After feeding Eleonora
After making the rounds to every pigpen without missing a single one, ensuring the pigs had been properly fed, I headed straight to the farm's guard dog, Ddongchi, who was stationed next to the pigpens, to take a short break.
[By the way, do you keep dogs on the farm? Is it for what I am thinking? Like, bandits with swords going, "Hehehe, if you don't hand over your pigs right now, we'll kill the women and assault the men!"...]
"Where would you find bandits in the 21st century? Wait, no. Maybe not in the past, but these days, it might actually be possible?"
[Huhuhu, ever since you first awakened that ability, the world has changed a lot!]
This is a quiet countryside, so the locals and even I had been living forgetfully, but the world has become a so-called hunter society, where a small number of awakened individuals hunt monsters pouring out from dungeons that have appeared all over the world.
If you just look up related news, it's all about which hunter saved the world, or who prevented the apocalypse from an evil god, and so on.
It's literally a society where they're living out a fantasy novel among themselves, but perhaps as a side effect of this rapidly changing society, the crime rate has also increased compared to ten years ago.
Why, they say where there are heroes, there are villains, right?
[Then why are you keeping a dog? If it's not to catch thieves...]
"It's to chase away wild boars."
[Wild boars? Not like that sow in there, but like, real ones with tusks growing up to their forehead?]
I wonder if the wild boar that system is imagining and the one I'm imagining are even the same species.
"There are various reasons, but sometimes wild boars or roe deer come snooping around our farm. For example, because they're short on food, or they're in heat and pick up the scent of a female, things like that."
Just like how Black and White people can have children together, pigs can breed with any breed and still produce pigs. As my father used to say, it's called hybrid vigor[1].
To give another example, the pink pigs we commonly know, like Yorkshire or Landrace, are good at raising piglets and are large, so they're mainly used as sows. But the semen used to impregnate them isn't from the same breed; it's collected from Duroc, a breed completely different from the two mentioned earlier.
[Why? Is it because, you know, when they do the deed, it's like... with you know who... huhuhu]
Speaking of Durocs, they are chocolate-colored pigs, and their characteristic is that compared to the breeds mentioned earlier, their meat quality is very good. The problem is, they often aren't good at raising piglets, or even if they do, the piglets often don't grow properly.
"So, crossbreeding them results in the pigs that end up on our dinner tables today, you see."
[Ahh... So naturally, the pigs born from such unions become larger due to the mother's traits and gain a chewy texture like the father... Huh? But what does this have to do with hybrid vigor? It's just being suitable for being eaten, ah...]
This is a pig farm, you idiot.
Anyway, if a wild boar and a domestic pig mate, of course, a pig is born from them too. The problem is that a terrible hybrid is born, combining the strengths of the wild boar and the domestic pig.
A hybrid that retains the wild nature of the wild boar but grows as fast as a domestic pig—a truly horrific hybrid you wouldn't want to see in the world.
[Still, it sounds worth seeing! While the keeper is distracted, a wild boar secretly enters the sow pen and does the deed with the keeper's sows! And the keeper, unaware of it, is just laughing haha-hoho with the castrated pigs!]
The way you say that makes it sound weird!
So, am I supposed to feel like a loser watching a sow get mounted by a wild boar?!
A message appears with an SD character rubbing its head where it got flicked, accompanied by a "thump!" sound, grinning. Just around this corner, my faithful guard dog, Ddongchi, appears...
-Woof! Woof!
-Grrr!
-Huff! Huff!
"No matter how many times I see it, I just can't get used to it."
[Well, it's only the first day. Even you, keeper, aren't used to your changed self, let alone an animal?]
Is that so? Tilting my head, I poured equal amounts of food into three prepared bowls and held them out to Ddongchi. He immediately buried his head in the bowl and began inhaling the food.
"But still, maybe because I didn't grow three heads myself. No matter how much I look, I just can't get used to it."
Ddongchi, a mixed-breed dog, the kind you can see anywhere in the countryside, often called a "Sigorjeb" or "dingo dog," had sprouted heads while I wasn't looking. Two extra ones, at that.
"Father was quite fond of Ddongchi... I'll have to make up some excuse later that he died or ran away."
[Wow! What an unfilial child! It's not like he's some grandfather who secretly ate the dog and is laughing ho-ro-ro-ro while lying to his grandson, 'He ran away!']
