There’s one thing about JRPGs that most players of other (lesser) genres tend to envy: the lack of escort missions.

The poor, deluded fools.

One would think that a whole genre that is most famous for turn-based battles would be free of such a scourge on a player’s last nerve, yes, but one would be tearfully wrong. The most glaring cases tend to be SRPGs in which an ‘allied’ unit that should really look into getting their treaty renegotiated is thrown into the middle of a horde of enemies, and you have the unenviable task of keeping the unfortunate, aggro-filled piñata alive.

(But seriously, fuck you, Zephiel. You and your death-seeking ways.)

Otherwise? But… the future refused to change.

Again.

(That means ‘game over,’ you uncultured curs.)

There are plenty of ways in which an escort quest can mess with the delicate, balanced recipe that is a proper JRPG—no, I don’t know what that recipe is, seeing as even the people responsible for the entire Final Fantasy franchise keep messing with the formula to, and this is me being far too generous, mixed results, but one needs not be a masterful chef to recognize the ingredients of flaming garbage.

Note to self: keep somebody in charge of supervising Aqua around open flames.

But, OK, do you want a concrete example? How about the forced guest character?

Visualize this: you’re playing the kind of turn-based RPG that has a sprawling cast the likes of which could easily include both a mute ninja and his dog, yet the game forces you to fight with a mere party of four (or even three) while the rest of your traveling caravan with no less than sixty active combatants and an implicit entourage of at least four times that number taking care of the vehicles and mounts presumably comfortably sits around, eating popcorn while watching you battle a giant man-eating snake that can slap the active party members out of the battlefield. Do your stalwart companions jump in to occupy the suddenly free party slot and grab with both hands their final chance to be seen as useful, or do they cheer for the enemy monster, fueled by hyena-like resentment at being permanently relegated to cutscenes because you’re already set on filling your party with only the waifuable characters?

That is a trick question, by the way. Everybody should realize that people who murder scores of sapient races for a living aren’t going to act out on their noble impulses unless the script forces them to.

So, that is a known fact: you can only rely on your chosen few, and the rest of your alleged allies are basically spectating a blood sport while pretending that they care about saving the world or some such. Fine. You swallow your bile and learn to live with it. Learn not to trust. Learn that the free entertainment of a good first-row seat at the caravan of player death will trump any comradery they may have once felt for you.

Fine.

But then comes along the escort quest. Maybe somebody needs to travel to a secluded location, or maybe they need to be present to unlock an arcane mechanism in a dungeon that your literal reality-bender of an archmage can’t get past without the help of a quirky NPC, never mind that I’ve seen the bastard summon gods—

Right. Sorry about that. Archmages get me worked up.

Anyway, you need to carry somebody somewhere. Doesn’t seem like the end of the world. I’m already carrying maybe about a hundred people with me if we’re being conservative with the logistics of it all, so what’s one more?

It turns out one more is a lot, because you’re forced to slot them as an active party member.

“Hurry up, won’t you?” Megumin says from over my shoulder, slightly below and to the left of where the brim of her hat keeps irritatingly brushing at my earlobe.

I feel a mighty, orcish eyebrow twitch.

“I haven’t had breakfast. Nor bought pants,” I calmly, reasonably, and, most of all, at a volume lower than a berserker roar, reply.

“And whose fault is that?” Megumin, spitefully, hatefully, and at a volume comparable to that of a hissing snake, shoots back.

From my back.

Which she’s clinging to with all the strength of a comatose sloth.

One part of me may wonder at the nostalgia of it all, that I’m once again carrying Megumin on a piggyback after she’s exhausted herself to the point of being unable to walk. That I’m yet again bonding with my chosen partner in ways that are most reminiscent of a companion quest reaching its Luca moment.

That naïve part must be sheltered and protected from the other, more aware parts of my brain, for its Yunyun-like pure smile is a treasure I’m unwilling to part from.

So I’ll just ignore its borderline suicidal stupidity without refuting it, and just try not to overly focus on how Megumin’s newest curves feel when tightly pressed against my broad, bare back or how my fingers keep sinking into her soft thighs with every almost twitch of my fingers, because being overly conscious of that will lead to my ski—kilt being flipped up in the middle of the main street through which I’m currently carrying my, at times, second most useless companion.

Yes, a comatose, Explosion-blissed Megumin doesn’t contribute much of anything, but at least she doesn’t detract anything.

“I asked you a question,” she grumbles as we go past two female adventurers who point at us in shock and horror, yet dare not try to rescue their comrade from the grasp of an orc.

Look, if you’re going to pretend to be heroes, the bare minimum should be to rescue the distressed damsel, not to gasp and clutch at your pearls while whispering scandalized conjectures as to the extent of the ravaging awaiting her. You’re adventurers in an RPG setting! Act like it! Proclaim your strength and virtue before being soundly defeated and taken to the point of mindbreak by an orc who was just minding his own business!

My orcish blood roars! This breach of protocol shall not stand!

“Kazuma, answer me,” the captured archmage about to be ravaged (and whose limp legs signal she already was) demands.

“Fine! You want to know whose fault it was? It was yours. Because you and Yunyun could’ve refrained from joining in on Darkness and Aqua’s fight for dominance, but no, you had to help, you had to give me tentacles, and then you had to act out all of your lovey-dovey, sometimes heterosexual-leaning romance, giving me fucking feelings with a dual blowjob out of all things—”

“Aaaaaahhhh! You bastard! Feelings? Feelings?! The only feeling I gave you was a knee-jerking orgasm when I shoved two tentacles down my—uhhh…”

There’s a silence in the middle of the busiest street on Axel. Answering the dreadful sense of inevitability, I, and the attached Megumin hood accessory, turn to face two violently blushing female adventurers.

