Chapter 97 — Y5: Chastity’s Bargain

Are you ready for --

-- oh!

Well if you’re up for some fun again, then I certainly won’t argue~

Mmmph~  You’re getting good at that.  Not as tiring now, is it?

That was a lovely way to wake up~

Storytime?

Alright~

So.

Year five.

Unlike previously, I went into year five with my knowledge of the plot completely useless.

…Okay, yes, I exaggerate, but not by as much as you’d think.  When goddesses are running around and interacting with mortals, any events that I could have planned for would have been changed beyond all recognition by the time they occurred.

To make matters worse, the actual mechanics of year five are much more limited than they were in years one through four.  There aren't any organizations or forces to interact with!  No special tricks to win big by just saying the right things or doing the secret handshake-slash-handjob!  It’s all up to chance!

It’s --

-- okay.

Taking a step back.

Year five is when the Evil God of Chastity and Purity was closest to the surface.  It was literally rising up from below the ocean floor; the closer it got to the surface, the weirder things got.  You can see that in how the five years progressed -- year one was mostly normal, but year two had ghosts, year three had a three-way war with each faction led by geniuses of various calibers, and year four was -- well, we covered that already.

Year four was… it was a thing.

Year four was a thing.

Year five is when all pretenses of logic are thrown out of the window.

Instead of a proper landmass, what we have instead are hexagons!

…No, I’m not joking.

Floating hexagons.  Glowing platforms that are just translucent enough that you can see the ocean beneath your feet.  That appear and vanish at random if you’re not close enough to stabilize them.  If you’re lucky, then the hexagon will be fully opaque, and you’ll have some kind of environment to interact with.

And you can’t see further than one hexagon away.

So by the time you move from the first hexagon, the entrance hexagon, onto any other hexagon, you can’t see the Kingdom anymore.

Just hexagons.

Hexagons, with their entire landscape made of trash.

…Let me explain.

The Evil God of Chastity and Purity was, essentially, the chief god's garbage dump.  He pushed all of the thoughts and emotions that he didn’t want to deal with into it, and ignored it to fester beneath the ocean floor.

…But that’s not all he pushed down there.

Anything he decided he ‘didn’t want to deal with’, he just shoved into his garbage can.  Sometimes it was because he wanted to hide it from others, other times it was because a simple destruction would result in reality bugs, and sometimes… sometimes it was punishment.

Almost every goddess has been punished by the chief god at some point or another.  Most of those punishments are relatively mundane -- ‘give me one hundred blowjobs’ or ‘wear a naked apron for a century’.  Still punishments that are, you know, not okay to give to somebody who hasn’t consented, but still.

Other punishments are a bit more extreme.

The worst of all were the punishments he gave the first five goddesses upon their betrayal.

Part of his reprisals for that?  Every single belonging of theirs -- every personal project, every treasured memento, every beloved pet -- was thrown into the garbage can with the Evil God of Chastity and Purity.

These things, half-finished or not, were just… left there.  For thousands of years, gradually being corrupted by the presence of the Evil God of Chastity and Purity, as well as the chief god's own insecurities.

It wasn’t pleasant.And, if that wasn’t bad enough, the hexagons move!

Whenever MISSY transitions from night to day, the hexagons move in a certain, complicated pattern.  There’s four different potential patterns they could move in, but those, at least, I had memorized; no need to go through the quest into the foundational code of reality to figure it out, just keep track of where certain hexagons show up each day for a week and you’re done.

Now, this is important, because some of those hexagons are ones you really want to keep track of.

For example, one of them is simply a blank expanse.  Simple, perfectly opaque white as the floor, in a perfect hexagon.  There are no items, and there are no monsters.  It is simply -- empty.

That is where the Evil God of Chastity and Purity will break through.

So you really want to know where it is when it’s time to fight him.  It could have, in theory, come out any day of the last week of year five, and knowing where it will appear is kinda important.

And then there are the problem hexes.

Some of the hexagons -- well, they might be problematic to walk through.  Like the harmonious hypnotic hexagonal melody, for example.  The sound that that hexagon has playing through it leads to a constant barrage of weird status effects, some of which don’t fade over time.  There’s also the swamp of degeneracy, which is -- a massive swamp, basically, that smells so strongly of sex that just walking through it can lead to gaining corruption.

But those are just dangerous areas.  Ones to keep an eye out for.

Nothing too serious.

The problem hexes?  Are hexagons that have creatures or facilities on them that can and will make things worse when the Evil God of Chastity and Purity breaks free.

There are four of them of note:  The First Tentacle Beast, the Sexual Submission School for Sluts, the Cauldron of Chance, and the Reflective Pool.

The simplest one was the First Tentacle Beast.

