The Great But Slightly Lewd Hero
Once more I crossed the Madun River at dawn, heading for the heart of the Light. The journey reminded me of the time I had crossed in the opposite direction five years earlier. I remembered the fishermen on the far bank hesitating, asking if I truly meant to go to a place like that.
The fishermen of Inis Madun ferried me across without a single word of protest. They might have recognized my face from the farewell party the night before, and Priest Karik had surely left instructions, but at the root of it they simply saw no issue with someone traveling to the Light Denomination’s directly governed lands on the opposite shore.
If my book sold well, perhaps it would dispel even those misconceptions. It would take a long time for knowledge of Riaska to reach fishermen on the frontier, yet still… I hoped they would remember the land that had treated me warmly—at least as warmly as any mage ever had—with fondness.
I disembarked at the pier in Kil Madun beneath the sharp stares of the local fishermen. After thanking those who had carried me, I left the muddy harbor filled with nothing but suspicion.
It was time to decide where to go next.
I briefly considered visiting the head priest of Kil Madun who had once saved me, but decided against it. He might still be here, and more than that, I was afraid to learn how the Denomination’s gaze toward the witch Kaira had changed.
Even with Saint Azalea’s influence keeping people quiet, many might have looked on me with sympathy right after the warrant was first issued… but whether they still regarded me favorably after all this time was anyone’s guess. Perhaps it was better if they had simply forgotten me.
It was still early morning, and with nowhere else to stop, the only choice was to quicken my steps. It would take several days to reach Poscotia, the first major city I needed to visit.
Just before leaving Kil Madun, an empty lot that radiated an ominous aura caught my eye. I paused to stare at it. The clearing sat between moss-covered wooden houses, in a spot where one or two buildings could easily have stood, yet nothing was there. Only a single neglected headstone stood lonely in the center.
The location felt strangely familiar. After staring at it for a long while, I finally understood.
This was the place where the inn had once stood. The place where the shadow I had summoned from beyond the world’s seams had devoured people’s lives—perhaps even their souls—then puppeteered their empty shells to rape me and try to erase my mind.
I started toward the headstone but stopped short.
There were no tentacles slithering out to take physical form, yet the sinister presence remained. It was not merely the psychological unease of seeing a space where a building should have been. This was something heavier, something that felt almost tangible. Stepping into that lot seemed like it would invite a game with death or the soul as the price.
Even though the priests of Light had labored to purify it, had they ultimately failed to cleanse the ground into a place where people could live without fear?
Thanks to Bishop Lumina’s painstaking purification, the whispers no longer reached me unless I drew too close to death. Yet even in this body, my instincts still screamed that entering such a place would be dangerous.
I abandoned the idea of approaching the headstone to read the inscription. Instead, I bowed my head for a moment before the empty space that had once been an inn, mourning the innocent victims I had created and praying that their souls had found rest somewhere.
…But……
The memory of how those shadow tentacles had ravaged my body, toying with people’s souls while seducing them into raping me, slid down my spine. The sensation I had tasted then.
Back then… it felt… good, didn’t it……
Suddenly my legs trembled. Something trickled down between the folds of my skirt.
Nngh……
Just remembering it was almost enough to make me come.
My face flushed scarlet. I forced myself to leave. Yes. These were not thoughts I had summoned myself. The corruption lingering in this place was desperately trying to entangle me, forcibly dragging up the pleasure of that time. I needed to get away from this ground as quickly as possible. From the town of Kil Madun, too.
Shaking off the curious glances of people who found a lone traveling girl fascinating, I set off into the forest where spring was in full bloom.
Haa……
I opened the crude wooden window of the inn, through which sunlight still leaked even when closed, and held the map up to the morning light. It was the same crumpled map I had carried on my journey five years ago.
I wondered how my traveling companion from that time—my mother, Pirel—was doing. Three more days remained until I reached the holy city of Poscotia. Yes, I could save thoughts of Pirel for that pleasure three days from now.
Turning from the sunlight pouring through the open window like a sunshower, I looked back at the small inn bed my tiny body had been lying on moments earlier. Upon it lay—
Mmm……
—the face of a man who had poured every ounce of his strength into my body and now slept on, utterly drained, even at this hour of morning.
…I didn’t know his name. I hadn’t even properly checked the name of this village. I had simply stopped at a cluster of small farmhouses along the road to Poscotia, and this inn was little more than a wayside tavern with furnishings barely different from an ordinary farmhouse.
