Reincarnated in a depressing erotic world but living a normal life (right?)

Stay Positive

This is wrong."Breathe... Just breathe."

This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong...

"Calm down... Come on, calm down."

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY WRONG!

"One step at a time..."

The phrase began to repeat inside my head in a frantic loop, over and over, at a speed that threatened to burst my temples.

"Come on, stay positive... positive."

My hands were still holding the handheld console, but the coldness of the plastic transferred instantly to my fingers, freezing them over the buttons in absolute rigidity.

What should I do, what should I do, what should I do, what should I do, what should I do, what should I do...?

"Don't move... Not yet."

I didn't move. I didn't blink. I couldn't afford the luxury of breaking the facade.

""""HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!""""

On the outside, I forced my expression to remain calm, reflecting an imperturbable serenity that contrasted appallingly with the chaos that had just erupted in my chest.

"Control... Maintain control."

However, a thick drop of cold sweat broke out on my cheek against my will, sliding slowly down my jaw.

"Oh, wow... For it being night, it sure is hot..."

Therefore, forcing a natural reaction, I moved casually to wipe it away!

"... Focus."

I couldn't lose my composure. Not in this situation.

"I'm fine... Everything is fine."

Echidna was still not responding. If I lost control here, there was no safety margin. There was no safety net that was going to save my skin if everything went to hell. And for the first time in a long time, I was completely alone at the wheel of this situation.

"... I was naive."

That should have been my first warning! Dammit, I lowered my guard!

"Drink until the trees dance with you, sister!"

"A toast to the eternal night and empty cups!"

"Let the wine run faster than the river!"

"Drink, dance, and forget about tomorrow!"

In the distance, the sound of the party continued intermittently, distorting as my attention withdrew completely.

(¡¡¡PUM-PUM-TRÁaa!!! ♫)

As I walked, I began to analyze the current situation with urgency and the possibilities of what it implied to have made such a massive amount of mistakes.

If I were in my original world, a chain of oversights of this magnitude would have ended in a scenario of mind control, manipulation, or the absolute destruction of my dignity under someone else's command!

... But even so... Even though I was supposed to know... Why was I so stupid...?

"Follow the beat of the drums until our feet bleed!"

"Spin faster, don't let the music stop!"

"The night is ours, sing until you wake the wolves!"

... That's right... How could you be so stupid? You lowered your guard the moment you stepped into this place... That's probably what you are thinking... Right...?

And I know... But... I thought that since this was an isekai... the rules here were supposed to be different; it was supposed to be a peaceful routine.

A peaceful routine?! Did you forget where you came from?!

"Look at her, she fell into the bushes again!"

"Howl out loud, let the whole forest hear us!"

"Bring another barrel of mead!"

... You are right... That place where a simple misstep was the immediate distinction between an irreversible game over or retaining your freedom.

"Stand up straight... Walk... Don't stop..."

There, lowering your guard meant ending up as the puppet of a brainwashing app, or being consumed by possession drugs designed to nullify your soul.

"Ahaha... Excuse me, pardon me... Sorry for the intrusion!"

To stop meant falling into the clutches of monsters, being cursed to the core, or ending up exposed to aliens, transmigrators, and damned users with abilities capable of rewriting your existence.

"... That's right."

Secret organizations operated around every corner, waiting for the target to relax for a single second to destroy their dignity and seize control if you weren't careful.

"You are right... You're right..."

And did you really think that just because you experienced an isekai, all of that was going to disappear? How naive. How prideful you became, you idiot.

To think that the rules of survival wouldn't apply here just because the landscape looked like it was out of a fairy tale or just because it was another world... To begin with... Why did I think I could take a vacation...? I should never take a vacation.

(Bzzzz... Kssss...)

The digital digits on the screen remained pinned to the same damn number, and time kept moving forward.

(Zzzzz... Shhhhh...)

To begin with... Why did you try to rest?

(¡Krzzt!)

There was no answer.

(¡Bzzt!)

Why the hell did you think you were allowed to stop, even for a miserable second?

"... Shut up."

Why did you try to relax? Did you really believe you could afford the luxury of enjoying something as stupid as a vacation... or a tourism operation?

(¡Prrzt!)

I must move, don't stop thinking, don't stop acting... Just... Keep going and going...

(¡¡¡TUN-TUN-PUM-CHÁAA~!!! ♥)

As the music increased, my smile regained its composure—that's it, good, get back into your comfort zone.

(¡Tzzt!)

However, as I moved forward, my eyes began to lose focus... Ugh... Everything is spinning...

(Bzzz... krshhh...)

What are you doing?

(Ksss... bzzt... ksss)

Look at yourself. Look at yourself trying to lower your guard in a world you don't even understand.

(Shhh... krzzt...)

Stay positive... Positive... Stay positive, you have to stay positive.

(Zzzz... tzz... zzz)

Positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, Positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive... STAY POSITIVE!!

(¡¡¡... Ksss... bzzt... zzz!!!)

Hello everyone.

(¡¡¡PLAS!!!)

Right! The sound of my own palm slapping against my cheek resonated with astonishing clarity inside my head, dissipating the fog of exhaustion in a single blow... and returning my focus instantly!

Alright, enough lamenting! It's time to get to work!

So, with a renewed attitude and optimism flowing through my veins once again, I began to calculate my movements as I strode forward with a firm pace.

Okay, putting aside whether reality had broken or if we were under an invisible attack, the first thing was to secure the perimeter and, above all, organize the priorities.

Absolute priority: secure Goldie, Silver, Flora, and Brownie.

Question: Is this up for discussion?

Answer: Absolutely not!!

