Story: Konosuba: Succubus Shop

This was a strange and often worthless fantasy world beset upon by a Demon King. Numerous heroes across the land strived and struggled to become stronger while seeking a way to enter his fortress to put an end to his evil reign. To this end, heroes used magic. They also used strength, bravery and assorted allies, but magic was a rather major factor.

Enter a young man named Kazuma, who hailed from the real world. He had died tragically/comedically (depending on whether you're asking a certain blue haired goddess for her opinion) and had been reincarnated here so that he may serve as an adventurer and defeat the Demon King. He had stepped into this world quite full of himself, confident in his ability, eager to accept the challenges that lay ahead of him.

He’d instead had to survive doing construction work until he could assemble a party to begin real adventuring.  Not that his party was really worth the lint in his pockets. Until recently he'd had to sleep in a stable, so you can imagine how thankful he was to have the chance to sleep in an actual honest to goodness mansion!

In any event: When discussing magic, it is vital to understand that rules matter. After all, magic is, by definition, breaking the rules of reality and even magic cannot make nature tolerate a vacuum. You break it, you bought it. Break the rules of reality, you have to replace it with something else. Just as surely as you'd have to pay to replace a city wall that your stupid Goddess party member had broken with a flood, magic had to replace the rules with something else entirely.

So yeah, that last point. In spite of his current living situation, can you remotely blame Kazuma for being a little bit stressed about his situation? Can you blame him for succumbing to the temptation offered up to him by his fellow adventurers? And becoming a client to the Succubus Shop?

Yes, a Succubus Shop! Seems like it was inviting bad times for all, but it really was not. You see that point above about magic needing rules? Succubi are inherently magical beings. They have their own rules to follow. Even if they didn't, they would follow those set up in the shop anyway, as it would simply result in the kind of bad time you're probably thinking of.

The rules were as follows: You give them specifications for the nice dream you want. You go to sleep that night. A succubus pays you a visit, drains a small, very small amount of vitality and gives you a nice dream. Rinse and repeat, they accumulate vast amounts of vitality from sheer multiplication, spreading word of mouth among the males in the city, everyone wins, nobody's dying, nobody's too exhausted to function the next day. It's a real win/win!

But magic is a tricky thing. Sometimes, magic interplays with magic in peculiar ways.

So let us start with our young and inexperienced succubus, who had been assigned to a first time and future repeat customer. That being young Kazuma, of course. Her name was Suzicubus, and she approached the mansion with trepidation for her first mission. The poor thing swallowed nervously. She wasn't too sure about this, she'd heard... Stories... about this particular adventurer.

Still, Suzicubus swallowed that and tried her very best to put on a veneer of professionalism. To that end, she adjusted her jet black string bikini and flapped her wings, taking her over the wall and into the ground and -

Huh! Strange, she could have sworn she felt something just now. "Was that a magical alarm?" Suzicubus gulped, quite nervously. The pink haired beauty quickly pulled out her things in a blind panic. Ah! Ah! Where was the contract... Here!

"Phew, thank goodness," she sighed. "It includes permission to be on the grounds. That should keep any magical alarm from tripping."

Magic needs its rules, and even those spells set by a Goddess have their limitations. In this case, even Aqua wasn't so stupid as to want it set off when someone with permission entered their abode. Well, maybe she was. Aqua was quite thoroughly stupid, and in very imaginative ways.

With that done, entrance was a rather trivial matter for her. As was locating the correct room - that was also specified in the contract. The door creaked open ominously and she spied him, on the bed in a rather uncool looking posture. His tongue was lying out the corner of his mouth, and he seemed to be cackling and grabbing with his hands in his sleep. How scary! The rumours were true!

Suzicubus tiptoed inside the room, with each step feeling like a lead weight falling on eggshells. Terrified she might awaken the other residents with each pace forward. Then she realised she could fly, and drifted up into the air to hover directly over Kazuma's slumbering body.

"Let's see..." she whispered. "Um... Step one, I touch their forehead like this -" she did so. "And then I can gain access to their dreamscape, and mould it as I want. Um... F-first l-let's take a look at what sort of women he has in his life. That way I guess I'll have a better idea of what he's really after."

Yes, that made sense! The description he'd given was a little on the vague side, uh... Inexperienced. Well that was her through and through! That meant he had some experience himself, right? Which must mean he had a preference for physical attributes as well!

The first woman he thought of had long golden hair. A crusader? Her figure was astounding. She'd make a superb succubus, what a waste! Ah, her name was Darkness, and in his dreams Kazuma imagined her as a bit of a masochist. Make that a lot of a masochist. Actually, was there anything about her that he wasn't imagining it as masochistic?

