I woke up after sleeping.
Strictly speaking, it means the body I’m contained in woke up after sleeping.
My consciousness was following Joanna all along. She’s doing exactly what someone who first gained power in books does.
She realizes her power and realizes many things she can do with it. And when she starts to see what she can become, a little greed develops.
It feels like watching a reincarnator.
Isn’t that how I feel too?
I’ve gained something called power, right? A person who pretends to follow rules but actually worships power without considering the narrative of the story at all. A munchkin.
I like munchkins.
Because they do what they want to do.
The person running the game and the people playing together might hate it, but is there anything else that produces as much dopamine as easily understandable strength?
Moreover, it’s so enjoyable to surpass the being that gave power after receiving power from that being said to give power.
I don’t mind either way.
As long as I can keep receiving warmth, I don’t care if the person who received power from me becomes a mass murderer or a hero.
What I want to do is a factory simulation, not an RPG.
So let’s set a goal. First, I need more harvesters. When I pushed myself into a faint light, it gave me a bright and warm light.
Doesn’t that mean I harvested warmth by using resources?
I sat up on the altar where I was sleeping. And I took off the fluffy hat I was wearing on my head.
Rustle
The hat melts into dark purple smoke and disappears.
Whether it’s the power I have, or whether I myself am the power, I need to figure out how this moves.
Main goal: Increase harvesters
Sub-goal: Confirm power
What I can do in a place where no one is around is to confirm my power first. I try to change my clothes. There are a few clothes in Rebecca Rolfe’s mind that she wears when going to important places.
A little.
If I push myself into Rebecca Rolfe just a tiny bit, cracks form on the skin and dark purple mist flows out. It’s not actually cracking, it’s just an expression.
Anyway, I can control it to come out a little more slowly than last time. The dark purple mist slowly turned the pajamas that were wrapping my body back into dark purple mist. After making me naked like that, it became an outfit centered on a brown, hard, and thick jacket.
It’s certainly not clothes suitable for the season.
When the girl named Rebecca Rolfe had her family murdered and was kidnapped, it was a season when most people were wearing short sleeves.
Not much time has passed, so it’s summer.
If possible, I want to express an appearance of low intelligence, but clothes with a different sense of season are a different kind of stupidity.
A bit more, what do you call it?
A white dress? Couldn’t I do something like that?
Oh. It worked.
It’s a dress with a deeply cut back but a fairly long skirt, and the dress itself has a body-shaping effect. Huh? Was there such a dress?
Hmm. I don’t think there was, but since it came out, let’s say it’s good.
Overall it’s pretty, so it’s fine. Rather than feeling like I’m wearing it, it feels like I’m decorating an object I’m controlling, so if it’s pretty, I like it.
Don’t you choose female characters in games too?
There’s certainly a feeling of strange pressure on the body, but I don’t feel like I’m cross-dressing at all. Although I was originally a man, all the sensations from that time have completely faded away.
Rather, I’m just cold.
Still.
The cold spreads deep into my spine, and I’m so, so cold, and it keeps getting endlessly colder.
If it were a real body, there would be a point where it gets so cold that it feels hot. Or there would come a moment when you feel pain rather than cold.
But there’s nothing like that.
Maybe it’s not really getting colder without limit.
But that’s how I feel.
That’s what’s important.
The fact that I feel that way. So I want more warmth.
It doesn’t matter that the outfit is women’s clothes, that the body is female, or that I can see both Joanna Smith’s and Rebecca Rolfe’s bodies simultaneously.
So it’s enough that the dark purple mist flowing out of the body can change into various things.
At least I don’t need to worry about what to wear.
The sub-goal is completed.
Now it’s time to return to the goal of increasing harvesters.
But it’s been a while since I woke up, and Hieronymus hasn’t come?
Then shall we organize information about Joanna Smith in the meantime?
The first harvester rose one more rank overnight. In terms of patterns, it’s those who were in the second circle among those I saw on the first day.
Her room changed, her belongings changed, she fully confirmed her changed appearance through a clean mirror, and she prayed without sleeping, kneeling with her hands together without saying anything.
And just now, Hieronymus came in.
He gives her the mission to take care of me. And he guides Joanna to a certain room. He introduces it as the place to take care of me.
An empty room. But there’s something strange attached where Joanna’s gaze reaches. It’s disguised as decoration in the room, but Joanna feels uneasy seeing it. However, she didn’t point it out verbally.
She quietly lowers her eyes and hides emotions of anger and suspicion. I don’t know if Hieronymus noticed this, but the meeting ended without incident. After that, he comes to me with Joanna.
