TTT Vol. 2 pt. 2

Like every other day, Lada made sure to wake me up by showing off just how much she was improving with her mouth. Especially with her tongue.

But also just like every other day, Granny came shouting for us before long and we had to get out there to go work.

There was good news, though. We ran out of milk and eggs. That meant it was my duty to go and pick some up from the farm. That meant I’d get to go hang out with Korova for a little bit instead of having to listen to Granny shout at me.

I liked working for Granny. I really did.

But I also liked not being yelled at.

Of course, this came at the cost of sacrificing Lada to be alone with Granny, but she was a pro when it came to handling Granny and never got yelled at except when it came to getting out of bed in the morning. She’d be fine. She also knew what would likely happen between me and Korova, so she was fully supportive of going by Korova’s place while she held down home with Granny.

So, I got to go on a nice, morning walk. I waved to everybody while walking by, holding up my notebook to wish them all good mornings, and made my way over to the farm while enjoying the sun shining down on me. The temperature outside was pretty nice, too. Not hot, not cold. Nice and neutral with just a slight breeze.

But I could tell that something was immediately wrong upon reaching the farm.

Or rather… perhaps not “wrong,” but “off.” Off because the hardworking Korova was mumbling something to herself and wobbling around as she walked, looking like she forgot how to balance. Then again, with those counterweights on her chest, I couldn’t blame her for having any balancing issues.

“Tenta!” Korova shouted out as soon as she saw me before stumbling over. At least she managed to catch herself using the fence next to her before she could fully fall… but it came at the cost of cracking the fence and almost breaking it. Her strength couldn’t be underestimated. “Wha—what brings you out here? Did you miss me? Heh… what a clingy little guy you are.”

Well, I did miss her even if that wasn’t the purpose of going out there, so I didn’t bother denying that and got straight to what was really on my mind.

HAVE YOU BEEN DRINKING?

Korova giggled and wobbled from side to side. “Is—is it that obvious?” she asked, slurring her words.

YES.

“Ah… heh. Woke up this morning and felt like checking out the cider I’ve been letting ferment. It tasted pretty good, so I siphoned it into some bottles… then drank all of them.”

Korova was, to put it bluntly, a very large woman. Her chest excluded, she was still tall and wide. Only the largest men in the village could compare to her. So, when it came to her sounding as drunk as she was, I figured she must have had a lot.

HOW MUCH DID YOU DRINK?

“Ah… just a little? Bottled two gallons, and I drank all that, so…”

YOU DRANK TWO GALLONS OF ALCOHOL?!

“Heh… yup. Sad there ain’t more…”

YOU NEED WATER. AND YOU SHOULD REST WITH SUPERVISION. YOU MIGHT GET SICK.

“Ah, don’t worry about me. Takes about four gallons to really get me drunk, and I’ve always been fine after that.”

FOUR GALLONS?!

That was a ridiculous amount of alcohol!

“Yup.”

HOW ARE YOU ALIVE?!

“Is that a lot?”

YES. EVEN A GALLON COULD PROBABLY KILL SOMEBODY.

Well, that depended on how strong the alcohol was and how the person’s body handled it, but it was generally safe to assume that drinking a gallon of alcohol would do no good for anybody. Yet, Korova just admitted to drinking four gallons to get properly drunk. How she was alive made no sense to me. Then again, there was no explanation for how I got the body of a small creature with tentacles, so things had a habit of not making sense lately.

“Huh,” Korova said. “Guess I’m just built different. Maybe being a transbeast has got something to do with it?”

I THINK EVEN BEASTS WOULD DIE FROM DRINKING THAT MUCH.

She shrugged and sighed. “All that really matters is that it’ll be another month before my next batch is ready. Ah… I don’t want to wait, but I know it’ll be worth it. Reckon I should probably start brewing more at once so that I always have a steady supply. Line it up so I’ve got at least ten gallons finishing every month. That’d be enough to let me get drunk twice a month.”

Only… only twice a month. With ten gallons. Maybe what she makes is really weak? I have things to do… but I’m curious. I have to find out just how strong the alcohol she makes is.

