Pechi – 5

“Oh, you can hit me until my tailbone shatters! If you tell me to hold back my screams, I will, and if you tell me to scream, I will! So please, just…”

A butt, encased in nothing but a thin pair of tights, revealing its perfectly round outline, wiggled towards me. I lost my words and stared down at it.

After lying prostrate for a moment, Pechi, seeing that I showed no inclination to hit her butt, pleaded with an even more desperate voice.

“H-Perhaps it’s because I’m still wearing clothes? Should I take them off to make it easier for you to hit me-“

“Put them on.”

“Yes, y-yes!”

She was actually trying to throw off her tights, so as soon as her butt crack was half-exposed, I ordered her to put them on. Pechi hastily pulled up her tights, following my command.

In truth, whether she wore them or not, there was almost no difference in coverage. Even now, the plump flesh of her lower butt was completely exposed.
Still, the very act of wearing clothes was the key. There was an enormous difference between wearing something and being completely naked.
Sometimes, situations where wearing something is even more dizzying do unfold, but that’s always an exception.

‘This is absurd.’

It was a sentence that succinctly summarized my current feelings. I had clearly thought I’d left her in Rije’s good hands, but I couldn’t understand why she had turned into a masochistic sow.
What on earth did they do? With that thought, I shifted my gaze. As my eyes met theirs, Nix fidgeted with her fingers in front of her chest, glancing at the person next to her, and Rije, who was presumably that person, subtly avoided my gaze.

“Rije. What did you do here? Tell me everything, step by step.”

“W-What did I do?”

Rije flinched and tried to deny my words, but she seemed to know herself that it was too late to back out now, and awkwardly met my eyes again.
“Well. You’re right, Delta. It is my fault.”

“What on earth did you do to her to make her… make such a request?”

I almost blurted out, ‘…make such a request that only you, Rije, would make?’ but quickly stopped myself. Since I had actually done such things with Rije before, I almost let slip something I shouldn’t have.
Thanks to that, a gap formed between my words, but Nix didn’t seem to care, and Rije was too busy making excuses to notice. It was a relief.

“No, no. I didn’t do anything major, really. You asked me to take care of her, so why would I do something like that?”

“So you did something minor, then.”

“That’s… well.”

Rije walked over with an awkward expression. It seemed her conscience wouldn’t allow her to deny it. Nix trotted along behind her.
“……”

Seeing that I showed no sign of hitting her butt, and now seemed about to start a conversation while ignoring her, Pechi cautiously lifted her head. Her hot pink pupils slowly scanned me.
“U-Um. Delta-nim. My butt-“

“Hey, shut up! How dare you try to butt in on spanking play without any manners? I’ve barely even done that a few times myself!”

“H-Hieek! I’m sorry!”

Pechi slammed her head back to the ground. But her wiggling butt remained pointed at me.
When I first saw it, I was too flustered to notice, but now that I looked, her back was quite hunched. It was a posture that seemed to protect her stomach from being pressed by her knees.

“Why did ‘spanking play’ even come up?”

“Even if you were to do as she says, you wouldn’t actually hit her until her tailbone shattered, would you? Then it’s spanking. I can guarantee you, having been hit by you, that it actually feels pretty good. I almost came, you know?”

“……Never mind. I won’t say anything. Just explain what you did.”

I vaguely changed the subject.
She wasn’t wrong. I had no intention of hitting Pechi, and even less intention of hitting her until her tailbone shattered. And I had no confidence in winning a battle of sexual innuendos with Rije.
Continuing this conversation would only be to my detriment.

“No, no. I didn’t do anything too bad, really? You asked me to take care of her, so why would I do something like that?”

“You mean you did something minor.”

“That’s… well.”

Rije walked over with an awkward expression. It seemed her conscience wouldn’t allow her to deny it. Nix trotted along behind her.
“……”

Seeing that I showed no sign of hitting her butt, and now seemed about to start a conversation while ignoring her, Pechi cautiously lifted her head. Her hot pink pupils slowly scanned me.
“U-Um. Delta-nim. My butt-“

“Hey, shut up! How dare you try to butt in on spanking play without any manners? I’ve barely even done that a few times myself!”

“H-Hieek! I’m sorry!”

Pechi slammed her head back to the ground. But her wiggling butt remained pointed at me.
When I first saw it, I was too flustered to notice, but now that I looked, her back was quite hunched. It was a posture that seemed to protect her stomach from being pressed by her knees.

