The lull on the battlefield allowed Ashen to sneak a moment away after relaying a couple of last orders to his deputies.
He dragged Lucia from the soldier lines to the nearest tower room. Then, he turned around and had a good look at her.
Aside from her aged appearance, what struck him more was the sorrow in her eyes… as if she were staring at a lost cause, yet the look also carried irrational desperation.
They looked at each other for a moment, both not knowing how to start, until Ashen broke the silence with a slight laugh, hoping to lighten the mood. "Lucia's mom, right?"
Lucia, who had more than a thousand emotions running through her upon seeing him once more, blanked for a second when she heard that.
"...What?"
"Ehm! Sorry, I was tryna lighten the mood…" He awkwardly scratched his head. "But for real… how did you become such a MILF?"
She could see his intense worry behind the joking tone, but Lucia didn't have time to explain. She'd been avoiding him mainly because of these questions for the last twenty-five days.
That, and trying to keep events as close as possible to the last simulation.
"I'll tell you later, but since you called me a MILF, that means you'd like to fuck, huh?"
"I do…. wait, what?" Ashen shot her a bewildered look, but she didn't seem done yet.
"Well, I'll allow it. You can fuck me."
"Lucia… Are you alright?" The worry was now naked on his face as he took two steps forward and asked again.
"I'm alright, why do you keep asking?" Lucia answered nonchalantly. "Just get to it…"
"Lucia… just in case you missed the memo… We're kinda in a war with our lives on the line right now. There's a place and time for everything, and this is not it, MILF or not."
She only answered by shortening the distance by another two steps. "No, wait… this is crazy—Oomf."
She finally hugged him tightly. "Just shut up and take me." One hand snaked down to the awakening cock below while her lips crashed almost violently onto his.
Ashen's mind blanked for a second, but his body's instincts did the job for him in the meantime.
He grabbed hold of her asscheeks and doubled down on the inexperienced kiss she was delivering despite her bold act.
Lucia felt herself melt. The overwhelming need for him to completely dominate her assaulted her willing body almost immediately, but she was sure she didn't have any masochistic tendencies.
'That damned curse…'
But even those sensations were quickly swallowed whole, overwhelmed by a pure, all-consuming rush of happiness that flooded her entirely.
She finally had it too... Her own irreplaceable person.
Slap—
One spank brought her from heaven back to the realm of earthly pleasures.
She felt her own asscheeks getting molded by two large hands, then she felt a hot whisper beside her ear. "Such a bad girl… trying to seduce me?"
Slap—
"Will you let go? Hmm?"
"Mmm~" A head shake was his answer.
"Then more discipline is in order."
And before she could stop it, her body answered in the most shameful way possible. "Mmm~" She eagerly nodded twice.
Slap—Slap—Slap—
"Mmm—— Ahh~!"
Abruptly—
BOOM—!
BOOM—!!!
BOOOOOM—!!!!
It was as if the apocalypse had suddenly arrived, with catastrophic explosions erupting in rapid succession.
Ashen steadied the still delirious Lucia as he felt the whole wall shake, then straightened up. "Lucia. I have to head back. Please run to the shelters."
She nodded anyway, seemingly understanding the gravity of the matter.
'I'm really turning into a certified scumbag… How exactly am I supposed to explain this to Alice and Sera now…?' A bitter smile flashed across his face as he looked down at the woman in his arms, whom he used to hate oh so much.
Then, the look was wiped away as fast as it appeared. "Welcome to the harem, Lucy. I'll be sure to prepare a welcoming feast for ya after I deal with those monsters. Stay safe!"
Then, under Lucia's eyes, he disappeared.
"..."
'...To make me fall in love with you to this degree… To have my body react to you in such a manner… To boldly include me in your self-proclaimed harem like I'm a prize you won…'
"What a wicked thing to do…" She finally smiled, a drunken smile full of adoration.
⛧
⛧
⛧
While two certain partners were spreading romance as they got lost in each other's lips, the scene on the Ashbastion's horizon was the farthest thing from that.
Cornelia Arde, the Domain's current Sin Lord, stood face to face with a man. The man also had red hair, and even the crimson pupils mirrored each other. But their gazes only held the desire to kill.
Both of them were stepping on air, courtesy of the respective clashing domains they each spread across the space.
The stretch of land between Ashbastion and the distant Pride Domain had become a graveyard. Corpses—human and monster alike—carpeted the scorched earth for miles. The stench of rot and burning flesh hung thick even at this altitude.
Cornelia hid the exhaustion assaulting her body and lazily asked, "What now? With my citadel right behind me, you won't be able to swarm me with your monsters anymore."
"..."
She smiled, though it didn't reach her eyes. "You must have felt it after this many clashes, right? Despite us both being at the Second Step, I'm still stronger. It's only a matter of time before I melt your head with my flames."
Cassius's expression didn't change. His gaze drifted to the titanic Narkal on his left, which was bathed in its own black fire, like an ifrit from ancient texts. Beside it stood another, much smaller, clutching a large staff—a priest.
Both were six-stage Beasts. Catastrophes, as the old records called them. Whenever they appeared in history, catastrophic destruction and death followed.
But even with these two combined and his own might, he hadn't been able to overcome the Sin Lord before him.
