A Girl Corrupted by the Internet Is the Summoned Hero?!

by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  “My body will be under your dominion, your soul will be mine if you refuse my lust. A night, a day, a night, a day, a night, a day. Fading into sunset. Ending as it began, on this witching hour. Yugano Yuuki, Yugano Yuuki, Yugano Yuuki. I offer that soul as a payment.”

  My heart is pounding wildly, the meaning of what I’m doing is really dawning on me.

  I’m—

  I’m about to—

  In just a few minutes—

  It’ll be time for me to finally lose my vir-gi-ni-ty!

  “Appare, appare, appare.” The tingling in the air becomes more intense. “This sanctified virgin speaks your name and invokes you to come forth—”

  Oh, why not.

  “—SATAN LUCIFUGE ASMODEI AHRIMAN MOLOCH MELKOR LEVIATHAN!”

  There’s a sound like a million tons of shattering glass, and all seven of the torches flare hugely and then go out.

  Ah, the Devil is above all Seven Sins, so of course it wouldn’t be just one of the torches that flare.

  As a consequence, this room really has gone completely dark.

  There’s no seeing anything at all, like if the Devil is standing right behind me.

  Well, I’m not going to just stand here in the dark like an idiot. Keeping calm, I stride towards the door to the bedroom. I keep a hand out as best I can, but I still have to grope a bit to find the doorknob.

  The bedroom has its own light, so as soon as the door opens, I turn around. In dim light I behold the Devil, gazing at me with a cold expression that seems to travel straight down my spine.

  Uh.

  Um.

  I’m not sure how long I spend staring at him.

  Compared to even an Angel, the Devil is…

  “You’ll do,” I tell him. My mouth is dry, I cannot swallow. “Now, come into my parlour.”

  10. Do you really think you can?!

  I usually feel good about my last-minute impulse decisions, but in retrospect, that one was a bit… large?

  It could be literally the silliest decision that anyone has ever made.

  If you consider the legendary errors, then right after 'Don't invade Russia during the wintertime' would be 'Don't stake your soul on defeating the Devil, but if you do, at least don't have it be a pervertedness contest'.

  But I can't help it—when I see the Devil in front of me, I regret nothing. His limbs are lithely muscled, and pale in the dim light. There's a white cloth about him, thin as a veil, wrapped like a toga, obscuring everything and hiding nothing. His face is indescribable.

  After a timeless eternity, I don't know how long, the Devil smiles, and steps forwards to approach the bedchamber where I stand.

  “It's been a long time since any mortal dared to treat with me. To be summoned under this ritual, by a holy virgin offering up her flesh, her sanctity and her soul… in all of eternity that's never happened. I'll give you unimaginable pleasure as a reward for that audacity.”

  My mind is a bit fuzzy right now. It could be the smoke from the seven spent torches, or it could be the male form hammering into my eyeballs. Even so, I remember the words that I should say next.

  “Satan Lucifuge Asmodei Ahriman Moloch Melkor Leviathan…”

  The Devil raises a single eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “Under the name of Yugano Yuuki I swear, I swear, I swear, that if at any time you wish to refuse my lusts as unendurable, you may say 'I accept your alternative compact' to annull this succubus ritual and institute instead your oath—”

  “You must be joking.”

  “—to lend me your power for the rest of my mortal days, until the limitations of the book of law. Nor yet shall you receive my soul. Your compensation will be to learn under me in order to gain in corruption and…” he can't rise any further in the ranks of Hell, “and that's it.”

  The Devil has let me speak all this without further interruption. When I'm done, he takes a step closer to me. It feels like I'm choking just from the air being so thick with his presence.

  “You have some nerve,” he murmurs.

  “Well, I won't deny that.” I try for a laugh, but it comes out sounding shaky.

  “Are you just making life more interesting for yourself, or do you really imagine that you can do this?”

  My heart is beating far out of control, but I manage to say, “Transform yourself into a girl. As the Devil above Envy, you can do that, right?”

