Those Who Watch in Secret (2)
It could hardly be called guard duty. All it amounted to was standing on a suitable ridge facing Darmess, watching for any sign of monsters or demons.
Someone had to do it, but Dain had volunteered because he wanted to put some distance between himself and the Hero and Saintess. He needed time to sort through his feelings.
“Hyung.”
“Yeah?”
At some point, he and Yujin had grown quite comfortable with each other. The younger soldier, a year his junior, had followed him all the way out here just to learn from him. Dain found himself warming to the boy more and more.
“Do you think they’ll come? The demons, I mean.”
“Who knows? Would you rather they did?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t want to march all the way to Darmess, but if we have to fight… we could die.”
“Haha.”
Once again, the conversation died there. Ever since they’d climbed up here, Dain hadn’t tried to keep it going. Yujin, who found the silence difficult to bear, was just searching for another light topic when Dain spoke again.
“Yujin.”
“Yes?”
The sudden question made the boy’s eyes widen.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Huh?”
“Back home. Her name’s Mina. She lived next door. We were close ever since we were kids, and then when we hit puberty… I started to feel something. So I confessed, and we started dating.”
“I see.”
It was a story not so different from Dain’s own past. The only real difference was that Yujin had found the courage to speak up.
“What if…”
“Yes?”
“What if that girlfriend of yours met another man back home while you were away? What would you do if you found out?”
“Hmm…”
“You’d be upset, right?”
“Of course. Obviously.”
Yujin scratched his cheek. Dain wondered if he should reframe the scenario. Calling it an affair didn’t quite capture the complicated truth of their situation. But after thinking quietly for a moment, Yujin lifted his head.
“Even so… I think I’d probably still hold on. You know?”
“Hm?”
A faint smile played on Yujin’s lips.
“Because I like her too much.”
The smile carried the full weight of the boy’s love for her. Of course, the hypothetical and Dain’s own reality were different. No matter what happened to Yujin’s girl, his love for her would remain untouched.
Dain found himself envying those words. He felt ashamed in the face of a smile that seemed like it would never waver. Even though he was young and inexperienced in battle, Yujin was the most admirable and strongest man Dain had ever met.
When he looked up at the stars, thoughts of Hero’s Village came to mind. The scenery was different, yet in his head he could see Ceres’s smile once more.
He would trust Ceres. The resolve to wait for the day she would smile at him again settled quietly in the warrior’s heart.
“Nngh… hnn…”
Ceres bit down on her finger. The moans kept slipping out against her will. She prayed the Hero would finish and leave as quickly as possible. But his cock, grown thicker along with his larger frame, showed no sign of stopping.
Even as Zarco thrust powerfully into her again and again, his eyes were fixed on the other side of the tree. The two soldiers behind it hadn’t noticed his gaze. They hid their bulging crotches and simply watched the act unfolding before them.
His eyes dropped to Ceres’s sweat-glistened ass as it slapped against him. She was trying to hold back her voice, but her pink folds stretched around his shaft were dripping with arousal.
He wasn’t entirely sure why the corner of his mouth kept rising. A sense of conquest? Of superiority? Whatever it was, Zarco instinctively acted on the thought that crossed his mind.
Without pausing his hips, he raised one hand. The soldiers’ eyes finally turned toward him. To the pair of pale-faced men, Zarco offered a leisurely smile and pressed a finger to his lips in a clear sign to stay quiet.
Zarco’s thrusts slowed for a moment. Ceres couldn’t feel anything unusual inside, but she wondered if he had finished and started to turn her head.
“Kyaa… nngh!”
Zarco gripped her waist hard and began driving into her faster and harder, as if everything before had been mere play. Each thrust sent an electric jolt racing up her spine. The unpleasant pleasure forced her head back, and moans of ecstasy began spilling from her lips.
“Hnn, haaah! Ahh! Aaaah!”
The fact that they were in a forest not far from where the soldiers slept had completely vanished from Ceres’s mind. Every time his cock rearranged her insides, her eyes and her voice grew louder.
Zarco’s hips finally stopped. Ceres’s body, still impaled on him, twitched intermittently from the lingering pleasure. In that moment, he yanked her top up, and her breasts spilled out, bouncing heavily. Her nipples had never stood out so prominently.
