How Does Despair and Regret Taste?
Despair and regret—how do they taste? If you never had power from the very beginning, you might simply resign yourself and keep living. But when someone who once possessed real strength suddenly loses it, the difference is on another level entirely.
Three women had luckily slipped through the crowds of the great city and managed to escape beyond the sturdy, majestic fortress walls. The world outside those walls was dangerous. No one could predict when or where a monster or a dungeon leading to this realm might suddenly appear. Yet the three women, unable to accept that their abilities had vanished, stole past the soldiers standing guard atop the fortress and fled into the distance.
After walking for a long time, they reached a grassy plain far from the fortress. In a field where easily dispatched, round slimes wandered about, the three women tried to use their powers against the creatures.
Kate specialized in channeling sword energy into her two-handed greatsword for devastating slashes. But no matter what she did, the energy refused to appear.
Arona was a wind archer who could loose arrows with blinding speed, piercing vital points like a gale. Yet she too found her specialty completely unresponsive.
Becky, a mage specialized in lightning magic, fared no better. Whether she swung her staff or chanted her spells, nothing happened.
No matter how many times they tried, the result was the same. Worse, they had drawn the slimes’ aggression and were forced to retreat in panic.
On the path back toward the fortress, they found troops already waiting—alerted by reports of women attempting to evade conscription. With no other choice, the three fled back into the field once more.
“U-unnies… have we really lost our abilities? Right? Tell me it’s not true! We were strong—we were really strong!”
Arona, finally grasping the situation, cried out while running for her life. Kate and Becky were just as shaken. The provoked slimes were closing in, encircling them. There was no time to comfort Arona’s whining, no moment to steady their own reeling minds.
The swarm kept growing. Slimes were weak monsters on their own, but a mass of them became genuinely threatening. And with all their powers gone, the women’s only option was flight.
Squelch. Squelch.
The slimes approached with grotesque, wet sounds and unnatural movements. They were too far from the fortress for any soldiers to come to their rescue. The three women could only desperately run toward any ground not yet covered by the creatures. Yet the farther they fled, the more completely the slimes surrounded them.
Only then did Arona truly understand. Her face crumpled with terror as she sprinted with everything she had. But it was too late. The slimes had completely sealed them in.
What made slimes truly horrifying was the way their sticky, viscous bodies clung without hesitation, suffocating and crushing their victims. The process was exceptionally gruesome and painful—one had to be extremely cautious.
Squelch. Squelch. Wriggle. Wriggle.
The blue slime horde spread across the grassland swelled and contracted, threatening the women like a living tide. It almost looked as though they were dancing before claiming their sacrifice.
In the center of that undulating wave, the three women pressed their backs together and stared at the encroaching mass. If they still had their abilities they could have carved an escape route, but their powers remained utterly silent. They had used them without issue right up until the moment they were surrounded and humiliated by tentacles. Which meant they had lost everything after that incident.
“Ugh… hic… I-I don’t want to die in a place like this…”
There was no one to help them. The slimes, unwilling to lose their prey, fused together while maintaining their circular formation, creating a hemispherical barrier.
“Shoot your arrows at least! Struggle, damn it!”
Kate’s irritated shout cut through Arona’s sobbing. Tears streaming down her face, Arona fired arrow after arrow. A slime’s weak point was its round core, but with so many of them, striking one did almost nothing.
They were going to die. They were really going to die here. Their minds went pure white. Fear. A desperate craving to survive. They prayed for a miracle, but they had already come too far.
“Th-this isn’t it! This isn’t the ending I wanted!”
“Huuueeeeng! I don’t wanna diiiiiie!”
“Aah… aah… uuuu…”
Regret. That single word flooded every corner of their thoughts.
The hemispherical curtain formed by the fused slimes slowly constricted, crushing them.
“Uwaaaaaaaaaah!”
In one final act of defiance, Kate readjusted her grip on her greatsword and charged. She slashed the slime wall diagonally.
Slaaaaaash!
The barrier split open with a wet tearing sound, but that was all. It regenerated instantly, and the rate at which it closed sped up even more. She swung again and again, trying to carve a path, but the thick slime wall had grown too dense to cut.
“N-no! This can’t be! I’m not supposed to die in a place like this!”
Kate, who had once dreamed of becoming a respected knight through her own power, swallowed her regret and terror and kept fighting.
