The start was the problem. That’s how Sieg Becker always saw it. For instance, if you trigger a trap on your very first step into a labyrinth, no matter how easy the rest of the path is, you’re bound to have your spirits crushed. If the first bite of food contains a lump of salt, there’s no recovering, no matter how delicious the rest turns out to be. Therefore, having a bad start is a fairly serious stroke of unluckiness in life. At least, that’s what Sieg thought.
“Damn it. Man, I envy you guys. You look so happy. Don’t get too cocky with that crap.”
Sieg sat in the shallows of the Bath Oasis at Tarruk, legs crossed in a triangle, indulging in an eye feast.
The Bath Oasis, which could be considered Tarruk’s most infamous local specialty for its mixed-gender bathing, was no stranger to young couples or parents with children.
You could see them everywhere: ogre couples or dark elf parent-child units making the most of the mixed bath’s benefits, naked and snuggly (or father-daughter pairs who didn’t look like they were related in the slightest).
Watching the young ogres and dark elf girls having fun with their friends at the oasis gave him a happy feeling, but seeing couples or families made his heart ache.
Sieg raised an invisible partition in his mind, focusing on the unaccompanied girls or groups of just girlfriends, gazing blankly around the oasis.
He had raged and gone mad over Andi’s harem situation at first, but when he really asked himself if that was achievable for him—or if it could ever be achieved—the only things he could imagine were sad ones, leaving him dejected as time passed.
“If only my start hadn’t been a failure…”
Speaking of being popular with girls, Sieg was in the pretty popular category based on looks alone; he had features good enough to compete with theatrical actors, he was tall, held a decent status, had great vibes, and was strong.
In a rural area where men were scarce and women had few prospects for marriage, if he didn’t hold back and used every seduction tactic in the book, it wasn’t entirely impossible that he could push things to a state close to Andi’s harem with enough effort.
Legally, under Celesta’s marriage laws, there would be no problem whatsoever.
So was it actually possible?
In Sieg’s case, the answer was no.
He was, in fact, a virgin inexperience.
Sieg Becker hailed from the western part of Celesta, the region along the Great Almonica River, and was an orphan. Shortly after he was born, his home was raided by bandits who killed his parents; on the brink of death from malnutrition, he was rescued and raised by the adventurer Reider Becker. His adoptive father, Reider Becker, specialized in tomb raiding and belonged to Birdmen, a small minority beastfolk race capable of flight for short durations of several minutes. His style was diving into the heart of ruins—a move that would normally be considered reckless—to snatch treasures and then shake off swarms of monsters by taking flight for a swift escape. And as for Sieg… he often secretly followed his adoptive father on adventures, only to find himself chased by swarms of monsters in place of the father who had already escaped cleanly. His exceptional high-speed movement ability, which far surpassed that of ordinary people, began to bloom around this time. When a human barely escapes death, all sorts of things awaken within them.
“Well, you guy who stole the bourgeoisie knife yesterday.”
“Huh?”
When Sieg looked up, a huge ogre stood there with his arms crossed.
It was the man who had been working as a bouncer at the tavern last night.
The weapon he wore, displayed without any attempt to hide it and swinging freely, was truly magnificent in its ogre-like grandeur. It was right at eye level.
“Stay back. Your dick stinks.”
“Don’t smell it then.”
“I’ll hit you.”
“Heh heh heh.”
The ogre sat down next to Sieg, about a meter away.
“But what a stunning knife that was. It’s not for me to say, as the one who confiscated it, but is it okay? It might have been worth buying a whole house.”
“It wasn’t. It’s seriously precious stuff. I’ll force that grandma to pay off the pawn before it’s forfeited.”
”…What, are those two your girls?”
“No. That’s what this is about…”
“Then just be honest and hand over the knife instead of running off… but again, that’s not for me to say either.”
“If that had been the case, things could have turned out even worse…”
He couldn’t exactly bring up the fact that the woman he’d been drinking with last night was actually a dragon. But while he kept it to himself, the despair in his tone seemed to get through, for the ogre formed his lips into an “H” shape and looked on with deep sympathy.
“That’s just it, I haven’t even pawned it yet.”
“That’s not my business. It’s up to Oyas-san.”
“Oh god, come on… then tell me about a pawnshop you usually use. Just in case something happens, I might need to go there.”
