Chapter ?: There Were Swords and Sorcery, or So It Was Told

Renya’s first ever dungeon excursion had included an unexpected encounter with a demon that had quickly devolved into a battle. Though he somehow managed to defeat the demon and survive, dealing with the fallout kept him occupied for a good while. Finally, after all the dust had settled and a semblance of normalcy had returned to his life, this next story began.

How? How did this happen?

That question was the first thing to leap into Renya’s mind. His breaths came in faster and faster gasps. He slapped one hand over his mouth in an effort to calm his own breathing. His chest tightened, and his heart leapt to his throat. In a panic, his other hand clutched at his chest, where it felt not the comfortable firmness of a slab of muscle, but the curious softness of something entirely unknown.

Well, not entirely unknown. Technically, he knew this feeling. Except it existed within the bosoms of women. And Renya was undoubtedly a man.

Nevertheless, one morning, when he had woken up in his room at the inn, something about his body felt strange. He had sat up on his bed and, his head still heavy with sleep, touched his own chest. There, he had discovered two generous bulges.

The sleepiness vanished in an instant.

His hand shot down past his lower abdomen.

This time, nothing was there. Something should have been, but it was gone.

Reeling from these two new realities, Renya’s nerves quickly began to get the better of him. His breaths were coming in gasps. His heart had leapt to his throat. He pressed his hands to his mouth and chest, trying to halt his descent into utter panic, and willed himself to calm down. It didn’t help him to make sense of any of this, but in a display of what was almost autohypnosis, his breathing slowed and the pounding in his chest waned.

“What… What the hell is going on?”

The soft whisper that escaped his lips, higher-pitched than what he was used to, would easily have passed for a husky female voice. It sent him into another bout of panic, followed by more autohypnosis. After an extensive session of reassuring himself, he managed to avert a nervous breakdown. Deciding that he couldn’t afford another descent into madness, he tried to sort out the mess of thoughts in his head and get a grasp on the situation.

Up until he went to bed and closed his eyes last night, Renya was definitely male. The memory was fresh in his mind, so he was certain that he wasn’t dealing with a “turns out, I’ve actually been a woman all this time” situation. He considered the possibility that his gender was somehow switched when he was sleeping, but he soon dismissed the thought. Someone would have to have opened the door, entered his room, and done something to him. There was no way he could have slept through all that, especially when they had to tinker with his gender; he wasn’t sleeping that heavily. In that case, it was natural to assume the cause lay in something that had happened before he got into bed last night. A sequential review of his memories of the previous day, however, produced no particular events that stood out.

He then contemplated another possibility: was this some sort of side effect of crossing a world boundary? Some Wanderer-specific syndrome? But if so, then that self-proclaimed God would have told him about it before sending him here. She wouldn’t forget something like that.

…She’d better not have, or there was going to be some epic deity abuse when he saw her again. Not if — when.

With that said, it still seemed very unlikely. She was the one who had asked him to come here. You don’t ask someone for a favor and then forget to mention the possibility that his freaking gender might change. The problem was that ruling her out meant he was back to square one; he was no closer to figuring out what caused this.

“Renya, are you in there?”

As though fulfilling the age-old adage, “when it rains, it pours,” Shion’s voice sounded at the door, further stressing his already-frayed nerves. He hadn’t even gotten his own thoughts in order; he did not need more on his plate right now.

For a short instant, Renya considered pretending he wasn’t there, but soon reconsidered. A vagrant soul in an alien land, he had no other friends to speak of and no family to see. It would be absurd for him to leave his room without letting Shion and Rona know. If he gave them the impression that he had disappeared, not only would it cause a lot of commotion, he’d also have a hard time convincing anyone afterwards that he actually was Renya. So, he got off the bed and opened the door.

“Oh, Renya, I almost thought you weren’t there,” Shion said as she made to enter his room. “It’s almost time for breakfast. Do you want to go… toge… ther…”

Her voice faltered. Speechless, she stared at Renya with the wide eyes of one who had just seen a ghost. Shock, horror, and disbelief vied for dominance in her expression. With the awkwardly stiff motions of a rusty machine, she slowly looked from his face to his chest, and finally down at his feet. Then, she did the same in reverse, except this time at half the speed. After thoroughly ogling him, she opened her mouth.

Was she going to scream? Or demand to know who he was? Either way, she was about to cause a scene. He lowered his head and sighed. What Shion said next, however, took him completely by surprise.

