So Hot, What Did You Give Me to Drink?

(Content warning: this is pure Mary Sue fiction. Just switch off your brain and read; there's no depth or deeper meaning.

Multiple male leads, all sexually inexperienced. They're very subservient and simping, and each one will only be more subservient and more of a simp than the last.

The female lead is invincible from the start, calculatingly self-serving, selfish and authoritarian, with a very nasty personality. She only uses the male leads and has no love for them. You can think of it as how someone treats pets, or how an emperor treats the consorts in his harem.

There's no female rivalry. Both guides and sentinels can be male or female. Every comparison in the story concerns rank, strength or personality, not gender. Don't be so sensitive that you call every comparison female rivalry. There's no rivalry to speak of.

This is my first time writing this type of story, so I'm bound to hit some people's triggers. Writing isn't easy, so if you don't like it, you can click away. Please go easy on me, and thank you.)

"Retreat! Retreat! The captain's rampage level has reached 99%! He's about to mutate completely! Go!"

On the scorched earth under the glow of fire, several men in black-and-blue combat suits scrambled aboard a hovercar and fled at top speed.

A mutated octopus the size of a three-story building, covered in tentacles and eyes, was still thrashing and hissing as it wriggled after them.

Suddenly, a wave of immense, powerful mental energy struck. The mutated octopus went rigid, and several of its pus-oozing tentacles fell limp to the ground.

When the dust settled, a black-haired young woman in a gray outdoor jacket and skinny jeans walked out as though she were taking a leisurely stroll.

She came up to the man, who had been human a few minutes ago but whose limbs had now all turned into beast claws, and examined him closely. Her delicate brows drew together slightly, and a flash of dark blue light passed through her black eyes.

"Good boy, tell me, where is this?"

Her cool voice brushed past his ear on the breeze, accompanied by the fresh, delicate scent of lily of the valley. The savage-looking man suddenly froze, and the changes to his body came to an abrupt halt.

"This is Iota M19, K9 District."

With his brain controlled by mental energy, the man wore a vacant expression and was very obedient.

The usually calm and composed young woman, however, looked uncharacteristically bewildered and confused by his answer.

Iota M19?

What the hell kind of place is that?

Where did taking a nap land me?

Xin Lan frowned and continued controlling the man to get answers to her questions.

As it turned out, she had transmigrated bodily from the apocalypse to a world centered on sentinels and guides.

The entire world had been polluted and humanity's habitable regions encroached upon. To fight pollutants and mutated species, humans had divided into three categories: sentinels, guides and ordinary people.

Ordinary people were responsible for reproduction, infrastructure and production in the safe zones.

Sentinels possessed powerful mental energy and offensive capabilities, making them important military weapons for clearing out pollutants and mutated species and expanding habitable territory.

Because of their hypersensitive senses and prolonged battles against pollutants, sentinels' mental energy was highly prone to spiraling out of control and entering a rampage. Once their rampage level exceeded 95%, they began to mutate and gradually lost their reason. At 100%, they mutated completely and became mutated species.

Although guides generally had less mental energy than sentinels and physiques no different from ordinary people, they had the ability to cleanse and soothe sentinels' mental landscapes, preventing them from rampaging and mutating.

Thus, sentinels and guides had depended on each other in symbiosis ever since the initial division.

However, after a bout of cosmic radiation a century ago, human genes began favoring sentinel awakenings. The number of sentinels surged, while the number of guides fell by multiples, and their awakened mental energy ranks grew lower and lower.

At present, the ratio of guides to sentinels on Iota M19 had reached a dangerous 1:8,000.

And there was only one SSS-rank guide.

Because that guide carried the hopes of all humanity, they currently worked at the Sanctuary in District K1 of Central City, the safest place there was. Several high-ranking sentinels protected them around the clock, and even the Federation's chief executive indulged their every wish and cared for them in every way.

Hearing this, Xin Lan scoffed.

What care and indulgence? Aren't they just being treated like an object and controlled by those at the center of power? They don't even have basic freedom.

They're the only one at the highest rank. By all rights, shouldn't they at least get to be chief executive?

There must be something wrong with this Federation.

Done complaining, Xin Lan entered her little puppet's mental landscape to try cleansing and soothing it.

In the apocalypse, the brains of humans without mental-type abilities had been as fragile as paper firewalls and completely empty, so she generally only used her mental energy to control, interfere and attack.

This was the first time in her life she had entered someone else's brain and seen a landscape, and she found it fascinating.

After she easily cleared away the stubborn black filth, her little puppet's mental landscape looked brand new.

A bright moon hung high amid a sky full of stars, and red roses bloomed eagerly across the mountains. Standing beneath a white jade dome, Xin Lan could almost smell their rich fragrance.

