Ep.3 - The Meaning of Life
Ep.3 - The Meaning of Life
A woman who realized her man had fled ground her teeth in fury as she examined the surrounding traces.
Clear marks led from the broken window, tracing the path of someone who had crawled.
Following that path, Neva walked, her body drawn taut by a quiet rage.
Anyone who saw Neva in her current state would do well to turn on their heels and flee at once.
Her fury was cold and merciless — to be caught up in it by mistake was to be reduced to a lump of meat without a single bone left to pick out!
"I treated you so well... and you abandoned me and ran away like this? Fine. Good. You want to play it that way? Just let me catch you again. I'll break your legs right off... no, I'll break your arms too while I'm at it..."
Her muttering, which betrayed her unstable mental state, cut off abruptly. And the traces of Delin she had been pursuing also ended just as abruptly.
'What's this?'
Neva swept her fierce gaze over every tree and blade of grass around her, yet oddly enough, there were no traces at all.
Suspicious.
Unless he'd sprouted wings, this escape route made no sense.
"Delin. If you come out now, I'll let it go generously. If you're nearby, show yourself right now."
But the silence around her carried no sign of Delin, nor of any living creature whatsoever. The wild animals and magic beasts had long since fled from the killing intent Neva radiated — that silence was, one might say, a perfectly natural phenomenon.
Yet within that silence, Neva's intuition told her that something had gone terribly wrong.
And it stood to reason. If a magic beast or wild animal had harmed the powerless, crawling Delin, wouldn't he have Loaded immediately, and wouldn't her man have noticed at once?
There was no way Delin had succeeded in running away. Even if both his legs had been sound, he would surely have gotten caught up in something or made some stupid mistake and been forced to Load.
Much less could he ever flee with a single leg. It was impossible. Not even the slightest chance.
'Was he attacked by a magic beast? Or maybe, by bandits or some such...'
But even considering other possibilities, if he'd been dragged off, it didn't add up logically — there were no other traces or footprints left around! So what, had he been kidnapped by a bird or something?
"Delin...! Delriiin..."
Now Neva was practically sobbing as she called out Delin's name over and over. She fervently believed that something must have gone wrong. Because if it hadn't, she would arrive at the sorrowful conclusion that he chose not to Load in order to avoid her...
"Delin! Answer me!"
The woman's mournful wail echoed through the forest as dawn broke. It was the cry of one searching for her vanished husband.
But tragically, even after the day fully brightened and warm sunlight enveloped the world, no trace of Delin could be found,
and though the search continued, tearing through the entire forest, the man's footprints were discovered no more.
Meanwhile, whether he knew or not of the female knight's desperate cries calling her man's name... our Delin was being washed clean by the lovely hands of witches.
Bubbly foam frothed up, tickling every corner of his head and body. Originally, he would have needed to use his own hands to rub his body with those soap bubbles, but the many hands already touching him saw to it that he was bathed without any such trouble.
"It tickles! That part, just let me..."
Delin's bath attendants numbered four in total, composed of volunteers from the class who took on the burdensome task of keeping his body clean.
For reasons unknown, despite it being such a troublesome role, many applicants rushed in, and as a result, a lottery had to be held in the end. The four on bath duty now were those who had beaten the slim odds.
"You have to stay still. When someone else is washing you, the proper way is to sit quietly and wait."
'Is that so...?'
Perhaps his hazy brain had foam in it too. Delin could not quite recover his senses and continued to be brainwashed by the witches.
The mind-control magic Chichi had cast was a spell that kneaded a firm mind this way and that until it grew soft and pliable. Once afflicted, the target would be easily swayed by the words of the caster and other subjects of the magic.
It was a considerably high-level magic, and since it could not easily be cast unless one was overwhelmingly stronger than the opponent, it wasn't used in actual combat, but was often employed in elaborate schemes or slave training and the like.
Slave training!
This would be most unfortunate news for Delin, who at this moment had been reduced to a state no different from a slave, but in this other world where the constitution did not guarantee human rights — unlike his original world — there was nothing to be done about it.
However, if there was one slightly special thing, it was that the great witch Chichi, the caster of the spell, stopped by frequently to check on Delin's condition.
"Are you washing him well?"
"Ah, eonni!"
"Shh. Here, she's Professor, remember?"
She hovered around as though supervising the witch apprentices, carrying on various conversations, but in truth, all of her attention was directed at Delin.
"Now. Everyone step out for a moment. Let's check his condition."
Whenever she came to see Delin, Chichi would always knead his body under the pretense of checking his state. The other witches assumed this behavior was related to the professor's sexual desires, but in reality, she was personally confirming whether some anomaly had occurred in the magic her man had placed on him.
