A Man and Woman Who Gain Magic Power from Lewd Acts (Revised) #2
A Man and Woman Who Gain Magic Power from Lewd Acts (Revised) #2
I rifled through Rotton's pockets and came away with a pair of iron gauntlets and some copper coins. Just what you'd expect from a named-class Bronze adventurer—the loot was pretty extravagant. Even the iron gauntlets were high-quality enough to fetch a halfway decent price at any general store.
All in all, not a bad haul.
I was covered in bruises from head to toe, but even with the injuries, it was a damn satisfying payout.
After looting was done, I started walking back toward the inn.
"Hehehe! Jackpot. I scored ninety copper off those hand-seal punks. Would've seriously regretted it if we'd just walked away."
And the whole way through town, there was a girl chattering excitedly beside me.
A cute, sexy girl with straight, waist-length red hair.
None other than Rebecca, who'd latched onto my side and was making a full-on racket.
I told her we should split the money, so why the hell is this chick still following me?
Don't tell me she's actually interested in me?
For half a second, I let my hopes get up—maybe we were flirting?—but when I actually asked, it became pretty damn clear I'd misread the whole thing.
"Not heading home? You don't have some other business with me, do you? Is this a green light? Heh heh."
"I'm headed this way too."
"Oh... okay."
Tch. I'm an idiot for getting my hopes up.
What "flirting"? I'm a goddamn Incubus.
"Where are you staying?"
"Hmm. An inn called 'Chainbell' near the big church. I've been there about a week; the facilities are pretty decent."
By "big church," she probably meant the building belonging to the Luminous Church. That's the only religious group with a large facility in Yoen-su.
If she was staying near the church, her place was in a different direction from mine. We were walking together now, but we'd have to split up at a fork in the road up ahead.
While we walked toward that fork, I asked Rebecca about something I'd been dying to know—the secret behind her superb martial skill.
"Your fistwork was a thing of beauty. Who the hell taught you?"
"I learned from my master. The strongest swordsman in the Kingdom of Zakarta."
"The strongest...? I can't even imagine how strong that is."
"Roughly, my master could single-handedly wipe out an entire regiment of the kingdom's army."
"Holy shit."
A single individual who can wipe out a military unit? That is one monster of a master. If this were Earth, I'd have written it off as pure bullshit, but here on the Midgard Continent, it sort of tracks. There are only five of them, but this continent's got monsters they call Sword Masters.
"Martial artists"—superhumans who use mana as a power source to perform incredible martial techniques. Even the lowest third-rate martial artist can easily beat down three or four ordinary people. Once you hit first-rate, counts and nobles start sending love calls, begging you to accept a knighthood. Above first-rate is the Master level, and from among those Masters, a Sword Master is born only at an insanely rare rate. You could call them the nuclear weapons of the Midgard Continent.
Listen to the war stories and you'll hear about a Sword Master who split a mountain with a single blade, another who destroyed an entire kingdom solo. They're monsters on a completely different level from Bronze Tier adventurers like me.
Rebecca claimed she had a Sword Master as her teacher. If that was true, it explained why her martial skills were so exceptional.
But something still didn't add up.
"What?"
"You said the kingdom's strongest swordsman is your master. So why come all the way out to the outer continent and run around as an adventurer? Wouldn't it make way more sense to stay put back home and learn more swordsmanship from your master? Train a little harder, become a strong martial artist, and you could rake in a fortune."
Of course, there was something about Rebecca's story that felt a little off. If I were her, I'd have stayed home no matter what and kept receiving swordsmanship training. Even if training was tedious and painful, I'd have gritted my teeth until I became a first-rate martial artist. I'd heard that a first-rate could make a living off their blade alone for a lifetime. But judging by Rebecca's level, she definitely wasn't there yet. So why had she "run away" from her homeland?
At my question, though, Rebecca just gave a bitter smile and sidestepped the answer.
"...Because I'm fated never to become a great martial artist. And there are family issues, too."
"Why?"
"I don't want to talk about it—it'll just make me sad. Let's talk about something else."
Fated never to become a great martial artist? And what's this about family problems? She's full of secrets. If she doesn't want to talk, I'm not about to pry. We're basically strangers.
Rebecca soon turned the conversation in another direction.
