Chapter 106: Humans vs. Tentacle Creature (3)
Tears streamed down my face as I mentally bid farewell to my lifelong companion, my precious dick.
Suddenly, the moisture in the room disappeared, my skin tightening painfully, and the tentacle creature let out a scream as it recoiled from me.
"Delphine! Throw more of it!"
Beyond the mass of tentacles blocking the shower room entrance, I saw Delphine and Professor Pandel. Delphine quickly grabbed another potion bottle, uncapped it, and tossed it into the room.
‘They’ve come to save me!’
Even if they couldn’t hear me, there was no way they’d miss the sight of the tentacles overwhelming the entire shower room.
As the bottle shattered, the potion began absorbing all the moisture in its vicinity. Even the fluid making up the tentacles started being sucked dry. The tentacle wrapped around my arm dried up and crumbled away, snapping off easily.
"No...! How dare you interrupt at such a crucial moment!"
The tentacle creature tried to close its maw, as if determined to finish me off, but at that moment, I clenched my core, pouring mana into my glans, and struck upward into its mouth.
The tentacle creature, hit squarely by the rising motion, flinched like a crocodile stabbed in the throat. It recoiled in shock, giving me just enough time to shake off the dried-up tentacles, grab the limp Mollang, and retreat.
I grabbed a nearby bucket and upended it over myself, coating my body with water to replenish my lost moisture. I also used the bucket to shield Mollang, trying to keep her safe.
While I prepared for the next attack, the tentacle creature reached out toward me, attempting to approach despite its body visibly shrinking.
Finally, as the alchemical dehydrating agent spread over the creature’s body, her supple, fluid-filled form began to wither and shrink at an alarming rate.
This was an incredibly potent substance, capable of turning anything it touched into a shriveled husk or mummifying it entirely. For a creature like her, whose body was predominantly composed of water, it was nothing short of a lethal poison.
Despite her body drying up, the tentacle creature reached out toward me, desperation in her eyes. But as she realized she couldn’t reach me, her arm dropped.
As the surroundings withered, losing their moisture, the tentacle creature looked at me with sorrowful eyes.
"My name... is Nel..."
"I will... find you... again..."
At that moment, the tentacle creature, who had been maintaining a humanoid form, crumbled completely. Abandoning her now-dried-up tentacles, she retreated into the drainage system, her remaining fluid slithering away to escape.
"She’s escaping through the drain!"
"Damn it, block her off!!"
My comrades outside, who had been waiting, scrambled to block the drain. But Nel forced her way through, smashing the wooden shields barring the exit, and vanished.
The dehydrating agent had left my lips cracked and my tongue parched, but aside from the severe dehydration, there were no other side effects. My comrades sprayed water around to rehydrate the area, stabilizing the situation.
Surprisingly, even the dried-up ends of the severed tentacles started moving again when water was poured on them. Though they didn’t form massive clusters, the individual tentacles reanimated. My comrades quickly burned each piece with mana sabers, damaging the tissue before disposing of them in sacks.
No, more than my life, the fact that my lower body was intact filled me with relief. I wanted to cry, but my tear ducts were too dry to produce tears.
‘What about Mollang?’
I lifted the bucket shielding Mollang and saw that she was still in her limp, gelatinous state. However, she seemed conscious, as she separated her melted body from her intact core and waited for me.
‘Does she want me to cut her?’
I pressed the bucket to the ground and carefully sliced through her gelatinous body, separating the damaged parts from her core. The discarded parts dissolved, leaking slime fluid everywhere. Mollang had now shrunk to half her original size.
‘She’s barely the size of my palm now.’
She used to fit snugly in both hands when she formed a humanoid shape. Now, she was so small she could be held in one hand.
‘Is she going to be okay…?’
I gently touched her core with my finger, and she rubbed against it as if clinging to me. It seemed the crisis had passed for her.
Professor Pandel doused me with water to rehydrate my dried-out skin and then fed me a potion through a straw. Only then could I move again.
"What exactly happened here?"
I hadn’t fully grasped the situation myself, so I asked Professor Pandel. To my surprise, even he, one of the kingdom’s top three experts in monster ecology, shook his head in confusion.
"It seems to be the original version of the tentacle masturbation tools you lot have been toying with."
At that, a few of my comrades flinched.
Judging by their reactions, they’d probably bought one of those toys too. Of course, based on how things were going, they’d likely drench them in dehydrating agents and dispose of them as soon as they got back to the dorm.
"Is it a cluster-type lifeform without a fixed shape? Normally, creatures form bodies around a single mana core… but this is an entirely new type of lifeform. It seems fundamentally different from anything we know."