“I told you it was Kazuma,” the mage wearing a bikini and cloak combo that doesn’t work with her almost absent curves mutters to the diminutive, red-armor-clad warrior.

“Indeed, it was none other than Scumzuma,” the girl who wouldn’t have survived in a more realistic setting in which ‘reach’ played any part in the fighting mechanics answers, trying to sound aloof and noble while beads of sweat slowly roll down her forehead.

I blink at them.

“So, you weren’t about to rescue Megumin here because you recognized me—”

“What? Rescue her? We all know what you and the pervert did with the Dullahan!” the mage shoots back, rudely pointing at me with her unvarnished wooden staff.

“Wha—we did nothing!” Megumin protests, defending her virtue in what I think may not be the best circumstances for it to be defended. “Why would I—nothing! Nothing at all!”

“Oh, please, you little strumpet,” the girl who may be littler than Megumin dismissively posits, “Everybody has heard about your rapturous moans in front of the castle as you were taken by—”

“Aaaaaaahhhh! That was only the proper and natural appreciation of a well-cast Explosion! There was no taking back then! None!”

“Yet here you are, loudly proclaiming how you and your Sapphic lover partook of this orcish Scumzuma’s… you know… thingy…” the haughty girl manages to finish despite the resurgence of a blush that rivals her blood-red armor.

…

Maybe she’s a recruitable character? I mean, the loli slot was just recently vacated, and it would be nice to have a fighter who can, you know, hit things.

The mage is thoroughly redundant, though. Nothing against exhibitionist pettankos, obviously, but I already have two dedicated casters, and I’m looking for more versatility than redundancy.

“That…” Megumin manages to say after a prolonged silence that, being the expert in all things Megumin that I am, I deduce to be of the ‘My secret inner desires have just seen the light of day’ variety. “That’s Kazuma’s fault! It’s always Kazuma’s fault! You are female adventurers, you know that!”

“I mean…” the superfluous mage mutters while fidgeting with her hugged staff.

“That rings verily true,” the period drama reject states, avoiding both my and Megumin’s eyes.

“Oi,” I succinctly rebuke, following the creed of my monosyllabic ancestors.

I mean, ‘breed’ is a monosyllable, and that’s about all the dialogue most orcs get in the kind of games I’m pretty sure inform the very structure of this cosmos. Mayhaps my cultured race should get a better agent?

“See? He’s doing it again! Rumbling that deep voice of his in a way that reverberates across his chest and all over my thighs tightly pressed around his muscled sides that… Uh… Why’re you looking at me like that?” Megumin asks.

‘That,’ in this particular instance, means ‘like we just stepped on something we’d rather not confirm the nature of.’ It’s a look I’m not familiar with at all from my previous world’s schooling system, and definitely not something I’ve often seen repeated in my party members’ faces.

Not at all.

…

Sometimes, I just wanna hide beneath my blankets and pretend that the world doesn’t exist. I think it’s an admirable trait that brings me closer to the spiritual practices of the Buddhist faith that continually strives to leave this tainted reality behind to transcend to a plane of reality devoid of suffering and, by extension, nosy classmates.

“I knew all the rumors were true…” the mage all but spits.

“Thou hast almost fooled mine eyes and ears,” the girl who’s playing it up a bit too hard adds.

“Wha—” the girl who just now realized what she said out loud starts before mortification catches up with her.

“Thou strumpet,” the fighter finishes her one-two combo.

And Megumin…

“So, you dare doubt me, a scion of the Crimson Magic Clan? You dare question my word? Throw doubt into the hearts of men? You would lower yourselves to deny how the power of Explosions renders all but the most insensate of mages awash with religious fervor?! Fools! Your fate has now been sealed! Heed me now that art darker than dusk—”

And I, being the saintly gentleman that I am, slap my hand over my own prone to getting me worked up archmage, almost drop her after letting go of her right leg, and quickly turn around to get her into what an uninformed spectator may dub a princess carry before cutting off her sharp “Eep!” with a promptly reapplied hand before swiftly running away.

The scene would’ve been completed if I could shoot a green middle finger at the two girls who have, so far, managed to avoid a rightfully deserved orcish-themed fate, but Megumin currently has my hands full.

When does she not?

***

“Kazuma Satou! I’ve been expecting your visit!” Vanir-chan says, proudly standing in the middle of Wiz’s shop with her arms thrown up in a perfectly symmetrical Y that has her legs glued together and her chest thrust forward at… an interesting angle.

“Yes!” she continues. “I find these newest, roundest additions properly compliment my usually grandiose style; how would you rather compare it to my usual grandstanding introduction—oh, that high? My, my, Kazuma, a girl could get used to such compliments…” she all but purrs as her arms lower, the left one acting as a propping shelf for her too-noticeable bust as her right lies straight between her breasts, the extended index finger coquettishly teasing at pink lips that—is that lip gloss?!

“Certainly! I looked through your memories and found a very memorable scene with what I believe is, as you would call it, uncensored Western live porn in which an actress kept switching the color of her lips before slowly descending down the thick shaft of a male actor whose sense of pride the current you would utterly crush. After each renovation of the cycle, a stretched imprint of colorful lips was laid on the succulent member. Would you like to… try?” she says, fanning eight lipstick capsules between white-gloved fingers poking from her sides as her slender arms cross beneath her breasts, making the blue jacket’s opening strain and the golden ascot… rise.

To my right, looking at me through the same window Darkness and Chris employed at the start of yesterday’s Wiz-focused events, Megumin looks at us with a face redder and darker than her dress, her eyes large enough that…

Uh…

Look, I promise this all makes sense. Megumin isn’t here to act out Darkness’ cuckquean fetish by proxy. She’s come here precisely to do the very opposite of that. Megumin is a virtuous young girl who has proclaimed herself to be my very guardian against the temptation that is Vanir-chan reading and being willing to go through my most depraved, revisited, kilt-raising fantasies.