"Earlier today, when I stopped by the inn, I asked the innkeeper lady what kind of race an Incubus is."
"What'd she say?"
"She said it's a race that has a psychic power to seduce women. So you always have to be careful."
"So why aren't you being careful? A terrifying Incubus is standing right next to you."
"You can't judge someone just by what others say. And besides, you don't look all that dangerous."
Wow, honestly, I was a little moved. If only everyone on the continent were like Rebecca.
"Anyway, after hearing that, I kept wondering—what exactly is this hypnotic power they have? Even the innkeeper lady didn't know the details."
"Ah, that."
Rebecca looked at me with eyes full of curiosity. I had no reason to hide it, so I told her all about the Incubus's psychic power.
"It's a special ability that releases pheromones into the surroundings. An Incubus's pheromones make a woman's body heat up. An Incubus with strong abilities can make a woman orgasm over and over just by emitting pheromones."
The girl looked young, but she was an adult, so I figured she could handle a dirty joke. Instead, the instant the words left my mouth, her face went bright red and she got seriously flustered.
"R-Repeat orgasms...?"
"Yeah. Makes her come again and again without a break. Once a woman gets a taste of an Incubus's pheromones, it's damn hard for her to break free of the pleasure. Her body just surrenders to the Incubus. That's how Incubi 'seduce' women—they get them to inhale the pheromones and turn them into slaves to pleasure."
How could the continent's Incubi commit rape and still manage to live relatively safely? All thanks to their special pheromone ability. What started as rape would gradually turn the pheromone-addicted woman into a pleasure slave. By the time the sex ended, the rape had somehow transformed into consensual intercourse. Since the victim willingly became a slave, the Incubus's survival rate naturally went up. They could even live like a kept man off the money their enslaved women earned. If adventurers farm monsters for money, you could say Incubi farm women for money.
...That's why people say to be careful around Incubi.
After my lengthy explanation, Rebecca trembled all over, maybe getting scared of Incubi.
"Wow, that's a total cheat ability. So does that mean if an Incubus feels like it, a woman has no choice but to become a slave?"
"Not exactly. Pheromones only work on ordinary women. They're completely worthless against martial artists or mages who've built up mana in their bodies. Nuns who wield Divine Power can resist them too."
Of course, pheromones aren't some super-hax cheat ability that works on every single woman. Any woman who can handle mana or Divine Power can easily drive the poison of the pheromones right out of her body. I've heard that mana and Divine Power are strongly antagonistic to Incubus pheromones—though honestly, I don't know much beyond that. I never bothered to learn. I have no intention of using pheromones on women anyway. And more importantly, from the very start, it's impossible for me to seduce anyone.
"Ah, so it works on ordinary women. Then, does that mean you, Luke...?"
"Well."
Rebecca fanned herself with her hand as if her face were burning up, then kept going.
"Can you, like, make a woman... r-repeatedly orgasm... by emitting pheromones?"
"No, I can't."
I denied it flat-out.
"The pheromones I can release are really diluted. Compared to others of my kind, my pheromones are pathetically weak. The most they can do is make a woman who smells them feel a little bit giddy."
It's been that way since birth. My pheromones are so weak it's almost embarrassing to call it a psychic power. I could make someone feel a little giddy just by running my mouth. The reason the prestigious Gjallarhorn guild accepted me was exactly because of that. I'm a goddamn harmless Incubus.
"Then you're not dangerous at all. I knew my gut was right. From the first moment I saw you, you didn't seem dangerous at all. It was kinda like looking at a big dog we used to raise back home—super docile and obedient."
"Comparing a person to a dog is a bit much, don't you think?"
"Hehe. It's just a figure of speech."
As we kept chattering away, it was soon time to part. We'd reached the fork that led to our respective inns. It was a little sad to lose my conversation partner.
Just as we stopped to say goodbye, Rebecca spoke up before I could.
"Before we part, can I ask you a favor?"
"What kind of favor? If you're asking to borrow money, forget it."
"It's not about money. Um, can you show me that pheromone power in person?"
Rebecca looked at me with a slightly expectant expression. I could understand how she felt, a little. The term "psychic power" had a certain romantic appeal that could make a young heart race. We weren't kids, but we were in our twenties; and Rebecca, who'd only just become an adult, still had some girlish curiosity. It wasn't unreasonable for her to want to see a real psychic power.