A terrifying chimera made of tentacles of all shapes and sizes, it roams its prison with a singular purpose:  To breed.  Any that walk into its domain shall become one of its many broodmothers, becoming ropers subservient to its will or simply laying there, constantly pregnant, giving birth to simple tentacle beasts that merge with their progenitor.

When the Evil God of Chastity and Purity breaks free, so too will that thing.

And they don’t fight each other.  They both fight you.

Which is, you know.

Not optimal.

Then there’s the Sexual Submission School for Sluts hexagon.  That one -- it’s not really a ‘facility’, per say, and more a massive grab-bag of various obedience-enhancing effects.

If it’s not shut down or claimed before the Evil God of Chastity and Purity breaks free, it will take advantage of the abandoned facility and use its capabilities against you.  Leading to various ‘brainwashed’ debuffs that, when the margin of victory is already always pretty thin, are usually enough to sink even an otherwise perfect run.

The Cauldron of Chance is actually a creature, believe it or not, one that chases down you and your party members to use as ingredients for boss fights.  If it’s left alone, the Evil God of Chastity and Purity can use evil alchemy.

Yes, that’s what it was called in Alchemical Corruption Twelve.

‘Evil God of Chastity and Purity used Evil Alchemy!  Evil God of Chastity and Purity has regained one thousand evil hitpoints!’

It’s hilarious~

And as for the Reflective Pool…

…Ugh.  It’s a thing.  I’ll cover it when we get there.  It’s so close to being stupidly hot and misses it by an inch!  It frustrates me so much!

Tch.  Anyway, those are the four big problem hexes, which are -- again -- ignoring the more minor problems that hexes can contain.  We needed to know where they all are and deal with them, and set up fortifications and traps  to help fight the Evil God of Chastity and Purity as it moves from its hex toward the Kingdom.

A massive, glowing thing just walking across the landscape, seemingly impervious to all damage.

…Yeah.  We needed a lot of firepower.

The fifth landmass, in general, is a random grab-bag of sexual dreams come true.

…Nightmares.

Sexual nightmares come true.

…

L-let’s move on…

Eh?  Ah…

…Right.

I didn’t end up meeting my family at the end of the fourth year.  It was --

…Look, things were getting… to say they were getting ‘hectic’ was an understatement.  There were too many things on our plates.

Especially my plate.

I still had four blessings to obtain, four of the hardest ones to get.

I had also been shuffled into the role of ‘person who politely asks the goddesses to stop doing scary things’.  It was well known by then that I had multiple goddesses eying me, and that I had most of the blessings required; I was well on my way to being minted, so they would actually pay attention to me when I spoke.

And, well.

…Look, when the power difference is large enough, it doesn’t really matter how ‘nice’ somebody is.  It’s still scary to talk to them.  And ‘being able to erase you with a thought’ is so far above the line of ‘scary’ that everybody was happy to just shove that role onto me.

Ah -- yeah.  Yes.  The goddesses were still around.

They were very, very much still around.

And causing problems.

Not intentionally, mind.

But most goddesses don’t really pay attention to local ordinance laws when they decide they want to fuck a cute cobbler or something.

A good example was Chastity, Goddess of Humiliation.

Chastity is…

…Hah.

Frankly?

She’s a mess.

I don’t -- okay, I do mean that as an insult, kinda, but she clearly has something of a one-track mind.

Her default solution to any problem is ‘whatever gets her off the most’.

She is capable of thinking, and she does try to do so, and her solutions do usually kinda sorta solve things, but she…

…Yeah.

The chief god worked her over pretty hard.

In this case, I was asked to go to her by Shimizu.  To ask her a few… questions… about how she deals with the isekai protagonists that the chief god literally dreams up.

It’s been a while, so if you don’t recall -- for every ‘fake isekai hero’ that the chief god creates and tosses into his reality, Chastity shows up and gives them some… fake details and warnings.  Like how they need to keep their isekai status a secret, as an example.

Shimizu wanted answers, but didn't want to go herself; she wasn’t certain she could control herself and, deserved or not, attacking a goddess without a plan is a bad idea.

So with some help from Modesty, I managed to get a meeting with the goddess of humiliation herself.

Which was… well, it was good and bad.  She showed up to our meeting wearing a blatant slave collar with a chain leash, surprisingly artistic tattoos that clearly label how to use each part of her body, and a lovely set of bondage gear on her that’s ready to be used to tie her up at any moment.

…Goddess of humiliation, what can I say?

She was quite eager to hear my thoughts on her attire, and I took immense pleasure in commenting on how skillfully it was done.  How valuable the slave collar looked to be, how well-cared-for her clothing clearly was, how she must have spent ages ensuring that her tattoos would be perfect.

