Chapter 36. The Road to Dominating the Great Mage (3)
Chapter 36. The Road to Dominating the Great Mage (3)
Half the blood flowing through my body was inherited from my mother, a witch.
Even diluted, the power of a witch still existed within me, and I already knew from experience that it could be used for research.
'...So this is what you used to pave my way into the Demon King's army?'
Yeah. Back when I first infiltrated the Demon King's army under a false identity.
At the time, I had been the experimental subject of one of the Demon King's army's officers, who drew vast quantities of my blood.
'Ah, well, I received such a precious commodity, so of course I had to let you in. Even the demon race gave up on forming contracts with humans after the witch hunts—makes witch's blood rather rare, so I got quite lucky.'
'....'
'That aside, a child of a witch, then... Khu-hu, beings of immortality tend to have affection fade, yet she bore a child. Now that is truly remarkable.'
'...Stay out of my personal affairs. From now on, as we agreed, we act like we don't know each other.'
'Yes, it would be troublesome for me too if the origin of the material became known, so we'd best do that. I do hope your objective is achieved. Be it revenge or survival. Khu-hu.'
...He was an obnoxious bastard for an undead.
Just looking at this dungeon boss resurrected as a corpse brought that skull-faced prick to mind.
Rumor had it he'd retired from his officer position in the Demon King's army, and I'd occasionally wondered what he was doing with himself, but...
No. I'd stop thinking about it.
What mattered right now was that, thanks to that dark mage bastard, I knew how to refine the blood I carried.
A trickle, a flow.
Yes. As soon as I added the pre-mixed chemical agent, it immediately separated.
The volume had been reduced by more than half, but the moment I succeeded in refining blood with properties identical to pure witch's blood,
I slipped the vial into my coat and began to meticulously review the plan I would execute once I confronted Ymir.
The Guild's procedures had been properly handled on paper through Martina, and I'd also earned the trust of the party who had cleared the witch-themed dungeon with me.
Sure, I'd extracted blood from a corpse, but the whole incident had occurred inside the dungeon, and the party members hadn't paid any attention to the body. The blood being in pristine condition was also something that happened inside the dungeon—that aberrant space—so no one would be overly suspicious.
Yes, there was no room for doubt in the process, at least.
What truly mattered was how to neutralize the hostility of a girl who was even less socially skilled than the reject party, and how to engineer that "few seconds of hesitation" before the hypnosis could take effect.
"Mages are fundamentally highly sensitive."
Right. Mana, at its core, deals with physical force. And since manipulating invisible energy relies purely on sense, a talented mage's ability to detect irregularities far surpasses normal cognition.
If she sensed danger, turning a person into minced meat in a second or less would be child's play.
If she found out I possess the power of a witch, I would most certainly be killed—or I'd end up having my blood squeezed out of me, reduced to a lab rat.
But was that truly possible? Could I make that woman, who seemed to have no blood or tears, feel trust toward me the way Serika or Berdia did?
'Maybe it's too selfish of me to try to help with feelings like this?'
...No.
There might have been a slight misunderstanding on that point.
'You're only saying this now?'
'People are all selfish to begin with, so what are you even worrying about? As long as you don't bother me, I couldn't care less whether you stay or go, so try living a little more brazenly.'
That was what Ymir had told me when I was acting like a timid, self-conscious type.
You couldn't exactly call it goodwill, but it wasn't something you could dismiss as malicious either.
Her personality was prickly and she had no real social warmth, but she might—just might—still have something like "the capacity to care about another person" inside her.
"Hehe, the reward was pretty generous."
"We might not have to work for a while with this—shall we have a drink?"
"Oh, of course, the highlight of the evening would naturally be with our princess..."
Yes. I'd already resolved to put my life on the line from the very start.
Whether it worked out or not, I'd just have to read the situation at the decisive moment.
The more means of attack, the better. So, in this moment right after clearing the dungeon, I resolved to shoulder one more risk—just to grasp even a tiny bit more of that possibility.
"Everyone watch out! The boss's corpse just twitched!"
"...What?"
In that instant, the party members recoiled in confusion. They seemed momentarily unable to grasp what I had said, but by then my power had already spread among them.
To a single person.
But against a target who held no hostility toward me, its application was certain.
"Ah, ugh...."
So long as no external interference arrived, the power to turn someone into a puppet moving at my will took hold—of Neris.
"Th-, the witch...."
Naturally, the party members, who had no knowledge of the power's existence, would misinterpret the "plausible line" she had no clue she was uttering.
"For the great witch!!"
Eventually, the moment Neris, her mind dominated by me, raised her staff,
-Crackle-crack!
The physical force that responded to her will began to manipulate the air.
Soon after, blades of wind she had conjured started scattering throughout the boss room.
"P-Princess! What is the meaning of this all of a sudden!"
"Eek! I'm sorry! I know it wasn't a safe day, but I shouldn't have let you finish inside!!"
"Not that—the witch! The boss isn't dead yet, it must be controlling Lady Neris in a final desperate struggle!!"
Yes. They were misunderstanding it perfectly.
That the power manipulating her belonged to the boss, not me.
Now for the final touch. If I could do something to erase any remaining suspicion out of that misunderstanding—
"Look out!!"
Yes. The perpetrator would never do something that harms himself.
Preying on that common-sense assumption to erase any doubt about me, I hurled my body straight into the blades of wind summoned by the Neris I was controlling.
"Ugah!?"
The bespectacled pig who had been the intended target was shoved aside, and the instant the attack tore my body to shreds—
All across my body, blood burst forth and scattered everywhere, and soon I was tumbling head over heels onto the floor.
