"Of course. If you're willing to stay in my arms like this, I'll treat you very well… and I'll let you experience all the pleasures a girl should enjoy."
Li Ke smiled, lowering his head as he reached out to gently pinch Shinobu's delicate, cute chin. He lifted her face toward him, gazing at her beautiful features. At the same time, he could clearly feel the warm, heavy pressure of her massive breasts squeezing against his chest.
It was quite an interesting contrast.
Despite Shinobu's petite 1.5-meter height, her breasts were exceptionally large and soft. When she clung to him like this, Li Ke could perfectly feel the immense, pillowy softness that didn't match her small frame at all. Every slight movement caused those heavy, warm mounds to rub and press against him, the soft flesh constantly molding and shifting against his body. The sensation was incredibly arousing.
The sweet scent of wisteria flowers on her body mixed with the occasional brush of her chest against his hardening cock, putting Li Ke in an exceptionally good mood.
Looking at her small face — which was barely the size of his palm — an amusing image suddenly popped into his mind.
Hamster eating a banana.jpg
Shinobu's body was still too small. Although he knew he could visit her room tonight without issue, actually being able to enjoy himself fully with her would be very difficult. Sex wasn't just about the man's stamina — the woman's physical endurance mattered too. Even after being healed by his dragon fire, Li Ke estimated that after thirty minutes, he would have to start worrying whether Shinobu might actually pass out or worse.
In that case, truly enjoying himself to the fullest would be nearly impossible. It seemed he would need more…
Hm… but who else?
Li Ke's mind naturally drifted toward that girl named Kanroji Mitsuri. She was looking for a husband who wouldn't mind her enormous appetite and boundless energy. He perfectly fit those requirements.
"Mmm…"
Shinobu didn't know what Li Ke was thinking. She simply snuggled closer into his embrace. Li Ke could feel her soft, heavy breasts pressing even more firmly against his now fully erect cock. As the one receiving this "Favor", how could he not notice?
Sometimes, when a girl pretended not to know, she was actually tempting you on purpose.
Even Shinobu herself couldn't stay calm. Feeling the massive, hot, and thick bulge pressing against her body, her heartbeat quickened. She couldn't help but start worrying about whether she would actually be able to survive being with him.
Li Ke's size wasn't exaggerated like those monstrous cocks in certain videos — it wasn't twenty-plus centimeters of unrealistic fantasy. It was above average, and had grown noticeably after his training, but it was still within the realm of what a real person could possess. Unlike many actors who relied on surgery and other tricks, his was natural.
Still, for someone as petite as Shinobu, it would be more than enough to completely overwhelm her.
Li Ke smirked as he thought about how he could now lift an entire cartwheel with ease. His training in the One Piece world had truly paid off.
"Alright, most of the demons have been cleaned up. We should head back."
Li Ke smiled and wrapped his arm around Shinobu's slim waist, taking one last deep moment to savor the feeling of her massive, soft breasts squeezing against him. Then, without warning, he princess-carried her.
Shinobu let out a small, surprised sound, her face turning slightly red from embarrassment. However, she ultimately didn't resist. She simply wrapped her arms around his neck and allowed Li Ke to carry her away in his arms.
Right as Li Ke adjusted his grip to carry Shinobu back, he noticed Mai Shiranui staring blankly at the pile of smoldering ash on the ground. Curious, he spoke up.
"What are you looking at?"
Mai turned her head. Seeing Li Ke already holding Shinobu in his arms made a flash of irritation spark in her chest, but the real source of her mood was the remains of her fan. The weapon she had thrown out earlier had been utterly incinerated by Li Ke's flames.
Andy had custom-forged that steel fan for her years ago.
Now, it was nothing but a molten pile of scrap metal.
Yet, she couldn't reasonably place the blame on Li Ke. He had unleashed that inferno strictly to neutralize a swarm of lethal anomalies, making it impossible to hold a grudge against him for the collateral damage.
But staying completely silent left her feeling thoroughly frustrated. She didn't know what to say, she didn't know what she truly wanted, and she certainly didn't know what she expected Li Ke to do about it.
After wrestling with her thoughts for a long moment, she could only let out a defeated sigh.
"It's nothing."
Tightening her grip around Kashu, the sword Li Ke had loaned her, Mai turned on her heel and marched straight back into the city, completely disregarding whether any hidden monsters were still lurking in the shadows.
Li Ke couldn't quite decipher her mood swings, but he immediately picked up his pace to keep up with her.
"Hey! Watch out for the phantoms!"