“Why did ‘spanking play’ even come up?”

“Even if you were to do as she says, you wouldn’t actually hit her until her tailbone shattered, would you? Then it’s spanking. I can guarantee you, having been hit by you, that it actually feels pretty good. I almost came, you know?”

“……Never mind. I won’t say anything. Just explain what you did.”

I vaguely changed the subject.
She wasn’t wrong. I had no intention of hitting Pechi, and even less intention of hitting her until her tailbone shattered. And I had no confidence in winning a battle of sexual innuendos with Rije.
Continuing this conversation would only be to my detriment.

“I just stopped her from leaving, as you asked, and while I was stopping her, I tried to educate her a bit. Even if it was all your intention, Delta, it’s still true that she tried to swindle us.”

“I understand that far. But then?”

“We couldn’t have her get hurt, could we? So I just played with her appropriately, then threw her a potion and told her to drink it, and when she finished the potion, I played with her appropriately again, then threw her a potion and told her to drink it, and so on.”

“Potions? The ones I bought from her?”

“Yeah. You said you had no use for them anyway, so I could do whatever I wanted with them.”

There were a few moments when I needed to replenish my HP with health potions when using a blood-stained sword, but now that I had gained the urge to suck blood, I truly had no use for them.
So I told her she could use them freely.
‘……Wait a minute.’

For some reason, I felt like I understood why Pechi was in that state.

“How many did you give her?”

“Let’s see. I stopped counting halfway through, so I don’t know… About twenty bottles? No, maybe more than twenty?”

“Exactly fifteen bottles. Hehe. I just counted them.”

Nix pointed to the glass bottles rolling in a corner.

I didn’t care that they used the potions. Although I bought them with my own money, I had no need for them anyway. They were just items I bought to fulfill an event condition.

“You hit her with proper strength control, right?”

“Do you think I couldn’t even manage that?”

“Then, you gave her that many potions even though she had no injuries?”

High-grade potions weren’t such that all injuries would heal with just a few drops. Potions, surprisingly, had very precise specifications. Both the Empire and the Holy Kingdom were like that.
The high-grade potion I bought from Pechi had a volume of 150ml. Typically, that’s an amount to be consumed in 2 to 3 doses. But she gave her 15 bottles of it?
By simple calculation, she had consumed well over 2 liters of liquid, so it was a miracle her stomach hadn’t burst.

“What if she had an injury?”

Rije grinned. It was a smile that clearly showed she knew exactly what she was doing.
A Knight Captain of her skill and position wouldn’t fail to control her strength against someone like Pechi, nor would she be unaware that potions consumed without injury are nothing more than water.

Everything was according to my intentions, but it still felt bad that she tried to swindle me, so she probably tormented her in that way because there was no actual harm done, making it hard to just beat her up.
Even if she forced her to drink them, a potion is still a potion. If any side effects occurred, the potion would immediately heal them. I thought it was clever how she came up with such an idea.

‘Now I know why she’s like that.’

I looked at Pechi, who was still presenting her butt towards me, her waist bent forward.
I wondered why she was in such an ambiguously hunched posture, but it was because an enormous amount of potion was sloshing around in her stomach, and she was trying to prevent her stomach from being pressed.

The fastest way to get rid of the liquid in her stomach would be to get injured, so that seemed to be why she was begging me to hit her. This resolved most of my questions.

“Why specifically the butt?”

“Beats me? You’d have to ask her, since she’s lying prostrate.”

Just one thing remained.
If she wanted to get injured to consume the potions, she could just get stabbed with a knife, but I couldn’t understand why she was specifically asking to be hit on the butt.
Rije also tilted her head at my question. Her face seemed to ask why I was asking her that.

“Hey, did you hear that? She’s asking why the butt, out of all other body parts?”

Her blue pupils turned towards the floor. As the topic shifted to her, Pechi timidly raised her upper body. Her lower body remained kneeling on the floor.
Her hands were near her sides, suggesting her sides were cramping. It made sense, given that she had rushed over as soon as she saw me.

“W-Well, getting stabbed or cut with a knife hurts too much… But I thought, maybe with the butt, it might somehow be possible, you see…”

It was an even more absurd reason than I expected. Just because she disliked pain-it was truly the pettiness of a swindler.

“You said it was okay to hit you until your tailbone broke. Getting stabbed with a knife hurts too much, but a broken tailbone is fine?”