From here on, it was the domain of experts, and I wasn’t particularly curious.
What was clear was that this tentacle creature was ancient and undetectable by mana, making magical sensing or a knight’s intuition useless against it.
‘Damn it! What a filthy dangerous thing!’
While dehydration agents might exploit the tentacle creature’s weakness due to its water-based body, they’re dangerous enough to kill a human if misused.
“Did it target you because you were in a shower room with high humidity at the time?”
Considering the way it said it “found” me and remembered the shape of my dick, I was fairly certain it came for me, not just the shower room.
‘If I admit the truth, I’ll get scolded for drawing in some strange creature…’
So, I decided to feign ignorance.
“Alright. We’ve collected the remains. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Delphine packed the dried tentacles into a sack, saying she’d handle their disposal herself. Taking them to an alchemist workshop was probably the safest option.
I picked up Mollang and stood, instinctively covering my lower body. Normally, I wouldn’t bother if it were just my comrades or Professor Pandel, but Delphine was here.
“You’re covering up now? I’ve already seen everything.”
Still, dignity requires some modesty.
“And honestly, to me, you’re all just children. It doesn’t matter if you’re flopping around.”
I glanced at my comrades, some of whom casually adjusted their pants at her words. For a moment, I wondered whether it was the military environment or these guys that made everything feel so ridiculous.
As Delphine left humming with the sack of tentacles, followed by comrades offering to carry it for her, I turned to Professor Pandel with a question that had been bothering me.
“Why is she even here?”
“She said she has nowhere else to go. The Frederica Alchemy Workshop is doing so well that they can’t accept her until they expand.”
How high is the demand for homunculi?
Well, if you can get that level of craftsmanship for 200 gold, it’s not a bad deal, even if it’s a one-time thing.
“I was bitten a little… down there.”
“Don’t shove anything dirty at me unless you want it cut off.”
It wasn’t a serious injury, so I decided to ask Shuru to help me heal it.
‘I should thank Delphine for saving me. But first, I need to stop the bleeding on my dick.’
The chaos in the shower room had been dealt with. Since it was only a temporary building, fixing the damage wasn’t a big concern. Professor Pandel installed a sharpness-enhanced grate over the drain. If the tentacle creature tried to escape through the drainage system again, it would be diced into pieces.
We tested it by rolling a stone into the grate. The moment it touched, the stone shattered into fragments. Seeing this, I made a mental note never to stick my hand in there, even if the drain got clogged, unless I wanted to lose it.
‘But something feels off... It doesn’t seem like that tentacle creature will give up so easily.’
While Professor Pandel considered issuing a kingdom-wide alert for the tentacle creature, he decided against it. Raising public alarm over a creature that could be neutralized by dehydration and would take considerable time to regenerate lost tentacles didn’t seem necessary.
‘The real problem is that it’s targeting me.'
To prepare, I sought out Delphine to request some dehydration agents as a precautionary measure. Her alchemy skills were evident, and the one used earlier had proven effective in immobilizing the creature.
‘But this doesn’t feel right…’
Delphine’s assigned quarters were in a guest building meant for hosting visitors. Understandably, they wouldn’t house her with the guys, especially not after the chaos in the shower room.
When I arrived, I noticed something unsettling. Dried tentacles hung around the room, and some containers were filled with water-soaked tentacles, as if they were being rehydrated.
‘Don’t tell me she’s… experimenting with these?!’
It’s a well-known fact that mages and alchemists are not to be trusted. They often claim they’re conducting experiments, only to cause catastrophic accidents with whatever creatures they’re studying.
If Delphine was planning to use those tentacles for her alchemical research…
‘Wait a second… is this thing alive?!’
One of the tentacles, which had dried and snapped in the middle, was rehydrating in the water. As it absorbed the moisture, it regained life, wrapping itself around my arm. Although it lacked the intelligence it had before, it still instinctively squeezed and rubbed against objects it touched.
Fortunately, the acidic fluid seemed to be gone. Still, the fact that it was alive left me horrified. As I reached for the doorknob to confront Delphine, I heard something from inside.
A soft, sensual moan.
‘No way… it can’t be. Professor Pandel said elves have low libido, often living alone and dying alone, which is why their numbers keep declining despite their long lifespans. There’s no way she’d be doing something even humans wouldn’t—’
The room was dimly lit, but I could see enough. Delphine, her slender, elf-like figure practically flat-chested, was pressing the tentacles against her body, her face flushed with arousal.