As he called out, he carefully willed his elemental shield outward, enveloping the three of them in a protective layer of fire. Since Kanae Kocho's temporary spiritual presence had fully faded by now, his tactical management was a bit easier; he no longer had to maintain an exact, skin-tight proximity to shield a ghost from dissolving.
Mai froze for a second, realizing she had let her emotions make her reckless. But a quick glance around allowed her to breathe a sigh of relief. Li Ke's cataclysmic sapphire flames had literally melted the surrounding stone battlements into slag, leaving the entire gateway area completely devoid of monsters. If anything, the only issue was that a few small military outposts lining the wall had been set ablaze by the residual heat.
Fortunately, those structures were completely vacant. They were merely rest stations utilized by the city garrison during the day; since no sane guard patrolled the outer walls at night anymore, there were zero human casualties.
Li Ke didn't let his guard down, keeping his "Observation Haki" fully deployed to monitor the environment. He immediately perceived a massive structural shift. The thick white mist that had blanketed the entire port city earlier had almost completely evaporated. Even inside the residential houses nearest to the gate, the dense spiritual fog venting from the citizens had noticeably thinned out.
"So the logic holds true. It really is fueled entirely by raw human terror," Li Ke muttered, nodding slightly as he analyzed the shifting variables.
Confirming the fear-based mechanic meant the war wasn't entirely hopeless. At the very least, it proved the enemy's operational numbers and individual combat metrics wouldn't continuously multiply at a geometric rate if they could manage public morale.
Furthermore, it opened up a high-yield avenue to harvest elite manpower...
"Come to think of it... couldn't I technically resurrect Yoriichi Tsugikuni for a limited window?"
A sudden, game-changing realization flashed through Li Ke's mind. Yoriichi Tsugikuni was the absolute, undisputed power ceiling of the entire Demon Slayer universe.
If he used his system to pull Yoriichi back into the land of the living, they would immediately achieve absolute strategic dominance over the traditional demon threat. He wouldn't have to waste a single microsecond worrying about the Demon King Muzan, allowing his forces to focus their entire destructive output squarely on the mutated cosmic invaders.
"Though I still have a pretty bad feeling about how this chessboard is laid out..."
Li Ke rubbed his chin thoughtfully. If his strategic intuition wasn't playing tricks on him, there was a very high probability that Muzan himself had already been marked as a high-value capture target by the true cosmic masterminds behind the 7 Days to Die cataclysm.
While there was no concrete proof yet, Li Ke's narrative intuition told him that if a world operated like a story, it always had a central anchor.
He currently held World Energy, and the invading monsters were built from the exact same substance. If those cosmic entities managed to assimilate or drag Muzan Kibutsuji—a core character whose existence bound the fates of countless people—into their faction, they could easily harvest a staggering amount of World Energy, or completely devour this universe in one fell swoop.
Therefore, it was highly probable that they were actively hunting for Muzan.
This made reviving Yoriichi Tsugikuni—the ultimate countermeasure against Muzan—absolutely essential. Furthermore, Yoriichi could serve as the ultimate instructor for the modern Demon Slayer Corps.
"Looking at it that way, it's a win-win scenario with zero downsides."
Li Ke rubbed his chin and gave a firm nod.
"Alright, that settles it. I'll make that my next move and give Muzan Kibutsuji a little surprise!"
Having made his decision, they finally arrived back at their original destination. Unfortunately, no matter how hard they knocked on the estate's heavy doors, there was absolute silence from within. The complete lack of response pissed Li Ke off so much he almost torched the entire gate right then and there.
"Please don't be angry, Lord Li Ke," Shinobu comforted him softly, trying to soothe his temper. She gently took his hand, guiding him to sit down by the entrance, and looked up at him with a look of quiet hope.
"Would you mind lending me your embrace for a little while? I'm feeling a bit cold."
She genuinely wanted to avoid a political conflict with the local nobility, who had no way of knowing whether the people outside were humans or phantoms. Ordinary mortals simply couldn't gauge the supernatural. At the same time, she didn't want Li Ke to feel slighted or unappreciated, so she stepped up to smooth over the tension.
By doing this, the nobles inside wouldn't be backed into a corner, and as for Li Ke...
Flushing slightly, Shinobu leaned her entire weight right back into his chest. Li Ke let out a helpless sigh. If he weren't actively trying to win her heart, he would have broken the door down and left, but seeing her look so hopeful, he settled against the entrance and opened his arms to welcome her.
Since she was willingly offering her affection to calm his anger, he wasn't about to play the saint.
