Luger’s world convulsed.
One second, he was drowning in a throat of tar, teeth and eyes, suffocated by the stench of ancient rot and ozone.
And the next...
-SPLAT.
Luger was ejected from the maw like phlegm, slamming into the damp earth with a bone-jarring thud that emptied his lungs instantly.
He scrambled backward on his hands and knees, crab-walking through the dirt while hacking up globs of neon-violet slime that burned his throat like acid.
Tears streamed down his face, mixing with the mucus and the mud, blinding him as he flailed wildly against the darkness, his fingernails digging into the rotting leaf litter in a desperate bid for traction.
"Gah! Haa... Haa..."
His heart hammered against his ribs with a violence that sent phantom pains shooting down his left arm, mimicking the onset of a coronary.
Frantically wiping the slime from his eyes, blinking rapidly to force his dilated pupils to adjust, he found the alleyway was gone.
And so was the warm amber glow of the mana lamps, replaced by a suffocating, abyssal gloom illuminated only by the pale light of the moon filtering through a canopy of skeletal branches that looked like clawed fingers reaching for the sky.
The air here was wrong, heavy, stagnant, and tasting of copper and ash.
"W-Who is it?!"
Luger screamed, his voice cracking into a humiliating falsetto as he scrambled to his feet, spinning in a frantic circle to find the enemy.
"Show yourself! I’m a Tier 3 Warrior! You hear me?! I’m Luger!"
He reached over his shoulder to draw his greatsword, his muscle memory reacting faster than his mind.
But his hand grabbed only empty air.
The memory of Nico crashed into him with the force of a physical blow.
And the silence that answered his scream was absolute, with a heavy, predatory weight that pressed against his eardrums, broken only by the wet sound of his own ragged breathing and the terrifying, rhythmic drip-drip-drip
And just as the tension threatened to snap the last fraying thread of his sanity.
-Rustle.
He spun around, but found nothing, breath hitching in his throat, only to freeze as warmth suddenly bloomed against his shivering spine.
Soft, slender arms slid around him from behind, wrapping around his slime drenched waist and chest with a delicate, possessive grace.
Luger looked down, his trembling eyes widening as he saw the hands of a maiden, pale as moonlight and adorned with bands of gold and emeralds, exploring the contours of his drenched leather armor before slipping beneath the fabric to touch his skin.
The sensation of her hands slithering through the goo on his body was... electric.
And not a breath later, felt the unmistakable, yielding softness of a woman’s chest pressing firmly against his back, followed by the rhythmic heat of breath trickling down the nape of his neck.
The primal terror that had paralyzed him a second ago evaporated, replaced instantly by a surge of dopamine so potent it felt like a drug injection directly into his brain stem.
His knees went weak, buckling from the sudden, overwhelming wave of ecstasy that rolled his eyes back into his skull.
"Mmh..."
An involuntary moan escaped his lips as a hot, wet tongue slithered up the nape of his neck, tracing through the goo with an agonizingly slow, sensual rhythm while her soft, slimy hand slid into his pants.
Luger involuntarily slumped back into the embrace, surrendering to the pleasure as the mouth behind him opened wide, unnaturally wide, to encompass the entire side of his neck while her hand explored between his legs with wet shlucks.
He felt the graze of her teeth, followed by the suction of lips that felt like velvet against his neck, while her other hand slowly slithered into his armor with the most delicate touch.
Luger drifted in the haze, drowning in the euphoria, before lazily peeling his eyes open to gaze at the woman who had claimed him.
He turned his head to the side, his lips parting in a smile to meet her gaze.
And the moment he did, his blood froze.
Staring back at him from mere inches away were two bulbous, milky spheres that glowed with a sick, internal light. They were lidless and wet, rolling wildly in sockets that looked like open wounds, set in a face of blue-grey skin that had split apart under the strain.
Deep, jagged fissures ran across her cheeks like dried earth, peeling back to expose the wet, raw red meat pulsing underneath, while strands of dead skin hung loose, dripping a yellow, oily serum onto his shoulder.
