Capture Target

Chapter 86 — Y4: Shard Math



A special thanks to all my subscribers, especially those at rank [A]!  User#f2d0baad, User#6c53ee46,  Nemesis01, Teacher, and Ilwan!

Okay so!  For MISSY sex magic, you need to be close to me.  Or any other other individual with a shard from MISSY, actually… we run off different physics than here.  

…Well, theoretically, one could try to get Dignity to give them a… what was it called… a ‘variant substrate bubble’ coupon.  If you have one of those, then you can do weird other-reality magic wherever.  But unless you want to try conquering the world with your cock, that doesn't really matter for you.

…Do you?

…Is there anything I can do to change your mind~?

Hehe, fine.  Anyway, the second thing to know about MISSY sex magic!

It is messy as fuck.

No, really, like -- the entire system is bizarre.  It relies on metaphors, but to rely on metaphors requires an actual mind that understands metaphors behind it.

Which is…

…Well, there’s a reason why half of MISSY’s name comes from ‘messy’.

Third thing is --

-- oh come on!  Really?  Really?!  I’m teaching you literal sex magic that you can use on your sex addict roommate and you’re saying no?!

Yes I know I agreed to teach you after storytime and not before, but come on!

Uuuuugh, fine! 

Storytime, then.

Bah.

Prude.


So.  Right.  Modesty and that whole -- thing.

I’m going to be blunt.  At the time?

I just really really really didn’t want to think about it.

…Actually, looking back, I think that I was burning out?  I had been on all cylinders for around three years straight by then, the brushes with the chief god and Argenta were terrifying, and I just needed a break.  I didn’t want to worry about divine politics, I didn’t want to worry about the fourth landmass, and I especially didn’t want to worry about divine shard math or the Evil God of Chastity and Purity.

…Ah, crap, I knew I'd forget something important… Modesty and I talked a lot and there was bound to be something that slipped through the cracks…

Okay!  Tangent!  

Divine shard math.


So, to make it simple, let me start with why this is important.

The chief god was, and is, functionally immune to any attempts to remove him from power except shard voting.  

The short version is that he made his mind part of the 'reality substrate' of MISSY, which is a technical term for the 'laws of physics'.  

The chief god's thoughts and emotions and wants are part of the very laws of physics, and if he dies, then the laws of physics stop working.

That means everybody in MISSY dies, which probably includes those with shards.  We don't know for sure but it’s not exactly something one wants to ‘test’.

So, we need to separate him from the reality substrate.  That would still be damaging without something to plug the hole he would leave behind, but Dignity has whipped up some things to help patch the hole and stabilize MISSY long enough for more permanent solutions.  

Meaning the question is how to remove the chief god, which itself leads into how divine shards work in general.

A deity, in isolation, can make divine laws.  Alterations to how reality works, additions to the laws of physics.  The blessings I'd been getting?  Modesty's changes to psychology to lessen how harmful rape is?  Those are good examples of divine laws, but in a very real way, a reality existing at all is founded on the divine laws defining it.  

When two or more deities are around, they can still both enact new divine laws… unless they want to do opposing things.  Say, one wants to introduce a new kind of magic, and another wants to block it.  Well, then we get into divine shard math.

To keep it simple?

Any divine law with more shards for it than shards against, becomes real.

Ties mean nothing changes.  You need a majority.  Changes from the new or newly modified divine law happen instantaneously and completely, without any warning before they do.  

And divine laws are binding even for deities.

So every shard matters.

Got it?  Okay.  Good.  

Now, as for the shard count -- let me start with the conclusion.  Because the math is complicated political stuff, and I want to start with what’s most important.  

Now, to keep things straight, this is the conclusion of the math at that point in time, when Modesty told me about it.

If you remember nothing else, at least remember this.

If:

 

  • Roberta, with her two shards, was the only goddess who voted with the chief god
  • I became a goddess, the chief god giving me one of his shards
  • We included the shard that Sumiko was hiding
  • We grabbed one additional shard away from the chief god
  • No more new shards were found, so the total count of how many shards were 'in play' stayed the same

 

 

 

 

Then:

 

  • We would be able to outvote the Chief God by one shard.

 

Got it?

And I know that 'grab one more shard from him' is a touch vague, but there were a lot of plans for it and only one of them needed to work.  

Now, presuming everything went to plan and Roberta was the only one to side with the chief god, then we would -- will, really -- win.

As for the math…

…Hokay.

This is going to get complicated.

I blame you for needing to go over this, by the way.  Why can’t I just talk about sex, instead…


So.  

The chief god made this reality with sixty four shards -- one of which is required to run the ‘laws of reality’.  This is known as the ‘world shard’, and remains neutral in all cases.  So there are sixty three shards to fight over.

He has -- he had -- he -- ugh!  Tenses!

I’m going to use tenses as they work for this part of the story, because tenses are so annoying!

Unless you want me to swap between ‘had’ and ‘has’ constantly for what was true and is true?

Because I will make mistakes if so.

Yeah, I thought not.

So!

The chief god has created twenty seven goddesses, which means the chief god has thirty six shards left.

