Episode 219
"Mmmph... mmmm..."
"......."
Miho, who had climbed on top of Frey, was kissing him with tears welling in her eyes.
*Chuup, chuuurup...*
She had been moved to her room's bed at some point, and now lay overlapping Frey's body, eyes half-closed as she melted her fox bead in her mouth to feed it to him, while at the same time...
"...Gulp."
She was swallowing the unknown sinister energies emanating from his body along with his bodily fluids.
"Fuha... fuheh... fuheeeh..."
After some time passed like that, Miho finally pulled her tongue from his lips and went limp.
...*Lick, lick.*
Lying sprawled on top of Frey, panting heavily with a tearful expression, she retrieved the small shriveled bead that had been in his mouth.
"I... I put it all in... every single drop. Perfectly..."
Completely exhausted, she barely turned her head and spoke with a hollow voice.
"So please stop now... let me stop... I'm going to die..."
"Get down."
"Mmm...!"
At Lulu's command, Miho flinched all over and began to climb down from Frey.
"Haa... haa..."
After struggling for a while, Miho lay beside Frey, covering her eyes with her arm and breathing roughly before...
"Hic... huuu..."
She finally burst into tears.
"How hard I worked to gather that... I tried so, so hard to become a 'Gumi'... and to that human of all people..."
"Come down next to me."
"Eek..."
But before she could even finish crying, she slipped from the bed at Lulu's command.
"What happened? Is he recovered?"
"Mmm..."
Lulu grabbed Miho's shoulders, still dazed, and asked. Miho stared blankly at Lulu for a moment before slowly answering.
"I don't know, I didn't expect it either. It shouldn't have been possible. But... it's certain that he's recovered to some extent..."
"So the treatment worked?"
"Y-yes. It was impossible, but his life force has recovered somewhat. I don't know if it's permanent..."
"Don't just say negative things."
"...At the very least, he won't be a corpse right now."
Only after those words did Miho escape from Lulu's grip.
"Fuheh... fuheeh..."
Even after being released, Miho couldn't collect herself for a while, then remembered that Frey's bodily fluids had entered her body and...
"Mmm... uuu..."
The fact that her fox bead, which she had spent 10 years gathering, had gone to her enemy in an instant, and she began to sob.
"...You said it was a fox bead? You said you need to gather 'essence' to collect it?"
Lulu asked her.
"So how do you gather essence?"
"......."
Miho glared at Lulu for a moment, but eventually bowed her head under her intimidating aura and began to speak.
"T-there's a way to gather dew. Morning dew contains a lot of the land's mana, so it's perfect for gathering essence."
"...How long does it take?"
"O-one year of gathering to grow it to a usable size."
"Too long..."
Frowning at that, Lulu asked again.
"The second method?"
"I-intercourse with a male..."
"......."
"Eek... th-that also... must be... intercourse with... the one you'll give the fox bead to..."
"Next."
As Lulu spoke coldly while watching Miho forced to squeeze out information by the power of the magic eye, Miho opened her mouth with a crying expression.
"F-finally... you extract life force directly from people. With my ability, I grab the target's heart with my hand and squeeze it like milking."
"Hmm."
"It's the method Serena asked for when torturing... anyway, when persuading the bishops. It's very painful and excruciating."
Hearing that, Lulu smiled brightly and took her hand.
"Then... if there are many people to squeeze, the bead will grow quickly?"
"T-that's true. But I! I only squeeze bad people! For example, the one lying over there...!"
"......."
"A-anyway, I can't just squeeze anyone. Not many people can withstand it in the first place. So criminals..."
"I'll provide them."
"...What?"
Miho tilted her head at those words.
"There are really bad people. My servants' former masters... Master is keeping them locked up right now."
"I heard something strange just now..."
"Anyway, you can squeeze from those people."
Miho looked skeptical at those words.
"And if that doesn't work... squeeze me."
"W-what?"
"Squeeze my heart. I'll provide criminals regularly in the future, but on days you can't find any, squeeze me."
Lulu said.
"Instead of giving it all like this time, inject half to Master. Even so, you can restore your fox bead faster than gathering dew."
She said with a serious expression.
"W-well..."
"You don't like it?"
"N-no... are you sure it's okay?"
Miho asked, looking at Lulu.
"As I said earlier, squeezing the heart causes extreme pain. It's not something you can forcibly endure... ah?"
Then, as she continued speaking with a suspicious expression...
"What are you doing now?"
When Lulu took her hand and placed it on her chest, Miho asked with wide eyes.
"Squeeze now."
"What?"
"I'm telling you to test it. Squeeze out my life force."
Lulu said to her with a serious voice, then closed her eyes gently.
"I belong to Master. My body, soul, life, everything belongs to Master. Of course I can give my life force."
And then, she spoke with a trembling voice.
"...Alright, then."
Glancing at Lulu, Miho made a resigned expression and gripped her heart.
"Ah...!"
And at that moment, a sharp scream echoed through the mansion.
"Aaaaahhhh!!!"
"S-see, I told you she couldn't endure it."
As Lulu continued to scream as if tearing apart, Miho tried to pull her hand from her heart with a flustered expression, but...
"K-keep... keep going..."
"......?"
"To save... Master..."
