The Last Happiness
A rustle. A soft thud.
The moment the trousers came down, his cock sprang free like a coiled spring, as if it had been waiting for exactly this.
A slow, lingering stroke.
"Hhnn…"
Fingers trailed along his length the way a pianist might draw a melody from the keys, and Gael's cock throbbed hard in answer. The teasing touch drained the strength from his whole body, leaving him slack and helpless.
He rolled his eyes toward the presence he could feel so close. Elisa was watching him through half-lidded eyes. A sultry gleam lived in that gaze, and his groin tightened on reflex.
"Does it feel good?"
"Y-yes…"
Her voice carried a thread of laughter. His own came out tight with nerves.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
His heart hammered like a thing gone mad — so violently he was half-convinced the woman right in front of him could hear it. Everything he felt spilled across his face, raw and unguarded, and Elisa brushed her fingers over his cheek.
"Heh. How cute."
"Y-yeahh…"
The real teasing hadn't even started, and already his mouth had gone slack into a foolish grin. For a man who had never so much as held a woman's hand, the sensation was overwhelming. A flood of unexpected dopamine had drowned his reason before he even knew it was gone.
Then the stroking began in earnest. Gael's loosened jaw fell open, and a tremor ran through him. The fingers wrapped around his cock swept slowly from the head down the shaft, unhurried, savoring.
"Unhheh…"
A woman was touching his cock. The sheer fact of it wrung a stupid little sound out of him before he could stop it.
"You like that~?"
"Y-yes, yeheh…"
The voice that chuckled at him was steeped in something lewd, and underneath it, something that almost sounded like mockery — a way of speaking that belonged to an entirely different person. In his fading awareness he caught a glimpse of her: the corners of her mouth curled up, her whole expression shifted from what it had been before. A thought flickered through his mind that something was wrong. His dopamine-soaked brain buried it without a second glance. Instinct, chasing the pleasure of the moment, refused to care about anything else.
"Of course you do. Because—"
Warmth drew close to his ear.
"I know men. Better than any woman ever could."
The low voice rode a strange, intimate breath straight into his skull, and Gael flinched hard enough to make his shoulders jump.
A flick. Her index finger snapped against his nipple, and his vision swam. At the same time, the hand working his cock began to pick up speed.
Every little thing she did hit him like a shock, inexperienced as he was — but more than that, her hands were simply skilled. She touched him as if she knew exactly where a man liked it most, working his body with uncanny precision. The proof was in the way she kept easing off the tempo at just the right moments, holding his climax at bay, driving his endurance right up to the breaking point.
"Ghhk—"
"Kuh-hut. You've gone full monkey. Easier than I expected, honestly."
Watching him buck and heave, cock and body alike, gasping on the waves of pleasure, Elisa let out a laugh that made no attempt to hide what it was. Pre-cum welled from him in a flood, denied any real release, and left her hand glistening.
"Want to come?"
"Y-yes, yehh… I-I want to come, hnn!? Nnyah—!?"
"What an ugly sound. On a woman, maybe. On a man it's just disgusting…"
The murmur of contempt brushed past his ear, almost too quiet to catch. Gael's numbed reason failed to register it at all.
"Alright. Close your eyes."
"Yehhn—!?"
"Close your eyes and I'll let you come."
Wet, rhythmic strokes, climbing toward that sweet peak. The voice that followed was sweet the way a devil's voice is sweet, when it means to lead a man to ruin.
"No?"
A sadistic little laugh, and the hand on his cock squeezed hard.
"Th-that's, nnyeh—eh?"
The strangled, broken sound wrung a burst of laughter out of her.
"If you don't, I won't let you finish. You don't want to come? You don't want to let out all that good feeling?"
"I-I'll close them—!!"
Reduced to a monkey chasing dopamine, Gael squeezed his eyes shut at once. Body slack, eyes closed, completely disarmed — in a dungeon crawling with danger, it was as good as suicide.
"Good boy. Keep them closed until you're done. Promise?"
"P-promighh—"
"Heh heh… what an idiot."
This time he heard it clearly. Open mockery. A sneer, plain as day. But knowing it now was already too late. The climax that had climbed from his prostate to the head of his cock swallowed even the instinct to survive. Whatever waited beyond his closed eyelids no longer mattered.
The wet friction climbed to a frenzy.
"Ghhnnnnhh—!?"
It burst out of him like a fountain, every second of denied release erupting at once. His outstretched legs shook as if seized by a convulsion, and a raw, fevered cry of pleasure tore from his open mouth. Joy of a completely different order from anything his own hand had ever given him slammed through his brain.
