Ventorino Kingdom - Sprouting (18)
Inside the papal palace of the Simon Holy Kingdom.
Within the grounds of the Holy Hammer Knights, a young man and a woman were clashing weapons in the training yard.
"Haaah! Hah!"
"Too slow! Pick up the pace!"
"Ah, yes!"
And at the edge of the yard, another woman watched the two of them in silence.
They’re working hard...
The pair training in the yard were the male Hero, Kang Jinhyuk, and Fiora of the Holy Hammer Knights, who had been assigned one of the Hero’s instructors. The woman watching them was Kang Jinhyuk’s twin sister, the female Hero Kang Yuri; that much needed no explanation.
Roughly a month had passed since they had been summoned to this other world.
During that time, the twin Heroes had been studying the common sense and knowledge of this world while throwing themselves into training to defeat the Demon King.
The papal palace had assigned them several instructors, and Fiora was one of them. Originally, the role had been meant for the commander of the Holy Hammer Knights, the dwarf Luciano, one of the former Hero’s party members, but he had said he wasn’t confident in teaching others and passed the task to Fiora, his deputy and adopted daughter.
At first, some people had worried about that decision, but now Fiora was performing so splendidly that it left them speechless. Just as Luciano had said she would. Just as he had wanted.
What he had wanted, however, was not only for Fiora to do her job well as an instructor, but also for her relationship with the Heroes to deepen.
"I can't believe they got that close in less than a month..."
Watching the man and woman in the training yard, Yuri shook her head.
Even to her, it was a complete surprise.
At first, her twin brother, who had shown interest in the saintess when they were summoned, had somehow grown close to Fiora, the woman in charge of his combat training. There had been a few signs here and there, but she had never dreamed they would start dating so quickly.
It had even made her suspicious of Fiora.
Was she perhaps approaching Jinhyuk with some impure purpose?
But when she thought back on the expression and tone Fiora had shown whenever the two of them were together, that didn’t seem likely either. Yuri hadn’t noticed it when she had no reason to pay attention, but once she started watching them closely, she realized something else: Fiora might really like him.
And that, in fact, was true. Even if political motives were mixed in, Fiora did like Kang Jinhyuk. In several senses of the word.
"Still, she’s unbelievably strict."
Yuri’s eyes caught Jinhyuk being knocked to the ground by Fiora’s attack.
Even after becoming the Hero’s girlfriend, Fiora showed him no mercy at all. She drew a line between duty and private life with ruthless precision. Her approach to training was so severe that Yuri almost worried they might start fighting and break up from the strain.
At least Yuri herself was better suited to magic, so she had been focusing on that sort of training. Jinhyuk, on the other hand, had thrown himself into swordsmanship and nothing else. That only made Fiora’s training look even harsher.
"...Thank you for your hard work, Hero Kang Jinhyuk."
"Ah, yeah. You too."
Seeing the two of them exchange greetings like that, it looked like sparring had just ended.
Wanting to surprise him, Yuri gripped the towel in her hand and started toward him from a distance. But after only a few steps, she had to stop.
"A-Are you okay? Sorry... I went a little too far, didn't I?"
"Hahaha. I'm fine. It has to be this intense if it's really going to count as training."
"Still..."
"We need to get stronger as fast as we can so we can bring down the Demon King."
"...Heh, yes. That's true."
The moment their duel ended, Fiora changed back from instructor to Jinhyuk’s girlfriend. She hurried over to him and took out a towel to wipe the sweat from his face. Then she touched him here and there, checking for injuries and making sure he was in good condition.
Jinhyuk, too, willingly offered his body to her with a pleased expression.
...
At that affectionate, tender sight, Yuri stood still for a moment before quietly turning away. With quick steps, she returned to the room prepared for her by the Goddess Church.
"Haah."
Throwing herself onto the bed, she stared blankly at the ceiling.
Her little brother had a girlfriend now. Since he’d never had the brains to secretly go and make one without her noticing, this was probably the first time in his life. And his first girlfriend wasn’t even foreign, but from another world. Somehow, that made her want to laugh.
But for some reason, it also felt strange.
She wasn’t sad or angry, yet for some reason she felt left behind and lonely.
Until not long ago, the twins had been each other’s only, and also strongest, source of support. No matter that they had been summoned as Heroes to another world and treated with great hospitality, everyone around them was still a stranger, still a native of this world.
They couldn’t help but have different common sense, and there was no way suspicion wouldn’t creep in. Just like how Yuri had worried that Fiora might have approached Jinhyuk for reasons other than love.
But not anymore.
"Jinhyuk is the only one I have... but now Jinhyuk has Fiora too..."
That was the reason for the feeling welling up inside her now.
If she didn’t know why, she would have been happy to take it out on him, but Yuri was extremely rational and wise. She couldn’t bring herself to snap at him, and she certainly had no intention of doing anything as absurd as telling him to break up with the girlfriend he had just made. That was why she felt depressed.
The best solution would have been to find herself a boyfriend too, or else discover something she could throw herself into. But neither option was realistic for her at the moment.
As for the first, there wasn’t anyone who really sparked her interest.
