A Pure Knight's Natural Enemy [Konosuba]

What is the one thing that, were it to suddenly disappear from the game world, would completely screw a main character over?

What's that, companions? No, as we've already established, the developers of the hentai JRPG genre have already shown us that, while mildly tedious, a game in which a lonely protagonist is forced to deal with hordes of enemies one attack command at a time is perfectly viable.

Consumables? Those very same developers have made it so that we're keenly aware of how grinding and overleveling (unwanted or otherwise) often make it so that the 'Use Item' command goes, ironically, unused.

Game balance? Equipment? A fucking spellcheck?

No, no, and no. There are plenty of games where those three are glaringly absent, particularly in the subgenre that currently occupies us.

So, what is it? What's the one thing whose absence would make the start of the game all but impossible, that would bring would-be heroes to their knees as they faced certain, inescapable doom?

The answer might surprise you:

Inns.

Inns, taverns, love hotels, however you choose to call them, are essential components of the genre. A main character who's too poor to afford either a mana potion or a healing one will find both HP and MP recovered by a portion of the price it would take to do so via performance-enhancement drugs. They are also, of course, often used as triggers for plot-critical events, and who among us has not suspiciously eyed a plucky companion who reminded us, upon entering a new area, that 'Maybe it's time to get some rest?'

No, that's not a specific reference. That would require that unsubtle game writers were something rare enough for this to be a specific concern.

I already have enough specific concerns.

"We have a house," Darkness says.

Which, come to think of it, is already enough of a concern, seeing as I've been assaulted by possessed porcelain dolls in that house, and not in a way that would make hentai game developers take notes.

… I think. Look, even someone as vastly erudite as I am may have missed some particular instances of… let's call it 'creativity.'

Yeah.

Disturbing, sick creativity.

"Kazuma."

"Yes, it's me, Kazuma, and most definitely not a cursed porcelain doll with those creepy unblinking stares, even if wearing a skirt may have sent mixed messages in that regard."

"What?"

"What?"

"Kazuma."

"Do you want us to get stuck in a loop? Because that's how you get us stuck in a loop, and I frankly don't care to revisit the charming mishaps of another tracksuit-wearing, isekaied character who has died even more times than I have."

"… I don't know what that means, and I don't enjoy you talking down to me—"

"Silence, Darkness. Illiterate bitches have no right to speak back to their masters."

"Hn!"

"You were saying?"

"That's… not what I meant, and you know it… Master," she says, grasping the front of my silk jersey with two trembling fists to keep herself even vaguely steady as she looks up at me.

I try to smirk victoriously at her—just for her sake, you understand; a boyfriend as caring as I am naturally gravitates toward giving his needy, masochistic girlfriend the kind of verbal abuse that engages her innermost, and far too often outermost, desires—but…

She…

Well, she's clinging to me. Pressing her body against mine. Staring into my eyes with dark blue irises that hold a light of their own in the dark streets of Axel at night as glimmering lamps reflect motes of gold over the wide stare framed by the brim of her white hat, the strands of blond hair, and the black silk of my jersey that she holds with both hands.

So, of course…

I kiss her.

It's not even rough. Not even passionate. Just a slow, careful, maybe shy lowering of my head until my lips graze against hers and her mouth opens in acceptance that I still have a hard time believing before I press against her and taste the remnants of…

"What… what is it?" she breathes out, voice quavering as her eyes find mine once more.

"Nothing?" I say very diplomatically.

She frowns, tilting her head slightly in a way that's just unfair as her narrowed eyes search mine for anything to incriminate me with.

"Kazuma," she says.

I try to smile conciliatorily rather than nervously, but, going by the tightening of her fists on the front of my abused jersey, I may have missed the mark.

"It's really nothing—" I try again.

"If it's nothing, say it to me," she says, very unreasonably.

So I wet my lips out of sheer nervous reflex, seeing as they'd been properly wetted just moments ago, and lean down to tell Darkness the one thing I likely shouldn't be telling her at this very moment:

"It's just that… I just remembered that you dined on bugs."

She blinks at me.

Then she pulls herself up until her eyes are in front of mine, and it is a testament to Aqua's craft that the jersey, rather than tear to shreds, manages to withstand Darkness' using it for pull-up practice—this isn't a crack about you being fat, dear; I assure you that you're as dainty a creature as a sinuous lamia. It's just that, just like with the lamia's case, there's a lot of daintiness to be hanging on just two fistfuls of silk.

"It's called escargot, and it's a perfectly normal dish," she says, her breath slightly tinged by the faint aroma of a sauce that featured enough garlic to make sure the escargot remained extra dead, even if they had somehow acquired some vampiric traits—which is not an unrealistic concern in my current world.

"They are snails," I shoot back, as economically efficient in my choice of words as effective in my unassailable logic.

"It's not the worst thing I've had in my mouth today," she says, and this mysterious announcement prompts me to both blink in bafflement and…

Uh… no, it's mostly just the bafflement. I really am running on empty about what could be worse than eating literal bugs—

"Breakfast," she says, rolling her eyes in a dismissive way that somewhat clashes with her still being in the middle of a pull-up.

And, really, breakfast was a perfectly regular affair, with maybe, at worst, consuming the remnants of an unborn chicken dipped in the boiling secretions of crushed sunflower seeds as Darkness knelt between my open thighs and—wait a minute.

"My cock is not worse than snails."

"I guess I should ask for Sebastian's opinion?"

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, I don't know, but with the way you tipped him, I'm sure he would."

"A man who can do art with a napkin is a man who deserves a good tip—"

"I'm sure it was just the tip—"

"My tip is perfectly adequate—"

"Oh, wow, look at those morons!" my girlfriend says.

Just, you know, not the one clinging to me.

Darkness and I blink at one another for a brief moment of bafflement before we slowly turn toward where the clearly inaccurate assessment of my intelligence has come from.

That is, a giggling Aqua bending forward with her finger pointed as she shakes with laughter in a way that manages to make it extra clear that, in some respects, she's a firm, comfortable middle between Darkness and Megumin's past self.

She's also leaning against—

"Yes, it's me, Kazuma," he says with infuriating arrogance as he tilts his head back and grins to show about as much tusk as can be done without a dentist's appointment.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

He raises an insolently challenging orcish eyebrow and thrusts his chin up to point over my shoulder at the magically lit sign announcing to Axel's streets the services of a luxury hotel that makes damp cobblestones glimmer with neon colors right out of a cyberpunk setting.

"That was not the plan," I tell him.

"I am with Aqua," he replies, as if that makes any sense.

Being with Aqua, I mean, not having to change plans because of being with her. Obviously, if you are with Aqua, something didn't go to plan to start with.

"Heeeeeey, what's that supposed to mean?" my most expensive yet still inferior onahole goddess says as she glares at her own 'I Can't Believe It's Not Kazuma, Accept No Substitutes!'

He, as his only answer, spanks her ass hard enough for her to almost topple over if not for her arm wrapped around his waist. Going by the way her eyes bulge out and the moan now echoing through this particular street, she isn't completely averse to the treatment.

"Really?" Darkness, still hanging from my chest, comments as she's slowly pushed away from my body by… said body's reaction.

"Look, I was about to drag you into a love hotel for a romantic night of debauchery; I'm just primed to react to a masochistic, slutty girlfriend moaning at her rough yet deserved treatment at the moment," I patiently explain to her.

"We have a house," she repeats despite her cheeks going redder than the escargot sauce.

"It's about variety! Spicing things up! This is me being thoughtful and mindful so that you don't get bored with our love life!"

"How am I supposed to even get the chance to get bored?! You—we have a whole fami—retinue. I'm having sex with so many people that I'm losing count! You are having sex with so many people that I have lost count—"

"It's just Yunyun, Megumin, Chris, Aqua, Luna, Wiz—"

"—Vanir—"

"You shut up, Aquazuma. You know it's Vanir-chan if sexual matters come up. Also, I haven't—we haven't had sex with Vanir-chan. We've had so little sex with Vanir-chan that, at this point, it counts as neglect play the likes of which Darkness can only dream about—"

"Kazuma! How dare you drag me on a full-day romantic date filled with building expectations only to then tie me to the chair in the corner of a hotel's room so I can watch as you and your duplicate spitroast Aqua, with both her drool and love juices staining the luxurious carpet while I valiantly struggle against the rough ropes digging into my plush thighs, not even allowed to touch myself to relieve the sheer frustration of seeing my boyfriend mind-breaking the traitorous maid betraying her mistress at the first chance she's had—"

"Hey, Kazuma, I know we only dropped here to mess with them, but I think I could indulge Darkness. It's a terrible sacrifice, but I think that, as her dutiful maid, I really should get your cock in both my pussy and mouth at the same time—ahn!"

