While You Were Away (3)
"Ah…!"
As the fabric of her clothes began to melt wherever the tentacles touched, Mela flushed crimson and thrashed against them.
Her arms and legs were already wound tight in their grip, but as a thief-class physical dealer, her strength was nothing to scoff at. Compared to Kyle or Hex it was embarrassingly modest — yet more than enough to break free of mere tentacle restraints.
But the moment those slick, glistening appendages brushed against her sensitive places, her whole body gave a startled shudder.
"…?"
The unfamiliar sensation left Mela reeling in confusion. And in that brief pause, the tentacles wasted no time.
Dozens of them swept across every inch of her, and in an instant her body was slick with their fluids.
Slick…
Mela's already skimpy clothes dissolved almost at once, leaving her all but naked, and the tentacles greedily indulged themselves against her bare skin. With even that thin layer of cloth gone, she felt every slimy caress directly — the slippery fluid clinging and tickling wherever it touched.
The awareness of it made her body grow strangely warm.
I have to get free…
Sensing something was wrong, Mela tried once more to put strength into her limbs — and that was when her heated skin registered every movement of the tentacles with even sharper clarity.
One of them dragged across her nipple.
"Hah—!"
A sweet, involuntary moan slipped from her lips. Startled by the sound of her own voice, she whipped her head around toward Emily. For reasons she couldn't name, she was certain no one else must hear her like this.
Fortunately, Emily was still unconscious.
"Hnn—!"
Was it the relief of confirming that? Somehow, holding back her moans felt even harder than before. The tentacles, as if savoring every sound she made, coiled around her faintly swollen breasts and her thighs. Fluid-slick skin and tentacle flesh slid together with wet, lewd little noises.
Mela felt as though she might cry.
"Stop… nnh!"
The moment she tried to plead, one tentacle brushed just below her navel.
A sensation utterly different from everything so far locked her body rigid. If what came before had felt like doing something she shouldn't, this felt like something to fear.
Slick…
"Hah—!"
The tentacle slid past as if gliding, leaving a thick trail of fluid from just below her navel all the way to her tailbone. And it wasn't only the tentacle's secretions.
"Nnh—!"
Mela bit down on her lip, fighting the pleasure — never realizing a thin thread of drool was already slipping from the corner of her own mouth.
Before long she had forgotten even why she had come here at all, pouring every scrap of will into simply enduring the pleasure. And the outcome had been decided from the start.
It wasn't long before Mela's expression went completely slack.
"Aahng…"
Her eyes were wet, her mouth glistening with saliva. Her nipples shone with fluid, and a viscous strand of liquid stretched down from between her legs.
I want it.
She could feel her body craving something with fierce intensity — something that would still this throbbing, aching emptiness and fill what was hollow.
And then, of all the tentacles, one particularly thick one caught her eye. It pushed in close to her face, and Mela watched it with a strange, feverish light in her gaze. As if answering that look, the thick appendage licked its way from her throat down across her chest, past her navel, and lower still.
"Ah…!"
Fear and anticipation tangled together; she couldn't hide either. Mela was trembling with those contradictory feelings when—
BOOM.
The wall that met the ground above shattered, and someone came crashing down through the rubble.
Blonde hair, darkly tanned skin — and, visible even through his clothes, an unmistakably enormous cock.
It was Hex.
The moment I reached Aiden, I headed straight for the inn. If things had gone the way I planned, everyone should have been gathered there by now.
"What the hell — where is everybody?!"
But contrary to my expectations, the place was empty. Well — one person did just walk in.
"H-hmph! Back sooner than I thought. I take it the job went smoothl—"
"Cut the act and cast a detection spell, now!"
I barked at Layla, who was putting on a transparent little performance. She flinched in surprise, then snapped right back at me.
"What's with that tone? I was only trying to be considerate—"
"Emily's in danger!"
"What…?!"
Layla looked like she couldn't make sense of it, but she still cast the spell without delay. Watching her, I was grateful our Affinity Level had at least reached 1 LV.
If it were still stuck at 0 LV, she wouldn't have given a damn even if I mentioned Emily.
Every living thing in this world has its own unique mana wavelength. With a detection spell, you can pick out a specific wavelength within a certain range. An ordinary mage tops out at a few dozen meters — but Layla could cover an entire city without breaking a sweat.
Apparently she'd locked onto Emily and the others, because her face went rigid and she bolted out the door.
"Damn it!"
One look at her told me something had gone wrong. I spat a curse and sprinted after her.
I got too complacent.
