Chapter 25: Happiness Village (Part 1)
The snack time with bread and honey finished, and everyone had to split apart in their own directions. After the quick blowjob behind the woods, Honey helped carry Victor to the main road, followed by Luka and Penny behind the two, while the other Bee Girls already left to get back to their nest.
"Alright, I guess this will be a Goodbye, then. I have work to do, and you have a destination to reach." Honey said as she gently let Victor touch the ground after she flew with him all the way here.
"Yeah… Well, good luck with your honey-harvesting in the future." Victor replied as he once again stood on his crutch. He also recovered some money from selling the picnic stuff that he had bought and climbed back to around 8000 Gold Coins.
"You too… Oh!" Suddenly, Honey remembered something and lightly landed on the ground for a bit. "I almost forgot to warn you people about 'that'. You said you were going to Happiness Village, is it because you heard of its lack of manpower?"
Victor nodded, and Honey sighed. "You have to be careful, I heard that the nearby Harpy Village continued to kidnap Happiness Village's men. We have a symbiotic relationship with Happiness Village, we give our 'Happiness Honey' in return for provisions and other things. We had noticed the lack of men coming to us to collect our honey, and soon we found out that the Harpies in Harpy Village kidnapped them."
"Huh?! Why is that the case?!" Luka curiously asked, while Penny listened in silence. As for Victor, of course, he already knew what was going on; even though it looked serious, it could be easily solved with some diplomacy. The only problem was that everyone seems to misunderstand each other and ultimately confine themselves away from the other side.
Honey shook her head. "I don't know, but they were never seen anymore after they got kidnapped. There were also 7 other travelers who went on your same road, five of them were Heroes. In the end, they also didn't return and nothing changed."
"I see… I will still go!" Luka spoke with a determined expression, getting his spirit flared up; and following the mood, Penny also lifted her fists and let out a cute warcry.
"Meh, I'm sure we can fix that easily enough…" Victor casually commented before he summoned his car once again, eliciting a surprised yelp from Honey.
"...What is this?" The Bee Girl curiously asked, and Victor gave a clear answer to her clear question. "This is my vehicle. It's much better than going there on foot or horse, that's for sure."
"This looks weird… Well, it's not like the other stuff you have brought out was normal anyway." Honey stretched her back before she lifted her honeycomb filled with honey. She smiled and winked at Victor. "Anyway, if you ever want to go to our nest for another relief, you can ask the villagers at Happiness Village for directions. Bye!"
With that, Honey began to fly away from the group, leaving Victor, Luka, and Penny alone. Soon after that, the familiar presence of Alice, Granberia, and Eva appeared once again.
"Hello again." Victor greeted them with a casual expression. Although they didn't answer, each of them carried a different expression: Eva was a bit embarrassed because she hadn't been useful at all during critical moments due to overseeing the two powerful monsters; Granberia was as impassive as ever, not reacting to his words; and then there is Alice, who was glaring at him for obvious reasons.
They all got in the car once again and Victor began to drive away. There weren't any dangerous monsters in the road, so finally Victor could relax a bit from his misfortune trying to get the best out of him.
While Victor was driving, his eyes casually went over Eva at the seat at his side. Brown long and voluptuous hair that seemed more akin to a lion's mane with all the waves they made up both behind her back and past her shoulders. Her green eyes were also quite rare to see on a person, and they were so clear you could look at yourself if you focused hard enough.
And then there were her clothes, which were made up by a white shirt that accentualized her large breasts and her tight pants that showed off her curves. There is also her golden light armor covering vital spots around her body, along with some joints like the shoulders and elbows. Her body is beautiful, and she is also very strong; she gave off the same aura of importance that Luka and Alice also carried, there was something that made her special.
However, between all the other five people in the party, if you take out Penny, she is another variable that he absolutely didn't account for. For Penny, it was normal. After all, she had been living in the wild for her entire life, and was basically outside the road that was the plotline of this world.
But Eva is different. Even if she never appeared in the game, even if she wasn't even mentioned once, she still appeared in the middle of the plot.
The original storyline had Luka challenge Granberia alone, and after he had shown the first skill he obtained from the Cursed Sword Style, Alice would butt in and forcefully send Granberia away.
However, in this case, Eva was the one who was fighting Granberia, and she was shockingly strong enough to match and eventually defeat her, although with a bit of assistance coming from his tools. Not just that, the aftermath ended with Granberia joining their party instead of leaving. Such a case happened in one of the side stories developed by a fan of the game rather than the original, but that wasn't important now.