"Silence, onahole goddess, or I'll have to shut you up with my cock in your mouth—"

"The city guard has already been notified. You have three minutes to vacate the premises," somebody who is neither a Kazuma nor one of two masochistic sows says.

I blink away from Darkness' flushed face and turn toward the entrance to the luxury hotel where a man wearing a formal suit quite similar to Sebastian's, yet lacking the white napkin needed to pull it off, is glaring at me with his arms crossed.

"We had a reservation?" I say, somewhat disoriented.

"It's already been canceled."

"But… I… Reservation?"

"Sir, please, leave."

"Look, if I promise there won't be any spitroasting, divine or otherwise, can I just please get my saner girlfriend in the room and have regular lovey-dovey sex with maybe a spanking or two to spice it up? Nothing too crazy, it's just, you know how nobles get weird in the head if they don't indulge their disturbing fetishes."

For some reason, Darkness, who's still hanging from her grip on my jersey, buries her face in black silk to the point her hat almost falls off and groans.

"This is a respectable establishment," the concierge, bellboy, bouncer, or whatever he's supposed to be says with enough derision that, were he to be reincarnated in a fantasy world, he could get his own onahole goddess' motor running.

"It's a hotel in a town of adventurers. Rookie adventurers," my onahole goddess says with her own share of derision as she straightens up to adopt what she seems to think of as her dignified pose.

Silly Aqua, there's no dignity to be found there. Only uppity hentai maids.

"I sure don't know what you're talking about, Madam," he says with a tone that matches the stiffness of the wording.

"She's very unsubtly alluding to the fact that most of your customers are adventurers who, as they are rookies, are also young, usually in their teens, and thus horny enough that I wouldn't want to join your cleaning staff without first getting some very thick gloves and, possibly, a gas mask," Aquazuma says, apparently supportive of his partner of the eve.

"I sure don't know what you're talking about, Monsieur."

"He's quite straightforwardly stating that your whole 'respectable establishment' has likely held more orgies than the Succubus Café and certainly held them to a lesser organizational and hygienic standard," I patiently and charitably explain to him as I pat Darkness' back.

"This is not the kind of humiliation I'm into…" she almost inaudibly lies into my jersey.

And I, as a caring and supportive boyfriend, don't call her out on it and keep reassuringly patting her loud enough to make the concierge's bottom-left eyelid twitch.

Or, at least, that's what I do before the town guard arrives and two pairs of Kazumas scatter, each trailing the flailing thighs of a masochistic girlfriend behind them.

━❖━

"Ahahahahahaha!" Aqua declares.

"Okay, that was funny," I grudgingly acknowledge as I keep running with a goddess of procrastination and poor late-night decisions held under my arm.

"Their faces! Their dumb, stupid faces! That was great!" she says, looking up at me with both fists held under her chin like she thinks a cute anime girl would do.

I at first agree with her with a genial smile and a brief nod peerlessly matched to the bounce of my running gait over the wet cobblestones of Axel at night, but then I realize that 'their dumb faces' includes the face of one Darkzuma, who is, after all, not only quite a handsome fellow, no matter the species he decides to inhabit, but also as far from the definition of dumb as Aqua is from the definition of 'person who can be left without supervision.'

So, it takes some doing, but I manage to shift the bundle of divine hilarity from under my right arm to my left so that her behind faces me rather than her blue, merry eyes, and then I—

"Hn! Oh, I've been so bad, Master," she says, wiggling her hips in invitation rather than protest after her latest spank.

This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with my Orcish Spear struggling against its bonds and trying to tear the bandage holding it against the inside of my thigh. It's a rather clever solution to the lack of underwear that my Aqua-granted tracksuit-and-skirt ensemble came with, except for the slight disadvantage that I have already sat on my balls tonight.

Twice.

It's… an experience I wouldn't recommend. Not even to avoid the ever-present threat of public boners.

"Stop right there, criminal scum!" a guard who seems to appreciate the classics yells from behind us.

"Did you use to be an adventurer like me?" I yell over my shoulder, offering him an equally classic and well-meaning opening.

"Yes! But then I stopped getting hit in the head!"

Oh, he's a feisty one.

"Ye'll never take us alive, copper!" Aqua yells with what, given her brief shuffling and a couple of elbowings, I assume to be her hands cupped around her face as an impromptu megaphone.

Also, with a disturbingly British accent. I would wager there's a hint of Speedwagon in it.

"The Hell?" I quietly ask.

"Fuck da police!" she yells with entirely too much enthusiasm.

And another hip wiggle.

…

I, as accommodating a boyfriend as ever, spank her.

"Stop! Lewd behavior will not be tolerated on Axel's clean streets!" the guard says in what, truth be told, is not an entirely unwarranted answer to Aqua's loud, long reverberating moan.

"Have you seen the Adventurer's Guild?" I still can't help but ask over my shoulder, which lets me see how Aqua is trying to taunt the poor man who's only obeying orders by pulling down her eyelid and thrusting her tongue out in a very un-hentai maid manner.

"You degenerates shall stop darkening Axel's good name, or my name isn't—"

And, before he can proffer a name that will get him to join the ranks of the named cast, I grab Aqua by her ankles and spin around fast enough to get her level with the ground without her head bouncing off the cobblestones even once.

"God Puuuuunch!" she enthusiastically yells at the right time for her to serve her purpose as a psychological weapon as well as the other kind of weapon.

This chain of events immediately results in a groaning copper bending over while holding his stomach (or slightly southward) with both hands and me still spinning around like a top with a blue-themed woman precariously held by her ankles and her long hair delineating her circular trajectory.

"Kazuma! Dizzy! Wheeeee!" she says.

And thus culminates my plan, with me smiling back at Aqua's wide grin with a smile of my own and a complicit wink that makes her grin soften into a warm smile.

Before I let her go.

"Kazuma, you bastaaaaard—" she protests before she dives right into the fountain at the center of Axel's main square with a splashing sound and a column of towering water.

Some of it reaches all the way back here in a descending mist that cools my cheeks and forehead, and…

Damn it, I'm grinning.

The guard, just for dramatic contrast, is groaning.

But, well, that's far from my main concern as I walk toward the fountain to fish my appropriately wet goddess out of its transparent and now purified waters—

She's beaming.

Floating face up, her hair turned into floating threads of moonlight under her, the long, gala-style dress she chose for tonight flowing around her like silk turning into smoke, her pearl earrings glimmering like the stars mirrored in the water turned into black and silver at night…

Damn it, she's beautiful.

"So. Enjoying being in your element?" I ask, leaning over her and offering her an extended hand.

She grasps it, her wet fingertips playing with the inner side of my wrist, her eyes never straying from mine, and…

And she, of course, pulls me in.

I spit a mouthful of pure water that I still would protest tastes like pond scum if I was in the mood to keep the joke going, but…

She's maneuvered to rest over my chest, her elbows under my collarbones, her steepled hands cushioning her chin as she looks down at me.

"You look gorgeous tonight," I whisper.

"As gorgeous as ever. And a bit extra for you," she says with a cheeky grin melting into…

Hours ago, I was pacing.

"Aqua! Everyone's already left! Except Yunyun and Primezuma, who, I imagine, are currently too busy staring into one another's eyes to realize where they even are!"

"Just a minute, you impatient oaf!"

"You've been saying the same thing for the past twenty minutes! And before that, you just told me to be patient! Not only are you making me wait, but your manners are slipping!" I said, arms crossed in masterly indignation as I stood right in front of Aqua's door, idly wondering if her plan had been from the start for me to get impatient enough to barge in while she was still undressed and discipline her for making her legitimate owner wait.

That thought, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with the sudden strain the bandages tied around the grip of my Orcish Spear had to contend with.

It also had nothing to do with how quickly I turned to face straight the creaking door finally opening to reveal…

Her.

"Well?" she asked, not looking at me, holding a small clutch purse with both hands in a way that was both demure and had her arms press against the sides of her breasts.

But that… that did not make her chest push past a daring neckline. It didn't turn her ensemble from teasing to indecent. It didn't make it so that Aqua and her latest attempt at portraying what she thinks maids are for set my raging blood aflame.

No, it just…

The blue dress had cleavage, enough of it to draw the eye, and the line of indented shadow between creamy flesh was as enticing as ever.

But…

"Kazuma?" she asked. Shyly.

Still not meeting my eyes.

I drew a long breath, barely noticing the jasmine perfume that clung to her even as I immediately thought how she must've sprayed it on her clothes rather than her skin to avoid purifying it inadvertently.

And I…

I walked, toward her, and clasped her chin as delicately as I could.

"Aqua?" I asked.

"Y—yes?"

