Am I The Villain?

19. Solipsism and Exposition

There are also some book about natural philosophy, mathematics, and politics. The natural philosophy books are basically biology, physics, and chemistry all rolled up into one. They're all unsophisticated and frankly a bit behind compared to the modern world I came from. The same goes for mathematics. There are no calculus, but I kinda expected that. Most of them are the study of geometry, patterns, and cryptography because these subjects are heavily used in Sorceries and Miracles.

Geometry is used for the construction of magical circles, scrolls, and general enchantment like swords and armor. Pattern and cryptography is used for grimoires writing.

I don't care about politics. It's medieval. Everything is feudalism with the odd republic here and there.

While I'm reading, Norn occasionally come and poured me some tea. Sleeping under my feet are also dark twisted octopedal creatures shaped like a spider but with a human-like head. It's one of those Old Ones that spawned from Yorheim ashes. I never mentioned it but this palace and the city is now crawling with these abominations. It scared me at first, but I kinda get used to it. They're kinda cute actually. They act like puppies, always excited when they see me and jumping around my feet. Some of them are much larger than me, so they end up causing quite an earthquake when they jump around. The palace spirits seems to treat them as comrade and live alongside them. Norn said that they are technically siblings, birthed by the same father. These Old Ones have the same red mana as the palace spirits.

There are also normal monsters with blue mana spawning around the city. According to the books I've read, monster emerges from nothingness when the air around them are dense with mana. I guess my rampage four years ago breed out a brand new ecosystem within this city. These monsters aren't friendly toward me and will attack me, even though they were "birthed" by me. These ungrateful children.

They're ungrateful, so I've been spending my time killing them. Don't get me wrong, It's not senseless massacre. I've been training my use of magic, guided by the books. I've also restarted experimenting with my tentacles. I found out that turning off the tentacles invisibility helps ease the pain tremendously. It's a bit disgusting though.

I've also tried out using the black ooze. I tried shooting out a ball of these ooze to a monster once. It writhed in pain while howling in pain for a minute before raising back up covered in tentacles. The tentacles burst out from its skins and eyes. Further experiments show that the monster is now fully obedient to me. It's so obedient that it even followed my order when I told it to kill itself. Scary.

Beyond the city walls, a small town has emerged. These are mostly used by traders resting between their travels and adventurers hunting the monsters inside the city. There's an Adventurer's Guild branch and a Trader's Guild branch set up there. Apparently, the materials obtained from monsters fetch quite a high price. There are also attunement crystals you can harvest from the corpse of stronger monsters. These crystals are used as aid when evoking Sorceries.  These must be the same crystal that decorates Allie's wand and lightning-truck lady's staff.

I wonder how those kids are doing now?

"aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAA I HATE LIVING!" I screamed in boredom. Reading is nice and all, but I'm starting to get really tired of it. This is the void all over again. It's nice while it lasted but I think I don't want to stay a hikikomori forever.

"NORN! I'M LEAVING!" I shouted and teleported myself to the outer gatehouse. I don't know why I'm feeling angry. Maybe the loneliness and constant silence inside the library finally got to me. I barely heard Norn shouting back "HAVE FUN" before I fully teleported.

It's still early dawn and thick morning fog is blanketing the city. From within these fog, a colossal serpent made of stone suddenly jumped toward me with its maw gaping, revealing rows and rows of jagged sharp stones. Its body diameter easily dwarfs a two story building and its length is about the length of a bullet train. It's 200 meters by the way, I already did the math. You're welcome.

"Fuck off," I said as I squirted some ooze from my hand. The ooze hit the back of its throat and the serpent quickly collapsed to the ground. That's what you get. These ooze are ineffective if they don't seep inside the body of their victims. They have to get inside through the eyes, mouth, nose, ears, genitalia and/or excretion organs for them to be fully effective.  Fortunately for me, this monster is stupid and gave me a clear shot inside its oral cavity.

My tentacles quickly bursted out from within the body wrapped themselves around the deceased stone serpent. The stone serpent, now covered in tendrils is looking at me expectantly.

"Kill yourself." The tentacles grip over the body tightened and crushed themselves as I said that.

Haah.. This always happen when I visit the city. Do these monsters have some sort of hivemind? Are they purposefully targeting me to avenge their fellow monsters I've used for experiments? Well, it's nothing but mild annoyance. I don't really mind.

I continued on walking outside the gatehouse. I evoked an illusion Sorcery to mask my presence. It's nothing advanced. I just made my very existence highly forgettable. Only people purposefully looking around the area in vigilance can actually see me and actually remember they've seen me. This is one of the spells I learned through the grimoires.

I don't want to keep holing up inside the city. I wanna have fun too! All of this is just my dream after all. I might as well make it a good dream!

First of all, let's see what these adventurers business is all about. They've been killing my children, err, Old Ones for a while now. As a responsible parent, err, master it is my duty to see why they've been killing them!