Xuelan shifted on her knees in an effort to get more comfortable underneath the table despite her bound arms. Kien was stroking her head affectionately as if she was a pet cat, which altogether wouldn't have felt that bad if it weren't for the fact that there were bitter thorns digging into her skin. The simultaneous contradiction of these two paradoxical elements naturally made her emotions very complicated.
Conflicted. Her feelings were always conflicted.
Was this really okay? Somehow, it felt like she had barely won anything at all. Her ex-boyfriend seemed perfectly content to have her in between his legs, even though he hadn't explicitly asked her to suck him off. Xuelan had basically spent the past half-hour screaming at him for raping her, and now he finally wasn't doing anything 'bad'. However, being made to kneel underneath a table hardly felt like a victory.
If your eternal owner was a sadist and a genuine psychopath, how much could you push your luck?
Was he actually starting to become nicer, or was this only a temporary reprieve based on his current unpredictable whim?
"Status."
She heard Kien say above her.
Although she had no way of seeing what was going on, it was fairly easy to infer that he was doing something administrative-related. Based on various bits of context clues that she had gathered so far, it seemed like this underworld shared many similarities with a typical Japanese isekai novel. Apparently, there was even a 【 Status 】 menu and level system.
Truthfully, Xuelan thought this was strange. What on Earth had happened to Dante's Inferno, Hades and Tartarus in Greek mythology, or the Sixteen Narakas in the Buddhist tradition? An isekai-style hell felt a blatantly anachronistic, as if someone had taken a particle accelerator to the Stone Age. Xuelan could only hypothesize that this place must have been recently devised by an unnamed lazy divine entity who clearly plagiarized from Japanese light novels.
In Chinese folk religion, it was said that there were 12,800 different hells underneath the Earth's surface. Perhaps this many-worlds interpretation of reality held merit, and maybe there were a lot of different metaphysical places that a person could go after they died.
In either case, Xuelan could only keep playing with the strange hand of cards that she had been dealt.
"Status." Xuelan whispered quietly, copying her ex-boyfriend, half-expecting to see a floating screen pop up in front of her.
However, nothing happened.
She blinked a few times in confusion, but then there was a soft chuckle from above her.
Kien rubbed her hair and smirked at her.
"Slave Status." He spoke self-assuredly, as if to mock her helplessness.
A few moments later, there was another flash of light and his hands started swiping at something in the air.
Xuelan immediately frowned.
This wasn't fair!
"Let me see!" She protested from underneath the table.
She obviously wanted to take a look at her own status screen.
The incubus promptly booped her on the nose with the his hand.
"Nope. Not today."
"Why not?!"
A shred of suspicion suddenly rose up in Xuelan's thoughts. Was there something he didn't want her to see?
"Convince me." Kien said, almost jokingly.
The frown on Xuelan's face turned even uglier. She did not appreciate having her own words turned on her.
"You're hiding something from me," she accused him.
"I don't want you to worry about it right now," he responded. "You've been through a lot today, so take it easy. We can talk about it later when you're ready for it."
"If it has something to do with me, then I want to know about it now."
"Hm..."
The incubus suddenly reached underneath the table and picked up the young woman underneath her arms. While her legs flailed, he turned her around mid-air so she could also see the table and plopped her right on top his lap. Unfortunately, Xuelan was completely nude, and she immediately yelped when she felt his sizable erection conspicuously pressing up against her private place.
In the meantime, he simultaneously shut off her status screen before Xuelan could get a close look at it.
She glared at the perverted bastard.
Clearly, he wasn't mature enough to stop rubbing his dick in her face.
Or well, in this case, it wasn't exactly her face...
"Mind if I dry hump you?" He asked casually.
"Absolutely not." Xuelan responded instantaneously.
"Damn." He spoke playfully with pretend disappointment, and did not press the topic any further.
In fact, he kept his lap perfectly still and did not move his lower body a single inch. Instead, Xuelan was left squirming, mostly trying to shift her position so that her labia was not directly on top of that pointy tent.