Blushing deeply, Shinobu crawled directly onto his lap, wrapping her arms naturally around his waist. She pressed her chest firmly against his robust frame, her curvaceous figure resting squarely over his lower lap, where his baseline desires had already generated a very clear, firm physical response.
She adjusted her position slightly, securing a comfortable hold around his arm while letting her frame remain completely flush against the fierce heat of his lap.
Li Ke unwrapped his sweeping travel cloak, draping the heavy fabric over her shoulders to seal out the night chill. He tilted his head back, texturing his expression into a mask of casual indifference as he stared up at the sun—though the sun was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a massive, breathtaking ocean of brilliant stars.
Shinobu snuggled closer, tracing his gaze up toward the magnificent, glittering canopy above.
Initially, she felt incredibly self-conscious and shy, given the prominent, rigid heat pressing against her from below. For any young woman, such an upfront display of male arousal could be quite daunting. But within a few minutes, the initial panic faded, and she found herself quietly listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
Li Ke's pulse was extraordinarily powerful, and his breathing was perfectly measured and deep. Listening to that heavy, reliable cadence, Shinobu felt her own heart rate accelerate in tandem, a wave of profound comfort washing over her.
Watching Li Ke look up at the stars with that distant expression, she couldn't help but feel a flicker of curiosity.
The moment Li Ke had draped his heavy cloak over her shoulders, she had mentally prepared herself for his hands to wander—whether that meant a stray squeeze on her chest, her thighs, or her hips. After all, he usually exuded the aura of someone incredibly impatient when it came to women.
Yet, after waiting for a long time, the only movement from below was the rigid heat pressing firmly against her. Li Ke's hands remained perfectly still, holding her securely as if his sole intention truly was just to keep her warm.
Seeing him staring so intently at the sky instead of looking at her, a strange, unexpected wave of disappointment subtly welled up inside her chest.
"Do you love the starry sky that much, Lord Li Ke?"
Li Ke gave a slow nod. He genuinely loved gazing at the stars, especially a brilliant, sweeping Milky Way.
Back in the One Piece world, whenever he found himself with free time, he would stare up at the heavens. He used to analyze that completely foreign celestial canopy, occasionally daydreaming that if he ever went up to the sky and thrashed Enel, he might actually be able to commandeer the golden flying ark, Maxim, and set sail to explore the vast cosmos.
In his original homeland, the concept of outer space carried an entirely different weight.
For a human race bottlenecked on a single planet, there was realistically only one true path toward endless growth and lasting peace.
Break away from Earth and head into the stars.
Only by venturing into the cosmos and tapping into practically limitless celestial resources could humanity take its next evolutionary leap, completely severing themselves from the destructive cycles of natural planetary disasters.
Even with all their modern advancements, humans remained utterly powerless whenever the planet decided to unleash its full fury.
If the exact same meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs were to strike the earth again, there was absolutely no guarantee that humanity wouldn't vanish into the history books of the planet's relentless cycle of life, leaving nothing behind but fossils just like the creatures before them.
The stars. The cosmos.
Ever since humanity's ancestors first looked up from the tall grass, humans had harbored a primal urge to eventually leave the cradle of their beautiful, yet unforgiving mother planet.
True victory over planetary extinction would only be achieved when humanity could reliably thrive among the stars, ensuring the species could never be erased by a single localized cataclysm.
Regrettably, given the nature of his dimensional abilities, his future trajectory involved hopping between entirely different realities rather than sailing across a single physical universe. The chance to pilot a starship through a conventional sea of stars was likely close to zero.
Yet, ironically, because his future trajectory involved hopping between entirely different realities, his opportunities to witness different cosmic vistas were theoretically infinite.
He was exploring the cosmos; he was just doing it across completely separate starry heavens.
It was the kind of thought that left a man feeling deeply melancholic, yet simultaneously filled with a boundless, sweeping ambition.
So, he offered that silent reflection to Shinobu with his nod.
"Yeah. I really love the night sky. Just think about it—how many cosmic secrets are buried within those glittering constellations? Those distant pinpricks of light have traveled for tens of thousands, millions, or even tens of millions of years across the void just to reach our eyes tonight. In fact, by the time we finally perceive their radiance, some of those stars have already burned out and ceased to exist. Isn't that a beautiful, haunting paradox? Even long after they've died, they can still project their light across the universe to be seen by us."
Li Ke took a deep, quiet breath, giving voice to the raw awe stretching through his chest.
