It started as a hum.
A low, resonant vibration that wasn't sound, but a tremor in the soul. It originated in my womb, the void-space where the lamia's essence was being devoured, then spread outward through every nerve, every cell.
Soon.
Boom! Boom!
The dark tendrils began to devour everything inside the lake: the congealed blood, the remaining bits of corrupted mana, the very runes carved into the edge.
The devouring wasn't clean.
It was wet.
It was violent.
It was intimate.
Each fat, obsidian-black tentacle that erupted from between my legs didn't simply pierce the blood lake—they embraced it. They coiled around the thick, syrupy liquid like lovers too greedy to let go, then flexed and squeezed. Crimson sludge ruptured upward in slow, obscene fountains before being dragged back down the pulsing lengths and into me.
Into the furnace.
Into the absence that now lived between my hips.
"Ahhh~..." I moaned, my head thrown back, my back arching in a way that should have shattered my already-broken spine. My mangled leg twitched, sending a fresh wave of agony through me that only served to sharpen the pleasure.
The pain wasn't an opposing force. It was an accent note.
A spice.
"MORE!" I roared, though the word was lost in a wet, gurgling gasp.
The tentacles didn't stop at the liquid. They burrowed into the masonry, their shadowy tips dissolving stone and ancient runes into dust that they eagerly inhaled. They found the deep roots of the ritual, the psychic anchors the lamia had planted into the very bedrock, and ripped them free.
Across the red expanse, Beatrice herself hadn't moved.
She stood ankle-deep at the lake's receding edge now, robes hiked to her waist, one hand buried to the wrist between her own thighs, the other braced against her breast so hard the flesh bulged between her fingers. Pink light leaked from every pore, but it wasn't controlled anymore. It flickered in erratic pulses, matching the rhythm of her ragged breathing.
Her eyes, those burning pink stars, were locked on my transforming body.
On the writhing forest of black feeding from the world.
"More," she hissed. "Take more, Aza. Drain it all. Every last fucking drop."
I couldn't tell if she was talking to me or to herself.
It didn't matter. The lake was shrinking.
All of it poured into me in a ceaseless torrent.
I hated every second of it.
And I loved every second of it.
My hips rolled forward involuntarily, grinding against nothing, chasing more contact, more pressure, more inescapable fullness. Yet I was still empty. The void inside me demanded fuel, and the world was obliging.
The stone island groaned beneath me, vibrating with the sheer force of the suction. My belly was no longer flat; it was a tight, pulsing mound, the skin stretched so thin that I could see the dark, ethereal shapes of the lamia's soul and the liquefied mana swirling within like a storm trapped in a glass jar.
"Fuck!"
Every time a tentacle retracted, slick and thick with stolen essence, it slammed back into my womb with a wet, heavy thud that echoed in the cavernous silence of the chamber.
"Aza... look at you," Beatrice whimpered. Her voice was thin, reedy, barely audible over the sound of the world being unmade. She had moved closer, her feet splashing in the shallowing remains of the blood lake. The pink light from her body was being drawn toward me too, flickering like a candle in a gale.
"You're... you're so beautiful." She didn't hesitate to lie next to me, tightly grip my jaw, and force me to look at her. Her face was flushed, her pupils blown wide. "So fucking... beautiful."
She leaned in.
Her lips met mine.
It wasn't a kiss of passion.
It was a kiss of hunger.
Damn, for a moment I thought that I 'shared' my devouring skill with her and she was using it to devour my mouth.
Her tongue didn't just slide against mine.
It probed.
Deep.
Like a snake searching for a nest of eggs in a hollow log.
I felt a strange, pulling sensation from the kiss. A faint, but distinct, drain.
She wasn't just kissing me. She was tasting. She was sampling the power flooding my system.
On the overflow.
Every time one of my tentacles withdrew from the shrinking lake and plunged back into my womb with that obscene, meaty slap, a thin ribbon of starlit essence leaked from the corners of my mouth. Beatrice caught it. Lapped it. Swallowed it down with a low, animal moan that vibrated straight into my lungs.
I should have pushed her away.
Instead, my clawed hand fisted in her hair and pulled her closer.
Our teeth clacked.
Blood—mine, hers, didn't matter—mixed on our tongues.
The kiss turned feral.
She bit my lower lip hard enough to tear; I answered by sinking my fangs into the soft inside of her cheek until copper flooded both our mouths. We drank from the wound like teenagers sharing a forbidden bottle, sloppy and desperate and utterly shameless.
"Aza... more..." she pleaded against my bleeding lips. "I can feel it... the memory... the knowledge... let me see!"
"Have it!" I snarled, my body convulsing as another wave of raw, untamed power flooded my womb. "Take it! Taste it!"
I didn't know how I was doing it. I just... let go.
