Work Text:
Makoto kicked the corpse of the Greater Minor Demon. It was overkill–the thing was definitely dead, but it never hurts to check if a Demon can still feel pain even with an axe jammed two thirds of the way into its skull. Finding the thing satisfactorily deceased, Makoto reached out to grab his axe and then spit a curse as it glimmered for a moment before vanishing, its Magicked Energy apparently depleted.
“Elycia!” Makoto called without turning around. “Can I get a new weapon? I think we have a few more guys ahead.”
“We should make camp, Master,” Elycia said quietly. She’d been right behind him, as usual. He should probably expect that by now. “The moon will rise soon, and the Demons’ energies will be–”
“Yeah, no, you’re right.” Makoto sighed. He checked the Magickal Device on his wrist. The lights on the Energy Siphon indicated he was close to having enough stored Energy to raise an Attribute soon. That made…
He counted the symbols glowing on the edge of the Device. It took him a minute–even after years of learning the other world’s language, counting in base 8 was still a pain in the ass–but he felt himself grinning as he reached the number 998. 998 times he’d filled up the Siphon and converted the Energy into his Attributes: strength, speed, social, and sex appeal.
That had to be close to max, right? If there was a max. With how things have gone so far, he wouldn’t be surprised if he had infinite potential. Maybe he’d get some kind of bonus skill for it, or maybe he’d be able to unlock a secret romance route–the Goddess? The princess of a nearby kingdom? Liz?
He heard a raucous laugh from behind him, where Liz was watching Irinabeth attempt to light a campfire. Irinabeth was blushing and stuttering, as usual, but the tiny smile playing across both of their lips was something Makoto only saw when they didn’t know he was watching.
So yeah, maybe Liz would be the secret route. He just needed some special skill that made him appeal to that kind of girl.
Camp was made, dinner was served, and sleep came to everyone fairly easily after the high level encounters they’d had that day. The moons made their way across the sky, one after the other, until the sun poked its head back out into the horizon.
Makoto didn’t get the chance to see the dawn, as he’d woken up in complete darkness.
His tent was nowhere near blackout-dark, even the nice one they’d gotten a few towns back, which meant that either it was still nighttime, or he’d been taken somewhere else. But that was impossible–he had better senses than that, even dead asleep; any enemy within a hundred yard radius would be easy to find and hunt down.
Okay. Time to take stock of the situation. Makoto sat up–or tried to, but his body wouldn’t move the way he told it to. It felt like a strain just to flex his fingers, let alone push himself into any kind of upright position. Some kind of energy draining spell, he guessed, but who–
A shape suddenly filled Makoto’s vision–amorphous yet distinct from the darkness around it, with no distinguishing features but a presence that set Makoto’s hair on end.
The thing hummed, a strange noise that reverberated across its formless form, vague semblances of color shifting through patterns that made Makoto feel ill. He tried to speak, move, anything, but whatever spell this creature had put on him was holding strong, and he was helpless to do anything but feel his skin crawl as he was abruptly lifted up by a few extensions of the creature’s body–he might call them limbs, if he could tell what was a limb and what was the body.
The feeling was revolting; not as sticky or wet as a Slime, but lacking the warmth of skin or the softness of fur. It occurred to him that he was judging the feeling more by what was missing than what it had, but Makoto was never one to philosophize further than that.
The only way Makoto knew he was moving was the faint wind on his face, as the thing carrying him made no sound as it rode smoothly through the darkness. Makoto’s mind, meanwhile, raced frantically, bouncing around ideas and crashing into walls more often than not. Where were they going? What was this creature? The spell must be wearing off soon–something this powerful can’t have that long of an effect, right?
He hasn’t faced an opponent more powerful than him since he received his latest Blessing from the Goddess, said to be the greatest of all boons–a vague description, compared to the others which had all been named things like “Blessing of Great Speed” or “Blessing of Golden Tongue.” He’d enjoyed that one quite a bit, actually, but it seemed useless to him now without any control over his jaw, let alone his tongue.
He felt like he was shaking, but even that was denied to him, leaving Makoto feeling like a spring coiled too tightly and threatening to snap.
The thing holding Makoto stopped after some time, and Makoto blinked–blinked! That was a good sign–as a dim red light came into view.
The light did not illuminate the creature; it instead faded away the brighter the light became, until it appeared to shatter into small specks of red-tinged dust. Makoto felt himself touch the ground–whether he had fallen or was placed there, he couldn’t quite tell–and he let out a sigh of relief at the feeling of cool stone against his back.