“Big Sis…”

“Wha—?”

“I-I mean, um… What a beauty! Wait, no, that’s not… it’s just, they’re so big, and…”

“Huuh? Okay, how about you calm down first? Come on, deep breaths.”

Shion’s face grew redder and redder as she nervously fluttered her hands up and down. Seeing that she was on track to have a nervous breakdown right in the middle of the hallway, he placed his palm on her left shoulder and gave her a reassuring squeeze. Pacified by the warmth of his hand, Shion’s erratic movements waned and her eyes refocused themselves on his face.

Finally. Geez, if anyone should be having a nervous breakdown right now, it’s me.

His calming gesture, however, had the concurrent effect of eliciting a breath of awe from her, who was gazing at him with starry eyes.

“Big Sis…”

“…All right, Shion. Time for you to snap out of it,” he said as he firmly wedged her head between his fists. Then, he began to grind at her temples with his knuckles. Immediately, his victim yelped in pain.

Shion’s cry soon brought an alarmed Rona dashing toward them, but before she could aid her abused friend, she took one look at the scene and froze.

“…Huh? Wh-Who… might this be?”

The sight of a lady, whose features probably seemed strangely familiar, trying to reshape the contour of Shion’s skull with her fists defied all attempts at comprehension, and Rona found herself at a complete loss as to how to respond. Had it been a complete stranger who tried to do harm — or whatever it was she was trying — to Shion, she would have smashed the attacker’s face in immediately, but something about that face made her feel like she’d seen it before, and the odd feeling stayed her hand.

“Yeah, I guess that’s the normal reaction one would have…” muttered Renya as he continued his manual excavation of his victim’s temples. Shion kept struggling under the bone-crushing pressure of his fists, but her attempts to escape proved futile.

“N-No way… Is that you, Renya?! What in the world…”

Despite his feminized attributes, Rona managed to deduce his identity through his tone of voice and manner of speech. The girl really was very perceptive. He found his respect for her grow a little.

“Good question. I’m dying to know, too.”

“L-Let’s get you inside first,” urged Rona as she hurried the three of them into the room. “If somebody sees you out here like this, it’ll be…” Her words trailed off as she considered their situation. “Huh, not actually much of a problem, I suppose.” The people who knew Renya, she could count on one finger. To anyone else, he and Shion would seem like nothing more than two girls having a bit of fun at the door to their room. “In any case,” she said, deciding there was no need for concern, “you can keep doing what you’re doing, but let’s have you do it inside the room.”

“Huh? Wait, Rona?! You’re not going to help— Ow ow ow!”

Renya clamped down harder on her, his fists grinding viciously at the sides of her head.

“You sure are taking this in stride,” he said casually as he felt Rona place her hands on his shoulders and push him through the doorway with a struggling Shion in tow.

“If even I lost my cool,” said Rona, “then this situation would spiral downwards very rapidly.”

“Hm?”

“You’re quite flustered, aren’t you, Renya?”

He thought he was doing a decent job at keeping calm, but he seemed to have been ruffled on some deeper level. Whatever latent turmoil lay within him must have shown in his expression. Releasing Shion from his death grip, he touched one hand to his cheek, surprised by how Rona managed to see right through him.

“Wow, you’ve got a keen eye.”

“I get plenty of practice,” she answered, glancing at her friend, who was splayed across the floor. Renya’s assault on Shion’s temples had taken its toll, and as soon as he released her from his grip, her eyes had rolled back in their sockets as she fell. With the nonchalance of someone who had done this a hundred times, Rona picked Shion up, carried her to the bed, and gently set her down.

Renya walked over and looked down. In the back of his mind, he thought, this is technically my bed. Of course, it would have been terribly inappropriate to demand that Shion’s unconscious body be dumped on the floor, so he lowered himself onto an unoccupied space at the edge of his bed.

“Well? Would you mind explaining what in the world happened?” demanded Rona.

Had she also taken a seat on the bed, it would have resulted in the slightly questionable situation of having three girls intimately close to each other on the same bed. Instead, she pulled the only chair in the room in front of Renya and sat down facing him.

“I’m waiting for an explanation myself… Does this world have some sort of disease or phenomenon that would cause this?”

