Paradigm Parasite

"Ugh..."

"Are you alright, Keem?"

I - Keem takes a break in the room to which he has been assigned, holding his bruised cheek.

He sits on his bunk soundlessly so as not to wake Tone, Dern's brother, who is asleep.

Dern next to him looks at him with a worried expression, but he waves his hand to say not to worry.

Worst. We got away from the guy, but thanks to him, we haven't been able to do our job these days because the military police patrols have been getting tougher and tougher.

Thanks to that, I've been beaten up a lot by our owner fucker as punishment, my food has been reduced and I've been stomped on and kicked.

The time is night.

The view out of the window is completely dark and the streets are deserted.

...Shit.

It's not good if things continue like this.

I thought it was a good time to make money because the number of people had increased thanks to the King's Championships, but because of the monster riot, the championships have been cancelled.

Military police and civil servants are wandering around the city to keep an eye on things.

All that stuff piles up and we have absolutely nothing to go up to.

The bastards are not so naive as to keep useless slaves.

If things continue like this, my sister Pili and the others will have to sell their bodies.

We have to do something to prevent that.

There are ways to get out of this situation.

But it would require access to the money we've accumulated so far, so it would be a last resort.

"Keem, what are we going to do now? At this rate, we won't be able to earn money for a while. We have to find another way..."

"Yeah, I know."

I reply, but I can't think of anything good at all.

What should I do... if I don't somehow think of a way to earn money soon. ......

Should I just break into the house where they might have the money? That's not a good idea. With the way we are now, we might get turned back if we try a surprise attack.

Then we could take them by surprise and steal the money from the civil servants or military police.

It's less dangerous that way. Once you've stolen it, all you have to do is run away.

If you do it, pickpocket. I'm determined to do it and say it out loud.

"Tomorrow I'm going to focus on civil servants."

Dern's eyes widen as he says this.

"Hey, public servants... that's a felony if they find out!"

"But they've got money, and right now their attention is on the monster fiasco. There's no way we can miss it!"

"No, ...... but..."

"We can do it. As public servants, the money they have is unparalleled! We can cross fewer dangerous bridges."

Civil servants are just people who get paid to wag their tails to the state anyway.

There is no way they can follow our moves!

When I think about it, I feel a strong conviction that we can do it.

There's no doubt about it! I... no, we can do it!

Dern looks worried, but I'm sure we can make that go away if we show them.

Okay, I'll get the money from the civil servants.

We've decided what we're going to do, so we're going to bed today...

Suddenly, a banging on the door echoes from below.

"What time is it? At -- at what time?"

I hear footsteps of the son of a bitch heading for the door, sounding annoyed.

A customer? At this hour?

I think it's unusual, but I try to go back to sleep, thinking it's none of my business, but then a word jumps out at me that interests me.

"Slave? I want to be a--?"

I stop moving with a jerk.

Dern must have heard it too, because he stops moving and seems to be concentrating on listening.

There are six slaves in this house in total.

Me, Dahn, his sister Peeli, Dahn's brother Tone, and his sisters Moolah and Sema.

That's all of them. If the guy who asked was from a whorehouse or something, my sisters - I didn't want to think about that.

I didn't want to think beyond that, but I couldn't stop the disgusting imagery.

If they were bought by a shop, they wouldn't be forced to take on customers right away.

But I'm sure they're going to set them up with all sorts of things.

What should I do... what should I do?

I thought about it, but nothing came to mind.

My sisters are in the next room. Should I hide them?

I thought so and tried to move, but it was too late.

Heavy footsteps are heard coming up two flights of stairs.

The footsteps pass directly through the next room to the front of this room.

--What?

The door was opened before I had time to question it.

"Sir, it's them. Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

There he was, rubbing his hands and flirting with the bastard, and that guy who we unsuccessfully tried to pick up his wallet just recently.

"What the ........."

Both Dern and I were so surprised that we couldn't speak.

Why this guy... no, more importantly, how did he do it?

"We've checked the stuff. We'll buy it all."

The man says this and offers the bag of money to the son of a bitch.

"Heh, heh. Thanks again."

The son of a bitch checks the contents of the bag with a smirk.

Inside was a large number of blackboards packed tightly together.

...This guy's got so much stuff!?

If there's that much in the bag, it's enough to free all of us.

Shit! If only we had managed to take it from him at that time...

Regret rushes in.

"Well, you..."

The man is about to say something, but is interrupted by a blow to the back of the head from behind by the son of a bitch.

"Heh, heh. You've got more, haven't you? I'll take them!"

The cocksucker is giggling with a cudgel in his hand, wondering where he got it from.

"Right. You don't want to make a proper deal?"

"Nah!"

The man mutters this as if nothing had happened.

The son of a bitch was upset and tried to give chase, but the next moment his hand holding the cudgel was blown off his shoulder in a thousand pieces.

It was too fast for me to see what happened at all.

The man kicks the screaming fucker in the stomach, knocking him down.

He kicked him two or three times where he fell, and when his resistance weakened, he grabbed him by the hair and forced him to raise his face.

"You should have just taken the money... well, it's a good thing I didn't spend it. Now, give me the ownership of the collar."

"Oh... it hurts... it hurts."

The man stretches the cheeks of the moaning fucker.

"Come on."

"Okay, okay..."

