Chapter 118: Leash
Chapter 118: Leash
Rituals that used magic circles couldn't simply be repeated back-to-back on nothing more than offerings and mana.
So the Sword That Severs the Yoke and her disciples returned to their own quarters.
The Academy appeared to have hastily emptied a dormitory for them.
Given the spine-chilling, mouth-parching killing intent she radiated, staying in a regular dormitory would have been difficult anyway.
Kim Ha-eun watched them go, then headed off to tend to the patients despite the late hour.
Not out of any philanthropic impulse — she'd gotten nothing from the female disciple, so she was off to secure her mana supply for the day.
'She still hasn't shaken the obsession.'
She had a friend in Lee Ha-rin now, and the comfortable life at the Academy plus her nightly indulgences had stabilized her mind to some degree, but that fixation of Kim Ha-eun's persisted.
Which left my quarters occupied by Lee Ha-rin alone.
"So. What is it?"
"You're soiled with dust. I thought I might attend to your bath."
Lee Ha-rin smiled brightly, said it as lightly as anything, and slipped into the bathroom.
But her composed exterior told a different story from the turbid emotions pouring off her.
'The hell — is qi deviation contagious now?'
Was it that female disciple's killing intent from earlier?
Her mental state seemed tangled up in knots.
She'd suggested bath service out of absolutely nowhere, and the emotions I sensed from her were a vivid cocktail of fear, anticipation, nervous excitement, and embarrassment.
This was Lee Ha-rin, who'd deep-throated me underwater in a hot spring inside a lucid dream. Did a simple bath service really warrant embarrassment?
I could read emotions, but not thoughts with full clarity. I had no way to parse what this mixture of dread, eagerness, and anxiety actually meant.
'...Do I just follow her in?'
In her lucid dreams, Lee Ha-rin always started out naked in a luxurious bathroom, so I had no frame of reference — was I supposed to go in now, or wait until the sound of water filling the tub stopped?
As if I'd ever had someone attend to my bath before in my life.
Not that "decline the bath service" was on the table as an option.
My heightened hearing caught the soft rustle of clothes being shed. How exactly was I supposed to refuse that?
The sound of running water eased a little, and I crept toward the bathroom.
I'd been served in reality before, not just in dreams, but being waited on by a beautiful woman still made my heart pound.
'She's not about to shove her head underwater in the tub again, is she?'
A horrible little imagining flickered through my mind, and I pictured the bathroom tub. It was reasonably spacious — two people could fit comfortably wrapped in each other's arms — but not nearly roomy enough for anyone to duck under and go diving.
A naked woman was offering to bathe me, and here I was, waiting for it while worrying about this. The absurdity of it made me snort to myself as I opened the bathroom door.
What met my eyes was Lee Ha-rin, kneeling on a single towel spread beneath her. Thank god it was just that, and not some bizarre spectacle that defied all common sense.
"Constellation, this way."
I approached as she bowed her head deferentially.
The dust-caked clothes came off, and warm water spilled gently over my skin with a pleasant prickle. Whether out of concern for my skin or quietly indulging her own desires, Lee Ha-rin worked up a lather with her bare hands and began stroking every inch of my body with slow, lingering care.
That soft touch sent blood rushing downward on reflex—
'Huh? What's this?'
Another rinse of warm water, and the suds washed away. We slipped into the bath together, basking in the drowsy warmth, and that was the end of the bath service.
It was so restrained, so unexpectedly bland that it almost felt like an April Fool's prank. I was thrown.
Honestly, this was a gender-role-reversed world. By now I'd grown more than content with how women here approached me first unbidden, their desires so unguarded they bordered on brazen. And yet today, the bath ended with nothing happening at all.
It wasn't the absence of sex that left me baffled.
'Then what exactly was I expecting?'
It was the emotions I'd sensed from Lee Ha-rin just before I entered the bathroom. That turbulent surge of feeling, strong enough to register even without focusing my magical power. What the hell had that been?
I stared blankly at her retreating backside, pale bare bottom bobbing as she scurried out ahead of me.
Well, if it didn't happen now, I could always enjoy myself in a lucid dream or inside her unconscious mind. It didn't matter.
But whatever that emotion had been, it nagged at me so badly I felt like I was losing my mind. As if someone had tossed out a nonsense riddle and bolted without giving the answer.
I was still turning it over as I grabbed a bathrobe and stepped outside—
Lee Ha-rin, whom I'd assumed had left, was waiting for me on the bed. In a state I could never have imagined.
A pristine white bathrobe, soaked through and clinging with moisture. The disheveled robe gaped to reveal the valley of her breasts, droplets beading and trailing down her skin. Her lower half had collapsed into careless disarray, exposing her thighs and what might even have been the curve of her ass.