Megumin is not lewd at all and is, in fact, here to prevent any lewdness.

“You don’t believe half of that,” Vanir-chan unfairly states, her head cocked to the side as the lipstick capsules wiggle enticingly.

“Look, if you aren’t even going to fall for the classic ways to fool a mind reader, I don’t even know what I’m doing here,” I tell her as I grab a sturdy-looking stool and carefully sit down on it, wary of the creaking wood.

“Trying to argue on behalf of my ruinous business associate?” Vanir-chan suggests as the lipsticks vanish (presumably) up her sleeves, and she jumps on top of the countertop in front of me, the left leg crossed over the right, her hands lying on the raised knee with her arms straightened in a way that pushes her breasts together—and this isn’t incidental at all.

“Of course it isn’t,” she says with an eyebrow that is clearly broadcast through her mask’s eyeholes.

“Right, how silly of me,” I say.

“Indeed,” she replies.

And then she just… stares at me.

And smiles.

…

Don’t think about a white bear, don’t think about a white bear, don’t think about a white—

“Gah!” Vanir-chan yells, dramatically clutching over her right eye as if she was trying very hard to get into the ‘Love, Chuunibyou, and Other Delusions’ fandom. “Why would you do that?”

“Aha! You’ve carelessly stepped into my trap!” I tell her, standing up suddenly enough that the worryingly strained stool falls back as I dramatically point at Vanir-chan—mostly because she’s a bit contagious. “That isn’t even the greatest horror that you can find while carelessly waltzing through my mind, my greatest foe! Your world’s lack of internet hasn’t prepared you for the depths I’ve fearlessly plunged into! My heart is dyed with a darkness beyond Hell’s reckoning!”

…

Megumin, please, be a dear and stop staring at me in sheer admiration while I try not to burst into tears.

“You are a fool, Kazuma Satou! You can’t expect me to fall for such a bluff—what even is that?!”

“Death Panda. You don’t want to Google that.”

“What—what is even—your world is foul.”

“People jacked off to this, Vanir-chan. You claim to be a denizen of Hell? Ha! I scoff at the notion! At the weakness of a demonkind that doesn’t know the dreaded words: Joke’s on you; that’s my fetish!”

Vanir-chan… blinks.

So does Megumin.

My dramatically pointed finger doesn’t waver. At all.

Shut up.

“You’re impossible,” the gender-bending, mind-reading demon says as her hand slowly falls on top of her thigh, and she lets out a sigh that is more carefully enunciated than many speeches.

“Of course I am. My orcish ancestors demand nothing else from me.”

“You’re aware that your ancestors are human, don’t you?”

“Shush. Let me take refuge in not being part of such a monstrous race at the moment.”

“Kazuma Satou… you make me laugh.”

“What?”

She jumps down from the counter, her eyes now lower as she carefully steps toward me with her hips swaying just enough to be noticeable, yet not enough to be overly so. And then she’s right in front of me, forcing me to look down to meet the eyes shining through the holes in her mask.

They are… a startingly deep blue.

I never noticed before.

“Kazuma Satou, I…” she lies a careful fingertip in the middle of my breastbone, her own chest almost reaching me when she takes in a deep breath before a soft smile blooms on her face. “Do you know why I’m always so overdramatic?”

“… Because you enjoy trolling the Heck out of everyone you come across?”

“Well, that may be a part of it, but… It’s also because I see myself in others’ thoughts. And I despise being mischaracterized. I loathe with a passion seeing myself be seen as anything other than what I intend to be. Do you understand where I’m going with this?”

I look at her. At the soft, upward tilt on the corner of her lips, at eyes that glimmer through shadow.

At Vanir being, for once, almost subdued.

“I haven’t got the slightest clue.”

And she giggles.

“So that’s what being a woman truly feels like…” she mutters. “Kazuma Satou, since the very first day we met? You haven’t misunderstood me a single time. You have always been an amiable partner with which to—”

“I’m not going to fuck you.”

“Why?! This form of mine is your fetish, as confused as your mind may be! You want to pick me up and skewer me on your ridiculously thick cock! I know for a fact that you do!” she protests, the finger on my chest swiftly turning into a slapping palm.

So I…

I pick her up from below her armpits.

And she ‘eeps’ in the cutest non-Yunyun way I’ve ever heard.

… Damn it, Vanir.

“I like you,” I tell her when her face’s right in front of me. “I enjoy both your humor and your trolling when it’s directed at a deserving victim. I do enjoy our deals and chats, but… we’re barely friends, Vanir. We don’t truly know one another.”

She tilts her head in feline confusion before she blinks her eyes, and a bright smile dawns on her.

“Does that mean—” she says, almost a whisper.

“It means that you know nothing! A true genderbending fetish does not ignore what came before, but leans on it! It was never about a petite build, nice tits, and ass, but about seeing a true friend and companion in a new light! It’s about discovering that which shines pure after society’s conventions are flipped on their head! I won’t ravish you, Vanir-chan! I won’t get you into the fuck-carry position your body seems to be designed for, and I shall never do until our bonds are deep enough for it to be meaningful!”

“You fool! I can read your mind! I can forge our bonds in mere instants, knowing you better than you know yourself—stop doing that! What even is that monstrosity?!”

“The Taimanin series is really messed up.”

“Is that… Is that… I don’t even know how to ask…”

“Look, I know perfectly well what it feels like to be so horrified that you keep reading out of sheer fascination until you get the guiltiest, most shameful erection of your life, but I would recommend against going down that route.”

“You can’t dissuade me, Kazuma Satou! I shall pierce the mysteries of your mind and show you what true caring and deep friendship is like, or I shall perish in—aaaaaaahhhhhh! What the Hell?!”

