Retired: Nice Guy. HAREM SYSTEM UNLOCKED

Chapter 36: 36. Oopsy~

”Yeah, you’re right. What should we do now?”

”Don’t worry, muffin, it’s nothing for me.”

Dr. Rhiannon entered the room closest to us. Her expression was calm, almost too calm, like she’d handled this many times before. Because she had, she’s the Assistant of Research and Development.

I followed her into the room. She stood in the middle with the ghostly book in hand. She filled her lungs, and the letters glowed brighter than usual. Her hair flowed in the wind coming off the ghostly book.

”Spirits of memory, keepers of what’s lost — lend your echo, bless what’s broken. I shape thee: Echo of What Was, rise.”

The ghostly fumes formed waves, flowing over the ash and charcoal like they were sand and rocks. Once the room was covered in fumes, they changed form, shaping themselves into the actual furniture, tables, cupboards, bookshelves.

She didn’t reconstruct them physically, she brought them back in spirit form, and I was surprised when she picked up a book made of pure fumes and began flipping through the pages.

”Now comes the boring part, you’d say. Not boring for me though, I’m pumped up. You can pick up one if you like. I’m going to copy them before my mana dries up.”

Dr. Rhiannon said, busying herself copying the fume-notebooks. I’m not into books, if it’s a novel I’d read it for sure, so I mostly just watched what she was doing.

Soon I realized she’d completely lost herself in her work. She still noticed things around her, but then, like any other woman, Dr. Rhiannon proceeded to confuse me.

She had a habit of only focusing on the biology, not the whole picture. In this first room we found the behavioral patterns of the beetle, which she decided to skip, calling it boring, just copying them anyway.

”Another set of books that focuses on behavior patterns. Who needs this!?”

She copied them, scanning them with her tattooed arm. At first I thought she’d read them later, but she was tossing the fumed books around so carelessly, I doubted that was the case.

”Holy mother. Show at least some respect for the books.”

”They’re boring. Just let me do my job. If you want to read them, go ahead.”

She was frustrated and made it very clear she wanted to be left alone. I’m not interested in biology, but I picked up a book she’d tossed aside and found it interesting.

The book felt practically weightless and light, the lightest movement could turn the pages, and ghostly fumes constantly leaked from every book. The pages were black, and the text glowed gray.

Not that I actually read the whole thing, I was more like a curious kid flipping through a picture book.

They’d named the newly discovered, experimented beetles Sylvbeetles.

The book captured details of the Sylvbeetle, with subject numbers and codes, markings I didn’t understand, motives, and behavioral test results. Different stages of the beetle, and so on.

After a few pages, they’d marked the species as host-based, and from there things turned dark. In the name of experiments, they threw different species at it as hosts.

Which resulted in pretty distorted and uncanny biological designs. Goats, sheep, rats, dogs, etc. Before long, they started throwing actual humans in front of the beetles, and for some it worked, not without a cost.

There were still many errors, hosts dying and taking the beetle with them. So other books documented the experiments between Sylvbeetle and humans.

I skipped most of it afterward to see the last few end results, because I was creeped out by the number of humans of different ages and genders being used, and the overall life-and-death game of it all.

The end result was stated plainly, half-written:

From our new discovery in previous experiment 145. We have found that a juvenile Sylvbeetle needs a juvenile human to turn itself into a full adult. Females especially are perfect hosts. When a Sylvbeetle bonds with a human female host, it becomes a game of dominance between the Sylvbeetle and the host.

When a slave woman was fed to a Sylvbeetle, the slave woman ended up dominating it, taking control and gaining all the strength an adult Sylvbeetle possesses. She completely lost herself to the power and killed half of the researchers in order to escape. Unfortunately, we had to kill our best subject...

What do they mean by ”best subject”? She killed half the researchers. These people were horrible.