How am I supposed to explain that the farm's guard dog became a guard dog from hell after just one day of independence? Instead of the fluffy tail that always made people feel good, a king cobra was flicking its tongue, catching and eating the mice coveting the farm's feed.
"Really, no matter how you look at it, even if I lie and say the living dog died, surely the heavens will recognize this as a white lie."
[Is that so? Shall I ask for you...?]
While the message was mumbling something to itself, Ddongchi had already neatly emptied his bowls and was now shoving each head into a large rubber tub, lapping up the water.
"Okay, now that I've fed the dog too, I should go collect the bowl I gave to Eleonora..."
[Hehe, but that sow is really stupid! Should I say her brain is all muscle? The way she just snapped at the easy prey thrown right in front of her!]
Message giggled as she talked about the deal I made with Eleonora. I hadn't expected it either. I'd clearly offered a condition that was suspiciously tempting to anyone, but I never thought she'd bite so readily.
Did she, judging me to be a third-rate tamer (not entirely wrong) all on her own, let her guard down? She didn't show an ounce of suspicion about the sweetness of getting what she wanted immediately.
[But what if that sow had refused to eat and said, 'I'll take my clothes off instead!'? What would you have done then?]
"Well, that would have been fine too. From the beginning, I'm taming her to strip away her human rights one by one. If she voluntarily decides to be naked, wouldn't that be good for me?"
My ultimate goal is to turn that upright female knight into a sow who will spread her legs anywhere on my command. If she's getting used to being naked on her own, what can I do?
Of course, she didn't make that choice.
[Wow, you're truly evil. How have you managed to hide such a nature all your life? Truly, a gloomy keeper with a degenerate penis!]
"Ahem! Shut up! You keep going on about 'degenerate penis, degenerate penis,' but I'll need that penis tomorrow, so stop causing a fuss and be quiet. Don't disturb the taming like you did earlier."
Message, who had been snickering for a while, displayed a character zipping its lips shut as I arrived at the pigpen where Eleonora was. I pushed the door open again.
Snort... Paha... Just you wait... Just you waaait...!
And the moment I opened the door, what I saw was the female knight, her head buried in the dish at my feet, greedily licking the plate.
Slurp! Slurp! Not content with just chewing and biting, now Eleonora was even licking the plate clean.
"Why... why is it so delicious... It's clearly scraps, leftovers... why...!"
"Because that's your true nature?"
"Slurp, Huh?!"
She had been eating so frantically that her once-pretty face was smeared with grease, and even though I was right there, she had her nose buried in the plate. It was no different from the sight of a pig greedily eating its feed.
"Why so surprised? The food scraps given by your master—isn't this what pigs eat? Or should I have mixed it with gutter water and acorns for you? That wasn't the case, was it?"
"You vile wretch! You've done something to my body!"
[The sow diligently eats all the food given by her master.]
This rule of the pen, which I had secretly set for Eleonora. Today, I clearly saw with my own eyes the physical effects, like restricting Eleonora's body, but I never expected it to be this powerful.
"Was it that delicious? To the point of getting covered like this? Well, I'm just glad to see you steadily becoming a pig right from the first day."
"You forced... appetite, hunger out of me! What trick did you use? Restraining a Grandmaster's limbs is one thing, but forcing hunger?! Gurk!? I-Impossible!"
Frantically interrogating me, she let out a small, unexpected burp. Seemingly embarrassed to be showing such a side in front of me, Eleonora took a few deep breaths and looked up at me.
"Why do you keep blaming others for you just being inherently pig-like?"
"What did you say? Ha! Here we go again, spouting nonsense again, trying to tarnish my honor again!"
"Oh? If you aren't pig-like, then why did you eat all of this, huh? All by yourself? The food scraps you mentioned—I don't know how you raise pigs over there, but it shouldn't be much different from what I described."
"Th-that's... it's because you... cast some vile curse on me!"
"A curse? Now it's a curse instead of magic..."
To put it in a martial arts context, is it like, 'It's evil arts! You're using evil arts!'? I looked down at Eleonora, crossing my arms as if telling her to keep talking.
[1] Hybrid vigor, or heterosis, is the phenomenon where a hybrid organism's offspring exhibit enhanced traits like size, growth rate, fertility, and yield compared to its genetically diverse parents. You're welcome. :D