It was early in the story, and when I'd played the game myself the event had been a breeze — so I'd treated it lightly. Who knew things would spiral like this just because two people were missing?
This is all because that girl tagged along!
I ground my teeth looking at Layla — then startled myself. I must have been panicking so hard my brain short-circuited. I shook my head hard and tried to map out the situation.
The tentacles themselves weren't much of a threat. Getting hit by one barely dealt damage, and their constriction and binding only limited movement. But this game was, at its core, an adult eroge. Women were at an absolute disadvantage against sex-attribute monsters. On top of that, tentacle fluid dissolved clothing and carried aphrodisiac compounds — leave someone in it long enough and their sensitivity skyrocketed until sexual attacks became nearly impossible to resist.
That was a serious problem.
NTR triggers are already everywhere in this world — the last thing I need is anyone's sensitivity going up!
Raising willpower was hard enough without sensitivity climbing on top of it. I would not allow that.
I was still grinding my teeth when Layla, flying alongside me with a flight spell, suddenly changed expression.
"…What the hell is that?! Have you lost your mind?!"
I was about to ask what fresh nonsense she was spouting when an inexplicable sense of wrongness made me glance down.
It was too big to call a dick. If that thing was a dick, a rolling pin would have to be a baseball bat. The comparison was weird, but the point stood — it was enormous.
Oh, for fuck's sake!
I'd forgotten this body belonged to Hex. Just imagining Emily at the mercy of tentacles had been enough to get me hard!
I snuck a look at Layla. She was staring at me with pure disgust.
Layla's Affinity has decreased.
I'd brought that one on myself. Nothing to say. Still — accepting it quietly was too damn unfair. Me, the self-proclaimed incarnation of pure love, getting hard over another man's woman!
Before long we reached Multu's mansion and tore past everyone who tried to stop us. The moment I spotted the place I was aiming for, I swung my fist.
"RAAAAGH!"
A punch loaded with pure frustration smashed into the wall like a small crater going off, and I dropped with the collapsing brickwork.
I frantically searched for Emily. At this point I needed to look at her for real and prove to myself I wouldn't react.
"Ah…!"
But against all expectations, the one pickled in aphrodisiac wasn't Emily — it was Mela.
"…"
I shouldn't feel disappointed. I felt a little disappointed.
Mela stared blankly at Hex. No — more precisely, at his massive cock.
Throb.
Everything below her navel burned. Her body, set alight by tentacle fluid, was screaming that it wanted that thing — unmistakably. Without realizing it she rubbed her thighs together, then saw his gaze turn toward her.
"Haa…!"
A hot breath spilled from her lips. She knew about this man. She knew he ranked among the worst human beings she had ever met. But none of that mattered right now.
I want it.
Not these fakes — she wanted that big, solid-looking thing. What would a real cock feel like up close? Hot, surely, and with a smell… Just imagining it made her cunt water. If he stirred her insides with that…!
But Hex turned his head away from her.
"Huh?"
He looked around as if searching for something, found Emily, and fixed her with a deadly serious stare. Somehow that left Mela feeling slighted — enough that if her hands and feet had been free, she might have tried to make him look at her instead.
"…Wave of Purification!"
A familiar voice rang out, and something soft washed over her body. It felt like sinking into warm water; her head cleared as if she'd just woken from a dream.
A moment later Mela realized she was free of the tentacles, and that Layla — face twisted in a miserable scowl — was covering her with her own cloak.
"Ah."
For a brief second Mela just sat there dazed. Then her face went scarlet. The fact that she'd been toyed with by tentacles, that she'd completely surrendered her body to the pleasure, and above all that she had desperately wanted that man's cock — it was almost too humiliating to bear.
No. That's not all of it.
Even now, with her mind clear, Hex's thing was burned into her thoughts and wouldn't leave. That was mortifying enough to kill her.
A chill brushed her skin, and Mela looked up.
"…!"
Raw fury was written across Layla's face. She set Mela down and leveled a hand at the tentacles. Emily had already been moved to her side as well.
A flow of mana so dense it made the skin crawl. The moment Layla spoke the activation words, those tentacles would vanish without a trace.
"Move."
Hex stepped in front of her. His face was uncharacteristically troubled — he could read the hair-trigger tension in Layla's frost-edged expression. One wrong word and she would blow him away right along with everything else, ally or not.
After a long, agonized pause, Hex's mouth moved.
"Ah, fuck. This is so goddamn hot."
Layla's magic unleashed, sweeping away everything in front of her.
Including Hex.