"So, that's really all the information she had in her head?"
Lucian lazily flipped a page of the heavy leather-bound tome resting against his chest. It was a work on the art of azure pyromancy, specifically detailing the mechanics behind the phenomenon summoned by the Super-Tier spell [Tartarean Flames]. The text broke down the precise elemental conversions, spiritual fuel, and mana architecture of the spell in great details.
Honestly, it was a surprisingly confusing read. Back in the game, casting a spell was just a matter of clicking an icon, waiting out a cooldown timer, and watching the visual effects play out. Reading about the actual underlying theory helped Lucian understand how magic operated as a living law in this new world, showing a fascinating contrast to how he instinctively used his own power.
"Indeed, my love. That is every last scrap of knowledge that little mortal girl possessed in her brain," Euphemia replied, her voice as sweet and rich as warmed honey.
Lucian was currently resting inside his own inner world, his Soul Space. He had visited this meta physical world dozens of times since arriving in the New World, especially since time here flowed entirely according to his whim; hours spent conversing inside his soul could translate to mere seconds in the physical world if he wished it. And over the course of those visits, he had grown completely accustomed and fond of Euphemia's presence.
The "little girl" they were currently discussing about was a high-ranking priestess—a Miko Princess—belonging to the Slane Theocracy, the very same human-supremacist nation that had dispatched Nigun Grid Luin and his Scripture to assassinate Gazeff Stronoff.
Specifically, she was the divination specialist who had made the fatal mistake of scrying on Carne Village during their battle.
Apparently, Euphemia had somehow projected her influence across the dimensional boundary to pay the snooping priestess a personal visit, effectively rewiring the girl's mind in the same instant and claiming her as "Lucian's property."
While Lucian didn't know the exact, undoubtedly terrifying mechanics of how Euphemia had brainwashed a target hundreds of kilometers away while technically sealed inside his soul, he wasn't about to complain. Free intel was free intel.
"Hmm… It's not a massive encyclopedia of knowledge, I guess, but it definitely takes a load off my mind," Lucian mused, his eyes scanning another paragraph of the tome "If this is the absolute ceiling of what the major human nations can bring to the table, I don't really need to walk on eggshells anymore. I can pretty much just cut loose and run wild."
"Fufufufu… You never needed to worry in the first place, my sweetie," Euphemia purred softly. She reached down, her impossibly soft, porcelain-white hand gently stroking his cheek. Looking down at the man resting in her lap, her expression was an portrait with pure, bottomless adoration. "Even if this world were brimming with primordial gods or ancient devils, I would gladly let you run as wild and free as your heart desires. Even if I had to tear apart their very existence with my bare hands just to clear your path."
Lucian let out a quiet, contented sigh, shifting the back of his head slightly against his makeshift pillow.
He was currently lying stretched out across Euphemia's lap, cushioned by her warm, supple thighs. They had the exact right balance of softness and firmness, easily tied with the thighs of his other girls as the greatest pillows in the universe.
The more time he spent hanging out with her in this space, the harder he found it to maintain any sort of emotional distance. How could any guy possibly dislike a woman like this?
To Euphemia, Lucian wasn't just a master or a lover; he was the sole axis upon which her entire reality spun.
He was her reason for existing, her reason for breathing, and her sole motivation for wanting to shatter the chains binding her.
Lucian knew with absolute certainty that if he casually asked her to erase her own soul right this second, she wouldn't even ask why, she would just smile and do it.
"Still, there is one thing from her memories that caught my attention," Lucian said, looking up at her upside-down face. "What did you call them again? Noble Dragons?"
"Dragon Lords, my heart," Euphemia corrected him gently, her fingers trailing from his cheek into his hair. "According to the Theocracy's secret records, they are the most powerful native creatures inhabiting this world, the true rulers of the continent before Players arrived. Very few of them still draw breath, however, the remaining ancient ones can probably be counted on two hands. You need not waste a single thought worrying over them. At the end of the day, they are merely overgrown lizards with wings."
"Right, Dragon Lords. And what about the Six Great Gods that the Theocracy worships? Based on what you pulled from her head, can we be a hundred percent sure they were Players from YGGDRASIL?"
