Chapter 67: Natural Consequences

"U-Urgh... ahhh... haaa... i-it hurts... and it stings... burns... it burns so much." Nio writhes in her bed, waking from the dreams. Nioh is training her intensely, but as punishment and also as a demonstration, she made the wounds from the kicks in the dreams appear on Nio’s body.

Even with regeneration, Nio feels an extreme pain deep inside. She twists in bed, breaking out in a cold sweat as she carelessly pulls at her dress, seeing blood soaking her panties.

Showing the intensity of the training, she knows this training is necessary, and she agrees that she cheated, so the kicks above her womb were her punishment. She urgently needs experience, but that doesn’t change the physical pain she’s feeling.

"I-I’m bleeding... d-dammit... that’s why it hurts so much..." She touches her own belly, using healing magic, but even with that, the feeling of malaise doesn’t disappear — a limitation of healing that is quite obvious.

"Haaa... haaa..."

"Nio!?" Nio hears Azalea’s voice as she opens the bedroom door and sees Nio’s panties soaked in blood.

"Are you okay!?" she asks, approaching Nio, who quickly hides her pained expression and tries to conceal how hurt she is after the training she had.

"I’m... it’s just... it’s just that time of the month," she says to disguise it. Despite it being true that her new female body can bleed down there just like all women, she isn’t having that now — she’s literally injured and she hopes Azalea won’t notice the difference, since she can’t let herself appear weak in front of dangerous people who might betray her.

"Oh!! That sucks. Want me to do something to deal with the cramps and the pain?"

"...No... just... what’s the situation?" Nio stands up, having to take off her clothes because they’re dirty, while trying to divert Azalea’s attention.

’Nioh will pay dearly for this someday. She didn’t have to make the wounds real just to demonstrate how the power really works...’ As Nio walks almost limping to the wardrobe, Azalea steals her blood-soaked panties and stores them in her inventory.

"Nio, things are going well, although the invading humans are extremely cautious now!! And other Apostles are also interested in going out since Yomo and Moros left."

"But the stress problem has diminished, since Moros and Yomo are gone for now. Two of the apostles who urgently wanted to leave gave up, mainly because of Yomo, and the others had their interest slightly reduced."

"...That’s good." Nio speaks as she uses towels to clean herself, not really caring about Azalea’s gaze since the pain is more inconvenient.

’It would be good to be able to ask my servants for help to learn properly and gain experience... but if I do, I’ll look weaker, and that’s not good... dammit...’ Nio grabs any random dress and starts putting it on along with a new set of underwear.

"Look, that doesn’t interest me. I want to know about the supposed rare ores underground. The humans seem to have no idea about the wealth that exists here. Looking at the Theocracy’s maps, I found about three areas that have large veins of important ores," Nio says, adjusting her hair without noticing that after she started talking to Nioh, her physical behavior has become more feminine.

Her tail now has a more expressive movement, and her wings open and close based largely on what she’s expressing, while the very act of fixing her hair — something she never did until now — exposes this fact.

"Ah yes, we’re keeping an eye on that! But we don’t have the means to properly extract them without making a mine for mining, extraction, and refining, since we’re busy with the defenses," Azalea replies using what she knows. There’s no way to focus on mining and refining rare ores if all focus is on reinforcing the castle’s defenses and creating new defense methods, as well as discovering more about the world.

"...Moros said he found a National Rank with enough power to kill him. What did you find out about that?" Nio questions because she knows almost nothing. Even going after knowledge, all she learned was that Ryu is also considered a National Rank even though she isn’t an adventurer.

So Nio knows that most will have power at Ryu’s level, or slightly below, or a little above, but nothing too far from that — because she realized that humans can’t easily break the level 70 barrier. So she deduces that the strongest probably reached level 80 at most.

Which would already be threats, but wouldn’t even come close to the level needed to fight Nio on equal footing.

"Oh! About that, I started sending some of the palace servants out to investigate! The shadow ants are investigating small kingdoms underground, while the information squad is investigating monsters since you and Yomo are focused on the humans," Azalea answers Nio, who finishes getting ready.

"Great... clean my room. I have to go out for now. I’m going to have a small fight." The [Faceless One] in the theocracy found records of a monster that greatly interested Nio.

So Nio decided to hunt this monster personally, since she has its location and wants to train without Nioh beating her up and verbally humiliating her.

"Of course, Nio!! I hope you get what you want," Azalea says to Nio, who heads to the door.

"Ah yes, I want you to unlock the vault’s secret passage." Nio has several vault floors, and they are unlocked over time. It means not even Nio can access the locked vault without ordering it opened and waiting a few days.

A mechanic that, in the game, prevented players who conquered a base from quickly stealing whatever was in the vault, giving the owner time to recover the base without losing their treasures.

Since things started getting a lot more complicated, Nio chose to leave all vault floors open by opening the secret passage, which would consequently open all floors.

"I’ll do that immediately, Nio!!" Azalea says while Nio closes the door. When Azalea can no longer hear Nio’s footsteps, she quickly pulls the bed sheet and presses the bloodied fabric against her face.

"Hmmm... Nio’s blood..." She inhales the scent deeply while collapsing to the floor, licking the fabric as she absorbs a part of it like a plant absorbing nutrients.

"It’s... fragrant... so... delicious." She throws herself onto the bed, rubbing herself on the bloodied mattress while smelling the sheets, beginning to spread pheromones throughout the room Nio just left.

Despite her saying she would do it immediately, it’s obvious from her gaze that she’ll spend hours wasting time on this if she isn’t interrupted.