The Brand of the Holy Sword
"I find this quite delightful as well. Your will to resist, even pinned beneath me, is admirable, Saintess—and yet your body is so honest it's almost comical. Wouldn't you agree?"
"Nghk—! Hahh!"
He had only pulled a little harder than before, yet her reaction shifted dramatically. A faint amusement having taken hold of him, Lean repeated the tug a few more times before stopping, then began kneading the flesh of her cunt in earnest and drove two fingers in at a stroke.
"Hngh—!"
She was so worked up that the instant his fingers entered, he could feel how thoroughly she had soaked them, slick and sticky. When he flicked them lightly, rapping against her inner walls, her thighs shivered delicately and her arms began to thrash. He fixed her seized wrists all the more firmly in place and quickened the movement of his fingers.
"Mmph, hah... mmn..."
And yet the longer it went on, the more displeased he became. He had meant to take his time and savor her torment, but watching her leak and gush from above and below stirred anger in him rather than arousal. If only what hung between his own legs were still whole, he could have been tormenting her with his cock rammed deep inside her instead.
"Hnngh, ah... huk...!"
In the end, half out of his mind, Lean added a third finger and began churning up the inside of her cunt. The faster his fingers pistoned, the thicker the lewd, squelching sounds grew. As her flushed, feverish pussy wept its juices onto the floor, a thought flashed through his mind—that he would devour her by every means he had.
Hurriedly bending over her, he pistoned his hand while sucking her breast into his mouth, and her back bowed, her head shaking from side to side over and over. Rolling his tongue around her nipple, he finally pulled away, licked a slow line along her collarbone, and lifted his head.
"Saintess. All it takes is one sentence—that you submit to me. Then this suffering will end."
"Ngh... sh-shut up. That's never going to happen."
"Hm. That's a problem. From here on, it's really going to hurt."
At those words, something changed in Serina's eyes. He raised what he held in his hand so that she could see it plainly.
"Just as you conjured that blunt weapon, Saintess, I too can replicate the Holy Sword—temporarily, at least. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
Serina swallowed hard. Seeing fear take root in her expression, Lean gave a small nod.
"Hm. It's thicker than my fingers, so I quite understand why that frightens you. But you know—this Holy Sword of yours is hotter than you'd think."
Serina flinched hard. The hand that had been tormenting her pussy had withdrawn long before.
"Y-you... you can't mean..."
Only now, at last, did she show him the reaction he wanted, and Lean smirked.
"Let's see just how long you hold out."
No answer came. Lips sealed tight in what looked like resignation, the Saintess braced herself for what was to come. It was a futile resistance, over in a breath. The moment the lower part of the Holy Sword's hilt touched her folds, her expression collapsed into horror.
"It's a shame, but there's something else I'd rather hear. However much it hurts, I do hope you'll bear it well, Saintess."
"...W-wait, just a mom—!"
The hilt began to force its way through her tight flesh. At once her body convulsed as though in a seizure—
"Nooo! Aaaghhh—!!!"
Her head wrenched all the way back as a terrible scream tore out of her. And the sound of flesh searing shoved its way past even that scream, filling the room to its corners.
Serina sat staring blankly at nothing, on the bed in her own room. The room the Order had provided for her had spent most of its hours serving as nothing more than a space for coupling, and never once, at any hour, had it offered her comfort. After she took one man into her arms, while she hurried to scrub her defiled body clean, another would come knocking at her door, wanting to hold her. Only after that cycle had repeated itself beyond counting were the brief hours before dawn granted her as free time—and that had been the shape of Serina's every day.
And so, on that bed, only two versions of her had ever existed: the one bucking and crying out in pleasure, and the one begging for sleep to soothe her worn-out body.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck..."
Of course—that was before she met Lean again.
Serina was trembling all over. No matter how she bit and tore at her nails, no pain came from it at all. Her arms, wrapped around the legs she had drawn up, had no strength left in them; only by curling herself as tight as a ball could she barely press down the shaking.
She knew it for certain now. She was broken.
No—she had been broken from the start.
She had melted into the arms of the men who raped her, rocking her hips like a madwoman, spilling cries drenched in pleasure. Those cries had even held words begging to be pierced deeper, to be violated in ways that felt even better—what part of any of that looked like a sane human being?