He sat up–slowly, with much effort, but he managed it all the same–and blinked into the dim light until his eyes focused on a shape looming over him, this one much, much larger than the creature from earlier.
You.
It wasn’t the first time he’d encountered a creature with telepathy, but this felt less like the strange but legible communication he’d experienced with the sky-folk above the mountain range to the east, and more like a physical force bludgeoning his head with the message it brought. He couldn’t hear it in his ears, but he could hear the rush of blood as his adrenaline spiked in fear.
The figure in Makoto’s vision was enormous, he could tell even in the dim light that he could now see was being emitted by crystals embedded in the cave walls. They looked magical, but he couldn’t tell if they were in any way powerful with his weak magical senses.
His captor, however, had a presence that intimidated even someone who’d struck down all eight Greatest Demons of the Capital.
I have been alive for ten thousand years, it said, making every hair on Makoto’s exposed neck stand on end, and yet in a scant few of them, you have managed to make this existence so… It made a sound that could have been a laugh, a scream, or a sigh. Worth living.
“Uhh,” Makoto attempted, but his voice was hoarse and his body was still recovering from the draining spell. Should he know this guy? He started to run through his current list of enemies, competitors, and guys who might hate him for various reasons, but his thoughts were interrupted by more monologuing.
You have dispatched many of my underlings, destroyed my citadels, even journeyed to lands beyond my current control. Another sound with no identifiable emotion. But that ends today.
Cocky bastard, this one. Makoto opened his mouth to make another go at talking back, but all that came out was a scream as a great weight came down on his splayed right arm with a bone-shattering crunch.
Pain. Pain. Makoto hated pain, no matter how often he’d felt it, no matter how thoroughly he’d learned the lesson that pain meant nothing to him at this level of power. Already he could feel his bones shift back into their rightful places the moment the weight lifted, surface wounds healing over to quickly cover up any evidence of trauma.
Then another slam on his other arm, then two more on his legs, and by this point Makoto was swearing as loud as the impacts resounded through the cave, multiple languages of curses echoing alongside sounds of displaced bone and rent flesh. He couldn’t see what was hitting him beyond vague shapes blurred by reflexive tears, but he could feel dark energies emanating off of the blunt force, more powerful than anything he’d felt before.
And yet, Makoto was not afraid. Intimidated, sure. Helpless, absolutely. But he hadn’t been well and truly afraid for his life since the time he had been drawn, quartered, and beheaded, and lived to tell the tale. Death would not take him, even if he had to grit his teeth through the pain and then grow new ones when they cracked under the pressure. He would survive this, find a way to defeat this horrific creature, and move on as he always did. As he always will.
Excellent, the Demon hummed. Just as my scouts have told me. Your regeneration will be very useful.
Makoto didn’t like the sound of useful, but he wasn’t in a position to argue. Every Demon had its weakness. It was simply a matter of finding and exploiting it, no matter how much he had to endure to get there.
He’d had arms gnawed to shreds by creatures who had Magickal Cores in their gullets that he’d torn out bare-handed. He’d even been fully inside two or three of them, and hacking his way out was a messy process, but he’d managed it every time. His party helped occasionally–mostly as distractions, if he was honest–but as the one chosen by the Goddess from another world, he’d done his duty.
Day by day.
Over and over.
This would be no different.
His still-healing limbs screamed with more pain as they were roughly grabbed by unseen tendrils, and Makoto was bodily dragged closer to the Demon as it glowed with an eerie light and started to shift, its immense and unknowable form shrinking down into something more familiar.
Humanoid, with a slight build, it almost began to look like a child as Makoto was dragged closer and his vision began to clear. Pale skin and short dark hair reminded Makoto of the humans of his own world, and its face–
But its face was obscured by a throng of smaller creatures approaching him, surrounding their master in an instant. They chattered in a low tongue that Makoto only understood a few words of–boy and new and meat.
One of them approached him first, a wolflike creature stalking on all fours, its fur patchy in spots and matted in others. It had no eyes, but it sniffed loudly in Makoto’s direction before pouncing.
The light leather armor he’d worn to bed in case of an attack proved useless against the beast’s claws, shredding to ribbons in an instant. His left arm had almost fully healed by now, but it was still tender to the touch when the wolf’s front paw came down on it, and a grunt of pain turned to a choked gasp as it clamped its teeth around Makoto’s throat.
