A New Encounter (1)
"...Nngh. ...Nngh."
In a cave untouched by even a sliver of sunlight, a woman's moans drifted through the dark. They were so small, so emptied of strength, that they sounded closer to sobbing than to pleasure.
A single torch did little more than peel the darkness back, and by its light the cave was a scene of utter wretchedness. Naked men and women lay tangled together. It would have been hard to call what they were doing lovemaking. The women's arms were bound. All they could do was spread their legs, open their mouths, or—if any strength remained—rock their hips.
Every woman's body was so thoroughly soiled with semen that a patch of unmarked skin was almost impossible to find. Their eyes were vacant, emptied of light. Their broken minds could no longer even register the pleasure of sex, and the sounds they made were nothing more than the wheeze of lungs collapsing under the piston-shock of each thrust.
Amid all of that, there was one woman who still managed, however faintly, to give voice.
A small alcove jutted from the outer edge of the cave where the orgy was taking place, arranged like a seat of honor. A man and a woman occupied it. The man sat sprawled in a chair with an arrogant ease. The woman—long pink hair falling to her waist, a trace of youth still lingering in her features—was with him.
They, too, were in the middle of sex, just like the others. The difference was that the woman was the one working, rocking her hips with desperate effort atop the man in the chair. That this was not her will was obvious enough from the tear tracks still wet on her face.
"Hey. Your hips are getting lazy. Want me to kill one of them?"
"N-no, please! I'll do better, I will..."
"A bitch with tits that small better put her pussy to good use. Don't make me tell you every damn time. Figure it out yourself. Got it?"
"Yes. Yes..."
She began rocking her hips again, frantic. There was not a shred of desire for her own pleasure in the motion. She moved only out of duty, because he had threatened to kill the other women if she stopped. But the cock was so large compared to her body that it made her lower belly bulge with every thrust, and it inevitably stirred the instincts of a female, pumping pleasure into her whether she wanted it or not.
"Nngh, hah. Hah... nnhah..."
Watching her obey so meekly even as her face made her disgust plain, writhing under a pleasure she could not refuse, the man wore a thin, ugly smile.
Of course, the men had not the slightest intention of killing the other women. They were bandits who doubled as slave traders, and the women were a fine source of income. With the war against the Demon King's army at its height, a few people vanishing here and there barely even made the news. For a slave trader, it was the perfect season.
Then again, the war against the Demon King's army had already been raging when they were born. They kidnapped women from chaotic regions even closer to the front lines than this, then sold them as slaves to rich, idle men in the rear.
A proper slave trader might treat his merchandise roughly, but he would never use them himself until they were wrecked the way these men did. Buyers preferred slaves who still had some life in them, after all. Some liked to break them with their own hands. Others enjoyed the fresh reactions. The reason these men used their "merchandise" so freely was that they were bandits first and slave traders a distant second.
They snatched slaves near the front, murdered any hapless fools they ran into along the way and stripped them of their belongings, then sold the slaves wherever they landed. The money they made off the sales was little more than pocket change.
"Making money's this easy, y'know. Ain't that right, boys?"
"Keheheh! That's right, Boss!"
"We caught some real high-grade stock this time. Sell these and we can loaf around for months."
"Heheh. Hey, Boss. Before we sell 'em, could we maybe...?"
The man they called Boss considered the groveling request for a moment, then spoke.
"Hmm.... Fine. I'm in a good mood. On the last day, I'll let every one of you have a taste of this pussy!"
"That's our Boss!!"
Amid the men stoking themselves into a frenzy, the woman—treated not as a person but as nothing more than a single hole—could only do her utmost not to sour his mood.
"Nnhah... haaah. Hic, nngh..."
Even so, she could not stop fresh tear tracks from cutting down her cheeks.
In truth, that woman had been a princess of the Veil Kingdom. A kingdom that no longer existed.
The front line against the Demon King's army had held more or less steady for decades, advancing and retreating in turn. Which, put another way, meant there had certainly been times when the line was driven back.
Her country had fought bravely on the front lines, but when the Demon King's army committed to a full push, they struck a fatal blow. The kingdom could not hold. It fell. The Demon King's forces, overextended, were later driven back by a counteroffensive from the allied armies, and humanity reclaimed its territory—but a nation already destroyed could not be brought back. By the time it fell, the entire royal family had already been executed.
...Or so it was believed. In truth, there had been one survivor.
The kingdom's third princess, Flora.
Raised as the youngest and doted on by everyone, she had been loved by her family even in the moment the kingdom fell. There was a secret passage out of the royal castle that no one else knew existed. But a secret passage ceases to be secret the moment someone uses it. It leaves a trail. And so her family agreed, all of them, to send her out alone.
They worried about sending their beloved youngest off by herself. And if the kingdom were ever to be rebuilt, it might have been wiser to save a prince. But every one of them wanted her to be safe, and they knew that escaping through a secret passage was no guarantee of survival. So they gave what little chance remained to Flora.
It was a human kind of family love—the sort you would never find among the royals in the rear, who put politics first and the future of humanity last.
Thanks to that sacrifice, Flora escaped the kingdom safely. But the world was not kind enough for a princess raised gently in a castle to survive on her own.
Raised as a princess of a front-line kingdom, she had been taught enough magic to fight in an emergency. She was already of age, and with just a little more training she would have gone to the front herself, to fight the Demon King's army alongside her older sisters and brothers. Gifted and trained from childhood, Flora possessed considerable combat power beneath that fragile appearance.
But combat power means nothing if you don't know how the world works.
Flora trusted the men who offered to take her to a village of refugees fleeing the Demon King's army. The next morning, she woke wearing a slave collar.
Slave collars were officially illegal, but they were magical items that circulated freely enough in the shadows. Their effect was to restrict the wearer's mana. Their durability, however, was poor—if you didn't bind the wearer's arms separately, some would smash the collar themselves and escape. Unfortunately, Flora did not have that kind of physical strength.
A mage like Flora could not fight with a collar restricting her mana. What followed were days steeped in violation. Her once-virgin body was trampled without ceremony. Her womb was filled with semen several times a day, until she was so caked in it that washing herself became meaningless.
The other women captured like her had already lost their minds to the abuse. They were no longer even females—just meat toilets that clenched when you thrust into them.
The reason Flora could keep her mind intact even then was her sense of duty. The duty of being the kingdom's sole survivor. And beyond even that, the duty of not betraying her family's final wish.
Splurt!
Even as another violent pulse of semen slammed into her womb and forced an orgasm that made her mind go white, Flora swore she would keep enduring. If you don't give up, a way will open. She clung to those words she had heard once, long ago.
She clenched her teeth and dragged up what little strength she had left. Her hips were already trembling from climaxing again and again, but she lifted them, pulled the cock free, and stretched out her tongue to clean the thing that had been tormenting her insides only moments before. Because if she didn't, they would beat the women lying collapsed on the floor. For a kind girl like her, watching the others get hurt was harder to bear than being hurt herself.
The sight of that monstrous cock, glazed in Flora's own juices and the man's semen, being cleaned by the slender princess's mouth was almost pitiful. But even then, the last light in Flora's eyes had not gone out.
That very composure only inflamed the men's sadism, earning her even more fervent abuse—but even if she had known what was coming, her heart would not have broken. There was far too much resting on her shoulders for her to collapse like this.
And that effort would, before long, be rewarded. One more day—until a female adventurer of rather peculiar tastes came bursting in. The sort who walked into any place that looked even slightly suspicious, on the off chance that someone inside might break her and violate her.