Lucy's Conquest Route (4)

Thump.

I shoved the image of Lucy rocking her hips in that inverted frog-leg position out of my field of view.

Thump.

My heart was hammering. That was Combat Sense kicking in.

"...Was this your plan from the start? You piece of shit demon."

"You're the piece of shit demon here, you filthy bastard."

That disgusting thing was still dangling between Felix's legs.

"You interrupted the greatest moment of my life. I'll make sure you die as painfully as possible!"

"You should probably run. He's got two horns, and both of them are fully grown. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠You won't be able to handle him."

A demon's horn count was determined by the amount of mana they possessed. Two large horns meant he was on par with an active B-class hunter. By any reasonable measure, that was a gap no cadet could hope to close.

"There's only one way to find out."

My combat strength couldn't be measured by mana quantity alone. Combat Sense, Insight, and Mana Sensitivity — those three didn't look like much on paper, but they elevated my fighting ability by leaps and bounds. And right now, through Insight, I could see that Felix's mana was severely depleted. He'd probably burned through a massive amount once to set up the barrier, and again to put Lucy into that heat.

At this level, I figured I could take him.

A system window materialized in front of my eyes. Looking at those rewards, I was properly motivated.

Crack. Crunch.

Felix's face twisted. With those bone-chilling sounds, the pretty blond boy's body began to swell.

"Hey, fuck. The mana I'm sensing just doubled!"

"...It's fine."

"Grrrr... I'll t-tear you apart. Don't even think about dying easy."

His once-handsome features warped into something repulsive, a grotesque blend of orc and goblin. His frame, slight even for a man, ballooned until he stood nearly twice my height. Having unleashed his full power and completed the transformation into his true demonic form, Felix stared me down with drool spilling from his mouth.

Thump.

Combat Sense sharpened another notch. I wasn't nervous. I still judged this winnable. The mana radiating off Felix had more than doubled, but that kind of doping was temporary.

"Grrrk...!"

Felix was burning his own life force. Whether interrupting his time with Lucy had pissed him off that badly, he was going all-out from the opening bell, killing intent rolling off him like he meant to rip me apart on the spot.

"Five minutes. No — I just need to last four."

"...This is definitely an abnormal berserk state. I want to help, but... would I even be useful?"

"Just stay put."

The truth was, my mana pool itself sat below average. My combat strength depended entirely on my perks and authorities. So how weak Liliana would be — her mana even lower than mine — I honestly couldn't say. Probably not enough to matter in a fight.

Then again, expecting a fight out of a money printer who wasn't even acting like a succubus was pretty weird to begin with.

"I'll... I'll finish this. In an instant."

Felix couldn't even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠keep his power in check. He stammered through the threat, pouring his killing aura over me. I activated my mana and settled into a combat stance.

CRACK!

Felix wrung the mana from his body, kicked off the floor, and came at me in a rush. He closed the distance in a blink and swung a mana-loaded fist at my face.

BOOM!

CRASH!

I reacted to his speed and snapped Cotton Guard open. The spherical shield wrapped around me, and I went flying with it, slamming into the wall.

"Fuck... that hurt like hell."

The shield surrounding me — Cotton Guard — was as solid as you'd expect from a unique skill. Felix's left fist had bent in a direction no joint was meant to go, which told me everything I needed to know about how hard it was. But I hadn't accounted for the raw physical force itself.

"Kh—"

My chest hurt like a bitch. Felt like a rib had given out. The iron taste spreading through my mouth said my insides might've taken a hit too.

"GAAAAH!"

Felix howled and forced his fist — bent more than ninety degrees — back into place. He was holding the completely shattered bone and tissue together with raw mana, which only burned through even more of it. His grip on sanity was slipping. Bloodshot eyes, drool hanging in strings, he charged me again.

His fist was already wrecked and he still hadn't learned? He'd probably figured that since I'd taken damage, the attack had worked — but that first exchange was just inexperience on my part. I'd assumed wrapping my whole body in a sphere would keep me safe. Now that I knew he only came from one direction, dealing with him got ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a lot simpler.

I concentrated my mana toward the line of his approach and shaped Cotton Guard into a solid wall.

BOOM!

The result was exactly what I'd expected. Felix's fist snapped clean backward and shattered. I didn't feel a thing.

"KYAAAAH!"

Felix vanished from in front of me in an instant.

Whoosh—

I heard the wind. He was circling me at high speed, trying to play a psychological game — except I had pretty good eyes. His velocity climbed higher and higher. He was betting everything on this next hit, the mana inside him burning off at a vicious rate.

He was on the verge of death, but I guess that's what a two-horned demon was. The doped-up power of someone spending nearly all their life force produced a speed even I would struggle to handle. And speed, of course, meant power. However tough Cotton Guard was, I'd already burned through a fair amount of mana. If I took this one head-on, I couldn't guarantee I'd stop it completely.

I dropped the shield and let my body go loose and relaxed. Then I poured more mana into Insight and tracked Felix's presence. I accelerated the mana along the circuits of my body, slowly at first. Thanks to Combat Sense, I could push it far more smoothly than I ever had in training.

A low hum.

I let the current of mana racing through me bleed outward, infecting the space around my body. Felix must have realized I was up to something. He stopped circling and came straight at me.

BOOM!

A sonic boom erupted. The shockwave cratered the ground where Felix had planted his foot. He came at me like a bullet. By the time I registered him, he was right in front of me — his hand closing the last of the distance, reaching for my throat.

But the space was already under my control.

I transferred the accelerating force of the mana circulating through my body into the space itself, and slipped his attack the way water slips around a stone. Felix's eyes went wide as the person in front of him vanished. He whipped his head around.

