It was dawn. A faint blue twilight glimmered through my eyelids.
I should have woken up by now. But I pulled the blanket over my head and burrowed deeper into bed. If something is "right," that simply means you're free to disregard it whenever you feel like it… Is that sophistry? No. If something can't be wrong, then it can't be right either… In short, I wanted to sleep more. I had every right to. And who exactly had earned the greatest merit in the vanguard? They'd all turn a blind eye to a little laziness like this.
"My lord."
At some point, Schopenhauer had set out to investigate what common thread united all human beings, regardless of nationality or station. His answer was simple: laziness. That, he declared, was human nature, the human essence, the human ideal. All human beings were equal in their laziness. Which meant that my current act of hiding under a blanket at dawn was perfectly justified on Schopenhauerian grounds…
"My lord, wake up."
As long as a lie is never exposed, is it truly a lie? Newton bristled his mustache and roared: the apple had flown upward! Apples, weary of falling, occasionally float up instead… Newton grew excited as he proclaimed this new truth. His partner, surprisingly, was Commander Zepar. Ah, so. Zepar and Newton were partners. Had my subconscious paired them together? All I could do was marvel at my own creativity.
"Hah. Looks like my lord intends to be a lazybones today."
"Why is Commander Zepar the guard… mmghh?"
"If you don't wake up, I'll do something naughty."
"Aristotle is his concubine… what excellent chemistry…"
"Fine."
I felt something squirming. It was the blanket. Blankets sometimes move, you know. In a world where apples fly toward the sky, a little blanket wriggling about was hardly strange.
"Mmm… mmph…"
Something warm enveloped my lower body. And then—
"GAAAH?!"
My skull went numb. An intense wave of pleasure surged upward. My spine shuddered, and my hips bucked involuntarily. My brain hadn't yet recovered enough to send commands to my body, so it was simply swept away by the torrent of sensation that had broken through the dam all at once.
"Sluuurp… mmf, mmm."
"What, what, what the— nngh!"
I barely managed to process what was happening and threw off the blanket. A blonde girl had her head buried in my lower body. It was Laura. She was going down on me while I was still completely soft. Her technique was quite unique—she used the fingers of both hands to spread the foreskin wide. Once the skin was peeled back like a flower's petals, she licked the exposed flesh underneath with her tongue. I had never received oral sex like this before, and I had never felt pleasure anywhere near this intense!
"L-L Laura. Hold on. Calm down. Let's just talk, just for a sec!"
"Mmph, nn, mmmn, mmph…chuup."
"Kguuuuuuhhh!?"
Pleasure exploded all over again. My back arched up like a shrimp. My mind went blank and I collapsed onto the bed, gasping for breath. Like a flower snapped at the stem and left on the bare ground. For some reason, a ding! sound echoed inside my head.
Laura spoke to me as my consciousness turned white.
"Gulp.……Good morning, my lord."
Her voice was as serene as ever.
"I hope you slept well last night."
"Thanks to someone, I slept v-very comfortably."
This wasn't working. My words were trembling. I couldn't control my tongue.
"What the hell was that just now?"
"What do you mean, 'what'?"
"That thing just now."
Laura wiped the corners of her mouth with a handkerchief. Besides saliva, some white, cloudy liquid was smeared on her face. She tidied herself up neatly.
"Hmm, it's called fellatio, isn't it? I don't know why you're so surprised—it's not like I haven't done it before. I'm pretty sure we did it behind the barracks just the other day, too."
"That's not normal fellatio, that's why!"
"Ah. I see."
Laura nodded.
"So it was your first time. What I did just now is what I personally like to call 'skin fellatio.'"
"F-foreskin fellatio."
I unconsciously repeated after her. These were not words a noble young lady raised as the precious jewel of a duchy should have in her vocabulary. Whether or not she noticed my dumbfounded expression, Laura proudly explained what "skin fellatio" was.