  The Devil gazes at me, then slowly smiles. “As you wish,” he murmurs, and—

  —sorry, my brain cut out for a while. She's not wearing any clothing.

  When I've recovered, I say, “Devil above Greed, make me a cup.”

  The Devil's female form hands me a golden goblet fit to be the Grail. The gold seems to shimmer below the surface in a pattern that's not quite as beautiful as a fractal screensaver. Okay, that thought is a good sign, my brain is recovering from this exposure.

  I'm Yugano Yuuki, the girl who's been ruined by the Internet. The Devil is unimaginably beautiful as a man or a woman, I can't deny. But it remains to be determined how the depth of this world's Hell stacks up against Earth's online forums.

  My voice is a bit unsteady, but I speak, and it steadies as I go. “So, you see how many girls are in this room? Two. You see how many cups are in this room? One. I'm a kindly master who won't resort to that if I don't have to, but with this, I've already won.”

  The Devil's eyes become cooler. Veils gather about her once more, and he's transformed into male again. “Beginning with your victory declaration against me, the supreme evil? You've gone beyond audacity into the realm of delusion, mortal. I've spent millennia steeped in wickedness beyond your capacity to imagine.”

  Ha! If one person spends a thousand years thinking perverted thoughts, that's no better than a thousand people spending one year thinking perverted thoughts! I'm not facing you alone, for behind me is the decadence of an entire planet! Even if the race of Earth can't win at anything else, we won't lose at degenerate pornography!

  The Devil steps close enough to me that I can smell his breath, fragrant like spices. From this close I can see more of the human shape beneath his veils. He lifts a hand up to my face and my knees go weak as he slides a thumb into my mouth. Oh, god, I'm sucking it. Licking it shamefully like the Internet has taught me. All the repressed sexual energy of these last three weeks is lighting a fire inside me.

  The Devil withdraws his thumb. “Interesting,” he murmurs. “Now that I've touched you and gained the measure of your sins, girl from another world… you might have as much perversion inside you as the governor I set over Lust. Not enough to conquer me or any of my seven. But enough to make this encounter truly enjoyable for me. You weren't nearly as foolish as I thought—but still, I declare my own victory. I'll have you endure pleasures you've never imagined, and make your soul belong to me even before these hours end.”

  The dismay inside me rises up, crashes against two protective thoughts: One hundred percent chance of victory and the Devil can lie.

  Certainly, I won't give up before three days have passed. I'll set my perversions against him to the very end. If I fail, it won't be with a single fantasy of mine left unfulfilled. No, I'll do my best to break through to a new level of twistedness if that's what it takes.

  I go over to the wide bed and sit down on it. The Devil remains standing, watching me with smoky eyes.

  All my limbs are trembling with hope, despair, and the torrent of heat pouring through me.

  I look at the Devil and ask myself—what will I have from him first?

  This man of ultimate beauty, ultimate confidence, with the strength of Hell and the supreme authority of wickedness—how does the woman in me respond to that?

  Thinking this, I already know the answer that rises up from my depths.

  I reach out my trembling fingers and slowly unroll my left leg's stocking, removing it to leave my foot bare.

  “Then, we might as well begin with the basics,” I say. “Now suckle on my toes, slave.”
>
  11. The meaning of probability is—

  Let's pause at this critical juncture to contemplate the nature of probability.

  What does it mean when the white mages say, “The Summoning Spell determined that you have a one hundred percent chance of victory?”

  Does it represent an absolute determination? One hundred point zero zero percent, total certainty? Or does it just mean the probability is closer to 100% than to 99%? Does the Summoning Spell round to the nearest 10%, in which case I could have a 5% chance of losing?

  When I considered that, I remembered that a white mage spoke as if gradations as small as “two percent” could be determined. If they weren't just speaking figuratively, then at least the probability is closer to one hundred percent than to ninety-eight percent. But an absolute certainty is probably impossible.

  Or a deeper thought: In the end, every event either happens or it doesn't. Even if you say that a coin has a fifty percent probability of landing on heads, in the end it either shows heads or shows tails. Then if the Spell looks into the future, how can the Spell determine any probability other than zero percent or one hundred percent?