Except he actually doesn’t.  Three are in the Evil God of Chastity and Purity, and Modesty assured me that one more could be taken from him.  She refused to explain how, but she said that she had a reliable lead on seizing one more shard away from the chief god.  

So that’s a total four more shards from the chief god, leaving him with thirty two, and the goddesses with thirty one.

Then, if I become a goddess, he would give me one of his divine shards.  Thus, the goddesses would have thirty two shards to his thirty one!

Thus, we could remove him from the reality substrate.

But we couldn’t guarantee that we would have every goddesses vote.

In other words, Roberta, the chief gods largest fangirl, existed.  And there was no doubt that she would vote with her lord.  Which brings the vote from thirty two us thirty one, him, to thirty one us, thirty two him.

Then there’s the two shards that I released at the end of third year.  One went to Roberta, and one went to Argenta.

It didn’t increase his lead, but it did change the numbers to thirty two us, thirty three him.

Assuming, of course, Argenta voted with us.  Which Modesty believed was a pretty safe bet.

…However, Modesty had her own spare shard.  One she had gotten a decade or two ago.

That brings the vote to thirty three all.  A perfect tie.

And then…

…Then there’s the spare shard Sumiko had.

Modesty knew I had kept it out of enemy hands, but she didn’t know whether I had control of it or just -- stashed it somewhere.  She actively requested to not be informed of the details, which I was really fine with.  

Frankly, I just wanted to keep something to myself, after dancing like a puppet on strings for years.  Petty, sure, but it still helped me keep confident and not-super-stressed about things.

Sumiko's shard took things from thirty three all, to thirty four us versus thirty three chief god.

In other words, just enough to kick the chief god off his throne and let us make MISSY not-terrible. 


Okay.  That’s the math.

Can we stop with it now?

Ugh, look, there were two divine shards floating around that Modesty was pretty sure would end up in the fourth and fifth landmass.  She wanted both of them to get a nice lead in the vote.

…No, no I am not going into details about them!

I’ll tell you when they’re relevant!

I’ve already told you everything I could about the goddess hated math, and now you want to know more details about it?!

No!  No!

Math can be fun, but you know what else can be fun?

Sex!

So I’m going to talk about sex now!

And you can’t change my mind!


So.  After talking with Modesty, and learning, and working through, all of those numbers, I was done.  I just wanted to get my brains fucked out, preferably literally instead of figuratively, and enjoy some time off.

Jessica actually noticed how much I needed it; she was one of the ones encouraging me to continue with my ‘training montage’ of ‘getting fucked and gaining blessings’.

…Okay no she didn’t literally suggest that.  She suggested that I ‘take a break’.

Just, you know.

Getting my brain fucked out is how I take a break.

I’m pretty sure how obviously I needed a breather had something to do with how my mood was just -- gradually decaying over time.  My patience was already low, obviously, given how I ignored Modesty for so long, which was a bad sign in the first place.  Similarly, Sumiko and Takeo picked up on how I was throwing myself at him -- ah, Takeo, that is -- and figured that I was using my new infatuation with him to not feel something else.

…At the time I blew off their concerns, but looking back?

Yeah, no, they were absolutely right.  I was burning out.

So it was time to take a nice, long break.

It was time to let myself vanish into the simple pleasures of lewd MISSY pregnancy hormones.


So, in order to get exactly what I wanted to happen to happen, there was only one choice:

I had to get cursed.

Thankfully, I knew exactly how to do that!  And, even better, I knew exactly how to get the exact curse that I wanted.  It wasn’t even hard to get.

All I had to do was walk up to a specific pregnant demon and tell her she’d look prettier if she smiled.

Let me just say that saying somebody would ‘look better if they smiled’ is not something you want to ever say.  

Not if you’re trying to be polite or nice to them, anyway.  It implies that they should stuff their emotions down into a little black box and put on a fake smile so that others don’t have to feel bad about their lack of enjoyment.

So it was a bit awkward for me to say that.  Thankfully she wasn’t really people people, so only the words mattered!  The tone, reluctance, and apologetic expression did not.

…After realizing how much I'd screwed up treating people like NPCs for the first two years, I'd gotten a lot more sensitive and self-conscious about being that kind of manipulative.  Even when the reality bugs basically were NPCs.  

Regardless, it was an easy curse to obtain.

The curse in question?

‘You shall be fucked pregnant by your own family against your will!’

Or something like that, at least.  It was pretty simple and basic.

In Alchemical Corruption Twelve, this particular curse didn’t actually affect a good half of the cast.  At least not normally.  They weren’t anywhere near their family, even during the break months, and thus, could not, in fact, be ‘fucked pregnant by their family against their will’.  Thus, the curse would seem to not do anything.

Unless they gave birth to a monster with a cock that grew to maturity before the end of the game, of course.

Then their own child would rape them pregnant!

…Yeah, I… I know how ridiculous it sounds.

Look, it’s MISSY.  It is what it is.

So!  I got this curse in particular because I happened to have an excellent potential baby-daddy in mind.  My adorable tree-wolf, Brutus!


