Chapter 174: Assemble 2
Chapter 174: Assemble 2
The Sword That Severs the Yoke did not sign incarnation contracts with her disciples.
Instead, she taught them swordsmanship and various martial techniques,
and once they attained a sufficient level, she ordered them down the mountain and dispatched them across the land.
The most common destination for her disciples, unsurprisingly, was the battlefield.
Statistics even suggested that fifteen percent of the Eastern Continent's front lines were held by her disciples alone.
Not that every disciple set out for the front lines.
Some would master lightness techniques and join inland Gate response units;
a tiny handful, more gifted in internal energy cultivation than weapons, even ended up in hospitals.
"My master told me this new life was a gift from Lethargic Nightmare, and that I was to use it for you."
And so, here she knelt before me with perfect deference—
one of the disciples dispatched to the Academy.
'Good grief.'
On paper, technically, there was absolutely no issue with this.
She was going wherever she pleased under the pretext of leaving the mountain, after all,
which only spread the renown of The Sword That Severs the Yoke even further.
Serving as the sword-bearing escort for Lethargic Nightmare, the recently famous Academy Constellation,
the man who treated incarnations and soldiers as equals—
that would certainly count as an honorable posting.
If only she hadn't been stark naked and secretly spectating someone else's sex scene.
"So couldn't she simply come to me, form a contract, and ask permission?"
Acquiring a ready-made incarnation whose growth was already complete was hardly a bad deal.
If she truly was the continent's greatest talent, the profit margin was enormous.
But that still didn't justify hiding in a wardrobe to peep.
I'd had this exact thought before, thanks to Kim Ha-eun.
I got away with it because I'm me, but by this world's standards,
wasn't this undeniably a serious crime?
Strip away everything else, and it was a voyeur, a victim, and an accomplice—wasn't it?
It wasn't Lee Ha-rin but the swordswoman who answered what I considered a perfectly logical question.
"W-Well, this is embarrassing to say, but..."
Unlike Lee Ha-rin, who spoke with measured composure,
the swordswoman's face had flushed to the verge of bursting,
and she stumbled over her words.
But once her story was finished,
I couldn't bring myself to scold her.
And I finally understood why she had come to me.
'Still, reaching enlightenment through voyeurism is a bit....'
"I didn't say it to sexually harass you or anything! M-My master also considers it rather unusual...!"
The swordswoman, catching my gaze, flinched in alarm and waved her hands.
With the martial arts of The Sword That Severs the Yoke and Lee Ha-rin's magic standing as proof,
the story was too elaborate to dismiss as a grand excuse to indulge private urges through peeping.
I even had a vague inkling of how it had happened.
Kim Ha-eun had covertly treated her through a spar within her Origin,
and then I had stepped in afterward, treating the Qi Deviation like just another Nightmare,
extinguishing it inside the swordswoman's Origin.
In short, her Origin was caked in Dream Demon magical power.
And it wasn't just me—Kim Ha-eun had also been in a partially mutated Dream Demon state at the time.
It reminded me of Ellis, who had been so saturated with water magic that her physical body liquefied.
It seemed exposing an Origin to magical power caused all sorts of mutations.
Like a human exposed to radiation turning into a mutant.
'Wow, I suddenly feel really fucking sorry.'
Back then, I hadn't known how to handle an Origin properly, so hadn't I been moving my magic around half as an experiment?
My curiosity had turned a perfectly normal maiden into a deviant who raised her cultivation through voyeurism.
A sudden wave of regret prompted me to personally help her to her feet.
At any rate, between the swordswoman's rambling account
and Lee Ha-rin's calm, supplementary explanation, I heard them out completely.
※
She came from a sprawling commercial city in the southeastern part of the Eastern Continent, and her name was Song Dan-dan.
Pronounced Ssong Dan-dan in her regional dialect, she asked to be called simply Dan-dan.
Her predicament was simple to explain but staggeringly difficult to resolve.
- A mixture of Dream Demon magic and sexual stimulation had eroded her Origin!
To put it bluntly, it was straightforward.
For her to grow, she had to do lewd things with me.
It sounded like the plot of some third-rate hentai missing a few screws, but what could I do?
I'd patched her Qi-devastated Origin with Dream Demon magic.
For example, imagine a cardboard box on the verge of splitting open.
What I did was wrap tape around it to keep it from tearing.
The Origin became sturdy, and there was no longer any fear of it rupturing and spilling its contents,
but I'd applied so much tape that the box was now sealed shut.
If this box needed more items added to it,
the hassle was that yet more tape had to be wound around it.
And that tape was my magical power—
more precisely, the Dream Demon Essence I transferred through sex.
'This is seriously my fault, isn't it?'