She felt his hands on her thighs. Zarco hooked his arms behind her knees and lifted. Her body rose, and the new angle drove him even deeper. Pain and pleasure surged through her at once.
“Nnghuu!”
Lifted into the air and leaning back against Zarco’s chest, Ceres let out short, ragged breaths. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to calm the pleasure swirling inside her. That vulgar beast inside her kept trying to break free. She kept picturing Dain’s face in her mind, though the image grew blurrier with each passing second.
Just a little longer… If I can just hold on a little more…
“Ceres.”
Zarco’s voice rang out, but she didn’t answer.
“Ceres, open your eyes.”
At his urging, she slowly lifted her eyelids.
“Kyaa, kyaaaah!”
Two unfamiliar men were staring straight at her. Their eyes were bloodshot with excitement as they gazed at her breasts and the space between her thighs, breathing harshly. The sight of the men—skin flushed red, sweating, swallowing thickly—made Ceres scream again and again in utter panic.
“Kyaaah! G-go away… nngh…!”
“If you keep screaming like that, you’ll wake everyone up and they’ll all come running.”
Zarco’s whisper tickled her ear. Her voice grew quieter, but her heart continued to pound violently.
Whether she screamed or not, the men kept staring. Ceres’s thighs clamped together instinctively. Only then did she remember their faces. They were the soldiers who had guided them through the abandoned cathedral. The same men who had already seen her breasts thanks to Zarco.
“Please don’t look… I-I’m begging you, turn your heads… hnn!”
Before her desperate plea could even finish, the indifferent cock began moving again. Ceres bit her lip and tightened her thighs with all her strength, refusing to let the pleasure weaken her. From behind her came Zarco’s low, ominous chuckle.
Squelch. Squelch.
The obscene sound of his shaft sliding between her thighs echoed through the air. Ceres covered her burning face with her hands, but that only made the sounds reaching her ears even clearer. The wet, sticky noises of their joined bodies and the soldiers’ rough breathing filled the quiet forest.
When Zarco pulled her thighs apart, Ceres flinched in alarm. She shook her head frantically and strained with all her might, but she couldn’t resist the Hero’s powerful arms.
“No, no… don’t…”
She wanted to run away from the shame. Every time the Hero’s hands pressed her thighs down, her body trembled uncontrollably. The moment she felt her legs reach their limit, Ceres’s face went deathly pale as she realized what was about to happen.
“Hnn, haaaah!”
Her strength gave out. And just as expected, the thighs that had been hiding her sex—still connected to Zarco—spread wide open. A place even she had rarely seen was now exposed, and nameless men were staring at it while swallowing their saliva.
The hands covering her face lowered slightly. The expression visible between her fingers wasn’t just shame. The strange sense of liberation that bloomed as her thighs parted to reveal her most embarrassing place began to cloud Ceres’s mind.
And in that confusion, the thirst she had been suppressing began pounding through her body again. When Zarco thrust into her violently, a moan tore free, but she couldn’t even hear it herself. Panting from the pleasure piercing every inch of her, the Saintess turned her head to look at the Hero. Then, as if she could endure no more, she pulled his lips down to hers.
Dain’s place in her mind vanished completely. It didn’t matter who was watching. The last thing she remembered was the faint smile on the Hero’s face.
“Ugh~ I’m so stiff.”
“My whole body aches. Haaam.”
It was still before dawn. The soldiers were slowly waking and beginning to move. The knowledge that they had to return to that terrifying place where the demons lurked weighed heavily on their hearts, yet none of them tried to avoid their duty.
“Hey, hey! Wake up. Time to get ready.”
“Ugh, do we have to? Haa~ I kept waking up because of some noise last night, damn it.”
“Noise?”
“Yeah. Didn’t you hear something like screaming?”
The soldier next to him answered while folding up his bedding.
“Now that you mention it… I heard something for a while. It was coming from above us.”
“Yeah, from the forest. It went on for quite a while.”
“Think it was an animal?”
“I don’t know… I’ve never heard anything like it before…”
A veteran soldier who had finished packing stood up and spoke.
“Probably just mountain beasts mating. Come on, everyone hurry up. If we don’t leave now, night will fall and that damned thing will start moving again.”
The soldiers all let out sighs, but their hands began moving faster.