Astral Online: Cursed by the Demon Lord to Become the Strongest Beautiful Girl, I Rapidly Grow and Dominate with Cheat Skills Despite Being the Weakest Profession - Chapter 230
Chapter 230: The Secret Room
I woke up suddenly around 2 a.m., an unusual time for me.
Turning my head, I glanced at Kuro, who was holding onto my right arm as she slept. Her peaceful breathing and serene beauty made me sigh softly without realizing it.
— *I love her.*
The feelings that had bloomed just days ago were no longer merely “like” but had deepened into true “love.” As I became increasingly aware of our relationship, a sweet sensation filled my chest, and I couldn’t help but smile.
The warmth of her embrace, her heartbeat transmitted through my arm, assured me that Kuro was no fleeting illusion.
I wanted to stay like this forever, watching her. Unfortunately, nature had other plans.
Perhaps it was the large amount of water I’d drunk before bed, but an urgent need to visit the bathroom broke the spell. Reluctantly, I gently freed myself from her hold and slipped out of bed, taking care not to disturb my sleeping beauty.
I quietly left the room, descending to the first floor. The house was enveloped in silence, with not a single soul awake at this hour. The darkness was pervasive, broken only by the faint light I turned on in the hallway as I made my way to the bathroom.
After finishing my business, I washed my hands and began heading back, walking absentmindedly. That’s when my instinctive ?Perception? skill detected someone else in the hallway.
The figure, skillfully suppressing their presence, was standing motionless in front of the storage room on the first floor.
‘Who could it be?’
Unlike in the game, my perception here was an inferior version, providing only vague sensations. Still, with caution, I decided to investigate the mysterious figure.
As I crept closer, I was stunned to see—
“??!?”
It was my father, standing silently in front of the storage room door.
He hadn’t noticed me, instead fixating on the door with a serious expression. Gone was his usual laid-back demeanor. Instead, he radiated the intensity of a gamer preparing for battle.
Clearly, this wasn’t normal. A sense of unease crept over me, and I mustered the courage to call out to him.
“Dad, what are you doing up at this hour?”
“Hm? Oh, Sora.”
“Don’t just say ‘Oh, Sora’! Isn’t that just a storage room? If Kuro or Shiori woke up and saw you staring at the door like that, they’d be so freaked out they might actually wet themselves.”
“…Ah, that’s right. This is the storage room, isn’t it?”
My father’s cryptic response left me both exasperated and slightly worried. Was he starting to lose it?
“It’s been a storage room since before I was born. Why are you phrasing it like a question?”
“Well, the world’s been changing a lot lately, hasn’t it? I’ve been checking around to see if there’s anything unusual in the house, and… there’s just something about this room that feels off.”
“Off? What do you mean?”
Looking at the door, I didn’t sense anything out of the ordinary. This room, located near my parents’ bedroom, had always been used as a storage room for as long as I could remember.
If our understanding of this “storage room” was somehow wrong, then we might be under the influence of something external…
Suddenly, an image of El, the self-proclaimed goddess with white hair, flashed in my mind, filling me with unease.
(Why am I thinking of El at a time like this? Could she somehow be involved in this too?)
I shook my head to clear away my overly anxious thoughts. Maybe I was just being paranoid, given everything that had been happening recently.
After a moment, my father placed his hand on the door and slowly opened it, turning on the light inside.
Curious, I peeked in from the side to take a look at the room.
What unfolded before me was not the storage room I had imagined.
A large bookshelf lined one wall, filled with photo albums, books about mythology, and titles on topics like the “Simulation Hypothesis,” “Virtual Reality Theory,” and other VR-related technical books.
(Are those… Dad’s…?)
While the mythology books didn’t make much sense to me, the VR-related ones seemed fitting. My father worked as a debugger, so it wasn’t surprising if he owned books like these. Maybe he stashed them here and forgot about them.
Looking around, I noticed an old gaming PC setup, complete with a microphone and various equipment neatly packed into cardboard boxes.
At a glance, it looked less like a storage room and more like a space someone used for streaming or other work-related activities.
I had never been curious enough to open this room before, but I never expected it to look like this inside.
What’s more, it was surprisingly clean. There was no dust floating in the air, suggesting it was regularly maintained. Only my mom or Shiori would be diligent enough to keep it in this condition.
“Hmm. The books seem like yours, Dad, but the equipment… Could Mom have been using this as a streaming room? I’ve never heard anything about that before.”
Some of the gear included high-end ASMR microphones. Maybe she kept it a secret out of embarrassment or to avoid me finding out.
“So that’s why you called it a storage room, to keep me from noticing it?”
“Don’t tell anyone about this, okay? If she finds out, she’ll be in a bad mood for a whole week.”
“Got it. I’ll keep it a secret, don’t want to risk dinner turning into a disaster.”
With that agreement between us men, my dad stepped further into the room and pulled a thick album from the bookshelf. When he opened it, his usual laid-back demeanor was replaced by an unusually grim expression.
“Dad, is something wrong?”
Finding his reaction strange, I leaned over to glance at the album. The photos inside were of me as a baby, nothing out of the ordinary at first glance.
—But upon closer inspection, I noticed something peculiar.
Though the photos only featured me, more than half of them weren’t centered. They all seemed oddly misaligned.
My dad was never known to be bad at photography, so this level of sloppiness seemed unusual. As I puzzled over this, wondering if he was just shocked by the poor quality of the old photos, my dad silently closed the album and returned it to the shelf.
Then he moved to the PC, pressing the power button.
The machine booted up quickly, displaying a clean home screen on its large monitor. A brief glance revealed nothing strange about it either.
“Maybe it’s been reset? There’s nothing unusual here, it’s just a normal computer.”
After checking for any leftover files, my dad powered the PC down. As the whirring sound faded, the room once again fell into silence.
In the end, we didn’t find anything particularly interesting.
Just as I was about to say that, I caught a glimpse of something, or rather, someone. Sitting in the chair next to my dad, I saw the white-haired girl, El Aurum.
“—!?”
Startled, I rubbed my eyes and looked again. But the girl was gone. Only my dad remained, giving me a puzzled look in response to my reaction.
“What’s wrong all of a sudden, Sora?”
“Oh, uh… it’s nothing. I think I’m just tired.”
“Honestly, you’ve got plans tomorrow, right? If you’re tired, you should head to bed.”
“Oh, yeah… tomorrow we’re meeting at Inori’s house to hang out at their private pool.”
“Wait, are you wearing a bikini or something?”
His face completely serious, my dad’s question made a vein throb in my temple.
“…Seriously, Dad? Why the hell would I wear something like that?”
“Oh, right. Of course. Even if you’ve turned into a girl, you wouldn’t wear a swimsuit like that, huh?”
His voice wavered, making it obvious that he’d been at least half-serious.
As if I’d ever fully embrace living the “girl life.”
I wanted to give him a thorough scolding, but it was 2 AM. If we started bickering now, we’d wake everyone else up.
Swallowing my irritation, I decided to head back to my room.
“Yaaawn… I’m exhausted. Anyway, I’ll turn in for the night. See you in the morning.”
“Alright. Good night.”
“Good night. You should get some sleep too, Dad.”
That earlier vision of El? It was probably just a hallucination from exhaustion.
I’d sleep it off and prepare for tomorrow.
As I walked toward my room, a voice faintly echoed behind me:
**”Sora, don’t forget our promise.”**
It sounded like El’s voice.
But overcome by sleepiness, I dismissed it as my imagination and kept walking forward without looking back.