"Hehh…"
The first time a woman had ever touched him, and Gael was gone. He thought he could die like this and have no regrets. He felt, absurdly, as if he had accomplished everything. It wasn't even sex — just a handjob — and still he felt boundless gratitude toward the woman who had made him come. He even found himself imagining a radiant future with her. Holding hands. Becoming lovers. Spending burning nights together. Marriage, children, a family — a happy blueprint, the ordinary delusion of men, blooming thick and fast inside his head.
And in that instant, a whisper of movement.
"…Huh?"
He opened his eyes with a glad heart, ready to show her everything that fantasy had grown in him. What he saw was a flashing blade.
In a span of time too short to count in seconds, Gael looked at the woman aiming a knife at him with a vicious smile on her face — no. Not a woman. Some kind of monster.
The blade punched in.
"Ghk!?"
Steel buried itself in his throat, and the question never had time to run very far through his mind.
A thick, wet surge.
"Ghhk—. Ghk, keh, khack!?"
Gael's hands flew to his throat on reflex, trying to hold in the blood and the pain. The hole in his neck wouldn't let a proper sound through. He couldn't even call for help. Panic, terror, and agony churned his thoughts into chaos, and his listing body toppled sideways.
In his rapidly scattering vision, the woman was wiping the whitish fluid off her hand onto his clothes, her face wrinkled in distaste. Then her eyes met his upturned gaze, and she let out a laugh that had nothing human in it.
"I get it, though. Men can't help turning into idiots the second a woman so much as touches them, right? It was a novel experience, I'll give it that. But still — it was a little, no, a whole lot disgusting."
"Ghhk—. Grlk—."
His throat, plugged with welling blood, produced only a rattling gurgle. What was that struggling sound trying to say? Was he asking why she had killed him? Or was he screaming to be saved?
"Kee-hee-hee!!"
Even Gael himself couldn't have said which. But looking at the woman laughing as if her face might split, he understood one thing. In his final moment he forced his eyes wide and dragged her true nature out of his ruined throat.
"Mon… steh, khack! …er…!"
Gael couldn't make sense of what the monster was telling him. The master of the dungeon, and the dungeon itself? It had lured them here?
The things he had seen since arriving flashed through his mind like a drowning man's last visions. The first monster they encountered. Traps that shouldn't have been possible, and the dungeon sealing itself shut. Monsters that fought like they'd been trained. All of it had been wrong. All of it had sat outside the laws of the world. And this monster was the same.
"What… are… you…"
His head, which he had been struggling to keep lifted toward the monster, dropped.
The focus drained from eyes still wide with shock and horror, and then there was only silence. A young male adventurer, blinded by a woman, met a hollow death at a monster's whim.
And he would not be the only one. Every other adventurer who had set foot in this dungeon was bound for the same end. Or perhaps for something far worse.
"Now then. Shall I use this to reel in the rest of them? Starting with that stray cat girl."
A long, wet lick. From between the folds of the human skin it wore, a tongue like a viper's slipped out and dragged across its lips. The bulge at its groin was a reaction no woman's body should have produced. The monster slung the dead male adventurer over its shoulder and started moving. There was no need to go looking for the others. For a monster whose body was the dungeon, peering into its own belly was as easy as a glance.
"Hah…"
Going through a dungeon alone really is hard, nya…
No vanguard, nothing but my own eyes for traps and monsters, and my stamina burned down fast. My whole body was soaked in sweat, and a mind stretched taut with tension was starting to scream how tired it was. I'd already used up every last stealth skill dodging the monsters that prowled around like they were on patrol, nya.
Honestly… I was starting to regret this. The thought kept creeping in that I should turn around right now and link back up with that Gael guy. He was an irritating bastard, sure — but having him up front did make you feel a little safer, nya.
"Damn it…"
How did it come to this, nya? I… I just wanted to make a little money. I won't pretend I wasn't greedy. But that greed was for my little sisters. I could go hungry if I had to — I just wanted them to live well, nya.
I know I said some ugly things. But I still wanted the others to be okay too… Aria, Serena, Rene, Brom, Gael — all of them, nya.
Where did it all start going wrong? I did my best, I really did… I worked so hard…
"Hhk…"
Something hot surged up in my chest, and the tears came. I wanted my party… I wanted my friends, nya.
"Help—me—"
…Huh?
Faint, but somewhere, a person's voice. I pricked the ears on top of my head and listened, nya.
"Please—help me—"
A woman. A stranger's voice, nya. And it was getting closer.