The Axe Mark
The sun was sinking behind the northern forest. Long streaks of sunset stretched through the leaves, birds called as they returned to their roosts, and a cool evening breeze brushed the tip of his nose. Tomorrow they would finally reach Ludel. This was the last campsite of their long journey. Yet the scene unfolding at the heart of that campsite, right before dinner, had nothing to do with peace.
“Aaaargh! Master! My waist! It’s snapping in half! Please!”
Hans’s scream tore through the woods. He sat on the ground with his legs spread wide, while a massive, bear-like man—Kane—stood behind him. Kane pressed his knee into Hans’s back and leaned his full weight down.
Crack.
The sound of bones twisting came from Hans’s pelvis.
“Quit whining, kid! A man’s strength is in his waist! You need flexibility if you’re going to swing a sword or work all night, don’t you?”
Kane’s logic was relentless.
“I asked you to teach me martial arts! Why are you only making me stretch?! Aaaagh!”
“Shut up! A warrior’s body must bend like a willow! Bend until your stomach touches the ground!”
Kane added more pressure.
“Ugh! Ack!”
Hans’s upper body was forced forward. The muscles inside his thighs stretched so tight they felt ready to snap.
“Tsk. So stiff.”
A cold voice drifted down from above. It was Cecilia. She sat on a boulder with her arms crossed, watching the pathetic spectacle.
“He really is a wooden block. Is that all you can spread? What use is a man with flexibility like that?”
Her eyes were filled with contempt and mockery. Rejecting his confession apparently hadn’t been enough; now she was openly insulting him.
Hans felt a surge of anger. He lifted his head, eyes bloodshot from the pain.
“Easy for you to say!”
Cecilia’s eyebrow twitched.
“Oh? Shall I show you?”
She set down her canteen and stood. The hem of her long coat fluttered as she walked straight toward him.
“Watch closely. This is the basics.”
Standing in place, Cecilia lifted one leg straight up. With a smooth shhhk, her leg split open to a perfect 180 degrees, shooting toward the sky like a boneless mollusk. The posture was flawless, without the slightest tremor.
“……!”
Hans couldn’t close his mouth. But it wasn’t just her flexibility that shocked him. As Cecilia stretched her leg, the tight leather pants pulled taut across her crotch. The strained fabric revealed an obscene curve—the distinct outline of her labia forming a sharp, vertical Y-shape. The so-called axe mark.
Hans swallowed hard.
Crazy… if I took her in that position…
His brain’s simulator kicked into overdrive on its own. If he hooked those flexible legs over his shoulders and thrust? He imagined a depth far beyond anything he’d felt with Eila or Masa—an overwhelming plunge that could reach past her cervix and into the very depths of her womb. Hans pretended to study her form with a serious expression.
“Hmm… certainly… perfect.”
His mouth spoke of flexibility, but his pupils were locked onto the seam of those tight leather pants stretched over her groin.
Cecilia slowly lowered her leg and snorted.
“See? Any warrior worth the name can do at least this. All you do is run your mouth, porter.”
She sat back on the boulder and crossed her legs. Hans looked away and shook his head.
Get a grip, you idiot. She’s the enemy. The woman who kicked you to the curb.
Yet the afterimage of that Y-shaped line burned itself into his retinas and refused to fade.
Kane cackled beside him and fanned the flames.
“Oh dear, youngest. You lost to a girl. Where’s your pride? Spread wider! Wider!”
Kane pressed down on Hans’s back again.
“Aaaagh! Fine! I’ll do it!”
Hans’s scream echoed through the forest once more.
An hour later, Hans was drenched in sweat. His shirt clung to his back like a second skin, and droplets fell steadily from his hair.
“Good. Next is waist flexibility.”
Kane ordered a change in posture.
“Lie face down.”
Hans dropped to all fours and lowered himself to the ground.
“Keep your upper body as low as possible! Push your hips toward the sky! Round your spine, then straighten it!”
Kane patted Hans’s backside.
“Put strength here! Tighten your sphincter! Imagine an enemy stabbing at you with a spear from behind! Clench like your life depends on not getting pierced!”
Hans obeyed, pressing his chest to the ground while thrusting his hips high. It was the cat pose. In other words, the perfect rear-entry position. An utterly embarrassing stance, yet he couldn’t refuse under the pretext of training.
“Hup…!”
Hans grunted and flexed. His round, firm buttocks tightened into hard muscle. The thin, sweat-soaked pants wedged between his cheeks, shamelessly outlining every contour. Each time he tensed, the muscles twitched. The bouncy elasticity and full volume were hard to believe on a man.
“……”
Cecilia, who had been drinking water on her boulder, froze. Her gaze locked onto Hans’s ass. The male backside twitching right before her eyes.
The lines… are rather pretty?
The owner of that heavy thing she had touched under the blanket two nights ago possessed an ass like this? Her imagination ignited. What would it feel like to grab those cheeks with both hands? Would she feel the muscles squirming against her palms?
Cecilia clenched and unclenched her fists. The moment she realized what she was thinking, her face burned.
