Chapter 18: Choice
Chapter 18: Choice
Her petite frame bounced on top of me.
Her ragged, breathy gasps began stretching into high, thin whines, and her movements became more forceful, slamming herself down harder.
Her slender body trembled—from pleasure or exhaustion, I couldn't tell—her breasts bobbing with every motion.
I just lay back and enjoyed the sight of a girl thrashing desperately, trying to cross the threshold into womanhood.
A world where I could just keep my cock hard and a woman would come service me according to her own desires... this gender-reversed world wasn't half bad.
Was it my innate laziness, or had the name 'Lethargic Nightmare' already seeped into my bones? Either way, I was slowly coming around to the idea that being the man getting ridden by a woman suited me just fine.
At some point, her strength gave out. She collapsed onto my thighs, too drained to rise again.
My cock—which even I thought was ridiculously large—was mercilessly buried to the hilt inside her.
As always, the tight, painfully snug grip of her inner walls felt incredible, but given that she'd never taken anything this size before, part of me was genuinely worried.
Well, black guys manage to have normal sex lives, so I figured she'd be fine. Right? Why, though—why had she dreamed up something this stupidly huge?
Some virgin's fantasy? An overestimation of her own limits?
People say pleasure you can't handle feels indistinguishable from pain.
I'd never experienced pleasure so intense it became agony, but looking at Han Ye-ji's face, I was starting to get it.
Tears had welled up in her glassy eyes and were finally spilling over, streaking her cheeks.
She curled up on top of me to catch her breath. I tilted her face up and kissed her lightly.
Compared to the raw act of fucking, the brush of my lips against her forehead and eyelids seemed to embarrass her more. She quickly averted her eyes.
As if urging her on in reply, I gave a sharp little buck of my hips, driving up into her.
Squelch. The head of my overly sensitized cock pressed unambiguously against her deepest limit.
An unfamiliar situation, but a familiar pleasure.
This was the first time she'd moved on her own while completely lucid, so Han Ye-ji's movements were awkward, virgin movements. She'd regained a little strength and pushed herself upright, only to hesitate before sinking back down, her round ass lowering with obvious reluctance. The crouched cowgirl position clearly wasn't comfortable for her—she kept shifting her footing, trying to find a better angle.
But the pleasure itself wasn't new to her.
Over the past week—dozens of hours' worth—this same pleasure had been driven deep into her body. And now her molten inner flesh wrapped around me as if to offer proof.
Overwhelmed by pleasure, she had no technique to speak of.
She just straddled me and bounced her ass up and down.
I met her desperate rhythm with a few sharp upward thrusts, but it only seemed to overload her with sensation and sap her strength even faster.
With a wet, squelching sound, she collapsed again.
Her body twitched. It wasn't just her stamina—she'd hit her mental limit. She went limp, overwhelmed.
I gently stroked her soft frame and wrapped her in my arms.
Her softness filled my arms completely.
"Haaah... my Constellation... is this really okay?"
A whisper, weak and muffled against my chest.
"Of course it's fine. It's more than fine. I didn't choose you just to secure myself a comfortable life, you know."
※
When Han Ye-ji woke from the dream, she moved without hesitation, as if a massive weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
As my First Incarnation, she'd apparently assumed my expectations for her would be impossibly high. She'd spent the whole week looking depressed, psyching herself out over it.
It was a Constellation-Incarnation relationship, but maybe she'd interpreted my willingness to sleep with her as me giving her everything. Or demanding everything.
She'd been carrying a heavy mental burden, convinced that as my First Incarnation, she needed to charge to the front lines and rake in points. But when I whispered—over and over—that she didn't need to do any of that, she chose, without a flicker of hesitation, the path of a civil servant.
It was a safe choice for a girl who was the head of her household, raising a younger brother with no parents around.
"I'm always so sorry, Constellation..."
[Constellation Lethargic Nightmare advises her not to worry about it.]
Points are awarded to Constellations based on their Incarnation's performance and reputation.
Fighting monsters on the front lines comes with high casualties but massive gains.
Conversely, joining an Incarnation Response Unit in the interior is safer but yields less.
Hunting down fallen Incarnations and closing civilian-targeting Gates was a hell of a lot safer than a warzone.
In my case, I could collect Nightmares from my Incarnation, but I have no idea what to use them for yet, so I'd put that on the back burner for now.
Still, what can you do.
I'm not screwed up enough to hand a gun to a girl I've slept with and order her to the front lines of a war.
If this were a ruined, post-apocalyptic hellscape too, then maybe. But it wasn't.
And so time passed.
