episode_0080

In the Hero’s room, Sanghoon gently stroked Ariel’s hair. She lay beside him, breathing shallowly in deep slumber, exhausted from their passionate lovemaking.

“Hoo… This is how one lives.”

Sanghoon kissed the deeply sleeping Ariel’s cheek, exhaling a contented sigh as he leisurely savored the afterglow of having conquered a woman.

A shadow beside him shimmered, and Ermel, cloaked in a purple robe, revealed herself.

Sanghoon looked at Ermel, who had appeared, and greeted her with a bright smile.

“What is it, Ermel? Unlike your grumbling, you handled things very well, didn’t you?”

Then, as if showing off his spoils, he wrapped his arm around Ariel’s shoulder, who was clinging to him in deep sleep, and lightly pinched her cheek with his hand.

“It just… happened.”

Ermel, with her usual poker face, reacted indifferently to Sanghoon’s praise by giving a slight nod of her chin.

Sanghoon stared intently at Ermel for a moment, as if her reply bothered him.

But since Ariel had ultimately become his, he leaned his entire body back onto the soft bed, as if it didn’t matter.

“Until now, all the Level 3 mages I’ve met were old folks or guys with an extra leg between their crotch… It was worth the trouble to come all the way to the southernmost region…”

Sanghoon once again stroked Ariel’s hair beside him, as if he had obtained a great treasure.

At his touch, Ariel smiled blissfully and wrapped her arms and legs around his body as if she would never let him go.

Sanghoon, too, didn’t seem to dislike Ariel’s actions, and looked at the sleeping Ariel’s face with a faint smile.

“But a problem has arisen.”

However, Ermel, who had been staring at Sanghoon, revealed that a problem had occurred.

At that, Sanghoon’s brow, which had been smiling at Ariel, furrowed uncomfortably.

“Did I make another slip of the tongue?”

Ermel had always pointed out Sanghoon’s verbal blunders, as he often used expressions and words from his original world.

Sanghoon looked at Ermel with an annoyed expression, perhaps expecting her to point out his mistake again.

“See for yourself.”

Instead of bothering to explain verbally, Ermel tapped the air with her fingertip, causing a status window to unfurl.

Sanghoon tilted his head at Ermel’s sudden action of opening the status window for him and checked the window she had displayed.

“What on earth is ‘Bond 100’?!”

What first caught his eye was the number ‘Bond 100’, given strong emphasis in vivid red, as if telling him not to miss it.

“Ariel is pregnant. That’s the result.”

“What? Really?!”

A flustered Sanghoon began to skillfully manipulate the status window.

The status window he was viewing not only displayed a person’s talents and stats but also detailed physical information and even sexual activity records.

“Wow… shit. Today was her fertile period…”

And only then, after confirming Ariel’s physical information, did Sanghoon realize Ermel hadn’t lied, and he let out a troubled sigh.

“Ariel is fine, but… I want to experience many other women and choose a proper wife later…”

Sanghoon tapped at the word ‘pregnant’ that appeared in Ariel’s status window with his fingertip, as if he disliked it.

However, no matter how much he tapped the screen displaying the other person’s status window with his fingertip, the word ‘pregnant’, already etched there, showed no sign of disappearing.

“A saintess who pretends to be pure but is actually lustful on the inside… A tsundere thief who acts prickly on the outside but is overflowing with affection on the inside… And even a quiet, calm ice mage, the opposite of the fiery and passionate Ariel…”

Sanghoon smiled slyly, listing the imaginary women he was sure to claim.

Greedy Sanghoon didn’t want to be bound to just one woman, Ariel, and as he tapped the word ‘pregnant’ with his fingertip, his brow began to furrow.

“Couldn’t I just stab it with a knife and apply a potion? It’s like a ‘stab-abortion’, you know.”

Tapping the word ‘pregnant’ with his fingertip, Sanghoon looked at Ermel and spoke his idea with a bright smile, as if it were a brilliant idea.

But at Sanghoon’s suggestion of such a horrific solution, one that even Ermel, a demon, had never imagined, even her expressionless face contorted into a frown.

“Ah, it’s a joke, a joke…”

As the emotionless Ermel frowned in disgust, Sanghoon belatedly tried to mend his words.

However, Ermel simply turned her back, as if she no longer wished to converse with Sanghoon, and erased her presence.

“Ah… This is a big problem…”

As Ermel’s presence vanished, Sanghoon gave up on further deliberation and simply lay back comfortably on the bed.

“Once I gather enough trait points, I’ll have to learn contraception magic first.”

Sanghoon’s eyes, as he looked at Ariel, who was sleeping too deeply to even hear their conversation, had changed to resemble someone looking at an annoying burden.

———————————————————–

Whatever happened last night.