I loosened the iron control I kept on the flood of information pouring into me. The countless screams, the fragmented thoughts of the sacrificed, the lamia's intimate knowledge of the Ouroboros, the Red Baron's plans, the architecture of the twelve lakes—they all spilled out, not just through my pussy but through our kiss.
...
Ten minutes later.
Ding.
...
[Quest Complete: The Secret of the Crimson Bastion]
[You have successfully infiltrated the Crimson Bastion, uncovered the secrets hidden deep within its labyrinth, and stopped the ritual]
[Reward: Unique summoning contract]
...
[New side quest]
[You have successfully uncovered the identity of the Red Baron]
[Objective: Find and kill the Red Baron]
[Rewards: Black Gold Treasure chest]
...
My eyes snapped open, only to find my vision was blocked by multiple system windows. I skipped the first two and focused on the third and the fourth, the ones that mattered.
…
[You have successfully devoured the lamia priestess]
[+100 points to Health, Mana, and Stamina]
[New unique skill acquired: Queen of Serpents]
[You can now command and communicate with all serpentine creatures, including lamias, nagas, basilisks, and lesser drakes.
Able to summon snakes. Their loyalty is absolute, but their strength depends on your level and willpower.]
...
[You have successfully devoured the Heart of the Ritual]
[+1000 points to Health, Mana, and Stamina]
[+20 to all attributes. +1 level to all skills]
...
"What a... harvest," I murmured, my voice barely a whisper.
"You... Aza..." Beatrice gasped, her body trembling against mine. "We need to leave."
"Ugh... how?" I growled. My body felt heavy, sluggish. "I feel... weak."
The devouring took a toll on me.
Even with the massive boost to my stats and the new skill, the act of consuming so much concentrated power and negative energy had left me feeling hollowed out.
"It's fine," she said, her voice firm. "Leave that to me."
Beatrice waved her hand, and from her storage ring a one-meter metal object appeared, floating in front of us. A single red button was visible on its surface.
"Hey.... is this?" I asked, my voice trembling.
"Yup," she smiled wickedly. "A pre-set magical bomb made by the gnomes."
Of course, it was a bomb. I recognized it instantly. In my old world, there were a lot of those things in my storage, but they were more powerful as they were made by the dwarves.
"Ah... Bea, I asked about how we should get out of here, not blowing up this whole place to the abyss," I protested weakly.
"I know, I know," she smirked, her crimson eyes glinting with mischief. "This is a farewell gift."
She waved a hand a second time and pulled out a magical scroll.
"Come, call your pet back," she said, unrolling the scroll. It was a teleportation scroll.
'Umbra, come back, we're leaving,' I mentally sent a command to my panther pet, who, during our fight with the lamia, was guarding the entrance to the ritual site, preventing the cultists from interfering.
Without a second delay, Beatrice pressed the red button.
"This was fun, Aza," she said with a grin.
"Fun? I almost died!"
"The best part of the fun," she snorted.
The moment she pressed the button, a small red light began to blink, faster and faster.
Beatrice stood there admiring her own work, the countdown already inaudible, a silent race against the void.
"Aa.. Bea," I tapped on her shoulder.
"Hmm?"
"Let's go," I said, pointing with my thumb to the teleport scroll she held.
"Oh, right, I forgot," she chuckled, swiftly using the teleportation scroll.
The world dissolved into a blinding flash of blue light.
The familiar, stomach-lurching sensation of teleportation gripped us—like being turned inside out and stitched back together in an instant. For a single, disorienting second, we were nowhere, floating in a kaleidoscope of screaming color. Then, reality slammed back into place.
The teleportation was a short one, only a few kilometers away from the Crimson Bastion.
We found ourselves on a desolate rocky ridge overlooking a vast, star-dusted plain. The Crimson Bastion was a jagged silhouette in the distance.
For about ten seconds, there was only the sound of the wind whistling over the rocks and our own ragged breaths.
Then...
BOOOOOOOM!
The explosion wasn't just a sound. It was a physical presence. A wave of pure force hit the ridge, making the very stone beneath our feet shudder. The air compressed, then rushed back in with a shriek that threatened to tear our eardrums out. The night sky, for a brief, terrifying moment, turned a brilliant, sickening crimson.
The Crimson Bastion, that formidable fortress of dark steel and malice, simply... ceased to exist.
"How about the people inside?" I suddenly asked, remembering the black-haired succubi who played the 'goods' part.
"Fuck them," Bea replied, her face a stoic mask of utter indifference.
"O-okay," I stammered, my mind reeling from the sudden violence and the casual cruelty of her words. "What now?"
"Hmm..." she mused, tapping her chin. "We fuck for a week. Nonstop, I'm so damn horny."
"Eh?"