It wasn't a hard request, so I decided to grant it.
"But there aren't any women around here. The pheromone only works on women."
"You don't see me as a woman? Do you have eye problems?"
I'd just tossed out a joke, but Rebecca looked at me with a pout, making it clear she didn't mind if I used it on her. It wasn't a dangerous ability, so no problem, right?
"I can see you just fine. Alright, I'll use the pheromone. A sweet scent will waft out from my body—that's the pheromone itself. If you keep smelling it, you'll feel a tiny bit good."
I chuckled and prepared to release my pheromones. I steadied myself and channeled power into the horns on my head. An Incubus's horns are like a switch that controls pheromone emission. Pour energy into them and pheromones flow out; cut the flow and they stop.
"Haah."
About three seconds after I channeled power into my horns, a sweet scent began to drift from my body.
It was so faint you wouldn't notice it unless you specifically sniffed for it.
"I think I smell something sweet coming from you."
"Oh, your sense of smell must be better than most. Some women don't even notice when I'm emitting pheromones."
"But this... something feels weird..."
Rebecca shut her eyes and focused on the scent. Up to that point, I figured there'd be no problem. I'd never once managed to enthrall a woman with my pheromones.
But little by little, Rebecca's reaction turned strange.
"Ah... haaah..."
Suddenly she wrapped her arms around her own ample chest.
"Hnnn..."
She let out a lewd moan and started squirming.
"Kyaa!"
Plop!
She stumbled and ended up thudding to the ground on her backside.
Seeing the sudden shift in Rebecca, I panicked and immediately cut off the pheromones.
"Wh-What's wrong? What happened all of a sudden?"
"My body... haah... feels strange. It... it feels so good that... haaah... I can't even walk..."
Cheeks flushed bright red. Hot breaths escaping as she spoke. No matter how you looked at it, it was the textbook reaction of an aroused woman. I had no idea what was going on, but there was no time for calm deliberation. Because the citizens walking the night streets were already staring at Rebecca, collapsed there on the ground.
"Wow, that redhead is damn pretty. Skin so fair—must be some nobleman's daughter or something."
"Is she drunk? I'll go chat her up for a sec."
Among the onlookers, the men especially couldn't tear their eyes away from Rebecca.
She was already a striking beauty, and now that she was aroused, sex appeal practically poured off her.
Her peach-toned skin had flushed bright red, and the vulnerable way she lay there—so unlike her usual haughty self—was driving the men wild.
"A-are you all right?"
"Miss, are you hurt? If there's anything I can do to help..."
Men started popping up from all around, one or two at a time, to speak to Rebecca.
If I left her sitting in the street any longer, this was going to turn into a scene.
"Sorry. I don't really know what happened, but I'm sorry."
"What are you... apologizing for... hngh...?"
"I think this happened because of my pheromones. Let's get out of here first. If you can't walk, I'll carry you again. Where do you live?"
"Hnnngh..."
I asked for her exact address, but Rebecca only answered with ragged breaths.
She must have been too aroused to even speak.
After twenty-one years of failing to excite a single woman, my pheromones had chosen this exact moment to finally cause trouble.
'God, my life is fucking awful.'
I hoisted Rebecca onto my back and ran toward the inn where I was staying.
It was only five minutes from the fork in the road, so we didn't have far to go.
It wasn't until I reached my room and laid her on the bed that I realized something.
I understood why my pheromones had worked only on Rebecca.
*
Come to think of it, I had once heard a rumor about this.
An incubus's pheromones didn't affect every woman in exactly the same way.
Some women merely became aroused after breathing them in, while others climaxed on the spot. The strength of the effect varied from woman to woman.
And why was that?
It sounded utterly ridiculous to me, but according to the rumor, the explanation went like this.
'The better a woman's sexual compatibility with the incubus releasing the pheromones, the stronger their effect becomes. An incubus's psychic power evolved to detect women capable of giving him greater pleasure.'
The better the sexual compatibility, the stronger the pheromones? What kind of bizarre phenomenon was that?
I had even challenged the old drunk at the tavern who told me the rumor because it sounded so absurd.
—Does that make any sense?