During that time, I sat quietly waiting on the altar.
Hieronymus passed through a quite long corridor and opened the door to the room where I am. At the same time, a large man with tattoos on his face enters from my direction.
“Hello.”
So I greeted first.
“Yes, hello. I don’t know how you spent the night. Now the room to serve you is prepared, so I’ve come to escort you.”
You were actually watching, right? But there’s no need to ask that specifically. I came down from the altar and approached him.
“This body needs food. The body of a living being is strange.”
It’s a statement that appeals to not being human while simultaneously needing to follow the rules of living beings. The moment you eat, an unknown being still falls to an animal that needs meals.
Perhaps an image that it might be possible to kill also appears? A very faint killing intent flashed across his expression.
Hehe.
Unfortunate people are bound to see the expression of someone trying to kill them.
There are countless memories that react convulsively to that expression. Too many to count numerically. So I can see it.
I’ve licked a lot for warmth.
“Then I’ll prepare a meal through the person who will take care of you. Let’s go together. Miss Rebecca Rolfe.”
Shouldn’t you extend your hand there? But since he’s seen how people connected to me transform, he probably doesn’t want to touch me.
I followed Hieronymus out of the special chapel.
Yes. According to Joanna Smith, this is a place where high-ranking people pray. It’s likely a place where Hieronymus raises his elites.
This might be the final tech I need to reach in this pseudo-religion. Although there’s a possibility I might be expelled by Hieronymus before that!
He’s not an enemy yet.
Not yet.
Since there can inevitably be only one leader’s position in such a hierarchical society, to set up a warmth absorption factory by greatly increasing harvesters, I’ll have to either co-opt or eliminate the person who’s already occupied the position, right?
It’s truly good that since they’re pseudo-religion people, I won’t feel any pangs of conscience no matter how they die.
If they were ordinary people, I might have felt a little.
But here, there are only evil people. Although their individual pasts are pitiful, it’s just that no matter how hard they tried, they had no place to go but here.
Yes.
Because I’m cold, even if you say you’re a good and nice person, even if you say you’re a religion that purely saves all people, please work for me.
Thinking like that, as I went out with Hieronymus, Joanna, who was waiting at the entrance, hurriedly bowed her head when she saw me.
And without any words, she naturally attached herself behind me. And the three of us headed towards the room Hieronymus had prepared.
We only met five people on the way.
All of them were high-ranking executives who were in the first circle. Three men. One woman. One with a dog’s head.
Doggy!
Come to think of it, there are beast-people like races in this world. Rather than being a race at the top or bottom of society, there’s a difference like between white and black people in the world I know. Of course, there’s discrimination.
That can’t not exist.
As long as they’re living beings, it’s impossible to distinguish between oneself and others without it.
More simply, can it be eaten, or will it eat you? It’s like a basic program to distinguish that.
Later, I have a desire to push myself in and become fluffy. It seems like it would have a lot of warmth too.
Thinking like that, I entered the cage they call my room. Looking with my own eyes, there’s a much more ominous object attached to the ceiling.
This is why Hieronymus is a potential enemy.
If he had let his guard down a little more, I wouldn’t be this wary either.
But because he’s that kind of person, he probably inflated this pseudo-religion until he could summon me.
I obediently entered and sat on the luxurious sofa inside. Then I spoke to Hieronymus.
“Please give me food. And I need warmth.”
“Warmth? Should I bring clothes?”
At my words, Joanna walked towards the drawer inside but couldn’t go. Because Hieronymus stopped her.
“You prepare the meal. And the warmth this person is talking about is not that kind of warmth. Let’s see directly beyond this.”
Joanna nodded and went outside. Looking at the direction she’s heading, she’s going towards the kitchen. Before Joanna’s skin swelled with edema, she also worked in the dining room.
Turning my viewpoint back, I looked at Hieronymus in front of me.
Now, it’s time to talk with Hieronymus about what to do from now on.
“Hieronymus. Can I use my power?”
To this question, Hieronymus answered like this:
“Yes. If possible, could you make many?”
Oho.
Here, I want to quickly say ‘All of it!’ but I’m going to drag it out a little more. I need time to get to know this world while licking one by one.
“I think I can make five or six people like Joanna a day. But if unlucky, they might explode.”
Hieronymus thought deeply for a while, and when his calculations seemed to be finished, he nodded.
“From now on, please do so when I ask.”
“Yes. I’ll do that, Hieronymus.”
The harvester production plan has been set.