"Yes, my love. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, those six were Players just like you," Euphemia confirmed without hesitation. "However, five of them had humanoid lifespans and died of old age centuries ago, and the last one—an undead—was apparently slain five hundred years back by another group called the Eight Greed Kings. At least, that is what the girl's memories claim… Though, if any of their remnants are still skulking in the shadows, I can always scour the ends of the earth in the future and slaughter them for you."
"Hmm…" Lucian hummed thoughtfully. Snapping the book shut, he casually tossed it into the air, where a small dark ripple swallowed it back into his [Item Box].
With his hands now free, he reached up and caught a lock of Euphemia's long, cascading hair, twirling the silky strands around his fingers. It carried a deeply familiar, intoxicatingly sweet floral fragrance that instantly relaxed his nerves.
"Fufufu, do you enjoy my scent that much, my dearest?" Euphemia asked with a proud, radiant smile. She continued combing her fingers through his white, silky hair, letting the strands fall in smooth waves through her palm. "You may indulge in it whenever you wish.
Slowly, she leaned down, her lush black hair forming a curtain around them as her glowing emerald eyes locked onto his irises—which, inside the confines of his Soul Space, mirrored her own in a striking shade of luminous green rather than his usual crimson.
"Whenever you want, however you want," she whispered, her voice dropping an octave into a velvety murmur. "This body, this mind, this soul, my entire existence…"
As she spoke, the vibrant green of her eyes began to darken, the pupils dilating and swirling until they resembled the deepest, most inescapable trenches of a lightless abyss. "It all belongs exclusively to you, my love. Every last atom."
Lucian, who had been lounging nonchalantly up until that moment, reached up to cup the side of her face. Gently running his thumb over her cheekbone, he guided her head the rest of the way down and pulled her into a deep kiss.
Her soft, plush lips parted instantly against his. As his tongue pushed past her lips to claim her mouth, Euphemia let out a muffled whimper into the kiss.
A few days ago, despite her lofty title and sensual appearance, she had been hilariously, hopelessly clumsy, as utterly inexperienced as a sheltered maiden could possibly be. Yet, thanks to Lucian's thorough "tutoring" and exploration of her mouth during his recent visits, she had proved to be a very fast learner, her tongue eagerly rising to entangle and dance with his.
It was honestly peak irony that the literal embodiment of the Sin of Lust was a pure, untouched virgin who turned into putty from a single kiss. Yet that exact contradiction was what made her all the more devastatingly charming in Lucian's eyes.
After a long, breathless minute, Lucian slowly pulled back. A thin, glistening silver thread of saliva bridged their parted lips before snapping. Beneath him, Euphemia's face was a crimson, blushing wreck; her eyes were half-lidded and misty, looking as though her very bones had melted into liquid.
"I'm gonna head back to the real world in a few minutes," Lucian said casually, raising a thumb to gently wipe the moisture from the corner of her lower lip before wiping his own mouth.
"Yes…" Euphemia breathed out in a daze, completely mesmerized as she stared down at his face.
Lucian rested his hands behind his head, staring up at her thoughtfully for a second before speaking again. "By the way, there's something I've been meaning to ask your opinion on."
Euphemia blinked, tilting her head attentively.
"That village girl back in Carne village, Enri," Lucian began, laying his thoughts out plainly because the sensation had been nagging at the back of his mind. "For some reason, I felt a weird pull toward her. Like this sudden, possessive urge to just scoop her up and make her mine in every way possible."
It was the honest truth. While saving Carne Village had been a pragmatic move to test the waters of the New World and interact with Momonga, a not-insignificant part of why he had gone so far, like bothering to cast high-tier resurrection magic on the slain villagers and gifting her that magic item gown, was simply because Enri Emmot had caught his eye.
"Tell me straight, Euphemia," Lucian said, frowning slightly in genuine self-doubt. "Am I turning into some kind of sleazy, uncontrollable womanizer because I inherited the class of Sin of Lust? Is the authority messing with my head?"