"Uh... maybe he'll want that for another dream?" the succubus mused, and moved on to the next figure he thought of. A girl with a big pointy hat. She was cute, but certainly not as sexy... It seemed like he didn't view her as attractive in that sense. So she quickly moved on to the next girl he thought of, some blue haired babe he seemed to harbour really strong feelings towards. And no wonder! Was she even wearing underwear? It looks like she was their priest and -

<i>"I am Aqua, Goddess of Water."</i>

And that's how you get a succubus to hit the roof. A Goddess?! There was a Goddess, right here?! Suzicubus looked around expecting a trap. After a moment she could hear footsteps down the hallway! She sucked in air and held her breath in anticipation and mortal terror. On her first mission! She encountered an honest to goodness disciple of a Goddess?! Her mind whirled: Was this a trap? Did he select "inexperienced" as a means to draw out someone who wouldn't have the faintest clue how to handle a Goddess? Someone who would freeze and panic at the first sign? Oh! And that alarm around the mansion! Aha! Maybe it was the sort set to go off if anyone entered, so they already knew that she was on her way!

Oh this was bad! The footsteps were getting closer and closer. O-Okay, calm down. It's entirely possible that this guy is just an idiotic pervert who didn't think through the consequences of inviting a succubus along to a residence with a Goddess. The rest of the shop would never even suspect it! They'd trap her in a purification field and turn her - Turn her into the worst thing you can turn a succubus!

They'd turn her into a prude!

Each footstep felt like a dagger in her back. This was worse than water torture! Suzicubus tried to tell herself that it would be okay. That the footsteps would go on by the room, and then she'd let out a sigh of relief, get the job finished as quickly as possible and scarper back to the shop. Maybe even skip doing the job? She was really, really scared right now!

But the footsteps did stop outside Kazuma's room. The succubus felt pale and ill. She stayed above the door, silent as the grave, and mouthing "oh please oh please oh please" over and over again. The door creaked open. Her eyes went wide, then wider still again when a head of perfect blue hair tied into a ponytail by a water molecule shaped bauble poked its way into the room.

"I hear prayers coming from this room..." Aqua, the Goddess of Water, worshipped by the Axis order - a noted bunch of weirdoes - was right there beneath her. "Kazuma, cut that out!"

Suddenly the succubus realised something. While she was being so afraid of Aqua discovering her, she'd been silently praying not to be noticed. In other words, the very thing that brought the Goddess into the room was her own fear that she would come into the room. She stopped praying, feeling sheepish, and then Aqua nodded sternly.

"That's better, you stupid NEET! Honestly if idiots like you could only stop praying for some action, the rest of us could get some sleep. Dumb pervert..."

And then she ducked out again. You would never see a succubus feel so thoroughly relieved without perverted connotations again in the history of the world. Wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead, she lingered there for another five minutes or so just to be on the safe side, then drifted over towards Kazuma and gave him a pleasant dream using her own body as a template.

After which, she didn't even bother draining his vitality and booked it out of there so fast you'd think the devil was after her. Or, for a sex fiend like her, something much worse: A Goddess.

<hr>
It's a rough thing being the Mistress of a gaggle of Succubi. You very rarely get the chance to ride a stud yourself, and have to handle all of the newbies, watch all of their mistakes, have to correct them when they go awry, reassure them if they do quite well... And the worst part was, you couldn't sample the goods for risk of contaminating your own vitality. Such sweet torment!

Case in point, young Suzicubus. Ah, but Mistress had such high hopes for this one. She was cute. Paid close attention to detail. She did the whole 'innocent waif' routine like a pro. Yet when she'd noticed the girl had returned without any vitality to speak of, terrified out of her mind, Mistress had initially believed she was going to put him through the ringer.

Then she got the full story from the girl and confirmed it with a little mental analysis. Honestly the girl handled the situation better than any of the others would have. Even Mistress herself would have been so terrified she'd have done something to bring attention down on herself. "You did the right thing," she reassured the adorable girl, rubbing her head for good measure. Such soft hair, so cute! "Giving him the good dream was incredibly risky, but at the very least you ensured he would be a satisfied customer."

"Wh-what's a Goddess doing here?" Suzicubus asked, still panicking a little bit. "Mistress, if there's a Goddess in town then shouldn't we move elsewhere?"

"No, we have a rather large client base already established," Mistress answered, but the first question still bothered her. Why would a Goddess bother with a starter place like this? It was so frustrating! "Not to mention, the other settlements aren't nearly as perfect for our needs as this one. So many young adventurers, full of vitality, just starting out..." She shuddered. "They have not yet been ground down by the corrupt Lords or the sheer difficulty of their task. They can currently afford the vitality much more easily than other places, and will recover it quicker as well. If we leave, then we would have to go back to the older ways where we had to kill our prey to survive."

"No, we can't do that!" Suzicubi complained. "I don't... Want to kill anyone. I just want to fool around, that's all!"

Of course you don't, you poor sweet thing! But this does present a unique problem, does it not? A Goddess in the city... If that Kazuma guy is up to his reputation, then there's a decent chance he'll become a repeat customer. And if they refuse him for any reason, he'd probably wind up telling the Goddess about the shop. What to do... What to do...

1. Brainwash Kazuma to help keep Aqua away.
2. Use their Succubi powers to transform him into an irresistible stud. That ought to keep Aqua occupied!
3. Strike a deal with Kazuma to keep him away from the shop. How about a magical item?
4. Or perhaps they should try corrupting the other members of Kazuma's party...?
5. Some other plan