By now even the normally composed mage Becky had lost her mind. She swung her staff like a club, screaming.
“Huaaaaaang! Uwaaaaaang! Get awaaaaay!”
Arona wailed like a terrified little girl, wildly swinging her bow. It accomplished nothing. The barrier had tightened so much they could no longer even hold their weapons properly. Their backs pressed tightly together. The air itself had grown thin; breathing became agony.
Just as death tightened its grip around their throats—
Booooooom!
Kate feels terror at her meaningless death.
Arona feels crushing regret for abandoning you.
Becky screams inwardly that she does not want to die.
“Yeah. This should be enough. Liris, get ready.”
“Yeees~ Master!”
I had been watching from afar as the three women slowly died inside the slime barrier. Now I knew it was time to act.
Using that sub-skill of Slave Domination, I had stripped Kate, Arona, and Becky of their powers. Naturally, I could restore them whenever I wished, but for now they were nothing more than conscription targets under imperial law.
Kate, Arona, and Becky are drowning in regret.
They are in utter despair, unable to understand where everything went wrong.
That was sufficient. The status windows and the faint, distant screams told me everything I needed to know about the dire situation and the slaves’ current state of mind.
“Liris. Now.”
“Yes! Master!”
I gave the order at the perfect moment. At the same time, I modified Liris’s own abilities. Since she was already my flawless slave, I enhanced hers instead.
Liris had originally been a priestess—a healer. But priestesses were not limited to healing alone. She opened a holy book with her left hand and stretched her right toward the slime barrier.
A low hum filled the air as a pure white orb materialized. The watermelon-sized sphere floating before her right hand shot forward like a cannonball.
It moved so fast it was nearly impossible to track. The orb of light pierced precisely into the upper section of the blue slime barrier.
A wet, squelching sound. The way the sphere sank into the slime made it look as though the attack had been absorbed. But then the change came.
Booooooooom!
The orb detonated, and the entire slime barrier exploded with it. Without pause, Liris formed a second and third orb, firing them in rapid succession.
A one-sided slaughter unfolded. The priestess Liris was single-handedly shattering the slime barrier. Caught completely off guard by the sudden ambush, the slimes could only endure the barrage. By the sixth shot, the barrier had almost completely vanished.
Through the gap, the three slaves finally appeared—faces drenched in slime fluid and tears.
“Hehe~ Look at them. They ignored Master and now they’re in this sorry state. It serves them right.”
The few surviving slimes and the shattered fragments scattered across the ground seemed to sense the threat; they fled in every direction. As I watched the large and small blobs disperse across the plain, I gently stroked Liris’s hair.
“Hehe… Master’s praise… I love it so much. Ahn… Master… please touch my breasts too… Aang…♡”
A well-behaved slave who follows her master deserves a proper reward. Liris had already reached the peak of lewdness. I naturally cupped her voluptuous breasts and continued praising her.
“Ahn… It feels so good when Master touches me. I feel like… mmm… I’ll never be able to leave you… I’ll remain your slave forever~♡”
Liris’s sexual desire is approaching its maximum.
Liris has decided to offer her virginity to you.
Liris wishes to relieve all her pent-up frustration with you.
For such a lewd woman to have kept her virginity until now was slightly suspicious. Still, she truly was untouched. If she proved herself a genuinely useful slave going forward, I was willing to claim that virginity.
In any case, I had rescued the three slaves at the perfect moment. People who return from the brink of death usually feel grateful to their savior.
With Liris—now clinging tightly to my side and letting out sweet, obscene moans—beside me, I walked over to the three women collapsed on the ground.
“Ah… Yaaaaah! Divine! How dare you do something so filthy?!”
I had expected them to beg for forgiveness. Instead, what burst from Kate’s mouth was a furious roar.
“It was you, wasn’t it?! You used some dirty trick to take our abilities away!”
“That’s right. Oppa… No. You’re the one who did this cowardly thing!”
“I will report this to the empire. A shameless man like you must be judged accordingly.”
The three slaves, still not understanding their place, dared to shove all the blame onto me. Of course, it was true that I had removed their abilities. But logically, was such a thing even possible? In the entire history of the empire, no ability user capable of stripping away another person’s powers had ever appeared.
They simply wanted to pin everything on me. The more I considered it, the angrier I became. In that case, I had no choice. I would simply have to break them even more thoroughly and turn them into slaves who obeyed my every word.