Chapter 82

One day, an anonymous post appeared on the Special Unit Bamboo Forest.

I usually browsed the Special Unit Bamboo Forest just to leave nasty comments or recommend trash posts out of boredom, but this one wasn’t written by me.

Given how tentacles had been sprouting all over the city lately, I figured it was probably written by one of the Special Unit members after seeing one.

“Where’s my 10 billion won?”

『Fear not?』

“I’ve lived with tentacles for fifteen years and didn’t get a single won. I think that’s unfair.”

Every time I drifted through the sea of information on my smartwatch, I realized something: the amount of money I hadn’t been paid like this had already exceeded 270 trillion won.

I kept scrolling down to read the comments.

Then I was hit with a massive shock.

“This is…”

Contrary to my expectations, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Most people said they could definitely live with a tentacle.

Some said they’d bring a full seven-dish breakfast to the bed every morning. Others said they’d stay up chatting until it fell asleep. Some even said they’d welcome it like family.

There was even someone who seriously asked if the tentacle was female.

For the record, from a demonic biology standpoint, tentacles are close to asexual, but depending on the environment, they can reproduce sexually through gametes. In the case of the high-intelligence tentacles I handled, they also had sexual identity.

A representative example was Digestion, who always nagged me not to play games until dawn and not to leave my socks inside out, and who had a feminine personality and spoke like a refined young lady.

Anyway, feeling how much public perception of tentacles had changed, I couldn’t just sit still.

I brought up “that plan” I’d been thinking about for a long time to Mala-nim.

“I think it’s finally time to leave this place.”

『Fear?』

“Yes. We’ll find a new nest.”

Being part of the Special Unit didn’t mean you had to live in the dorms.

In fact, around me, only Alexei and Kang Ha-neul still commuted from the dormitory.

If you rose to commander rank, the Administration would provide a private residence comparable to a mansion, but that was realistically impossible for me.

After the probation period, most unit members moved out of the dorms.

Honestly, I didn’t realize how miserable it had been until now.

For nearly a year since escaping the Demon Realm, I had no choice but to host my Outer God in such a shabby space.

A creaky bed and a cramped bathroom.

And an inconsiderate second-floor roommate who caused light pollution by using their smartwatch late into the night.

The last one was me, but still, that kind of life was over now.

I decided to leave the dorm immediately and look for a place where my Outer God and I could live together.

However, there was one condition.

As long as the mural on the outer wall of the Cult of the Void wasn’t finished, I couldn’t increase my spending any further.

The current dorm was practically free, so moving out would obviously cost more.

That was why the anonymous post on the Special Unit Bamboo Forest became the trigger to finally act on independence I’d only thought about before.

“If there are people who desperately want to live with a tentacle, they’ll accept us for sure.”

『Fear not?』

“I’m not saying we’ll leech off someone else’s house! If we find a compatible roommate, we can rent a place together.”

That would cut rent in half and save a significant amount on living expenses.

Especially since my own spending on food and clothing was close to zero, it was more than worth trying.

After writing a short note to Alexei, who was out training and not in his room, I packed all my belongings and stepped outside.

“Shall we crack the shell and head out, then? Into the world.”

The sewer was cozy.

There were traces of Velada having used it once upon a time here and there, but well, it wasn’t unlivable.

After boldly declaring that I would live on my own and even submitting a dormitory move-out form to the Ability Management Bureau, I realized just how cold reality was in a mere three days.

On the first day, I tried looking for a room share through “Lotus Root Market” (a local secondhand and neighborhood exchange app), where people sold used goods and interacted with nearby residents.

However, no one wanted to bring a tentacle into their home.

When I offered to share homemade tentacle cheese balls, I got more than fifty messages in ten seconds flat. But when I explained that I could make things like that every day, everyone backed off in horror.

So the next day, I decided to secure a room first and then bring in a roommate, and opened Magical Tower Realty.

It was a real estate brokerage app created by the Magic Tower.

There were lots of cheap, decent listings near Ground Zero, but even if they were marked as vacant, many already had “tenants” living in them.

So I moved on to areas packed with guild offices, where lots of job seekers lived, only to find that most listings were marked “No Pets.”

They only said pets weren’t allowed; they didn’t say tentacles weren’t allowed. With that logic, I went to check out a place—only to be hit by an even more horrific reality.

When the agent saw the tentacles growing in the corner of the room, they calmly said things like, “The landlord will take care of all that,” and “This is an area regularly fumigated by the Blue Magic Tower, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

I was this close to stamping the contract when I heard that and panicked, backing away immediately.

