Lucy, Trained by the Succubus (1)
"...There was something truly vile hiding in this room."
Lucy murmured the words under her breath and came to a halt. Only then did she sense the darkness coiled and waiting somewhere within the chamber.
I walked into a trap.
The thought had barely formed before dozens of tentacles were sprouting from every surface, writhing and squirming across the entire room.
"You mangy mutt... you were keeping a demon in your room."
Shff, shff-shff!
Tentacles came flying at her from every direction at once. Their speed was more than twice that of an arrow, and the distance far too short for a mage—a class weaker in body than any other—to hope to dodge.
She was a mouse sealed inside a poison jar, one wrong move from being seized and violated, or skewered where she stood.
But Lucy had been ambushed without warning more times than she could count over her years of adventuring, and she had long since prepared a countermeasure for precisely this situation.
Ting! Ting-ting!
In a hundredth of a second, a transparent barrier had formed around her body. The tentacles beat uselessly against its surface, unable to pierce it.
"To think you'd stoop to such a pathetic little trap."
Lucy scoffed, toying with the bracelet on her left wrist—Ganicher's Bracelet, studded with jewels, loot from some adventure long ago. It was an artifact that automatically raised a barrier the moment its wearer was attacked, but that barrier had a limit to its durability. Once it ran dry, reactivating it took time.
Not that she needed long. Against mere tentacles, someone of her caliber wouldn't break a sweat; even if a horde of them swarmed her, she had every confidence that a single spell would end it.
Lucy began her casting, her hands flowing gently like a slow-moving river.
With her fire magic enhanced, the spell carried twice its usual power.
Fwoooosh!
A torrent of flame erupted from Lucy's palms. She turned slowly in place, sweeping fire across the tentacles, and the burning tendrils convulsed, leaking green fluid, before dropping lifeless one by one.
But as the charred tentacles fell away in showers of ash, new ones sprouted from the stumps like fresh flesh, writhing hungrily. The thing's regeneration was nothing short of staggering.
"Well, isn't that just lovely."
The tentacles hurled themselves at the barrier once more. Its durability was still intact—for now.
"Fine. Let's play, then."
Lucy swept the room with calm, thoughtful eyes, and belatedly understood.
"A barrier. It feeds the demon's power while gnawing away at mine... You made this damned thing well, you bastard. Ha."
Every second that passed put her at a disadvantage. She hurried.
She stacked another layer on top.
And one more. A living body burns until it dies.
And at last, a devastating offensive spell.
The moment Lucy finished casting, chain explosions erupted throughout the chamber. BOOM! BABABABOOM!
Ferocious heat swallowed the room in an instant, and when the inferno finally subsided, limp, spent tentacles lay sprawled in its wake—while the grotesque mass of flesh at their core still smoldered, fire clinging stubbornly to it.
The thing kept trying to regenerate, but the moment a new tendril grew even five centimeters, the flames leapt onto it. Regenerate and burn, regenerate and burn, over and over again.
Only then did Lucy allow herself to relax, wiping the sweat from her brow.
"That freak really knows how to wear a person out. Just wait till I get out of here—you're dead."
She had held the tentacles at bay, but it wasn't over yet. The barrier still remained. The blast's force had been contained entirely within this single room instead of rocking the royal palace to its foundations—a sure sign the barrier still stood firm.
Now came the part where she deciphered it, then broke it.
"Let's see..."
Lucy pressed her palm flat against the floor and spread out a circular magic circle, its blue glow packed edge to edge with unfamiliar symbols and runic script.
Crouched low, studying the floor intently, she narrowed her eyes.
"This isn't a room at all. We're using the same space, but it's a separate place entirely. No wonder nobody outside can tell. Looks like black magic—how does that mutt even know how to use this? Don't tell me he made a contract with a demon..."
PAHT!
Something shot out from behind her and struck her dead center. She took the hit without harm, but her shield shattered, its lifespan spent.
"?"
Lucy scrambled to her feet and whirled around. By the window, where the curtains swayed gently, stood a woman in a black hood.
"Your aim was true. A pity."
"So it was you. The demon the mutt contracted with."
"I'm afraid there's been a misunderstanding, my lady. My Lord and I have yet to formalize a contract—though he may deign to do so in the future."
She smiled, slow and seductive. Though the robe concealed her voluptuous figure, carnal allure spilled off her in waves, and Lucy's face twisted into a scowl.
"You sick freak. So he just rolled over and surrendered himself to some demon bitch."
She had slain countless demons at the Hero's side, and her sense of justice burned as fiercely now as it ever had.
"I'll kill you first, then report that mutt to the kingdom and toss him into a cell where he belongs."
"In this place, you are the weak one. I do wonder how much of your true strength you can actually manage."
"Worry about yourself first."
Lucy gave the ring on her finger a slight twist—the Ring of Linking—and a duplicate of herself, dressed identically, materialized at her right side.
My power's weaker than usual, but with this thing at my side, I'll manage.
The clone would handle defense and support. She herself would devote everything to the attack.
"Want to live? Then surrender. Come outside with me and confess everything to everyone, and I'll spare your life."
"You have such a small chest, though. How do you expect to seduce a man with that? It looks like you balanced two fried eggs on your ribcage."
"I offer you mercy, I give you a chance at life, and this insolent bitch spouts nothing but filth—!"