She simply hadn't wanted to die, hadn't wanted to go mad, hadn't wanted to hurt, hadn't wanted the stress. So she had thrown every one of those things away and, like a child, whined and clung to whatever felt good. That was Serina.
She didn't regret the choice. Even now, she still believed it was the only path there was.
But it hadn't been the right answer. There had never been an exit to begin with. Whichever choice she made, her stigmata was fated to fade.
That bitch who'd claimed to be more merciful than anyone had been toying with her Saintess all along. It was obvious now.
"Fuck—fucking hell! Shut up, shut up! Aaagh...!"
The sounds wouldn't stop. No matter how viciously she cursed and gnawed at the Goddess, there wasn't the slightest sign of anything getting better. If anything, her body only shook harder.
"Ah... ahh... aaah...!"
She still did not know that exalted being. And fury aimed at so hazy a target could never last forever.
Serina grew afraid. The instant her rage toward the faceless Goddess drained away, the memories of those days crawled back to life, and terror coiled around her, trying to swallow her whole. The problem was, she had no faith in her ability to shake it off.
She had endured everything so well until now—and then a single day's events had turned it all upside down. When that mass of fire had churned its way into her depths, she had even thought she might die then and there.
She had felt something of that size once before, taking Cardinal Fry's cock. It, too, had been astonishingly large—large enough to scrape along every fold of her walls as it forced its way in. But there had been no pleasure in it whatsoever; only an agony beyond describing had come crashing down over her.
Each time that searing hilt was rammed into her cunt, the reek of scorching flesh rose. There was no describing what it was to smell her own flesh burning. That alone had seemed like quite enough to die from.
"As expected of you, Saintess—you are truly magnificent. Even the Holy Sword responds to your light."
The moment the hilt reached her innermost end, the wounds healed—while she was still clenched tight around the steel heated through in that furnace of fire.
"To see you take something this thick without the slightest trouble—so what I heard was true, then. That you were impaled on something bigger than me and went off like a bitch in heat. Did it feel good? Well?! Did it feel good, I asked!"
Lean was a jealous man. Just as Serina had been certain that, so long as the two of them—each answering to the other's light—remained together, he would never die, Lean seemed to hold the very same conviction. The faint concern that Serina might die of shock, which had once lingered somewhere in his face, was gone now; only a distinct smile remained.
He wrenched the embedded hilt free and drove it back in. That was all he did.
"AAAAAAGH!!!"
The only problem was that he repeated it dozens of times. Hundreds.
The seared flesh mended, and the mended flesh was branded with fire once more. She passed out and came to, over and over, beyond counting. Every instant her eyes opened, she shook her head desperately and wailed. But the pain did not end.
"...Ha. Saintess. Just give in. I'll do it. I'll do anything. I'll follow the Hero. Is one little sentence really so hard to say?"
And naturally so—because through five full hours of torment beneath the Holy Sword, she had never once let slip the words he wanted.
There was a clear reason she refused to take that road, too. She believed, unshakably, that restoring the Hero's manhood had nothing at all to do with reviving her stigmata.
"Sh-shut... up... you fucking... bastard..."
She had spat in his face and heaped insults on him. Rather than suffer a humiliation far worse than any before at the hands of the man whose cock she would be bringing back to life, it was far better to give her body to the Order—at least that had grown gentler.
Above all, hadn't Priest Ervan said so plainly? That he would permit this one day, and this day only. Borrowing the Holy Sword from the Hero in exchange for handing the Saintess over for a day meant, from the very start, that the bargain with the Hero took precedence—not any aim of restoring the Saintess's stigmata. They had simply left the Saintess in the Hero's hands for one day.
And so she had believed, without a flicker of doubt, that she need only endure this span of time.
"You brought this on yourself, Saintess. I'm in a position where I must hear that answer from you, whatever it takes."
It hadn't been a misjudgment—certainly not that. It was only that the trump card Lean had brought out left a wound far too fatal.
"Don't worry. I'm a man who loves you, Saintess—you, your very self. Even if you've become half a madwoman, I will stay at your side and love you for the rest of my life."
Lean had said those words as he drove the replicated Holy Sword down into the floor of the room. And she had grasped, precisely, what that meant.
Trapped within the illusion the Holy Sword had conjured, she watched the mist around her slowly thin—and there, straight ahead, found the back of a man dressed in a way she knew only too well.
"Ga... Galef...?"