I Became a Tentacle Monster Blooming in the Academy Garden 77

## Chapter 77 – The Woman Who Cannot Trust

‘It feels like so many things are suddenly getting tangled up together…’

Is this what it feels like to be a manager instead of a regular employee?

There are so many things in my hands now that it’s getting hard to manage them all.

The day still only has 24 hours, just like before.

But now that I think about it, the problem is that the amount of time I spend absorbed in something has been inflated considerably compared to back then.

Investigating Eloise, the enjoyable study of parahumans with the beastmen, and everything leading up to this.

My mind, which is reaching out a tentacle to look down at a black-haired lady, is filling up with countless thoughts.

‘The bottom line is, the problem is what to do with her…’

She’s not exactly comfortable, but she’s fast asleep, exhausted – Yui.

She must have been on guard the whole time she was awake, worried about what might happen to her, and kept her nerves on edge until she finally passed out. Her curled-up shrimp posture with her back against the wall reveals that.

Her traditional clothes, now a little dirtier with mud, effectively wrap around Yui’s body, preventing other foreign objects from touching her.

But even the mattress seemed unreliable, so she’s sleeping on the bare floor. I’m worried she’ll get sick first, so I’ve been pondering for a while whether I should take off her clothes and give her a bath and do some laundry.

‘But if possible…
I want to avoid making her more wary…’

At first, I thought about leaving it to Vivian and Lanie, but there seemed to be some misunderstanding between them, and they ended up stripping Yui’s clothes off, so they also lost her trust.

Besides, after seeing them writhe in pleasure while entrusting their bodies to my tentacles, she seems to think they’re already in league with me.

It seems that humans captured by monsters, if they don’t die, tend to become corrupted in various ways.

Just looking at the prison cells, I have no room for excuses.

‘Isn’t my existence living proof of that…?’

So, the next best thing I could think of was this.

‘Pina, are the kids asleep?’

“Ah… they’re… crying…
Um… is it… now…”

‘Just bring the kids to this room.’

“I… I understand…”

Pina, who I now consider an important asset and don’t touch, is practically the only beastman who hasn’t been consumed by pleasure and is maintaining her sanity. As I looked down at the children relying on her, I was trying to persuade her to come to my room.

Seeing her rabbit ears twitching nervously and revealing her unease, I waved my tentacle as if sighing.

‘I’m asking you for a favor, I repeat.
I’m not going to touch you or anything.’

“I… I believe you… just… sob… a little…”

As she seemed overwhelmed with emotion and gently showed tears, hugging the children in her arms tightly, I couldn’t help but feel a subtle sense of guilt.

She’s in a corner of the prison area, after all.

Even now, in the open central area, the beastwomen are screaming out half-crazed moans, and the sound is hitting her ears without any filtering.

As Pina, who is excluded from all of that and huddled in a corner, this situation must be unsettling for her.

During her time as a slave, her fellow tribesmen were the only beings she could trust, and now they are suffering in many ways. Being kind-hearted and gentle, she might feel guilty for not being harmed herself.

I led her to the room and closed the passage. No more desperate moans from the beastmen could be heard from the passage blocked by tree roots.

As the room became quiet, Pina’s expression gradually relaxed.

Confirming her reaction, I gave her the next instruction.

‘Can you see up there?
There’s something I want you to do.
Let’s have the kids do it with you.’

“H-Have the kids do it too…?
W-What are you trying to make us do…!!”

‘Huh…? What do you mean, what am I trying to make you do…?’

“I… I was a fool to trust you…!!
Just do it to me instead…!!
Don’t touch the innocent children…!!”

‘I should just quit Enic…’

Perhaps because I’m regretting things more and more, I felt like I was accumulating more feelings of defeat today.

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“She’s really pretty… her skin is so smooth…
She’ll definitely give birth to a healthy baby…”

“Is that… supposed to be a compliment…?
More importantly… could you please stop groping me so much…?”

“Ummm… I’m just trying to help you…
It’ll be okay if you’re with me, so you don’t have to worry too much…”

The sound of water gurgling and splashing.

After arguing for a while, Pina and Yui were finally washing in the bathtub.

Yui, who was still trying not to let her guard down, was facing a beastman.

Even if she was female, she surpassed humans in terms of basic strength and other aspects.

As she reassured and persuaded (physically), Yui, with a resigned look on her face, ended up showering with Pina.

“The lukewarm water feels nice, right?”

“I get it, so can you just hurry up and finish…?”

She’s still looking around, checking to see when and where a tentacle might reach out, like a cat with its fur standing on end from tension.

Seeing her behavior, only Pina, who knows the true meaning of my request, was trying to calm her down and wash her body with her.

“Wow…!! Big sis has huge boobs!!”

