Her face paled as the courtesan's arm wrapped around her waist, the slender digits wrapping possessively around her. "Pardon?" she managed to choke out, her voice trembling as she looked into the woman's sharp, intelligent gaze. It was as if those eyes could see straight through her, peeling back her layers and laying her soul bare.
"Don't be coy, honey," the unnamed courtesan crooned, her sly smile widening.
It was of little help when Ariger took a whiff of that intoxicating perfume, making her instinctively become more internally torn as her body responded in a strange longing to be enveloped in that web of fragrance.
This was not the right moment to be acting like a deranged imp.
"You may not have considered it before, but I can see you have the potential."
Their phlegmatic aura was undoubtedly that of a seasoned professional, yet their identity puzzled the emperor. She attempted to drift to the times where the sensuous gaze of countless women would ogle her when she was a man in Elysium Boudoir, but as she racked her memory, nothing came to mind.
It was quite odd - those smoldering gray eyes, framed by thick, dark lashes, surely would not have escaped her target. Her lustful nature usually tracked female forms and faces quite readily, rarely letting a stunning woman go unnoticed.
As the courtesan urged her forward, Argider stumbled slightly, her objections falling on deaf ears. "W-Wait!"
"Hush, now," the courtesan shushed her, a small smile playing at the corner of her lips. "You'll find that this is not nearly as bad as you imagine, my dear!"
'How the hell am I supposed to get myself out of this mess?' she silently cursed, internally seething at the unfairness of it all. 'I hate being in this damn female body - my cousin would probably have no problem handling this situation. But me, well, I'm just a trainwreck. Can't even read emotions properly, can I?!'
Born with a sense of disconnection, the pain of alienation etched deep scars upon her identity that she swore to shield her heart from the opinions of others, refusing to let others sway her with their words. But the world seemed mercilessly unfair, favoring those who wielded emotions like a blade.
Thus, she always felt like a child in a storm, defenseless against the cunning machinations of those capable of weaving words into traps. She yearned to defy this fate, but her own inability to navigate the complexities of life that everyone says to be quite simple left her feeling trapped and hopeless just like her scum of a father.
"I...I really don't want to..." Argider's voice trailed off, slowly becoming demoralized.
Beep!
Beep!
Beep!
— [Warning: Cognitive & Bodily Adjustment!]
[Fast Install] ....
[Loading Resources] ...
— [Inserted 'Mental Thrivation' Cultivation Formula. User Is Currently A 'Perceiver', The Lowest Rank Of All Political-Based Systems]
— [Realized Redemption System Skill: Empath - The Ability To Heightened One's Sense Into Other People's Temperament's And Emotions]
— [Empath Skill | Level One: The user will appear in a state of temporary suspension as they access the inner psyche of another individual. They will absorb the target's mental processes and emotional makeup, along with their internal state. For external observers, this process may appear as a mere moment, but the user will experience a different, altered perception of time within the target's mind.]
— [Additional Information: The capabilities of the skill will go beyond boundaries as one progresses and cultivates through the system, which means, it does not merely act as an absorber of emotions.]
— [Synchronizing Percentage: 1%]
— [Synchronizing Percentage: 15%]
— [Synchronizing Percentage: 41%]
....
— [Synchronizing Percentage: 100%]
Argider's eyes glimmered like translucent light, and before she could even finish reading the words displayed before her, time seemed to slow down. Her vision transformed into a parallel reality, her spirit forcefully extracted from her body like being devoured by a blackhole. Yet, at the core of this chaotic vacuum, a singular point of light shone brilliantly.
There was a collision between the unreal space and her insubstantial form, her clothes devoured by an intense gravitional pull, reduced to ash in an instant. The world around her smeared into a chaotic blur, as if multiple sequences compressed into a single moment. Every part of her being slowly succumbed to a queasy sensation as the world around her became an amalgamation of her own flesh.
"You impure woman!" came the aggressive thuds.
It was a chorus of frantic pleas.
"No, please! Have mercy! Please don't!" there was a woman who protested in fear, pleading for mercy and begging for the violence to cease.
One memory after another, the woman scream's were often cut into a wail of pain as that same man grabbed a hold of her hair. Her attempts of escape were proven futile under their impenetrable pull. Even if they managed to break free from one prison, they would only found themselves ensnared within another, a never-ending cycle of confinement and longing for freedom.
All of that resulted into a barrage of sensations and memories overwhelming Argider, each one a crushing weight, causing her body to convulse uncontrollably... She was absorbing it all at once, the sheer volume of experiences almost drowning her in a sea of emotions.
For a moment, Argider's vision transcended the norms of her human perspective and expanded into a panoramic view. She was hurled into a different space, compelled to observe a typhoon of words writing themselves in thin air that lunged towards her immediately, her mouth foaming.
"I think about it a lot. I think about the past. I have seen my son rot. I have seen him happy. I have seen too much. I have seen too many things, all easily dying. Except me. I want to die. I have seen the demise of too many lives. But not me. Let me die. I have seen new many things. I have seen too much. But not me. I don't want to see. I don't want to become old. Not like this. I will die. I want to die. I want him to stop hitting me. I don't want to go back. I don't want to go back. I think I'll die. I think he'll kill me. I am broken. I can't run. I'm a butterfly with no wings. Beautiful, but can't fly. I don't think I can fly. I am broken. I just want to be happy. I want to go back. I want to go back to my home. I want to go back. I want to go back when I was a child. I want to go back."