After wasting two days like that, I realized it would be hard to find a place through normal means.

So, as a last resort, I decided to pursue a fateful encounter.

I put a small, cute baby tentacle inside a box.

With a note that said, “Please raise it,” I left it in front of various houses and rang their doorbells, over and over.

Then a new mission suddenly appeared on the mission board.

“Hey, you there in the suspicious robe.”

“Don’t tell me you’re the culprit—khhk!!”

I barely managed to knock him down and escape because the one who picked up the mission was Boneless Spear Kang Ha-neul. If it had been another member, I’d be living life on the run by now.

He had earned the qualifications to enter the Eternal Temple after hunting tentacles in Necropolis, but he still wasn’t enough to be a match for me.

And so, today marked the third day since I set out in search of a warm, cozy home.

Lying in the cold sewer, I realized one thing.

There was no country for tentacles.

“Everyone acted like they’d be okay living together… and here I am, betrayed. Humans are so disappointing.”

“Euh—?”

My Outer God struck straight at the point, saying, “Wasn’t that only if they’re paid 10 billion won?”

Still, she didn’t seem particularly angry.

Even though she must’ve been cold, and even though she’d probably tossed and turned all night in the damp sewer stench.

She spent most of her time sitting next to me in the form of her avatar.

When I pulled her slender arm, she came into my embrace without even a hint of resistance.

Inside the dark sewer.

The only thing we could do was share each other’s body heat like this.

“Now that it’s just the two of us, I finally understand. Why you wanted to leave the dormitory and be alone with me, Mala-nim.”

“……”

I held her cold hand.

She tightened her grip in response.

Though we were buried in darkness, I could see faintly flushed cheeks beneath those quietly glowing violet pupils.

Her breathing looked a little rough.

Her body fidgeted restlessly.

Proof that Mala-nim was expecting something too.

“You’re waiting for me to completely pass out, right? So you can finish eating Velada’s horn, the one you couldn’t last time.”

“Crunch!”

…Was I wrong?

Thinking it might just be the cold scrambling my brain, I decided to get out for now.

The Han River riverside was peaceful as ever.

Seeing citizens kite-surfing along waves formed by piles of corpses from the undead and tentacles lingering until late dawn, it felt like public safety had really improved.

That too, this and that—must have been thanks to the Special Unit working so hard.

After stretching, I realized she’d already returned to her tentacle form. Mala-nim was carefully entwining my fingers as I explained my next plan.

“At this point, we should listen to advice from people around us.”

『Fear not?』

“Not the Cult of the Void. That place is basically a shelter for people with nowhere else to go.”

I hadn’t given up on the dream of living on my own yet.

So naturally, the best thing to do was to ask people around me who lived independently how they found their place.

And whether any neighbors were seriously considering living with tentacles.

I immediately turned on my smartwatch and started scrolling through my contact list.

I knew most of the agents I’d met during missions, but there were only a few I was close enough to visit at this late hour.

Commanders were out of the question too.

They lived in exclusive housing provided by the Bureau, automatically disqualifying them from the start.

“Moon Ah-rin originates from the White Magic Tower, so she’d be uncomfortable with tentacles, and Senior Kang Ha-neul was just transferred to the Central Hospital earlier…”

After filtering and filtering by conditions, only one person remained.

No Yeon-hwa.

I left her name open on the contact screen and hesitated for a whole hour.

Because I prided myself on knowing her well.

“It’s already 1:30 a.m. Considering No Yeon-hwa’s sleep pattern and anger threshold, showing up at her place in the middle of the night would be tantamount to suicide.”

『Fear not.』

“You think if I just contact her, wake her up, and say I’m coming over, she’ll accept that? Mala-nim, you really don’t understand women at all…!”

『Fear not!!』

“Ah!”

After our three-day-long plan had utterly failed, maybe she just didn’t want to endure the cold anymore.

In an instant, she snatched the smartwatch and sent a message to No Yeon-hwa.

I might be an Apostle of an Outer God who didn’t understand the human heart, but when faced with a true Outer God, even I had to yield.

How could she so casually tell me to just go over, in a situation where rejection was practically guaranteed?

Not only would all the goodwill I’d patiently built up evaporate, it would surely end in a tragedy where our relationship would break beyond repair.

As I waited there, ready to wither away like a tentacle crawling out of a garden bed after rainfall, slowly drying up under the sky—

A reply arrived from No Yeon-hwa.

—No Yeon-hwa: If you’ve got nowhere to sleep, just come.

…It worked?