  One guess is that maybe this universe has something analogous to quantum decisions that are irreducibly random. These tiny alternatives, by the butterfly effect, would be amplified into affecting larger outcomes like 'Yugano Yuuki overturns the Wicked Emperor' or 'Yugano Yuuki does not overturn the Wicked Emperor'.

  Then, the meaning of the Spell's estimate would be that after accounting for tiny divergences and how they affect the world, in nearly all the possibilities Yugano Yuuki overturns the Wicked Emperor. Not just nine possibilities out of ten or even nineteen times out of twenty, but ninety-nine out of one hundred.

  In that case my victories shouldn't be obtained by the last inch of my fingernails. If I was on the verge of losing before a desperate effort, mightn't some small event like a falling pebble perturb the outcome? A narrow victory shouldn't be one that happens in ninety-nine worlds out of one hundred.

  Realistically, there is nowhere I could have ended up after my Summoning except in the office of the Wicked Vizier making his offer. Maybe the right falling pebble could have altered that, but the vast majority of falling pebbles wouldn't. If I'd wantonly committed suicide, that could have prevented me from reaching the Vizier's office. But that choice would be uncharacteristic of me, and someone watching me from the outside would call it unlikely.

  So, looking back, my course up to the Vizier's office seems overdetermined.

  If I win in more than ninety-nine out of one hundred worlds, that's how every flag event should appear in retrospect.

  This story of Yugano Yuuki doesn't belong to the shounen genre—is what that implies. I won't ever win at the last minute.

  Of course, a further implication is that I shouldn't do things based on random whims.

  Was 'Yugano Yuuki will go for the big one and summon the Devil himself' an overdetermined event? Was it something that anyone who knew me could have guessed? To me, it feels like I didn't decide it myself until the last minute. Then, was my choice a fragile event that could have been altered by a bird flying past me in the morning? In the latter case, by choosing on a last-minute whim, I might have departed the track of the ninety-nine worlds and wandered into the uncertain open space of the hundredth.

  I myself have no way of knowing whether my choice was overdetermined or a whim, except by seeing whether the consequence is victory or failure.

  I wish I could say I worked that out in advance, but the truth is I saw it afterwards.

  The state I'm in when I emerge from the sorcerer's bedchamber—

  There's a perversion called 'ruined orgasm' that's part of the 'teasing and denial' fetish. You slowly stimulate yourself until you're almost ready to come, and then push yourself over the edge. As soon as you can't stop yourself from falling over that edge, you snatch your hands away and feel the empty pulsations inside you, contractions without real pleasure. It's more of a torment assigned to submissives, than something that people naturally enjoy. I tried it once and, nope. Raising all that tension, all that anticipation, and then letting it drain away into frustration and emptiness…

  That's how I feel when I stagger out of that bedchamber with my virginity intact.

  The Devil trails after me, the ancient being still looking stunned.

  So. On the one hand, nobody's ever pushed a Demon into outright refusing an order and losing their soul.

  Why? Because Demons are accustomed to taking orders from their superiors in Hell's hierarchy; they already have ancient mental habits in place for obeying.

  But there's one entity in Hell who's an exception to that rule, isn't there?

  From my womanly desire to see a beautiful, powerful man kneeling before me in subjugation, I treated the Devil as an 'M' and told him to suckle on my toes.

  The Devil gave me an amused look, as though to convey 'fat chance'.

  He didn't speak the words to accept my alternative compact. He just refused my lust.

  I, Yugano Yuuki, am the woman to whom the Devil lost his soul. By the time either of us could have asked if we wanted that to happen, the succubus ritual had already shattered around us.

  This is what it's like to be on a one hundred percent probable path to victory, I guess? Regardless of my exact actions once the ritual began, that flag would have tripped before three days had passed.

