Beatrice approached the bound lamia priestess, and both hands were glowing with pink ethereal energy.
"Hiss... What... are you doing?" the lamia hissed, her serpentine eyes wide with a new kind of fear. She was struggling against the chains and my wraiths, her scaled body thrashing, but she was held fast. And when Beatrice was just three feet away from her, she froze.
"No!... Hiss... Stay back!" The lamia's panic escalated into outright terror as Beatrice raised her glowing hands. "You wouldn't dare! The consequences! The unbalancing! You can't—!"
Beatrice paid her no mind. With a precision that was almost surgical, she placed one palm over her head and the other over her scaly chest, right over her heart.
"Vinculum solve."
The words were ancient, heavy, and final. The pink light in Beatrice's hands flared, not violently, but with an intense, concentrated pressure that made the very air feel dense. The runes etched into the lamia's skin flickered violently, as if a power surge was tearing through them.
The priestess didn't scream at first.
Instead, her jaw unhinged in a silent, jagged motion, and a torrent of pure, liquefied mana began to pour from her eyes and mouth. It wasn't blood; it was the raw, stolen essence of the victims.
Then the runes began to peel.
Not physically.
Conceptually.
Threads of crimson light—thin as veins, thick as arteries—were dragged out of her body, writhing and snapping like living wires. They stretched from her chest and skull back toward the vortex, toward the distant lakes she had synchronized with.
The lamia found her voice again.
"You—fool—witch—you'll tear the weave—YOU'LL TEAR EVERYTHING!!" Her scream was a symphony of agony and fury, her human-like tones shredding into bestial, reptilian shrieks.
Each thread Beatrice pulled was a lifeline. A connection. As one was severed, the light in a distant lake would falter, its swirling vortex collapsing into a placid, bloody pool.
"HISSSSSSSSSS—!" The lamia's scream tore through the chamber as Beatrice pulled harder. The pink light intensified, compressing inward, isolating the crimson threads wrapped around the lamia's soul like parasitic roots.
Beatrice didn't blink.
Her expression was calm. Clinical. The same focused detachment she wore when we first met, but deeper now.
"I am not tearing the weave, priestess," she said, her voice low and steady, cutting through the lamia's shrieks. "I am correcting an error. You have tied a knot that cannot be untied. So I am cutting the rope."
With a final, decisive tug—
SNAP!
The last crimson thread was ripped from her body.
The effect was instantaneous.
The colossal blood vortex in the center of the chamber simply froze as if time itself had stopped. Then, like a house of cards, it collapsed inward. The lake settled, the surface becoming still and glassy. The oppressive, humming pressure in the room vanished, leaving behind a hollow, ringing silence.
"It's... done," she managed, her voice cracking.
"Not... quite..." I gritted my teeth, pushing myself up on my good leg, my mangled limb screaming in protest. "She's still alive."
That's right, the lamia was still breathing heavily, her serpentine body now limp. The glowing runes were gone, the magical energy that had animated her now completely severed. She was just... a lamia now.
"Are you going to kill her?" I asked, standing next to Bea, my eyes fixed on the defeated priestess. She looked up at us, her serpentine eyes no longer filled with rage, but with a deep, profound despair. There was no fight left in her.
"Of course," Beatrice said, her gaze unwavering.
As Beatrice was about to make a move, right at that moment—
Ding!
I heard the familiar notification sound in my head.
"Wait a second," I said, holding out my arm to stop her.
Opening my notification window, a single, glowing message stood out.
...
[Quest Updated]
[New objective: Devour the lamia priestess and the Heart of the Ritual]
...
"Aza?" Beatrice looked at my outstretched arm, then up at my face. She couldn't see the screen, but she could clearly see the shift in my expression—the way my pupils slitted and the hunger that started to leak from my aura. "What is it?"
"Change of plans," I rasped. My voice sounded deeper, grating like stones rubbing together. The pain in my leg was still a white-hot fire, but it was becoming background noise to a new, more primal urge.
I looked at the priestess, then at the blood lake, which I assumed was the "Heart of the Ritual."
"I need to... devour her," I said, feeling a heat building in my lower belly, "her and the lake."
Beatrice didn't flinch.
She didn't recoil or argue or ask for clarification. She simply lowered her hand—the pink glow fading to a soft undercurrent beneath her skin—and studied me with those unnervingly calm, star-bright eyes.
