TWLPOD 34

There was no insertion, but the act of exposing and rubbing each other’s genitals, feeling pleasure, and ejaculating… it could not be defined as anything else.

At the same time, that meant that it felt that good, undeniably so.

‘I think it might have been tingly…’

That feeling, swallowed by pleasure… was something different from simple pain….

‘Let’s stop thinking about it.’

As he shook his head from side to side, a faint laugh drifted over. It was the sound of the guy who had been following his every move with his eyes, enjoying someone else’s anguish.

“Don’t laugh.”

He couldn’t even wait that brief moment and touched the back of my hand again. The feel of the blunt leather on the back of my hand was strangely vivid, so I shook his hand off again.

When the clock struck the hour, a screen turned on above the platform of the strategy conference room, and Jin appeared.

[“We will now begin the strategy meeting for the assault on the H-District Fortress.”]

His eyes, with dark circles deeper than usual, seemed to emit a glint as he scanned the people seated inside.

[“First, I will give a brief explanation of the <Fortress> in the relevant area.”]

With clear and distinct pronunciation, he brought up a map displaying the battle situation on the screen.

<Fortress>

That was the new name for a place that was once called a ‘factory.’

After the Mother Core malfunctioned, the shipping destination changed from the market to the battlefield, and the heavily secured factory became a fortress for defense. The android army, which had endlessly proliferated based on the fortress, was continuing the war while protecting the ‘Core’ that supplied production energy in the deepest part of the fortress and the ‘Key’ in charge of that fortress.

Among them, H-District.

H-District, a strategically important location bordering Lympus’s largest river, the Is, and its highest mountain, Taebaek, and occupying a geographical bottleneck as the area connecting to Central, was difficult to assault and capture. The reason was….

[“Once every three years. For a single day. It is opened. Moreover, the opening time is short, making it optimized for defense. In other words, within the given time, you must defeat the ‘Key,’ use its nucleus to disable the security device, and succeed in destroying the <Core>.”]

Next, the core structure of the fortress was displayed on the screen.

[“However, three years ago, we located the deepest part where the <Core> is, so this time, we, who have grasped the internal structure, have an absolute advantage.”]

In that moment, his eyes met Jin’s.

[“And we have two S-ranks.”]

It was an explicit signal directed at Kay. Jin quickly looked away and displayed the operation time and the internal layout, and Aran took that opportunity to move closer.

“You said twisting words to distort the truth is also a form of lying. Then what Jin said is a lie.”

Wondering what he was suddenly talking about, Kay listened as Aran continued.

“To be precise, it’s not that we just located the deepest part.”

“Then?”

The opal-colored shimmer surrounding his black pupils wavered as if it were burning.

“It’s that I reached it, but failed to destroy the core.”

For Aran, it was a heavy emotion.

“The fortress’s core is, after all, like an android’s nucleus. To break it, there is no other way but to apply a force stronger than its given durability and destroy it.”

“And you couldn’t do that even with your power?”

Aran’s sunken eyes rose again, and he disguised his true feelings with a playful voice.

“Of course, I’d appreciate it if you took into account that I was so tattered from fighting nonstop on the way there that it was agonizingly painful to even lift a finger, but to just answer your question… yeah. It was impossible.”

Even though his pride might have been hurt, or he might have felt anger or irritation at his failure, Aran just smiled in a way that made it difficult to read his thoughts.

“But I didn’t know they would go so far as to try to kidnap and brainwash you over it.”

He stabbed at a person’s bad memories with a smiling face.

He was the type to remind me like this whenever I forgot what a bad personality he had.

“So that’s why it was three years ago.”

The Center began its persistent persuasion, conciliation, and threats about three years ago from now. It makes sense if you think of it as being right after Aran, their strongest weapon, had failed.

‘Strongest?’

For a moment, Kay felt like he had missed something.

“…What about the other person?”

The only two S-rank Multis in this world. If they needed another one besides Aran, then the fighting power exists even if it’s not Kay himself.

“……”

Aran, realizing who Kay was asking about, twisted his lips.

Kay knew it was a smile that hoped he wouldn’t ask, a smile that warned him not to ask, but he wasn’t one to back down so easily.

“The S-rank Multi. Isn’t there another one besides you?”

“Let’s just say that one is off the roster.”

“Off the roster?”

It was a vague expression, but it seemed he had no intention of saying anything more.

[“You two over there.”]

Feeling as if they had been caught goofing off, they looked at Jin.

[“For the remaining two days. Rest with all your might. It is a mission.”]

“Yessir.”

He realized that being told to rest included guiding from Aran, beyond just playing and eating. In the past, he might have said he didn’t need such a thing, but after yesterday’s guiding, his body felt so light that he had to admit it, even if he didn’t want to. His mind was clearer than he had ever experienced, and the heat that had always pooled and felt stuffy flowed smoothly to his fingertips and toes.

Thanks to that, he also realized that his past physical condition, which had felt no different whether he rested or not, had simply been consistently bad, and that became an irreversible fact.

“Legitimate rest. Nice.”

Unlike Aran, who was delightedly propping his chin on his hand, Kay grasped the shape of the irritation that had been bothering him from yesterday all through today. This is thirst. The preciousness of water, which one doesn’t know when one’s throat is constantly dry. Just as the thirst after drinking one’s fill of water is even more unbearable, it was a sense of relative deprivation brought on by a single moment of abundance.

A feeling of refusal, of not wanting to go back to that state again.

The fear brought on by emptiness, absence, and poverty.

“……”

He truly understood why espers lost their guides and went mad with insanity. Why social news stories about guides being kidnapped, confined, and raped happened every day. Why facilities were being created for guides who suffered due to forced imprinting.