And a dog leash.
'A leash? Why? Is this an S&M thing? Wait, her unconscious mind did go this far back with Anna...'
My thoughts refused to cohere, bouncing around my skull as disconnected fragments of words.
A woman on a dog leash. Wasn't this the kind of thing you only saw in AVs back in my old life?
I approached the bed as if spellbound, and Lee Ha-rin shyly extended a hand toward me. The emotional wave that struck me alongside it was even more intense.
The fulfillment of submitting to her Constellation.
The constriction biting into her throat.
The shame of displaying herself like this as a woman.
And beneath it all, the illicit thrill of how every part of it made her heart race.
"It's, um, despite how it looks, this is a magic tool..."
Lee Ha-rin began her explanation, voice trembling, unable to meet my eyes.
"It seemed... whenever you wish to contact us, Constellation, you have to return to the Sanctum..."
The faint magical power I could sense from it, the way water beaded and rolled off instead of soaking in — the claim that it was a magic tool seemed genuine enough.
"It was sent by Incarnations from the Southern Continent. When you're taming an animal, it lets you communicate telepathically with it. That kind of magic tool."
"It's meant for animals, though. Is that... alright?"
"Oh, yes! I did the research and made adjustments, so it's fine. I slightly altered the relationship from human-and-animal to, to Constellation-and-Incarnation..."
Looking at her hands shaking and her eyes on the verge of tears from sheer nerves, I couldn't bring myself to mention that I'd been planning to contact the Academy today to purchase a smartphone.
'Her loyalty to her Constellation seems to be twisting into a craving for submission and restraint...'
Her desire had taken a dark turn, shifting from "I offer my devotion" to "my Constellation binds me."
Still, one thing was absolutely clear.
'This is hot as fuck.'
I was thoroughly on board with this situation.
When I took hold of the leash handle she'd shyly offered, she smiled as if relief had washed over her. I heard the sigh she let out — half exhalation, half reassurance — and gave the leash a gentle tug.
She toppled softly toward me.
'That is obscene. Genuinely.'
A half-naked woman in a disheveled bathrobe, a black leash stark against her pale skin and the white fabric — it hit like a lethal poison aimed straight at a man in his prime.
Sprawled on the bed, she glanced at the bulge straining against my bathrobe and let a small smile slip. She seemed reassured that I hadn't refused, hadn't found it strange.
"In that case... a ceremony to formalize the master-servant relationship."
It wasn't a Constellation-Incarnation contract, and wasn't she being a bit too overt calling it a master-servant relationship?
Before I could even object, soft fingers slipped inside my robe.
The dizzying pleasure hit me at the same time.
'This is reality, though?'
It was obvious, but pleasure in dreams was always more vivid than in reality. We'd done things far removed from actual physical constraints — thirty-minute breath-held underwater fellatio, the essence-extraction ritual that devoured mana in ways that defied all real-world logic.
"You're wielding Dream Demon power."
Yet right now, Lee Ha-rin wasn't working as a mage. She was wielding the power of a Dream Demon — just enough to make reality feel as overwhelming as a dream.
"Y-yes. I may not look it, but I am Lethargic Nightmare's Incarnation."
She was only teasing at the tip, and the frustration made me tug the leash. The sensation of the collar tightening around her throat sent her crawling forward eagerly, tongue lolling out as she spoke.
"I may not be on Kim Ha-eun's level, but I should be able to handle this much magical power too, shouldn't I?"
That faint wisp of purple pooling at her fingertips and the tip of her tongue. A laughable amount, nothing compared to Kim Ha-eun's mana veil or the threads of magical power I could spin.
But Lee Ha-rin was a victim of the Extreme talent — a savant in sacrifice magic and utterly useless in everything else. I couldn't even imagine how much effort it must have cost her to wield even that trace of Dream Demon power.
'The direction of the effort is a little... warped, though...'
There was something ironic about pouring blood, sweat, and bone-grinding effort into producing a dog leash and a mouth pussy. But what could I do? Her Constellation was a Dream Demon — wasn't it only natural for the Incarnation to make things like this? I had no choice but to rationalize it.
"I worked so hard modifying the magic circles and adjusting the spell formulas embedded in the magic tool—"
[So I'd like to be rewarded, Constellation.]
Lips warmed by the lingering heat of the bath pressed kiss after kiss to the tip of the glans. By now, neither of us was breathing anything but lust-heated air.
From the head of my cock, down the shaft, to the balls — and just when I thought she'd come back up, she descended lower instead, savoring the bite of the leash squeezing her throat. She kissed her way down my thighs and knees, then to the tops of my feet and my toes.
Submission so total it was hard to reconcile with the relationship between a Constellation and his Incarnation.
And that, more than anything, was what aroused me.