“Yeah, Goblin Slayer doujins can get… nasty.”

“Nasty? Nasty?! That is… That is… Oh, demons below, I’m going to throw up…”

Already experienced with the trials and tribulations of handling an inebriated Aqua, I immediately turn Vanir-chan’s greenish face away from my almost equally greenish chest and kneel down to set her on the wooden floor as I rub her back in soothing circles with the most care I’ve ever devoted to such a task.

The Strength stat may have some drawbacks, I admit.

“I…” she starts to say.

“No. You will not cheat; you’ve already done more than enough to my confused libido. If this is going to happen… I have a—I have girlfriends, Vanir. I can’t just stick it anywhere I please. Not anymore.”

Vanir-chan remains silent for a moment before slowly falling back until her small back rests on my chest.

“Thank you, Kazuma Satou,” she gently whispers, not bombastically at all.

…

“I don’t even know what for,” I honestly tell her, the barrier of disturbing hentai ever ready as a mental shield against her surprise attacks.

She, once again, softly giggles before slowly turning her head up and back until she’s staring right at me with surprisingly piercing blue.

“Thank you for taking Wiz in. I’ll be sure to visit her,” she says.

And then, as my crashing brain remembers that this whole thing was supposed to be about getting Vanir to let Wiz move back in rather than forcing her on my steadily crowded mansion, Vanir-chan lays a quick, sweet kiss on my cheek that makes my face heat up as she shows me yet another of those carefully subdued smiles.

“At least one of the lipsticks didn’t go to waste,” she murmurs, making my heart beat just a tad faster.

…

Damn it, Vanir.

***

“You didn’t have sex,” Megumin says by way of greeting as I go to the alley by the side of the store to pick her up from the wooden crates she’s been spying on me from.

“Did you miss the show?” I ask as I reach up and get her into another princess carry, despite Yunyun being the one who should be laying claim to such royal treatment.

… Because she’s the almost literal princess of their clan, not because of anything vaguely romantic.

Really.

Megumin’s eyes are hidden from me behind the rim of her wide hat, but her mouth still twists into sheer displeasure at the mere notion of getting a live performance from yours truly. Which is preposterous, given how much money people in my homeworld have spent on consuming orc porn that wasn’t even uncensored, much less live-action.

And then, Megumin’s hand lifts up to touch my cheek… and violently rubs at it.

“Gah! What are you doing?!”

“Shut up! I’m demarking you! I’m taking away a demon’s seal and protecting your soul from her claim!”

“It’s lipstick!”

“Foolish Kazuma! Curses can be laid with any manner of ink, chalk, or pigment! Don’t you realize why makeup is called a woman’s weapon? It’s precisely because of occasions such as these, when an unwary soul gets carelessly stolen away by tinted lips!”

“At least use a handkerchief!”

“Just hold still! I’m almost done, you big, green baby.”

Patiently enduring the meticulous rubbing of my cheek the girl in my arms seems to believe is in any way necessary, I wait until—

“There, done.”

Yes, I wait until that.

Obviously.

“OK, so we just need to go back home so I can get some non-cum tainted food and talk to Wiz about—”

“No. I just saved your soul, so now you have to repay me,” Megumin interrupts, her cleansing finger barring my lips.

“Huh?”

“Yes. I’ve done you a great service, and now you’re going to balance your karma so that our bond doesn’t get tarnished by the underlying forces of the cosmos,” she says in what I believe she thinks is a sage tone.

…

“What do you want now?” I finally ask, far too tired from my mental battle with Vanir-chan to even try to argue.

***

“You enjoy this far too much,” I tell Megumin as I hold her in my arms over the edge of a cliff while she cradles her staff between both her breasts and thighs.

“Shut up, you love it,” she says, her eyes brimming with visible joy now that I’m, for some reason I still have to be clear on, wearing her hat.

“I may enjoy the aesthetics, but… Really? Out of all the things you could’ve asked for, you wanted this?” I ask.

And then Megumin turns her head to the left, where her vision isn’t blocked by statuesque green muscle (I am humble, but also not blind), and over the cliff.

At an abandoned fortress.

An abandoned fortress that still bears the mark of quite a few magical nukes.

“Yes,” she says, licking her lips as she pauses in contemplation. “Yes. This is precisely what I want.”

And then she raises her staff, pointing with its crimson orb at what once upon a time was a dullahan’s dwelling, and gives me an arched, prompting eyebrow.

So we, at once, recite words that should have turned into something PTSD-inducing a long time ago:

“Crimson-black blaze, king of myriad worlds.”

The magic circle spins below us, its red glow bathing my feet in shimmering crimson.

“Though I promulgate the laws of nature, I am the alias of destruction incarnate.”

It speeds up, growing with added symbols and runes, wider than when Megumin practiced this magic what feels like ages ago, on this very spot, before we defeated everything that came after.

“In accordance with the principles of all creation, let the hammer of eternity descend unto me!”

I match my tone with hers, trying, and failing, not to get carried along by her childish, pure enjoyment of the only spell she wields.

“Explosion!”

We yell.

Together.

At once.

Because I know her. I’ve watched her do this a thousand times, often with anger and sometimes with awe.

And this time…

Even as I strive to keep a long-suffering grimace on my face, I see her lighting up with joy when a beam of multicolored light descends from the darkened heavens to strike down at the fortress that endured so many of her assaults.

Then both her eyes and smile widen as walls are torn asunder, as a piece of the cliff rumbles down the side of the mountain with thunder that takes seconds to reach us.

And Megumin, exhausted and limp in my arms, her staff lying on top of her as her left arm falls lifelessly by her side and the right is stuck between her body and my chest, smiles in triumph at the first true sign of her improved mastery since our latest battle.