—And fucking psychic powers do?
That comeback had left me with nothing to say.
He had a point. Psychic powers were absurd to begin with, so thinking too deeply about them would only give me a headache.
In short, there was one reason my pheromones had worked on Rebecca.
'Our sexual compatibility is apparently off the charts.'
Rebecca lay on the inn-room bed, panting heavily.
I wasn't sure how much she could hear, but I explained what had happened anyway.
"Looks like you and I are insanely sexually compatible. Pheromones work especially well on women whose compatibility with the incubus is high. If the match is perfect enough, they can even overwhelm female martial artists or mages who would normally resist them. The odds are incredibly low, though."
Rebecca stared at me with tears in her eyes and barely managed to speak.
"Then what do I do now...? How do I make this feeling stop...? Hic."
"There are two ways to break the pheromones' effect."
"Tell me... quickly...."
"The incubus can personally make the exposed woman climax. Once she comes, all the pheromone poison built up in her body gets purged."
Having the incubus bring the woman to orgasm was the first way to remove the pheromone poison.
Of course, if he released more pheromones afterward, it would create an endless hell of arousal and orgasms, but that was the sort of thing rapist incubi did.
If I made her climax with my technique, she would feel better.
Naturally, Rebecca's face twisted the moment she heard the first option.
"No. Absolutely not. If you try anything perverted, I'll kill you...."
"C-calm down. I'm not saying I'm going to do it. I'm only explaining the method. There's a second option, so hear me out first."
The atmosphere turned so murderous that my heart lurched.
I should have kept my mouth shut.
My mouth was always getting me into trouble.
Fortunately, the second method was comparatively tame.
Pheromones weren't some absurd aphrodisiac from a trashy erotic novel.
You didn't have to have sex to detoxify them.
"The second option is to wait for your body to break the pheromones down naturally. Hold out for about twenty minutes and you'll return to normal."
"All I have to do is endure it...?"
"Yeah. Just lie on the bed and wait."
"I'll... choose the second one. I'll wait twenty minutes. Hngh."
Rebecca chose the second option without hesitation.
Apparently afraid I might touch her, she began wrapping herself tightly in the blanket on the bed.
A moment later, only her face peeked out, as though she were tucked inside a cocoon.
Well, I could understand why she was wary.
Her body was so sensitive right now that even the slightest touch would probably feel good.
If I seriously tried to pounce on her, she wouldn't be able to stop me.
"Hoo."
As I watched Rebecca, heat rose to my head.
The longer I looked, the prettier she seemed.
Fine, delicate features. Smooth skin without a single blemish. Full lips that drew the eye. Glossy, straight red hair and mysterious crimson eyes.
I had self-control, but I was still an incubus.
My sex drive was stronger than that of most other-race men.
There was no way staring at Rebecca wouldn't stir something below my waist.
'I shouldn't wash that blanket for a while.'
A dirty thought flashed through my mind.
Perhaps she sensed the strange look in my eyes, because Rebecca shivered slightly.
"W-what? Why are you spacing out and staring at me?"
"Ah, well... hmm."
I couldn't exactly tell her it was because she was beautiful and turned me on.
Besides, if I stayed still much longer, I felt like something might happen.
We were a young man and woman alone in a cramped room.
One of us was a horny incubus, and the other was a woman whose body was in heat.
I had to overcome the lewd atmosphere filling the room.
"No choice. I'll have to use that method."
"W-what method?"
I had been sitting on the floor. Without another word, I rose to my feet.
Whatever Rebecca imagined, she stared at me in alarm.
"I didn't think you were that kind of person!"
"What kind of person? This is exactly who I am."
Smiling, I planted both hands on the floor and bent my knees into a runner's starting stance.
It was the same crouching start sprinters used before a race.
"You're planning to leap at me from that position!"
"Kukukukuku."
My silent laughter made Rebecca tense up.
Trying to put even a little distance between us, she rolled toward the edge of the bed.
But my room was so cramped that there was nowhere for her to escape.
In the end, Rebecca had no choice but to witness it with her own eyes.
My desperate effort to drive away my lust.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!!
From a push-up position, I rapidly pumped both legs back and forth.
I drove each foot up toward my chest and back down, running furiously in place.