“It’s the Trident Trading Company on Razona Street. They’re the only place you can trust for evaluating weapons and gear.”
”…The Trident Trading Company? Hold on a sec. You don’t mean the one that belongs to the Tricorn ogres?”
“You know that well, huh? I thought you were an adventurer, but are you a merchant?”
“I’m neither.”
Sieg buried his head in his hands.
“Man, man, man… if it’s a Tricorn thing… the odds are pretty high they’re connected to someone down south…”
“What’s wrong, bro? You got some bad memories involving Tricorns or something?”
“Just a little from back in the day. I guess all I can do is pray it’s unrelated…”
A Tricorn ogre was, as the name literally indicated, an ogre with three horns. While they were part of the standard breed known as Plain ogres, Tricorns were less common than one-horned or two-horned variants, making them notorious for their strong sense of solidarity.
“Ah crap. My jewel knife… damn it…”
“W-well, let’s just hope luck is on our side.”
“Yeah… you’re a pretty good guy. Even if you do look like an asshole.”
“Shut up. That’s just proof I’ve been working hard. Leave me alone.”
Reassured by his unexpectedly decent bodyguard ogre, Sieg exited Water Sprinkler Oasis. Even though it was a collector’s item, the possibility of losing something so expensive that you could have built three sun-dried brick houses with its value left Sieg unable to hide his shock. “Damn it… but even if I rush to the tavern right away, I can’t see how that chick made enough gold overnight to replace it…”
He wanted to dash to the bar out of panic, but without money, there was nothing to be done. Sieg’s job involved stealing information or kidnapping important figures from others, so naturally he couldn’t just swipe cash and valuables from a civilian. It was a profession where one step out of line could ruin everything, which is precisely why professional ethics were crucial. ”…Damn. Looks like I have to wait then. I’ll make sure I’m not left behind when we set off.”
Since he had only pawned the jewel knife as payment for drinks, his wallet was still intact, leaving him with a bit of breathing room. He decided to use that money to pass the time. Having lost his prized possession over alcohol, he wasn’t in the mood to look at booze right now. “So… women, then.”
Confirming the weight in his wallet, Sieg began walking down the back alleys, searching for a cheap brothel. Buying a woman was also one of his hobbies. He never got hooked on any single woman, and since he wandered through various towns as a side job to his espionage work, there were no issues.
“Ugh… that man Smayson, keeping six or seven beauties around him and banging them for free, it’s infuriating just thinking about it…”
Sieg didn’t look nearly as bitter as those muttered words suggested. “I really wish he’d tell me. The secret to getting close to a woman that good.”
It was a sarcastic line. However, the bitterness wasn’t quite as heavy in the delivery as it was in the content. For an instant, his vacant gaze reflected not longing for the situation, but disappointment in himself. “I shouldn’t be thinking about things that don’t suit me.”
Lead Becker had departed for the Western Continent when Sieg was twelve years old, a region known for its many untouched mazes and ruins. However, after repeated instances of Sieg’s reckless tracking were exposed, Sieg was entrusted to one of Lead’s acquaintances. Despite being a foolhardy adventurer, his parents’ affection prevailed—they decided that enough was enough.
Sieg spent a few months in Timbares, a port town at the mouth of the Great Almonika River, before moving to Quica. He passed the Ace Knight examination that year, earning the title of Ace Knight at the age of twelve—a record for the youngest ever. Immediately after, due to his unique style specializing in evasion, he was assigned directly to the Special Intelligence Corps.
After a few missions, Sieg experienced first love when he was fifteen. Sieg had been fawned over as the youngest Ace Knight in history, but it was less about treating him like a prodigy and more like a rare animal; it certainly wasn’t how one treated a normal twelve-year-old. While that treatment satisfied the boy’s vanity and provided a comfortable environment, it may have fueled his passion for work, but it did nothing to soothe his loneliness. Hanging out with Knight Class holders who were mostly much older was never easy for a pubescent boy, and seeking peers proved futile as well. The military cadets of similar age were almost all non-combatant staff candidates—rich kids and little ladies with whom he couldn’t possibly hit it off. Surrounded by praise and admiration, he was alone. The one who cured that loneliness was a merchant’s daughter from the Aphlim Empire, two years his senior. Her name was Elsa. Perhaps because she was foreign, she wasn’t intimidated by Sieg, then a famous “Genius Ace Knight” in Quica, nor did she give off the vibe of an uneducated slum girl. She was exactly what Sieg had idealized. It didn’t take long for young Sieg to become infatuated with her.