"Where did you get the money for a pearl necklace and matching earrings and bracelets?"

She blinked at me as the color drained from her cheeks, and her lower lip trembled in what was sure to be the prelude to one of her overly dramatic crying fits.

"I—I—" she started.

"You?" I growled, tightening my grasp on her chin in warning.

"I sold my bubbly!"

I blinked at her.

She pouted.

"Really?"

"What—I wouldn't lie about my bubbly!"

"You also wouldn't sell the obscenely overpriced French-wannabe thing that these people believe is classy alcohol!"

"How dare you insult my bubbly—"

"Aqua, you're wearing a set of matching jewelry. It's silver and pearls, tastefully crafted, with the kind of strenuously detailed filigree work that means somebody's going to lose their eyesight in the coming years. You can't expect me to believe you got that from selling the secret stash under your bed."

"Well, of course not; those are the decoys."

I, yet again, blinked at her.

"Decoys?" I carefully asked.

"Sure. There are a few fancy bottles in there, but they're filled with crap. Can you believe Megumin keeps sneaking in to drink it and thinks I haven't caught on that she's refilling them with cheap booze? That's what they were filed with to start with! Heh, such a moron. The poor kid wouldn't know good bubbly if it hit her between her bushy eyebrows."

I, somebody who possessed perfectly dignified eyebrows and had been sneaking into Aqua's room to do what she apparently thought Megumin had been doing over the past few months, remained quiet.

"Kazuma! You're pinching my chin! It hurts!"

"Your chin knows what it's done."

"It really doesn't!"

No, it didn't.

I grab the waist of the goddess laying on top of me with both hands, my thumbs idly tracing the lines delineating her trim belly up and down, dragging wet silk along the way as she giggles more delicately than I once thought the raucous woman ever could.

"You're tickling me," she says with that mildly stupid sincerity of those who're drunk enough to be unreserved in everything they feel.

I crane my head forward until her eyes are in front of mine. It's only when I'm this close that I can notice the artfully applied, discreet eyeshadow and liner that not even her late-night dip have marred.

"You're beautiful," I repeat.

"I am," she says, the corners of her lips pulled back so tight it feels painful to behold.

"You… Stop… Right there…" somebody peeking over the fountain's border says.

This, of course, means it's time for me to stand up with the goddess in my hands abruptly enough that the guardsman splutters indignantly at the ludicrous amount of displaced water that it takes me a moment too long to realize is being supplemented by a nontrivial amount of divine power.

Then, of course, we're once again running through Axel's streets, my bare, wet feet almost slipping every time we take a sharp corner as the woman clinging to my neck keeps laughing loud enough that it will be impossible for us to shake our pursuer.

━❖━

"Change of plans," I said, pretending to feel more in charge than I really was.

"What?" she said, looking up from the frankly unpronounceable dish we had ordered on the rather sensible basis that the number of vowelless consonants should directly correlate to the quality of the food. That, or serve as an eldritch invocation of some kind, but so far, I had yet to turn the venue into a tentacle orgy.

"You keep pulling faces," I pointed out.

"You have tusks," she said, not only unfairly but more than a bit racist.

"And you have a very spankable butt fitting for an uppity maid looking to get disciplined, but this is neither the time nor the place."

She blinked at me, and then she very meaningfully looked at the dark hall lined by mahogany wainscotting presumably leading to the kind of luxurious bathroom that makes you feel guilty about using it.

When I didn't immediately stand up to drag her to the presumably luxurious privacy, she added an eyebrow waggle that was about as subtle as an Orcish Spear tucked under a skirt.

I sighed.

"Look, this… isn't working," I said over a forkful of something I felt safe in claiming contained meat of some sort, though maybe not entirely dead.

Her eyes widened.

"Are you… breaking up with me?"

"Wha—"

"You can't break up with me! It's our first date! We haven't even had proper make-up sex, or angry sex, or—"

"Aqua, it could be said that we have only had make-up sex. Immediately followed by the next fight and then more make-up se—"

"I will change! I won't make up with you anymore, so you can have all the angry sex you want with me!"

"That's not—"

"Or—or—I'll fight with Darkness! So you can discipline us both! Don't you want to see your two maids with their cheeks smushed together, glaring angrily at one another as they fight to lick your cock clean, Master?"

"I mean, I am not saying I would mind—"

"Sir… could I bring you something else? Dessert? Coffee? The bill?" a somewhat beleaguered waiter asked.

I looked up at the most likely teenage boy trying not to look like he was wearing his father's suit to a costume party and found in his eyes the sad, soul-crushed remains of a man who once thought that he would make it big in the city of rookie adventurers only to end up unable to even pay for the Guild's admittance fee.

At that moment, I felt something rare and precious in this new world of mine:

Kinship.

"They're asking you to throw us out, aren't they?" I said, throwing a brief glance the maître's way and seeing him studiously examining a spot on the floor that, at first glance, didn't seem that dissimilar from any of the surrounding tiles.

"Of course not, sir. We would never," the boy said with a voice so lacking in vitality it would feel an immediate bond with Wiz.

"Right. Of course not. Look, let us just finish this dish and we can be on—you know what? What's a good bar around here?"

"A what?"

"A good bar. Not an expensive bar, but a good one. I want the kind of place you and the other staff members under twenty go to when you're done with this place and just want some good food and drinks."

The boy nervously looked toward the elder member of staff and found, rather than veteran guidance, a relentless pursuit of the truth behind the aesthetic choices of whoever bought this particular set of ceramic tiles.

To be fair, they were fancy tiles. All glossy and with detailed work. They do a kind of mini-mosaic thingy, where a set of four converge into geometric patterns wrought in sedate greens and maroons that would have made Jiraiya proud.

All I'm saying is that, at that very moment, those tiles looked mighty interesting.

But, right now…

"Is he gone?" Aqua asks, her breath warming my ear, her breasts sliding against the wet fabric of both my silk jersey and her dark blue dress, her feet idly kicking back and forth so that her thighs rub against each other and the front of my torso as I keep pushing her against the deepest recesses of this shadowed doorway… recess.

Look, I'm not in the best circumstances to keep looking for an eloquent synonym, all right? I've got a very wet onahole goddess clinging to my neck and sliding up and down my body whom I'm trying to keep quiet by means other than forceful irrumation. These are very stressful circumstances.

"Kazuma?" she asks, pulling back, offering me wide, blue eyes that manage to glimmer in all the myriad motes of her chosen color despite the darkness of this side street.

Her hair loop is even standing up rather than lying on top of her head like a drowned rat who fled from a hippy commune.

It's just… not fair.

"You can…" she breathes in, her lids lowering almost entirely as a pleased smile comes out. "You can do everything you want to me."

"… Everything?" I can't help but ask.

"Everything."

So I nervously nod and…

Throw her over my shoulder as I bolt out of our hiding place just in time for the cursing guardsman behind us to realize that, if his LCK stat was worth a damn, he would never have become a guard in the first place.

━❖━

There was laughter.

Drunken laughter.

"And, and—yeah!" she said, enthusiastically waving with her beer mug, managing to make white foam crest over the wooden rim without actually spilling any of it before it splashed back down.

"Yeah!" the gathered crowd roared as my first goddess stood on the bar's counter and kept going from her often refilled drink to whatever inane waste of skill points she felt like displaying for the sake of her street performing arts that, to this day, she still refuses to take donations for.

And I could've been resentful about how I'm the one who's supposed to pay for her messes. I could've been rubbing my temples in exasperation at the sheer potential she could've channeled toward any mildly useful purpose rather than showing off or boasting around. I could've been angry at Aqua being… Aqua.

I was cheering.

"Do the thing!" I demanded.

"What thing?!" she said with a grin that grew broader with every sip of beer and every awed clap from the crowd.

"The thing!" I explained.

"Ah! The thing!"

She did not do the thing.

She did not pull out a stupid paper fan streaming twin spouts of water as she proudly claimed 'Nature's Bounty!"

She, instead, twirled around like a magical girl, kicked off her left sandal to send it whistling past my ear, and, before I could protest, placed her toes on my lower lip, pulled up the hem of her blue silk dress, and poured her beer down her smooth, pale shin until the rivulets of bitter amber reached my mouth.

"Thass noph the thang," I more or less said.

She smirked.

The crowd cheered.

And, half a mug of feet fetish beer later, we were kicked out of our fourth bar of the night.

But we still laughed, recounting all the silly little things, the way the last bartender looked slightly pucer than the previous one, how the black beer at the first bar, the one we got a recommendation for, was still the uncontested champion of the night and far better than the allegedly fancy crap we'd been overcharged for during our interrupted dinner.

"I missed this," I said in a quiet moment as we silently reclined on a park bench with a good view of a stretch of night sky.