Makoto managed to will his right arm to move enough for him to pull at the creature’s disgusting fur, but between the struggle for breath and the wolf’s unearthly strength, the battle was already lost. He clenched his eyes shut against the sight of his throat being torn open, blood spilling down his exposed chest and filling his lungs as he shuddered for breath. I’m alive, he told himself, as he always did, I’m alive, I will stay alive. No matter how much pain he takes.
The wolf snarled in victory as it tore pieces of Makoto out of him, and cheers broke out from the crowd behind it. They only grew louder as Makoto continued to gasp wetly for breath and, after his body had healed enough, tried to fight back again, this time gripping at the wolf’s jaws to keep them away from his flesh.
He was swarmed. Orcs charged towards him and grabbed his limbs in perfect locks–Makoto managed to break them with his expert Strength, but there were more to replace them in an instant. Snakes as long as two humans slithered around his waist and chest, weighing him down and making the struggle that much more unwieldy. One Demon barked an order, and the orcs snapped all his limbs at the same time, making Makoto howl with anguish through the raw mess of his throat.
It was too much, it was all too much, but he couldn’t manage to fight back with his body in such a state, no matter how much he wanted to–needed to, because the next beast that approached him had something else in mind.
It was bipedal, but with enormous horns protruding from its temples that marked it as distinctly inhuman, with impressive musculature and an even more impressive cock held in one of its enormous hands.
It dropped to its knees so Makoto had nothing to see but that. It was hard, dripping slightly from the tip, and aimed directly at the hole in Makoto’s throat.
“No,” Makoto tried to croak, “No, no, no–” but his tongue was displaced from underneath as the Demon wrenched Makoto’s hair with one hand and began fucking him, letting out a wild snort as the hole continued to heal around it. It hurt, everything hurt, and not for the first time Makoto wished he had the ability to pass out from the pain instead of being forced to endure every excruciating second until his body had healed enough for him to fall asleep naturally.
But here he was, giving a bull-Demon a horrific inverted blowjob, gasping every time it pulled out enough to unblock his airway. He wasn’t sure if it was a good thing that he didn’t have any food in his stomach to vomit–maybe it would help expel the foreign object, or maybe it would burn and ache even further.
It felt like an eon passed with every thrust, even when they started to come faster as the minotaur’s wild grunts became an extended mooing that Makoto only realized the meaning of when it was already too late. Liquid shot out of his mouth and nose in a pink-tinged burst as blood and semen mixed in his throat, leaving Makoto choking wetly when the Demon finally pulled out. The sight of the heavy gore-slicked cock leaving him elicited a dry heave that did nothing to rid him of the fluid in his entire respiratory system, only adding stomach acid to the wretched taste on his tongue.
His throat healed quickly over, his power finally able to knit the flesh together with the obstruction out of the way, but all it allowed him was the ability to shout coherently as a pair of orc-Demons muscled their way out of the crowd and began barking orders at the ones holding Makoto’s arms and legs.
“What is the point of this?!” This world didn’t run on any kind of sex Magick, he’d been told as such with a bonk on the head from Liz when he’d first arrived and tried to make sense of the new world he’d been sent to. Magick was based on internal strength and innate ability, augmented by tools such as the Magicked Weapons Makoto used to fight, since his innate ability was, frankly, total shit. Instead, he had his healing factor that rendered him practically immortal, for all the good it was doing him in this particular situation.
The orcs didn’t answer, but something else did.
You will see.
That was all. The orcs holding his legs spread them apart until his joints screamed, and the two that had given the order cast aside their loincloths to reveal thick, knobbly shafts that made Makoto sick to look at, much less think about going inside him.
After a brief unintelligible argument, one orc positioned itself underneath Makoto and the other atop him, the latter taking the time to run its tongue up the side of Makoto’s face before shoving inside. No lubricant, no preparation, no chance for Makoto to struggle except to brace himself against the nauseating feeling of his tissues tearing to make way for the intrusion. The wounds healed over quickly, but thankfully the blood was left behind to slick the way as the second orc’s cock started to press in as well.
Makoto didn’t know what kind of noises he was making. He wasn’t aware of much outside of the haze of pain, and even that was starting to fade away as his brain went into a self-defensive state of detachment, something he’d learned to lean into after too many incidents that couldn’t be solved by anything but time.
And there was time to spare.
Before the two orcs in his ass were finished, another came out of the crowd with its cock in one hand and a dagger in the other. It laughed in a self-satisfied way as it carved out another hole in Makoto’s side for it to fuck, and Makoto sobbed in pain as well as sheer frustration. There were too many of them. Too many to wait for every individual demon to have their wretched way with his body, too many to fight off even with his goddess-damned useless Strength Attribute–
An idea occurred to him.
