The Vanished Warmth
Thud!
Gah!
A dull impact rang through my ears.
At Camilla’s command, her followers charged without a moment’s hesitation and began kicking me. Side, back, stomach—wherever a boot landed, a sharp jolt of pleasure stole my breath. A few ribs were probably cracked or broken already.
It was strange.
My body refused to put up any strength.
No—more precisely, it wasn’t that I lacked strength. An overwhelming power was surging inside me. If I wanted, I could have flung these first-years aside in an instant and walked out of here.
But… I felt no desire to do so at all.
It was like burrowing into a warm blanket on a freezing winter night with the electric pad turned on. Soft. Comforting.
Every pain became pleasure…
Every insult became praise…
My own twisted paradise.
I could find no reason to struggle free.
Hehe.
“…I’ll give you what you wanted… so look forward to it…”
Camilla’s voice reached me faintly through the ringing left by the beating.
What is she saying?
By the time I came back to myself, I was already being dragged along by the followers. The kicking had stopped, but their rough hands had not.
We arrived at a bathroom—spacious, luxurious, reserved for noble students. And inside… a bathtub filled to the brim with water.
Ah…
I already knew what came next.
And my premonition was not wrong.
“Shove her in!”
At Camilla’s order the followers rammed me straight into the tub.
Splash—!
Gah!
Icy water swallowed my entire body at once; it flooded my nose and mouth. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs felt ready to burst. I thrashed on instinct, but the followers pinned my head down from above and I couldn’t move.
In that extreme agony—vision blurring, consciousness slipping—a strange pleasure rose again.
The suffocation of being unable to breathe.
The crushing pressure that felt as if my lungs would tear.
The cold water numbing every sensation.
Splash—!
Gah!
How much time passed? After being dunked and hauled out again and again, my mind grew steadily hazy. The border between pleasure and pain blurred; my body’s senses seemed to dull.
A faint thought drifted by: I might actually die like this.
Then, suddenly, the force holding me down vanished.
I gasped and shoved my head above the water. Coughing, I spat the water from my lungs and finally managed a real breath. Barely opening my eyes, I looked around.
Through the foggy haze I saw Camilla’s followers approaching, something in their hands. Moisture still blurred my sight, yet I had no trouble recognizing what they carried.
A dagger, gleaming sharply.
My heart began to race again—pure anticipation and excitement. Something far more intense and thrilling than the water torture awaited me.
Then Camilla’s voice filtered through my water-clogged ears. I couldn’t catch every word, but the gist came through clearly enough.
“…Do we have enough potions? We can’t kill her even by accident.”
The followers holding the daggers answered, their voices trembling with a touch of fear.
“Y-yes, Your Ladyship! We brought plenty of potions! But… is it really… really all right to do something like this?”
Camilla flinched for a moment, then instantly schooled her face into coldness.
“Think about everything that bitch has done! She brought this on herself. Just do as you’re told.”
Even under her firm command the followers still hesitated. Hands shaking, they gripped the daggers and edged closer, glancing at one another.
Watching them, I felt a strange little twinge of apology.
You can just treat me like a lump of meat and take it easy. Hehe.
Of course I only thought it. Outwardly I kept playing the part of a water-soaked rag doll hanging limp.
The followers’ hands trembled as they began undoing the buttons of my soaked uniform jacket. The cold air against bare skin didn’t feel bad at all. While they stripped me I held my breath, waiting for the next rush of stimulation.
Then, just as they had nearly finished, one follower suddenly yelped—“Hik!”—and stumbled backward. The others looked at my lower abdomen and their faces filled with panic.
“…Your Ladyship! It’s… it seems to be that time of the month. There’s blood…”
One of them reported to Camilla in a quavering voice.
Camilla’s expression flickered with conflict. Even a villainess might hesitate to do this to a girl on her period, I supposed.
But her hesitation did not last long. The cold mask returned and she snapped,
“So what? This is what that bitch asked for herself! Stop hesitating and keep going!”
At her urging the followers reluctantly picked up the daggers again.
And then… it finally began.
Shlick—
The sharp tip of a dagger sank into the flesh of my arm. At first it was only a light sting; then the vivid sensation of skin parting and muscle opening flooded me with fierce pain—no, pleasure.
“Hngh…!”
The problem was that these children were not professional torturers. Their hands were clumsy; they had no idea where or how deep to cut to maximize pain without endangering life. The blades raked across my skin at random—sometimes too deep, sometimes too shallow.
But… that only made it better.