Eva's presence made him a bit uncomfortable, because he doesn't know anything about her. He knew enough about Alice and Luka that he could swap them with clones he made out by himself and no one would notice; as for Granberia, she was a side character he knew enough about to make sure that she doesn't go wild. Once again, Penny is another matter altogether, since she is just over 1 year old.
Because of his lingering gaze, Eva twisted her head in his direction. "Is there something you need?"
"Oh." Being called out like that, Victor thought about his next words before he spoke. "I was just thinking that I know everyone here except for you. So, where do you come from?"
Eva smiled and replied. "I come from San Ilia. 12 years ago, I left my home and traveled with other Hero Apprentices towards Iliasville to get baptized, and since then, I had been taking odd jobs that consisted of being my employers' bodyguard or saving small villages from bandit threats.
A couple of years ago, I returned to Ilias Continent from Sentora and started to refine my techniques and strength even further. Although, unlike other Heroes, I don't really have anything against the Monster Lord in general, I had just been living my life until now. Sometimes I get bored, other times I take jobs… You know, just to kill time."
"I see." Victor nodded in understanding. "Then why the sudden decision of joining our party? Is it really because you wanted to look over Alice and Granberia to make sure they stay in line?"
"After all, I'm still a Hero. With these kinds of people standing in front of me, I can't simply close an eye, you know? Although I am not taking drastic measurements, I would feel uncomfortable knowing that they are somewhere away from my field of vision. Them attacking an important city might be low, but they are never zero. You also saw how Granberia caused a mess in Iliasburg, right?"
"Fair enough." Victor nodded. "What about magic? You had healed Luka back then, right? ...Also, once we are down in Happiness Village, can you heal him again?"
"No problem. As for why I know magic, that is related to being a Hero. Unlike you think, Heroes are not simply glorified soldiers. The blessing of the Goddess makes men's semen taste awful, you should know it if you have been traveling with monsters. However, if that was so simple, then it would be useless on women, would it not?"
Victor nodded along with Luka from the backseat. Because it was about Heroes, he was also interested in the conversation.
"On the surface, it would be exactly like that. Only men benefit from the blessing, while women would not feel any change. In fact, this is the same for almost everyone who had been a Hero for long enough to understand that fact.
However, the Goddess Ilias' blessing doesn't work just like that. That is simply the tip of the iceberg for people who are truly dedicated to power. The Goddess extended her almighty holy powers on us, so why can't we just use that instead of keeping it within our bodies? Once you understand the flow of energy within your body, you can create spells using Holy Energy like I've been doing.
Of course, I am not the only one who has accomplished that. San Ilia and other regions also have their fair share of royal mages who have spent their entire lives studying magic and holy energy, and they also have some few Heroes working as generals that are able to strengthen their bodies to great degrees, although not as much as me."
"Oh right." Victor suddenly had another question. "How did you even get that strong? I didn't remember there was a person capable of matching Granberia in power."
"There shouldn't be at all." Granberia commented with her arms crossed, casually glancing out of the window before moving her gaze on Eva in the front row. "As far as I know, there is no possible way for humans to fight off monsters. Even Heinrich was aided by inhumane forces 500 years ago, and I couldn't feel you using any 'Holy Energy', at least until I stopped holding back."
"As if I'm going to spit out my own secrets in front of you people." Eva snorted at Granberia's poor attempt to dig out the secret of her abnormal strength. Luka got a bit upset about Eva's behavior against Granberia, but the latter didn't seem to mind it at all.
"Calm down now, you guys will break the car if you start fighting, and you both will have to pay more than its previous cost if you do so." Victor told them as the tense atmosphere in the car vanished.
"So, Harpies are kidnapping men… I guess we have found the problem." Luka commented, starting a new conversation.
"Not like it changes the fact that Happiness Village still doesn't have manpower…" Victor let a small comment pass through his lips. "We'll check over there what is going on."
"Victor." Penny suddenly asked, and Victor hummed to tell her that he was listening.
"I'm bored."
"I see, give me a minute." Victor muttered as he opened his shop, shifting his gaze between the wheel of the car and the store. He immediately bought the first thing that came to his mind, a colorful pinwheel.
Passing it to Penny, Victor said. "I'll get you something better later, now I am driving. If you put its head on the wind, it will spin very fast."
"Okay!" Penny nodded and turned towards Granberia. "Can I sit on your lap?"
