Chapter 167: Rain Shower 2
Chapter 167: Rain Shower 2
I glued myself smoothly to Heart of the Exiled Serpent's side.
Obviously not because she was pretty or because I liked her, but to drain her mana.
Even as her magic was being siphoned off in real time, the stupid bitch probably thought she was just spending it on hypnosis or maintaining her clone.
She just grinned moronically beneath the envious stares of losers who couldn't seduce men, and the gazes of other jealous males.
Put simply, the woman had zero sense of danger.
"Your hair is really pretty. Mixed blood? Or an exchange student?"
"Exchange student... I came to check things out."
Enough to swallow an awkward lie like that. A black-haired pretty boy materialized right in front of her while she was on the run, and look at her—not even suspecting a honey trap or a sting operation.
Though, having her mana stolen little by little probably explained why she was acting like a brainless whore.
Heart of the Exiled Serpent had been born into a wealthy family from the start. A rich girl who'd never faced a crisis worse than failing an exam. She spent her days just studying and getting her sexual kicks with androids, went to college, joined a company, became a director through her parents' connections—
"An exchange student... You came all the way to the Western Continent? Hmm, should I pick up a blonde too?"
Unaware that she'd ended her world with war, she'd been knocked out with sleeping gas and exiled into outer space.
The most dangerous thing she'd ever experienced was nearly getting into a car crash because of a broken auto-drive system, and a meeting where she politically clashed with a director from another line. That was it. So of course, she couldn't feel danger.
She ignored the presence of someone approaching from behind, and even when the men she'd picked up were suspicious, she just grinned slack-jawed. An idiot who'd made plenty of enemies but couldn't even imagine facing retaliation.
"Wanna come over here too?"
"Yes..."
Not realizing her mana was being sucked dry by me, look at her dragging in another handsome blonde from the street. Yeah, a handsome, blonde... man?
'Wait, isn't this crazy bastard...'
I was startled for a moment, eyes widening, but that moron with no danger sense just assumed I was reacting to her touch, laughing to herself like, 'Hehe, sensitive, aren't we?'
Unaware that the man on her right was the Dream Demon who gouged her eyes out not long ago, and that the man on her left was grinding his teeth for revenge.
I wondered if she'd been hypnotized herself to get this far, but when Heart of the Exiled Serpent looked away, I saw him grinning darkly at me. He was probably blocking the hypnosis with some kind of Guard gear.
"Alright, let's go this way."
"Yes, okay..."
"Sure."
Two men in her arms, and she didn't even realize they weren't hypnotized.
She probably wasn't going to make it past tonight. With that thought, I moved as she led.
Two men flanking one slender woman. One, a slim, black-haired idol type. The other, a blonde hunk who looked like a statue of David. The drunk people stared daggers at us, especially as we headed blatantly toward a building that looked exactly like a love hotel.
'Constellation of Clubs and Love Hotels, huh.'
The kiosk screen flashed a threat: 'Under Constellation Jurisdiction.' Come to think of it, they must make a killing here. With the fame, plus the direct profits.
"Hmm, bed sizes..."
Heart of the Exiled Serpent, tapping away at the touch screen, casually slid her hand into the Imperial Guard's clothes. She groped his chest a few times, then pulled out his wallet and swiped a card. The way she plucked the wallet from someone else's clothes and paid—she was incredibly practiced, as if she'd done it a thousand times before.
The golden-haired Guard stared murderously at the back of her head as she tapped at the kiosk. A killing intent so strong it made even my spine shiver for a moment. Though, she didn't even notice that, so it was irrelevant.
To be fair, I'd never felt killing intent or a sense of danger myself before the nuclear war.
"Come on, follow me."
The moment of staring with bloodlust didn't last long. Heart of the Exiled Serpent finished paying and took the lead.
She'd absorbed a lot of mana. Should I keep following her? If this kept up, it looked like we'd end up dick-fencing. I had no desire to see another man naked. Anyway, what was the golden-haired Guard here for? Musing over all of it, I got on the elevator. As the ding sounded, all sorts of thoughts ran through my head.
"Today's a lucky day. Didn't even wander much and I picked up two."
Was it an aftereffect of the space exile? This woman kept muttering to herself while fondling our asses. It was starting to get annoying. If we were at least going to end up actually fucking, maybe I'd get it. Sure, she was decent-looking, but just because she kept grabbing my ass, getting half-hard was both irritating and uncomfortable. In the first place, walking three in a row while having your ass grabbed by the person next to you—could anyone call that comfortable? The bitch doing the groping might be having a grand old time, but for the people doing the walking, it was just a hindrance.