Back on Earth, he wasn't some saint who lived like a monk, sure, but his romantic feelings had always been strictly limited to three very specific people: Mei Mei, Suzune, and Mizuki. He had never been the type of guy to look at a random stranger he just met and immediately feel an urge to claim her. The thought that a game mechanic or his Sin class factor might be overriding his personality bothered him a little.
For two full seconds, Euphemia stared at his conflicted expression in silence. Then, her shoulders began to tremble.
"Fufufufufu…" She pressed a hand over her mouth, trying and failing to hold it in before bursting into a fit of bright, melodic giggles. "Hehehehehe! Ahahaha!"
Lucian's frown deepened into a flat pout as he watched her laugh until tiny tears gathered at the corners of her emerald eyes.
Wiping a tear away with her finger, Euphemia looked down at his sulking expression and clutched her chest as if she had just been struck by lightning. "Oh, goodness… You are simply too adorable when you make that face, my love. My heart nearly stopped."
Clearing her throat, she finally reined in her giggles and adopted a more comforting, explanatory tone, though a teasing glint remained in her eyes. "Tell me, sweetie, do you truly believe that bearing the class of the Sin of Lust automatically rewires a person into a mindless beast who hungers after every member of the opposite sex?" She gave him a playful wink.
"How should I know? It's my first time being a Deadly Sin," Lucian muttered defenselessly.
"Fufu… My everything, I assure you, it does not work like that," Euphemia said softly.
She took his right hand and lifted it so their palms pressed together right between their faces, her emerald eyes gazing straight into his matching green ones. "Need I remind you that I held the mantle of the Deadly Sin of Lust long before it became yours? And in all the eons of my existence, have I ever felt so much as a microscopic flicker of affection, desire, or even mild appreciation for any living thing besides you? Never. Not once."
She lowered his hand to press a light kiss against his knuckles, her smile turning delightfully smug. "So you may rest easy, my love. You are not turning into a womanizer because of the Sin of Lust. You are simply a womanizer because you, at your core, are a natural-born womanizer."
"Hey," Lucian protested, pouting again, though a wave of genuine relief washed over him anyway. Knowing his own mind wasn't being artificially hijacked was the main thing that mattered.
"Besides," Euphemia added, tapping her chin thoughtfully, "if we are speaking purely of that sudden possessive impulse toward the village girl, I do have a theory as to what triggered it."
"Oh? What's that?" Lucian asked, his curiosity piqued.
"It is most likely a passive resonance stemming from your [First and Last Einherjar] class," Euphemia explained smoothly.
Lucian blinked, his brows furrowing in confusion. "'First and Last'? Where did you get that name from? My status system clearly listed the job class as [Greatest Einherjar]."
"Oh? Does it?" Euphemia tilted her head with an innocent, enigmatic smile. "How strange. I am quite certain my terminology is accurate. Perhaps the system simply displays a shortened title for your convenience. Regardless, the essence remains the same, for you truly are the greatest hero in existence, my star."
"Hmph. Now you're just dodging the question with flattery," Lucian huffed, turning his head slightly away.
"Do not be like that, my precious," she cooed, smoothing down his hair affectionately. "You look infinitely more handsome when you are smiling. Or, at the very least, when you are wearing your signature 'I am clearly interested in you, but my pride demands that you start the conversation first' face."
"Oi, oi, slander! I have literally never made a face like that in my life!" Lucian tried to deny it immediately, only for Euphemia to dissolve into another round of knowing giggles that made the tips of his ears burn with embarrassment.
After a few more minutes of relaxed banter, Lucian finally braced his hands on the ground and pushed himself up from her lap, rising to his full height and stretching his shoulders as he prepared to return to the physical world.
Looking down at the breathtaking woman rising gracefully beside him, a lingering question crossed his mind.
"By the way, Euphemia… I've been curious about something for a while now."
"Ask me anything, my love."
"Just how strong are you right now?" Lucian asked, looking her over with genuine analytical interest.
