**[System Notification: The growth task for a special individual has been automatically accepted: Phase One: A Different Person]**
**[Task Objective: This is your new life. Currently, you are a newborn half-demon child.]**
**[Task Warning: This is a task exclusive to special individuals. If the fact that the player is a reincarnator is exposed, it will attract the attention of the [Asylum]! Be extremely cautious.]**
**[The player’s fate is being evaluated; task rewards are being generated.]**
**[Individual evaluation complete: SSS+. Highest level rewards are available.]**
**[Task Rewards: Upon reaching the 5-year-old childhood phase, you will be rewarded with a Purple-grade self-selected set. At the 10-year-old growth phase, you will be rewarded with two A-grade skill crystals, allowing you to choose your preferred [Prosperity] skills. At the 15-year-old phase, you may unconditionally awaken an imprint of no less than S-grade.]**
**[Special Reward 1: Upon reaching maturity, you will obtain [Unranked Appraisal]. You can unconditionally view detailed target information and see all of a target’s experiences within the last 1 month.]**
**[Special Reward 2: After reaching maturity, you can obtain up to three opportunities to make a wish to the Gods.]**
**[Special Reward 3: After reaching maturity, you can obtain at least three opportunities to make a wish to the Abyss.]**
‘Truly generous rewards…’
‘The beginner task is here. The game system has already acknowledged my existence, hasn’t it?’
‘Anyway, I’ll definitely do a good job playing a real half-demon kid!’
‘Showtime!’
“Mama—” the young girl cried out in a tender voice.
Her watery eyes were like a pool of clear spring water as she reached out her small, pink, chubby hands toward the woman in front of her.
‘And I will definitely protect such a young mother!’
*Snap!*
Alicia’s back straightened like a rod.
A blush burned its way from her face down to her earlobes, her gaze darted around in a panic, and her voice trembled out of tune.
“I… I’m not your mother!”
The young girl tilted her head to the side, looking at her “innocently” with eyes shrouded in a layer of mist, and called out again, “Mama?”
“You can call me Big Sister! You’re not allowed to call me Mom!”
Alicia suddenly turned her face, her gaze pinning directly onto the girl’s face.
The little child seemed struck by that gaze.
She shrank her neck, her head drooping down while the thin little fingers of her left hand toyed with the tentacles on her right arm.
Her nose twitched, the rims of her eyes turned red, and her eyelids puffed up.
It looked like she was about to start dropping little pearls at any moment.
…
“Waaa—hoo-hoo-hoo!”
Eh?
Surprisingly, it was Alicia who started wailing first…
‘Huh? Huh? Huh? Is this right? Is it? Why are you the one crying first!’
‘This won’t do! When it comes to shedding tears, I also…’
“Waaa—waaa~~~”
The octopus girl also joined in the wailing…
In the silent forest, two heart-wrenching, mournful voices twisted together and echoed far away.
That Saintess was perhaps crying because she had inexplicably become a mother.
As for the soul from the Blue Star, it was unclear whether she was crying out of extreme joy or because of the sadness of becoming a ♡girl♡.
Regardless, they both had a good cry.
As they cried, they ended up rolling into a heap, and it was hard to tell who was hugging whom.
“Mama~~”
“Waa~~ I don’t want to be a mom yet~~”
“Oh, my dear mother~~~”
“Ah~~ my baby~”
Regardless of whether it made sense or not, an ill-fated bond was thoroughly established right then and there.
After howling for a good while, a scent of roasted meat drifted into their noses.
While tears were still hanging on their cheeks, saliva began to trail down in thin threads.
The crying gradually subsided, and two bellies began to rumble incessantly.
*Sniff.*
Alicia sniffed her nose and stopped crying.
She placed her hand on the octopus girl’s small, smooth shoulder, her voice still raspy from crying.
“Fine, Mom it is. My name is… Lucia. Your name will be Lucoco.”
The octopus girl, Luke, was no more; now she was Lucoco.
Lucoco’s eyes were bloodshot as she nodded her small head with a sniffle, her body sliding out of Lucia’s warm embrace.
[Lucia] stood up and walked a few steps to the campfire, picking up several skewers of sizzling, oily, unidentified beast meat.
‘So that’s how it is? You’re the one who gave me this name. You had it picked out long ago, didn’t you! You had it ready all along? You were already prepared to be a mother, weren’t you?’
Teasing her internally, Lucoco’s eyes nevertheless showed a hint of admiration for this young mother.
If it had been anyone else, she probably would have been chopped into mincemeat long ago, and who knows which resurrection point she would have ended up at.