Since I stupidly took her adventurer’s card and invested all her remaining points on the Explosion spell, because I’d rather have a true Megumin than a functional party member.

… I may have some brain damage. I blame Aqua’s inadequate healing magic.

“That was… the best…” she says in an exhausted breath, the smile never faltering.

I look at her.

At the girl who would drink an aging potion just to fit what she thought I would find attractive.

At the companion who… who joked and kidded around with me, understanding my humor in ways neither Aqua nor Darkness ever did.

At… At the first girl I kissed.

“It is,” I say, trying (and yet again failing) not to feel overly mushy as goddamn feelings seem to squeeze my heart.

Orcish rape. Such a simple concept. Why do I have to keep messing it up? My ancestors must be turning on their graves.

Assuming orcs have burial rites and not, you know, pure cannibalism like in that Lord of the Rings movie, in which case they must be turning on somebody’s stomach.

Good. I hope it gives them heartburn.

“You didn’t fuck Vanir,” she says, still smiling at the ruin and destruction she has wrought, at the seemingly slowly falling pieces of mountain and fortress.

“Rub it in, why don’t you,” I say, still staring at her face. At the face that hasn’t really changed when she took that potion, the face that’s so quick to anger, and glee, and malice.

The peaceful, serene, beautiful face of a girl I…

“I am…” she says, drifting off when a grey rock shatters against a jutting protrusion from the cliff’s face, tearing it off and prolonging the landscape-rearranging avalanche. “I… I just spent all my magic, you know?”

I raise a thoroughly exercised eyebrow at the obviousness of the statement.

“I… do? I mean, that’s what your Explosion is, you one-hit wonder—”

“I mean that I was already exhausted from… earlier, but now I’m also wiped out. I can’t cast a spell to save my life. Or… you know, anything else.”

And Megumin, ignoring the path of destruction she just carved on an unsuspecting world, laboriously turns her head over the crook of my left elbow to look up at me, the pensive smile turning into something… else.

Brighter.

“Oh, woe is me, a poor archmage who is so thoroughly defenseless while in front of a rampaging, unsated orc,” she says, a hint of her usual sardonic mockery in her tone.

And I…

“There’s nobody else in here,” I say as my arms lift her up, seemingly uncaring of my own thoughts on the matter.

“Nobody who can protect me from you. Yes,” she says, crimson eyes shining beneath dark bangs.

“I… I am an orc. And you’re a female adventurer.”

“A defenseless female adventurer.”

I swallow something thick stuck in my throat.

It may have been feelings.

Goddamn feelings.

“Megumin, I…”

“You didn’t fuck Vanir,” she insists.

“Stop bringing up the one thing my orcish blood doesn’t approve of.”

She… She slowly lifts up a trembling left arm, the effort obvious even if I didn’t know how much it taxes her to cast her magic.

And then she grabs the staff lying over her breasts, and tugs at it until it rolls off and down into thick, soft grass that we lied upon plenty of times on those days when we happily traipsed to this one place near the town of beginners where yet another of the Demon Lord’s Generals had decided to set up camp.

So unsporting. Really, the game dev needs some harsh lessons on game balance.

“I heard everything,” she whispers, her voice almost a caress on my chest as her eyes lid. “I heard you say… that you have girlfriends. That you don’t want meaningless sex.”

“I—”

“Am I… Am I your girlfriend, Kazuma?”

I look at her.

At crimson eyes opened in something more vulnerable than she’s ever allowed me to see, at lips that are pink not because of makeup, but because…

Because she’s Megumin.

Below her, my kilt is flipped up as my orcish blood roars.

“If you want to be,” I tell her, lowering my face toward hers. Toward shiny lips and glowing eyes. Toward the first girl I kissed.

“It won’t be that easy. You’ll have to take me,” she says, something wicked in her tone.

My hands on her shoulder and below her knee shift, my fingers kneading bare flesh.

And I kiss her.

She’s weak, barely responsive, but her muffled pleasure is enough to make me thrill as I shift her in my grasp, never letting go of sweet lips pressed against mine between my tusks.

And her body hangs limply from hands that dwarf her even more than her actual height. I always found a certain thrill with our height disparity, with how easily I could pick her up and carry her despite my lacking Strength, but… But now…

She’s like a fairy.

And we all know what happens to onahole-sized fairies when they are caught by horny orcs.

That’s a rhetorical trap, by the way: there are no non-horny orcs.

“Kazuma,” she mutters as her lips are briefly freed as I drag her down my body, my cock gliding between her descending legs as her dress gets pulled up, bunching beneath her breasts, the dark line of her cleavage shifting as I press her against me until she’s perched on top of my shaft, almost held up by it as much as by my hands beneath her armpits.

She’s wearing her usual black, satin panties. The ones I always thought were too mature, too damn tempting.

Now? Now they are perfect.

“Do you know what a carry fuck is, Megumin?” I rumble at her.

Her eyebrows shoot up before she worries at the left side of her lower lip with teeth so white it’s not hard to believe she belongs to a race of magically enhanced superhumans.

In some ways, Megumin has always been achingly perfect.

“I think… I think I get the idea,” she says.

“Good,” I murmur in a way that makes her shiver against me.

And then I lean forward, my left hand going from her armpit to the middle of her back, holding all of her weight over it as her body arches below me as if I was dipping her in the kind of showy dance I’ll never be able to perform.

Her eyes are focused on mine all the way.

My right hand is free to undo the side tie of her panties, and so I slowly pull at it, the ribbon knot coming apart as she gasps.

Then I pull the other side.

And her lips are slightly parted as warm puffs of air keep wafting up to my chest as Megumin waits for me to pull at the piece of fabric sticking to her sex. The last barrier between her and the cock nestled between her ass cheeks.