Back in YGGDRASIL, the World Enemy representation of Luxuria had possessed absurd, raid-wiping skills and monstrous stats. Yet the Euphemia standing before him now wasn't merely a block of game data; her physical body was infinitely more refined, her beauty transcended any 3D polygon model, and the sheer weight of her ambient presence was on a completely different dimension.
In the game, players couldn't physically feel an aura, of course, but his instincts told him she had evolved into something else entirely.
"How strong am I…?" Euphemia placed a slender finger against her lower lip in a cute, contemplative pose, glancing upward as she did some mental math. "Hmm… If I had to use a benchmark you are familiar with, I suppose my current output is roughly equivalent to the Realm Tree itself?"
She tossed out a comparison to the literal World Tree of YGGDRASIL as casually as someone guessing the weather, before flashing him a radiant, carefree smile. "Though, who truly cares about numbers, my love? My strength is unequivocally superior to everything else in this world. And once I finally shatter these annoying chains binding me inside your soul, I will gladly give you a personal demonstration of just how overwhelming I can be."
Stepping forward, she wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her impossibly soft, curvaceous body flush against his chest.
Lucian slid his arms around her slender waist, pulling her even tighter against him. Burying his face slightly into the crook of her neck, he inhaled deeply.
"Mhm… you really do smell delicious," he murmured against her skin.
Extending his tongue, he dragged a slow, warm lick up the side of her pale nape. A violent shiver ran down Euphemia's spine, and then, with a faint click of his jaw, Lucian opened his mouth and let his two sharp canines elongate slightly.
Without hesitation, he sank his fangs directly into the soft flesh of her neck.
Instantly, rich, glowing golden blood welled up from the twin punctures, flowing smoothly over his lips and onto his tongue. The moment it hit his palate, Lucian's eyes widened slightly. It didn't taste normally sweet like any of his girls blood at all, instead it tasted like warm, liquid jelly and fermented ambrosia, pure, concentrated divine nectar.
"Ahhn…! L-lucian… my love…!"
Euphemia's breath hitched into a high, euphoric moan of pure ecstasy. Rather than flinching from the bite, her fingers tangled desperately into the hair at the back of his head, pulling him deeper and pressing his mouth harder against her bleeding neck, offering every drop she had.
For two full minutes, the only sounds in the Soul Space were Lucian's steady swallows and Euphemia's ragged, blissed-out gasps.
When he finally retracted his fangs and gave the rapidly healing puncture marks one last cleansing lick, Lucian pulled back with a deeply satisfied sigh, licking a stray drop of liquid gold from his lip. "Yeah. That was incredible."
In his arms, Euphemia was completely boneless, her eyes glazed over with hearts practically floating in her pupils as she panted softly against his collar.
As the golden blood assimilated into his body, however, Lucian paused. He raised his free hand and clenched it into a slow fist, feeling a strange, profound tremor reverberate through his core.
"Weird… Why does it feel like I just broke through a level cap or just leveled up?" he muttered, inspecting his palm.
Because of the heavy dimensional restraints of [Restraint on Divinity] Ring currently sealing roughly ninety percent of his actual stats were locked away.
Even operating on a mere ten percent of his baseline power, he was still vastly superior to any max-level YGGDRASIL Player or Floor Guardian. He was strong enough to solo ordinary raid bosses without breaking a sweat. Yet right now, he could distinctly feel that his base capacity, which should have been stuck at a hard bottleneck and level cap now, had just expanded permanently upward a level.
Honestly, it was almost scary to think about what would happen if he ever undid that ninety-percent seal in the middle of the New World. Would the sheer density of his mana cause the surrounding space to collapse into a literal black hole?
"Fufufufu… Nothing quite so inconvenient will happen, my love, so feel free to unleash yourself whenever you wish," Euphemia murmured dreamily against his chest, effortlessly reading his surface thoughts through their soul link.
Lifting her flushed face, she smiled up at him. "That surge you are feeling is simply my innate Divinity merging with yours through my blood. In doing so, it is stimulating your own dormant Divinity, pushing it toward a higher stage of ascension."
To Lucian, half of that sounded like vague metaphysical lore that didn't come with a proper stat breakdown, so he didn't bother racking his brain trying to overanalyze it. Stronger was stronger; that was all he needed to know.