As the thought passed, she also began to wonder about [Lucia]’s background.
She couldn’t really be some wild woman from the desolate mountains, could she?
As she pondered, her gaze stuck to [Lucia].
She used the system’s built-in appraisal to check her information.
**[Prompt: The system cannot appraise the target. Please try again after the player has learned a higher-level appraisal skill.]**
“¿”
Lucoco’s brow twitched.
Her system-provided D-grade appraisal could not identify [Lucia].
At the very least, she was an Elite-rank adventurer, but her level was completely unknown.
**[System Appraisal]**: Minimum D to maximum S-grade. Can identify **[Common: D]**, **[Elite: C]**, **[Boss: B]**, **[Lord: A]**, and **[King: S]**.
What a wonderful start!
Lucoco felt like she was simply the chosen one!
‘I’ll definitely play the part of a good baby… kekeke~’
A brilliant smile appeared on her small face as she looked toward her young mother with sparkling eyes.
Alicia was using a wooden stick to scrape off the charred bits of the meat.
When she turned her head, she bumped right into her “daughter’s” sweet smile, and her heart softened for no reason.
“Hungry?”
She held up a skewer of dripping roast meat and shook it, asking.
She was indeed very hungry…
Lucoco nodded bashfully, her little throat letting out a gulp as she swallowed her saliva.
Her eyes were fixed on the trembling, oily meat skewer, unable to move.
“Come… I… Mother will feed you—”
Lucia tore off the most tender piece of meat and held it toward that small, cherry-red mouth.
Lucoco opened her mouth.
“Ahm—”
She swallowed it in one swift bite.
Her little cheeks moved quickly, chewing left and right… up and down… but the piece of meat didn’t budge!
Eh?
Suddenly coming to her senses, she realized her mouth was completely empty—she didn’t have a single tooth!
Despite having the tender shell of a 3-year-old child, where were the teeth?
Alicia noticed it too and subconsciously murmured, “That’s right… you’re an infant who was born less than 1 day ago. How could you eat meat…”
As she thought about it, she recalled a few fragments of text from some old book, and her pretty face suddenly turned bright red.
Panic was hidden in the corners of her eyes and brows as she constantly scanned the surroundings in silence.
However, her peripheral vision couldn’t help but drift toward Lucoco.
‘?’
Lucoco naturally noticed her strange behavior and stared at her without blinking.
She didn’t have any ulterior motives; she just felt a light thought in her heart: ‘She really is beautiful.’
**[System Notification: You can use the Absorption skill to eat. Be careful not to scare your mother.]**
“Gurgle—”
Her stomach happened to make a loud noise at that exact moment.
Hearing the sound, Alicia lowered her head and saw that flat little belly.
Her gaze moved up slightly and met those round, unblinking eyes.
She saw that the small mouth was still stubbornly moving, trying to grind down the piece of meat inside.
‘She must be starving…’
A hint of dark purple suddenly surfaced in her pupils…
A warm current of maternal instinct she had never felt before rushed to the top of her head, and any sense of shame was tossed to the wind.
With a sudden movement, she reached out to lift the beast skin!
An earth-shattering ♡gracious♡ gift was about to reveal itself.
Lucoco’s eyelashes lowered.
‘She wants to nurse me!! My dense mother—half-demon babies aren’t what you think!’
Prepared for this, her tentacle went *slap!* and directly knocked Alicia’s hand aside.
“Ah—!!”
Alicia shivered in shock, her surge of courage instantly deflating as she looked at Lucoco in a daze.
Having just activated **[Absorption]**, Lucoco slowly opened her mouth…
“Eeeek!!!”
A high-pitched scream burst from Alicia’s throat!
She saw it clearly.
Lucoco’s mouth had grown dense thickets of tiny tentacles that were churning, grinding, and devouring… it was extremely unsettling.
At the same time, Lucoco’s strike had calmed her down.
Alicia finally remembered the differences between half-demon infants and normal infants described in books.
“…”
Lucoco’s eyes were clear as her tongue licked her pink lips.
“O-Okay…”
Lucia swallowed hard and carefully tore off a strip of meat.
“I’m throwing it in!”
She tossed it into Lucoco’s mouth.
A wave of lingering fear suddenly rose in her heart.
If she had actually taken it out to feed her… Eewww!
Alicia couldn’t help but shudder again and again.
Then she replayed Lucoco’s action of slapping her hand away in her mind.
When her gaze fell on Lucoco’s face, it was filled with a soft, warm, maternal light.
‘What a smart, good baby~’