Chapter 5: Tentacle Menace
"Eat!" the bandits tossed some remnants of their meal to the girls. They were on the run, so they hadn't carried much—only two tents and several bags of supplies. The fact that they hadn't untied the ropes binding the girls indicated that they wanted them to eat with their mouths on the ground like dogs. Cecile quickly bowed down and devoured the meat presented to her. Her nutrient levels were in the single digits, even though she had consumed less yesterday. Hiro was relieved that Cecile wasn't as prideful as the other two, who refused to eat.
"Boss, what are we going to do with them?" asked one of the bandits.
"We're going to sell them, of course," replied the leader.
"But our faces are known. Knights are looking for us all over the place."
"We'll sell them to other countries. Don't touch them. They're more valuable that way. Most nobles won't touch women who have been defiled by bandits. Shitty nobles—they're fine with women who swing with other nobles but are disgusted by us. I know what you're thinking. But we need more money to bribe those nobles from Vertia." Vertia was a kingdom neighboring Latvin, where they currently resided. To travel to Vertia, one had to cross two other cities and a mountain pass. It was far, but they had to do it if they wanted to be free from Latvin's knight order.
"Okay, boss," replied the bandit. They proceeded to tie the girls to a tree.
Hiro thought hard about how to reverse the situation, and then he suddenly had an epiphany. He remembered his race was supposed to consume the entire ecosystem. So, it couldn't be that his ability only worked for his host alone. However, Cecile was still awake. He needed to put her unconscious. He looked through his skills and remembered anaesthesia.
Anesthesia consists of many types. Hiro only knew about local anesthesia, which reduced pain in a small area of the body. He didn't realize anesthesia could put someone in a coma-like state, similar to a sleeping drug. While he had over 9000GB of sex lessons, he was a bit behind in biology and thus didn't even know that anesthesia could induce comatose or even kill the host if too much were injected. Fortunately, his skill window explained what anesthesia he had. It was a skill and not a real drug, so there was no need to fear for fatalities.
Cecile felt numbness spread from her bosom. It spread from her stomach to her chest. At first, she was afraid, thinking she would die. But soon, she accepted her fate. It was better to be dead now than to be caught by bandits. Her body relaxed as her breathing calmed down, and soon she fainted.
"We need to do something!" Rebecca panicked, but Nana was broken. Alex's death meant she had no future. She was unresponsive when Rebecca called her. "Cecile, you too. Don't sleep!"
Hiro slithered from her crotch and coiled himself around the bark of the tree behind Cecile. He then peeled some of the loose bark from the tree and latched onto its vascular system. When he activated his skill [Advanced Parasitism], it worked as he intended. His hunger was filled by the nutrients from the tree. Hiro usually took only enough to satisfy his hunger from Cecile, but this time, he took more. With advanced parasitism, it was possible to take more nutrients and convert them into body mass, which would be stored in his cell storage skill.