She didn’t blink. Nor did ’she’ let go.
Her mouth remained unhinged, stretched impossibly wide to engulf the entire side of his neck in a wet, suffocating seal.
Luger’s breath choked.
He could feel the teeth resting directly against his skin, scraping against his pores like needles hovering over a balloon.
While inside that wet cavern, her tongue continued to slither against his slime-covered neck in hungry circles over his pulse.
He felt her hands slowly callousing against his manhood and chest in a firmer grip.
The haze shattered instantly, replaced by a clarity so sharp and violent it felt like a physical blow to the skull.
And Luger’s mind broke.
His knees knocked together with a violent, uncontrollable rattle as the strength evaporated from his muscles, leaving him dangling like a puppet in her grip.
A single strangled, high-pitched whimper tore out of his throat, manifesting as a pathetic squeak of pure, primal regression.
The rugged arrogance of a Tier 3 warrior dissolved into the ugly, contorted mask of a terrified child.
Hot tears spilled over, mixing with mucus and mud before streaking down his face, while snot bubbled from his nose.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think.
He was entirely at the mercy of the monster’s clutch that was hardening against his most sensitive flesh.
"P-Pwease..."
The word bubbled out of him through the snot and the slime.
His eyes darted wildly in their sockets, pleading with the moon, the trees, the uncaring void, to everything, begging for a savior that wasn’t there.
He wasn’t a warrior anymore.
He was just a piece of meat, trembling and sobbing in the dark.
And a beat later...
He broke down into ugly, shoulder-trembling sobs, while his face contorted in a rictus of sheer misery as snot bubbled from his nose to mix with the tears streaming down his face.
"Ah-ha-ha-aaa!... someone... p-please!"
He wailed into the darkness, his voice cracking like a terrified child’s.
"I’m begging you... please... I swear I will be a good person! I’ll change! Please!"
And just then...
-CRUNCH.
-CRUNCH.
The sound of boots crushing dead leaves approached from the shadows behind.
"I sincerely recommend you do not move."
The voice that cut through the gloom was neither male nor female, but a hollow, vibrating chord that seemed to resonate with the darkness that surrounded him.
Luger’s ugly cries instantly intensified, spiked with a sudden, desperate hope.
"Please save me!" he screamed, straining against the grip of the monster holding him. "I’ll do anything! Please kill this thing! Please!"
"Now, why would I kill my own conjuration?"
The hope died in Luger’s throat, replaced by a cold, suffocating dread while the footsteps continued.
And the moment that figure came into view, Luger’s soul withered.
Standing amidst the darkness was a figure wearing the darkness itself like a cloak.
The shadows... they bled from the fabric, swirling and pooling around their frame like living smoke that devoured the moonlight, leaving only a silhouette of absolute void standing against the grey forest.
Luger’s eyes widened until they burned, his mind plunging into the deepest pit of despair he had ever known.
His trembling lips parted, shaping the word that every child in Shinkotsu feared.
"...A Heretic."
"Rude," the figure rasped, the shadows around them flaring as though offended before they took a slow, deliberate step closer.
"I prefer ’Asset’... currently consulting for Shinkotsu’s Secret Service."
The void where a face should be tilted slightly while the darkness wisped from that gesture.
"Answer a few questions, and I will let you go."
Through his sobs, Luger nodded violently, his neck grazing against the monster’s teeth as he surrendered completely to the fear.
After all, what choice did he have with that thing on his throat and blasphemy itself standing before him?
"You wonder why the City of Amaterasu employs the damned," the figure mused, as they leaned in closer. "Well, the dear goddess has yet to grace us with a Crusader. So the city’s simply fighting fire... with an inferno."
The Heretic raised a hand, the shadows swirling around their fingers before pointing at Luger.
"Now... you came into contact with a man named Arlath. And we suspect the man had ties to Entropy."
Luger’s lips trembled violently as the realization crashed into him as though it was the sky itself that he hadn’t just hired a hitman. He had hired a terrorist.
"He... he was one of them?" he rasped as his eyes widened in a new kind of horror.