Vol 1 Chapter 39 – Stop It, No More Girls — This Is a Yandere Harem

“A daughter?”

“A daughter, yes. Her name is Ariadne — she doesn’t look much like me, I’m afraid.”

A photo was shown to him. There she was: a pink-haired girl dressed in gothic lolita fashion, surrounded by cakes and stuffed animals, beaming with pure happiness as she stuffed her cheeks full of sweets.

First impression — loli. A loli. At this stage of the journey. Well… yeah, it’s a classic genre. Can’t say I’m against it.

She looked like a perfectly normal girl, otherwise. Same as Rottal-san, she had ram-like horns curling from her head. And also — hard to make out against the background, but… were those wings? Bat-like ones?

“The first to hold the Demon King title bore the name Catastrophe, and like all other fixed roles, the position is inherited by the firstborn of the direct line with each generation. Ariadne has several siblings as well, and since my daughter has no children of her own, should you win, the title would pass to her brothers.”

“Is it really alright to just casually drop all of that…?”

Spineless, spineless — Titania-san and Maronier-san had both said it to him more times than he could count, but still — he was technically the hero. Technically, the enemy. He genuinely wanted to ask what kind of open-book attitude this was to have toward someone who was supposed to be threatening her daughter.

“It’s less information and more simply… fact. Isn’t that right, Takamitsu-san?”

“Well, yes. It happens every time, after all.”

The problem was one single thing. He had never imagined the Demon King’s role would be a fixed one as well, completely outside his calculations. There was now a very real possibility that the Demon King fight was going to be brutal. He’d thought that now that he could use magic, he’d manage somehow — but supposedly the coercive force of a fixed role’s route was absolute.

Whether his route or the Demon King’s route was stronger, he couldn’t say — but one thing was certain: this girl was absolutely a yandere. Every instinct in him was screaming it.

“Boy, your face has gone completely pale.”

“Well, it’s just… I’ve got kind of a troublesome route when it comes to girls, so…”

“Ahh, the hero role does seem rough every single time, doesn’t it?”

“So then, Utaki-kun — you want to ask Rotta the same thing, don’t you?”

“Ah — yes, right. Um—”

“Rotta is fine.”

“Rotta-san, have you ever felt something was off about this territory game?”

“I have.”

“Right, I knew it — this world’s… wait, what?”

“I have, yes.”

He’d braced himself for a flat “what are you talking about” reaction, so he stumbled right out of the gate. Rito, who had been inching closer little by little, seemed to be eavesdropping — listening with a blank, puzzled look on his face.

“Rito, have you ever wondered about the whole Demon King and Good Realm territory thing?”

“Nah, not really. Always seemed pretty normal to me.”

The same reaction as Elena. So this was the normal response for those on the human side. He and Dr. Takamitsu were outsiders, so they were a different story — but that meant Cleo must have been struggling with this all along. If he’d tried bringing it up with anyone around him, all he would’ve gotten was exactly that same kind of reaction.

“Hmm. So you want to ask about the game.” Rottal-san tilted her white porcelain teacup with graceful ease and smiled. “Very well — ask me anything.”

Vol 1 Chapter 40 – There’s a “Married Woman” Eroge Genre, But She’s Not Human, So It Doesn’t Count (Excuses)

“A sense of wrongness about the territory game, you say. No one from the human tribe here would ever say that.”

Rottal-san smiled pleasantly as her gaze swept between Dr. Takamitsu and him. When her eyes finally landed on Rito, he let out a tiny, inexplicable yelp — “Eep!?” — and ducked behind Utaki’s shadow.

…Come on, it was just eye contact. What’s the deal? Is it because she’s a woman? Because she’s Demon King royalty?

“This sense of wrongness you speak of, Utaki-kun — why do you want to know what’s behind it? Is it because you’re the hero? Some drive to unravel mysteries, or…?”

“No. It’s just because it makes me uncomfortable.”

“Ufufufu — you really do say exactly what you mean, don’t you! Satisfying intellectual curiosity — I don’t dislike that at all.”

Because it does make me uncomfortable.

This world where everything seems like it knows everything — and yet all of it feels fake.

A world like a light novel. Like a game.

The same kind of wrongness as food samples, or sushi made out of wagashi sweets.

It has the feel of the real thing, it’s as close to real as real gets — and yet something is still off. If you could stand here perfectly calm in a place like that, you’d be the strange one.

There’s a certain group that put it in a song, didn’t they — you’ve gotta lick it yourself and sink your teeth in before you’ll ever understand.

So that’s all he’d decided to do — open his mouth as wide as it’d go and bite down. Though honestly, it was Cleo who pulled the trigger, so it wasn’t exactly his own initiative from the start. (And he’d say it again as many times as it took — he did not consider boys who present as girls to be within his strike zone.)

“Dr. Takamitsu — if a perfectly fine chair turned out to be made of chocolate, or a dish that looked delicious crumbled into sand the moment you bit into it, what would you do?”

“Well. I suppose I’d ask whoever prepared it if they were playing a prank on me.”

“That’s exactly how I feel right now. Like, maybe someone set up an elaborate hidden-camera gag. Or like I might be having one incredibly long, vivid dream.”

The cockroach army had completely ruled out the hidden-camera angle, leaving the dream theory. But honestly — dream or reality, after this long in this world, it hardly made a difference either way.

“What you should begin with, I think, is understanding why His Highness Catastrophe was born.”

“But the Demon King tribe is an older race than the humans, isn’t it?”

“That doesn’t make them unrelated, though. Because before the human tribe existed, we were the race that ruled as absolute sovereigns.”

“Top of the food chain, then.”

Rottal-san recrossed her legs and signaled for a refill of her tea.

“Boy — you said you carry a troublesome route when it comes to women. I think I understand why.” Her gaze lingered on him, warm and knowing. “Looking at you gives me… a little thrill.”

“Even if I’m on Rotta-san’s route, please don’t kill me.”

“Sadly, my game is already over — I won’t be interfering with anyone else’s route. This is more…” She paused. “Instinct.”

Rottal-san had short, curling silver hair, lucent as glass. Picture Marilyn Monroe, approximately, and you were in the right neighborhood.

The living embodiment of sensuality was casting him a sultry look from across the table — and yes, that did something for him — but according to Elena, the two of them were separated by over four thousand years in age.

He wasn’t opposed to the married woman genre. But it seemed like this person (… person?) wasn’t going to end up in his route. Whether to call that a relief or a disappointment, he wasn’t sure.

No — wait. A yandere married woman. When he thought about it calmly, that was genuinely terrifying. He was getting numb to all of this. Gradually, definitely numb.

“Ufun. Dr. Takamitsu, the Master, you — and the little light-attribute boy over there — shall we start with a history lesson?”

“Wait, why does the Master have to be here, too?”

“Ah — he came to this world five or six years ago. Didn’t he?” She glanced sideways. “Isn’t that right, Shin’ichirō-san?”

“I thought Masters were supposed to stay silent and pour the coffee.”

I really, truly wish people would stop dropping that kind of information after the fact. It’s terrible for the heart.