A snort escaped from Victor once he heard those words, but he didn't get distracted from the path in front of him. Granberia looked down at Penny with a twitching eyebrow, but she eventually relented and sighed, before grasping Penny's tiny waist and put it over her green-scaled lap.
Then she grasped the handle of the door and pulled it with the intention of opening the door to let Penny play with the pinwheel. However, the door didn't open, and the locker made a sound that alerted Victor.
"What the hell are you doing?" With a suspicious tone, Victor asked.
"I was just trying to open the door-"
"Jesus Christ, don't!" Victor immediately interrupted her with a panicked expression. "Are you trying to kill Penny?! Just… *Sigh*"
Of course, how could Granberia understand how a car worked? Using the buttons on his own door, Victor opened Granberia's window, letting Penny poke the pinwheel out of the car and make it spin very fast.
"Don't ever touch that handle unless we are not moving. I swear…" Victor relaxed a bit more from the panic attack he just received. Opening the door while he is going 100 km/h…
"..." Granberia stared at the handle with a raised eyebrow and politely followed his instructions to not try to open the car's door until the car would actually stop.
Although Victor was certain that Granberia could hold on Penny even if she really did open the door, the concept was drilled in his head by his parents so much that it turned into some kind of forbidden taboo for him. It didn't help that when he was small, the door of his seat broke apart and he got terrorized by the strong wind entering the fast car.
Well, that is in the past now. With a sigh, Victor pressed the accelerator a slightly bit further and switched the gear.
…
Around 13 and half, they had reached a really near spot from Happiness Village. They would have to walk for something like a couple of minutes and then they would be there.
There were two reasons why Victor didn't drive all the way there: First, the sound of the engine would possibly scare the already-cautious villages. They already have to deal with the Harpies stealing their men, they certainly don't need a heart attack too; Second, it was standing right behind his seat, leaving the car from the door.
Granberia stretched her muscles after staying for an entire hour inside the car while Victor left the driver seat with a crutch under his arm. He looked at her and asked. "What are you going to do now? I really doubt that Happiness Village will not go ballistic when the villagers see you."
"And what about it? It's not like they can hurt me."
"..." Victor raised an eyebrow. "...You do remember why we came here in the first place, right? If you don't feel like it, you can still stay here and wait."
The dragonkin scoffed. "Absolutely not." She pointed to Eva, who was with the rest of the group watching their conversation. "I will not leave that heroine alone with my lord!"
"I don't see how that is my problem."
Granberia clicked her tongue and replied with an annoyed expression. "Whatever." After that, she snapped her fingers and a spell that was eerily similar to Alice's disguising magic began to change her own body, removing the green scales and switching them out with pieces of armor that matched her own real armor, while the yellowish skin shifted into a more natural color. Her monstrous features also vanished, leaving out a human version of the dragonkin.
Victor's eyes widened in surprise and asked. "You can also transform?"
"Of course I can, anyone with enough control of Dark Energy can do so. This is also how I traveled across human territories before I became a Heavenly Knight." She fixed her crimson hair with her new human fingers before she started to walk towards Happiness Village. "Let's go and deal with this problem."
Victor simply rolled his eyes at her impatient attitude, but still joined the rest of the group following her after he brought the car back inside his inventory.
"Victor!" Penny walked at his side, with her pinwheel that barely spun around itself. She looked up to Victor and told him. "You said you would give me a new toy after we left the car!"
Victor sighed and quickly turned into the store once again, before buying her a handheld water ring toy. He handed it to Penny and told her. "Good luck solving this."
"Oooh!" Penny stared at her new toy in amazement before she quickly learned how to use it. Meanwhile, Victor pulled her in front of him as he once again covered her head with the white bonnet.
The six of them headed through the last remaining patch of woods before they reached an empty land entirely made up of grass. Some distance away from the woods there was a tiny village with some big houses and some small houses. From the low number of buildings, it was possible that some families lived together in the big ones.
As the six of them showed themselves in the village, they began to catch the attention of the villagers living in Happiness Village, which looked to be entirely made up of women, although one could find a boy or two if they looked carefully.
"They are really hanging on a thread…" Luka commented with a dark frown. Luka was the only one who lived in a place that could be categorized as a 'village', while everyone else were straight out from the wild or directly from big cities and the Monster Lord's Castle. Only he understood what it truly meant for a village to lose their main manpower.
In fact, he had also assisted in such a scenery 10 years ago, when the entire Iliasville got caught in a deadly epidemic.