She just… leaned her head against my shoulder.

"Told you," she whispered as her fingers danced on the back of my hand.

"You didn't tell me shit," I said, smirking a victorious grin because this felt like an argument, even if it wasn't.

The fingers slowed, the tickling caresses turning more careful as she tilted her head to have her eyes meet mine.

"Not tonight, you moron," she said.

"Watch it, you brainless, NEET goddess."

"I'm trying to have a moment, you hikikomori, transspecies, sorry excuse for a generic isekai protagonist."

"We are having a moment. It's just that our moments tend to feature more insults and profanity than other people's moments. I blame it on you being a goddess. It makes thinking about fucking you cross-eyed profane by default."

"Told you," she insists, the hand not caressing mine turning into a jabbing spear on my side.

"Hey! I'm the one who's supposed to abuse you!"

"You are abusing me! It's called neglect play, you prick!"

"I'm not neglecting you. When I neglect you, it will involve ropes, a ballgag, and Chris deciding that she's more into sausage than fish tacos."

"That sounds disgusting."

"I know. Only the best for you."

She glared at me for about ten seconds before we couldn't hold back anymore and started laughing like we didn't care about all the people trying to sleep in the houses surrounding this little park.

Because we… didn't.

The Kazumas with Yunyun or Darkness would. The Kazuma with Wiz may. The Kazuma with Vanir-chan would be too busy reigning her in to bother with moral dilemmas.

Me?

I was with Aqua.

And so, I was the Kazuma with Aqua.

She climbed on my lap, the blue silk of her dress spreading over both our thighs like liquid night, her eyes sparkling with streetlamps powered by what I guessed was magic but was too busy to check as she just…

Was Aqua.

Laughing, merry, teasing, careless, free Aqua.

"I told you," she whispered, her lips so close to mine that I could feel the syllables being shaped. "When you finally took me."

I… could've argued.

But she did. She told me.

And so, we set to do something else certainly ill-thought and likely hilarious before the night was over.

In hindsight, trying to tease my own alternate self while he was supposed to be romancing Darkness with all the fancy opportunities our Succubus Café dating funds afforded us was, maybe, not our greatest idea ever.

But I was the Kazuma with Aqua.

And so, my foresight was precisely as lacking as one would expect it to be.

━❖━

"Don't take me home. Not tonight," she whispers as we walk past the Guild, our persistent guard finally tired of trying to keep up with an Orcish stamina like so many other humans (and Crimson Magic Clan members) before him.

She's grabbing my arm with both hands, the side of her face resting on the groove between my biceps and triceps, and I…

I nod.

And don't take her home.

━❖━

"I'm exhausted," she says with an exaggerated yawn as she stretches both arms to her sides, lifting the straps of her almost dry dress with the accompanying, trembling shrug.

"Really?" I tell her with a raised eyebrow.

"Yup. I think I'll catch an early night's sleep," she says, looking at me over a bare, creamy shoulder.

I feel like arguing or protesting. That this is our date and I know her far too well to believe that she wants to end things early.

But I know her that well.

Or, at least, I now do.

"Okay," I say with my own shrug before I open the jersey she sewed for me by hand, the metallic susurrus of the zipper reminding me of just how meticulously she went about doing something that should have been impossible without mechanized labor.

She smiles softly and warmly for a moment before she puts on an overblown sleepy face and lets herself fall down on the threadbare blanket covering a pile of hay, limp as an exploded Megumin.

"Don't wake me until noon," she mumbles past a mouthful of the greyish burlap as golden strands of straw drift around her, only lit by the rays of moonlight coming in through the cracks in the wooden walls of our…

Our place.

Where Aqua first was happy.

I take the rest of my clothes off and carefully undo the overworked bandage that has managed to strap my cock to my leg despite Aqua's best attempts through the night.

"Aqua?" I ask with that soft voice that only comes out in bedrooms with the lights out.

"Hmmm?" she says, more drowsy than she can realistically feel, even with how late it is and how much we've drunk.

"Sweet dreams."

She doesn't answer, still lying face down, but the corner of her mouth quirks up, and she…

Remains still.

I let time pass, aware of her by my side like I was so many nights before, like I was uncomfortably aware of when it had been days without a break or moment of discretion to relieve my healthy teenaged urges.

Like she was when I guiltily decided to be a creep on par with Shinji Ikari by the side of a comatose girl.

Except she wasn't comatose, just asleep, and I was trying not to look at her, much less touch her or worse.

I was just huddled on myself, trying to get my business done as quickly as possible without thinking about the woman with the exhibitionistically short skirt sleeping by my back.

Except she wasn't sleeping.

So, I take my time. I count my breaths. I… wait.

"Aqua?" I whisper.

She doesn't answer.

I turn over, slowly, carefully, and drape an arm around her waist as I shuffle closer to her until her side nestles against my chest, her arm along my breast bone, her thigh… along something else.

"You're beautiful," I say in her ear, low enough that maybe she won't hear it.

Her lips twitch.

So do mine.

My hand trails down her back, caressing the exposed stretch of skin above the modest hemline that, while slightly lower than the neckline in front, only shows down to her shoulder blades.

There's a contrast in texture between her pale skin and the blue silk that should've been ruined when I threw her into the fountain not even an hour ago. A difference in smoothness and softness that's hard to compare.

It's just…

The silk loses.

So I keep trailing my touch down, as careful as her fingertips were on the back of my hand when we sat on a park bench, and soon I'm at her waist, following the dip of her spine, lingering on the dimples right on top of her coccyx with circular massages of thumb and forefinger that make the fabric of her barely damp dress whisper over Aqua's yielding body.

I lean forward and gently kiss the side of her neck, as careful as if she was asleep and I was trying to keep her that way, and she only lets out a small, sighing sound that gets muffled by the blanket on top of the hay.

Then… Then I pull away, just… watching her.

Stripes of light bend around the curves of her back, glinting off the strands of her blue hair, and blurry shadows play between the bands of clarity, moving and shifting with her deepening breath as I keep caressing her with a single hand and my erect cock rests on the back of her thigh.

I want her. I have wanted her since I first saw her atop that ridiculously over-the-top throne of hers that Eris now occupies, when her ethereal skirt flashed me enough of her milky thighs for my eyes to do far more than linger.

I wanted her when I spitefully claimed her, when I turned her into my cheat item.

I wanted her when we were alone, homeless, and drunk, exhausted after every day of backbreaking labor and night of hard partying. I wanted her when she smiled brightly at me, when she sang offkey by my side, and even when she bent forward to vacate her liquid dinner as I patted her back and held her hair so it wouldn't get even more fouled than it already was.

And, all that time, she wanted me as well.

We are a pair of morons.

I get on my knees and straddle her legs, the blanket rustling under my shins, and I carefully brush her hair aside before I keep massaging her back as if that was the only thing running through my mind.

I sink my thumbs in the muscles by the side of her spine, tight with expectation, and she fights me on it, intent on not letting herself be relaxed when we're finally here, back where it all really started, a tip to the sketchy keeper of the stables granting us one final night sleeping by one another's side where no one should sleep, not with how… blatant the horses' presence in the rest of the squat building is.

I do it harder, stronger. Still delicate enough that maybe she wouldn't have woken up, but letting the silk of her dress help me in gliding along the crevices between bone and muscle, my thick fingers barely adequate to dig between them, but more than enough to push down on tight knots and force her to release both gasps and tension.

Then I go down.

I trail by the sides of her hips, framing with dark green fingers the marvelous globes I've been mesmerized by one time too many, even when she looked at me over her shoulder with a teasing, smug smirk as she shook her ass side to side hard enough for her abbreviated skirt to fly up above the line that revealed her underwear.

… It really took me too long to get the hint, didn't it?

Aqua mumbles something that she pretends is sleepy nonsense as I let my thumbs sink into the soft flesh I will keep on admiring at inappropriate times, particularly now that she's taken to wearing what she thinks I like her to wear, and…

I lean over her back, resting just enough of my weight on her that the heat between us mingles and rises.

"You're… clumsy. Scatterbrained. Panicky. You make rash, careless, thoughtless decisions and push right ahead without ever considering the consequences. You're… impossible to predict, except when I would rather have missed that prediction. You're… terrible at…"

The two lines of muscle on the back of her nape tense, and I…

I am the Kazuma who's by Aqua's side.

"You're a terrible goddess. But you're my best friend."

The tension holds, neither rising nor falling.

"And I wouldn't have you any other way."

She sinks into the pile of hay, her limbs slack, and a hint of a smile on the side of her mostly hidden face.

I don't say anything else, not now. Because I know I can screw things up as much as she can. I know I can get into a long, senseless rant about all the failings of the people around me and none of mine, and…

And this is not about me.