I had been spending regular time with Brutus; it was hard not to when the lug followed me everywhere and could only barely be trained to listen to orders.  I had to trick him into his kennel whenever I needed to explore without him!

It wasn’t even out of a desire to protect me that he stayed around!  More out of a -- monster pack instinct thing, with a heavy tilt towards possessiveness.  He wouldn’t help if I was in the middle of combat, instead either lazing around and watching or running to avoid danger.

Honestly, if I didn’t find him so adorable…

…Anyway.

After the curse, nothing happened.  …Immediately.  I spent some more time with Brutus to be sure, but after a week of doing so I honestly thought that the curse didn’t even take.

I spent a full week, wet and ready for my tree-wolf child to rut me and get me pregnant, and nothing!  Not even a single hard cock for my trouble!

It was extremely aggravating.

So with a mental huff of annoyance, I decided to just wait until the twelfth month to get pregnant by one of my brothers or my father, instead.  My schedule would still work with that, after all.

So naturally that’s when Brutus decided to get off his ass and rape me.

It happened one day after I got him into his kennel.  The door for it is rather particular -- once it closes, it locks automatically.  And if you don’t have the key, you’re stuck inside.  Monsters tend to be rather clever at escaping enclosures; in order to keep them contained, things need to be much more certain than they are for, say, a common house pet.

As far as I was concerned, it was just another day.  I had the key on a lanyard strap that I was wearing as I coaxed Brutus into his rather spacious ‘please don’t destroy everything you massive monster’ home.  He followed me, naturally, because I was carrying some of his favorite food for him.  I emptied it out into his feeding bowl, dusted off my hands, and moved to leave.

It was then that Brutus leaped on me, when my back was turned.

Somehow the angel was just right for the lanyard strap I had on to just -- slip off of me, and go flying out the still-open door.  I instinctively reached out for it, but instead of grabbing the key, I grabbed the door itself.

That combined with my forward momentum from falling meant that I ended up locking myself inside the kennel with Brutus.

Curses can be tricky about how they come true.

So there I was, on the ground, with Brutus on my back, locked inside the kennel.

…I really should have realized what was going on at that point, but I didn’t.  Instead, I just felt annoyed.  I technically had the afternoon off, see, and was planning on getting some private shopping and boy-watching done on my own.  Maybe have a quick fuck or two if I saw somebody particularly hot.  Just some ‘me’ time, you know?

But that meant that nobody would know where I was, and nobody would even look for me, for at least one full time slot.  Maybe even two.

And I would be trapped until somebody managed to unlock the kennel from the outside.

But no, I didn’t realize something was up then.

No, I realized something was up when I felt Brutus, with his grasping limbs, tightly hug me around my waste as he growled in my ear.

It was like -- okay.

I knew I was getting sluttier, more corrupted, and more -- sexually depraved over time.  It was practically happening by the day by then.

But that was the first time that it felt like a switch was flipped.

It didn’t even feel like it was a switch in my brain, per say.  It felt like a switch in -- my soul?  Reality itself?  Something.  It was like I suddenly shifted from black and white to colors.  Like I was suddenly hearing again, when before I was deft.  Or like a swap from an intensive puzzle that makes your brain hurt just contemplating it to the middle of an exhaustive, exhausting, exercise routine over an obstacle course.

I felt my body almost -- slump, in Brutus’s grasp.  My brain felt foggy, sluggish, as it was forced to adapt to a new situation without the normal buildup.  My arousal and libido were triggered and were rising as fast as they could.

My body almost ached for part of it -- it wasn’t used to transitioning this fast from ‘normal’ to ‘super fucking horny’ this fast.  A small whine escaped my lips at the realization of what was going on slowly managed to penetrate my skull.

Brutus was getting ready to rape me.

And my entire being had responded to that fact before I could even realize what was going on.

My body and mind were pushing me into a state of intense arousal and lust, of burning heat and need, faster than I could comprehend.

Not even ten seconds had passed, and I was already panting.

Not even a minute had passed and my slit was drenched.

By the time Brutus had decided to move me into a more comfortable location for mating, my thoughts were all but gone.

All that was left was -- hehe, well.

A bitch in heat~

That was the first time that ‘switch’ had flipped.  It took me quite some time to process the ramifications of it.

Well, the ramifications beyond the most important one, of course.

The most important one being that it’s really fucking hot!

It’s -- mmph!  Do you know what it’s like to know that your body is so convinced you’re a sex toy that it doesn’t even let your brain in on the plan?!  Fuck, just thinking about it makes me wet…

…You know what?

We can go into the details of this later.

Let me teach you some basic MISSY magic first, and we can have some fun right now instead…~

If I could change one thing -- one thing about Capture Target now that I'm this far into the story, it would be to simplify the shard math.

Don't get me wrong, I kinda like it being this complicated, but it means that everything that the plot is about from this point forward is directly related to some really weird math.

It's not even complicated math, it's just too much to hold in your head.

Something like 'he who has the five flags rules the world' is much simpler and easier to grok from an emotional perspective.  As it is, with the shards, I feel it is important to emphasize why every single shard is important.  ...Which requires diving back into the math more often than I like.

Bleh.

I like it, but bleh!


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