What does it feel like to be ambushed with a kiss?
Li Zihan found the experience to be startlingly enjoyable.
The petite girl had her slender arms wrapped around his neck, proactively pressing her lips to his. A warm, slick little tongue stirred restlessly within his mouth, sucking forcefully, drawing out the bodily fluids brimming with magical energy.
A legal loli, showing up on her own initiative, offering herself freely with a kiss. This kind of experience inexplicably made a certain someone want to return to Chaldea in the Moon World and steal some summoning tickets. After all, by using himself as a catalyst for summoning, he could easily summon girls connected to him, right?
Someone with the summoning affinity to instead pull Merlin, Chen Gong, those human scumbags, or Arjuna, whose eyes are only for Karna, is utterly clueless, he mused, completely oblivious.
However, the mood of the other people present was far from as cheerful as Li Zihan's.
It's often said that love strikes suddenly. But some things come even more abruptly than love.
For example, the new addition atop Mei's head.
Watching the Servant, under the pretext of "replenishing magical energy," directly kiss their Master...
Ana and Sirin felt a certain heaviness in their heads, as if they were wearing something they didn't want to.
"What in the world are you two doing?!"
After a brief moment of stunned silence, Sirin and Ana clearly snapped into action. One grabbed Li Zihan, the other grabbed Kuro, forcefully pulling apart the pair who were supposedly comrades-in-arms but had, for some ungodly reason, immediately launched into a passionate French kiss.
"Replenishing magical energy," Kuro stated, as innocently as if she had just been describing eating and drinking. Pulled away by Sirin, she gazed with her amber eyes at a Miss Sirin who was nearly fuming. "If a Servant has no magical energy, the best method is body fluid exchange."
"That can be done through a proper contract, you know!" Miss Ana, having also received Li Zihan's "knowledge transfer" (ahem), well aware of this fact, angrily rebuked the girl who looked every bit like a cat that had stolen the cream. "Right, A-Li?"
The mismatched-eyed girl took a step forward, simultaneously twisting the soft flesh of the man's waist—a man whom even a speedster couldn't catch if he truly wanted to escape—while glaring back intensely at the rather suggestive loli.
"It's probably... an issue with the summoning ritual," the young man said with a dry laugh, feeling the sharp pain in his waist. He had indeed noticed that something was amiss with his contract with Kuro.
And then—
A familiar light ignited once more in the depths of his eyes.
Clairvoyance, activate.
He then saw a future where the two girls worked together to prepare a table full of specially "enhanced" Heavenly Fire cuisine for him.
Should I rewind time again?
He had a feeling that after eating that meal, the passive skill he'd acquired from slaying Lugh—"Though the Sun May Set Three Times"—would most certainly activate. He genuinely believed he would die from eating that spread.
As Li Zihan pondered whether to rewind time, the girl, probably protected by her "Servant" status which prevented her from being immediately branded as a complete homewrecker, spoke calmly.
"I was summoned using Chaldea's technology. Logically, I should be powered by Chaldea's nuclear reactor."
This was true. Chaldea's magical energy wasn't supplied by the Master. A single Chaldea, depending on Guda's wealth and luck, could house anywhere from dozens to hundreds of Heroic Spirits. If all those Heroic Spirits relied on Guda for magical energy, he'd probably be sucked dry and end up looking like Ramses II in an Egyptian museum.
"But I don't feel any connection to Chaldea here. I have to obtain magical energy from somewhere else to sustain myself."
The girl, who possessed all of Archer's skills because Archer had willingly relinquished his power, was spouting utter nonsense. Archer's Class Skill, Independent Action (Rank B), allowed him to function perfectly well for two days even without a magical energy supply. As she had all of Archer's skills, she certainly wouldn't collapse after a few minutes of being cut off.
"I imagine you wouldn't want to see Master and me doing that to replenish my magical energy, so I chose kissing instead."
Sirin and Ana were completely flabbergasted.
Kuro's reasoning was incredibly thorough, utterly logical.
But the stench of something amiss was practically overwhelming!
And also—
Why could a girl so casually mention replenishing magical energy through sexual intercourse?!
Like a fishbone caught in their throats, countless retorts were stuck in the two girls' throats.
"Alright, alright, don't be angry," Li Zihan quickly interjected, sensing that Kuro was about to be sent back to the Throne of Heroes via a violent explosion. "This is my fault; I didn't check the contract beforehand, which led to some misunderstandings."
Such words, however, clearly did not satisfy the girls. At least, not Ana.
That perverted Director, he just can't control himself around pretty girls.
Miss Ana, who really did not want to end up like Mei with a pile of cuckold hats on her head, was furious. She intended to have a serious talk with her lover.
But then—
A hand reached out and stopped her.
It was Sirin.
"Just make sure to fix it quickly," the girl said, giving Ana a meaningful look. She, too, was enraged, but she knew that her anger would likely only result in some huffing and puffing before she was "slept into submission." "By the way, you fought another God-Slayer yesterday, you must be exhausted. And you expended so much energy last night, you need to replenish your strength."
As those words fell, Li Zihan's instincts—honed by both God-Slaying and his time with Cu Chulainn—went into overdrive, sending him frantic warnings.
If translated into human terms, his instincts were probably screaming: "Boss, save yourself! Time to make a run for it!!"
Li Zihan desperately wanted to flee.
But he couldn't. Sirin and Ana's anger had to be unleashed. If their fury wasn't vented and simply kept building up, only to explode all at once someday, it would be far more than a minor spat.
So he had to stay. Even if hell lay before him.
"Yes, that's indeed true."
The boy, now too afraid to activate Future Vision and see what his future held, nodded with a smile.
"So, A-Li, you just go and properly revise that Heroic Spirit ritual, alright?"
Miss Sirin, who would essentially be taking over his meals for the foreseeable future, smiled faintly. Her smile was incredibly virtuous and demure, almost as if Miss Mei herself had possessed her. That demure smile, however, appeared rather sinister in Li Zihan's eyes.
"Ana and I will prepare a nutritious meal for you."
Sirin, whose culinary skills were "number one" among all the girls Li Zihan knew, emphasized her words, then repeated herself.
"And remember... you have to eat every single bite."