Shaking off his youthful memories, Sieg ducked under a curtain entrance layered with multiple veils of thin cloth.
Inside, a young dark elf woman waited, wearing garments that could barely be called clothes.
“A dark elf,” he murmured.
“You look at me as if I’m something rare.”
“Sorry. It’s my first time seeing a dark elf in a whorehouse.”
“This is a dark elf colony?”
“It strikes a lowlife like me as strange that members of a long-lived race would take up work stripping their legs open in a cheap inn like this. You’d think it was just for humans and beastmen who hit rock bottom.”
The dark elf laughed.
“We don’t live on air either, you know. We buy bread with money, and renting a house isn’t free. Sometimes we fall in love, and sometimes we get scammed… and sometimes, there’s nothing left to sell but our bodies.”
“Fair enough.”
It was a common story. An inevitable social structure.
If there are men and women, money and business, and the desire to outwit one another, this kind of thing is bound to happen.
There will always be women who end up in this position.
Sieg was no longer at an age where he felt pity or sympathy for such things, or burned with righteous indignation.
He had long passed that youthful naivety.
“Well, let’s begin. I believe we’re going by the clock?”
“Yes. You can ejaculate as much as you like until the noon bell rings. Though, in the case of a client… expect it to be thick and sticky right up until time is up.”
“You really know how to set expectations, don’t you?”
Even if told to pull out as much as he could, one couldn’t just rush to climax like that.
He briefly wondered what Smaison was doing. That guy was probably struggling with his performance techniques because he’d taken on too many women.
His member wasn’t keeping up, so he was likely just getting better at finger tricks, Sieg imagined. He then threw himself over the woman, kneading and wringing her breasts which were framed by cloth and hardware but otherwise nearly bare, running a kiss from the base of her ear upwards, parting the crotch—covered only by thin fabric hanging like a curtain—with his fingers, and moving them around to probe her wetness.
“Hn… nnn, client, don’t just charge in all at once… you’re the customer, I’m the service side, so…”
“Sometimes I just want to check if my fingers still know how to pleasure a woman. Come on, we’ve got time, right? Give me a show of what it’s like to climax.”
“Mm, gah… stop it…!”
The dark elf became quiet.
Sieg continued moving his fingers.
He rolled her nipple with his tongue, peeled back the hood of her clitoris, massaged her anus, and teased her into producing love juices from between her inner labia.
“Haaah.”
“Nngh ahh…!”
Occasionally, he’d blow hot air into her ear unannounced, or suck at it sputteringly with saliva.
The dark elf surrendered herself to pleasure with a straight-faced compliance.
Or perhaps she merely performed the act of surrendering.
”……”
Even if it was an act, he wasn’t some reckless kid who’d get angry over it.
That was her line of work, and that was the professional spirit required for the job.
Sieg could see that clearly enough.
Suddenly, he came to despise the way his face always betrayed such familiarity with these things.
(……Lying, getting tired, pretending to be deceived while believing the deception works, mutually pretending to be obsessed with one another…… huh.)
In the end, would he just have to wear a stupid look on his face and ejaculate to prove that the thick pile of lies held together?
Just paying money to spit out his essence solely to hide the self who wasn’t truly capable of being obsessed with anything because of all these preemptive defenses?
…Feeling a sudden loathing for such a self, Sieg whispered to the dark elf girl.
“What’s your name?”
”……?”
“Not a trade name. I can’t get myself worked up enough to cum unless I’m calling out the name of the person I’m screwing.”
”……I see. Ariel.”
“A good name. ……Ariel!”
He surrendered himself to ego once more.
With that sense of satisfaction, he thrust his spent cock deep into the dark elf’s crotch.
Sieg’s habit of probing for his partner’s secrets was a tendency he’d had since his first love. He wanted to know. He wanted to know the truth. He wanted to know what the other person was trying to hide. He wanted to see sides of them that they thought no one else could see. Only then could he feel at ease. I know. That’s the only way I could believe it.
Though the name I just learned might also be a trade name, you know.
(……No, fucking hell, me?! )
He despised himself fiercely.
What kind of love, romance, or sex was this, left with nothing but these preemptive defenses and his spineless guts showing?