Leaning down, he pressed a gentle, parting kiss right onto the center of Euphemia's forehead. The ancient goddess of the unknown cosmos, blushed furiously all over again, gazing up at him with shining, upturned eyes like an affectionate puppy waiting for praise.
"Behave yourself while I'm gone, okay?" Lucian teased softly.
She nodded rapidly, her expression so eagerly obedient that Lucian was dead certain that if she had a tail right now, it would be wagging fast enough to create a tornado.
With a fond chuckle, Lucian closed his eyes and let his consciousness sink back into the real world.
Lucian slowly opened his eyes, greeted by the familiar sight of the grand, intricately frescoed ceiling of his master bedchamber in Castle of Valhallas, Aeternus chambers.
He was lying flat on his back beneath a cover of very thin blue silk sheets, completely naked.
Curled tightly against his side was Mei Mei, who was just as bare as the day she came into the world. Her eyes were peacefully shut, her cheek resting squarely against the curve of his bicep as both of her arms remained wrapped securely around his torso, clinging to him even in her sleep.
Turning his head slightly, Lucian reached out with his free hand and gently stroked the smooth skin of her cheek.
Under any other circumstances, an assassin of Mei Mei's terrifying Level 100 would have sensed a foreign presence the instant it entered her sensory radius.
However, her body and soul were so deeply attuned to Lucian's aura that her instincts recognized his touch as the ultimate reassurance of safety. In his arms, her guard just ceased to exist entirely. After all, his embrace was her sanctuary.
Technically speaking, thanks to her racial passive and high-tier ring enchantments, Mei Mei didn't actually require sleep to function.
Yet choosing to rest manually was still the best way to clear mental fatigue, and after spending the last fourteen hours straight locked in intense, passionate lovemaking with him, she had earned a nap.
Every single touch, kiss, and sensation within these new bodies had felt like a brand-new discovery to her, especially considering that Lucian had made it his personal mission to drive her to the absolute peak of pleasure with his overwhelming size, over and over again, until she finally lost consciousness from sheer sensory overload.
"You really are the cutest when you're dead to the world like this," he murmured fondly to the quiet room.
Careful not to jostle his sleeping maid, Lucian raised his free arm toward the empty air beside the bed. A silent ripple of darkness twice the width of his forearm tore open, it was the spatial interface of his [Item Box].
Reaching wrist-deep into the void, he rummaged around for a second before pulling out a small paperback book that would have left any native scholar of the New World utterly baffled.
It was a Japanese manga volume from his personal collection.
Propping the book up with one hand while keeping the other wrapped around Mei Mei's bare shoulders, Lucian spent the next two hours leisurely reading through the panels in the peaceful quiet of the bedroom.
Eventually, a soft sigh brushed against his collarbone, and the long lashes framing Mei Mei's eyes fluttered open.
"Morning, sleepyhead. How are you feeling?" Lucian asked warmly, tossing the manga back into his [Item Box] before tightening his arm around her waist, pulling her soft, naked curves flush against his own bare skin.
The soft warmth of her chest pressing against his ribs instantly sparked a familiar, tightening heat low in his groin, though for the moment, he forcefully suppressed the urge to pin her down for a fifteenth round.
"The greatest I have ever felt in my entire existence, Master," Mei Mei whispered, her voice husky with sleep and lingering bliss. Melting gladly into his embrace, she looped her arms around his neck and pressed a deep, lingering kiss right over his heartbeat.
Pulling back just enough to look into his crimson eyes, her cheeks glowed with a radiant flush. "I still can hardly believe I was blessed with the miracle of offering my first time to you twice across two lifetimes. Feeling the sharp, exquisite pain of my hymen tearing for you all over again… When we first joined together back on Earth, I thought I had already touched the pinnacle of human happiness. Yet experiencing it in this body felt as though an entire eternity of pure bliss was poured into my soul all at once."
She spoke the remarkably graphic confession without an ounce of shyness or shame. If a normal person had overheard her, they probably would have cringed or blushed out of second-hand embarrassment at how bluntly she talked about her own virginity.