“T-That’s… because even if my tailbone breaks, it’s not visible, you see?”

“As if that would be fine.”

“Getting cut by a knife doesn’t even hurt that much. I’ve been cut a lot.”

Next to me, as I stared dumbfounded at her saying a broken tailbone was fine because it wasn’t visible, Rije threw out a joke that wasn’t really a joke. Although it sounded like a joke, it was more likely to be Rije’s personal experience.
I gave Nix a meaningful look. If she was afraid of getting stabbed by a knife, there was a much simpler way. Nix, understanding the meaning of my glance, conjured black flames in her hand and poured them onto Pechi.

“Kyaaaaaaah!”

A desperate scream erupted, and Pechi thrashed her limbs, rolling in the black flames. The black flames that had caught onto her body extinguished in less than 3 seconds. The scream also abruptly stopped.
“It’s done, hehe. I only burned off about 10 bottles worth of potion, so she should be fine.”

I stroked her head as a sign of approval. Nix grabbed my wrist and, in turn, rubbed her head against my hand even more vigorously.
Rije’s eyes narrowed at the sight. It was a look of protest, clearly asking why I wasn’t doing it for her, so I placed my other hand on her head. Her expression instantly softened.

“Ugh… it hurts…”

As I diligently caressed both their faces, Pechi let out a painful groan and slowly got up. Thanks to the potions, even though her entire body had been scorched, she was spotlessly clean, not a single thread left on her.

“Oh…?”

Yes. She was spotlessly clean, not a single thread left on her.

“Kyaaaaaah! My clothes! My clothes!”

Pechi, inadvertently looking down at her body, realized that her tights had all burned away in the black flames, leaving her naked. She let out a shrill scream and frantically covered herself.
With one arm, she covered the tips of her breasts, and with the other hand, she tucked it between her legs. I thought it was fortunate that her breasts were small enough to be covered by one arm. Rije and Nix, on the other hand, would never be able to do that.
‘Isn’t it practically the same whether she wears them or not anyway?’

In terms of coverage, her attire was indeed almost the same whether she wore it or not, but I had seen such changes in common sense more than once or twice, so I decided to let it slide.
At least when she wore them, they covered her nipples and pubic area.

“Hee-hee-hee…”

While I was seriously contemplating the purpose of clothes, Pechi, twisting and shuffling, walked a good distance backward and quickly picked up her coat and put it on.

“I-I feel strange…”

Having inadvertently become a pervert with nothing but a coat dangling on her naked body, Pechi’s face turned into a tearful mess. Did she know that the degree of exposure was actually worse when she walked around with her coat unbuttoned?

“Come over here once you’re fully dressed.”

From my perspective, her current attire was better, so I urged Pechi. She scurried closer.
“Pechi.”

“Yes, yes. Delta-nim.”

I considered pointing out that “Delta-nim” honorific, but decided against it. It would make her more clearly aware of the power dynamic.

“By now, you must realize that I deliberately kept you alive, right?”

“Yes, yes. I know. Thank you.”

Pechi nodded vigorously. As expected of a swindler, her perceptiveness was top-notch.

“Then, do you also know why I kept you alive?”

“……Yes. It’s because you have something you want me to do, right?”

“That’s right.”

Her pink pupils trembled for a moment, then returned to normal.

“I understand.”

“Good, what I need you to retrieve-“

“I’d rather die than sell my body, and I certainly wouldn’t give it away for free… but if my first time is with such a handsome man, that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

“Sell what?”

“The reason you kept someone like me alive could only be that-Hieek?!”

Pechi, who had been rambling on, completely misunderstanding the situation, shut her mouth and trembled at the sight of Rije, who was glaring at her and fiddling with a dagger.

“It’s not that kind of strange request, so don’t misunderstand on your own.”

“……Hiccup, I’m sorry. Then what do you want…?”

“You just need to get me one item.”

Originally, it was the final reward that marked the end of Pechi’s side quest. And to get it, you had to be betrayed about four times.
Even in the game, it was an item that could only be obtained as a reward for completing Pechi’s side quest, so I didn’t know how to get it outside of this route.

“What item?”

Her pink pupils wavered uneasily. She was acting like that because she wondered how big of a demand it would be, given that it was an item she had to retrieve in exchange for her life.

“A Golden Key.”

Pechi’s eyes widened at my words.