[CONTENT WARNING: EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT]
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The Narkal metropolis was enormous enough to house all of humanity's half billion soldiers and some more.
Even after reading the detailed reports and studying the aerial projections that Alice's drones had produced before the assault, none of it had prepared them for the scale the humans were currently witnessing.
Thankfully, the current grandeur that was the Narkal's first base only worked to their benefit now.
The entire human great army, all of its tents and supply trains and field hospitals and artillery columns, fit inside this place with room to spare.
And most surprising of all, the walls still stood. That was the first thing that struck anyone who entered.
The Sin Lords had fought here at a scale that had reshaped the terrain for kilometers in every direction, and the metropolis's outer walls had absorbed the peripheral consequence of that and remained upright, because whatever the Narkals had built these walls from wasn't stone or wood or any material anyone had a name for.
They were dark and almost organic-looking, their surfaces slightly warm to the touch and unnervingly pliant under pressure; just enough to trigger an instinctive wave of disgust.
But the thing that took the cake as the most disgusting sight was, without a doubt, those fleshy pillars.
They rose from the ground at irregular intervals throughout the city, ranging from the height of a man to structures tall enough to shadow an entire block.
Their surfaces were pale and veined, and if one watched long enough, the veins would pulse at irregular intervals—as if struggling in vain to sustain something already dead.
Whatever spell the Sin Lords had cast on those pillars, it had rendered them incapable of fulfilling their original purpose.
That purpose was reproduction.
That was the conclusion the pink-haired woman had reached after witnessing chunks of raw flesh periodically split away from the pillars, only to writhe and twist in a futile attempt to form something humanoid.
They always failed.
In the end, all that remained was a half-deformed corpse.
As she walked through the makeshift passage between the tents, Lucia's thoughts drifted to a certain fact.
Every Narkal they had killed, every wave that had crashed against the human lines over the past four months—no, over thousands of years—had ultimately originated from structures just like these.
And now, they were withered.
But she couldn't be relieved even then, for she knew that these pillars were only some of them.
What was even more harrowing was that despite being devoid of even the faintest trace of vitality… despite clearly being dead…
Occasionally, even in that state, one would still produce.
A body would emerge from the surface of a pillar and slide onto the ground.
The biological process continued through sheer momentum, long after the mechanism driving it had been severed.
That alone painted a despairing picture of what they were capable of when they had still been healthy.
And somewhere out there, even now, countless healthy pillars were still producing.
As fortune would have it, the soldiers had stopped reacting to such scenes soon enough, staying true to humanity's adaptable nature.
On the first day, it had caused panic.
By the third, it had become just another feature of the environment—like rain.
Lucia passed two such incidents on her way to the command section of the occupied city, stepping around the resulting shapes on the ground without breaking stride.
***
The tent Ashen was using as his temporary quarters had been assembled against the interior of the metropolis's eastern wall.
It was large enough to serve as both sleeping quarters and a working office, which meant it was considerably larger than a standard field tent. Even so, it still felt crowded from the sheer number of reports and maps spread across every available surface.
Before Lucia pushed through the entrance flap, she felt as though she were passing through a thin membrane.
There was only slight resistance before she was allowed through. She recognized it instantly as Ashen's barrier. It was a spell he used whenever he did not want someone barging in on him.
…with a very few exceptions, such as her.
The next thing she noticed was the suspicious lack of sound coming from inside the tent. That was likely the work of a soundproofing spell.
Those two clues alone told Lucia the nature of the scene that awaited her inside.
Fwoosh…
And lo and behold…
Lucia's little nose twitched at the sweet scent in the air. She skipped right past Ashen's carefully neutral expression as he sat in the main office, her attention drawn instead to the space beneath the main table.
Alice was on her knees under it.
"..."
Gluck… gluck… gluck…
The angle of her posture, the position of her head, and the expression on Ashen's face as he acknowledged Lucia's arrival without so much as shifting in his seat told her everything she needed to know.