“I’m no sage so I can’t say for sure, but speaking from my own limited experience, I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

Renya nodded with a hum as he leaned back a little with his hands on the bed, crossing his legs out of habit. The gesture caused Rona’s expression to stiffen. He noticed the change but raised his eyebrow, unsure of what was bothering her. Meanwhile, she was motionless, her gaze fixed squarely on his legs and waist.

“Rona?” he asked perplexedly, but Rona did not respond.

(Wow, such slender ankles… And what is with that narrow waist? Not to mention that firm leanness around the stomach, now that’s just cheating… Judging from the way the shirt bulges, there’s probably plenty of volume there, too… What is it with this girl’s body? It’s got the contours of a church bell! Her figure might be better than mine! Absolutely nothing on her sags… And she’s got such seductive curves… Wha— No way… Look at it jiggle! And she barely even moved! Wow… Just, wow… Then there’s her chin. So sharp… Same with the look in her eyes. They just scream “big sister.” She has the same hairstyle as when she was male, but something about that mismatched style is alluring, as well…)

“Uh… Rona?”

“Yes, you’re making my mouth water.”

The words just slipped out of her lips. A split second later, she realized. Her hands shot to her mouth and her eyes widened, but it was too late. Renya had already scurried across the bed, retreating into a corner that put the most space between the two of them.

“Um, you see, that was…” Rona started to say.

“You monster! Where do you even draw the line?”

“L-L-Let’s move on to other matters, shall we?”

Rona had a feeling that any further discussion would only lead to her digging her own grave, so she forcefully proposed a change of topic. Renya, who was concerned by what a desperate Rona might do once she dug her own grave, was more than happy to agree.

“What’s important right now is how exactly this delici— I mean mysterious situation came about.”

“That’s right. Also, I’m pretty sure I just heard something that I definitely shouldn’t have heard, but I’ll let it slide for now.”

“You were fine all the way up to last night, so whatever it was, it must have happened sometime between last night and this morning. Does anything come to mind?”

Renya sifted through his memories, recalling his actions and his surroundings during that timespan, but nothing stood out.

“Anything?” Rona probed. “Even if it’s, say… you ate something funny?”

“Funny, huh…”

At Rona’s prompting, something came to mind.

“Now that you mention it, you know the tea they brought out after dinner last night? I do remember that tasting particularly bad.”

“Huh? That tea? Wasn’t that yours, Renya?” asked a third voice. It came from the horizontal figure beside them. Apparently, Shion had woken up at some point.

“That tea? What do you mean?”

“When we were eating dinner, there were tea leaves on Renya’s table, so I figured it was his and dropped them in the teapot…”

“Who the hell would just leave a bunch of tea leaves lying on a table?”

Renya narrowed his eyes and glared at Shion, whose face twitched in fear. She hurriedly turned her back to him and pretended to be unconscious again. She fooled no one, of course, and he would have to have some harsh words with her, but that would wait until later. For now, he had more important issues to deal with.

“Have you heard of any drugs or poison that might do this?”

He doubted it was either of those, though, because one of the skills he had received from the girl god when he came to this world was Healthy Body. If his current condition was due to some sort of poison, that skill should be negating its effects. Rona’s answer, however, was not what he expected.

“There’s no poison like that, but drugs, maybe… Shion might have picked up a magic drug of some sort.”

“Magic drug?”

Something occurred to him: the girl god had told him that this was a world of sword and sorcery. Sorcery meant magic. However, he still had yet to see any magic in this world. Everything that resembled it was called magecraft here. That was strange. If magic existed in this world, so should wizards; someone had to wield the magic. Despite that, he had only ever seen mages and magecraft.

“Magic drugs, in a nutshell, are drugs that cause all sorts of crazy effects. While drugs used in magecraft have well-defined purposes such as healing wounds or curing poison, the effects of magic drugs are completely unknown. The only way to find out is to swallow some and see what happens. And what happens tends to be pretty ridiculous. Their potency is on another level entirely. They can flip genders, resurrect the dead, turn things into gold…”

A moment of silence ensued as Rona composed her thoughts. Then, a muffled voice was heard.

“But we drank the same tea…” Shion said into the bed. She still had her back turned, presumably because she was scared to make eye contact with Renya.

“I can only assume it was a gender-switching drug that only worked on males,” answered Rona.

“What? Can you just pick up one of these things anywhere?”

