A Smell That Somehow Puts One at Ease
How much time had passed since her duel with Cheon A-rang?
In the now-empty sparring arena, long since abandoned by every spectator, the Female Knight Lee Seo-rin lay sprawled flat on her back, staring blankly up at the ceiling as she muttered in sheer disbelief.
"I lost…"
She had been defeated by Cheon A-rang.
A-rang had become a single savage black panther, rampaging across the arena and raking it with those destructive claws and fangs, while Seo-rin herself had been nothing more than a helpless buffalo—trampled and violated without offering any real resistance.
It was the kind of overwhelming, pride-shattering defeat that would have left any normal person sobbing in fury for days on end.
And yet, strangely, not a single tear welled in Lee Seo-rin’s eyes.
Of course she felt the sting of losing to her rival, and deep in her heart she had already sworn, Next time I will not fall!—a resolve to keep moving forward. But the questions raised by the sheer power and movement A-rang had displayed earlier had already blown away every tear that should have gathered at the corners of her eyes.
"I always knew the wretch was ahead of me… yet never before has the gap been this vast. And I, of all people—I who have spent the entire past year stopping her every misdeed—knew her true strength better than anyone."
That was precisely why she could not believe it.
In a mere handful of days, Cheon A-rang had grown so dramatically.
What on earth could have happened to her while Seo-rin was away on that provincial commission? What could possibly have granted her such explosive growth?
"A chance encounter of some kind? Or… a secret known only to A-rang herself… a secret?"
As she turned the mystery of her rival’s sudden strength over in her mind, Seo-rin suddenly recalled the final words A-rang had flung at her just before leaving the arena—those lips curled in a savage grin as she looked down at Seo-rin still sprawled on the floor.
"That’s right… she looked straight at me while I stared up in disbelief and said it… ‘Surprised? It’s all thanks to our Seung-yong.’ She spoke as if this growth of hers was entirely the work of her own underling."
Goo Seung-yong.
The faithful right hand who idolized Cheon A-rang—the same A-rang who went around picking fights and committing every sort of villainy across Hankuk University.
"Come to think of it… last time, at Sindorim Station, A-rang was definitely with Goo Seung-yong. The two of them had flipped a train and were up on top of it doing that shameless ‘combined piss’ act or whatever they called it!"
Could that underling have been the secret to her strength even then?
"Surely Goo Seung-yong cast some sort of magical buff… no. He is a warrior. He could not have used magic. Then… did he discover some special training method?"
Given that a mere D-class had somehow made B-class Cheon A-rang stronger, the thought of illegal drugs would have been natural. Yet astonishingly, the possibility of drugs never even entered Lee Seo-rin’s mind—not so much as the first letter of the word.
She believed without a shred of doubt that her rival A-rang was a true warrior among warriors who would rather die than rely on something as base as drugs. And as for Goo Seung-yong himself, though he was only D-class, she had always respected the stubborn diligence with which he trained without ever giving up—exactly as befitting A-rang’s subordinate.
"Surely that… combined piss of theirs cannot be the secret to strength…"
The moment the thought of Goo Seung-yong rose, the image of him from a few days ago at Sindorim Station—standing atop the monsterized train, performing that shameless combined-piss act with A-rang, and the forearm-thick cock he had been swinging—flashed through Seo-rin’s mind. She shook her head hard, banishing the flood of phallic images, then slowly pushed herself up off the floor.
"In the end I have no choice but to ask Goo Seung-yong himself…"
He had certainly been disciplined last weekend for his lewd acts with Eracila at Dongmyo.
"He claimed there were complicated circumstances, then proceeded to creampie Eracila right in front of my eyes. It was so outrageous I seized him on the spot and handed him over to the Hunter Police…"
Of course, watching Silvanel climax while pissing everywhere had been quite the spectacle as well, but apparently there really had been complicated circumstances; the school had given him a punishment that amounted to house arrest.
"Ordinarily he would be holed up at home… yet the wretch possesses a shamelessness every bit the equal of A-rang’s. There is every chance he is brazenly showing his face at school again, plotting something new with her."
Even if he were quietly reflecting at home, the possibility that A-rang would simply summon him was extremely high.
The vivid image of those two villains scheming together made Seo-rin grind her teeth. She rose to her feet and headed straight for the locker room.
"They are no doubt swaggering about, proud of having beaten me once. But they will not catch me a second time. I shall uncover that secret no matter what… Hm?"
