The Black Knight Swore to the Blind Saintess
I let go of the tentacle I'd been gripping in my hand as I kissed Emilia.
The coil around my arm slackened, and with a soft hiss, the creature's presence drifted away.
With my newly freed arm, I cupped Emilia's face and kept kissing her.
She tangled her tongue with mine just as before.
Hm?
I felt Emilia's suspended body slowly being lowered down.
We broke the kiss.
The tentacle that had been holding her in the air set her down on the ground as though its strength had simply given out.
Not that it had released her.
The tentacle still wound around her limbs and waist. With her arms bound behind her back, she ended up kneeling in front of me.
"Ah—? Castollini! I-I'm down."
Emilia squirmed against her bonds.
"And somehow my arms and legs feel a little... loosened. Just a tiny bit... Mmgh. Nope. Not coming undone."
"Still, things have improved a little, haven't they?"
"...Yes."
When her eyes met mine, Emilia flushed and looked away.
It was only natural she'd be embarrassed—I hadn't just groped her breasts and sucked on her nipples, I'd kissed her too.
Not to mention she was still half-exposing her chest right in front of me.
"I'd love to cover you up, but... you'd just be stripped again anyway. Honestly, it might be better to wait and get dressed once the tentacle lets go."
"Okay..."
I fed a few branches into the campfire that had begun to burn.
"Let me stoke the fire quickly so we can try it against the creature."
"Ah? Castollini, your arm..."
Where the tentacle had coiled around my forearm, red welts had risen as if I'd been burned.
"I'm fine. Don't worry about it."
And I truly was fine.
I could feel new tissue weaving itself together beneath the skin at an astonishing pace.
Fresh flesh was already growing over the spots that had been red moments before.
Emilia spoke to me with a face on the verge of tears.
"That has to hurt a lot."
"It's bearable."
"Then could you leave the fire for a moment and give me your arm?"
"Sorry?"
"I can't use my hands right now, so just put it to my mouth."
"My... arm?"
Emilia nodded with utter seriousness.
I set down the branch I'd been poking the fire with and held my arm to her lips.
She pressed a soft, gentle kiss to the reddened skin.
Heal
Ssssss—
The arm, which had already been sprouting new skin, began healing at a blinding speed.
"Oh?! Thank you, Master."
"Give me the other one too."
So Emilia treated my other arm as well.
Dusk had begun to settle in.
Deep in the forest, the sun seemed to sink earlier than usual.
I lit several branches at once and gathered them into a single bundle in my hand. The flame grew to a decent size.
"Master. I'm going to press the fire against the tentacle now. Tell me immediately if anything feels strange."
"Yes."
I brought the flame to the middle stretch of the thick tentacle.
Sorry about this, Bibic.
"How is it?"
"Mmngh... Mmgh."
Emilia wriggled her body, but the tentacle didn't so much as twitch.
Fire was useless after all.
I carried the branch back and dropped it into the campfire.
"So fire doesn't work on it."
"Still."
"Yes?"
"It's not like we came away with nothing. When you blocked the tentacle and we k-kissed... it did lower me down..."
Emilia shyly put a positive spin on our situation.
Just then—
Grrrowl.
Her stomach growled.
Emilia bit her lower lip and squeezed her eyes shut.
[Why. Why. Why now, of all times.]
The sight was so endearing that a smile crept onto my face.
"Let's have a meal first—canned goods."
What we'd scavenged from the shore was a can of corn.
I pried the lid open with my knife, bent it back, and shaped it into a makeshift spoon. Scooping out the corn, we took turns feeding each other one bite for Emilia, one bite for me.
"Here. Last one—ahh—"
"Ahh—"
Emilia swallowed down every kernel I fed her without complaint. She chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then suddenly burst out laughing.
"What is it?"
"I just thought—if the tentacle moves while we're eating like this, we'd have to kiss again, and it struck me as funny..."
"We'd taste like corn, both of us."
Emilia shook her head.
"No, we wouldn't."
"Sorry?"
"I can use Clean magic. I'll... clean the inside of your mouth with it... for you."
As the words left her own lips, Emilia's ears flared crimson, as if even she realized what she'd just said.
I pretended not to notice.
"I'll use the empty can as a water container. I was thinking of washing it in that stream over there and filling it up. That should be fine, right?"
The stream was visible from the campfire. Still anxious, Emilia glanced back and forth between the tentacle and the water before speaking.
"You have to... come back quickly."
I washed the can in the stream and filled it with water, keeping my eyes fixed on the campfire the whole time.
Fortunately, the tentacle didn't stir.
Carrying the water, I returned to the fire.
"Master, would you like some water?"
"Even if it looks clean, better safe than sorry—I should purify it first."
"Good thinking."
Bear Grylls, was it? Some stubbled survival guy on TV.
I can't remember his name, but he drank straight from a mountain stream swearing it was clean and paid for it with a stomach bug.