Of course, the true meaning of that worried examination was not concern that the magic might break and damage her man's reputation — rather, she was filled with excited anticipation about just how and in what manner it might break, if it were to break again.
"Excellent. Delin? You have to listen well to the students here to be a good boy... Even when noona isn't here, you must be good~ Understood?"
Seeing that her magic had not yet broken, Chichi gave a bright smile, then praised the other students for their diligence and slipped outside.
Her magic was still intact. If he were to break the spell this time as well, it would not be a mere coincidence, but an inevitable result.
'Will he be able to break it again?'
Chichi found herself in a good mood without realizing it, walking the corridors with a brighter smile than ever before. She, who always maintained a faint smile and a leisurely gait, hummed a tune in genuine delight today. It was not her habitual smile meant for others, but an expression of happiness welling up from the heart that echoed through the hallway.
Inwardly, she rooted for Delin. She desperately wished, both unconsciously and consciously, that he would please break her magic.
Because what she needed was not the title of Archwitch or the envy of others, but a true genius equal who could challenge her and find flaws in her work.
Well.
That being said, the man upon whom Chichi's expectations were wholly focused was currently suffering considerable humiliation!
"Ahhng... that part, please..."
"Didn't you hear the Professor? You're such a bad boy!"
The witches, whose ages didn't differ much from Delin, called him a child and scolded him, but the authority they held and their unrestricted actions made it feel as though they stood above him.
Nobles didn't speak down to commoners and bark at them for nothing. They did it because it felt natural.
"If you raise a hand, I'll tell the Professor everything. Got it?"
The witches too considered themselves to be in a position where fondling and touching Delin while washing him was perfectly acceptable, and kneaded him with thoroughly lecherous intent.
The sensation of a man's body felt through heightened touch in their fingertips seemed like something they could never tire of, no matter how much they groped him. His reactions added to the titillation and delighted the women.
"Nnghhk..."
The witches' hands, which had at first caressed his forearms, shoulders, and back, grew ever bolder, eventually targeting the areas that drew the most intense reactions from Delin with persistent fixation.
In particular, stimulation directed at the male organ they had learned about in class took center stage. Amidst the pleasure of being touched here and there, Delin trembled violently and pleaded with the women.
"Nngh... please stop just a little... nn? Please... we're all done washing now..."
But how could such pleas ever reach those women? The witch who had been squatting right in front of him, tugging at the skin and observing it in little pinches, suddenly shouted and grew angry at Delin.
"Ah, come on! I said stay still! You're being washed and you keep being a nuisance?"
"I-I'm sorryyy..."
Delin choked back his words inwardly, on the verge of tears.
To show such pathetic behavior while receiving the service of being washed — worse, to make the kind witches angry.
Even thinking about it himself, it was nothing short of a nuisance.
"Ahhng... but still, it's too..."
But still, it tickled too much!
It tickled, and...! How was he supposed to endure it when they kept fiddling with his dick like that...!
"Come on, hurry up and ejaculate. So we can touch it a bit too."
Even without their urging, a dizzying sense of impending ejaculation was welling up inside him. The male instinct that could not be suppressed no matter how much one tried sent the white turbid fluid, thick with sperm, surging up to the penis where pleasure concentrated.
"Kyaah!"
In the end, unable to endure the bodily stimulation, Delin spilled everything out in a refreshing burst. Along with a melting moan, the face of the woman in front of him was coated with sticky semen.
"Ugh! What is this...!"
"Nnnght... I-I'm sorryyy..."
"You should have said something! What am I supposed to do when you suddenly cum like that!"
Truly a heartbreaking situation. He came because they told him to come, and now Delin was being scolded for coming.
"Uuuugh... the smell..."
The flustered woman, wiping the semen that had smeared all over her face this way and that,
suffered under the stickiness of the fluid that grew even tackier in the humid warmth of the bath.
But contrary to her deeply furrowed expression, she wasn't really in a bad mood. She was just a little flustered, merely surprised by the unfamiliar sensation she was feeling for the first time.
"W-Woah... you... your face..."
Of course, to the women beside her, it was a scene of unparalleled arousal!
Seeing the state of a face drenched in semen, they were seized by belated regret, cursing themselves for not sitting in the front.
And so, even as Delin coated a woman's face with his own jizz for the first time in his life,
"Delin... please, just answer me..."
Neva searched for Delin. Chances were, no matter how long she searched, she would never find so much as a single hair from his head.
Unable to calm her heart, Neva forgot even the crucial fact that she had to go interrogate Philmark at the prison soon, and paced about restlessly, scouring the entirety of the forest.
Because a world without Delin no longer held any meaning for her.