As long as I exposed my face, I would always have people pointing and gossiping behind my back.
As... as a "Hero," that wasn't exactly something I couldn't endure.
After all, a "Hero" was someone who protected people no matter what sort of calumnies they received in return.
I, who had thrown away happiness as a woman, would not quail at such looks.
But... but... if... if he looked at me with the same eyes... if that happened... I would...—
"Kyuuuuunn! "
—Wh, what... is this...!?
Just imagining it was enough to make my lachrymal glands slacken, and I was on the verge of tears when the tentacles again twined themselves around me.
The pleasure of it was incomparable to what I had felt so far.
A sensation as if my already heightened pleasure had been multiplied by several times more raced through my whole body.
Especially intense in my head and hips, it was stealing the strength from my body.
I scolded my own crumbling body for its failure to obey my will, but it was in such a state that, were it not being supported by the tentacles, it would likely have soon collapsed.
As proof of that, my legs were trembling like those of a newborn fawn.
"Aah... Kuu... hee...! "
But even that trembling ended up increasing my pleasure.
I mean, my skin and the tentacles around my legs rubbed against each other with every movement.
That stimulation, weighing on top of the sensation as if the whole of my legs had become an erogenous zone, was more than sufficient to cause a sweet cry to escape my mouth.
"Oh my... making your legs shiver like that... I'm so glad you seem to like it. "
"Oo... kyuu... D... don't... look... Ngh! "
I tried to scowl at the delighted-sounding succubus, but I failed utterly.
I felt my feelings of pleasure running in a single direction: a vague sense of fulfillment, as if currents of water that had been racing about my body every which way were now all going the same way.
Surely that feeling, as if I had found a goal somewhere within myself, ought by all rights to be praised.
But it was no youthful impulse which now found its course within me; it was pleasure.
"Fuah... aah! Aaaaahhh! "
—Aah... Com... ing... Something's... coming from inside me...!
It's point of departure was deep inside my belly.
The pleasure, swirling round and round, suddenly reared its head from that place, which felt as if it were melting.
Seeming almost to burn my insides, it was spreading along my nerves in a single rush.
And yet, it was unaccompanied by pain or anguish, and was not even unpleasant.
On the contrary, that heat brought with it pleasure, and made me hallucinate that my insides were being melted.
Then the melting flesh coiled around my nerves, making my body more sensitive than before and driving it to new heights of pleasure.
"Hee... aaaaahhh! "
The sensation, rising without limit, made me feel as if my body were floating lightly.
But the reality was the opposite.
The strength had at last gone out of my legs, which had kept up a desperate resistance until now, and they had crumbled from the knees down.
The shivering of my violently shaken legs was an expression not of resistance, but of pleasure.
I felt disgusted with myself, but the tentacles continued to drive pleasure into me without stopping, as if to toy with my crumbled, unresisting legs.
"Kuuuuunn! "
It wasn't just my legs, of course.
It was my breasts and belly, too.
The tentacles moved as if to bind my breasts in particular from outer circumference to cleavage, making me let slip a high-pitched cry.
The pleasure spreading to my whole body from the sensitive skin into which the design had been carved united with the earlier heat, and felt as if it were making me float up on and on forever.
—In that state, my consciousness floated far, far away, and...
"Hu... h...?
"Oh...? Have you realized, then?"
When my consciousness, which seemed to be going off high into the sky, at last returned to my body, that body had become just as heavy as lead.
It troubled me that, try as I might, I could move not one finger.
My body, which had difficulty even to stand unaided, was supported by the tentacles throughout.
The tentacles weren't moving now; perhaps even they had no taste for playing with unresisting prey.
And yet my skin, become exceedingly sensitive, obtained pleasure even from even the faintest movement of my body, and made me let out long, sweet sighs.
"You came magnificently. "
"Came...?"
I tilted my head in bewilderment at the word, which I had never heard before.
Several candidates were listed in my brain, but none seemed to fit.
Perhaps it was because my thoughts were just as sluggish as my body... or else...—
"Acme. Orgasm. Climax. I don't know which you prefer, but... for a woman, it's certainly a form of happiness."
"Happiness..."
—Certainly... it was...
Up to the moment my consciousness had abruptly receded, my body had been growing soggy and mushy.
There had been no anguish or grief in that sensation, which felt as if anything and everything were being mixed together.
That feeling, as if I would become a creature that only felt pleasure, was surely sufficient to represent "the absence of unhappiness," and I could even understand how some people might call it "happiness." And yet...—
"Wouldn't you like more happiness like that...?"
"...I... refuse."
"Oh dear... whatever for?"
"Because I... don't want... to acknowledge a thing like that... as happiness."
—That's right. Such a thing wasn't happiness, or anything of the kind.
"Happiness" was a warmer thing.
For instance... yes.
I thought that something warm and filled with a sense of security, like when El had been at my side, was suitable to represent "happiness."
In comparison, that... which lacked warmth, which lacked a sense of security... which was only mere pleasure, was far from happiness.