CRASH!

In a single instant of Acceleration, I was behind him. I unleashed the spell.

"GAAAH!"

I poured in nearly every last drop of mana I had left. A colossal blaze wrapped around Felix's body and roared to life.

"Hah. Hah. Hah."

The strength drained out of me. I eased back, watching Felix burn.

I did it.

It was my first real fight, but I'd taken the challenge because the odds were good enough — and that was why I'd won.

"D-did we get him?"

"Hey, you can't say that, you—"

A hand shot out of the flames and seized my throat.

"Kh— hhk."

He was in a state where dying at any second wouldn't have been strange, but Felix refused to let go, like he intended to drag me down with him. Fuck. I'd let my guard down. I should have finished him completely. I'd never killed anyone before, so that thought had never even crossed my mind.

"Ghhk."

Searing heat crawled up Felix's ruined, barely-holding-together hand and into me. His mouth slowly opened. Drool pattered down. A rotting stench rolled out of that maw as it drew closer and closer to my face. No hands left, so he was going to chew my head off instead?

My mind spun wildly, hunting for a way out, but nothing came. I'd spent too much mana putting Felix down. His mouth was a hair's breadth from my scalp when—

POP!

Felix froze mid-lunge. The grip on my throat went slack.

"I can only hold him for three seconds! Kill him!"

Liliana, her transformation dropped, shouted ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from where she'd collapsed on the floor. It took me less than a second to process the situation. I had to end Felix in the time that remained.

I scraped together mana I thought was already gone. What existed inside me now was a single handful — barely enough to form a proper spell. But there was no time to think. Felix was already straining to break the charm.

In that desperate instant, looking at his mouth hanging open to bite my head off, I found my answer. The inside of a body was always weaker than the outside. The thought clicked, and I focused every scrap of mana into my middle finger.

The same mana exhaustion I'd felt the first time I met Lucy crashed over me. But Combat Sense and Clear Mind forcibly jolted me awake and kept me on my feet. I gave the mana physical form, using a single finger as the medium, and shaped it into a razor-sharp spike. The target was the inside of Felix's mouth — punch through and pierce all the way to the brain. The sharpest attack I could forge with what little mana I had left.

The charm broke. Felix's eyes flew wide as he tried to take in the situation—

CRUNCH!

With a hideous sound, the spike punched out the back of his skull. At the same moment, every ounce of strength left my body, and I toppled over backward.

"Hah... hah... hah..."

I couldn't even twitch a finger. As I fell, the finger I'd driven into Felix pulled free, but the hole in his head was already there. He just stood there, frozen in the same posture he'd held when the charm lifted.

If he moved now, Liliana, Lucy, and I would all be dead.

But then the exhaustion vanished from my body as if it had been washed away, and the breath that had been jammed up in my throat evened out. Which meant—

"Hup—!"

"Kyaa!"

Vitality surged through every inch of me. I bolted upright from what had looked like a corpse, and Liliana — still slumped on the floor — nearly jumped out of her skin.

"We got him, thanks to you. Liliana. I owe you one."

"I-I'm only saying this so you don't get the wrong idea! I was just waiting for the right opening the whole time. Don't misunderstand, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah. Thank you."

Felix died standing up, right where he was.

I'd killed someone for the first time. He was a demon, grotesque enough that calling him a person felt like a stretch — but I had seen what he looked like as a human. The feeling was strange, but I wasn't particularly sad about it.

"Ah — wait. This isn't the time."

I ran to Lucy, who had been left unattended this entire time. She no longer had the strength to rock her hips. Every few seconds her body shuddered and she squirted, a puddle of her own juices gathered around her groin that made a wet slap every time she trembled.

"Hweh... eeeh..."

Splish. Splish.

This was looking like a real problem.

"Hmm. If we leave her like this, she's going to lose her mind pretty soon."

"What?"

"I can tell from looking at her up close. She's under a severe heat spell, and she can't do anything about it because she's tied up. She's probably going insane."

Liliana was right. Lucy's eyes had rolled back, her whole body shaking. Now that my stamina and mana had recovered, I released the mana ropes. But Lucy didn't even have the strength to relieve herself. She just lay there with her tongue hanging out, twitching.

"Can you reverse the heat spell? With your magic, it should be possible. Same feeling as when you took down the barrier."

"Hold on."

I was getting ready to reverse-engineer the magic when a status window appeared in front of my eyes.

"What the hell."

Normally the status window only appeared when I thought about it. This time it had popped up on its own, without any input from me. There'd never been a "Current Status" field before, either. I didn't know what that was about, but it wasn't going to hurt me.

"No. If I reverse the heat spell now, it'll leave aftereffects on her body."

I explained the situation to Liliana as calmly as I could.

"What? How would you know that?"

"I can just tell by looking."

I'd finally taken Felix down, and now Lucy was the one in danger. There was no time to hesitate. Every second counted, so I didn't even bother with my shirt — I just dropped my pants.

"Hey— hey! I told you to reverse the magic, why are you taking your pants off?!"

"I just said I can't reverse it right now!"

"Why not?! After watching you take down that barrier, a spell like this would take you ten seconds, tops!"

"Because it'll leave aftereffects!"

"You'd steal your little sister's car and skip town just to get your dick wet...!"

The hell is she even talking about. Fuck.

I couldn't exactly explain the status window to her. It was infuriating. There was no other way. Lucy needed semen pumped into her womb, right now. That was the only option.

"Lucy, I'm sorry. Just hang on a little longer."

"Hhn. Haaah. Nnh. Hiiinh..."

Splish. Splish.

The wet sound of Lucy's pooled juices was the only thing echoing through the basement.