"How amazing."

Xin Lan had struggled to survive in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, where yellow and gray were the predominant colors, since she was ten. She had never seen such breathtaking beauty.

She was mesmerized and admired it for quite a while before leaving his mental landscape.

"How far is this from the nearest sentinel tower in K9 District?"

"Over 500 kilometers."

Xin Lan: ...

Damn! That far?

If I'd known, I would have kept those guys who ran away here too. At least they had a car.

"Do you have a car? If you do, get it over here."

"Yes."

With his rampage level back at zero, Chi Lin's mutated beast claws returned to normal, and his five senses quickly recovered.

Having his mental landscape thoroughly cleansed for the first time felt so good that he was floating on air and nearly moved to tears. The scent of lily of the valley lingering around him made him even more mentally excited.

Behind his tightly closed eyelids, his eyes darted wildly, and his breathing grew heavier and more fervent.

But under Xin Lan's mental control, he couldn't open his eyes.

Although he didn't know why a guide had appeared in the contaminated zone, he desperately wanted to open his eyes.

So badly! I want to see who the guide who saved me is!

"Oh, it's here already? High tech really is something."

Watching the sleek hovercar speed in from the horizon and come to a steady stop in front of her, Xin Lan whistled, jumped straight in and had her little puppet activate the autopilot.

Destination: K9 District's sentinel tower.

K9 District was a frontier city. Because it bordered the contaminated zone and was too dangerous, no guides were willing to stay. As a result, all sorts of people were mixed together here, and the five sentinel towers, including the Sanctuary, were filled almost entirely with crazy sentinels whose rampage levels were extremely high and who had gone without a guide's soothing for a long time.

With no guides around, they could only survive by injecting Guide Pheromones.

Low-rank Guide Pheromones had too low a compatibility rate to be very effective, while high-rank Guide Pheromones were exorbitantly expensive. As a result, most of the sentinels who had survived despite prolonged mental torment were highly ranked and battle-hardened.

Likewise, their mental disorders were severe. Not only did most have McDonald's attributes, they were so far gone that even three days and nights of electric shocks and whipping would only leave them feeling it wasn't pleasurable enough.

The little puppet Xin Lan had left behind had called himself an SS-rank sentinel, but she still had little idea what sentinel ranks meant.

After all, cleansing his mental landscape had been easy.

If cleansing an SSS-rank sentinel was just as simple, she was determined to take the Federation chief executive's seat.

Of course, even if it wasn't simple, she still intended to take it.

After all, she was already here.

The hovercar stopped in front of a massive black tower that rose into the clouds, its top nowhere in sight. Ink-dark seawater beat against the jagged reefs outside the tower. If not for the hovercars zipping through the sky, the place could easily have served as a horror movie location.

As soon as Xin Lan got out, she spotted the self-service testing station outside the tower.

According to her little puppet, the station was placed outside so sentinels who had recently advanced could conveniently confirm their mental energy ranks. Its testing device was therefore the same model as the one at the District K1 Sanctuary, with an accuracy of 99.99%.

She had never tested her mental energy rank before. First, she needed to understand how the device measured mental energy so she could control her score.

Otherwise, if her mental energy tested at SSS rank or above, she would definitely be taken straight to District K1 and placed under control, with no further chance of reaching the center of power.

After carefully reading the instructions, she entered her basic information, stood beneath the device and began slowly releasing her mental energy.

The progress bar shot straight up.

[D-rank, B-rank, S]

Xin Lan quickly stopped before the device had finished its announcement.

Good grief, that progress bar jumps way too fast.

Looks like I'll have to be more careful when I take the official test.

[Beep! Test complete! Esteemed guide Xin Lan, your mental energy is S-rank!]

[Your K9 District resident information has been automatically registered!]

[You have been identified as newly awakened. Star Brain has matched you with the five escort sentinels with the highest current compatibility rates in the region!]

The testing device kept beeping, giving Xin Lan a headache.

Fine, it registered me automatically, but why did it match me with sentinels too?

I didn't say I wanted any.

What use would a bunch of mentally ill people with McDonald's attributes be? Wouldn't they just be a burden?

As she was looking down on them, the device made another announcement.

[During the trial period, you may convert escort sentinels into exclusive sentinels at any time. All of an exclusive sentinel's assets will become yours.]

[If you are dissatisfied with an escort sentinel in any way, you may return half of that sentinel's assets at any time to dissolve the bond. If you still have fewer than five exclusive sentinels at that point, Star Brain will match you with other sentinels.]

[The assets of the five escort sentinels have been transferred to your name.]

[Your current account balance is: 8xx0000000000 star coins. Available balance: 4xx0000000000 star coins.]