“W-Wait a minute…!! That’s rude to say…!!
I’m sorry…!!”

The beastman girls, who had encountered water to wash their bodies after a long time, seemed excited and were splashing each other.

But in the midst of that, the younger girl was carefully watching Pina wash Yui’s body.

She was staring at Yui’s breasts, which could only be described as enormous, with sparkling eyes and exclaiming in admiration. The older girl stopped the younger girl’s mouth.

Perhaps because she had experience as a slave, she couldn’t help but feel fear when she saw the human Yui.

“It’s okay, come closer…”

“I… I’ll talk to her… so…”

Although she was still a child, she was a pitiful child who was born into a world where she had to act at least somewhat her age.

The older girl hugged the younger girl tightly, as if Yui’s face, which had stiffened due to tension, was being reflected as if she was angry at the rude behavior.

She was the very girl who had almost been abused by the mercenaries because of her childlike innocence, and it seemed that the tension that had been released while washing her body in the water was clearly showing.

But as Yui immediately came forward and pulled the two girls towards her, the two girls wore surprised and bright smiles, hugging her tightly.

“You have to be careful. If you relax in a place like this…
You’ll definitely be targeted by ‘that’…”

The voices of Yui, looking down at the young beastman children in her arms, as if recalling memories of the past, were filled with trembling.

‘So… this is how big sis felt…’

Even in that moment when she was holding the hand of a young life in her arms and running breathlessly.

And even in that moment when she ended up letting go of that hand and shedding tears over an unavoidable choice.

“Huh?”

“It’s nothing.
Come on, stay closer and hold on tight.
Don’t ever let go, okay?”

“Okay!!”

As Yui took care of the children and began to tear up, the expression of Pina, who had been quietly watching it, was gradually darkening, without others noticing.

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“They’re sleeping well…”

“Yeah…”

Small murmurs flowed out of the mouths of Yui and Pina, each lying on the large tree root mattress, holding one of the children tightly in their arms.

“Even these little children have to go through this…
We have to do something…”

To Yui’s murmur, which sounded sympathetic, Pina gently stroked the back of the girl’s head, who was hugging her and burrowing into her arms.

Sparkling red jewel-like eyes were half-closed, seemingly not watching Yui, but actually staring at her.

“But how did you all end up here…?
Were you… perhaps kidnapped from somewhere else…”

“Is that… are you a student from the academy?”

“I… am…”

At the sudden question, Yui was speechless. Pina seemed to have expected that and whispered quietly.

“We were slaves bought for your tests.
You saw the Arachnella in that room over there, right?
Originally, we would have been meat shields to stop that Arachnella, instead of the students…”

“During the special evaluation… I thought the difficulty was abnormally high…”

“I don’t know the details either…
Anyway, this… person, or monster…
‘He’ saved us from that desperate situation.
He helped us escape.”

“But… I can’t really call this escaping…”

“Our tribesmen… couldn’t trust him until the end…
So, he told us to wait a moment because he would let us escape…
But they couldn’t stand that time, and they betrayed him and tried to escape on their own.”

“Even so…!”

Perhaps it was only natural that Yui, like most ordinary people, could never understand it.

As a result, the beastmen lost even the freedom over their own bodies and were reduced to toys to be played with as they pleased, and it was not difficult to package that up with the word “atonement.”

But rather, Pina, listening to Yui’s voice, which was only agitated enough not to wake the children, simply continued to answer indifferently.

“He didn’t touch me anymore…
And he’s not touching these children, or you…
I think he at least kept his word.
Surely… if other people had just been a little more patient and had faith…”

“That’s sophistry…! There’s no way you can trust the words of a monster in the first place…
He must have been trying to exploit you beastmen with that excuse from the beginning…!”

“How were humans… any different…”

“Huh…?”

“It’s… nothing.
It must be night soon.
For tomorrow, let’s go to sleep now…
Please take good care of that child.”

As if she didn’t want to say any more, she cut off the flow of the conversation and lowered her head. Yui ended up only leaving a simple answer.

“Yes… no matter what happens…”

Yui swallowed the words ‘I’ll protect you’ and gently adjusted her posture so that the beastman girl in her arms would not be uncomfortable.

But even though it was time to go to sleep, perhaps because she had taken a bath earlier, or perhaps because her abundant body had become naked due to her clothes disappearing,

‘Still… I can’t trust him…
Taking away one thing after another like this…
And in the end…’

Yui’s gaze, with wide-open and uneasy eyes as if she wouldn’t be able to sleep, continued to glance around, never dying down.

Only the body heat shared with the little girl in her arms was helping her to distance herself from the anxiety and control her emotions.

And Pina, who had been quietly watching the scene with half-closed eyes, slowly closed her eyes and gently bit her lip.

‘He might be better than humans who only tell lies…’