Faux Humans Aren’t Allowed to Play Rules-based Horror!

[Bonus chapters updated irregularly... Next book: "I'll Give Everything for Mother." Please add it to your favorites. Launching in June!]

Shen Zeyu, a bottom-rung wage slave at the UMF Foundation, recently found a roommate to share an apartment with.

His roommate looked perfectly human, and was a rather handsome young man.

It would've been even better if he didn't liquefy himself in the middle of the night and squeeze through the window's security bars into Shen Zeyu's room.

Through tears, Shen Zeyu taught him a few tips on how to behave like a person.

After two and a half years living together, Teacher Shen, who believed education should be for everyone, had become a celebrated master instructor in the fake-human community.

*

Listening to his roommate's garbled human language, with its jumbled word order and missing subjects and predicates, Shen Zeyu decided to revise his teaching plan and organize some volunteer social practice activities.

Just then, the Foundation's management started making round after round of urgent calls, recruiting people for an exploration team heading into a Domain of Urban Legends. Fill in the staffing roster, or get fired.

Shen Zeyu stared at his roommate. "Are you afraid of fire?"

His roommate shook his head.

He asked again, "Are you afraid of dying?"

His roommate's head spun a full 360 degrees on the spot.

Undeterred, he asked, "Are you and your kind afraid of being exploited by capitalists?"

His roommate's neck, twisted like a pretzel, tilted to one side.

Shen Zeyu waved his hand and signed himself and his best fake-human students up for the Domain of Urban Legends exploration team.

*

After one exploration.

Shen Zeyu: Write a summary and submit your field report within three days. Today's assignment: What did you learn from this Domain of Urban Legends?

Student 1: People mustn't go to the bathroom alone at night.

Student 2: Humans can't breathe.

Roommate: I am a fake human. You are my master.

Shen Zeyu: Hm???

*

They say being a master is a high-risk profession. Modern-day teachers are no exception.

Beneath the stars, the roommate who had lived with him day and night finally shed his false human form and revealed his true self.

It was the rhythm of the universe, the original color beyond dimensions. The radiant deity arrived in this world with boundless hunger and an insatiable yearning, in pursuit of vigorous life.

Boundless colors filled Shen Zeyu's world.

Shen Zeyu (making a run for it): I'm doomed!!!

Reader's Guide:

1. The top is a blank slate with no common sense. He has an imprinting complex and trusts the bottom without question.

2. The bottom has an everyone-loves-him (fake humans) quality.

3. Romance is one-on-one, and both leads are each other's one and only.

4. UMF stands for "Unusual Matter Facility."

5. It has the absurd premise of "Haiyore! Nyaruko-san," where someone happily cohabits with Lovecraftian monsters.

Next Book Preview

"I'll Give Everything for Mother"

Mu Bai was working late in the lab on tissue culture when she passed out. When she opened her eyes, she had arrived in an era where the stars were at war.

Disasters and wars raged everywhere, and only those with powerful supernatural abilities could find a place to survive.

The bad news: she'd become a reclusive plant breeder who'd lived a quiet farming life. When she woke up, her cozy home had been destroyed by her enemies, and thousands of acres of farmland had been reduced to scorched earth.

As a hapless agricultural student, the only thing she knew how to do was...

[Username: Mu Bai]

[Ability: Sowing]

Mu Bai: "You expect a farmer like me to fight monsters that can destroy the world? What does that even mean?"

Getting land is hard. Managing land is hard too. Protecting land is harder still.

She controlled mutated vines to hang every enemy up, then watched as their supposedly indestructible warships were split open by the new branches growing at a crazed pace.

The defeated ability users: "???"

Who had provoked this person into coming out of seclusion?

After seizing wealth by force and earning enough startup capital, Mu Bai immediately returned to her old profession.

She opened experimental plots, raised rare alien creatures, bred high-quality hybrid offspring, and kept having children until she was sick of it.

From the void to the deep sea, even the bodies of living creatures could become fertile fields as long as she was there.

One day, seeing starships flocking toward her farm like dense locusts, Mu Bai gave an order, and the most advanced planetary defense system activated in every direction.

Mu Bai: "Ha! Things are different now..."

The battered civilizations: "Wait! Mom, save your children!"

After the god who wielded the power of creation fell, the living beings of the universe spiraled completely out of control. Driven by fear, they fought one another and plundered the resources they needed to survive without any limits.

Until one day, it woke once more.

Dragons soared across the starry heavens, and insect swarms flourished.

Soft fungal mats spread across the land, and shapeless limbs sprouted and grew.

All the indescribable, great beings submitted, devoutly welcoming the source of creation.

"Supreme Mother of All, grant me your great seed."

"I am willing to offer my glory, flesh, soul, and everything I have."

"All so I may sow your blood and let the light of life illuminate the universe."

Theme: Know yourself and accept who you are.