Shlurp… shlurp…
She stood there for a moment.
Then, deciding it was best not to acknowledge it, she walked forward and took her seat beside Ashen. From there, a single glance downward made the situation even clearer.
Alice's hands were bound tightly behind the small of her back with her own belt. Her military jacket hung open, buttons undone. Her huge tits spilled free, glistening with thick ropes of leftover cum that had escaped her mouth during the previous loads, while sweat soaked her uniform until the fabric traced every curve of her body.
Lucia's deadpan gaze drifted back to her skirt, which was bunched around her waist, allowing her tiny, soaked thong to make its appearance as it clung uselessly in the crack of her round ass, letting her plump cheeks spill out and pressed against the points of her high heels.
Lucia realized from the choice of panties that Alice probably planned for this steamy encounter.
'Still, isn't this too much?'
The con-woman had to consciously hold her facial expression from blushing as she noted Alice's expression.
Her eyes looked glassy and half-unconscious, but her body moved like a depraved cock-hungry slut that could not live without the huge cock in her mouth.
Her puffy lips, painted with soft rosé lipstick, stretched obscenely around Ashen's thick cock. The feminine color created a stark, dirty contrast to the way she slobbered and choked on him. Nobody would believe that such a beautiful authority figure was being defiled like this under a command table.
But here she was… gagging, slurping, and choking on it as obscene sounds filled the space while thick strings of drool and cum spilled from her stretched lips and dripped onto her bouncing breasts and coated them as they slapped noisily against each other from her frantic movements.
Eventually, Lucia let out a long, flat breath through her nose and looked back at Ashen.
"When I left earlier, I saw her just come in. Don't tell me she had been like this since that time…?" she said.
"Ehm… yes… about two hours now," Ashen answered, with a careful expression.
Looking at her expression, he was certain she had already formed more than one misunderstanding about him. Well… the situation was a bit too misleading, indeed.
"If you're that pent up," she said, taking hold of his free hand, "I could sub in. She's clearly checked out."
Ashen watched her interlock her lithe fingers with his and felt the urge to ask her why she was offering to replace her instead of simply joining in.
Eventually, he shook the thought away and decided to explain this ridiculous scene.
"I'd like to say it was my love overflowing for Alice, but it's not only that this time." He shifted slightly. "It's her skill."
Lucia raised an eyebrow.
"Reward Compulsion is the culprit," Ashen said. "It's a trait of her path skill that forces her to reward her thralls when they finish her orders. Back then, she had me running errands for more than four hours straight…"
"Ah." Lucia considered this for a moment, then allowed herself a small smirk. "A slave still needs his reward from the master after a job well done. Her abilities are surprisingly fair, for something designed to strip free will through pleasure."
"Fair?" Ashen rolled his eyes. "I'm more of the opinion that it's just a mechanic designed to make a slave more compliant under the guise of reward."
"I don't know whether I should be sad that our dear Alice couldn't use the skill to its full potential, or happy for the very same reason."
"I think it's just hilarious," Lucia said with a faint smile.
"What is?"
"You thinking she isn't using the skill to its full potential."
"Is that not so?"
"Definitely not." Lucia tilted her head slightly. "This Reward Compulsion trait is redundant, yes. It's obvious you'll obey her without her needing to bend over and bait you with her body…"
She paused just long enough for effect.
"…but the fact that she has the full cooperation of someone of your caliber already fulfills the skill's purpose—and then some, in my opinion."
Ashen frowned slightly.
Lucia continued. "How does skipping the persuasion stage mean she isn't using it properly? That's just putting the cart before the horse. Don't narrow your thinking, Ashen."
"…you're right." He nodded in agreement. One hand drifted down to stroke his eager lover's head.
"As for the trait," Lucia continued, dismissively, already moving on, "you can just use it as a kinky game between the two of you."
She placed her folder on the table, flipped it open, and smoothed the first page with the flat of her hand.
"Shall we?"