I needed answers, and for that, I needed someplace private.

The Demon King was nowhere to be found when I stepped inside his ‘legendary’ tavern and looked around, but I hadn’t returned to The Age of Depravity for a chat with him. After a brief exchange of words and coins with a succubus barmaid on the ground floor, I had a key to my own room upstairs for the night.

I wasn’t planning to stay that long.

While this might have been the most expensive option, frugality was the least of my concerns at the moment, and this familiar choice had something else I was looking for. When I finished climbing the stairs to my room and shut the door behind me, I let out a sigh of relief. As I expected, this room had a mirror just like the other one did when I stayed here two nights ago.

John showed up randomly on my first day in this world when I was all by myself. There had to be a way to summon him, and knowing that bastard, did I have to say his name in front of a mirror three times or something? It was worth a shot.

I walked up to the mirror and took a deep breath.

“John. John! John!”

Behind me, nothing. Across the room, nothing. In hindsight, maybe it was too much to expect that to actually work like—

“It’s Johnny Shift, remember?”

“Shit!”

I jumped back at the sudden intrusion. Where did he come from? How did he show up that fast? No, who the hell even was this guy?!

Standing in front of the window I just checked a second ago was an unfamiliar man wearing a beige suit coat and pants with a full head of trimmed chestnut hair and… Wait no, that was definitely John, but something about him looked weird.

Like, more than usual.

“Seriously man, can’t you make some kind of sound effect when you show up like that?” I asked.

He coughed. “How’s that?”

I rolled my eyes. “Forget it. Look, we really need to talk. What’s this about Divine Gifts, and when exactly were you going to tell me about them?”

“Ah, yeah, the Gifts… Let me put it to you this way. There’s a time and a place for everything, and, we kinda ran out of time at that other place.”

“Bullshit!” I shot back. “More importantly than that, you never even… um… you never even told me I could reincarnate as a cute girl and keep my manhood!”

The room fell silent for a very, very long minute.

“Now I’m not one to judge about that,” John finally said while scratching his head, “but that’s not exactly my ‘area of expertise,’ you dig?”

“What the fuck, man!”

He cleared his throat. “You know, I thought you’d be on cloud nine right about now. With your new lancer friend and that fox lady, you could roleplay one of those animated pornos you used to—”

“Not. One. More. Word.” I clenched my hand into a fist and raised it toward him.

John held up his hands defensively. “Hey, hey, it’s all good. I slipped you that little something extra, remember? You’ve got a darn good Gift of your own.”

Ugh… I let my fist fall to my side. “About that. What is it called? What does it even do?”

“Yeah I gotcha covered,” he grinned. “It’s great. Gives me goose bumps every time I say it.”

“Just out with it already,” I groaned.

He took a deep breath, pausing for dramatic effect. “I call it, ‘Mirror of Soul.’ Ooh, gets me every time. It grants you cool stuff like magic deflection.”

Magic deflection? “That sounds great and all, but I’m already supposed to be a mage. Would I really need some kind of anti-magic passive ability?”

“Didn’t that get you out of a real tough spot last night?” he asked, tapping his head.

“No thanks to you,” I grumbled.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Come on, you know what I mean!”

But when I thought more about it, if it really was because of this ‘Mirror’ thing that I was able to do all that back in the clearing yesterday…

“Are you trying to tell me that you didn’t let me pick a Divine Gift and gave me this one because you knew something like that was going to happen?”

All he gave me for an answer was a wink and a grin.

God only knew how much this ‘angel’ wasn’t telling me, but as far as I could tell, he didn’t have any evil intentions. Still, there had to be more to it than that… and damn did he piss me off!

“You do want me to slay the Demon King, don’t you?” I asked.

“Sure thing, pal. He’s gotta go. But I can’t help you with those soul fragments that make him immortal.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, there’s a time and place for everything, and this just ain’t it. Don’t you worry; you’ll get there. Just gotta level-up a little first.”

“‘Level-up?’ I thought you said this wasn’t a video game?”

He flashed me a cheesy grin. “Eh, call it a metaphor.”

Okay, maybe he had some evil intentions.

“So what else aren’t telling me, John?”

He shifted his weight on his feet. “There’s a lot more to this world than meets the eye at first glance. The folks here might not all be as bad as you think.”

“Even if that was true, you are the last person I’d ever want to hear that from.”

He put his hands up again. “Hey pal, I’m just tellin’ it like it is.”

Well, it felt like I had gotten all the useful intel out of him that I could—for now, at least. As I stared at him trying to think of anything else to ask, I couldn’t help but wonder why he still looked so different. He was missing something particularly cheesy, like…

“Your hat!” I blurted out. “Why aren’t you wearing that thing?”

John shot me a wink. “Yeah, I was just getting to that…” He held out a hand.

Wait, that meant…!

“I’m thrilled you kept it nice and safe for me this whole time,” he chuckled. “Now I can lighten your load a little, unless you’ve gotten attached to it.”

I let my bag drop to the floor. “I-It’s not like I wanted to hold on to this for you, or anything!”

He whistled. “Looks like tonight’s forecast is ‘cloudy with a chance of tsundere.’”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! That’s too far, man! Just take your stupid fedora already!”

I quickly snatched the damn thing and thrust it onto his outstretched hand. For the first time I’d ever seen, John actually looked kind of taken aback.

“Fedora? Now I can’t let that slide, partner. This here is a trilby.” He tapped his hat for effect.

Oh, for Christ’s sake!