It's… about us.

So I don't do what a bolder Kazuma would've done to a defenseless, sleeping goddess if he'd been overcome by his desire, because that's despicable and sickening to even think about.

No, I do what a more perceptive Kazuma would've done with the friend who stood by his side, slept by his side, trusted him to take her home when she got too drunk to walk unaided, and then kept teasing and flirting in the clumsy way a pair of morons with no experience nor good references failed to understand.

So, I tug the skirt up, the silk effortlessly gliding up Aqua's legs when I shift my weight so I'm hovering above them, and I keep looking as more and more of the perfect curves of a goddess who looks far more divine when she shuts up are revealed while she holds herself still beneath me.

I keep pulling until…

"Naughty," I breathe into her ear as soon as it's revealed that, this once, Aqua is really going pantyless rather than just looking like she is.

The corner of her lips twitches yet again, and I can't help the answering grin, even if she's not able to see it.

"You're always like this, aren't you, Aqua?" I whisper, getting into character as the scornful Kazuma of not that long ago. "Always teasing me with what I can't have, bending over the table to reach for something that just happens to make your tits brush against me. I bet you get a kick out of it. I bet you get wet when you know that you make me hard. I bet you do all of it on purpose, and then you jill yourself silly when you hear me jerk off at night."

I pause as if waiting for her answer, but it only comes in a sharp exhalation and a shiver rushing between her shoulder blades.

So, of course, I smirk and lean further down, pushing her into the hay with my bare chest on her back as I shift my legs down, my thighs on either side of hers, and my cock lying straight between her cheeks.

"So this is all your fault, you know? Me, being this hard? Your fault. My balls filled with sperm ready to impregnate an irresponsible goddess so she'll be forced to stop drinking our savings every night? Your fault. You being about to have your virginity stolen in a filthy stable by a no-name rookie adventurer? Your fault."

And that's the thing, isn't it?

A rookie, no-name adventurer.

Not Axel's savior. Not the vanquisher of Demon Lord generals. Not the protector of the Crimson Magic Clan's village.

Not the orc.

Just…

It's me.

Kazuma.

Or, at least, back then, it was.

She trembles, restraining herself from whatever it is that she wants to say or do as she keeps faking her sleep, and I take a deep breath of the aroma behind her bare nape, dragging the tip of my nose up the slope over her spine until hair no less silky than her dress tickles me.

Then I take one last lungful of her scent, unmarred by the jasmine perfume still clinging to her clothes despite her earlier public bath, and straighten up, sitting over her naked thighs, my cock still lying between her pale, round cheeks that I can't stop myself from grabbing with both hands, kneading the overflowing meat, digging my thumbs in them far deeper than when I massaged her back, watching as another shiver runs up her spine before I part them open and have my cock nestled between them, the precum dripping from my tip leaving glistening tracks on her smooth skin that reveal the texture and pores under the jagged bands of streetlight that bothered my sleep so many times before.

When it was just the two of us.

I clench my teeth not to say something that will break the moment, and I push her cheeks together around my shaft, enveloping myself with a softness that makes me hiss when I drag myself almost entirely out of her grasp before I push forward until my tip re-emerges from velvet skin right above the end of her spine, transparent precum pooling on the dip right below her tailbone.

I hold myself there, watching, my chest rising and falling with increasingly ragged breaths as I have to hold myself back from doing something rougher.

Because I don't want to wake her up, of course. It's not like I care for Aqua or her silly fantasies born out of too many hentai references and too little social interaction. This is just me being selfish and greedy with the yielding body of a goddess who, for once, isn't going to say or do something that will ruin the entire evening.

No, she's just going to lie there, facedown, underneath me, her blue dress hitched above her waist, her meaty behind overflowing from between my fingers, her wet heat pressed against my balls.

I grunt.

She moans.

So I shift back, slightly, just a bit. Just enough that I can pull her waist up so she's not lying flat against the pile of hay, but has her hips tilted up as if to receive me. Ass up, face down, as the connoisseurs of culture would say.

And I start thrusting.

Still slow. Still leaning on plausible deniability.

But harder.

Hard enough that a muffled grunt escapes her closed lips when I hilt myself fully between her cheeks, and my balls hit her lower lips with a wet impact. That the muscles on the back of her nape tense up once more when I pull back before going limp when I hit forward once more, her face digging deeper into the burlap blanket as I start fucking the crevice between plump cheeks with a sound very much like the one we make when I bend my unruly hentai maid over my knees and discipline her for as long as my patience and self-control last.

"Maybe this will be enough… Maybe I can just let out a big, fat load all over your back and go to sleep. Wouldn't that be nice, Aqua? You wouldn't get your virginity stolen by a loser NEET if I did that, would you?"

She tenses under me, and I smirk at all the things she'd say if she wasn't so committed to her role.

Most likely, a lot of profanity. Maybe even delving so far as to say that Eris pads her breasts.

"Ah, who am I kidding? I want you too much," I growl, my Orcish throat perfectly suited to the rumbling I add to my words before I pull away and drag my tip all over the line between soft mounds…

And I stop in the middle of it.

Over a hole other than the one I was aiming for.

"I keep calling you a shitty goddess, don't I?"

She tenses up.

But she doesn't protest.

And… if this was months ago? If this was the Kazuma who couldn't even begin to think that the drunk woman by his side ever saw him as anything other than an amusing man to tease…

This wouldn't have happened. None of it.

Much less me sodomizing Aqua.

"Hmph…" Her sound of discomfort is barely audible as I push forward, just making the ring of muscle go inward without breaching or dilating it.

"I wish I was looking into your eyes. I wish I could see how you look when your virginity is about to be taken…" I pause, lessening the push before shifting forward on my knees. "You could tell me what hole you would rather I take. I may even listen."

And, instead of pushing any more, of taking her between the enveloping cheeks that I'm grabbing and spreading open… I wait.

Because I'm acting like a selfish jerk, as much as it takes superlative thespian skills for me to deviate so harshly from my immaculate character, but this is still… Aqua's fantasy. Her dream of a night that never happened.

And she isn't giving me any hints about how she'd have wanted me to do this.

So I purse my lips as much as my tusks allow me to and… think.

About hentai.

About the sleep sex tag.

… And yeah, anal sex from the very start isn't particularly fitting.

What would a goddess with distorted views of romance and worrying notions of consent have imagined? What would the blue-haired woman beneath me have thought about when she masturbated while I was on the other side of the pile of hay, grabbing my cock as I tried not to think about her?

I slide down, dragging my tip the rest of the way, pressing against her taint, running along the opening between her labia.

Pushing between her thighs.

"I don't want to wake her up… better work her up before."

Because that's one thing about sleeping sex in hentai:

The woman gets off on it.

Oh, sure, there are 'emotionless examples' to be found, but those are more often present in time stop, and even then, the way it usually goes shows how the whole scene hits the woman at once when the hypnosis, magic watch, or sentai-esque questionable hero's work is done. And, if I was Aqua? If I had to guess what kind of things she was thinking about when she lied by my side and hoped I would do what she thought a Japanese youth in search of romance would?

The stories that would come to mind would be the ones where the woman's body starts waking up long before she does.

That's how the trope goes, you know? I slide my cock between thighs almost as plump as the cheeks in my hands, and the top of my shaft rubs along wet labia and an erect clit, where I delay to grind a tight circle that loudly spreads her lubrication between us.

But that doesn't wake her up.

It makes her gasp against the blanket she's covering her mouth with, yes, but that, of course, is just how her body makes her react. How the sensations slowly awakening with my touches and caresses force her to feel more and more as they go on.

Because in those comics, if I had started fucking her from the very start, she would've woken up in a panic.

But if I take my time? If I caress her back, kiss the side of her neck, slowly drag her skirt up? If I ready her?

If I take it one step at a time?

"You feel… better than I imagined. Than I dreamed," I say like I would've said… likely never.

And Aqua grabs twin fistfuls of the blanket by the sides of my knees as her thighs close tighter around me.

I pull back once again, and the muffled moan is tinged with frustration before it cuts off sharply when I press between her lips rather than past them. When my tip starts going into the welcoming warmth I've already learned to recognize. When my wet heat joins hers.

She's…

Her back draws an arch from her sunken face to her raised hips, the curve accentuating at the base of the spine, offering to me the ass I'm still grabbing with decreasing delicacy as I find myself getting as excited as I'm trying to make Aqua feel.

Liquid arousal drips around my glans, down my shaft and her thighs, some of it glimmering in the jagged bands of streetlight going through the stall's outer wall.

The sound of our breathing fills the wooden cubicle, hers faster, mine deeper, but… harmonizing in a way that has nothing to do with rhythm and music.