I’ve lost my mind. That’s just a porter’s ass. Why am I…
But her eyes refused to move away. When Hans shouted “Uraaah!” and lifted his hips even higher, the pants stretched to the breaking point and the outline of his ass became even sharper. Cecilia swallowed dryly. Her mouth had gone completely dry.
Then—
“……?”
Cecilia’s brow furrowed. A chill ran down her spine. The same sticky, unpleasant sensation of being watched that she felt while staring at Hans—as if someone else was also staring at him.
Is it just my imagination?
She turned and glared into the forest. Dense trees. Branches swaying in the wind. Nothing. No presence, no killing intent.
“Hmm.”
Cecilia tilted her head and lifted her cup again. But her senses had not been wrong. The owner of that gaze was simply positioned far beyond the range of her detection.
Deep in the forest, at least a kilometer from the campsite. High in a massive ancient tree that had stood for centuries. Hidden among lush leaves, the elf Serena sat on a thick branch. In her hands was a high-powered telescope carved from spirit stone—something human craftsmanship could never replicate.
Through the lens, Hans’s figure appeared crystal clear.
“My, my. So stiff.”
Serena clicked her tongue.
“With hips like that, how could he handle night duties? To keep up with an elf’s elegant and skillful mating, the waist must be flexible.”
She pouted, clearly disappointed. She had been searching for a useful male to aid in species preservation, but human men were all so rigid and crude.
“Rejected. I’ll have to look for another—”
The moment she lowered the telescope, Hans changed posture inside the lens. The cat pose. Hips thrust high toward the sky.
“……!”
Serena’s eyes flew wide open. She pressed the telescope back to her face. The view filled entirely with Hans’s ass. Sweat-glistened pants. Twitching glute muscles beneath. The deep valley where the fabric dug in each time he flexed.
“Oh my god…”
A sigh of admiration escaped her.
“Just look at that ass. So plump and springy. I’ve never seen a man with such a pretty backside.”
She licked her lips, but the rear view alone wasn’t enough.
“I need to see the front. The front.”
Serena leaped nimbly to a neighboring branch. Not a single leaf stirred. From the side, she trained the telescope on him again. The side profile of Hans in that prone position was utterly exposed. With his hips pushed back and waist lowered, a gap formed between his thighs and lower belly—and that gap was filled by a heavy, bulging mass.
“And that front… it’s a weapon. A goddamn weapon.”
Serena swallowed hard. Flexibility? She couldn’t care less.
“Who needs flexibility? If he slams that thing in hard enough, my bones will melt.”
She felt a throbbing in her lower abdomen. An elf’s sensitive senses were reacting to Hans’s raw masculinity.
At that moment, Hans finished his training and stood. He flapped his soaked shirt to cool off, then grabbed a towel and headed toward the valley. Serena’s eyes flashed.
“Oh? He worked up a sweat, so he’s going to wash?”
A wicked smile curved her lips.
“Eligibility on hold. Let’s follow him first. Seeing him naked will make things certain.”
Serena leaped to a thick branch on the next tree. The moment her feet touched, she sprang again, racing across the canopy like the wind. Her eyes glittered with pure greed.
Hans had slipped away from camp alone and made his way downstream to the valley creek beside the campsite. He couldn’t stand the sticky feeling anymore after sweating so much.
“Hoo…”
He scanned the surroundings. No one around. Without hesitation, he stripped everything off.
Whoosh.
His shirt came off, revealing a solid upper body. Then pants and underwear slid down together.
Splash.
He stepped naked into the creek. Cold water wrapped around his ankles. But far more noticeable was the heavy, swinging weight between his legs. Even in the chilly water it showed no sign of shrinking—a massive, thick club. Its weight slapped against his inner thighs with every step.
And every inch of it was being watched from a tree branch far, far away.
“……!”
Serena stopped breathing. Her gaze wasn’t on his face or muscles—it was fixed solely between his legs.
“No way…”
She covered her mouth. Length that reached halfway down his thighs. Girth that one hand couldn’t fully wrap around. And the blunt, threatening shape of the glans. It existed on a completely different dimension from the elf males she had occasionally seen in her 120 years of life. Elven ones were sleek and pretty, but lacked power. But that thing…
“It’s brutal.”
It was violently huge. Elves were commonly thought of as refined and ascetic. Humans fantasized that they lived on dew and treated even sex like elegant art. But that was bullshit. At least it didn’t apply to the elf currently drooling on a tree branch.
To Serena, Hans was simply a walking giant dildo.
Gulp.
Her throat burned. She imagined it. The feeling of that thick glans catching at the entrance of her narrow passage. The pain and pleasure of being stretched to the limit as it forced its way in. The violence of those bulging veins scraping her inner walls as he pounded like a beast.
“Ah… just imagining it is making me wet.”
Her thighs rubbed together on their own. The space between her legs grew slick.
“I don’t need anything else. Stiff? Flexibility? All forgiven. That one tool is more than enough.”
Serena cast off her elegant elven mask. Only the face of a female honest to her desire remained.
“Should I kidnap him?”
She seriously considered it.
“Knock him out right now and drag him away? Lock him deep in the forest… and milk him until his seed runs dry…”
The impulse to leap down and pounce on him rattled her reason.
“Wait for me, human. I’ve marked you as mine.”