Shhhhhhh—
While she was still deciding how best to punish those scoundrels, the sudden sound of a shower reached her ears and stopped her in her tracks.
"Why is there a shower running…? Is someone using it?"
At first she thought it might be A-rang, but she quickly shook her head. A-rang had gone to the locker room first, true—but Seo-rin had already been lying in the arena long enough for A-rang to have showered five or six times over.
"That energetic A-rang would already have finished and either gone looking for another fight or headed into a dungeon… Wait. The locker-room door is open?!"
Who on earth was using it with so little caution?!
She had been tilting her head at how strangely loud the shower sounded; never had she imagined the reason was that the door had not been properly closed.
Seo-rin hurriedly glanced around to make sure no one was passing by, then let out a sigh of relief at the completely empty corridor—not so much as an ant in sight.
"Whoever it is, I shall have to remind them to be more careful when using the locker room."
Resolving to give a firm warning, she stepped right up to the door—
"Kh… W-what is this… this smell?!"
At that very moment an indescribably strange scent drifted out through the crack along with the sound of the shower. Seo-rin’s face twisted in shock and she scrambled several steps back from the door.
"W-what was that smell just now?! This… this bizarre scent that, the instant I breathed it in, made my womb and pussy clench as if they were being wrung dry?!"
It was the first time in her life she had ever smelled such a thick, lustful odor.
A pure virgin who had never so much as been near a man—who could walk past a spider tomorrow and have it spin a web without anyone batting an eye—had no hope of recognizing the true nature of this stimulating, carnal fragrance that could only be found at the scene of mating, where the fluids and pheromones of male and female mixed together.
Failing to identify it, Seo-rin carefully leaned her face toward the crack once more, determined to discover the source of the strange scent.
The moment she sniffed a few times—
"Hnnngh?! I-it really was not my imagination. It is leaking from this place! I still do not know what it is, but this… this filthy smell no proper woman should ever inhale is coming from here…?!"
The powerful erotic fragrance stabbed into her nostrils again. Her thighs pressed together of their own accord. Seo-rin realized she had not been mistaken.
"What in the world… No. This is no time for questions. First I must confirm the scene itself. The culprit who spread this smell is still showering, so I shall slip in quietly…!!"
Fearing the culprit might escape, she entered the locker room as stealthily as an infiltrator, maintaining complete silence.
"Hoooough?!"
Naturally, the concentrated erotic scent inside was incomparably thicker than the mere wisp that had leaked through the crack. For an instant her legs nearly gave out, strength fleeing from her pussy outward—but she managed to keep her balance and quickly pressed a scrap of cloth she found on the floor over her nose and mouth.
"Kh… Even this has a somewhat strange smell… yet still, my lower belly is calming a little. It is a smell that somehow puts one at ease."
The striped scrap of cloth was rather peculiar, and the scent rising from it felt faintly suspicious, yet without it she would not even have been able to breathe in a locker room saturated with that overpowering odor. Holding the cloth firmly over her nose and mouth, Seo-rin surveyed her surroundings.
"Ssssss… haaah… The windows are intact, and there are no signs of forced entry. It does not appear someone broke in from outside to spread this filthy smell. Hm?"
Then the unidentified person currently showering must be the one who released it?
While that thought formed, her gaze fell on the neatly folded clothes resting on the central bench of the locker room, and she tilted her head.
Of course clothes would be present in a locker room—yet the garments folded so carefully on that bench were clothes that absolutely should never appear inside a women’s locker room.
"Sssss—haaah— An enormously large T-shirt. A size like this… the wearer must be over one hundred ninety centimeters. These pants as well… and these shoes are most certainly not a woman’s size…?"
At that moment Seo-rin’s expression hardened as she spotted something on the sole of one shoe.
"This is definitely… the pair Goo Seung-yong often wore when he went out to the convenience store…?!"
Shhhhhhhhh—
Her eyes quietly turned toward the shower stall. And as if the secret, once uncovered, now wished to reveal itself fully, a sound that until now had been buried beneath the rush of water finally reached her ears.
Squelch♡ Squelch♡ Squelch♡ Squelch♡
—Ah…♡ So fucking good…♡
"Th-this sound—?!"
As if she had just understood everything, Lee Seo-rin clapped both hands over her nose and mouth and let out a silent scream of pure shock.