Please Put That Away, Saintess
"Please put that away, Saintess."
If you treated "Saintess" as a profession, what would be the first thing that came to mind?
In the world I used to live in, the word itself had gotten a little… contaminated.
So maybe what leaped to mind first was a Saintess gasping under goblins or orcs, or someone who, instead of serving a goddess, was worshipping something else entirely while moaning like a bitch in heat.
But set that kind of sex-ntess aside. Think of a proper Saintess.
Holy. Compassionate. An instrument of divine will. A being who seemed to exist to cast light over the world.
Maybe that image was exactly why her fall into corruption carried such a twisted charm—why people found the sacrilege so intoxicating.
So the original image had to be the sacred one: holy, merciful, the goddess's hand on earth, a guardian who brightened and protected the world.
After all, "falling into lewdness" only worked if she hadn't started out that way.
A Saintess was holy. That was common sense.
And right now, that "common sense" was about to collapse.
In a dark room, a wavering candle flame picked out a single silhouette.
A compact, beautifully balanced body—small, yes, but unmistakably a woman's in every line.
Her clothes clung to her, soaked through with sweat, laying that silhouette bare without mercy.
Lustrous hair the color of pure black; if you lifted a lock to your face, it would surely smell wonderful.
Pale skin flushed with life, delicate features, and a head so small that—with only a little exaggeration—you could almost cup the whole of it in one hand.
And beneath her eyes, a faint shadow that, blasphemously, added a single spoonful of decadent allure.
Looking at her, I almost understood why that other image of a Saintess took root so easily.
Honestly, if it had stopped there, I could have written the whole thing off as my own warped birthright—my eyes so thoroughly stained by the sex-ntess image that I couldn't see straight.
In short: my vision was filthy.
Even if someone beat me over the head with a mind-correction rod, I wouldn't have a word of complaint.
How dare you look at the Saintess that way?
Fine. Guilty as charged.
But when my gaze slipped a little lower, something that should not have been there came into view.
The hem of her clothes—which ought to have been cascading gently down her thighs—was standing tall, as if it had forgotten there was any such thing as a ceiling.
It jutted up as though someone had shoved an arm underneath that skirt and was holding it aloft. Literally tented. A full-blown canvas pavilion of fabric.
And at the tip of that tent, the cloth was stained a deep, wet color, as if someone had splashed water on it. Liquid had soaked through until it turned translucent, then seeped out to darken the hem further and drip to the floor—drop… drop.
Even from a little distance, the smell rolling off it was thick.
Too rank to call fragrant, and somewhere in it, a faint metallic tang. It drifted over in lazy waves.
A smell I could never get used to—the one people usually called the scent of night flowers.
Thinking of that, it wasn't hard to guess what was lurking under that enormous tent.
Yeah. That. That thing.
Maybe because our Saintess's body was so small, its presence felt even more overwhelming.
At this rate, if someone called her a sex-ntess, she wouldn't have a leg to stand on, would she?
Why? How?
And hang on—wasn't this a little dangerous? She definitely hadn't had that before. Why would it suddenly show up now?
Was I about to take the full fall for this? Was this the moment those bastards who'd been waiting for an excuse finally stuck a knife in me?
Wait. Don't tell me they picked me because they knew something like this would happen.
Yes, I was in charge of the Saintess's personal safety. That much was true.
But that meant guarding her so this pilgrimage finished without disaster—not handling this. I never heard a word about this. That old man tricked me.
Even if I was only half of one, I was still a Holy Knight, not a sex knight! The Saintess's partner Hero! A sword, not a goddamn sheath!
Right. No way. Absolutely not. She must have eaten something wrong. That had to be it.
I'd seen this kind of situation in games and manga in my past life, now and then. Usually, if you just yanked the thing out clean, it vanished.
So instead of staring at me like that, shouldn't she just grab it herself and take care of business?
Should I even tell her? Then again, there was no chance she'd ever gotten that kind of education. She probably didn't even know what it was.
When was the last time I shook one of those myself? I couldn't even remember. That last piece of fap material, though—that one had been insanely hot. Still stuck in my head. Definitely a Saintess who—
Don't tell me this is happening because I used to jack off to Saintess stories in my past life.
Ahem. Anyway.
Our taciturn Saintess only frowned as if she were in pain, staring at me and nothing else.
Her whole face asked what the hell was going on, and what this thing even was.
I don't know either, lady.
My head was killing me.
The manuals never covered how to handle a situation like this.
Then again, of course they didn't. If they had, that would have been the real problem.
Couldn't I just cut it off? Snip. I was confident with a blade. Cut it, then heal it. Done.
And then my life would be over, right?
Fuck this.
And they wanted me to believe in the gods in a world like this?
Ah—no, I mean… I'll believe properly from now on, so can we just call this a draw?
Please?