I held the water up to Emilia's lips.
Clean
Emilia and I took turns drinking the freshly purified water.
In the deepening forest, the campfire crackled and blazed away.
With our bellies full and our thirst quenched, we sat side by side and talked.
"So that's why you became a priest."
Emilia had been born an orphan and entered the priesthood to survive. Hearing stories that never appeared in the novel was strangely fascinating.
"What about you, Ian? How did you end up running a toy shop?"
Once we'd discovered we were both twenty, we'd naturally dropped the formal speech with each other.
I silently hoped Rhea would answer for me.
Can I just say I inherited it from my late father or something?
[Yeah.]
A short reply came back.
I improvised a backstory.
"It was my father's shop. My mother passed away not long after giving birth to me, and my father died of illness the year I turned fifteen. So I inherited the store young. Honestly, I hated it at first—but then I thought, it was something he treasured, so I should at least give it a try."
"...I see. So then, Ian, where do you—"
"Shh."
I raised a finger to my lips.
The forest was silent.
Only the crackle of the campfire broke the stillness.
About ten paces away, something was moving.
A bluish, teardrop-shaped monster.
A slime.
I whispered to Emilia.
"That's something we can use, right?"
"Probably?"
It had come up in the novel.
In this world, every household kept a slime in its toilet. The slime would eat urine and excrement, break them down inside its body, and eventually expel the result as fertilizer.
The protagonist, raised in the demon realm since childhood, had his first glimpse of the human world—only to see slimes, his fellow demonkin, being worked to the bone decomposing human waste. The scene where he rose up in righteous indignation was played for comedy.
I crept up quietly on the slime.
I was a little nervous.
I had no idea what it would feel like.
So I caught it with Vajra Body active, but it turned out to be surprisingly harmless. Like squeezing a water balloon that refused to pop?
It didn't even try to escape from my arms.
"I caught it, but where should we put it?"
"How about inside that crate?"
"Good call."
After removing the cans stored inside, I set the slime in the crate. When I closed the lid, it just bounced lightly around in there—no attempt at escape whatsoever.
"Ian."
Emilia called to me in an uneasy voice.
The tentacle, silent all this while, had quietly begun to stir again.
"Don't be scared, Emilia."
I went to her and kissed her.
Whether she'd used her Clean magic or not, each kiss carried a fresh rose fragrance instead of corn.
When our lips parted, the tentacle had frozen in place.
I reached out to place my hand on Emilia's chest.
She offered her chest to me and spoke.
"Rose."
"Hm?"
"People who are somewhat close to me call me Emilia. But people who are truly dear to me call me Rose."
Emilia Rosebloom.
Rose.
In the novel, it was a name she permitted to the Black Knight and no one else.
I gazed into her clear eyes and said it.
"Rose. Don't be afraid."
We kissed.
I gently caressed her breasts.
I pinched her nipple between my fingers like a pair of tweezers and gave it a light twist.
A monster impervious to fire and blade alike.
To break free of it, we had to escalate the level of physical contact.
Emilia—no, Rose—was now well aware of this fact too.
Still, she couldn't muster the courage readily. There was no guarantee of a hundred percent escape even if we went through with it; it was, after all, mere conjecture. And for Rose, a woman of the cloth, losing her virginity meant casting aside her very identity as a priestess.
When I turned my head at the end of the kiss, the tentacle had retreated back to its spot.
Rose's strength seemed to give out, and she collapsed against me, her forehead thumping softly onto my shoulder.
She looked exhausted.
She had every right to be.
She'd fallen into the sea, washed up on a deserted island, and been through so much with a total stranger.
I held her and gently rubbed her back.
"Rose. If you're tired, sleep. I'll keep watch."
"I'm sorry, Ian. I'll wake up soon and take over. If it moves, wake me right away. And if I don't wake up... um... you can do whatever you need to while I'm asleep."
I tossed the pile of branches beside us onto the campfire.
"All right."
Nestled in my arms, Rose drifted off to sleep almost instantly.
Emilia Rosebloom opened her eyes.
She had fallen asleep cradled against Ian's chest.
The moment she woke, she realized she had slept far too long. The pitch-black night had, without her noticing, melted into a bluish dawn.
The campfire had burned down to embers, trailing thin wisps of smoke as it died.
Ian had wrapped both arms tightly around her, sharing his body warmth.
Rose's head snapped up.
"...!"
Ian's clothes had been reduced to little more than rags.
The day before, he'd taken the tentacle in both hands and suffered red, burn-like wounds across his arms.
Wounds like those now covered his entire body—his face included.
"Ian!"
Ian Castollini blinked slowly and spoke.
"Morning, Rose."
He smiled faintly.
The two tentacles that had threatened them all day yesterday lay sprawled limp across the ground, far out of reach.
Tears welled up in Rose's eyes.
"How—how did this happen?"
Ian's answer was brief.
"Nothing happened. Nothing at all."