It continued: From Experiment 167, during the hosting process, the juvenile Sylvbeetle took over the body, and there was a noticeable change in the rest of the juvenile Sylvbeetles without any host. This has happened every time they took control. But this time the subject stayed alive the longest, 15 minutes...

During the last few minutes, the subject somehow communicated with the other juvenile Sylvbeetles. The subject’s first words were, ”you will die by our hand, humans.” We can confirm the Sylvbeetles have developed their own language and way of communication. Soon after those words from the subject, all the juvenile Sylvbeetles became extremely aggressive, impossible for anyone to handle.

”I’m not finding anything interesting here.”

Dr. Rhiannon shouted, tossing books around. At this point, there were more books on the floor than on the shelf itself.

”What do you mean, not interesting, this is very interesting–”

”You don’t know what interesting even means to me. Let’s move on to the next room.”

Dr. Rhiannon stormed out of the room, cutting off the spell. The book I was holding, and every ghostly thing in the room, disappeared.

I was speechless, left on a cliffhanger. Well, I could guess what happened afterward, the Sylvbeetles became aggressive. Let’s see what the next room has to offer.

”This room is useless as well!!”

I hadn’t even entered the next room and Dr. Rhiannon was already mad about what she found.

”You’re looking for something specific, aren’t you?”

Dr. Rhiannon turned around, narrowing her eyes at me as I entered the room. She decided not to answer my question at all.

”Well, I need your help now.”

She grabbed my hand, and the text from her book crawled onto my arm, glowing soul-blue, settling into a tattoo.

”Scan this room for me. Just hold the book for 5 seconds and think that you’re reading it.”

With that, she left for another room, leaving me alone. Now I had to do this. Well, it saves time, so I shouldn’t complain.

I jumped right into the job. Easier said than done, because there were so many books. But it wasn’t boring, I read some of them to see what this room contained.

This room was different, purely about transactions, funding, materials, motives, promises, etc., which told me exactly who was involved with the experiment.

The first thing I saw was terrifying, a royal shield with a feather symbol I recognized from Elias’s memories. It was the symbol of a royal family, the Drevaunts, who’d been in charge of Vraskhold for the longest time, and who still hold power today.

It was my first time seeing Elias’s memories, and it felt like a dream. I don’t like politics, it’s interesting, but it’ll leave me spiraling.

There were other symbols that didn’t trigger Elias’s memory. One stood out to me, a two-headed dragon with sad and happy faces, named The Black Covenant. Seeing that, it was safe to say a cult was involved.

I read more and my suspicion was confirmed. The Drevaunts had an agreement with The Black Covenant. The agreement stated The Black Covenant would handle all the experiments until they made the perfect sex doll from the Sylvbeetle, and in return, the Drevaunts had to do whatever they said.

”....ALL OF THIS BULLSHIT IS FOR A SEX DOLL!!!”

That revelation didn’t move me a millimeter, it just sent blood rushing to the wrong area.

I read more, and then it started to make sense, hummer beetles are mostly used for sex toys, and since Sylvbeetles are a new experimental hummer beetle...

But it was still hard to believe. They killed people for this? What kind of psychos are the members of the Drevaunt family?

Wait, I scanned the rest of the remaining books quickly, because I’d just noticed something.

I rushed to the other room to see what Dr. Rhiannon had been up to. I stopped at the doorframe and saw her lying on the ashy, dusty floor, surrounded by ghostly books.

Dr. Rhiannon had a bright blush on her cheeks, eyes sparkling, mouth open, lips forming words. Overall, she looked like an overexcited teenage girl reading a romance novel.

”Ohh, these new beetles could make an amazing sex toy. What are they called again? Yes, Sylvbeetle, such a beautiful name.”

”So you were looking into the factors affecting the quality of a SEX TOY THIS WHOLE TIME.”

”Oopsy~”

Author here, no need to this, I didn’t hit the word count so I’m just yapping. But if you really like what I’m trying to do, drop a power stones please. Thank you.