CAN YOU SHOW ME WHERE YOU MAKE IT AT?

“Ah, you’re interested? Sure! C’mon, hop on up,” Korova said, patting the top of her breasts. She patted hard enough to make both of those mountains shake around behind her overalls.

Now, while I was more than capable of moving around on my own and following her, I wasn’t going to turn down getting to ride on top of her chest. So, I wrapped my tentacles around them and lifted myself up to sit atop her valley.

Korova then pressed her fingers against the top of my body to push me down between her breasts, firmly tucking me within her cleavage.

I wasn’t sure why Lada and Korova enjoyed putting me there so much even whenever we weren’t doing anything sexual, but I wasn’t going to complain about it.

Korova took me out to one of the small shacks behind her house. One of the other nearby shacks had its door open and was full of various tools used around the farm, but the one she took me into had shelves full of glass bottles with fermenting liquids inside. Each bottle in use had what looked like a glass weight sitting on the top to keep it sealed, and the glass weights were occasionally lifted up on their own to release pressure before dropping back down and forming an airtight seal.

A layer of what was likely dead yeast sat at the bottom of each vessel as active yeast bubbled around inside of the fermenting liquid. I wasn’t sure why the process felt so familiar to me, but I was able to look at everything going on and could immediately make sense of it. Yet, it didn’t necessarily bring back any feelings or memories.

Well, that one memory before made it seem like I might have been some kind of scientist before. Making alcohol is a chemical process, so maybe I know it from that.

A couple of the vessels looked like they were the ones she must have drank from. They were open with pools of dead yeast at the bottom with a bit of liquid sitting on top of them. Getting that liquid would have been hard without getting the yeast, and I doubt that she wanted to taste dead yeast in her alcohol, so it made sense to leave a bit in there.

But getting that would be easy for me.

I took one of my normal tentacles, squeezed it through the top of the vessel, and dipping it into the remaining liquid. I then brought the tentacle back and stuck it in my body to let my “tongues” lick it.

…

…

…

This tastes like poison! No, like… some kind of fuel! Like oil! This tastes like oil that was poisoned! How could anybody drink this?! I feel like a single drop is going to be enough to make even the largest man wasted! I don’t have a single hair on my body and feel like tasting that is going to make me grow hair on my chest and back! And she drank two gallons of this?! And she can drink up to four gallons of it?! She should be dead!

“Good, right?” Korova asked. “Though it’s a bit weaker than what I like. Probably because I switched out sticks. The old one was looking pretty… gross, so I started stirring my brews with a new stick.”

DOES THE STICK MATTER?

“It’s what has the yeast growing on it. Stir up a new brew with the stick and it gets the fermentation started. Yeast comes off the stick while you stir with it.”

HOW DID YOU EVEN LEARN ALL OF THIS?

“Ah… from the old guy who used to run this place before me. Back when I was just one of the beasts on the farm, I remember standing around while he talked to us about it. I think he was lonely, so he liked explaining everything to us beasts while he worked. That’s how I learned everything. Though, seeing as how I’ve turned his soul into mine and all… maybe that’s got something to do with it.”

Both of those potential reasons helped explain it. Even if she wasn’t truly alive and capable of feelings or anything when she was just a beast, she would still have memories covering her entire life upon getting turned into a soul beast. And even if soul beasts basically overwrote the soul of whoever they took a soul from to turn into a soul beast in the first place, it was impossible to remove every existing influence of the soul.

“I reckon nobody’s told you about what happened,” Korova said.

WHAT HAPPENED WITH WHAT?

“Me and the old farmer. About how I killed him.”

I… HAVEN’T HEARD ANYTHING. I REMEMBER YOU TELLING ME THAT A LOT HAPPENED AND THAT WAS WHY THE VILLAGERS WERE WARY OF YOU, BUT THAT’S IT.

