A Perfectly Obscene Cycle
The voices of countless women swirled through my ears. Every single one of them called out to me with pet names soaked in love and raw obsession.
“Honey.”
“Darling…!”
“Master.”
“Husband.”
“Human!”
I was a lowest-class mercenary who couldn’t even swing a sword properly. A pathetic excuse for a man who had never held a woman’s hand, let alone looked one in the eye.
“What the hell is this…”
Fwooooosh—
Purple mana, secretive and eerily beautiful, flooded the space around us. A woman in a black robe pulled low over her face smiled softly. She was the legendary Witch, the one said to see through every thread of causality on the continent.
“What a vicious curse. No, it’s too perfect and obscene a cycle to call it a curse.”
The Witch twisted her purple lips, her gaze sliding greedily over my body. Looking positively delighted, she continued.
“Every time you die, you are reborn.”
“All the memories of your past lives are stripped away, as if the soul is being filtered clean of impurities.”
“But by some miraculous alignment of the world’s axis, every woman you loved, married, and fused your soul with in those previous lives has returned in this era. All of them at once. And every last one of them remembers you.”
The Witch smiled, a touch bashful.
“To perfectly reclaim the power and memories of your past lives and fully assimilate them, you must achieve the most intense physical and spiritual harmony with those who were closest to you before.”
“That harmony is the fusion of souls… in other words, the deepest possible union between man and woman.”
“Every time you lie with them, the memories and strength engraved in your soul are dragged back into the present.”
Her voice dropped, eyes narrowing as she stared into the dark heart of the forest.
“But be careful. The ones who have regained their memories are not limited to the wives who loved you.”
“Who knows… If the enemies you bled against in your past lives, or the powerful foes who once hated you with all their being, have returned in this life with their memories completely intact… what then?”
For the sake of my past lives and this present one, I would have to grow endlessly stronger, day and night, without rest.
“I called dibs today!”
“No! Master smells like other women. I have to wipe their scent off him…!”
…Before any of that, I was seriously worried my waist would give out first. The road ahead looked incredibly bleak.