And…

I want her.

I wanted her.

Just…

She shifts, her hips pressing back against me, almost managing to get my tip inside her before I pull away.

And then I grab her hair loop and pull.

She gasps, and her silk-covered back presses against my chest and belly as I lean over her, looking straight into wide eyes that she hurries to close into an approximation of restful sleep marred by the dark tinge atop her cheekbones.

"I know you are awake," I say as I thrust my cock yet again past her lips, rubbing the top of my shaft against all the wet heat I'm not yet surrounded by as she trembles, but I've dragged her to her knees, and she can't close her thighs around me, so the stimulation is lacking enough that I could do this… for a long time.

She doesn't answer.

So I keep going.

"I know you're awake and waiting for me," I say, moving so that she almost loses her balance when I push her up abruptly from below. "I know you're letting me do all of this."

She shakes her head minutely, trying to say no without saying it. Without breaking the illusion of a night long ago.

The night she dreamed about.

I let go of her still captive cheek and my hand dives around her, to the front of her thigh, slowly crawling up her soft belly before reaching the underside of a breast that I should've realized sooner was without support other than the blue silk dress.

Her lips purse into a thin, quivering line, and I put some extra effort into making the grin that comes out at her reaction as smug as orcishly possible.

Mostly, because I'm pretty sure that she keeps stealing glances at me when I don't realize it, and I want her to see just how superior it makes me feel to have her react to my touch, to have her feel good because of me. To have the woman I—

Damn it.

"Aqua…" I whisper over her closed lids before I kiss them as if wishing her good night and sweet dreams even as my thumb and forefinger delicately tug at the stiff nipple I just found, her dress pooled over my wrist and baring the front of her body to the whistling breeze coming in between ill-fitting wooden boards.

"Aqua," I say, my voice as gentle as I can make it before I move down and taste lips that are as bitter as beer before I lick them clean, and her true flavor comes through as I move slowly between her lips.

"Aqua," I murmur in her ear when I pause in nibbling it as if saying goodbye as I abandon it in favor of the neck I briefly kissed earlier.

And then… I say nothing more.

Because I'm caressing her. Kissing her. Playing with her body and 'awakening' it as much as she would have wanted in that fantasy of hers that she still tries to cling to with her stubborn refusal to meet my eyes or let out anything other than stolen gasps and almost inaudible moans.

I lean back so that she rests against my body, all her weight on me, from the soft cheeks above my cock to the slender shoulders on my chest, and then I let go of her hair and breast, slowly moving my hands down her sides, the left one slower than the right until they are both at her waist and then they move in unison to her hips.

To grab her.

To lift her.

She lets out a small, sighed protest when her sex no longer presses down on my shaft, but I turn her around and…

And I rest her against the front of my body, her breasts against my chest with blue silk between us.

Then I hug her.

Soft, warm, and… fulfilling. So fulfilling to hold. So… small. Like I should protect her. Like I should surround her with my arms and keep the world away from hurting her.

Like I should keep her here. With me. Frozen in this moment.

In this moment for us.

And that's… that's the issue. This isn't about the night that Aqua missed on because I couldn't get a clue. This is about the night that we both missed on…

Because we are a pair of morons.

My hands trail up and down her back, once more crawling under her dress so that I can feel as much of her as possible, my fingers splayed to cover as much of the delicate lines and slender muscle as I'm able.

And, of course, so that I can grab an ass that nobody, no matter how heretic, would deny is divine.

But I don't speak. I don't say anything else. I just keep holding her, touching her, feeling her. I just keep… being as close to her as I maybe was once or twice when I helped the drunk moron get back to the place we were ashamed to call home. Even if it was.

Even if it truly, really was.

"Kazuma?" she finally asks, pretending to blink her bleary eyes at me.

"Yes, it's me. Kazuma," I whisper, craning my head down to meet blue eyes with… with mine, whatever color they may look like to her at this moment. Whether he sees the orc or the… the stupid, irresponsible, loudmouthed braggart who dragged her out of the heavens and down into a sordid little stable.

She, for a moment, doesn't answer, as lost in me as I am in her.

Then she starts beating her fists against my chest.

"Pervert! Lech! Scumzuma!"

"What the—keep quiet! Somebody may hear—"

"Aaaaahhhh! I'm about to be ravished! My poor, divine, beautiful body is going to be turned into a plaything by a degenerate molester! He's going to take all of my holes like a ravenous beast until I'm ruined and can't ever go back to Heaven!"

"I'm not going to—okay, I may do some of that, but, really, is it rape if you end up begging for more?"

"I don't know! Convince me!"

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

I look down at Aqua.

She looks up at me.

And, before I quite know what I'm doing, my lips are against hers, my tongue pushing hers down, and I'm pulling up her hips, helping her climb my body as she pulls down on my nape and surrounds me as fully as she can with her maddeningly yielding thighs.

Her hand grasps my shaft, and I hiss as she positions it against her wet, warm, opening, and then her legs stop holding her up, and she begins to slide down, and I…

Stop her.

I'm looking into her eyes, or at least I do when my stare doesn't drift down to her parted, glossy lips as our breath mingles in clouds barely visible as they drift up toward the crooked rafters.

"What… what are you waiting for, you… you limp-dicked wimp?!" she says, twisting her pelvis around my cock, belying her words as she desperately tries to screw herself in the most literal sense possible as my fingers tighten around her in silent, desperate warning.

"I just told you," I say. Or growl. Or whimper.

It's… kinda hard to say which one at the moment.

"Told me? Told me, what? That I'm clumsy, scatterbrained, a shitty goddess, and—"

"And wouldn't have you any other way."

Another beat of silence as we just… breath.

And look.

"Kazuma…" She tilts her head back until the shape of her taut throat stands out beneath kissable lips open like they would if waiting for… something other than a chaste kiss.

I…

I kiss her forehead. The corner of her right eye. Her cheek. The side of her neck.

She giggles.

And I close my lips around her throat, sucking on her as she swallows and makes her neck tremble against my lips like she's returning my hungry kiss.

"Kazuma…" her fingers play along my scalp, pulling me closer as she grinds down on my tip, taking as much of me as I allow her to before I pull her closer to my torso and paralyze her entirely as I engulf her tiny body with mine.

She whimpers when I slide out from between her lower lips once again, and I let my cock push between twin cheeks that, even without the cooperation of my hands, surround me with heavy softness.

I grunt against her throat, and she moans in answer.

Something rushes between my ears, the sound like thrusting my head into a raging river, except the cold waters are hot. So hot that they do feel cold.

Refreshing.

I pull away from her neck, unsure whether I'll be able to say anything at all before I finally give up and take this onahole goddess of mine. Before I thrust inside her yielding body once again and make her sing her pleasure, her desire.

But…

Blue eyes.

Blue, lidded, lazy, smiling, trusting eyes.

The rush doesn't abate in the slightest. It grows. It makes me want her even more. It makes me want what I see in front of me and all the other versions of her that I can turn her into through the night. It makes me need all the other ways in which Aqua could be looking up at me right now.

It's just…

There's one look I want more than the others.

"You are mine," I say.

"Make me," she answers with a provocation that is far more than a hint.

"You are mine," I repeat, if only to hold back the immediate urge. "You are my goddess. My cheat item. My… My best friend."

The dreamy smile on her face tightens before her eyes widen, and…

"Are you… I… Megumin?" she says.

I bite my bottom lip nervously before I slide my left hand from her hip to her lower back, pressing her against me to free my other hand so that I can brush loose strands of blue hair away from her eyes with the back of clumsy, green fingers.

"I don't want to compare… any of you. That's… that's not what… I won't. But… you're you, Aqua. I… You were…"

I could say a lot of things right now.

I could tell her how none of my friends on Earth worried that much for the hikikomori stuck in his parent's house. How they all stopped visiting. Calling. Caring.

I could tell her how ready I was to disbelieve… a lot of things. A lot of the things that I found in this stupid, senseless, balance-breaking world that she dragged me to.

I could tell her that she was the first.

The first thing I should have disbelieved and… didn't. That she kept being there when I woke up, by my side when I went to work, dragging me to my first bar, to get my first beer, to…

To be my first.

In… many ways. Many ways except one that we didn't share just because we're a couple of morons and Darkness was on a hair-trigger the day that I showed up at the mansion with my new body.

But if I had been just a few months wiser? If my hang-ups had happened just a while before?

If I had had even the foggiest clue about how to talk to women without being an acerbic prick?

"Aqua… do you want to be my first?" I say, cradling her cheek with a palm that I hope is as soft as she deserves.

"… Little bit late for that, isn't it—"

"For—I've been roleplaying your stupid sleep sex scenario all this time! Could you do me the fucking courtesy of letting me roleplay this being our first night together?!"