...Fuck, now he was pretending to act like her boyfriend.
She had to stay on guard so she didn't get swept up by his deceptive pace.
Kien acted oblivious as he smoothly reached his long arms around her shoulders, effectively hugging her in his lap. In the meantime, he slid his floating screen in front of Xuelan.
+ + +
"I'm assuming you'd like a quick rundown of the situation, Xue?"
"...Yes." She squirmed uncomfortably, unable to escape from the erection pressing up on her leg. She tried to ignore it to the best of her ability. "I would appreciate it. How long have you been here before me, by the way?"
"Only a week. It kind of sucked."
"...Uh, yeah, I guess that's what you'd expect from Hell..."
Knowing Kien's regular conversational habits, Xuelan figured that 'kind of sucked' was probably an understatement...
The incubus continued to stretch the transparent screen of light larger. The floating surface was suspiciously like a holographic computer monitor, and it currently displayed a large map of squiggly continents and shapes.
"So this is a map."
"Uh-huh."
"Right now, we're in Hell. Bad people come here when they die."
"...Right."
"Basically, it's good if I kill people and bad if I get killed by someone else."
"..."
"And if I die, you're stuck with me. So it's better if you try to make sure I don't die."
"...Are you screwing with me, Kien?"
"Also, an important thing to remember is that you're basically immortal, so if you get caught by a bad thing you can expect it to hurt for a really really really long time. In other words, it's a bad idea to walk into a tentacle monster just because you're curious about what it feels like, since I figure that's something a masochist would probably do."
"Kien, can you just give me the manual so I can read it?"
"What? I'm trying to keep things simple for you."
"You suck at explaining things, Kien. It's faster if I just read it."
"There's gaming jargon, and I know you don't play video games, so it might be hard for you to understand the terminology."
"......"
"What? Why do you look so annoyed at me?"
"Just give me the damn manual, Kien."
+ + +
A short while of bickering later, Xuelan finally managed to convince her asshole of an ex-boyfriend to leave his status screen open so that she could scroll through it. Of course, she hadn't been able to obtain it for free, and his final condition was that he would finger her pussy the entire time she was reading the screen (...what a pervert).
The other condition was that he'd turn off the monitor as soon as she succumbed to an orgasm.
In other words, Xuelan obtained the following (boring) information dump thanks to her herculean effort resisting a sadist's sexual torment... which is graciously sanitized here for the reader's convenience.
The menu screen had multiple tabs, which unfortunately she had to poke at with her nose since the idiot refused to untie her.
It took Xuelan several tries before she managed to navigate to the Encyclopedia tab.
This isekai universe was known as Hell. It consisted of nine separate worlds, each of which corresponded to a "Level" of Hell. The First Level was the most comfortable world, and its environment was very similar to Earth. However, each subsequent level was worse and worse. The worlds were progressively more barren, diabolical, and horrific, until finally the Ninth Level at the bottom was nothing but an endless sea of burning hellfire.
If a demon was killed in Hell, they descended a level. The Ninth Level was a permanent final destination, it was impossible for a demon to escape the eternal burning flames if they ever landed there.
Each of Hell's levels (except the Ninth) had a fixed maximum population pre-ordained by the universe. However, there were constantly new souls arriving in Hell, which meant that most levels were perpetually overpopulated. On Walpurgisnacht of every year, the universe would reorder all the demons in Hell and bump any excess demons downwards to lower levels to maintain the population limit of each world.
The system for determining which demons ascended or descended was based upon the total number of "Infernal Marks" that a demon possessed. Each demon arrived in Hell with nine marks, and the only method to gain more was to coerce another demon to surrender theirs. Typically, this was done by defeating another demon and creatively torturing them until they begged for mercy.
Generally speaking, demons with the fewest Infernal Marks were sent downwards to the lower levels on the annual Walpurgisnacht. Losing all of one's marks was equivalent to a direct ticket to the endless burning agony of the Ninth Level.