At Lulu's tearful words as she grabbed her hand, Miho closed her eyes tightly again and continued.
"Aaaaaah...!"
And so, a long time passed.
"Haa, haa..."
When Miho pulled her hand from her heart, she collapsed onto the floor exhausted.
"You'll keep withering away. And this is just a temporary measure. There's no guarantee your master, whose insides have already started rotting, will recover. Even so..."
Miho looked at her with a pitying expression, trying to persuade her, but...
"...Heheh."
Despite her condition, she crawled to the bed.
*Lick, lick.*
She burrowed beside Frey and quietly licked his face as he lay with eyes closed, then...
"Hic...!"
She took Frey's hand and began to choke her own neck with it.
"Only you can dominate me... only you can own me, only you can kill me..."
Having spent such an anxious day, her habits of self-abuse and self-destructive behavior that she hadn't shown in a long time came bursting out.
"So if you die..."
Lulu, who was licking the motionless Frey with closed eyes while choking her own neck with his hand...
"...I'll die too."
She whispered in his ear while putting more force on his hand gripping her neck.
"So if you don't want to kill me..."
Then, whether by chance or because her voice reached him, Frey's hand choking her neck flinched and pulled back slightly...
"...Please live."
She stopped choking herself and smiled happily as if she knew it would happen.
"Just as you saved me, now I'll save you. I'll give you my heart. I'll give you my life force. I'll squeeze it out with all my might until I wither away and give it to you."
She whispered while nuzzling her cheek against his hand.
"...I want to live as your pet until my life ends."
Today, she was the heroine of a novel.
"So let's live together for a long, long time, die together, and be buried in the same grave."
A romance novel that brings tears to one's eyes.
.
"Phew..."
Some time after that.
"What a ordeal..."
Miho, coming out of Frey's room, sighed deeply as she descended to the first floor.
"But still, surely Serena didn't anticipate this..."
She muttered with a desolate expression.
"...Did she ask me to squeeze her heart every night for the past few days?"
Then, Miho smirked and shook her head.
"Nah, no way. Even if she's a genius, that would be foresight. That's impossible."
Saying so as she went down the stairs, she suddenly stopped and frowned, muttering to herself.
'No, maybe it is possible...'
Miho had spent quite a lot of time with Serena recently.
She was someone who had shared more communication with her than anyone else, aside from Serena's confidants and Frey.
And because of that, she had noticed that Serena changed every night.
In the morning she showed a slightly empty-headed and cute side, but at night she transformed to the level of a dark force in the underworld.
And that's when Serena would instantly resolve cases she couldn't solve during the day, and come up with amazing strategies and brilliant moves.
"Just what... is her true identity..."
Thanks to that, Miho thought about how she'd experienced quite a lot of strange things since leaving the Eastern Continent, shaking her head.
'Come to think of it, what is that dog beastkin Lulu's identity?'
She narrowed her eyes.
She looked toward Frey's room where Lulu, who had been licking Frey for a while and muttering before suddenly growling while looking out the window, would be.
'That energy... it was definitely that strange feeling from the slave market...'
At the slave market, when she transformed into a mid-boss, she had definitely gone on another rampage due to someone.
The sinister ruby-colored energy and strange feeling she felt back then - why did she feel it from Lulu looking out the window?
"What could be outside?"
Thinking there might be someone outside the window coming to assassinate that scoundrel, Miho reached the first floor and quietly approached the mansion's window to look outside.
"Hmm."
But what entered her eyes was not an assassin.
It was the guard unit densely surrounding the mansion.
"...How pitiful."
At the sight of territory residents Frey had probably never even seen throwing stones and shouting in collective rage, Miho inadvertently whispered that.
"Ha?"
Then she looked flustered.
"W-what's pitiful about that trash?"
Of course, a sickly-looking young man collapsing while coughing blood - if that young man was terminal, feeling pity was natural.
But he was, at least as far as she knew, the empire's greatest scoundrel and villain.
So there was no need for sympathy at all... what was that thought just now?
"Phew..."
Thinking it was just a stray thought because of all the nerve-wracking things like the forced kiss and lying on his body, Miho shook her head and was about to leave the window, but...
"Hm?"
She tilted her head again.
"...What is this?"
The guard units gathered at the mansion were suddenly all kneeling and prostrating themselves.
".....???"
At that strange sight, wondering if some bizarre incident like those she encountered whenever she was with Serena had occurred, she perked up her ears and observed the situation...
*Ding-dong...! Ding-dong...!*
"Hmm? Serena?"
When the doorbell rang, she walked briskly to the entrance.
"I should tell her to leave quickly. This place is very dangerous."
Thinking only of getting out of this house, and looking forward to meeting Serena, whom she always thought was strange but had come to rely on quite a bit, Miho opened the front door with a bright smile...
"Ah..."
And froze on the spot.
"My, what a cute fox beastkin."
The empire's second in line to the throne, the First Princess.
"...Hic."
And at the same time, at the top of the danger list that the nighttime Serena had written.
1st: Raphael Sol Sunrise
[In summary, a fox spirit.]
[Her benefactor was none other than Frey, but not knowing that, she fell into corruption and ran wild like an idiot.]
The breathtakingly beautiful but somehow chilling Princess Raphael stood before her.
[She's the same level as that bitch Rosé.]