While he displeased with his current condition, based on what Rona just said, Renya was starting to believe that maybe things weren’t as bad as he thought. At least there was minimal harm to him. After all, if he had swallowed one of those drugs that turned things into gold, not only was he not sure if he’d survive the experience, but even if he did, he’d have to deal with the problem of having a literal golden body. In that sense, perhaps he should consider himself lucky to have gotten off with a gender switch. At the same time, it now made sense why his Healthy Body skill didn’t activate. Currently, his body was perfectly healthy; it was just female instead of male. He wasn’t harmed, so it didn’t trigger his skill.

“Normally, magic drugs are very rare and found only in ruins and mazes. And even there, you have to be lucky. They’re not even traded on the market, so you can be sure one won’t be just lying around for you to pick up.”

“Well…”

“The thing is… sometimes, magic drugs are discarded without ever being identified as one. In fact, they’re often thrown away even if people realize they’re magic drugs.”

“Why? If they’re so rare, they should be worth a fortune.”

Renya was pretty sure that the correlation between rarity and value was a universal truth, especially if the thing in question was so rare that few people in the world had ever gotten a glimpse at it. There were doubtlessly people — connoisseurs, one might call them — who would leap at the opportunity to acquire one.

“That’s because on top of having unknown effects, magic drugs come in all shapes and sizes. There’s no way to identify them by appearance. They’re dangerous substances that always come with the risk of causing something terrible to happen. According to legend, the purchase of a magic drug that was falsely claimed to resurrect the dead once led to the collapse of an entire kingdom.”

“They’re just too dangerous to handle, huh…”

“Yes, but it’s not common for someone to simply leave one on a table…” Rona glanced at Shion, who still had her back turned, and sighed before continuing. “And, of course, it’s even less common for someone to then pick it up and eat it without a second thought.”

“I mean, it was just lying there on the table. We can’t really blame her for thinking it was edible… though it wouldn’t have hurt to ask beforehand.”

He tapped Shion on the foot, and she timidly turned a little, glancing at him across her shoulder.

“Are you mad at me?” Her voice was meek.

“I might have lost some hope in you… but I’m not mad.”

Rona took a moment to ponder which of those was actually worse. Shion, however, did not seem to share Rona’s concern. Once Renya said he wasn’t mad, she sprung up on the bed and turned to face him.

“Really? You’re really not mad at me?”

“I’m not. We know the cause now, and turns out, it’s not really worth making a fuss over. Besides, I have a feeling this effect won’t last too long.”

He didn’t say it out loud, but he was already aware of a method to revert the change to his body. The Healthy Body skill was normally triggered automatically by abnormalities that harmed his health. During their conversation, however, he also realized that it could be triggered in response to something the user had deemed abnormal. More specifically, he learned of this fact when the Help Function conveniently kicked in and he saw rows of scrolling text out of the corner of his eye.

In summary, Renya had deemed the gender-switching drug to be a foreign substance, and the detoxification process had already started. Being a magic drug, however, it seemed fairly resilient, and the process seemed like it would take some time, which led to his prior comment about the effect not lasting too long.

“Is that so? That’s good to hear. In any case, I suppose we’ll simply have to wait and see,” said Rona. “There’s nothing we can do right now, anyway.”

In response, Shion made a fist and brought her face close to Renya’s.

“Just so you know, I’m okay with both male Renya and female Renya!” she said emphatically.

“Uh… Okay, sure. Thanks?”

“If anything, being the same gender makes skinship easier!”

“Hmm?”

He had to admit that he felt a little glad to be told by Shion that she was fine with him being whichever gender. Presumably, that was a sign that she welcomed him as a friend, and their bond went beyond simple gender. Her next words, though, turned a tad ominous.

“All right, it’s skinship time! With the usual barriers gone, we can touch to our hearts’ content!”

“Hmmmm?”

“After that, we can all go shop for underwear together!”

“Uh, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. It’s not like I’m going to be like this forever.”

“What are you talking about, Renya? Underwear is important. Wearing ones that don’t fit you will mess up your curves.”

Shion was coming on rather strong, and it was upsetting him a little. He took temporary refuge in his thoughts as he pondered whether shaping underwear existed in this world. The changes to his body still left him somewhat flustered, and he was having trouble keeping up with Shion’s sudden burst of energy.

“Once we’ve done that, we can all go bathe together and wash each other! What do you think, Big Sis?”

“Wait. Hold on just a damn minute. I’m a guy. Who’re you calling Big Sis?”

“Do you see anyone else in the vicinity whom she might be referring to?”