Losing manpower means losing income. What the villagers could produce became smaller and smaller until it was insignificant, forcing the village to become independent. Having no contacts with outside will leave the village with two choices:
Become a tribe that is entirely focused on its survival by farming vegetables and hunting animals, or change location and erase the village from the maps.
If no income came in, how could they possibly keep up buying products from outside? Iliasville was forced to accept outsiders after the epidemic, but the infamy of Happiness Village will remain even after every single man has been kidnapped.
One villager in particular approached the party group, an average woman wearing a simple yellow dress with a common apron came closer to them and called them out. "Oh, travelers! Welcome to Happiness Village. We would like to offer you more than this kind of hospitality, but we currently don't have anything… Due to a shortage of manpower, we have a shortage of our special Happiness Honey, too…"
Luka nodded in understanding. "I already know what is going on, we came here to fix the problem you have with the Harpy Village."
However, instead of being happy, the woman looked troubled about that. Well, the adventurers were told by Honey that 7 other travelers attempted to save Happiness Village, so the village might have lost hope on incoming travelers.
"I'm truly grateful for your intentions, but… Are you sure? The monsters kidnapping our men are Harpies. They might have a weaker body than other species, but they are still monsters that are stronger than normal people."
"It's fine, I can deal with it!" Luka claimed. Attracted by the conversation, more and more villagers began to extend their ears in his direction and approach the group.
"Can you save our family?"
"The man I married two months ago was kidnapped…"
"My new husband, too! Even though he came from another village, he was kidnapped a month ago…"
"Even my fourteen year old son… Those harpies again…"
"Grandpa disappeared… I miss him…"
Luka's gaze hardened at the countless desperate pleas coming from the woman of Happiness Village. "What are they doing with all of the kidnapped men?"
"I think I can explain the situation here in detail…" A new, old voice silenced the mob surrounding the travelers as the women glanced behind their back and made up a path in between, letting a very old woman walk through them.
The woman walking on a can looked up to Luka, who stood in front of the party like he was their leader. She took a deep breath and spoke. "Adventurers, I humbly welcome you to my village, Happiness Village. I am the wife of the original Village Chief and the current acting VIllage Chief. I hope you can follow me to my house to listen to our story before passing to action."
"Sure, please show us the way." Luka replied before they all followed the old woman into the village, to a rather small house in the middle of Happiness Village.
…
Victor Luis' (future) Trivia Book: Disguise Spell
Although there is already a general page about magic, this is a rather special subject to take aside from normal magic: Disguise.
There is a lot of confusion about the spell in general through humans, and even monsters who can utilize it cannot understand its real nature. But first, let's talk about the spell in general.
The Disguise Spell is part of the White Magic, although it requires Dark Energy to be utilized. If you are not clear about the reason, please visit the chapter on Magic if you didn't. The Disguise Spell is mainly utilized as a supportive spell to help monsters shift into more human-like appearances to hide in the middle of a mob entirely made up of humans.
Of course, these disguises are not flawless; there is always a way to differentiate a disguised monster from a human group, as long as you have clear eyes capable of catching up small details.
This also depends on which kind of monster is mixed in the group, but that is not important, at least until you can actually find the disguised monster.
You first have to watch out for their gender: The Disguise Spell is not like the Mimicry Spell, which is perfectly capable of copying someone's identity. No matter what, monsters lack something that humans have: the capacity of producing life.
It is not by the sense of giving birth, but it is meant to be unable to induce pregnancy. Women alone cannot reproduce, even if they are the ones making out children, because they lack semen. Without semen, women cannot make children, that is obvious. And because of that, they cannot recreate a man's reproductive organ.
Even if they somehow are able to shape up penis and testicles, they will be unable to release semen because they have no way to imitate that kind of complex life form.
Of course, there are more ways than jacking off every man in the group to ascertain that they are really men, and that is to be taken as a last solution, just after attacking every person and seeing which one is really a monster.
First, newbies are unable to disguise their monstrous features in perfection. Usually, they would hide their undisguised animal ears with hats. As for more monstrous beings such as Centaurs and Lamias, their disguises take a greater toll on their bodies, and thus need more practice to fully disguise their bodies.
In this case, you simply have to check for any abnormal feature in the disguised monster to see if they are truly disguised or not.
However, if they are actually experts, it will get more complicated. That is because they already adapted to their imperfect disguise and hid their features as best as they could. There might be some cases when you can catch a tiny abnormality of theirs, but the chances are low, so it's better to use other methods.