“Ah. Well, you see… yeah, I killed him. He was an old man. Sweet, caring guy. Probably the nicest man on the island. His wife died and they never had kids, so he spent a lot of time with us beasts. Talked to us like we were his own kids. Then one day… well, he was milking me and I got spooked by some sounds outside. A wild beast jumped the fence looking to turn some of the livestock into food. Panicked me real bad at the time. Ended up knocking the old man over and… I’d rather not go into the specifics about what happened, but I killed him. Even if it was by accident, I still got his soul and turned into a soul beast.”

I’M SORRY TO HEAR THAT.

“Well, talking about that has really sobered me up, let me tell you. Anyways! While we’re on the topic, guess you’re probably curious about what came after that.”

I WOULD BE LYING IF I SAID I WASN’T, BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO PUSH YOURSELF OR TALK ABOUT THINGS THAT MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE.

“Ah, it’s fine. I don’t mind. The stuff after isn’t sad or anything anyways. Well, when I realized what happened, it was kind of sad. I felt real bad. Still do. Also figured the others from town weren’t going to be too happy about what happened and would probably try putting me down, so I broke out and went into the woods. Couple of weeks later and a kid went missing in the forest. Got killed by a beast. I didn’t know that, but there was one day where I heard a guard calling for help. He went out looking for the kid and got ambushed by the soul beast who took the soul of the kid. I helped him out and managed to kill it. I guess… I wanted to talk. I wanted to explain what happened and wanted to apologize to everybody, so I evolved and gained the ability to talk after getting that other soul.”

Makes sense. The only way for a soul beast to evolve, and to eventually become a transbeast, is to acquire more souls. The more souls, the more evolutions. Going from a beast into a transbeast would take more than just a couple of souls, though.

“The folk in the village didn’t appreciate my honesty when I told them what happened. Well… I guess I shouldn’t say that. They believed me and didn’t kill me in exchange, but I knew they hated me. Between wanting to help out since they didn’t have anybody trained to take over the farm, and wanting to make up for killing somebody they all respected, I did my best to prove myself. Threw myself at every single soul beast that popped up for years. Eventually got enough souls to evolve and get a body like this. Then I met Lada. She started hanging around whenever she was free, and it’s because of her that I wanted to get even bigger and stronger the next few times I evolved. I guess I kind of cut out a lot of details in the second half of that, but you get the point, right?”

YES. IF YOU DON’T MIND ME ASKING, HOW MANY SOULS DO YOU HAVE?

“Ah… eight.”

So, she has the soul of the farmer and then seven souls she got from killing soul beasts. That explains why she was able to evolve so much.

I’M CURIOUS. HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE YOU GOT YOUR FIRST SOUL?

Korova looked away and scratched her cheek. “Let’s not worry about that.”

THAT MAKES ME EVEN MORE CURIOUS, BUT ALRIGHT. I WON’T PRY.

“Ah… darn it. It’s been… almost thirty years, I think? I don’t know, I’m not good at tracking time.”

That was older than I expected considering how young she looked despite her overall size, but it made sense. The island was small. I doubted that people were killed and beasts were turned into soul beasts often. For her to gain that many souls, a lot of time would have had to pass. A more violent soul beast with the intent of growing stronger and gathering souls would have gotten that many souls within a few months in a more populated area.

I wonder what would happen if I killed a soul beast. Or anything with a soul for that matter. I’m able to evolve and change my body just by eating beasts, and I even evolved from drinking some of Lada’s milk, so what would happen if I ate something with an actual soul? Or just killed something with a soul. I’m not a soul beast, but I’m not a Chosen, either. So, I have no idea what might happen.

The only way for me to realistically find out would be to kill that soul beast on the loose, but I wasn’t about to go and try to hunt her down.

“Anyways, while you’re here… think you might have a few minutes to spare with those suckers of yours?” Korova asked, stroking the top of my body with a few of her fingers.

I already spent more time there than I probably should have, but…

Drinking some fresh milk also sounded nice.

Plus the suckers would make it quick.

And I knew that Lada would approve.

ALRIGHT, BUT WE HAVE TO BE QUICK.

Korova unclasped her overalls and let them fall around her waist. “Then let’s not waste any time.”

LET’S NOT.