"My sleep sex scenario is not stupid! It's very, very hot, and if you weren't a worrywart, I would already be mewling around your cock, but noooo, you had to go and be concerned after all the damn clues I kept throwing your way. Do you think it was easy to keep still while you hotdogged my ass? When you were about to take my pink rosebud—"

"I mean, the light here is kinda low, but I wouldn't say 'pink' is the right color—"

"Aaaaaaahhhh! You bastard! You heretic! You disbeliever! I'm a pure goddess, I don't poop!"

"You've only been a hentai maid for a few weeks, Aqua."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"That I know who clogged the toilet after—"

There's a hand pressed right against my mouth. The hand in question serves as a swift reminder that, aside from LCK and INT, all of Aqua's stats are god-tier.

"Kazuma?" she says, about as sweet as a half Yunyun—and now I'm thinking about Yunyun and Megumin's perfectly heterosexual friendship naturally culminating in a bundle of love, joy, and explosions, and, really, I should start pondering how the line of succession to the Crimson Magic Clan is going to— "You are talking to a goddess. A divine, dignified being. And I most certainly don't poop, much less clog toilets. Now, I'm going to let go of your jaw, and you're going to repeat after me: 'Lady Aqua, I apologize for my uncouth transgressions. Your pink rosebud is pure and pristine and has always been.' Do I make myself clear?"

She stares at me until a minute motion of Orcish eyebrows who, at this precise moment, don't feel like challenging anything, secure in their past triumphs and tired of facing new contenders, tells her to go ahead and let go.

Which she does with an unfair amount of recalcitrant suspicion, so I feel fully justified in my response:

"I mean, I've seen you throw up plenty enough to guess there's something wrong with your digestive system—"

For some reason, there's a fist buried in my solar plexus.

"God Blow," she whispers, dramatically after the fact, like a samurai sheathing a katana after a blink-and-you'll-miss-it duel.

So, I fulfill my part and fall back, limp on top of the blanket, the hay beneath poking past the threadbare spots of the stupid thing that ended up being a complicit witness to too many nights not entirely unlike this one, given all the arguing, physical violence, unrealistic standards of beauty and hygiene, and—

Aqua's dress is on top of my face.

"Whu—" I start to say.

And then, there's a… pressure.

On my tip.

And two hands pushing down on my lower belly, slightly tremulous as the woman on top of me shifts her weight side to side, her thighs straddling me, pillowy pressure enveloping my tip as it keeps pressing up against—

"Aqua?" I say as I slowly pull down her dress to see her…

Radiant.

Ghostly pale, framed by jagged bands of light, her blue hair turned into a banded halo surrounding her from behind, her teardrop breasts pushed together by her bare arms, the pearls and silver of her jewelry glittering accents on her neck, ears, and wrists.

Her eyes on me.

"Gonna…" she breathes out, pushing slightly harder against me. "Gonna show you just how… how pure I am…"

I take a moment to lick my lips as I wisely ponder my next few words.

"Making a defenseless orc assfuck you may not be the best way to portray your purity—"

And now there's not a hand on my mouth, but two around my throat.

I feel like I got an upgrade. Yay.

"I'm going to… I'm going to take you. All of you. I'm going to get you inside my ass, and then you'll see just how pure a goddess of water can be when I give you a sloppy, clean-up blowjob after the fact. And then… then you're going to fuck me. You're going to rail my wet, needy pussy. And you're going to… to cum… cum… hn…"

She keeps pushing harder and harder, her face growing darker as beads of sweat on her forehead rival the pearls on her collarbone, and then…

Then something pops.

And I hiss as tight, tight pressure envelops my tip and strangles my cock right below it.

Aqua breathes out harshly, her hands losing all strength, her body slowly falling forward before…

Before I catch her shoulders and sit up with her on my lap, looking up at me like moments ago.

"Does it… hurt?" I ask, crossing my fingers behind her back so I won't get a Darkness-worthy answer.

"It's… a bit uncomfortable," she says, wiggling just a bit. Enough to make me hiss again.

"I can go… slow," I say as if whatever's going on is something I have the slightest control over.

"Please…" she answers before she closes her eyes and rests her face on the middle of my breastbone like…

Like she did during our actual first time alone, when she kept kissing that hollow spot in the middle of my chest that she's seemed to claim ever since.

And I could be sappy and declare that it no longer feels empty, but, really, I'm about to fuck her ass in a sordid little stall, surrounded by hopefully non-voyeuristic horses, so maybe sappiness isn't quite the right note for the current scene.

It's just…

I don't really know what other note would fit me hugging Aqua's naked body to my chest as she trusts me to be gentle with her.

"It's all right," I murmur over the top of her head, nuzzling her weird hair loop with my nose until she giggles against the wet spot of my skin she's now kissing once again.

"I know it is. You're here," she says, making… making all this as complicated as it should have been obvious it would be when I first met blue, bright, mischievous, often clueless eyes.

So I don't thrust my hips up nor shove her down my shaft. I keep holding her in place, her warm embrace occasionally pulsing around my tip as I remain as hard as I'm able while she milks dollop after dollop of hopefully adequately lubricating precum and tries to wiggle her hips side to side.

She giggles when I grunt.

And I smile when she giggles.

Tentatively, I push up slightly, and she parts with surprising ease, her laughter turning into a surprised 'eep' that I savor about as much as I always have her overly expressive defeats, but I still stop to let her get used to me—and isn't that a turn of phrase I maybe should've thought about long ago?

But when I look down, she's waiting for my eyes and gives me a shy, minute nod that… that makes it that much harder to hold back.

"You sure?" I ask.

Another nod. Still shy.

Another kiss on my chest.

So my hands go from her back to her yielding cheeks, the soft feeling of her skin and the malleable meat filling my palms and fingers, and I let her slowly fall down my shaft, warm wetness surrounding me as my shaft massages my precum into her walls, making the motion smoother, easier.

Better.

I try to hold back a grunt, but Aqua's triumphant grin tells me I don't quite manage it, and that smile turns into a surprised lip bite when I push her up for a single second before immediately sinking back in.

Then… the surprise turns into something mildly worrying.

"What's the matter, you useless NEET? Too afraid to handle a real woman?"

"You just asked me to be gentle."

She looks back over her shoulder and wiggles her round behind as much as my grip on her allows her to before looking up at me with an infuriating grin.

"Meh. I can take you," she says.

This, of course, is when I stand up.

"Eeeeep!" she announces as the abrupt movement jostles her along my cock, and I sink a good two inches deeper inside her.

"Aqua, I just want to thank you for indulging both my 'cheeky brat needs correction' and 'instant loss two koma' fetishes in a single night. It's very thoughtful of you, and I want you to realize how much it means to me."

"I… I haven't lost! I'll never lose to the cock!"

I lift a muscular eyebrow who finally thirsts yet again for a proper challenge.

"Too much?" Aqua mumbles.

"I could never have too much of you."

"That's not what you said when I—"

"You, though, may be about to get quite a lot of me."

She starts to 'eep' for the third time tonight, but I decide that her reactions need more variety, so, in the middle of the adorably squeaky noise, I turn to my right and push Aqua against the stall's wall, hilting myself deeper inside her as I look straight into her widening eyes and her silently open mouth.

"Too much?" I ask with a cocky grin that makes the parroting mockery obvious enough for her to catch it even in her current state.

"More," she demands as her hands close around my nape, she tilts her head back, and…

And I'm kissing her as I grope and fuck her ass, her plush cheeks massaging what little of my shaft still isn't inside her, gripping me almost as tightly as her demanding hole when I pull out, and welcoming me with pillowy softness when I thrust back in until Aqua throws her head back and away from my lips just to moan out her pleasure and…

"So, did you lose to the cock already?" I ask, trying to act nonchalant as my eyes get dragged to the bouncing pearls atop her jiggling breasts, and a stupidly inopportune bead of sweat falls from my eyebrow right into my goddamn eye.

"I…" she gasps something wordless yet very expressive in the middle of her line, and it takes her a moment to refocus that clearly has nothing to do with me bottoming out inside of her and grinding my hips against her. "I want a rematch!"

I smile.

Then I pull out until my tip kisses her twitching hole as her eyes widen in a mix of worry and anticipation.

I, of course, wait until she opens her mouth to say something else before I shove myself right back inside her, trusting in the efficacy of my Orcish fluids to have properly prepared her passage for such an abrupt reentry. Going by the surprised scream immediately turning into a moan, my trust has, unlike Aqua's backdoor's integrity, not been betrayed.

"I asked you to be gentle!" she says with a single, trembling hammer fist on my chest.