The second solution is seeing their movements. Non-Humanoid Monsters will never be able to adapt to a human's motor skill, lest they forget how they once walked in their original forms. To discover non-humanoid monsters, you simply have to see how they are walking or using their arms. If it is suspicious to you, there is a chance that they are disguised monsters, or they are simply that bad at walking…
But for humanoid monsters, this might be impossible to detect, since their movements match with a human's movement. For this, there are more solutions:
The third solution is investigating their backgrounds. Every human born in this world has a certificate that identifies them as people who belong to this certain village/town/city/continent. There are some exceptions such as tribes, though. However, they can get such a certificate when they get in a town. This case is overseen by the Goddess and her angels, and thus it is impossible for a monster to be able to make her certificate in this way, although it is possible to forge one through illegal methods.
If they don't have any clear background, they are most likely monsters in disguise. But if that is still not enough, there are still other solutions. One of such that can be utilized by human people is the 'special' sense.
When humans attain Critical Ecstasy with monsters, although their brains cannot recognize the pleasure they feel and shut down, their souls are able to memorize the sensation of Dark Energy being in contact with them. Simply let a human who has been hit by Critical Ecstasy once before touch the disguised person. If they are really monsters, then the human should be able to feel a repulsive reaction from their very souls.
There is an exception, however, and that is an Elf. Elves have very low levels of Dark Energy, especially the common ones. Because of that, they cannot stimulate the person's soul and can escape undetected. The only way to see if they are monsters or not is to beat them, since monsters are stronger than humans in almost every case.
Ok, now that we went through the basics, it's time to see the secrets that the spell hides.
The Disguise Spell is not a mere White Magic Spell, but it was originally part of Black Magic and known under another name: Shapeshifting Magic.
Thousands of years have passed since the Shapeshifting Magic was recognized worldwide, so very few people know about it.
To first cast the 'Disguise Spell', one must have to attain two conditions: The first is that they must be capable of controlling Dark Energy very well.
Dark Energy is the energy that influences the physical world, materials and beings. Using that as a catalyst, it is possible to change one's body as one wishes.
The second is that their bodies must have memorized one kind of life that is not theirs. Almost no one knows about this case because it has always been overlooked. However, the reason why monsters are able to disguise as humans is because they had been ingesting human semen for a while, and thus their bodies have memorized the genetic code of a human.
Thanks to that, when using a Disguise Spell, they can change their bodies to look more human. However, the 'life' to be memorized must still be alive. As soon as the memorized material is dead, it cannot be used anymore. This is also why they can only become humans, since it would be hard to ingest a monster while they are still alive.
However, there are two kinds of monsters that excel on this technique and develop it further… No, not further, they are able to manifest atavism through this technique, bringing it back to its glorious past as a Shapeshifting Spell.
One species are the Vampires, who suck the blood of humans and monsters to survive. Because they drink live blood, their bodies memorize lots of genetics, and thus they can shape their bodies in countless ways to match or even fuse different beings into one body. Even the thing you thought was just an Imp could be a Vampire in disguise. They are the greatest users of Disguise Spell in the world, being able to use it offensively, just like it was made for.
The second species are actually not a real 'species', but more akin to a clan. That is, the Fateburn Family.
They directly came from the original Dark Goddess. They possess not only extreme affinity to the Dark Energy, but also possess extreme quantities of such energy within their bodies. Because of these two factors, they can completely bypass the need to register different genes within their bodies, and are able to use their imagination and control to shape their bodies as they wish.
However, as time passed, this art has been lost in time, and the current Monster Lord is unable to take the full advantage of her special body. The clan that once had the absolute control of their bodies were forced to concede their throne to the Vampires because of time.
Still, it didn't help that Monster Lords fell apart like flies one after another. It's been 1'000 years since the Dark Goddess left, and now we are in the 16th generation. Hell, even San Ilia's pope belongs to the 14th generation, and that city was born before the Great Monster War ended to represent the main force of the Goddess faction.
For comparison, the Fateburn Family can live around 1'000 years in their entire lives, at minimum. So, you can see how pathetic the so-called 'history' the Monster Lords possesses. Still, they don't need such a thing, considering they are still the strongest species between Monsters.
Another trivia: There is a variant of this spell that Angels can exclusively use which doesn't use Dark Energy, but that is only because their bodies are entirely made of Light Energy, flesh and all. Even if they are similar, the Disguise Spell and their transformation are completely different. However, they almost never change appearances because they consider themselves proud of the bodies that the Goddess has gifted them with.
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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