“Reroll,” he said, his voice drowned out by the crowd, but it didn’t matter as long as his Siphon received the command.
This action has a cooldown of one moon. Continue? The robotic voice of the Siphon reverberated through Makoto’s body, and he quickly confirmed his choice in his mind.
You have chosen: 998 Strength, 0 Speed, 0 Social, 0 Sex Appeal. Continue?
“Yes, yes!” Makoto shouted, and the demons all flinched and covered their eyes as a bright light enveloped Makoto for a few moments before fading away just as quickly.
He wrenched his arms free.
Whatever number his Strength had been at before–the indicator, again, was a pain in the ass to read, so he just tried to keep the glowing lights just about balanced–he was minmaxed now, broken, able to plow through every demon that was in his way. Noses broke, jaws cracked, even the Demons covered in scales or chitin were left helpless before Makoto’s overpowered fists. He stomped on the spines of creatures slithering below his gaze, he kicked goblins ten yards across the way, he gut-punched a bear. He finally felt like who he was meant to be again–a warrior. A hero.
That’s enough.
The Demons dissipated–some running, some disappearing into smoke, all out of sight in a few seconds flat. Save one.
Makoto squinted at the one remaining figure–it gave off a bright light not unlike the one that had just saved Makoto’s skin, but this one lingered no matter how long he looked. But soon enough he was able to find shapes within the light, identifiable features coming into focus.
Not just identifiable. Familiar. Only faintly, faded to years of time and experiences beyond the world he remembered the face from.
“Yes,” the boy said, at the same time as Makoto mouthed: “Takuya?”
it couldn’t be him. He looked exactly the same as Makoto remembered him–delicate features unmarred by age or experience. Takuya had disappeared from town when Makoto was eleven years old. He must have aged since then, if he wasn’t–
“Dead? No, I am dead, don’t worry. I drowned in the lake that day, don’t you remember?”
“They never found your body,” Makoto said quietly.
“Huh. Weird! I wonder if they found yours.”
“So you’ve been–”
“Here, the whole time!” Takuya grinned and spread his arms. “In this cave! For thousands and thousands of years! I look good, right?” Takuya’s form shifted slightly, growing taller. “It was pretty scary at first. All alone, in the dark. I figured it was just death!” He stopped growing, but his shoulders broadened and his face grew hard lines. “But I was still hungry. Thirsty. Tired.” He looked up, to where the sky might be. “The crystals were my only friends. They taught me things. Helped me see outside, even if I couldn’t go.”
Takuya sighed, and his form flickered and faded to the colorless void that had dwarfed Makoto when he’d first arrived here. “They kept me alive. By keeping my body intact, yes, but also by telling me how I could find my most precious possession again.”
Makoto cocked his head. “And what was that?”
Takuya laughed. You.
Makoto’s limbs went numb and he crumpled to the ground, just as weak as when he had first woken up. Takuya stepped toward him, slowly, and he flickered back into existence wearing a new face with each step. I commanded armies, raised great fortresses, all so that one day, a hero could step forth. He smiled, his now undeniably Demonic face a hair’s breadth away from Makoto’s own. “I knew it would be you.”
It was his first kiss, Makoto realized the moment before it happened. It could have been Elycia, if he’d ordered her to do it. It could have been Irinabeth, if it happened one of the times he’d accidentally fallen on top of her. Hell, it could have been Liz if he made a good enough bet with her. Any of the other girls he’d been adventuring with, at any time, could have been what was now happening to him.
But instead, his mouth was captured by that of the Demon Lord he’d been fighting for the past Goddess-knows-how-long, who also happened to be his ten thousand year old childhood friend, and Makoto was almost grateful that the draining spell removed any ability to decide how to react to this situation.
Takuya whispered in his ear. “Let’s make up for lost time, my friend.” Your journey is over, Hero.
The Goddess of this world had given its hero a blessing: that of a great love. One that could not die, and would not relent.
Preview: Chapter 1069 of Woke Up In Another World Where I Don’t Need Healthcare!
A new villain has appeared?! The Demon Lord’s Dark Master!
Elycia and company begin the search for Makoto! But something blocks their way…The Four Demon Generals VS The Great Hero’s Sidekicks!
Makoto’s hidden feelings–or are they?! Takuya’s attempts to bring Makoto into darkness!
See you next week!