"You also asked for a rematch?" I say, the perfect picture of an innocent orc defiling a bratty goddess.

"Oh, you asked for it!"

"I'm pretty sure it's precisely the opposite of—hn!"

"Hmm? What's that, Kazuma? Did you mean to say, 'Please, divine Lady Aqua, keep showing this unworthy mortal the glorious grace that only your perfect and pristine pink rosebud can bestow upon—'"

"Aqua?"

"Yes?"

"I'm about to fuck you as hard as I can right now. I don't know when or if I'll stop. Your safe word is 'Eris is the superior goddess.'"

"Wha—I'll never say that—"

"Oh, good to know," I say without a grin about as sharp as my tusks.

Really.

"Aaaaaaahhhhh! Kazuma!" a goddess stubbornly clinging to her misplaced sense of superiority says as she once again surrounds my neck with trembling arms as I send her body bouncing between my cock and the nearest wall, her pearl necklace slapping the underside of her jaw as her breasts bounce so high I would worry it could hurt her if not for the way she keeps struggling to bring her eyes down from their sockets to look at me, her mouth hanging open in shocked surprise when I reach as far inside her as I can, the ring of muscle spasming against my root before I drag myself out only because of the lubrication I've already poured inside of her until even the crown of my glans pops out of her before I ram her right back against the trembling boards separating us from a horse that is either deaf or very, very understanding.

"Aqua," I finally growl in answer.

Her fingers claw at my nape as she lets her head hang back, her mouth pointing straight up and letting out more clouds of white vapor that make it all that much harder to hold back.

So, I obviously don't.

Two steps back, away from the rickety wall, the burlap blanket shifting under my weight and almost making me roll an ankle as I balance a limp goddess on top of my rod while her blue hair cascades behind her.

I lean over to look at almost blank eyes that nonetheless manage to find my own.

"Mine," I growl.

Her lips move mutely before she nods.

Then… her ass clenches around me, and those eyes gain a pleading note.

I hold back for a moment, leaning further down to taste her as I drag my tongue up the top of the middle line in her belly, over her breast bone, and around a perfectly shaped breast that is just that bit softer than her lower cheeks before I suck her pink nipple into my mouth as hard as I can, her hands finding renewed vigor to grab the back of my head and pull me against her.

"Kazuma… more," she finally begs.

And I give it to her.

Hard enough that her free breast slaps against my collarbone as her legs suddenly kick straight behind me, the fingers not losing any strength as she starts mumbling something that could be… anything at all, really, but that I flatter myself into believing has something to do with…

Us.

And that's enough. After an entire night by her side, catching glimpses of her neck, her cleavage, the shapes so magnificently displayed by draped silk, all that her dress hid and hinted at… After kissing, hugging, caressing, teasing, talking…

I want her.

Like I always did.

Her abused nipple slips out of my lips, and she whines in protest before I lunge for her open lips, her surprise barely lasting a single of my thrusts inside of her before her tongue wraps around mine and she drags me as deep into her mouth as she can.

Her hands drop from the back of my head, sliding over the front of my body, warm, open palms resting for a moment on my chest before going under my armpits so that she can grab my shoulders from behind.

I keep fucking her. Wanting her. Claiming her.

Loving her.

Her legs spasm over my waist yet again, a scream trying to tear past our joined lips, and I go faster inside her, filling the small stall with the echo of her slapping flesh as her ass bounces against my hips, rippling with the force of our fucking, going louder and louder as her moans in my mouth get faster still, her breath turned into a speeding series of inhaled gasps and muffled excitement that makes me lightheaded as I can't help but mirror her, sharing our air and lack of until I feel like I will asphyxiate if I don't let go of her lips.

I don't.

The world blurs, Aqua's scent fills my lungs, her panted pleasure my ears, her eyes… my world.

And my cock fills her ass, so I guess this is currently a tie.

Except I told her I would defeat her, so…

So I pull away from her kiss, a flattering look of betrayal flashing across her eyes, and I hilt myself fully inside her, stopping all motion except that of our ragged breath as I tighten my grip on soft cheeks and my arms on her back support her weight.

"Say it," I tell her.

"What?" she asks with a raspy voice that makes shivers shoot up my spine.

"Say it. The thing."

"What thing?"

"The thing."

She blinks for a moment before an impish grin blooms on her lips that only gets enhanced by the disheveled blue locks matted to her forehead with the sweat of being taken up the ass.

"Kazuma… I'm your personal onahole goddess. And Eris pads her chest."

I answer her malicious smirk with one of my own, and…

And I throw everything I have left into bouncing her up and down my shaft, her hair flying up behind her as she lets out a bark of pure joy and her rear entrance convulses around me.

"Yes! Yes, you useless NEET! Take me! Make me yours!"

"You are already mine," I say with about half a Kenshirou before I drop the serious tone and join her in mirth that clashes with the burning in my arms and the increased strain at the base of my cock while I struggle to hold back an orgasm that maybe has been a long time coming.

Just, you know, since I first stepped into this world.

… It's no wonder that the blue-themed goddess blue-balled me for so long.

But… but she's looking at me, smiling widely, her lips trembling, her eyes shining in sparks that go off whenever a band of streetlight washes over her face, and her hair flies all around us until…

Until I see none of that and can only feel the sudden pressure of the ring of muscle around the middle of my shaft right before I go fully inside her tight warmth.

And, because she's Aqua and it's me, Kazuma, I don't even warn her before I explode into her ass.

"Ah! Ah, fuck!" she eloquently says before she bites her lower lip and whimpers, her thighs once again quivering around my waist.

"Aqua!"

"Yes, it's me, Aqua! But I'll also answer to Onahole Goddess or Naughty Bratty Maid!" she yells as I let out my second jet of white-hot cum.

My hips keep trembling up against her, but the words catch me by surprise, and I start laughing, my grip on her cheeks slipping until, mid-orgasm, I try to catch the falling goddess in a panic only to get my feet tangled in threadbare burlap and both of us to tumble down into the pile of hay, strands of jagged gold flying up at the impact and floating around us as the goddess beneath me laughs and hisses, her feet kicking by the side of my ears as her channel keeps convulsing and I keep pouring more and more cum inside her.

Then… Then there's a last gasp, a last dollop of cum dribbling out rather than shooting, and we're both smiling tiredly at one another while I carefully brush her sweaty bangs away so that nothing gets in the way of me staring into bright blue eyes.

She reaches up with a trembling hand to cup my cheek, and I…

Her forehead, the corner of her eyes, her cheek.

Her lips.

And, given the qualifier that my slowly softening shaft is still lodged up her ass, this may be the chastest kiss we've ever exchanged.

"So…" I say after a while.

"So?" she says, still smiling brightly enough that my heart clenches at the sight.

"I was promised a sloppy clean-up blowjob?"

She blinks.

Then, after an extra dose of blinking, she looks down between us, past her parted breasts, to where she can see my cock firmly lodged into her raised hips.

It only takes her a brief moment of extra processing for her cheeks to turn green in solidarity with her interspecies lover.

"I… I'm a bit tired? Oh, right, I have a headache! Can't do sex stuff with a headache. It's like… a law? I think?" she offers with a nervous smile and desperate hope.

And I, rather than answer, laugh at the flustered, offended, uppity hentai maid until she puffs her cheeks in hilarious indignation.

Which is when I tenderly kiss her forehead once again before I surround her with my arms and turn over so that thick, coarse burlap is on my back, and she's spared from the offensive blanket as she curls over my chest and belly before laying a last kiss on that hollow spot on my breastbone.

I don't say, 'Good night, Aqua.'

I just… hold her as she rubs her cheek against me like an amorous cat, my cock slipping out of her with a heavy, wet thud and a shiver that travels through her entire body.

So, for once, I go to sleep fully satisfied in the place where everything truly started, and, as Aqua lets out tiny, cute snores that she'll swear she's too divine to proffer, I keep holding onto her soft warmth on top of me and realize that… Even if we were poor as rats, even if we were a constant disaster, even if my liver may likely never fully recover from those early days? Even if I couldn't afford even a room at the nearest RPG inn? The start to my adventure went…

Far better than I thought it did.

━❖━⧫━❖━

So.

The next one isn't a 15k words colossal monstrosity that counts as a sixth of The Hobbit.

It's only 13k words. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/pure-knights-22-121546650?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link)

… It also features prominently a very short character, but I fear what the Megumin inside my brain could do to me if I called her a hobbit, so, that's just mere serendipity.

…

…

I have never written Lord of the Rings erotica, have I?

Anyway! I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and if you did, I hope you enjoy seeing me continue to be alive and well-fed enough that I can work on the next one. Hint hint, nudge nudge.

As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true): aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Vergil1989 Crossover King, and Xanah. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!