Amateur torturers knew no limits. They simply followed Camilla’s orders, terrified, carving wounds into my body. Unexpected places. Unexpected depths. That irregular, unpredictable pain dragged me into an even more intense and novel world of pleasure.
“Heuk…”
Flesh tearing open.
Blood streaming down.
And over all of it, rapturous ecstasy.
I struggled to hold back the moans that kept bursting free.
If this had been anyone else, they’d already be dead several times over.
Even with potions preventing death by blood loss, the pain would have been enough to send an ordinary person into shock. But I was fine. No—far beyond fine. I was in heaven. I could savor even this extreme agony that danced on the threshold of death.
In this moment every worry and anxiety in the world vanished; only pure pleasure remained.
Camilla, thank you so much. Hehe.
Thanks to you…
…Snap.
Huh?
Right at that instant—while I was lost in the peak of rapture—something inside my consciousness suddenly severed.
It was faint, yet at the same time an unmistakably clear sensation of disconnection.
The link carved deep into my soul, the one that had always sent me a faint warmth—the Decimal Reverse that bound Master and me together.
The warm current of Master’s presence flowing from that magic circle… vanished in an instant.
As if a blazing campfire had been snuffed out all at once.
“……!”
The scorching pleasure that had wrapped my entire body cooled as though it had been a lie.
Master?
My mind went blank. I had checked just earlier in front of the headmaster’s office and everything had been fine.
So why, all of a sudden…?
“Why…?”
A hollow voice slipped out of me unbidden.
The cold, despairing reality that my connection with Master had been cut extinguished the waves of pleasure that had ruled me in a single stroke.
My mind snapped clear.
And at the same time I realized:
My current state… something’s wrong.
I couldn’t stay like this. I had to escape this unpleasant, dangerous condition right now.
I have to fix it.
Fix what?
…
…
…
I gathered a vast amount of mana into my remaining right hand. The power that had been running wild from pleasure concentrated into my palm at my will.
The followers around me, even Camilla, still hadn’t grasped the situation; they only watched.
And I…
Without a second’s hesitation, swung that hand straight at my own head.
BOOOOOOM—!!!
A horrific rupture of sound, and my vision went black.
“Kyaaaaaaah!!!”
“Hiiik!”
“…Crazy…!”
A room steeped in a sacred yet somehow alien aura.
Unlike any architectural style found in Tera, pure white marble and golden patterns decorated the space—scenery that could be seen only in the very heart of the Holy Theocracy.
At the center stood an exquisitely ornate throne, the supreme seat permitted solely to the Pope.
Yet the one seated upon it now was not the Pope.
Dazzling golden hair cascaded like a waterfall; the face was so beautiful it seemed to transcend human standards of aesthetics. Enormous pure-white wings spread from the back—yet strangely, one wing was nothing but a scar, as though it had been torn away by force, creating a grotesque imbalance.
The being looked every bit like what one would call an “angel,” yet those eyes held no holiness—only an unfathomable abyss and cold calculation.
Beside the throne stood the Pope of the Holy Theocracy, a Level 9 powerhouse, hands folded respectfully and head bowed.
“Oh?”
The angel on the throne murmured softly. A faint frown creased the brow, as if something unexpected had occurred.
“…It snapped.”
The angel gazed into empty air and muttered,
“Looks like this much still isn’t enough.”
The voice was exquisitely beautiful, yet somehow devoid of emotion.
The Pope at the side carefully asked,
“Shall we… try again? This time a little more…”
“No. That’s enough.”
The angel waved a hand, cutting the Pope off.
“I’ve confirmed for certain that this level won’t work. No point in poking that monster directly and inviting disaster.”
The Pope still looked uneasy.
“…But that person will surely continue to obstruct our plans. Someday…”
“Then just take the hit.”
The angel spoke with utter nonchalance.
“…Pardon?”
The Pope asked in confusion.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
The angel turned a slightly tilted head toward the Pope. Not a shred of emotion colored those eyes.
“Give what must be given. Dealing with her… won’t be our job.”
The Pope could no longer object and simply closed his mouth. The angel’s decision was absolute.
“Well then…”
Looking satisfied—or perhaps simply ready to move to the next stage—the angel rose slowly from the throne.
“It seems the Academy will need a new headmaster. Don’t you think?”
With those words the angel turned back to the Pope and smiled—a meaningful, sly smile, the look of a child who had just discovered an amusing new toy.
“Let’s prepare.”
The angel whispered softly.