His academic grasp on astronomy was casual at best, but his appreciation for the night sky was absolute. The primary reason he had always despised modern city life back home wasn't just the suffocating, breakneck pace of the urban jungle—it was the fact that a concrete metropolis completely choked out the natural rivers, the wild berries, and the vast, unblemished heavens.
The ultimate tragedy, in truth, was this—
The stars were gone.
The artificial glare of the concrete metropolises back home had utterly choked out the celestial light, and a heavy shroud of industrial pollution permanently veiled the sky. Gazing up at these pure, unblemished constellations and the pristine moon, Li Ke felt a deep, sweeping sense of peace wash over his chest.
Even if this moon and these stars no longer belonged to his original home universe.
The realization forced a quiet, wistful sigh from his lips.
Ancient poetry always wished for loved ones to share the moon's beauty across thousands of miles, but the moon hanging above him right now belonged to a completely different dimension.
Yet, analyzing his situation realistically, a displaced moon was a trivial grievance. Plenty of ordinary, modern corporate workers back home were far worse off than interdimensional travelers like him.
At the very least, a dimension-hopper maintained a concrete, systemic possibility of returning home. If they failed, it was strictly due to objective mechanical milestones, and they were constantly rewarded with reality-bending methods to grow stronger along the way. Conversely, an ordinary cubicle worker was often so thoroughly trapped by the systemic grind that they couldn't even afford a ticket home, even when their hometown was right there on the map.
Shinobu's acute intuition picked up on the sudden wave of melancholy rolling through his frame. Marveling internally at his unexpected grasp of advanced astronomy, she softened her voice to a gentle, comforting register.
"You've grown sad again, Lord Li Ke. Are you missing your family?"
Her face looked beautifully ethereal under the pale moonlight. For the first time, her historically vacant, unseeing eyes flickered with a completely different, warm light.
Because she had finally detected a fundamental, shared trait between them.
An absolute, unwavering devotion to family.
"...You can actually perceive that?" Li Ke asked, mildly surprised by her emotional accuracy.
Shinobu offered a slow, validating nod. Smiling softly, she leaned her entire weight back into his chest. This time, however, as she cradled his arm, her posture was entirely stripped of any underlying, calculated desire to seduce him; it was a pure, unadulterated expression of wanting to be close to him.
"Because in the past, whenever I found myself desperately yearning for my sister, I carried that exact same expression."
Li Ke fell silent for a long moment. His structural situation was fundamentally different from hers. Once he successfully returned to his home timeline, he could effortlessly weaponize his resurrection protocols to pull his entire family back into the land of the living, ensuring a permanent reunion. Even if his journey dragged on for so long that human civilization on Earth collapsed, he could still gather his loved ones under his roof. Furthermore, there was a very high probability that he could leverage his World Energy to leap precisely back to the microsecond he had departed.
This safety net was the exact reason he had ceased to feel a frantic, desperate urgency.
But Shinobu didn't possess that luxury. For her, her entire immediate family had been brutally, permanently erased from the face of the earth.
Li Ke reflexively tightened his embrace around her petite, wonderfully soft and curvaceous frame, his tone softening completely.
"Do you want me to permanently bring your older sister back right now?"
For the first time tonight, Li Ke's scoundrel heart had genuinely softened. He felt that he could easily afford to resurrect Kanae Kocho immediately; after all, Shinobu was already firmly bound to his side anyway, so there was no point in holding out.
Yet, to his absolute astonishment, Shinobu looked up into his eyes and gave a gentle, smiling shake of her head.
"No."
"Huh?"
Facing his pure bewilderment, Shinobu raised her hands, tenderly cupping his cheeks as she spoke.
"As far as my sister is concerned, I already possess a beautiful lifetime of memories with her. Even if she is no longer by my side, I can easily carry those happy echoes to keep fighting on the battlefield. But... I have yet to forge a single beautiful memory between just the two of us, Lord Li Ke."
She paused, her gaze locking dead-center onto his eyes with absolute clarity.
"Whether I analyze this from a cold, strategic standpoint or follow the dictates of my own heart, you are the absolute most suitable husband for me. Because of that, I want to begin building our own beautiful history together."
Leaving him with those final words, she fell silent, gently closing her eyes as the soft moon and starlight blanketed her pristine, pale cheeks. At some point during her movement, the high collar of her tailored Demon Slayer Corps uniform had come undone, elegantly exposing the refined definition of her collarbones to the night air.
Li Ke didn't hesitate. Gripping her hands firmly within his own, he leaned down and claimed her lips.
And in that next breath—
He tasted the exquisite, intoxicating flavor of wisteria.