'Not like I haven't predicted this.'
Cornelia tilted her head, reading his silence. "The only way to break through here is to somehow reach that legendary step… the first one." She spoke as if she were also helpless. "But you're also afraid, right? Just like me… that the moment you touch upon that threshold, you'd instantly lose control."
Her voice dropped lower, almost sympathetic. "You must have also felt that dread the moment you tried to touch the untouchable line. The one that could transform you from subject to king… but could also turn you into a slave all the same."
Cassius still didn't answer, but inwardly, he agreed.
Everyone wanted to lord over their own Sin and not be swayed by its whims anymore. But most ended up as slaves to it instead.
He was the same. But unlike others, he clearly knew himself.
He was too wrathful. His mind too warped, too deranged, to take that last step.
The moment he did, his only fate would be that of a monstrosity.
"...You sure talk a lot for someone who lost all her subordinates." Finally, he uttered at last.
BOOM—
A wolf's head made purely of fire answered him. The ifrit on his right responded with its own flames while the priest conjured an ocean in retaliation, but both were swallowed by the wrathful wolf's jaws.
Cassius had to step up himself and deal with the attack.
Crack—BOOOMM—
His own black fire met her gold ones. Neither backed down until both attacks detonated in the middle, the shockwave ripping through countless Narkals down below.
Cassius didn't care about the rabble. Not after those same subordinates he'd just provoked her with had killed almost every Great Demon under his command.
Cornelia didn't seem to care either. She kept her eyes trained on him, advancing with a face completely devoid of expression.
But then, she stopped.
His next words saw to that.
"Did you think you were the one who brought me here?"
She was the one who'd baited him into this position, so what did he mean by that? Cornelia's mind spun.
He willingly answered the unasked question. "It was not you, Sin Lord. I came here willingly."
A pause. Then, he continued in the same conversational tone.
"Did you think I marched this massive monster army solely to attack your bastion?"
Another pause. His eyes swept across the vast graveyard below.
"I've already tried this method before. It did not work."
The cadence of his words changed to a mechanical one.
"So I thought long and hard… how can I kill every single one of you? How can I make it so that this cursed race finally goes extinct?"
Cornelia's instincts screamed. She resumed her charge, each step thundering with her strikes. But she couldn't break what she'd failed to break in months.
While he wasn't her match in might, the man's defense wasn't something she could shatter on short notice.
But even so, she had to try. She rained countless frenzied attacks, no longer caring about conserving mana or the overheating of her circuits.
Cassius kept talking hollowly amid the fire.
"In the end, I came to the conclusion that I simply could not. I can cause damage. I can kill millions and raze whole domains. But I can also predict how you'd eventually rise back up."
"Humanity is simply that resilient."
Ka-Boooom—!!!
For the first time, something like satisfaction crossed his features.
"Since I couldn't do it… then I thought, why not simply call someone who can?"
Cornelia was barely listening anymore. All of her attention was on the overwhelming ocean of mana being sucked into the multicolored stone resting on top of the priest's staff.
Her blood ran cold.
"Sin Lord… are you curious? How far can one reach with the mana gathered from billions of corpses?"
BOOOOMM—
The shockwave from her strike lifted his bangs, fully revealing his crimson eyes and the madness they held underneath.
"Well, the answer is right in front of you."
His lips finally curled up.
"A body able to hold a God's concepts can be made."
The faith stone, saturated with faith that Cassius had tirelessly harvested from humans and monsters alike for the last two hundred years, and now stuffed to the brim with the mana of every human and monster that had died on this battlefield for the last couple of months, finally… throbbed.
The sound reverberated across the space and reached everyone's ears, even though it was minuscule.
Ba–Dum—
Once.
Ba–Dum— Ba–Dum—
Twice, thrice.
Ba–Dum—Ba–Dum—Ba–Dum—
Then, the beats fell into a constant rhythm.
Under the eyes of the expressionless Cassius and the pale Cornelia, the stone started to morph.
A black beak sprouted first—
Followed by hands. Skeletal fingers tipped with talons.
Then a face attached to a neck. The features were disturbingly human, save for the beak where a mouth should be.
The torso came next—feathered and naked, ribs visible beneath translucent skin.
Finally, the feet materialized bird-like and clawed.
The crow-like creature stretched languidly, as if it had just woken from a nice nap.
Then it smiled.
Perfectly but unnaturally in a contradicting expression that would make any sane human go insane.
Its eyes… too many of them, blinking out of sync, contained unsuppressed glee.
Cornelia found herself frozen in place from the gross sight. 'This thing shouldn't exist.' The thought came on its own. And right after, every instinct screamed at her to run away.
…but she couldn't.
Before her very eyes, the creature's beak opened.
And it spoke.
"Ahhh~~ Finally, some fresh air!" The voice was chipper and cheerful, layering another contradiction that scraped against her eardrums. "The void up there was getting suffocating!"
It tilted its neck to one angle while its pupils… all of them… darted in the opposite direction, landing squarely on Cornelia.
"Hello, friend! I came down to play!"
The smile widened impossibly.
"I hope you entertain me… hehehehe…"
⛧ ⛧ ⛧
Ashbastion's wall.