Via Agra (3)
Via remained dazed for quite some time.
The sight of Kyle and Emily passionately intertwining their tongues in that secluded spot simply refused to leave her mind.
She muttered blankly to herself.
“Just now… that was sex!”
“No, it wasn’t.”
What they had done was only a rather intense kiss. A sweet lovers’ kiss that had gone a little further—one brimming with raw desire. Still, it was clearly beyond the bounds of Via’s sexual knowledge.
“It wasn’t sex? Then what on earth is sex…!”
Via’s face was pure shock. She seemed to be struggling to accept that anything more extreme than what she had just witnessed could even exist.
This is driving me crazy.
I sank into thought. I already had more than enough on my plate—did I really have to look after this innocent young lady on top of everything else? But if things continued like this, it was painfully obvious Via would end up as a sacrificial lamb for the villains. Just look at the present situation. If the original Hex had been standing here, he would have grinned and said something like “I’ll teach you what sex is,” then put his hands all over her. Deserted spot, plenty of bushes—he would have happily taken her right then and there.
Now that I’ve taken over this body, that won’t happen…
But Hex was far from the only rape character in this world. There were his underlings from last time, the mage who treated Layla as a mortal enemy, the bald little brat, the poor, even pot-bellied nobles—all of them waiting in the wings for their turn to appear.
I’ll have to kill every last one of them.
As a pure, sheltered noble daughter, Via was the perfect prey. My conscience wouldn’t let me abandon her, so I decided to give her a proper education on the subject.
“Well, sex is…”
I was just about to start from the basics of convex and concave when someone appeared in the distance.
It was Layla. She planted herself between us as if shielding Via from me. How the hell had she known to come here?
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You just said the word se…x!”
“I did not.”
Or had I? Had I? I’d been hearing “sex” so much that I couldn’t even remember whether I’d actually said it.
Layla grabbed Via’s hand with a look of pure distaste and pulled her away.
“Come with me! He’s someone you absolutely should not be around!”
I watched the two of them recede into the distance and felt a wave of relief. I’d thought their relationship was pure hostility, but apparently it wasn’t that simple. Figuring Layla would take care of her just fine, I turned and headed back toward the mansion.
Back at the estate, Layla had already heard about Hex and Via from Kyle and Emily. Uneasy about that particular combination, she had rushed straight to the scene—only to overhear Hex’s casual mention of sex.
I knew he was trash!
While dragging Via back toward the mansion, Layla suddenly realized she was still holding the other girl’s hand and hastily let go. Via, however, remained in a complete daze, as if her soul had left her body.
“He didn’t do anything to you, did he?”
Seeing Via so unlike her usual self, Layla spoke with genuine worry.
“Well…”
Via recounted everything that had happened. When Layla heard what Kyle and Emily had been doing in that secluded spot—and what Hex had said afterward—her face flushed scarlet. The knowledge that people she knew had shared such an intimate kiss, the fact that she was hearing it from Via who wasn’t even part of the party, and the fresh wave of self-reproach for having misunderstood Hex yet again all tangled together until her head spun.
In that state, Via dropped what she clearly believed was a bombshell.
“But he said that wasn’t sex!”
“Well… that’s true.”
Some people insisted it didn’t count as sex unless you went all the way, so the statement wasn’t wrong. When Via stared at her with wide eyes as though Layla naturally knew everything, Layla caught the look and forced a confident smile.
“Looks like it was a bit too stimulating for you, Via.”
Via’s expression turned indignant.
“So you know what sex is, then?”
“Of course! Can’t be helped. I’ll explain it for you.”
Layla put on airs and began her lecture. What she had forgotten, however, was that there is a vast difference between simply knowing something and actually saying it out loud.
“Listen carefully! Sex is…”
The confident color drained from Layla’s face at lightning speed, replaced by a deep crimson. By the end she was finishing the explanation in a barely audible mutter. After hearing every last word, Via covered her mouth in pure disbelief.
“People actually do that…?”
Seeing Via’s shocked face, Layla recovered a little of her composure and laughed.
“Hmm. Via, you’re still just a kid.”
Completely oblivious to how thoroughly flushed her own face was, she said it with a smug little smile.
Via’s eyes went round.
“Then have you done it too?”
“O-Of course not!”
Putting on adult airs and having no chastity were two entirely different things. At Layla’s vehement denial, Via looked relieved.
“Then you haven’t even kissed either?”