...Damn it. Taking a wind spell with no guard and a bare body.
I really have to be careful using hypnosis when people are watching. I can't make fine adjustments—one wrong move and I could genuinely die.
"Wh-What? What on earth did I...."
"Dave!! Dave, are you all right!?"
"Shit, the wounds are way too severe! Someone get a potion, now!!"
Still, my consciousness remained intact, and fortunately my limbs were fine.
On my abdomen, a wide gash had split open, but I could still manage emergency first aid with the equipment I carried.
"...No. That's enough."
"What do you mean enough!"
"Don't worry. No vitals were cut, so as long as recovery comes in time, I'll live!"
"So stay awake, Dave!! Dave!!"
The party members, having not caught on to my scheme in the slightest, poured out their frantic worry and tried to soothe my wounds.
Yes. This was the best I could do.
The preliminary groundwork to gain the Grand Archmage's trust.
***
After that, the party carried my injured self out of the dungeon straight to a church, where they handed me over to the clergy for treatment.
Fortunately, the treatment had been administered in time.
But as soon as the bleeding stopped, I slipped away from their eyes and headed straight for where Ymir was.
While my wounds had yet to heal, I imagined the kind of reaction she'd show once I brought her what she had been so desperate to obtain.
'You dumbass.'
And she...
'Who told you... to go that far?'
No—she'd shown me an even greater reaction than I'd anticipated.
As if all those reactions I'd dismissed as annoying and bothersome hadn't been her real feelings after all. As if, even when I'd left without a word, she'd still worried about me...
She had proven, right before my eyes, that even a woman who seemed to lack blood and tears still possessed something you could genuinely call a human heart.
After that, I lost consciousness, so I didn't know exactly what happened afterward, but... No, I didn't even need to hear it.
She would have heard all about me from the Guild and the party to confirm whether what I'd brought was genuinely what she'd asked for, and if that final moment of sincerity hadn't been mistaken, she'd be convinced that I had staked my life for her sake.
The more she pieced together the situation through others' accounts instead of mine, the more her suspicion would fade and her trust in me would grow.
'Ymir, do you... like me?'
Still, just in case—that question I'd asked right before committing the act.
That question asked by the one who had gone through hell and back to complete her research, the one permitted to speak only the complete truth...
'I don't dislike you.'
The moment I heard that single statement—that at the very least, she held no wariness toward me—I became certain and exercised my power.
Ah, yes.
"So she would hesitate during those few seconds' opening when I put her under hypnosis."
-Schlick. Mmph.
And once the hypnosis had been successfully applied, the target's strength no longer mattered.
Whether the target was a Hero, a divine messenger, or a Grand Archmage—my power held absolute dominion over the human mind.
Before the spell took hold, that was one thing. But once it had, there was no way to break free unless an outside party intervened.
"...You're shit at sucking."
Even when I pulled the cock that had been in her mouth right out and smacked her cheek with it—
"I-I'm sorry."
—she couldn't offer any real resistance. All she could do was stare with blank eyes and apologize.
That pride of hers wouldn't bend even to the kings of mankind—so could this behavior genuinely be called an act?
"I've, never done anything like this before, so I don't know what to do..."
"Yeah, of course you don't have any experience."
She became a Grand Archmage at the youngest age in history.
Given that, naturally she wouldn't have had a single moment to let her eyes stray to debauchery the way a used whore like Neris would. If she had, I'd be the one more disappointed.
"So from now on, I'm going to teach you plenty of things."
"Mmph!"
The moment I grabbed her head again and forcibly shoved my member back into her mouth—
Though she was suffering from it, she still didn't try to pull it out. Instead, she held the sides with her hands and started moving her tongue.
"Uuump, uu, hnaap, schllrp...."
My cock, being sucked on for the first time in her life.
She might have known the theory, but in practice, she was a complete mess.
She didn't even know which spots to stimulate to please a man.
She just shoved it in her mouth and moved her tongue however she could. She didn't have Serika's knack for quick adaptation either, so it was going to take quite a while for her to acquire proper sexual skills.
"...Heh."
Yet even so, I could feel a wave of pleasure incomparable to when I'd eaten that slut Neris washing over me.
Because I was defiling such a pure existence?
No, I'd experienced that plenty of times now.
A feeling like this couldn't come about just from taking someone's first time.
If I had to assign meaning to this joy I was feeling for the first time, it was because I had just succeeded in a life-or-death gamble unlike anything I'd done before.
"Ahahaha!! Ahahahahahahahaha!!"
Ahh, yes.
For the very first time in my life, I was experiencing "enjoyment" from this ability I possessed.
Until now, I'd only ever used it when I was absolutely certain of the outcome. I'd never even considered using it to enthrall someone while risking my life like this.
And now I, of all people, had pulled off that tightrope act for the first time, survived it, and seized my reward.
The thrill was so electrifying that I felt my body losing its balance.
So much that even the faint stimulation from this clumsy caress was pushing me toward the verge of climax.
"Ymir...."
In this moment, the person sucking my cock was the very being who had made me feel this way.
Ymir, the Black Crystal.
The pinnacle of the magical world humanity had achieved—and accomplished at the youngest age in history, at that.
The sole person tracking the traces of witches and possessing the potential to develop that power further.
And, unlike Serika, someone who was already a finished hero...
An existence whose status alone was absolutely undimmed even next to Berdia, one of the continent's Ten Greats.
"I really am going to have to make you mine."
Unable to suppress the exultation of having placed that being beneath me, I gripped her head and pressed down with force.
-Spurt.
Along with the sensation of pressure on my glans, the fluid surged up.
It began to burrow deep into her throat.