There were countless men in the papal palace of the Goddess Church and in the capital of the Holy Kingdom. Plenty of them were handsome, talented, and even held high positions. Naturally, there were men she found appealing, even men close to her ideal type. But if you asked whether she wanted to date any of them, the answer was a resounding no.
Even she didn’t know why.
For some reason, whenever she imagined dating them, holding hands with them, or kissing them, her heart went cold.
Then what about the second option?
For Yuri, who had enjoyed all sorts of stimulating, overflowing subculture back in modern times, this other world was far too boring. Especially the place she was staying in now: the papal palace of the conservative Goddess Church. In a sense, it was the most devout place on the continent—and also the place with the least for an ordinary person to do.
All Yuri could do was pray, read scripture, study, and train.
Of course, she had no reason to like the first two. And as for the latter two, it was hard to immerse herself in them as well. At first, she had studied diligently, fascinated by the joy of learning about this world, but before long all she had left were dull histories and the names of important figures from each country.
She hadn’t even been able to memorize the history and people of her own world, so there was no way she could enjoy this.
And finally, training.
Yuri was at least learning basic physical conditioning and close-quarters combat. But the most important thing for her was magic. Even so, magic was fairly interesting. The art of manipulating mana to create phenomena that science could never explain was endlessly mysterious. The problem lay elsewhere.
"...Status window. Skill window. Quest window."
At her faint murmur, translucent windows appeared before her eyes.
They listed all sorts of information about her. Some of it covered her magical talent, while other parts described the kinds of magic she had mastered.
"Haah..."
The power of the system granted by the Goddess.
It was helping her tremendously. And that was true for magic as well.
Rather than studying hard to learn and use magic, it was far more convenient to satisfy certain quests and register spells in her skill window, then use them at will. The quests required to learn each spell were also tailored for the Heroes’ convenience, demanding easier tasks in unrelated fields instead of making them slog through endless magical theory.
That alone had drained her motivation to even practice magic.
"Isn't there anything stimulating out there...?"
Letting out a long sigh, Yuri stared blankly at the ceiling again, her eyes drifting this way and that as if searching for a spot that wasn’t stained. She spent a long time like that, wasting time without any real purpose, until suddenly she sat up from the bed and headed for the door.
Then she opened it.
She wasn’t going outside.
"Hmm, no one's there... good."
Peeking just her head outside and looking around, she confirmed that no one was nearby. Then she closed the door again and firmly locked it, even tugging the handle back and forth to make sure it wouldn’t open by accident.
"Haah..."
Another sigh slipped from her lips, just like before. But this one carried a different warmth, a different dampness than the last.
Returning to bed and pulling the blanket over herself, Yuri quietly moved her right hand between her thighs and her left hand to her chest.
"Nn... hng, ah..."
And so began the little session of comfort she had prepared for herself.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t even get her hands on erotic books, so she had to satisfy her needs with nothing but imagination. But she still carried in her head the countless memories of eroge she had played and watched before coming to this world. The most familiar, easiest fantasies stirred her arousal the most.
Swish... swish... squelch...
"Mm, ahhn, nngh, haaah..."
Yuri’s left hand slowly caressed her breasts. Summer was almost over, and the Holy Kingdom lay a little north and west on the continent. The papal palace was even farther north than that. Because of the cool weather, the clothes she wore were a bit thick.
Finding that annoying, Yuri slipped her left hand inside her clothes. Her chest was not as ample as her appearance might suggest, but even so it was well above average, a C cup by modern standards. When she touched herself, the satisfying softness spread eagerly beneath her fingers.
"Aaah... haah, hnghh...♡"
Her right hand, which had been stroking over her panties, had also slipped inside before she knew it and was directly caressing her sensitive spots. A slightly rough patch of short hair caught on her fingers. She usually kept herself clean-shaven with regular Brazilian waxing, but since that was impossible in this world, the hair had begun to grow little by little.
That fact reminded her that she really had come to another world, and it made her even more excited.
The reason she got so aroused just from the fact that she was in another world was simple.
Because the fantasy playing out in her head was none other than the female Heroes of this world being humiliated by monsters or thugs.
Not just imagination, but something that might actually happen—that faintly possible situation plunged her into a dizzy, throbbing excitement.
Her fantasies began with representative monsters such as slimes, goblins, and orcs—nonhuman beasts—and then moved on to animal-shaped monsters like demonic hounds and minotaurs, scenarios with a beastly edge, before flowing all the way to being assaulted by the lowest trash mobs, the kind of petty extras one could barely even call enemies.
And finally, she reached the ultimate boss: the Demon King, who would utterly ravage her without mercy.
"Ngh... ah, mm... haaah, ah, ahh—!!"
With that grand fantasy climaxing in her mind, her hips jerked sharply as she came.
"Haaah, haaah, nngh..."
Lying on the bed and panting through the aftershocks of her orgasm, Yuri soon frowned at the wave of self-loathing that followed and covered her face with both hands.
"Seriously... what the hell am I even doing?"
Her brother Jinhyuk, who had been just like her—lost in subculture and a virgin from birth—was probably spending sweet, blissful time with a lovely female holy knight, while she, a woman who should have found a lover much more easily, was alone in her room jerking off to fantasies of being humiliated.
It was a depression perfectly suited to post-orgasm clarity.
"I want to date too..."