"..." Zhita’hna looks at me, briefly confused, then stares at my milk again, and then back at my face. She soon flies from where she is straight to me, stopping in front of me while sniffing the air.
"Poison?" She tilts her head to the side, staring at the milk as if it really could be poisoned, which is almost an insult since it undoubtedly isn’t, and it’s quite tasty.
"No, you saw it come from my body. Why would it be poisoned? Besides, I am not a poisonous being." I really could have an ability to poison everything that leaves my body; it would be extremely useful for killing the wretched things that try to eat me.
"..." She takes the bowl from my hand, holding it with a degree of care, and with that, I notice a weakness of hers. In that brief moment of her holding a bowl is when I have this realization.
’She can’t fly and hold things at the same time...which also means...she can’t fly if one of her wings is damaged...’ She has a pretty big weakness there.
It might seem simple, but it isn’t, not for abyssal beings. It’s not so easy to have notable weaknesses. But she can’t hold things and fly because she needs to curve her wings forward to hold them, and thus can’t flap them to maintain flight.
"...What is this?" she asks after having sniffed the bowl for some time. She seems to have evaluated and realized it has no poison.
"Milk." I am magnificently beautiful, and by standards from outside the Abyss, my body has nothing that makes it especially delicious. However, by Abyssal standards, I am still beautiful, but I have a literally tasty body because my body stores fat.
Especially my breasts, which are large and voluminous. And since everyone in the Abyss is a predator, they all sense the faint smell of fat, even though it shouldn’t be this easy.
And naturally, milk also has fat, and mine is quite caloric. So Zhita’hna is wary of the milk, but you can see in her gaze that she seems to want to drink it.
"...If you don’t trust it, give it back and I’ll drink it." I can’t just waste it. I am supplementing my meals with my own milk, and every drop matters, since in the Abyss I have little food and I no longer have that spider girl to feed me.
"It’s not that...I’ll try it..." She puts the bowl to her mouth and begins to drink slowly. And when she finishes, she licks the bottom of the bowl until it breaks because she is too strong.
"So, what did you think?" I ask, knowing she liked it. That single bowl of milk must be equivalent to several of her meals—an excellent bargaining chip without a doubt.
"...Good."
"Yes, it’s very good. And you are very strong, so you can’t take my milk from me without possibly killing me. So, do you think a deal would be beneficial for both of us?" I ask arrogantly.
She doesn’t have hands, or webs, or anything like that. If she tries to milk my breasts, she’ll pierce me with her claws. And if she tries to pin me to the ground, her legs will deeply puncture my body, and wounds will only reduce the milk I produce.
"...Speak."
"Great. So, how about I give you milk every day? In return, you give me the food you hunt and answer all my questions. Of course, I’ll continue cleaning your house too." I am trying to get some margin of advantage.
Eating corpses will allow me to steal new traits from them. She’ll bring me strong monsters I could never have killed before. That is, I can increase my level by eating the prey she hunts for me while I adapt, since adaptation grants me levels.
"Interesting...proposal..." She seems to think and realizes the same thing I did: that fortunately, unlike that damned spider girl, this bird girl will have no way to restrain me. She is too strong, so she would easily hurt me if she tried to pin me down and drain milk from me. And that is good news that gives me the advantage.
In other words, if she wants resources from me, I myself need to take them out and deliver them to her. And when I think I’ve taken enough from her, I’ll disappear from here.
’I wonder how much she really knows about my mother’s servants...’ She seems to know more than she lets on. I say this because she avoids mentioning them, or when I asked about them, she was very vague without trying to take the more informative path.
"Do you produce a lot?" she asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
"Several liters per day, every day, without any pause as long as I am well-fed." Because of the Devourer passive and my race, I can get much more energy from less food than most beings.
So even though beings in the Abyss are not very nutritious, they still give me the energy needed for my body to produce milk.
"BUT, if I am poorly fed or injured, production will decrease." I don’t know if it stops. Normally in most beings, they stop producing milk, but my body isn’t common, and I’ve been producing milk for over 400 years, so maybe my body can’t stop.
"..." She seems to be thinking something, weighing the choices she has. For her, both killing me and keeping me alive are tempting. Killing me would get her my flesh, and keeping me alive would get her my milk.
"A philosophical question I’ve always had. If you answer it...satisfactorily...I accept your deal...If I don’t like your answer...I’ll kill you now." She says something truly dangerous.
"...A philosophical question, huh...I didn’t think monsters could have their own philosophy. Isn’t it just live or die in the Abyss?"
"...That doesn’t stop me from having doubts...or am I not permitted to have doubts about my own existence and what surrounds it?" She says something quite rational for something that is a dangerous beast.
’...’ But she’s right. I have my doubts too. We have intellect and the right to question things.
"Ask away."
"Which came first, the body or the soul? And based on that answer, what are we?" Her question is extremely complex. Normally the answer should be the soul, but that is wrong for monsters. Monsters receive their bodies first and then their souls when they evolve.
"What came first is the body. And what are we based on that? Wild beasts, without hatred, just following the simple logic of killing if you feel hungry to eat, and fighting to survive. Nothing more and nothing less. We are not special beings for existing, because existence is not special."
"What would be special is what we do with that existence. And I know very well what I want to do, and what I will do with mine." I traced my future a long time ago, and I am walking this path without deviating from it for anything.
"..." She falls silent for a second before staring fixedly into my eyes.
"I see...we have similar answers...I didn’t like your answer, but I think we have a deal now, because your answer is precisely what I always thought we are..."
"..." She is much more rational than I would expect from a monster. The savagery is notable, but the rationality at the same time is a strange mix to see, because I am also like that.
It’s like being...at home. In the place where I should always have been from the start. The Abyss is the first place where I really fit perfectly, not as something special, but as just another being in this place.
"I’ll go out for a moment. Stay here and organize things. I’ll hunt for food." She leaves through the same path we entered.
Not caring much about our conversation, I start doing what I have to do while, of course, making plans for the future. This bird girl will do everything not to lose me as she realizes my usefulness and gets used to it.
So I’ll need an escape route when I’ve already gotten everything I want from here. Unfortunately, teleportation is not an option, and I still can’t use magic to its full potential.
’I should use the time here to practice magic...’ I need to find a way to use Pure Mana without problems and without much cost while adapting this to my current spells. I also need to figure out some way to enter the sea of consciousness.
"What are those three doing in there that they aren’t doing their job..." I try to turn my hand into black slime, but it doesn’t work because the three Pandora’s aren’t doing what they’re supposed to.
And this part should be with the Monster Pandora. That is, if I can’t turn into black slime, it means the Monster Pandora isn’t "active" in the sea of consciousness as she should be.
And the worst part is that I know something is wrong. It’s extremely obvious to me that something inside has gone wrong, but I can’t do absolutely anything because I don’t know how to invade my own head, and I don’t know what the problem is.
’When the Yandere Pandora appears, she’ll pay dearly for this!’ I may not know the problem, but I’m almost certain the Yandere Pandora is the issue. She acted strange the last time we met, and she was the one who expelled me from the sea of consciousness.
And she is probably the only one with the ability to lock me out of my own head. So she is hiding something terrible, and I can only count on the other two Pandora’s to deal with the Yandere Pandora.