybody follow me along.

And there were advantages to that tactic, advantages that I still stand by.  But I hadn’t even considered any alternatives.  I never even asked for help planning; at most I asked if there were any obvious pitfalls.

…It was around then that I got frustrated that Takeo’s arguments had gotten to me.  I needed to process them or I’d keep thinking he had a point, which he obviously didn’t, because he was a jerk.

So I decided to try ‘thinking things through’ a bit more.  If only to prove to myself that I already was.

I realized it was time to talk to Sevens.

PHEW!

Here's a chonky chapter.  Even without the updated stat sheets, this chapter is a little more than eight pages.  With it, it's more like fourteen!

It also represents a turning point for Elizabeth -- she starts being smarter with the next chapter, and taking action and making plans, as apposed to dealing with things as they come.  She becomes a player instead of a pawn... and she will rather soon discover that the board is much more complicated than she thought~


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