“Like me… you like me…”
Creis’s face turned scarlet as she carefully turned over the meaning of every word Olivia had spoken.
There was far too much she still had to repay, and that included healing Olivia’s sickness and her heart.
She wanted reconciliation with Olivia.
She wanted Olivia’s love.
She wanted her daughter to understand her.
Every one of those ideals was slowly coming true.
Creis was satisfied—or rather, she was happy—and that was why she had tested Olivia on her own.
She had wanted a clear result.
She had known the price of failure, of course, yet she had still chosen, on impulse, to trust Olivia.
She had heard them—a whole string of confessions.
“That’s right. I like you~”
Olivia wore a frenzied smile.
The heat radiating from her body grew fiercer.
The shadow swelled further, covering the window and spreading across the floor like countless black cobras slowly coiling around the bedroom, wrapping it completely until the last thread of light was swallowed.
A tide of shadow swept the entire room, drowning the place like a boundless black ocean and leaving only a warm, dark space that dripped scalding liquid, rolling and surging just like Creis’s body.
It was as if this had been a prepared trap all along, waiting for Creis, the little white rabbit, to leap in of her own will.
And now she could not even struggle.
“So I will answer the question you asked earlier. The reason I only acted now is that you were not ready at all. You were too immature, too cute. From the moment I decided to kiss you I considered whether I might be exposed. I’m sorry. I like you far too much. I wanted all of you. I wanted the moment you could accept me. When that moment came, you would not even resist. You would take me in, because your heart would already have been corroded through by me.”
“This is my love, Creis~”
With that, Olivia kissed her lips, a dragonfly’s touch that left behind a thread of honey-sweetness and lingered, unwilling to leave.
Creis let out a faint moan.
Olivia’s body was scorching.
“Nnh…”
“Creis, become a weapon of His Majesty the Evil God, just like me.”
“You want to turn me into an apostle?”
“That’s right. An apostle.” Olivia gave a light laugh.
Creis lowered her head.
Right now she only wanted to hide her burning face so that no one would see it.
The strange wickedness of the apostles echoed through her mind again and again, yet the desire that rose from her own heart—the wish for Olivia to like her—shattered those images over and over.
She was like a bird that could no longer fly above a pitch-black ocean, about to fall into a warm abyss.
She did not know how to answer, and she did not want to answer.
It felt as if refusal would make the tragedy repeat itself.
Very soon Creis learned she was wrong.
This time was different from every time before.
She had no right to choose.
It began with her lower abdomen.
The shadow swelled until her senses seemed stuffed full of cloying sweetness.
By the time she realized it, everything around her was wrapped in black viscosity.
A tail pressed against her delicate body and branded the first mark of humiliation onto skin as flat and fine as porcelain, marked with a few beautiful lines.
That mark was a demon sigil.
“Ah, huff…”
Creis moaned.
She knew the ritual had begun.
For the first time she tasted defeat.
Her body wanted to react on instinct, yet it also accepted what was happening on instinct.
Until the light on those pink markings gradually faded, and the ruined maid outfit dissolved with them into the sticky shadow.
The echoes of her own sweet gasps turned her pride into burning shame once more.
“Creis has always been this slow. You only ever know what you ought to do at the very last moment. For example, becoming one of us.”
“It’s a pity, though. You don’t seem quite the same as the other Heavenly Oracle Envoys. Corrupting you is rather difficult.”
“I’ll do my best, all right?”
Olivia smiled with certainty, as if she had already decided Creis belonged to her.
“I will become a weapon of the Evil God…”
“Mm-hm.”
“It’s dangerous. I… we will all become puppets.”
“At least we will still be together, loving each other.”
“Love…”
“Lord Evil God gave us the right to love.”
When Creis’s doubtful, bewildered heart was filled again by Olivia’s affection, fierce feeling and sweet kisses together eroded her pure white soul.
She was pinned to the bed.
Before she could react, Olivia bit her mouth.
They had done this before, yet it was different this time.
It was fiercer, more intoxicating, more obsessive.
It seemed that being with the one she liked made even treatment this aggressive feel like it did not matter.
Olivia’s movements never stopped.
She had long since laid layer upon layer of arrays through the room, and she activated every one of them now.
When the demon tail touched her body it resonated violently with the markings on her neck and lower abdomen.
Seeing the familiar clear luster on Olivia’s delicate body, glittering with a drunken light inside the shadow, Creis trembled a little, tipped her head back, and, without noticing, let out wave after wave of broken cries.
“Ah, haah…”
“Oli…via…”
Light smacks sounded like punishment and like mockery of her defeat.
With every shift of their bodies, a little more of Creis’s consciousness scattered.
Creis moaned without stopping.
Even so, she still endured every moment in humiliation.
My body is so hot, as if something is eating into it.
It began with her head.
It was not a forced pouring-in of thought.
It used warmth to make her remember beautiful things, and it was not even dangerous.
It was like holding a piece of honey candy and feeling it melt slowly on the tongue.
Then came her neck.
Everything that resisted Lord Evil God would be erased.
Her lifeline would rest in the Evil God’s hands.
All of it would belong to this “senior,” Olivia.
Next were the demon markings, made to recall Olivia’s dominance, the intoxication of being kissed, Olivia’s confession and her love.
At last, when Creis began to deny the former icy Celestial God who had cared only for her goals, the shadow began to erode her soul.
Creis’s hands locked tight with Olivia’s.
Her eyes had rolled up a little and could no longer fix on anything except the shadow.
Her body felt as if it were melting in honey.
“Nnh… mph…”
The power that belonged to a Celestial God opened like a budding flower peeled back layer by layer, exposing the most fragile part inside.
Shadow and authority toyed with its pistil.
Creis sometimes curled in on herself, sometimes offered token resistance, sometimes laid every fragile part of herself bare to Olivia.
After that, the process simply repeated.
Olivia had been right.
It was difficult for one divine authority to erode a god.
It should have been a painful process.
Yet Creis found, wretchedly, that she—a Celestial God—was accepting it of her own will, even enjoying this pitch-black love, about to sink into the lingering symphony of pleasure and broken cries.