'Should I kill her now, or not?'
Because I didn't know much about magic, my head got all tangled up. Would killing this clone be enough to study her? If I killed the clone here, could I capture her for sure next time? If we went all the way to sex, I could definitely drain her mana. But what if this fetish freak made us guys do stuff with each other?
With another ding, the elevator door opened, and I agonized over all of it as I walked toward the room Heart of the Exiled Serpent had paid for. But the moment the door opened with a click, my worries became meaningless.
"Ah, urk—!"
"Finally...!"
A dagger stabbed in with a precise shunk. Aiming exactly at her mid-back, piercing her lung, it dug into a spot where she couldn't even scream.
'...What the hell is this?'
"Y-You—!"
But maybe because it was a clone body? Even with her lungs punctured, she gagged and tried to open her mouth. Why wasn't she dispersing the clone, though?
The golden-haired Guard drove the knife deeper into her back, using it like a handle, shoving Heart of the Exiled Serpent farther into the room. Heart of the Exiled Serpent thrashed her limbs like a doll and was dragged inside without shedding a single drop of blood.
"Please, come in, Constellation."
Twisting the dagger lodged in her back, the golden-haired Guard smiled ever so brightly.
※
They say a woman's grudge can bring frost even in midsummer. In the old days, if frost fell in midsummer, all the crops would be ruined—meaning an angry woman could cause unimaginable harm. Did this reversed-gender world have a similar saying? English literature had a similar phrase, so probably. If a man held a grudge, what was it—'A portal opens even in the safe zone'?
Watching him laugh while twisting a dagger lodged in a person's body, I was certain this world had its own version of that proverb.
"So, explain what's going on."
"It's all thanks to you, Constellation."
"Not thanks to that dagger?"
It was a clone that shared senses. A knife lodged in its back, the blade twisting around, literally gouging out its innards. Why would anyone maintain a clone while tears and snot were streaming down their face? She wasn't some insane masochist who got off on having her guts sliced up. The normal reaction would be to disperse the mana, sever the connection to the clone, and curl up crying in her Sanctum.
So the suspicious thing was that dagger. He wasn't thrusting it in and out, just twisting it, which made me suspicious. Was it enchanted with a spell that kept her clone from disappearing?
"Heh, I had a tough time buying this. If not for the Curse Sorcerers who visited the Academy, I couldn't have gotten it."
"Curse Sorcerers...? Ah, back then."
Come to think of it, when we caught Heart of the Exiled Serpent's incarnation, all sorts of wizards had gathered, wanting to dissect and autopsy her. I'd wondered why he was there observing in the meeting room at the time. He must have been running around looking for this dagger.
"So that's why you said it was thanks to me?"
"Precisely, sir. It's because you drained her mana. A Curse Sorcerer's dagger isn't all-powerful and has major restrictions. The clone needs to possess more magic than the original body to prevent backflow."
"Then, while that dagger is in her...?"
"Yes. This bitch can't return to her Sanctum."
Hearing that, Heart of the Exiled Serpent writhed on the floor, but the Imperial Guard, who'd planted his ass right on top of her, kept her suppressed by yanking the dagger in her back back and forth like a car gearshift.
A world mixing all sorts of Constellations, Incarnations, magic, and superpowers. Indeed, it meant you could screw a Dream Demon over in ways you'd never imagine. The Curse Sorcerer's dagger was hard to find, but its ability wasn't much. Its only power was preventing a clone from disappearing. Even that could only be used when the clone possessed more mana than the original. It couldn't be used on mass-produced clones like those from talismans or shikigami. Originally a ritual dagger for sealing single-duplication Authorities like Doppelgangers.
'He approached me because he saw I absorb mana?'
But Heart of the Exiled Serpent had just met those conditions perfectly. She'd wasted what little mana she had on hypnosis, and I'd sucked up the rest using her clone as a straw. Since she didn't have an incarnation like Lee Ha-rin, her maximum mana was far lower than mine.
"The dagger will lose its effect once the original body in the Sanctum recovers its mana... But you can absorb mana, can't you, sir? If so, we just need to make her suffer enough that she'll never dare set eyes on the surface again."
Heart of the Exiled Serpent, pinned on the floor, thrashed about. And the more she thrashed and wailed, the deeper the golden-haired Guard's smile grew.
'Fuck, that's seriously fucking dark.'
I'd been thinking I'd just beat her to death and consume her Origin, but he was determined to sneak in some torture no matter what.