When Via tried to place them on equal footing after confirming they were in the same boat, Layla bristled.
“I’ve done that much.”
“Really? Like… tongues all tangled up with a guy…?”
Layla floundered under Via’s stare, but fortunately the mansion servants appeared just then and the conversation was cut short.
And so the next day arrived.
The investigation team set out to look into the recent attack. It consisted of Kyle’s party, commissioned by Beyond, and Via, who had volunteered to join them.
“....”
“Ugh…”
Layla and Via both looked terrible. Neither of them had slept well after the previous day’s events.
Layla was lost in thought. She had put on a strong front in front of Via, but the truth was she herself had never even held a man’s hand, let alone kissed one. She hadn’t fretted over that fact much before. A chaste woman had always been one of the ideal images men sought, after all. She had assumed that interaction with the opposite sex would simply happen naturally someday.
Yesterday’s events had changed that.
To think even Emily would kiss…
She had always supported Kyle and Emily’s love, so she had known they would kiss eventually. But learning they had suddenly shared such a fierce, tongue-tangling kiss with no intermediate steps left her unable to even look Emily in the eye. Worse, once she knew, she started noticing things in their behavior—the placement of Kyle’s hands when he stood behind Emily, the way Emily’s face was flushed whenever the two of them reappeared after a brief absence. It felt as though her friend had suddenly climbed to some lofty height alone, and Layla felt a quiet sense of crisis. She was going to be left behind.
Then she spotted Mela and felt a rush of relief.
Mela hasn’t done it yet either, right?
Thinking that this pure girl might still be waiting for her prince, Layla gently stroked Mela’s hair.
“What’s wrong?”
Mela tilted her head slightly, looking pleased. Layla smiled. What she didn’t know was that Mela had already experienced her first kiss—and that the target had not been lips. She might never have met her prince, but she was already serving her princely master.
Once we arrived at the site of the previous day’s attack, I compared the flow of the event I remembered with the current situation. Aside from Via joining the investigation team, nothing seemed particularly different.
No major changes up to here.
But the moment the investigation began in earnest, events started diverging from what I knew—because the unexpected addition of Via was proving remarkably effective.
“This is remote surveillance magic. It’s been about a day since the link with the caster was severed.”
As a member of the Agra family, experts in magic-tool crafting and enchantment, Via immediately located and interpreted the residual traces right there on the spot. Information that originally would have required a trip back for Beyond to decipher was decoded on site, so progress was inevitably swift. The entire search wrapped up before the sun even set.
This stage was supposed to take several days… and we’ve already made it this far on the first day?
Standing before the cave that was almost certainly the culprit’s hideout, I couldn’t help but be impressed. I had planned to drop subtle hints whenever we got stuck, but there had been no need. With people who possessed exactly the right conditions for the strategy all gathered in one place, everything had progressed without a single hitch. That was something to celebrate. The enemy would still be unrecovered from yesterday’s fight, so striking now would make everything far easier.
We entered the cave—and immediately stopped at Mela’s sharp warning. A large magic circle was carved into the floor.
“This… is going to take a little time to interpret.”
While Via was still flustered by the unfamiliar formation and trying to decipher it—
Srrk.
From the shadowed depths of the cave, something pitch-black began rising as though emerging from the ground itself. They were the same monsters that had attacked Via the day before.
Battle erupted in an instant, but it was no real crisis. Having already fought them once, we knew the creatures were weak to physical impact. Kyle and Mela, the physical dealers, cut the enemies down while the rest of us provided support from the rear. In the middle of it all I simply swung my arms around half-heartedly. No matter how the fight ended, the subsequent development was fixed, so there was no point in wasting energy. Even if we wiped out every last monster without taking a scratch, the game would still switch to cutscene mode and force the event to proceed.
Just like now.
“Did we get them all?”
The moment Kyle finished off the last monster and spoke those words—
Srrk.
A monster suddenly burst from the earth and swung its claws toward the magic circle. Mela’s thrown dagger seemed to intercept it, yet even as the creature dissolved, the tip of one claw still grazed the formation.
Kwaaa—!
The magic circle activated and vomited a torrent of black magical power.
“…Fall back!”
Emily, Layla, and Via frantically raised defensive barriers, but it was useless. This wasn’t an attack. The massive current of magical energy swallowed us whole, and we were dragged into the swirling vortex.
A short while later—
“....”
I found myself somewhere else entirely, with an unconscious Layla at my side.