Chapter 43: Doubts and Gratitude

"...I see. I hadn’t thought of that..." Nio soars through the skies, analyzing the information her clone gathered.

’As a dragon, I should now consider not just my player status, but the differences my race gives me.’ Nio realized something when she received the information about the [Dragon Gel], and that is just how much her biology will affect her fights and daily life.

Even with countless factors showing that everything had changed, she ignored it — maybe trying to preserve a little of her humanity upon realizing she killed people without feeling anything, or maybe just an instinct to avoid a problem she didn’t want to see.

But now it’s undeniable how much her normal life is affected by her new species. If a simple thought about eggs and the sight of several dragon eggs made her react physically, then other things have also changed in her mind — things she doesn’t know.

"If my body reacts to this the same way someone might react to the smell of food, then I can just throw everything I know about human biological responses in the trash."

"After all, I’ve never felt the urge to eat regardless of whether the food smells good, while I could smell blood from a simple cut from dozens of meters away and even identify the person’s gender just by their blood and their general life status, like whether they’re healthy or not."

"Not to mention that when I’m sleepy, everything just shuts down relatively fast whether I’m underwater or not, which wouldn’t happen with humans."

"And now this? It’s obvious I can’t take biological patterns into account anymore. I’ll have to relearn everything from absolute zero... haaa... how I wish all of this were so much easier."

"And the worst part is my NPCs can’t help with this..." Nio thinks about Typhon. Ironically, Typhon is the only one who knows about her situation — not because she deduces she’s a "player," but because she knows the current Nio is "another" Nio and could help her.

"Urgh... my body shudders just thinking about getting help from that monstrosity... and also... what happened to the other Nio? Did she disappear?" Nio begins to spin in the air as a gentle breeze brushes through her hair.

At first, she deduced that "Nio" never existed, that she had always been simply an empty body. But now it’s clear — there was a Nio before the current one took over the body.

"Wait... now that I think about it, it’s sinister that Typhon noticed I existed before I even existed... she said she knew I was ’sleeping’ inside Nio... does that mean this body actually existed even inside the game?"

"Then... Typhon, me, my NPCs — was it all real? Or was it another parallel world? No... it doesn’t make sense to be a parallel world, because if it were, Typhon wouldn’t have been able to notice me ’sleeping’ inside this body."

"...Besides... Typhon clearly understood my ’playing’ style to the point of reacting to it in combat and even forcing me to use my magic class... so she knows far more than she lets on."

"Nio... is sleeping inside me?" Nio touches her chest, listening to her heart beating slowly. The rhythm is irregular and slightly strange because her heart is much stronger than a human’s, requiring fewer beats while pumping harder to circulate blood. The prospect of having "another person" sleeping inside her body is terrifying and makes Nio’s tail whip through the air.

"If there’s another me, why doesn’t she try to take over the body? She’s in here, right? Can she not do it? Does she even hear me? Does she know who I am?" Nio fills herself with confused questions while spinning in the air so rapidly that she changes the wind’s path, slowly beginning to form a whirlwind without noticing, gently pulling the clouds along.

"This whole subject about my body gave me more doubts than help. At least my palace’s defense is going well — now I have dragons to help against the nosy adventurers who started showing up." As Nio complains, the area where her palace is located began receiving more adventurers because of the disappearances, and soon stronger people will come check the place out.

"Wait!! I’m in a lesbian relationship!!" She freezes in place suddenly. The spinning stops so abruptly that the whirlwind that was forming begins to disperse naturally.

"Wow... now I realize it — I’m a girl married to another girl... well, there weren’t major prejudices against same-sex couples and you could even get married in reality, and it was well accepted." It was the year 2569, so all of that was already well regulated and naturally accepted.

"But even so... it’s... weird things just don’t stop... well, I should at least be grateful that I’m a cute girl married to a beautiful girl. After all, I almost considered... urgh." Nio puts her hand over her mouth as if about to vomit.

Since the game allowed a lot of creativity, Nio initially thought about — obviously — Gap Moe, as always. So Typhon had some generally bad options. The chosen one was a beautiful girl utterly insane for Nio, which is the current Typhon.

But there are several other options that were literal monsters in appearance, and one of the options that crossed Nio’s mind was the Blood Slug Typhon — a disgusting insect-type monster, filthy and slimy, who was married to Nio.

Which would be an "interesting" Gap Moe because of Nio’s cute looks being married to a disgusting thing like an "insect." The thoughts of what Typhon could have been make Nio sigh in relief.

"F-Forget it!! She’s beautiful!! She’s absurdly beautiful!! Okay, she has some bizarre traits, like being able to open her mouth wide enough to fit a whole human inside and even bigger things, but overall, as long as she doesn’t do that, Typhon’s entire physique is beautiful." Nio breaks into a cold sweat.

Because the lores of those other disgusting versions weren’t about enemies of Nio, so Nio feels profound gratitude for having given up on them due to last-minute ideas about some new things.

"Wow, I almost condemned my life even further!! What are the odds?" Weak and beautiful Nio, strong and ugly Nio, a physically monstrous Typhon, NPCs who want to kill her — among several other terrible ideas Nio had.

All of which were discarded in favor of the ideas that currently govern everything she created. Nio’s relief is immense. She only thought about how hard her life was, but forgot that it could have been thousands of times worse if she had followed other Gap Moe paths.

"I’m really starting to hate Gap Moe... I’m NEVER again in my life going to choose things based on Gap Moe." As she decides what to do, she begins to glide gently, thinking about a sudden gratitude.

’...Developers of AIN SOPH... thank you... thank you for creating your game without allowing sexual content freedom... I feel like I would have written so much shit that when I appeared in this world I would have been condemned from the very first second.’ She takes a deep breath as she begins descending from the skies to return to the theocracy, determined to settle some more peaceful matters and look for books about dragons.

’I will never forget my gratitude for such a thing... and I will never again complain about this fact like I used to complain in the game!!!’