"First of all, skin fellatio can only be done when the man isn't erect. You peel the skin back like this and lick the inside — that's skin fellatio. Once he's erect, the shaft and the skin both go taut, so you can't peel the skin back separately. In other words, it's only possible when the skin hangs loose like excess flesh."
"Dick, shaft, skin…"
A chill ran down my spine. Who was it. What kind of person had turned a seventeen-year-old girl into someone who could utter those words without hesitation? The phrasing Laura was using now wouldn't have been strange coming from a thirty-seven-year-old, let alone a seventeen-year-old.
"I heard this fellatio provides a special kind of pleasure unlike any other. So I tried it today. I'm glad my lord seemed to enjoy it."
"The pleasure is far too intense. And calling it a dick skin — isn't that filthy? Please maintain some dignity as a young lady, some dignity."
Laura tilted her head.
"My lord doesn't excrete waste or even sweat. Where would the filth come from?"
"Ah."
That was indeed true.
Ever since becoming a Demon Lord, unless I ate a truly enormous amount, there was no need to relieve myself. Sweat was the same — I had to run until I was practically on the verge of death before a few drops would trickle out. I'd been so curious about it that I looked into it, and apparently over half of a Demon Lord's body was composed of mana or something to that effect. In other words, the unpleasant urine smell and grime that normally accompanied fellatio simply didn't exist for me.
As the pleasure receded like the tide, I began to register the situation in front of me. Something was floating in the air. A hologram. On the blue hologram, the following words were written:
"Laura de Farnese's job level (Sex Slave) has increased!"
"……."
I stared at the hologram in blank disbelief. I checked my Status Window, and sure enough, the Sex Slave job level had risen from Level D to Level C. So, doing that skin fellatio thing had caused Laura's job level to go up. What could I even say about that… it was an extremely postmodern way of leveling up.
"Get up already. It's been ages since the roosters crowed. A healthy mind resides in a healthy body, and a healthy body comes from healthy habits."
"Mmh. I know."
I got up. In truth, as a Demon Lord I only needed two or three hours of sleep a day. I could go four consecutive nights without sleeping and still feel perfectly fine. I'd been pulling all-nighters for days on end, so today I just wanted to sleep in a little more. Pushed along by her nagging, I started changing clothes — and from behind me, Laura muttered something chilling.
"Mm, it worked well. I should wake you up like this every morning from now on."
"……."
Going to level up, Laura?
I finished getting dressed and stepped out of the tent. I rinsed my face lightly from the washbasin placed at the tent entrance. The dawn breeze coolly caressed my face. After a long stretch, I gazed at the scenery before me. A vast plain. Thousands of bonfires were burning.
The monster legions had no need for tents or shelters. Bonfires were more than sufficient. Some monsters even disliked bonfires, finding them too hot. They divided themselves by race, sleeping with their families and companions pressed skin to skin. Tens of thousands of hazy emotions soaked into my heart.
I felt the monsters' emotions for a moment, then consciously turned away from them. Lately, I'd become proficient at reading others' emotions. I could block them out to some degree if I didn't want to feel them. Extremely intense emotions, like the excitement of battle, were harder to ignore. But anything became familiar with enough practice.
Just then, a giant strode over from the open ground opposite. There was no need to guess who it was. There was only one giant over four meters tall, excluding Ogres. The giant waved his left hand at me in a show of welcome.
"Well, well, look who it is. Isn't this the favorite concubine Lord Barbatos dotes on so?"
It was Beleth, the 13th-ranked Demon Lord. I grimaced internally.
"Good morning."
"Yes, a very fine morning indeed. Seeing your face makes an already pleasant morning even better, it seems. *Cough! Ptui.*"
Beleth spat a gob of phlegm on the ground. He really wore his intentions on his sleeve.
It didn't bother me. Ever since Barbatos publicly declared me his favorite concubine, Beleth had been treating me exactly like this. He was the world's most petty lolicon creep.