In the end, all that prevented Sieg from concentrating on a woman was his sheer unwillingness to embarrass himself as a fool.
If you get too used to being an adult, too accustomed to knowing only the weaknesses of others, you can’t be honest with yourself.
Sieg found it excruciatingly difficult to act in accordance with his desires and passion—truly, without any pretense or ulterior motive—by throwing himself at someone.
Therefore, he found that youthful quality, that immaturity capable of such things, enviable.
“Mm, uh…!”
”……Customer?”
The dark elf looked up with a puzzled expression.
Sieg’s cock had gone soft and slid out of her.
“S-sorry… I seem to be feeling under the weather.”
“I’m sorry, I…”
“Ariel, it’s not your fault. I just tend to get a bit flaccid from time to time.”
The Dark Elf propped himself up and, in a panic, buried his face between Sieg’s legs.
Unlike with a vagina, where pinpoint stimulation of the erogenous zones can be masked by psychological factors to some extent, fellatio was too direct to feign composure. He was quickly brought to erection and guided straight through to ejaculation.
“Ugh… ghh!!”
“…Mm, kuu, …mng, mng’… nghk, pffh.”
And then he swallowed the semen.
Sieg, his feelings a tangled mess, stroked the Dark Elf’s head.
“…♪”
“Don’t look so happy just because I’m petting you.”
He’d start losing faith in him again.
Looking past that blissful expression, Sieg wondered if the Dark Elf was actually mocking him.
“…Then stop petting me.”
The Dark Elf took his hand.
“It’s a pleasure to be praised. Even for something like sucking your member,” he said.
“Is that how it works?”
“Yes, it is.”
The Dark Elf buried his face in Sieg’s groin once more.
This time, the approach was unhurried, devoid of panic.
Just as the sensation built toward another climax, the noon bell rang.
Sieg left the brothel, bought a thin pancake from a street stall, and scaled the roof of a nearby building to eat it in seclusion.
For someone with Sieg’s leg strength, vaulting onto the roof of a three-story building was no trouble at all.
Compared to when he was young and chased his stepfather through mountain ruins, leaping up sheer cliffs in a zigzag, this was nothing.
“…Huh. I suppose I should give it a go—ask someone out first. If the Dragon Sis doesn’t work out, and Smajson doesn’t either, I can always make Carlos take out a loan, I guess.”
He muttered to himself, trying to flush away the hollowness rising in his chest.
Work, and inanimate objects.
Those were the two things that would never betray Sieg.
Do the job, pamper the inanimate things, occasionally buy and fuck a woman for a while. On good days, it all flowed together seamlessly, and he could live with style.
And before he knew it, he was thirty-nine.
He had no choice but to keep living this way.
“At this point, I can’t actually get close to a beauty like you. If there’s a way to do it, teach me.”
That wasn’t envy of Andy’s “situation.”
It was envy of Andy’s “innocent youth.”
It was regret for his own life, where he had been forced to grow up too early and waltzed into the adult world. The posture he had adopted had unknowingly become everything he was, and if he tried to dismantle it, there was no other footing left to stand on.
Amid all that, Diane had always been the exception for Sieg.
Diane would never deceive him. He could state with absolute certainty that she gained nothing from lying to him and found no amusement in it—a woman so strong, earnest, and filled with compassion.
To Sieg, she was the only person he could trust unconditionally, the only one he could admire, and the perfect match for his ideals—the greatest, a true goddess.
But his bad habit of peering into secrets and shame always got the better of him, preventing him from truly grasping her heart, and in the end, Andy beat him to it.
“…Well, Anzeros too… even if he does approach her, things would probably just stay the same as before.”
With someone who lacked sufficient basis for trust, he couldn’t help but draw a line.
There’s no need to be so wary. No need to put on such an act.
Deep down, he understood that, but the ingrained “adult pose” was here to stay.
He had always used work as an excuse to escape from anyone who threatened to become a close attachment. Whenever he became the object of someone’s affection, he’d betray them while the wounds were still fresh enough not to matter. Beside the one-tenth of feeling that regretted being bested by Andy for Anzeros’ attention, there lay nine-tenths of a reassuring peace: the knowledge that he no longer had to actively distance himself from Anzeros because the other man would naturally maintain a proper gap on his own. Ultimately, that was just how this man’s life worked out. No matter how talented, handsome, or strong he might be, he was a cowardly man who relied on appearances and lacked confidence—a weak soul at heart. There was no changing it now. Hiding behind the rigid signboard of Sieg Becker, brushing off glimpses of his own fragility with jokes, that was all he could do to keep going. He had resigned himself to it.