Lucy ground her teeth and cast, and in the same breath the demon's hands moved just as fast. In a span of less than three seconds, three-pronged black shadows surged up from beneath the demon's feet and hurtled toward Lucy, while her clone immediately spread a round, rune-etched shield in front of her. Simultaneously, the fireball Lucy hurled struck the demon and detonated.
KWA-BOOM!
The spot where the demon had stood was engulfed in flame in a heartbeat. Smoke and fire towered so high that it was impossible to tell whether the thing had died.
"I'll erase your very existence."
Lucy kept drawing on her mana without pause.
She unleashed her specialty—layered casting.
And then—
And again—
And last of all—
Ten small spheres of flame formed around Lucy's body and began spinning rapidly, round and round. As the blaze's roar thinned, the hem of a robe appeared before her eyes, and without a moment's hesitation she launched all ten superheated orbs of condensed mana straight at it.
KU-KWA-KWANG!
Successive detonations hammered her eardrums as the chamber shook violently. At this magnitude, the corpse would be erased without a trace.
But a black silhouette burst free from the flames, racing along the wall with blinding speed—and in an instant, it had slipped behind Lucy's back.
"Heh heh heh."
From the wall clung the upper body of a two-horned succubus. She drove her dagger deep into Lucy's back—except the blade had pierced her clone, and the moment Luciella realized it, her expression twisted. At the same instant, Lucy sensed her duplicate under attack, spun around in alarm, and reflexively used telekinesis to fling the succubus away.
PAK!
"Kyaa!"
The succubus slammed hard into the wall and dropped. She had no time even to breathe—a stream of Lucy's flame came roaring straight at her. From her half-crouched sprawl, the succubus hastily poured out mana in response, and the blazing torrent and pitch-black radiance collided in the middle of the room.
Lucy stood firm, one arm outstretched, feeding out the flame stream with an unshakable expression while her clone supplied her with mana from behind. The succubus, by contrast, held both palms out against the darkness and was steadily losing ground, her face crumpling with strain, her fangs bared ever more prominently.
"You. Now that I get a good look—Luciella, right? The one Kiera nearly killed a few years back? Your name always annoyed me, too similar to mine. You were on friendly terms with that mutt, weren't you?"
"Uuugh...!"
The succubus had no breath to spare for an answer. Lucy, on the other hand, was comfortable.
"Ahh, so that's how it was. After the mutt got thrown out of our party, the two of you shacked up together. Now it all makes sense. You two kept exchanging messages behind our backs, didn't you?"
Luciella's lips suddenly twitched at the corners.
"Heh heh..."
"What's so damn funny? Why are you creeping me out with that chuckling?"
"Kuk kuk kuk."
While Lucy scowled in disgust, Luciella was remembering the night before.
After two days and nights of ferocious battle, Maru finally wrenched the head clean off Gnirr. The colossus's massive body toppled backward, and a brief earthquake rippled through the shore.
"Hah... hah! It's over. Dammit... that was rough... hah, hah... nearly killed me."
Maru collapsed onto the swirling dust of the sandbank, heaving for breath, and Luciella crouched beside him, wiping the sweat from his face with her hand.
"You've worked so hard, my Lord."
"Never mind that—what are you going to do with the thing? Hah, hah. Sell it?"
"Sell it? I need to use it, of course."
"How?"
Luciella rose to her feet and stretched her arm toward the giant's chest. Moments later, a glowing golden orb—Gnirr's Essence—floated gently free from within the corpse. As it drifted toward her, she caught it in her hand and swallowed it whole.
Gulp.
Back in the present, Luciella's black radiance suddenly surged with genuine force—and on top of that, her body itself began to change, muscle swelling across her frame as her flesh was reinforced.
"Kheh heh heh."
The succubus's mana had grown stronger, and now even her body had been enhanced—the sight froze Lucy's face solid.
"What... what did you just do? Why is a mere succubus getting stronger?"
"Behold it clearly. This is the power my Lord has given me."
The moment Luciella withdrew her black radiance, the flame stream crashed down onto her—but she had already vacated the spot, folding her twin wings tight and darting at Lucy like a loosed arrow. Her speed, now backed by those hard, masculine muscles, was like light itself.
"S-stay back!"
"Kyahaha!"
Before the flustered Lucy could raise so much as a defensive ward, Luciella's fist hammered across her head.
POW!
"Ugh...!"
Lucy flew helplessly through the air, and before she had even touched the floor, Luciella's lightning-fast downward kick slammed into her stomach midair.
"Khagh!"
Lucy's eyes bulged as she plummeted straight down into the floor. After that relentless succession of physical blows, her body lay motionless where it had fallen. She had simply blacked out. Her clone, drained of strength, flickered and silently vanished.
"Most satisfying."
Luciella, in her scandalously revealing outfit, admired her taut, hardened abs with a deeply pleased smile. She liked her transformed body so much that she spent a long moment caressing it, squirming with delight all the while. Then she opened a portal, seized the unconscious Lucy by the hair, and dragged her across the floor and through it.
"Now then—starting today, let's work hard together on becoming a good little dog who obeys my Lord's every word."
Villainous laughter echoed through the chamber as the portal sealed shut, and Maru's room returned to its ordinary appearance, as though nothing at all had happened.