Naturally, since I was running in place, I didn't get a single inch closer to Rebecca.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
"Mountain climbers. It's a cardio exercise popular in my homeland. It got the name because the movement resembles climbing a mountain."
Rebecca stared at me, dumbfounded.
Was she amazed by an exercise from Earth that she had never seen before?
But after hearing her response, it seemed something else had surprised her.
"No, fuck, that's not what I meant. Why are you suddenly exercising?"
"Working up a sweat can suppress sexual desire. Intense exercise can reduce the secretion of the male hormone testosterone and lower your libido."
"Testo... what?"
"Testosterone."
In truth, according to gym addicts, whether exercise reduced your sex drive varied from person to person.
Some people claimed hard exercise made their erections even stronger.
But in my case, exercise was remarkably effective at cooling my libido.
Effective enough that I regained my composure in an instant despite having an aroused Rebecca right in front of me.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!!
"One, two. One, two. One, two."
"Good grief."
Rebecca had looked baffled at first, but she soon relaxed.
Lowering her guard, she unwrapped the blanket and exposed her bare skin again.
The sudden sight of all that tempting skin forced me to raise the intensity of my workout.
THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD!!
"One-two-one-two-one-two-one-two-one-two-one-two."
"Hnghaaaah! He's insane! Moooom!"
My furious exercise continued until the pheromones wore off.
Twenty minutes later—
Rebecca's body returned to normal.
She stared awkwardly at me as I lay sprawled on the floor, drenched in sweat.
"I've been thinking. If you wanted to stop having dirty thoughts, couldn't you have just gone outside? Why did you pointlessly run around inside the room?"
"I couldn't leave you alone in here. I had to stay and watch over you."
"Were you... worried about me?"
It wasn't for any reason that romantic.
I shook my head at her question.
"I had to stop you if you started causing a commotion. What if you lost control under the pheromones and broke something? This isn't my house. I'd have to pay for it."
"Hah."
Rebecca nodded with a look that said, Of course.
I had brought her to my room by accident, but we were still essentially strangers.
I had no reason to trust Rebecca, and she had no reason to trust me.
Part of the reason I had stayed in the room—even while doing mountain climbers—was that I remained a little wary of her.
"What happened was an accident. I had no idea our compatibility would be so good that the pheromones would hit you that hard. So please don't report me to the city guard for sexual harassment."
"I already heard you explain that it was an accident. I won't report you. Let's both forget what happened. I'll forget that you enthralled me, and you forget it too."
"Forget what?"
"...The weird way I acted. Twisting around, trembling, making those lewd noises."
Rebecca muttered in a voice that shrank with embarrassment.
I scratched my cheek and spoke.
"What if I pay you five copper to let me remember? I could make use of what I just saw."
"Make use of it how? Shut up and forget it."
I was going to use it as masturbation material for the rest of my life, fuck.
Regrettable as it was, if I didn't want to be reported as a sex offender, I would have to forget everything I had just seen.
At that moment, the video titled <Rebecca's Secret Aroused Moments.avi> was deleted from my memory.
And so the adventure that began with an after-party and sent us racing through the night streets of Yoen-su came to an end.
Who would have guessed that a simple promise to go drinking would turn into a grand adventure involving beating down Rotton's gang and arousing a beautiful woman?
"I'm leaving. I'm exhausted. Oh, and never use your pheromone ability on me again."
"I won't. Don't worry. Get home safely."
"Bye."
Rebecca left my room after that cool farewell.
Looking out the window, I watched her back as she left the inn and walked alone through the night.
'We probably won't meet again. She's a woman, after all. She won't want people giving her strange looks for hanging around an incubus.'
Now that Rebecca had left her homeland and entered the wider world, she would gradually absorb the attitudes of the people on the continent.
Someday, she would come to hate incubi like every other woman.
Imagining that cute newbie adventurer keeping her distance from me made something prick at a corner of my heart, but I quickly went numb to it.
'I'm used to being treated like a villain....'
I washed off the sweat in the inn's bath, returned to my room, and lay down on the bed.
The blanket carried a sweet, fruity scent that might have been Rebecca's.
As I breathed it in, drowsiness eventually washed over me and I fell fast asleep.
All the while thinking that my connection with Rebecca had truly come to an end.