"Hey."
Beleth bent his waist low, shoving his face close to mine. Don't come any closer, you ogre boar. If your lolicon stench seeps into my clothes, who's going to be responsible?
"Yes. What is it?"
"*Ahem.*"
The mountain boar snorted through his nose. What was with this guy? Was he hungry? Was he being coy to beg for food from me now? There were hundreds of smoked human carcasses in that tent over there; he should just go eat those. Being coy with me at this point would only cause trouble for him.
"*Ahem.* There's something I want to discuss with just the two of us."
"……The Laura de Farnese here is my loyal subordinate. Please don't feel the need to exclude her."
"No, *ahem.* It's just that it's not suitable for a woman to hear."
Beleth sharply furrowed his eyebrows.
"I'm sure you can figure that much out on your own!"
I was stunned. That Beleth—whose brain looked like it was half made of muscle—actually had enough rationality left to distinguish between women and men! If I published this as a paper, the academic world would be turned upside down, no question about it.
What's more, this wild boar had used the advanced vocabulary word "figure it out on your own"... Perhaps the creature actually considered itself a person with its own personality. It was enough to shake heaven and earth. The academic world would surely hold a serious debate on whether wild boars should be accepted as part of the demi-human race.
"Laura, I need to have a brief word with Lord Beleth."
"Understood. I'll wait up ahead."
Laura gave a deep bow.
As she walked off to a clearing some distance away, Beleth brought his face even closer. For reference, his nostrils were as large as my entire head. Hot breath streamed in and out of them without pause. I thought a fan was blowing air at me.
"Hey, you. About that thing."
"Yes?"
"Ahem. Ahem-hem—so, you know. That thing. Was it that thing?"
I stared at Beleth like he was a lunatic. It seemed this ogre-wild boar hybrid had his own special language. A language made up entirely of demonstrative pronouns. He managed to communicate everything with just the single word "that thing." Well, given that his brain had been replaced entirely with muscle, it was hard to expect him to construct language beyond the word "that thing."
"Could you please speak clearly? I can't understand you."
"I'm asking if you slept with Lord Barbatos!"
Oh boy. A headache came crashing in.
This guy, who was over fifteen hundred years old, was stammering just to ask whether someone had slept with someone else. A being who should know everything, acting all shy and awkward like this. I shot back at him with a voice that practically said, "You're really pathetic, you know that?"
"Are you really that curious? You asked the exact same question yesterday. Anyone watching would think Lord Beleth was a virgin."
"W-who said I'm a virgin?!"
Beleth leaped into the air. When a four-meter giant stomped his foot, the ground shuddered briefly beneath us. The wild boar was no ordinary wild boar either. If you roasted just one of them, an army of twenty thousand could eat their fill for three days.
Beleth muttered in a voice as small as a mosquito's.
"I've just been abstinent for the past fourteen hundred years, that's all."
"...Excuse me?"
"Since the day I first came into the presence of Lord Barbatos, I have never once been with a woman. To do so would be an insult to my devotion to Lord Barbatos."
Beleth wore an utterly earnest expression.
What the hell was this half-ogre bastard rambling about?
"I swore an oath one thousand four hundred fifty-six years and forty-six days ago. It was a truly historic moment—the day Lord Barbatos and I first met. I swore that until the day my heart for Lord Barbatos fades away, I would never so much as glance at another—"
"One moment, please, Lord Beleth. I'm asking this because I genuinely don't understand."
"What is it? I was just about to tell you how incredibly manly I am."
Beleth pouted, clearly displeased. Honestly, it was enough to make me want to vomit, but I held it in and spoke.
"So in other words, Lord Beleth… you haven't had sex in over fourteen hundred years? And you remember the exact day you met Lord Barbatos, not even by year, but down to the individual day?"
"That's right."
Beleth nodded with confident conviction.
"That is how genuine my heart is."
"..."
I was certain now. This guy was a complete nutjob.