The slime body was surprisingly comfortable.
No trouble with movement, and I rarely felt fatigued. For a rough-and-tumble guy like me, there were virtually no downsides.
But then, a major problem arose.
I had come to a shop called "Night's Butterfly."
I had zero interest, but Kaijin insisted, so I couldn't very well say no.
Well, that's not entirely true. I really had no interest at all. But Kaijin kept pushing, so...
...
Fine. I'll admit it.
I was actually brimming with curiosity. The thought of drinking with beautiful women for the first time in ages had me practically skipping into the shop.
But then!
Even after drinking, I couldn't get the slightest bit drunk. Now *that* is a serious problem. To think that at a shop Kaijin had gone out of his way to bring me to, the fun would be cut in half! I tried everything to get tipsy, but since I couldn't even taste anything, there was nothing to be done. I gave it my all with sheer willpower, but that was one battle I simply had to concede.
However, drinking wasn't the only source of fun.
I'm a man who bounces back quickly — I'm not about to give up over something like this!
So, I decided I wanted to play around with the famous, gorgeous elf ladies worthy of the name "Night's Butterfly."
And here, yet another problem reared its ugly head.
I had no complaints about my slime body, but this shop was an absolute minefield of problems.
The new issue: I had no hands. Here I was, surrounded by gorgeous elf ladies, and I couldn't even touch a single one. You'd have to call that a grave problem.
Being held in those supple, slender arms, pressed against those voluptuous chests...
Wonderful! Is this heaven!? It's a paradisal situation that would make you want to scream out in pure ecstasy — yet...
The tragedy of having no hands meant I couldn't do anything beyond that.
I racked my brain, mentally cataloging every monster I'd ever consumed — could I somehow produce hands or tentacles, some organ that could convey my feelings to them?
This was exactly the moment I needed my Unique Skill, the Great Sage, so I promptly issued a command.
However— 《Answer. Insufficient data. Failed to fabricate the designated body part.》 USELESS!!! What kind of "Great Sage" is this? When it actually mattered, completely and utterly unreliable.
But thinking about it more carefully — the monsters I'd consumed: snakes, centipedes, spiders, bats, lizards, wolves — none of them had anything like that kind of function.
As disappointing as it was, I had no choice but to give up on groping breasts.
But! I'm not the kind of man who gives up here.
Even if squeezing them was off the table, I could still savor the rich, intoxicating fragrance of the elf ladies.
Enveloped by voluptuous chests, soaking in the scent of paradise. Now *that* is what you'd call the ultimate lifestyle for a distinguished gentleman.
I decided to help myself right away.
I drew in a deep breath through my entire body. And entered the wondrous world of aroma.
This was where the Super Sense of Smell I'd acquired from the Fang Wolf tribe truly shone.
Driven by the insatiable curiosity demanding to know more, I indulged in the scents of the beautiful elf women to my heart's content.
《Answer. Components include perfume, along with a type of female hormone known as estrogen, oxytocin—》 Stop! No, that's not what I meant!!
I didn't want that kind of technical breakdown... Once you know the raw data, all the romance vanishes.
Seriously, is the Great Sage just a name? It's genuinely useless as a skill.
So I gave the Great Sage a patient, meticulous explanation.
Yes, I wanted to smell the scent and appreciate its wonderfulness — but there's an absolute limit to how much you should know.
Moderation is key. There's a line that must never be crossed.
Knowing what you can't fully know. Seeing what you can't fully see.
*That* is the true essence.
Once people know everything about something, they lose all interest. That's precisely why you push right to the very brink of understanding — and then self-restraint kicks in before you go any further.
You might call it a variant form of translucence.
Suppressing curiosity in order to achieve an even greater thrill. It's the mark of refined taste — something only a true connoisseur can pull off.
I laid all of this out for the Great Sage in careful, patient detail.
《...Answer. Understood.》 Seriously? As expected of the Great Sage.
Whether my passion had finally gotten through or it had truly grasped the essence, it understood.
And once the Great Sage understood the essence, it was magnificent.
It could take you right to the very brink of knowing something you desperately wanted to know — and stop.
To be specific, I could now gauge a woman's mood purely from her scent.
Whether she was happy, angry, or anything in between — it was only the rough range of emotions, the likes of joy and sorrow. But in a place like a night shop, even that information was worth its weight in gold.
I had secured my position as *king* in this establishment.
But the effect wasn't limited to scent alone.
Vision worked the same way — the Great Sage could reconstruct in my mind images that seemed visible but weren't quite.
My vision still relied on Magic Sense. Replicating just the eye organ was surprisingly difficult, and using Magic Sense to reconstruct images was less taxing while also offering a wider field of view.
Exploiting that broad field of view, I could even obtain images from beneath skirts that no human eye should have been able to see.
However, the sacred golden triangle that the elf ladies were so skillfully defending — the Great Sage reproduced it as tantalizingly visible yet just impossibly out of reach.
As expected of the Great Sage... a truly terrifying being.
And so, my unceasing exploration of the night shop continued on — until an unrefined intruder appeared and put a stop to it all.