Flora and Silver were already high up on the inn's roof dealing with that strange allergy, while Brownie remained inside, taking care of playing the music that made the building's walls vibrate.

"... That means."

The three of them were grouped at a single defendable point.

"Only Goldie is left."

Therefore, the next immediate priority on my list was both "shrine maidens"—those two who had been left completely unconscious and asleep by Flora's pollen in a corner of the clearing.

So, spinning on my heels, I fluidly changed direction to head straight toward the sector where their inert bodies were resting!

But surely at this precise moment you must be scratching your head, looking at me with suspicion, and wondering why the hell I am going after those two instead of running immediately to protect Goldie's altar... Right?

And the answer is pure distributive logic, dear reader!

As I already mentioned, Flora, Silver, and Brownie are concentrated at the inn, which reduces my fronts of vulnerability. That leaves Goldie as the last critical point on the map, surrounded by Clotilde and her legion of thirty religious fanatics.

But if I go toward them first and it turns out that one of my baby's believers is under an enemy's mind control or has been manipulated in some way... well, that would only mean that I'll be able to fight and give them a beating to my heart's content without any remorse for profaning their fervor!

Oh, but surely you must be wondering... And why are you so sure that your babies or you yourself aren't already under mind control?

Which is an excellent question, dear reader! But let me tell you, you offend my professionalism.

Do you honestly think I would casually walk around in my day-to-day life without intellectual life insurance?

For your information, I took drastic measures against that kind of cognitive interference since long before even arriving in this Isekai!

What the hell did you do? Oh, well, not much; I mean, I only did the basics that anyone would have done being in my position, like brainwashing myself, inducing certain stimuli, and a couple of rather specific cerebral adjustments of which, honestly, I am not going to give details for reasons of public mental health.

So no, my mind remains exclusively mine.

But putting that aside, I maintained my pace, shortening the distance toward the sleeping maidens while my eyes scanned the edges of the forest, looking for any physical anomaly that would confirm the origin of this frozen time!

"... Good heavens."

... However, what I confirmed was only how the level of debauchery had reached its absolute boiling point.

(¡¡PUM-PUM-TRÁaa-CHIN~!!)

If before I thought this looked like a pirate celebration, I fell short; this was a full-blown civilized collapse, where the damn place had transformed into a canvas of bodies, emergency outfits stretched to the limit, and an absolute disregard for sobriety.

"MORE MEAT, DAMMIT!! Did the fire go out or what?!"

Right in the center, around the improvised grills, what was left of the collective sanity had evaporated, while three girls with neon-dyed hair and piercings flashing under the moonlight tried to lift an entire barrel of mead onto their shoulders, competing to see who could drink directly from the open tap while the golden liquid soaked their faces and tight school uniforms.

(¡Frott-frott-frott!)

On the other hand, a few meters away, the arm-wrestling competition on the fallen log didn't even make sense anymore.

"For the honor of the alliance, do not fall before the mead!"

There was a whole line of girls in bunny suits and elastic lingerie piled on top of each other, pushing, shouting, and cheering with a fervor so aggressive that the log was already creaking under the weight.

"Shut up and drink, comrade! The northern front no longer exists here!"

The elastic fabrics defied physics with every sudden movement, creating a visual outlook that was as suggestive as it was ridiculous, enough to make anyone lose their concentration... Although, well, I was already used to the bizarre, so it didn't have much of an effect.

(¡¡Glup-glup-glup-glup!)

However, on the right flank, the situation was even more chaotic.

(¡¡CLANK!!)

The school-aged girls who were previously singing in tune had now split into two factions; some were weeping bitterly, hugging empty jugs, lamenting the loss of a military honor they clearly had never possessed in this world, while others, completely drunk with their nurse uniforms about to burst at the seams, were trying to bandage the branches of the forest trees, thinking they were soldiers wounded in combat.

... I don't know if I should say this but... Is it wrong if I say that seeing this chaos helps calm me down...?

"No, that doesn't matter now..."

But putting therapy aside, I averted my gaze from the carnival of excess and focused on what was right at my feet.

"Zzz~"

"Mmm-mmm... Mmmgh..."

There lay the former innkeepers, turned by the whim of who-knows-what god and at who-knows-what moment into a pair of shrine maidens who, right now, were snoring peacefully, oblivious to the rupture of space-time surrounding us.

"..."

Therefore, after observing their bodies put to sleep by Flora's pollen, I made an executive decision: the best way to secure their tactical integrity was to put them directly into my dimensional storage pocket.

... But the problem, of course, lay in the method.

"In the middle of this chaos, it should be fine... right?"

To be able to store living biological beings inside that space, I absolutely and without exception had to adopt the magical girl form.

"Will it be fine?"

But the memory of the last time I resorted to that asset was still very fresh—and how I ended up stuck in that damn form, suffering a horrific emotional overload due to the lack of control over my empathic magic, which caused a chain reaction that led me to release Melioris.

And well, we all already know the absolute disaster that caused.

"Inhale... Exhale...!"

So I inhaled a mouthful of thick air, filling my lungs before exhaling sharply...

(¡¡PLAS!!!)

To immediately afterward deliver another corrective slap to my remaining cheek, dissipating the ghosts of the past with pure willpower.

"No problem!"

Alright, focus! I have progressed since then. I have trained, I have analyzed my mistakes, and for the love of God, I should be able to handle a simple change of state without emotionally collapsing!

(¡¡PUFF!! ♫)

So, with renewed spirits and self-convinced of my own growth, I activated the transformation while a dense cloud of pink smoke and pastel sparkles completely enveloped me in a blink, transforming me.

"?!?!"

However, at the very instant the smoke dissipated... I... froze dead in my tracks.

Once again... I had been far too naive.