In the alleyway below, he happened to spot a familiar face.
It was the dark elf he’d held earlier.
“Ariel, I’ve got some good fish here.”
At the words of the fishmonger ogre, the dark elf—Ariel—beamed and pulled out her purse.
“There you are, Ariel. Must be tired after work… If my shop could offer higher wages, you wouldn’t have to go to that kind of place.”
“No, it’s fine. Since I’ve decided to do it, I’m going to earn more than anyone else in that establishment.”
”…Yeah, sure. But don’t overdo it, okay?”
Ariel put on a brave face for the dark elf girl from the clothing store (though she didn’t look like a daughter, she might actually be pretty old).
”…So it wasn’t an alias after all.”
Sieg felt embarrassed that he had doubted her, and then was surprised at himself for feeling that embarrassment.
Of course one should doubt. It was a spy’s job to be suspicious.
…While that astonishment lingered, a sudden shout cut through the alley.
“Ariel!! Ariel the dark elf!!”
”!”
The air in the alley grew tense.
Several hornless ogres burst into the backstreet, sweeping aside the stalls as they went.
“We didn’t get enough from Agari! What’s that all about?!”
“I, I… she was sick last month…”
“What do I care! Whether you’re sick or not is none of my business! Paying back what you owe by borrowing elsewhere if you have to—that’s just how things work!!”
“There’s no one left who’ll lend me money…!!”
“Hah, then steal it or something! Don’t start acting all high and mighty now, you happy little whore pig that chose to become a harlot!!”
Ah, right.
It was a common story. The sort of thing that happened everywhere.
Falling in love, getting deceived, women selling their bodies, and the loan sharks.
It was a story found anywhere, anywhere at all.
In the north and the south alike. Among the long-lived elves and the humans too.
”…Hah.” Sieg Becker blinked shut his eyes for an instant, thinking of how his first love had ended twenty-four years ago. The end of his first love was his first killing of a woman. Oh yes, there’s never a good ending for spies. If I hadn’t done it, Elsa would have been tortured and broken bit by bit, finger by finger—to the very last—toiling under interrogation. I’m the one who got deceived. I’m the one who fell in love. My fault. But.
It was undignified, but that’s all there was to it. And yet, no matter where or with whom, she loved without fear of being deceived. She lived her life with her head held high.
All Ariel had done was smile pleasantly because Zieg had introduced himself correctly, without suspicion. But Zieg didn’t even believe that much. So what? One could say that was enough for Zieg to shake off his shame. It was more than sufficient to engage in the undignified act of trying to look cool by taking a woman on directly, which was rather unsportsmanlike of him.
“Hey you, one-horned imbeciles with those stupid faces!”
“Huh!?”
Suddenly.
Next to Ariel, a tall, slender middle-aged man had materialized.
“That was quite an inauspicious thing to hear.”
“Who the hell are you… Get lost, stick man!!”
“To steal right in front of a soldier? You sure have some nerve.”
“Soldier…!?”
“Don’t panic. This is our colony. …If we fold it up and bury it, no one will ever know.”
The ogre said something ominous.
Zieg grinned and knocked one of the ogres unconscious in an instant.
“W-what…!?”
“What’s going on?! What’s wrong, Gatz!!”
Zieg had merely closed the distance in a blink, kicked the temple, and returned to his original position, but that movement hadn’t been visible to anyone on the back street.
“And then… you calling such a fine woman before me a sow? You sure have some nerve.”
“What are you…”
“Zieg Becker, thirty-nine years old. Looking for a partner.”
Giving an ill-suited wink, he smiled at Ariel, who stood in a daze.
“Personally, I’d like to see you.”
“This jewel knife… it’s from the Western Continent, isn’t it?” “Yes.” “There are only four of this type on the Northwest Plains. One is held by Sylphid Trading Company in the capital of Trot, one is in the Central Museum of the Aphilem Empire, and I have one.” “The remaining one must be yours.” “Hmm… So that means that man has come to this city… ckc ckc kck” Shaking its three horns, a pleasant-sounding laugh echoed. “Keep it safe. …I’ve waited ten years for this moment!”
(To be continued)