He froze. Rona continued.

“Face it, Renya, you’re one hundred percent Big Sis material right now. Honestly, you’re such a beauty that I’m having trouble coming to terms with it myself.”

“Huh? But that’s…”

Having not seen his own face, Renya was under the impression that he was a walking abomination — a man’s body with a woman’s breasts attached. Being formerly male, his attention was entirely focused on his chest. And, of course, down there. But what he failed to notice were the other changes: his delicate ankles, his slender fingers. The gears in his brain ground to a halt. Voices seemed to be coming from afar. Vaguely, he heard Rona sigh.

“Both Shion and I are the eldest daughters in our families. All our sisters are younger than us. I’m sure you can understand if the hearts of two young maidens yearn at times to seek comfort in the arms of an older sister,” said Rona as she inched closer.

Renya distinctly remembered having been in a situation like this before, except the danger to his person felt far more significant this time. He flinched backward, only to feel a light impact on his back. Before he could even see what it was, one of Shion’s hands had slipped under his right arm wrapped around his breasts. Her other hand snaked its way around his waist, slithering past his thigh and threatening to advance into even more intimate areas. Tense with shock, he tried to jerk away, but found his route of escape cut off by Rona, who was approaching him from the front. He was trapped.

“Big Sis…” they said, whispering in harmony.

That was the last thing he remembered. From then on, his memory was fuzzy. Someone might have screamed, and someone might have unleashed an elbow strike backward, and someone might also have viciously headbutted an oncoming figure. He thought he threw out some pretty serious attacks, but his opponents quickly recovered, clinging to him with the tenacity of zombies. He remembered being terrified.

At the end of his long stretch of hazy memories, he found himself waking up to the red-tinged sunlight streaming in through the window. He looked himself over. His body was, once again, that of a man. It was also in a state of significant undress. His shirt was gone, his pants had slid down considerably, and his belt was undone. It was one heck of a close call.

On the bed lay a bundle of… something, wrapped up in a blanket. Tied together at the top, the blanket formed a pouch, and was just about big enough to hold two people. He had no idea what was inside, but it squirmed and writhed in a most upsetting manner.

Once he made himself presentable again, he inhaled deeply, and then breathed out until he had emptied every last wisp of air in his lungs. Only then did he begin to speak.

“Okay, listen up… Nothing happened today.” The bundle stopped moving. “Nothing happened today. I did nothing. I saw nothing. I heard nothing.”

With a hint of command in his voice, Renya spoke slowly and deliberately, his words seemingly meant for himself. Then, he stood up and, his steps weary, made his way to the door.

“If you feel like something happened, then it was a dream. And what happens in dreams stays in dreams. Unless someone wants to bring it into reality, in which case… There will be consequences.”

He glanced behind him to make sure he was understood. The upper half of the bundle of blankets dipped down in a nod.

“My head hurts. I’m going to get some water. When I’m back… I’d better be pleased with what I see.”

With that, he left the room. There was a clamor behind him. It sounded like a bundle of something hitting the ground. For a moment, he wondered what it was. Then he shook his head. It was a bad dream. No need to dwell on it. He was going to get a cup of water. That was all. With that thought in mind, he headed for the dining hall.

Renya was not mad.

Some girls had been fooling around, and he had gotten caught up in their antics. Thinking of it like that, it seemed foolish to even feel angry.

“Man… am I ever tired…”

Today was a day to be forgotten. Even if it was a fleeting dream, it needed to be forgotten. The sooner, the better. With both heart and body heavy with fatigue, he dragged his exhausted self toward the dining hall.

On a certain day, at a certain place.

“Master, about that drug. I made it so Renya would drink it down, but what was the point of it?”

“Well, you know how I told Renya that he’d be going to a world of sword and sorcery? And sorcery means magic, right? But then I remembered that world actually has almost no magic. It’s mostly magecraft there.”

“Huh? So?”

“It wouldn’t do for God to have lied, now would it? That’s why I needed to show him definitive proof that magic does exist there.”

“The whole ordeal was just for that? What are you going to do if he finds out? Won’t he hack you to bits?”

“Yeah, I really don’t want to be cut up by that sword of his, but hey, looks like they’ve decided to go with the “it was all a dream” thing. No harm done, right? It’ll be fine. Probably.”

In a place that was nowhere in particular, there may or may not have been a conversation like that. Was there? Wasn’t there?

Well, God only knows.