  And, this is what it means to be trapped in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because nobody would ever have tried this if they hadn't been told they were certain to succeed. I think that maybe if I'd been told eighty percent, I would have tried for the Duke above Pride, and lost, which would have made the probability nearly zero. If I'd been told fifty percent, I would have tried for a Count under Pride and won. So in the end, the most self-consistent probability that could be told to me was a one hundred percent chance of victory.

  You white mages who peeked at the probability… you made a weird event happen. If any cosmic forces show up asking for an explanation, I'm disclaiming all responsibility and passing them on to you.

  12. You did it because—?!

  The Wicked Vizier seems to relax when he sees me staggering down the halls. Then he chokes and turns away. “What are you wearing?!”

  It seems I forgot to change out of those clothes.

  “Well,” says the Wicked Vizier, still not looking at me. “I'm not disappointed to see that you changed your mind and backed out. You might feel ashamed of it, but I believe it shows wisdom to wait and consider.”

  It also seems he can't see the Devil behind me.

  “Actually… I didn't back out.”

  The Wicked Vizier whirls on me, then chokes again and averts his eyes. “What? Then what are you doing here? Quick, go back and complete the ritual!”

  “It's done.”

  “That fast—?!” The Wicked Vizier seems to steel himself, then he stares at me. “No, I see faint signs of a halo about you! You still have your Angel, unsealed!”

  YES. YES I DO.

  After I recovered from the shock, I thought of going right back into that bedchamber and finishing what we'd started, but—

  The Devil pleaded with me. He sounded like he was strangling himself, but he pleaded with me. If my Angel leaves me, he must return to Heaven and report this situation to the factions there, and then the Devil himself doesn't know what will happen after. I asked my Angel, but he didn't know either.

  I'm NOT HAPPY with this situation, but I'm keeping the Angel temporarily.

  The Wicked Vizier looks worried. “Yugano Yuuki, tell me the truth this time! What happened? If you've made an error and damned yourself—” The Vizier shakes his head. “No! No, that can't have happened! We wouldn't make you Empress then, and in that case, you never should've been Summoned here to begin with!”

  “Ah,” I say, “it seems a fluke event has occurred. Before I could have my so-called purity ruined, the Demon refused my lust outright, and…” I pu
t a hand against my head. “Do you know what a human's supposed to do if she owns a Demon's soul? How to make him obey me or lend me power? Right now he's just following me around.” A thought occurs to me, and I turn my head to address the Angel hovering over my shoulder. “Do you know, Angel?”

  “Don't you dare say a word to her!” hisses the Devil.

  The little Angel has his hands over his face. “I'm not advising you about anything at this point, Yugano Yuuki. Your life is too strange.”

  Meanwhile, the Wicked Vizier is clutching his head. “That's—just what kind of world did you—but if you say it's so, then—should we consult the sages? No! They can't be allowed to know! But then—gah!” The Vizier spins around in a full circle, hands still fisted in his hair. “No, if it's like this, can you still wield supreme diabolical power?”

  A thought occurs to me, and I turn to the Devil. “Hey you, make me some chocolate.”

  The Devil snorts. “Why should I?”

  “Make me some chocolate, or my hand goes into my panties and starts rubbing.”

  Ignoring the gargle from the Wicked Vizier, I smile at the Devil as he absorbs my threat. If I do that, my Angel departs. Returns to Heaven. And talks.

  The Devil's eyes flare. “You…”

  “You know, even when you're angry, you're not actually as scary as a horror movie… no, wait, never mind, that's competitive.”

  Averting my eyes, I hand the chocolate back to the Vizier. “There, I figured out how to make my Demon do things for me.”

  “You invoked a Demon under Greed instead?” The Vizier looks puzzled. He raises the chocolate to stare at it, then sniffs. “No… Gluttony? What have you done now, Yugano Yuuki?! How will the dread powers of Gluttony stabilize your reign as Empress?”

  “That's a bit of a complicated story…”

  “You did it because you missed the food from your previous world?!” Now the Wicked Vizier is glaring at me. “So far I've refrained from criticizing your decision-making on grounds of your youth, but this is unbelievably irresponsible!”