So I do it. I pull it up, away from her.

And her eyelids tremble.

“No one’s coming to save you,” I whisper, my head craned painfully low, right beside her reddened ear.

“Good,” she says.

And that’s all that I need before I pull her up, my cock dragging across the tender skin of an ass I will delight in watching ripple at another time.

Up. Up until she’s almost in front of me, until her forehead is in reach of my lips, and I can’t help but kiss it, some of her hair sticking to my lips as I pull away with a shared chuckle at the clumsy moment.

And then Megumin’s pussy, her warmth and wetness, is pressed against the tip of my cock, and she looks at me, her limp arms struggling to move until I realize what she’s doing, and my heart melts yet again because of this tiny terror that has infuriated me far too many times.

So I lean back, her body resting against my own as I clasp her ass, not letting her fall down while I spread my stance to avoid stumbling before I reach up with my right arm and pick up Megumin’s hands one by one.

And lay her limp arms around my neck.

“You’re too sappy,” I tell her, pretending to mock her.

“Shut up and take me,” she answers, avoiding my eyes for all of a whole second.

And she’s demanding, stubborn, and a lot of things that constantly annoy me and quickly bring me to the point of incoherent, shouting rambling.

Because she’s Megumin.

And, thinking about an adventurer’s card filled in the most suboptimal way I could conceive of…

I wouldn’t have her any other way.

“Ah! Slowly!” she says when I prod her open just a tiny bit, some of her weight transferred from my bare torso to the tip of my member.

“You’re about to be ravished by an orc, Megumin. You don’t get to make demands,” I say, the hand on her ass soothingly squeezing her flesh as I contradict myself by pausing my intrusion.

“You’re Kazuma. Of course I get to make demands,” she answers, a bit of a sappy smile mixing with the infuriating smirk.

I raise the other well-muscled eyebrow, just to add some variety, and resume lowering her down my shaft, her soft hiss almost inaudible until her very opening stretches as wide as it’s ever gone when reaching the thickest part of my head.

And then I push up. Just a tiny bit. Just a fraction of my member slipping past with the tilt of my pelvis.

And she snugly fits along the groove beneath my head, her flesh seeming to snap into place as her hiss turns into a screamed moan, and the limp, exhausted Megumin lying along my tilted back body throws her head back, her open mouth directing her surprised pleasure at the bright sky above.

It takes everything I have not to shove her down, not to sheathe myself fully inside her.

But she’s Megumin.

And, spoiled brat that she is, she’s always demanded special treatment.

“I will never get used to it,” she mutters between laborious pants.

“I’ll never let you,” I tell her.

She looks up at me, crimson eyes yet again surprising me with their inner light.

“‘Never’ is a long time,” she says, her face devoid of anything but sheer intensity.

“We have a goddess on our side. We’ll manage,” I answer without even thinking about what I’m promising.

Her smile reappears, brighter than ever, and I—

“Ah! Kazuma, I’m not Darkness! This isn’t my fetish!” she says with half my cock suddenly lodged up inside of her.

“You can’t blame me! You can’t look up at me with a Yunyun-like smile and expect me not to shove as much of my shaft inside of you as I can cram in a single push!”

“Wha—Yunyun-like smile? You bastard! Stop thinking about her while we do it!”

“Megumin, stop being so unfaithful to your soulmate! Yunyun doesn’t deserve to be ignored by you after everything you’ve gone through together!”

“Yunyun’s not my soulmate!” Megumin lies. “She’s just—she’s just…”

I stop pushing up when a third of me still remains in contact with the kind of breeze tourists back on Earth would find invigorating rather than, you know, annoying, and look at the blushing girl I’m currently fucking with a skeptical, eyebrow-alternating expression.

“She’s just the girl you clung to while having both your virginities taken at once, the girl in whose arms you slept and awoke, the girl who’s chased you here from your shared home village and that’s fought by your side no matter what?”

“I mean… when you put it like that…”

“The girl who, and I quote, ‘was going to make you explode?’”

“Aaaaahhhhh! Forget about that! Don’t even think about Yunyun forcefully dragging me to my bedroom and using each and every one of her lewd spells on my defenseless, responsive body! Don’t think about Yunyun making me come again and again until my throat went hoarse, and she had to rush to get Aqua to heal me so that she could then cuddle with my sweaty, exhausted, naked body, cradling my head against her breasts, murmuring soothing things, trailing her fingers down my hair and back—why are you looking at me like that?”

Don’t think about a white bear.

It’s impossible, right? The very moment the words get into your brain, there’s the white bear there, mocking you like he knows you aren’t paying for his caffeinated beverage sponsorship. The very admonition, the prohibition to think about it, makes him amble past your mindscape again and again, returning with ever more alacrity with each forceful repetition of the thought that should banish him.

Don’t think about a white bear. The thing I used to orchestrate Vanir-chan’s downfall before I assaulted her (comparatively) pure mind with a fraction of what the internet has to offer.

Now, substitute that for ‘Don’t think about Yunyun and Megumin engaged in very active lovemaking involving the creative use of arcane powers that were definitely meant to be abused.’

“Ka—Kazuma?” Megumin asks, her sweet, tender, dubitative voice and wide-open eyes finally breaking that particular camel’s back like a train-suplexing wrestler prince.

“Kazu—aaaahhh! What did I just say?!” Megumin asks, her irate voice finally reaching familiar notes.

Or, well, mostly familiar, given the idiosyncratic warble marring her admonishment when I finally bottom out inside of her.

“A lot of things,” I manage to get out through clenched teeth. “You said a lot of things, and I’m not liable for what’s about to happen.”

“Wha—hn! Let me—at least let me get used to it!”

My hands tremble on her ass and back, struggling not to manhandle her, not to make her bounce up and down the cock stuck inside her tight body, my arms almost quivering with restrained strength.