I’m a sub as well, after all.

I knew exactly what to say that would get her flustered… in a way that wasn’t sexual.

Well.

Mostly was’t sexual.

Praise kink is a thing, after all.

But!  I managed to get her on the back foot, which was the goal, and from there I managed to lead the conversation in the direction I wanted.  Namely: Why she lies to isekai characters, telling them that they can’t tell anybody about where they’re from.

The answer was…

…I feel like I should have known.

You know that feeling you get when you’re told the answer to a puzzle you’ve been working on, and the moment you’re told you feel like an idiot because it’s so obvious?

Yeah.

That’s what I felt like.

There’s a few key things to keep in mind here.  The first is that Chastity has some fairly massive masochistic-brain-fog due to the various punishments the chief god gave her.  She has active difficulty in solving problems in a way that doesn’t result in her being ‘blamed’ in some form or fashion.

…This is not a good idea when it comes to dealing with ‘large masses of the mortal population’.

Maybe she could just ‘not’ do things, but she both wants to help and… uh…

…She tends to cause trouble when she’s left without something to do.  Which she’s aware of, and doesn’t like admitting, but she has trouble controlling herself.

So by dedicating herself to the ‘dreamed-up isekai people’, she has ‘something to do’ which keeps her out of trouble, and lets her do it in a way that gets her the blame she’s been made to crave.

Those are the first few important facts.

The next one is that goddesses can simulate the fucking future.

So long as certain events do not occur, such as other divine interference, a goddess can predict what a mortal will do with an incredible degree of accuracy.  So while giving them her speech, telling them to ‘hide their nature’ and that they have an important fate, she does so in a manner that is, in theory, guaranteed to have an ‘optimal outcome’.

If it all works out, and it usually does, by the time they realize that their pasts aren’t real -- if they ever do -- they have a support network of friends and found family to help them adjust to it.

In theory, that means that Chastity gets to work around her masochistic cravings in a mostly healthy manner, the individuals that were made from the chief gods whimsy get happy endings, and everything works out alright.

In practice, the five-year-long land grab was an absolute cluster fuck of chaos.

Chastity actually apologized for how she handled Shimizu; she knew that her prediction wouldn’t be as perfect as usual.  Or, at least, strongly suspected such.  She’s done this very thing hundreds of times by then, and she just -- couldn’t think past her desire for punishment to come up with a better solution.

Which she was not happy about.  I could tell she was holding back how much that backslide bothered her.

She actually told me to offer Shimizu a boon from her, if she wanted it, as an apology.  Which I’ll --

-- uh --

-- that’s not relevant right now moving on!

Nope!  Nope!  Not saying a thing.

Moving on!

After dealing with --

I said we’re moving on!

After dealing with that, I shifted the conversation to the topic that was more personally relevant to me.  How to obtain her blessing.

And this was when things became complicated.

…For me, at least.

The chief god demands that, out of all of humanity, a certain percentage range of them must have a blessing from each goddess.

So, say, between one to three percent of all humans must gain Modesty’s blessings of Rape, for example.

Their blessing, and the requirements to obtain them, must be related to the goddesses domain in question.  This is why obtaining the blessing of some goddesses is harder than others.

It’s because some domains are more, or less, omnipresent in all of MISSY than others.

Humiliation was one of the most common expressions of MISSY out there.  Everybody experienced it at some point, and due to the chief gods meddling with biology and the rules of reality, most of them got off on it to some degree or another.

So, naturally, some humans would decide to dedicate themselves to that sensation.  Just like Chastity had done.

And the more people that sought a blessing, the stricter the requirements became -- as required by the chief god.

So even with my ease of obtaining blessings, Chastity had to give me a large enough challenge when it came to obtaining any of her blessings.  Otherwise, the chief god would start sniffing around, and nobody wanted that.

…And that was when she smiled.

It was a smile that I was very worried to see on her face.

It was a smile of comradery.

Of seeing a kindred soul, and offering something that they know their peer will enjoy.

I was immediately on edge.

And I was right to be.

Chastity promised that I’d get a proper blessing -- one that I would enjoy as much as any other -- if I sought to become a certain… well… uh… let me put it this way.

When a goddess is minted, the chief god gives them a domain.  …With minimal input from the new goddess in question, usually.  My quest to obtain Chastity’s blessing?

I had to convince the chief god to make me the 'Goddess of Bimbos'.  She didn't need me to lock it in, not when he's so flighty, but I had to put the idea into his head strongly enough that Chastity felt comfortably confident she could massage him into committing to it.

…Yes, I’m aware of the irony.

…I’m going to go leave the room now.  Please keep holding back your laughter until I close the door behind me, then I give you full permission to let it loose.

Haaaaa…