"Devour, both of them," she repeated. Not a question. Just tasting the words. "Are you sure? That's centuries of concentrated malice and the lifeblood of thousands. If you take that all at once..."
"I don't have a choice," I interrupted, my gaze fixed on the lamia. "It's a hunger I cannot ignore... plus I'll grow stronger when I eat her."
She was watching me now, her expression unreadable. She saw my leg—a mangled mess of flesh and shattered bone—but she didn't mention it. She knew it didn't matter. Not right now.
"Do what you must," she said, stepping aside. "But be careful. The ritual might be stopped, but its echo is still here. And it's... dangerous."
As Beatrice stepped away, I turned my full attention to the lamia. She was looking at me now, her serpentine eyes wide with a new kind of terror.
"Please..." she whispered, her voice a dry, rasping sound. "Don't..."
I didn't answer. There was nothing to say.
I walked toward the lake, dragging her bound body behind me.
When I reached the edge, I stored all my clothes in the inventory, leaving nothing between my red skin and the cold, damp air of the chamber.
No armor. No modesty. No barriers.
The hunger didn't care for cloth or propriety; it wanted flesh. It wanted essence, raw and complete.
The lamia's tail twitched once in my grip—reflex, not resistance. She was too empty now, too hollowed out by Beatrice's severing. Her scales felt strangely cool against my palm, like river stones left in shadow.
I stepped into the lake.
Or what was left of it.
The surface didn't part like water. It clung. Thickened. Welcomed. Warm and thick as fresh blood, it lapped at my ankles, then my knees, then my thighs like a lover tracing scars. Each inch it covered sent a shiver up my spine that had nothing to do with cold. The liquid heat pressed against every pore, seeking entrance, seeking surrender.
I pulled the lamia in after me.
She didn't fight.
"Please," she whispered again. One last time. "I can still serve. I can—"
"No," I said. Quiet. Almost gentle. Pressing my palm to her sternum, right where the final thread had snapped. "You can't."
I reached the center of the lake where that small stone island rose.
Thud!
The sound of her body hitting the stone was soft, muffled by the blood.
I sat on my bare butt right next to her, spreading my legs like I was about to give birth rather than commit an act of cosmic consumption. I lifted my gaze up and saw Beatrice watching me from the edge of the lake, her stare was... intense.
I felt a strange sense of... intimacy.
I even saw her right hand moving up and down under that cloak of hers, while her left hand was squeezing her left breast.
'What a pervy succubus,' I thought, a small smile playing on my lips, spreading my legs even wider for her.
Then, I reached down, my fingers closing around the lamia's head, dragging her between my legs.
The scent of her terror was the final ingredient. It mixed with the heavy, metallic tang of the lake, creating an intoxicating perfume that made my inner furnace burn hotter.
My pussy lips twitched, wetting in anticipation, not for pleasure, but for absorption.
I lowered her face toward my vagina.
It wasn't about lust.
It was about opening.
"Devour."
The moment I spoke,
My lower lips began to... change. They didn't just open; they bloomed. The delicate folds of flesh darkened, deepening into a swirling vortex of crimson and black. The entrance to my womb became a gateway, a bottomless pit of absolute emptiness that was the physical manifestation of my hunger.
It was not a hole. It was an absence of everything. A small, localized piece of the void. And it pulled.
"HISSSSS!!!"
The lamia's body convulsed, not with her own will, but with the irresistible suction. Her scales shimmered, then cracked, unable to withstand the metaphysical pressure.
Then a shadow tendril burst out of my womb.
A single, slender, yet terrifyingly strong tentacle of pure darkness.
It lashed out, wrapping around the lamia's head with shocking speed. Not with violence, but with an unbreakable, intimate grip.
"NOOO—!"
Her scream was cut short as the tendril began to pull.
It wasn't a yank. It was a… drawing.
Like thread through a needle.
Right into my hungry pussy.
And the moment the lamia fully disappeared between my legs...
"AHHHHH!"
Shadow tendrils burst out from every available hole in my lower half.
My pussy, my ass, and my succubus tail's tip.
They weren't just tendrils in normal size anymore. They were fat, throbbing tentacles of pure, living darkness, as thick as my own entire body. They whipped through the air with a wet, fleshy sound, then began to plunge into the blood lake.
Some even started to devour the runes that were engraved on the ground.
"Fuck, Aza... fuck... you... slut..." Beatrice moaned from the edge of the lake, her own fingers working furiously between her legs. "This is... insane... you're... ahh... hot..."