And, slowly, deliberately, I crane my head down toward her still-reddened ear, my lips reaching the tip of it as I straighten up and hold her vertically, against me, her weight resting as much on the base of my member as on the hands digging into soft, tender flesh.

“Never,” I whisper with a slow caress that only ends when I poke out my long tongue to lick along the ridges of the shell of her ear.

Megumin first shivers at my dark tone and the sensations running across her body, but then… stops.

And realizes what I just said. What we just said.

That’s when another Yunyun-like smile breaks across her face as she looks into my eyes, her limp arms barely squeezing at the sides of my neck.

And so I bounce her up, my cock exiting her body almost entirely as her smile turns into a surprised, silent ‘O’ that reverses into clenched teeth and rolled eyes when I bounce her back down, her light, tiny body a mere plaything in my grasp.

“Kazuma… Kazuma, I’m going to—”

“Cum. You’re going to cum, one-pump chump that you are.”

“I—don’t make fun of me, I am—”

“Unbelievably beautiful when you do. When pleasure courses through you, when your eyes soften, when your lips fall open. I could watch over your orgasming face for years on end and never get tired of it. Never.”

I whisper the last word yet again, and she shudders.

And then I really rail her.

Her voice turns into incoherent babbling as her narrow sex smoothly glides up and down my cock, clenching on me tighter than any other girl I’ve been with even as both her fluids and mine make that a non-issue.

Her fingers twitch behind my nape, and I smirk as I pull her down, grinding our bodies together, pressing against her clit as she first gasps then grunts, her thighs quivering against my own, the rippling flesh slapping against taut muscle as I move her in tight circles around my cock that always end up in a sharp gasp when our pelvises rub together, and I squeeze her that bit harder, that bit closer as her eyelids tremble.

“Kazuma… I’m going to…”

“Yes. Yes, you are,” I say.

And my hand goes from her back to her nape, cradling her head back so she can look into my eyes as I hold her still and fuck her hard enough that she bounces.

Her mouth drops open, the breath squeezed out of her before she can scream, and I let her recover for an instant so that she can, so that I can listen to her moaning her overwhelming pleasure as I speed up, shortening each stroke, turning her bounces into something syncopated that makes her voice warble until, finally, the wail doubles in volume and Megumin—

She looks so beautiful.

It’s an effort of will to hold her still, her face cradled against my chest as she shivers all around me as my whole being demands I continue, that I keep fucking her through her orgasm, that I use her, that I make her into my toy so that I can take all the pleasure I want from her.

But… she’s Megumin.

And I’ll only do something like that to her when she’s fully capable of being infuriated at me for it.

“How are you doing?” I ask her as a thick thumb brushes down the back of her head, her eerily soft hair yet again reminding me of how much her clan was crafted, turned into something…

More. Into something more, I guess.

“I love you,” she answers with a broken murmur.

…

When I regain my senses, both my hands are sunken into Megumin’s ass, and she’s bouncing up and down along my cock fast enough that her hair struggles to keep up with her, whipping along the trajectory I imprint on her tiny body, her breasts free of the recently tight confines of her dress.

They are… doing their own share of bouncing.

And Megumin looks almost insensate, her eyes drifting to and away from mine, her mouth slack in something that is sometimes a smile, even if an obscene one.

And I cannot stop.

There’s a roar in my skull, something that echoes with every new garbled moan from the girl I’m holding up, something that grows every time I make her eyes roll back until there’s only white showing and her tongue futilely wags barely past her lips.

Something that screams at me to take her, to make her mine, and to never let go.

I could claim it is my orcish blood, the teachings of my ancestors demanding I breed the uppity archmage.

But, honestly? It’s the lonely boy who shut himself in his own room, refusing to meet the world until he got over losing his childhood crush.

It’s not Orczuma. It’s Kazuma Satou.

And the fact it’s me that’s about to brand Megumin makes this all the more delicious.

So I lean down and shove my tongue past her lips until I reach the back of her throat, until I  can feel the ring of muscle convulsing around me almost at the same rate as her pussy around my cock.

And I don’t tell her I love her. I don’t tell her about how confused she’s made me over and over again, or how frantic I was when her mother straight-out prompted me to take Megumin as my wife.

I just… take her.

So I shove her down one last time as I feel the burst of electric fire at the base of my cock about to…

Well…

Explode.

And then I take my tongue out of her mouth, and I look into her wide, briefly focused eyes, and, with a forced smirk, I tell her:

“I’m going to explode! Megumin’s going to make me explode!”

“You basta—aaaahhhh!”

I will one day claim I timed my ejaculation just to interrupt her in the most embarrassing way.

It will be a lie.

But, for the moment, all plans of pranking and counter-pranking fade away as my thoughts are consumed by the overwhelming feeling of something erupting from me and into Megumin, of bursts of searing hot semen loudly splashing into the space I force open inside of her, over my pulsing tip, past the mouth of her womb as she yells and her arms and legs finally snap closed around me.

I keep cumming inside her until thick drops of my seed are forced past her tight opening and roll down my shaft and past my ballsack to the green grass below us.

And I keep doing it, filling her with jet after jet of semen until the pleasure blurs together with the sensation of making Megumin mine.

***

I… Some time has passed.

The avalanche (the literal one, I mean) has finally stopped, the rocks settled into something that looks more or less stable.

And Megumin…

She’s still hugging my neck, her legs trying to do the same with my waist even as they keep slipping down when she fails to keep them up as her harsh breath wetly washes over my chest, her soft cheek resting on my breastbone.

“I do,” I finally tell her, yet again caressing her soft hair with a disproportionately large thumb.

“What?” she whispers after a moment.