Still, it was a village at a crossroads. The presence of lodgings meant it saw its share of travelers. Several other guests besides me were staying in this single-story building where rooms and the dining area were divided only by partitions.
And among them, I had seduced a young man returning from a pilgrimage to Poscotia and slept with him.
…He isn’t handsome.
I studied the utterly unremarkable man with sun-baked orange hair and beard, his body not particularly firm despite all the time spent in the fields, still unconscious. If the ego of Lee Sun-hyeon—who had only recently inhabited this ten-year-old body—were still fully intact, he would never have considered sharing a bed with a man who looked like this. No… that ego wouldn’t have considered sleeping with any man at all.
It would have been that way. Still, a one-night stand with someone I’d never see again after tomorrow… it was enjoyable. Have I truly become a woman who craves that… cock… so badly that I’ll seduce any man who happens by and roll around with him?
Considering the harsh realities one inevitably learned, the things I had discovered in Arto’s brothel, Pirel’s personal experiences, and the doctrines of the Light Denomination, the Empire was relatively open about sex. Even so, I still possessed enough sanity to realize that the sight of myself whining and clinging to a man I had just met, allowing him to finish inside me, was far from normal.
Even as I thought that, I gazed down at the man snoring peacefully in deep sleep… and brought two fingers of my left hand—middle and ring together—to my lower body for a moment.
Simply remembering that he was sleeping right in front of me after devouring and licking my body, squeezing out so much semen that he had passed out, made the petals between my legs grow slick with sticky fluid.
Nngh……
My body suddenly flared with heat. The desire to wake the nameless traveler and intertwine our flesh again from the morning onward surged up like a spring.
Unable to endure the burning, I slid my fingers into the soft interior of my womanhood. A wet, obscene sound—schlup—spread through the fresh morning air slipping in through the window.
I was on the verge of falling into masturbation as if possessed, as if hypnotized, when the man’s voice reached me.
“Mmm……”
It was the voice of someone in light sleep, on the verge of waking.
…It would be too much to continue like this. I don’t want to drag a one-night stand out into something sticky and complicated.
I barely held myself back and withdrew the fingers that had grown wet inside me. The fingertips, paler than I remembered because of the slight tinge of death’s essence, were swollen from the fluids that had seeped out of me.
…….
Schlup…
Damn……
I stared at them with regret, then deliberately licked them clean before beginning to dress. I wanted to disappear before he woke.
Hehe. The one-night stand was delicious, nameless uncle.
I offered him a farewell only in my heart, then vanished without a trace.
The Light Denomination’s directly governed territory was a land ruled by divine law, so I could worry a little less about meeting bandits. Few robbers would want to be horrifically burned alive by the radiance of combat priests wielding greatswords or maces infused with the light granted by the God of Vengeance.
Thanks to that, I never had the chance to show off the swordsmanship personally taught to me by a bishop who served the God of Death—someone probably more powerful than those combat priests. Though I had adapted the techniques Bishop Lumina taught me into a style suited for a mage who could cast Veltara’s Transparent Shield.
Having reached Poscotia without incident, I headed for the main temple instead. I watched the errand-runners carefully, but the boy monks, acolytes, and theology students who had worked there when I last visited had all grown up over the past five years into proper monks and priests. I saw no familiar faces.
After hesitating, I lingered awkwardly in front of a young woman at what seemed to be an information counter. She didn’t appear to be a full priestess. Probably a theology student or acolyte. She looked about as young as my small body.
She noticed me and responded promptly.
“May the One who burns like the noonday sun guide you, sister. What brings you here?”
If I suddenly asked a stranger to call for a saint, she would probably scoff, so I said,
“I’m looking for someone named Pirel. I believe she’s a priestess… she joined five years ago. I’m her family.”
That should be enough explanation. There was no hint of suspicion. In a temple this large, simply giving a priest’s or student’s name wouldn’t let them find the person immediately, so perhaps she would check the register…
“Ah!”
But before she could even flip through a single page of the student or priest roster, what came back was an exclamation.
“You’re Pirel’s sister! Then… you must be the one Saint Azalea and Sister Pirel talk about every single day…”
An atmosphere that promised nothing but annoyance settled over me, so I took a step back. Just what on earth had Pirel and Azalea been saying about me? I wanted to be remembered only as the author of the Riaska Encyclopedia, to fade quietly from people’s gossip.
“You’re the hero Kaira—the great one who is unfortunately a little lewd!!”
“Hweh…?”
What… what is that bizarre modifier!!
For some reason… the evaluation seemed even stranger than I had expected.