The fucker removes the bracelet and offers it to the man.

That was our--.

A shudder runs through my chest.

...... If we could have taken that away, we would have...

I didn't even have to think about it.

I found myself reaching out to take the bracelet...

"Ah...le?"

The moment I took a step forward, I felt a shock on the side of my head and felt my cheek hit the floor, and my consciousness--.

Gone.

After I stunned the kid who tried to take the bracelet by hitting him with my invisible left arm, the Human Centipede, I put on the bracelet I received.

The name is 'Master's Bracelet', which is in essence the collar's parent device.

It is said to be able to remotely control the registered collar and bind the behaviour of the person wearing it.

What? How do I use this?

I kicked at the old man lying in front of me and asked.

"How do you use this?"

"It hurts... it hurts."

I burn the wound with [Fire I].

The old man screams.

"How do you use this?"

Again, the same question.

"Hey, you can vaguely see the status of the collar you're connected to just by thinking about it, so all you have to do is give the command and you can use it. Oh, please! Yes, I need a doctor..."

I see.

I've heard what I want to hear and now I'm done with this guy.

I kicked him in the jaw and reaped the old man's consciousness.

I focused my consciousness on the bracelet to try it out.

...Oh, this is useful.

The number and status of the child collars float in my brain.

The number registered is six.

Their location is around here.

The orders are blank because the owner has changed.

This is useful.

With something like this, a slave can't resist.

"Oh, that ......"

Hmm?

When I was checking the bracelet, two kids were looking at me.

Hmm? One of them should have been asleep in bed, but the commotion earlier seemed to have woken them up.

"What can I do for you?"

"Oh, what's going to happen to us now?"

Ah, you're worried about what will happen to you now that your master has changed.

After smiling with a reassuring expression, I spoke honestly.

"Hmm? Well, don't die."

I wrote an order on my bracelet while the kids who heard it were stiffening.

Don't disobey.

"For now, take the three people in the next room and the guy lying there and come downstairs. I'll explain it to you there. Ah, I won't allow you to run away, so make sure you all come down together."

Without waiting for a reply, I drag the unconscious old man downstairs. On the way, I also retrieve his shredded arm.

I'm going to use this old man as a material.

I come to the large room that seems to be the living room downstairs and roll the old man's body.

When we were building the Shrigala and the others, there was one that we had to scrap because it didn't look like it could be used against the elves, but now that we've gone to the trouble, we'll use it here.

It's a bit different from the others, but if I get it right, it could be interesting.

After extracting the memory, I produce a basketball-sized clump of roots from my palm and drop it on the old man's face.

The clump changes shape and enters the old man's body through his mouth. This time I don't want to take over, so the mouth is the right way to enter.

The old man wakes up and suffers at that point, but it's a minor thing.

"Hey, what ......."

The next moment, the old man's whole body withered away as if it had lost water, and his abdomen swelled like a pregnant woman at a tremendous rate, as if in semi-proportion.

The skin, perhaps unable to withstand the rapid enlargement, is ripped open and blood seeps from his clothes.

The old man died without even screaming of pain.

At the same time, the abdominal enlargement stopped.

I touched the bloated belly to check, felt something stirring inside and nodded that it had worked.

Multiple footsteps were heard behind me.

It appears they have all come down.

Three women and three men, six in total. They're all here.

The woman screams when she sees the corpse of an old man with an abnormally swollen belly lying at my feet, but it's too noisy, so I order her to shut up and she becomes quiet.

The kid I just knocked out in the front is behaving like he wants to talk, so I allow him to talk.

The kid stares at me and starts shouting.

"You! Why are you here? What did you do to him? What are you doing to us?"

"Shut up."

He was trying to say something, so I thought about letting him say it, but it became too much trouble, so I shut him up.

When I said that, the kid held his neck and started to suffer.

The collars they wear around their necks have a mechanism that tightens when they disobey their master's orders, and if they continue to disobey, their necks will eventually break into a thousand pieces, which is a dangerous thing to happen.

Now, the reason why I'm going through all this trouble is to use them as bait for those monsters.

I honestly thought about throwing them away because I had almost forgotten about them, but then I remembered that I had unilaterally promised to kill them.

I didn't care what happened to them because it didn't hurt me at all, and I also wanted to experiment on a new species that was growing by eating up the fat of a dead old man.

These kids have a few years left to live anyway.

The survival rate of slaves in this country - especially children - is not so high.

Women are sold off when they are old enough to be used in brothels, and if they are not well received by the customers, they are given diseases and thrown away without proper care.

In many cases, men also die as a result of reckless work and crimes.

Thanks to Hieda's policies, the situation is said to have improved somewhat, but it will be difficult to achieve overnight.

This is the darkness of this country.

According to the memory I pulled out of the old man, the kids were planning to accumulate stolen money to buy themselves back, but from my point of view that's just naive.

They seem to have accumulated some money, but they probably don't have a vision after that.

The idea that they can get by if they just get out of it is transparent.

To be honest, even if these kids get out of slavery, it's obvious that they will have trouble making a living and will probably turn to pickpocketing again, and then they will be caught easily and go straight back to slavery again.

I laugh at them.

It's probably not relevant because their lives will probably end here anyway.

...It's about time.

The next moment, the old man's belly bursts open from the inside, spewing blood and guts.