As long as the world didn’t end, a new morning began to break.

I, who had been stuck in a seemingly eternal mire, was forcibly pulled out by the morning sunlight piercing through my thin eyelids and pricking my eyes.

“Ah…”

My body was buried in the soft bed.

My clothes were also exactly as I remembered them.

“A dream…? Was it all just a dream?”

The first thing I did after regaining consciousness was to feel the spot where my molar had been with my tongue.

The chilling sensation of my molar shattering still lingered vividly in my mouth.

Carefully, I touched the place where my molar had shattered with the tip of my tongue.

As if to prove that everything that had happened with Ermel was a dream, I felt a smooth molar with no trace of injury with the tip of my tongue.

“It was a dream… It was all just a dream!!”

My chest, which had been hollowed out by despair just moments ago, filled with hope once more, and I frantically got up from the bed.

Clutching my still dizzy head, likely a lingering effect of all the alcohol I’d drunk last night, I approached the door.

After taking a deep breath to swallow the lingering dizziness.

I carefully twisted the doorknob and slowly opened the door.

“It’s true… It was all just a dream…”

The living room visible beyond the slowly opening door was completely different from the scene in my dream.

The liquor bottles were neatly arranged, and the leftover food from the drinking session was also tidily put away.

And there was not even a speck of a trace of discarded clothes or lovemaking on the floor.

Looking around the neatly organized living room, I could confirm that the horrific aftermath Ermel had shown me was merely a nightmare she had created.

“That can’t be… Ariel wouldn’t just fall for him that easily, would she?”

The moment I convinced myself that everything Ermel had shown me was just a nightmare.

I recalled my pathetic self, who had despaired as if the world was ending, and leaning against the table, I let out a hollow laugh.

“Ah~ Good morning!”

At that moment, the shower room door opened, and the Hero, with a large towel wrapped from his waist to his thighs, walked out, shaking his wet hair.

The moment I faced his countenance, fragments of the nightmare Ermel had shown me resurfaced, and my face stiffened.

“Go… Good morning.”

I, who had dismissed the relationship between the Hero and Ariel that Ermel had shown me as merely a nightmare to torment me, accepted his morning greeting with an awkward smile, pretending it was nothing.

“Speaking of which… where’s Ariel?”

I cautiously asked the Hero about Ariel’s whereabouts.

Ariel always woke up and moved earlier than me, but I couldn’t sense her presence.

At my question, the Hero casually replied, shaking his still-damp hair vigorously with a towel.

“She’s in the shower. Women tend to take a while to wash up, you know?”

“……?”

At his reply, the gears of thought spinning in my mind seemed to come to a grinding halt, as if a large stone had jammed them.

Not just my thoughts, but I had even forgotten to breathe, and I simply stared blankly at him, as if demanding further explanation.

Then, the Hero, who had yawned slightly as if tired, continued speaking, as if he had no choice but to address my piercing gaze.

“Oh right. She also has ‘after-care’ to do, so she’ll be even later than usual.”

“Af… after-care? What kind of after-care does she need to do?”

“Well… do I really have to spell it out for you?”

At my question, the Hero grinned and conspicuously moved his hips back and forth.

Unable to comprehend the Hero’s unbelievably blatant gesture, I stared blankly at him, lost in thought.

“Ugh…!”

But the moment my consciousness went blank, the suppressed hangover dizziness surged, and my body, leaning against the table, swayed.

“Looks like you’re still not sober. Sit there and rest until Ariel comes out. We have an important discussion about the upcoming schedule.”

The Hero, looking at me with a pathetic snort, lightly flicked his hand in the air.

Pop!

“It’s a hangover remedy, so drink one.”

Then, a small potion bottle containing a brownish liquid appeared on the table in front of me.

Unable to control my swaying body, I slumped weakly into a chair at the table, staring blankly at the potion bottle containing the brownish liquid, the hangover remedy the Hero had created for me.

Had what Ermel shown me not been a nightmare, but reality?

Had Ariel truly given her heart to the Hero, just as Ermel had said?

This easily?

“That’s impossible…”

Even if she was a succubus, I couldn’t understand how a person’s heart could be turned 180 degrees in just one night.

Creak…

Behind me, as I stared blankly at the potion bottle, I heard the sound of the shower room door opening.

Swallowing a nervous mouthful of dry saliva, I slowly shifted my gaze from the potion bottle and looked at Ariel, who emerged from the shower room.

“Ah… Jazel…”

Ariel, wrapped in a large towel, appeared with a flushed face, as if the sticky heat of their lovemaking had not yet dissipated.

Ariel, whose eyes met mine, mumbled my name briefly, then…

She merely averted her gaze to the side, as if even making eye contact, let alone conversing, was too much of a burden.