John deftly put his… hat back on and sauntered over to the mirror, checking himself out. When he finally had it positioned on his head just the way he wanted it, he gave himself a thumbs-up.

“Are you done yet?” I groaned.

He turned to me and shrugged. “You know pal, one of these days you might be happier to see me than you think.”

And with that, John opened the door and strolled out of the room.

“Wait, what are you doing!” I called out. “You didn’t even walk in through that—”

But when I ran to look in the hallway, he had vanished without a trace.

***

Step five: …there was no step five.

Finding myself alone again like this made me realize how there was nothing to distract me from agonizing over my current predicament. I wandered aimlessly through the city until I returned to that familiar spot along the river I was at this morning. Alice’s spot.

I didn’t expect to find her there, I didn’t know if I wanted to find her there, and I felt neither relief nor despair when she was nowhere to be found. In three days, it felt like I hadn’t gotten hardly anywhere closer to my original goal in this world. But somehow it felt even worse thinking of relying on Alice every day, especially if it lead to fooling around with her when she didn’t even know who I really was—or what I was really here for.

The previous events of the day threw my head for a loop, making me think of all the things at the back of my mind I didn’t want to deal with. It made me feel nauseous to realize that John was the only person who knew what I looked like before I came here. What would Alice say if she knew that… that this wasn’t my real body? No, I didn’t want to find out.

According to some chatter I overheard earlier, the Demon King was outside the city planning his ‘invasion’ or whatever. Mao had promised me he would give me some hints where his soul fragments were if I returned to him with a party, but I didn’t know where to find him even if I did have my own adventuring party.

It felt I was watching my own ‘highway to paradise’ crumble to dust right before my eyes. There wasn’t even a trail to follow in the right direction. The nobility in this world was no good; in the unlikely event that there were any nobles who weren’t perverts, they probably had their own scary political rivalries I wanted nothing to do with. The commoners were basically perverts, the other Outworlders from Earth were perverts, hell, even the freaking spirits were perverts!

When I thought my best option right now would be to find that witch Vexina and ask her for more training, I had to resist the urge to vomit. Then again, why did I even need to do that? I had plenty of coins left; I could do just about anything I wanted right now!

Yeah, screw the Demon King and the main quest; I basically had it made in this fantasy world! If I sold my enchanted cloak for a hundred gold, I would have enough money to live a life of relative luxury for years! I could even have some fun with a succubus tonight and enjoy a whole new world of pleasure I never could have back on Earth! I’d stare into her eyes, slowly remove her sexy top stray by strap before helping myself to her bountiful chest, savoring her every moan of desire, and then… and then…

And then what? No, I didn’t come here in this body for that! I didn’t have the familiar ‘equipment’ downstairs anymore! How would that work if I was alone with a succubus? Would I be the one getting fucked?

Oh God, I’m even wearing panties right now! I can feel them every time I move my hips! What the hell was I thinking?!

A sudden chill made me hug myself as I stared out at the river stained blood-red by the setting sun. Come on, deep breaths. It was only sunset; I still had plenty of time before nightfall to figure this all out and…

Sunset? Shit, something bad always seemed to happen in this world around sunset! Icy talons of fear gripped my heart all at once. I could almost feel a pair of hungry eyes staring at me, drawing closer by the second. This was bad. I needed to get out of here—immediately!

“Well, well! If it isn’t Lady Beryl the legend!”

Fuck!

I frantically spun around trying to find the source of that feminine voice, but there was no one anywhere close to me. Who, or what—

“Hello-o, down here!”

Huh? I paused to catch my breath, tilting my head downward to discover a small reddish-brown fox wagging her bushy tail and grinning up at me.

“Y-You?!” I stammered.

“Yeah, ‘me,’” the fox spirit answered dryly, her nose twitching up and down. “That’s some way to greet Viela Vixen after she went through all the effort just to track you down.”

Wait, what? Did Viela track me by scent? Fox spirits here were scarier than I thought…

“What are you even doing here?” I asked. “Weren’t you going to go back to your world?”

“But I just got here!” she whined. “And you went through all that trouble to summon me. I’m bored now; can’t you take some responsibility? You must know some fun places around here!” She rubbed her fluffy head against my ankle.

“I’m really not in the mood,” I sighed.

With a puff of smoke and a sudden rush of wind, Viela shapeshifted back into her human form. I felt her put an arm around my shoulder, hugging me from the side.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, her hot breath kissing my cheek. “You can tell big sis Viela anything.”

Big sis…?

Well, as unnerving as it was having her captivating face suddenly inches away from my own, it didn’t seem like she was actually trying to mess with me this time.

“Um, we didn’t exactly leave off on the greatest terms,” I said while turning to stare back at the river. “Are you really trying to be nice right now?”

She hugged me a little tighter, my heart racing even faster as she pressed a huge breast into my own. “There, there. The first summoning is always the hardest. Practice makes perfect~!”

Ugh, this damn fox is full of herself!

I didn’t want to admit it, but at the moment, I could really use someone to vent everything on my mind. That said, this would probably be a bad idea considering what happened earlier. Scratch that; getting involved with this wily fox was definitely asking for trouble!

But then again, I might never get another chance like this—not in this life or any other. And what more did I have left to lose right now? The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t wait to see her reaction when I told her I used to be a guy. It was a long shot, but if there was any chance that I could be the one to surprise her…!

“Alright,” I said with renewed vigor. “I know a good place. Let’s grab some drinks, and I’ll tell you a story you’ll never forget!”