“I… The same. I do. As well,” I tell her, feeling my cheeks tinge with what long, terrible experience assures me is an embarrassed blush that my orcish ancestors would shame me for.

“What are you talking about?” she asks, this time somewhat faster.

“Are you serious—I love you! I love you as well, all right?!”

“What—‘as well?’ What does ‘as well’ even mean?!”

“You just told me you loved me! You can’t pretend that—”

“I just came my brains out! I don’t remember it! It doesn’t count! It doesn’t!”

“What the—I take it back!”

“Too late! You love me, and that’s it!”

“I just came my brains out! I don’t remember it! It doesn’t count! It doesn’t!”

“You—if I had my staff, you’d be—”

Megumin, looking up at me, sees something in my eyes, my widening smirk, and my gleaming tusks that makes her stop cold.

And I, still sheathed inside her tight, tight body, hold her as I bend down until her (slightly cum soaked, now that I look at it) staff is in her reach.

“Come on, pick it up,” I dare her.

“… Don’t wanna,” she says, proving yet again that her Intelligence stat is not just for show.

“Do it. Come on, Megumin, aren’t you going to put me in my place?” I tell her with malicious glee.

She, as apprehensive as Darkness approaching her father’s house, finally relents and takes the staff. Then she drops it with a grimace, looks at her cum drenched hand, and, staring straight into my eyes with defiant anger, licks her palm clean.

I pretend I don’t notice her purring, and she pretends not to notice my cock hardening inside of her. Then she grabs her weapon above the part more clearly splattered and lifts it up.

“OK, now what—what the Hell are you doing?!” she yells as I suddenly straighten up and start taking a jaunty walk down the path back to Axel.

“A carry fuck. Try to keep up, Megumin,” I tell her as her eyelids flutter, and she almost drops her staff from limp fingers.

Along the way back home, Megumin explodes quite a few times.

So do I.

It’s kind of our thing.

***

Obviously, I stop fucking the insensate archmage before there’s any risk of running into any potential witnesses of the non-silenceable variety, so, when we get back to our mansion, Megumin is once again being transported via the kind of royal treatment that rightfully belongs to Yunyun, and—

…

I may need to have a talk with Yunyun. Just…

A talk.

Hopefully, one without feelings.

Still, my mind is more or less at peace, and not even the prospect of having to rearrange Wiz’s living accommodations brings me any measure of panic or apprehension. Indeed, it’s like fucking my whole party (plus Yunyun as a guest member) for breakfast, and then having Megumin more or less ask to be my girlfriend as preliminars has brightened my outlook on a world that seems slightly less terrible than usual. I would go so far as to say that—

“Luna?”

Well, yeah, I would go so far as to say ‘Luna.’ Mostly? Because she’s seemingly waiting for me at the living room table while a nervous Aqua stands by her side with a metallic tray protectively clutched vertically in front of her maid’s uniform.

“Ah, Kazuma, good to see you’re back,” the blonde says with a bright smile, unfailingly polite, before raising her cup of tea to her lips for a brief sip of something I dearly hope is not purified warm water.

“Right, I…” I look at Megumin peacefully sleeping in my arms and then shoot Luna a guilty gaze before I gently walk to the sofa and lay her on it.

Shut up. It’s not like I don’t want to disturb her rest; I just know how annoying she is right after waking up.

Really.

So I take off her borrowed hat and lie it over her eyes before I walk back to the table and sit in front of the receptionist I was balls deep in yesterday, desperately trying not to get my kilt twitching and dreading why Aqua looks like the town’s brewery caught on fire.

“So… you had guild business with us?” I venture.

Luna’s smile goes from bright to brighter, yet in a way that doesn’t inspire anything but dread.

“Precisely. It has come to my attention that there’s been a sudden avalanche down by the old fortress’ ruins,” she says.

Cold sweat doesn’t run down my back. Mostly because icicles tend to politely stay put.

“Oh?” I say with a frozen rictus that tried very hard to be a smile before realizing its life-long goals were as unachievable as enjoying Final Fantasy’s VIII junction system.

“Yes. Oh. Because do you know what’s down that cliff?”

“A ravine?” I ask, looking for Aqua’s fleeing eyes.

“That is technically correct, though it’s one through which a river runs.”

“A river?”

“Yes. A river. A river that, once blocked by what seems to be half of a mountaintop, first overflowed and then pushed the impromptu dam downstream, where flying rocks and pressurized water crashed against the only bridge in miles.”

It is only then, when Luna’s smile further sharpens into something that assures me that she may very well be an undercover assassin (with the ass for it), that I lower my eyes to realize there’s an envelope on the table.

Her eyes narrow.

And she pushes it toward me.

“What… What is it?” I ask with mounting dread.

“This, my dearest Kazuma, my most favorite of adventurers, savior of Axel, is the bill for a new bridge.”

My eyebrows knit into a pleading, sad valley looking for mercy.

They find none.

“You… There’s no proof that I—”

“Two female adventurers, a mage and a fighter, identified some very enthusiastic, distinctive moans that coincided with a certain spell being cast.”

I, stupidly, look at the peacefully sleeping Megumin lying on the sofa, her matted hair and sticky clothes all but screaming just how much she exploded.

So I, resignedly, fearfully, pick up the envelope, and Luna’s smile finally turns into something vindicative as she gleefully watches me process the number of zeroes I find inside.

Then, for a brief, mad moment, I wonder if this is the start of Luna’s escort mission.

 

 

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Hello there! This bout of green fever is brought to you by both my own insanity and my supporters voting for it one too many times in a row until it became a monthly series. It currently has ten chapters, nine of which can be found on QQ, and the tenth one on my Patreon. I’ll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we’re caught up. 

Also, I’d like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and helping me keep writing wholesome orc rape, consider joining them or buying one of my books on Amazon. Thank you for reading!