The Horn of Purity's Shameful Revelation
It felt exactly like running a chastity relay, passing the torch between virginity and purity. There was no doubt in my mind that the eyes fixed on the sacred light pouring from my hands shimmered with hazy admiration. Yet the clearer and brighter those emotions became, the darker the shadow of shame spreading across my heart grew.
“Whoa…”
Even in broad daylight, the dazzling radiance that seemed to raise the brightness of everything around us by another level drew wave after wave of genuine awe. The magical tool known as the Horn of Purity emitted light in direct proportion to the user’s chastity. The legend of a devout nun who had never known a man in all her years using the artifact to bring light back to a sun-forsaken city was a classic example trotted out whenever they taught new priests the importance of purity.
And that symbolism had survived even after the tool’s purpose had warped from a holy relic proving nobility into an impure device that judged whether someone had experience or not. At least, it had when the subject was female.
“Pfft.”
I drove a solid punch into the waiter who had just laughed out loud.
The value of male virginity and female virginity were nowhere near equal. How could a lock that had never been opened hold the same worth as a key that couldn’t open anything? A woman’s purity was an achievement worthy of praise, but a man’s chastity was little more than a stain on one’s life—fortunate if it escaped ridicule. That was precisely why every grown bachelor secretly lingering around the capital refused to go anywhere near the Horn of Purity.
Which meant that a healthy adult male holding the artifact and scattering a light so bright it made people squint was no different from screaming at the top of his lungs for the whole world to hear: “Yes, I’m a virgin!”
It was a deeply embarrassing act.
After I began emitting the light, the voices of contempt and disgust born from a small misunderstanding had all died away. That was good news, if anything. But in their place rose sighs heavy with pity and sympathy, so my feelings remained just as tangled.
I didn’t need a mirror to know what my face looked like right now. It was surely flushed crimson, like an overripe apple.
“There. This proves my innocence, doesn’t it, Apis?”
“Uh… uhh… Y-yeah, but… uh…?”
I set the Horn of Purity I had been holding down carefully on the broken table and spoke to her in a tone that sounded rather curt even to my own ears. Apis’s dumbfounded expression—blinking like a mute who had swallowed a mouthful of honey—made for quite an amusing sight. It formed a delightful contrast with the sharp, resolute Apis I remembered.
Still, we couldn’t stay like this forever. I decided to drag her consciousness back from whatever distant place it had wandered off to.
“Here.”
I tossed the Horn of Purity lightly toward her. Part of me wanted a little payback for forcing the most private secret I had sworn never to reveal to anyone except my future wife out into the open for all to see.
According to Apis herself, she was a so-called demonic elf who had grown utterly sick of men after bedding countless ones over the past four hundred years. So when the Horn of Purity touched her hand, there was no way it would shine. Instead, the tool that detected impurity would surely turn pitch black. Even I had to admit it was a rather fitting revenge.
Let’s see you get embarrassed for once.
“Uh—wait! Hold on!”
The instant the Horn of Purity settled safely in Apis’s hands, a fierce flash erupted. A sacred beam of light incomparable to the meager glow I had produced tore across my retinas. Its brilliance was so otherworldly that it would have been difficult to argue against the idea that the sun itself had descended upon this place for a moment.
“Wow…”
As if witnessing a rare spectacle one might see only once in a lifetime, every eye in the vicinity was drawn to that polar light—to Apis. Some whistled crudely, others clasped their hands and shed emotional tears. Even the shop owner shook his head slowly, as though facing an unbelievable reality, and unconsciously began to clap.
The holy silence was reminiscent of morning prayer in a monastery.
Crack!
A clear shattering sound rang out as the Horn of Purity split cleanly in two. Immediately afterward, the aurora-like swarm of light fluttering through the shop met its noble end. The scene somehow felt familiar, instantly calling to mind a certain manga where a combat power scanner exploded from overloading its calculations.
No way! The scouter must be broken!
That immortal line was playing automatically in my head when a frail, tear-choked voice rose from the spot where the light had died.
“Hic… hic…”
I opened my eyes fully—they had been squinted against the intense ray—and saw Apis. Her face was redder than a carrot, possibly even redder than her own hair, and her lips trembled as if she might burst into tears at any second. Whether from the shock of the tool breaking or something else, the recognition-inhibiting hood had rolled up just enough to reveal her flushed ears, but she didn’t seem to have the presence of mind to notice.
Her delicate hands, which had been wandering helplessly through the air, finally settled on her pure-white thighs. One by one, teardrops fell onto them, clearly revealing the storm raging inside her.
“What the—! So the woman was an elf! Whoa~! Never thought I’d see a virgin elf in the flesh! You really do live and learn!”
Apis bared her teeth once at the surrounding cheers of admiration, then hung her head low. No matter how long-lived elves were, they still possessed physiological desires; their first experiences didn’t differ all that much in timing from humans. I had heard that the newer generation of city-dwelling elves considered it proper to finish their first time between the ages of twenty and fifty at the latest.
When Dawna had asked Apis about the truth of those rumors, the sight of her answering in a triumphant voice was still vivid in my memory.
“O-of course! I’ve eaten so many men over the past four hundred years! If I wanted, I could send them off just by touching them!”
“I get it, so don’t say it so loudly… Good grief, how impure…”
“Ohh! Amazing, Apis! To be able to defeat someone just by touching them! That technique! Please teach it to me too! By the way, what does ‘eat’ mean in that context!”
At the time I hadn’t doubted her words for a second. Her attitude had been far too confident for it to be a lie, and her beauty was more than enough to make the claim believable.
“Uh…”
In this situation, blurting out something like “Wow! Apis was a virgin! I’m a virgin too!” would very likely be the last thing I ever said. I racked my brain desperately, searching for any way to survive this moment.
Using the Horn of Purity to prove my own virginity and clear the false charge of being a male prostitute had been perfect. Yet through one unnecessary stunt I had created another creative brush with death. I was on the verge of letting out a self-mocking sigh of admiration for my own talent.
That was when it happened.
“Excuse me, beautiful elf lady sitting over there. If you have the time, how about sharing a cozy meeting with me tonight?”
“…What?”
A man wearing layers of flashy but impractical armor—likely a mid-rank adventurer at best—swept his bangs back with a dramatic flourish and hurled a pickup line straight at Apis. Approaching her right now was no different from shoving your hand into a box packed with dynamite. Before I could even warn him, he was closing the distance far too carelessly.
Then—
“I don’t know what quarrel you had with this gentleman, but wounds born from one meeting are best healed by another. Moreover, to doubt the purity of such a noble woman and force the Horn of Purity into her hands right away… As a fellow man, I absolutely cannot forgi—”
“Lightning…”
In that ominous atmosphere where only I sensed that everything in the shop would be reduced to ashes in seconds if nothing was done, I grabbed the fool’s outstretched hand with the single thought of saving his life and blurted out the first words that came to mind.
“Get your hands off my woman.”