Lucian, however, just smiled fondly. That unfiltered, fanatical honesty was simply who Mei Mei was, and more importantly, she was only ever like that for him.
"Haha, I'm glad to hear it," Lucian chuckled, kissing the tip of her nose. "Honestly, just having you here by my side makes waking up in a whole different world worth it."
Despite the genuine warmth in his voice, a tiny, fleeting shadow of concern flickered across the corner of his brow. It lasted less than half a second, yet to Mei Mei, who studied her master's divinely sculpted face with religious devotion, it was as glaringly obvious as a thundercloud on a sunny day.
Raising a hand to gently cup his jaw, her expression softened with sympathy. "Please do not torment yourself with worry, Master. Knowing Mizuki, I am certain she is managing just fine. If she was pulled into this world alongside us, someone of her capabilities will surely—"
"She's not in this world," Lucian interrupted softly, his tone carrying an absolute, unshakable certainty.
Mei Mei blinked, caught off guard by how definitive he sounded. "What…? Forgive me, Master, how can you be so certain of that?"
"Call it intuition, or maybe a perk of what I am now, I just know," Lucian said, offering her a reassuring smile that immediately smoothed away the distress forming on her face. "She isn't in this world right now, at least not at this exact moment in time. But I also know for a fact that she's alive and kicking somewhere out there."
Hearing the utter confidence in his voice, Mei Mei let out a quiet breath of relief. While she genuinely cared for Mizuki, who, alongside Suzune, was one of the only two people she had ever considered a true friend back on Earth, her emotional hierarchy was absolute.
Her master's peace of mind came before everything and everyone else in creation. If he wasn't despairing, then all was right with the world.
"And mark my words, I'm going to have Mizuki back by my side sooner or later, even if I have to flip heaven and earth upside down to drag her here," Lucian declared, grinning as he thumped a fist lightly against his bare chest
Realizing how dramatic he sounded, he let out a self-deprecating laugh. "Man, okay, saying that out loud sounds super cheesy, like some shonen protagonist. Still, I mean every word of it."
"Of course… Of course you do, Master…" Mei Mei whispered.
A single, glistening tear of pure emotion pricked at the corner of her eye. Back on Earth, given the complicated web of their circumstances, Lucian had often kept a layer of guarded restraint over his deepest feelings.
To hear him declare his love and determination so openly and boldly, coupled with how fiercely he had claimed her body over the past fourteen hours, filled her heart until it felt ready to burst.
Clearing his throat lightly to break the sentimental mood, Lucian gave her bare ass a playful pat. "Alright, playtime's over for now. Dress me up, my darling maid."
That single casual command was all it took for her switches to flip back into perfection.
"As you wish, my Master," Mei Mei purred, bowing her head gracefully against his chest.
Before Lucian even had to lift a finger to push back the silk sheets, a silent tide of pitch-black shadows surged up from the floor, enveloping both of their naked bodies beneath the covers in a cocoon of darkness.
A split second later, the shadows dispersed like morning mist. When they vanished, Lucian was already immaculately dressed in a fresh, regal set of dark gold-trimmed attire, while Mei Mei was once again clad in her crisp, pristine black-and-white maid uniform, a brand-new spare set pulled from her inventory, naturally, considering Lucian had thoroughly shredded her previous uniform beyond repair yesterday afternoon.
Swinging his legs over the edge of the massive bed, Lucian stood up and adjusted his cuffs. "Come on, let's get moving. I want to sit down and have a proper, in-depth meeting with the rest of my servants. Now that we have a solid grasp on the local power scaling and the political layout of this continent, I need to brief everyone on our circumstances, and lay out what we're going to do next."
Stepping gracefully to his side and smoothing down her apron, Mei Mei tilted her head curiously. "And what is it that we are doing next, Master?"
Lucian paused by the grand double doors of his bedroom chamber, glancing back over his shoulder as a slow, wickedly amused grin spread across his face, his crimson eyes gleaming with the casual ambition of a god who had just found a new sandbox.
"Hmm… Honestly? I'm thinking of conquering the world."
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