On a somewhat unrelated note, Han Ye-ji didn't make any friends during her three months at the Academy.
Other students seemed to bond early on—during beginner classes when they chose their career tracks, or during graduation prep when they studied together. But she'd been adrift during that first window, and she'd accepted a business card and locked in her career path so fast she'd missed the chance entirely.
She also changed her classes after that consultation.
Instead of Basic Weapon Skills, she chose Basic Marksmanship and Advanced Law and made it abundantly clear to the staff that she wanted to be assigned to the interior.
I didn't bother examining the business-card-sized thing closely—it was too much effort—but even just seeing her casually give an instructor attitude told me it belonged to someone extremely high-ranking.
Someone that high-ranking had shown personal interest and rushed over in person, so her recruitment was practically guaranteed.
Now, on the screen, she wasn't swinging weapons at mannequins anymore. She was aiming her gun at moving targets.
She'd finished her basic courses and chosen a career. All that remained was grueling specialized training.
Starting with stationary targets, she'd moved on to shooting down black drones weaving between white mannequins.
Whether it was the weight off her shoulders, or a natural talent for shooting, her skills were visibly improving.
Three months ago she'd been holding a convenience store barcode scanner. Now she was holding a gun, shooting drones out of the sky.
Finally, I was beginning to understand what it meant when they talked about souls with talent that never got a chance to bloom.
It'd only been three months—less than a month since she first held a gun—and the improvement was remarkable.
Even so, by the Academy's historical standards, Han Ye-ji wasn't particularly exceptional.
Her marksmanship had gone from an unimpressive 14 out of 20 hits in her first week—an ambiguous, middle-of-the-road score—to hitting flying targets that were actively evading obstacles.
And yet her growth score was still considered average. Just how monstrous are these other Incarnations?
Some Incarnations supposedly apply for a practical exam at the start of the month and pass it by the end without any Constellation help. That's just terrifying.
I'd also heard about last year's top cadet, who picked up a sword for the first time at the Academy and beat an instructor in swordsmanship within a month.
There really were Incarnations with protagonist-level talent straight out of a novel.
It hit me again just how incomparable this world was to my old one.
In my old world, anyone who surpassed an instructor after just one month of training would've been hailed as a prodigy on the news.
A world where at least one talent like that pops up in every field every single year.
Then there were the alien monsters that kept invading endlessly, undeterred by such formidable human potential.
It looked peaceful on the surface, but when you looked deeper, this world was absolutely insane.
that's why sending minors to war was considered normal.
Look around the Academy and you saw plenty of young men and women in their mid-to-late teens alongside those in their twenties and early thirties.
Before they even turned twenty, before they'd even finish high school, some would be deployed to the front lines to kill monsters.
A world that casually consumed child soldiers... or rather, girl soldiers.
Put that way, it really did feel like a horrifying world.
I stared blankly at the list, searching for anything that looked remotely useful.
Today was the last day of September.
Han Ye-ji had failed to hit the high-speed maneuvering drones in her test, so her marksmanship class was on hold. She was skipping new classes and resting comfortably in bed.
And I was looking for a way to help her, counting the 1,000pt I'd get in October to bring my total to an ambiguous 2,000pt.
Just as I was slowly learning about Nightmares and lucid dreams, the shop's inventory kept growing.
no Authority was cheaper than the 3,000pt Sweet Lucid Dream.
But I couldn't just buy her a 5pt Fatigue Remover or something equally useless, so I kept browsing for something potentially useful.
I was looking at Authorities for marksmanship and evasion specifically.
I'd sent her to the interior to avoid making her shoot monsters; I wanted to prevent her from accidentally shooting civilians and getting traumatized.
Plus my slight stereotype that gunner characters are supposed to be agile, dodge-based builds.
Temporary doping items were cheap, but permanent enhancers started at 5,000pt and went up from there.
Basic Authorities cost 3,000pt—isn't that too expensive?
Wait, since item descriptions used terms like STR +1, did Incarnations get to see their own status windows?
Would shouting 'Status Window!' into the air make their stats pop up?
With these idle thoughts filling my head, I kept browsing the new items.
Among the consumables, there were special ammunition types, probably designed for gunslingers.
I'd have to buy her some when I earned more points.
11:58, 11:59, midnight.
Just as the sprawled-out Han Ye-ji slipped into a lucid dream, the point window refreshed.
I'd saved points from June, July, and August to buy the Sweet Lucid Dream, leaving September's 1,000pt untouched.
And now that it was October, it should've been 2,000pt...
[Points held: 6,000pt / Fragment of Nightmare x1]
My points had suddenly jumped.