Han Ye-ji, Lee Ha-rin, Kim Ha-eun.
I thought back on the first awakenings of those three Incarnations.
Hadn't they awakened their talents and Authorities precisely because of the Dream Demon Essence
I'd transferred to them through sex every night in lucid dreams?
A genius of the sword, the finest on the continent.
Her growth as a promising future swordmaster was now being blocked by my cock.
If only that were all. Blocking her growth would have been welcome news compared to the rest.
She appeared to have restrained herself from masturbating while peeping, but
hadn't I clearly sensed an undeniable arousal coming from her?
In the name of treatment, I'd turned someone into a deviant
and completely sealed off her potential for growth.
'Fuck, a perverted fetish and a growth stopper?'
"Erm, my Constellation? If you intend to continue, p-please wait a moment."
She couldn't have imagined I was the cause as she knelt on the floor, pleading—Dan-dan.
Lee Ha-rin, utterly naked except for a collar, moved with complete nonchalance
and held Dan-dan by the nape, rubbing against her.
And there I was, still standing in front of them with my pants off.
It was a truly chaotic scene.
"And what is that?"
"Ah, it's a magic circle designed to detonate had she attempted to deceive you into a sexual act."
Lee Ha-rin stated something utterly vicious with a perfectly straight face.
After Dan-dan, Lee Ha-rin continued the explanation.
Her logic was surprisingly sound.
So she hadn't permitted the voyeurism without a reason.
"You only bestow your grace upon your Incarnations, my Constellation. Had Song Dan-dan, driven by lust, schemed to manipulate you with false confessions, that magic circle would have simply torn her head off. It would have ripped her apart above the neck without leaving a trace, so I judged witnessing what she should not have seen was a non-issue."
Becoming my Incarnation meant being allowed sex to receive the Dream Demon's Essence.
It was Lee Ha-rin's judgment, made without knowing the true nature of my relationship with the Unfading Giant Tree.
She had a point—for a Dream Demon, I'd never simply grabbed any random woman.
If Song Dan-dan's words were true,
I would think highly of her talent and take her as an Incarnation.
If they were false,
the magic circle planted in her neck would burst with a pop,
erasing the memory of my naked body from her mind.
A physical method of memory deletion that would take her entire brain with it.
She cared not one bit about her own unsightly, collared appearance being seen in all this.
An extreme decision, born from this gender-reversed world and her submission to a Constellation.
She added with a completely shameless face:
"If you do not accept her as your Incarnation and cast her aside instead, then I apologize. I dared to anticipate your will, my Constellation."
A laugh escaped me at that.
Who the hell would refuse, short of having been shot in the head?
She came with a guarantee from The Sword That Severs the Yoke herself—
a woman who could become the continent's greatest swordmaster as my Incarnation.
And perhaps due to her martial training, but her looks didn't fall short either.
A round, cute face and long, straight black hair.
It had grown nearly to her waist, as if hair could pose no possible hindrance to her.
I lack the vocabulary to describe it well, but
she gave off the strong impression of a round-faced, classic beauty
who'd look stunning in a cheongsam or historical-drama costume.
On top of that, Kim Ha-eun had stolen a portion of her sword talent.
Putting the two of them together might generate some positive synergy.
I understood, I accepted, and I took the contract.
But the biggest problem remained for last.
"So, um, should I... step outside?"
The atmosphere in the room was awkward as hell, that was the problem.
A woman naked except for a dog collar, a man stripped from the waist down,
and a woman kneeling between us.
Amid this awkwardness, Lee Ha-rin was the first to speak.
"Miss Song Dan-dan, you're a virgin, correct?"
"Huh? Ah, eh, um, yes? I suppose so? I was too busy swinging a sword."
"Then I gather you don't know the way a woman serves a man."
"N-No...."
Lee Ha-rin's eyes glistened with desire.
The dense emotions I felt flowing from her were almost disconcerting.
Seriously, why was she feeling a desire to show off and a craving for recognition in this situation?
"In that case, my Constellation, might you permit me to let her watch—for the sake of Miss Song Dan-dan's growth? The service a man requires is delicate, you see, unlike a woman who is satisfied by simply being roughly thrust into."
Lee Ha-rin wanted to flaunt her service to Song Dan-dan.
Song Dan-dan wanted to observe the relationship between me and Lee Ha-rin.
It was a moment where their perverted interests aligned perfectly.
Even if she had to create clones, Lee Ha-rin's desire was to monopolize the act of attending to me.
Since becoming the sole Incarnation was impossible,
had the direction of her desire simply bent this way?
She wanted to show off her techniques to Song Dan-dan, who would belatedly become an Incarnation.
More precisely, she wanted to brag about how helpful she was to me.
No wonder she'd taken charge of the contract and led the conversation.