Summarily, it was a diabolical and hellish system that guaranteed that demons would torment each other in the underworld in order to stay afloat.
It was sink or swim, torment or be tormented.
...and that was pretty much as far as Xuelan got before she became slightly too distracted to read anything else.
∎
It's fine for her not to be able to see her status screen. That worked fine.
However, skipping the negotiation where he gets to finger her while she reads the status...
In general, even though it might be weird writing the scene or make the chapter longer, I'd suggest not skipping such a scene. "Show don't tell" is a common recommendation, because it's preferred to see how the scene develops rather than just hearing about their negotiation results. If they have repeated negotiations, it's obviously fine to abbreviate or skip them, but this was their first time.
It was their first real negotiation and would be a good a scene to establish a dynamic between them. Let us hear her inner thoughts as she hesitantly decides to allow him to finger her if it means she gets the information she wants. Let us understand the anxiety she feels when he says that she only has until she orgasms to read as much as she can. Maybe she tries to hype herself up for the "challenge."
If you don't want to flesh out the smut for the fingering, that's fine, but throw in some whimpering, complaining, moaning, or SOMETHING so that it feels like the character is experiencing something instead of being a dead fish. That's an exaggeration (it wasn't anywhere close to that bad), but character reactions are one of the most important things in a story. It's what gives a scene weight and significance.
Maybe you didn't want a scene with weight or significance, which is fine as it was intended to be an info dump. But for the character herself, it should have been important, since it was the first time they had a consensual sexual interaction, so at the very least it marks an opportunity for Xue's character development, for her to establish herself as a participant instead of just a helpless damsel.
It really depends on how important you want us, the readers, to view the scene. Skipping BOTH the negotiations and Xue's experiences during the info dump makes the scene feel extremely minor and insignificant. Fleshing out one while skipping the other would make us view it with more importance, while fleshing out both would make it a major scene.
You neither need nor want everything to be a major scene, though. Minor scenes are also very important. Just be aware that the amount of details provided and the character reactions to what happens are what determine whether the scene is major or minor. You gave us LOTS of details and reactions with her sitting under the table, down to her knees being a bit sore and her feeling awkward and conflicted. This was good. Same with her sitting on his lap. The characters felt real and believable.
In my opinion, too much detail is better than too little, though I understand that some scenes are MUCH harder to write than others. I'm conflicted when writing this comment, for example, since I clearly see you're doing fantastic with 95% of this story, and you've been open about your inexperience/hesitation around writing smut, and I really don't want to risk putting pressure on you or imply that readers expect perfection.
In order words... If you want future feedback along these lines, you're going to need to "convince me."
Yeah... I definitely got lazy when writing this chapter last night. This story isn't actually that well planned in advance, and most of the content is popping out on the fly. It was getting really late, and the chapter was getting long, and then I got tired...
Actually, in the original version of the chapter, there wasn't even fingering. It was just a pure information dump and I thought it was too boring and then added something at the last second lol.
But yes, everything you said are really great points! There should have been a lot more weight in that section, and instead it sort of floated by too lightly! I see what you mean!
Thanks again!
Xuelan could only hypothesize that this place must have been recently devised by an unnamed lazy divine entity who clearly plagiarized from Japanese light novels.
Author, is there something you'd like to tell us?
The mark system might work for a little while but very soon you'll have demons on the first layer with millions if not billions of marks and backed by borderline infinite personal power, and eventually the same thing will slowly happen in each and every lower layer making new souls/demons unable to do anything but get a direct nine years long trip to eternal fire.
The system needs something that skip demons from the top if you want the infighting to last more than a few decades followed by an eternity of fossilized ranked ladder...
In MMO therms you need gold sinks for your Infernal Marks otherwise they will endlessly accumulate hence devalue the value of each Mark up until new "players" can't do anything to compete with the older more established ones, which obviously kills the competition.
Alternatively you need the equivalent of the big reset button that is a new MMO's extension.