The sensation of relentlessly devouring his tongue, like a beast tearing into its prey, didn’t leave Isaac’s lips or the inside of his mouth. In the overwhelming sensation of being pushed relentlessly to the point where he couldn’t breathe, the feeling of his skin being exposed to the cool air was added.

The clothes, stripped off as if being torn away, fell next to the bed. The touch sweeping over his body, the hand gripping his waist and pulling him close, didn’t leave Isaac. The tongue that had been tenaciously swallowing his lips and licking the inside of his mouth slipped downwards at some point. At the sensation of his neck being bitten hard, Isaac unknowingly let out a short groan, “Uhm……”

The teeth digging into the skin of his neck until blood seeped out were sharp. It truly felt like being bitten by a beast. No, at least it was clear it wasn’t human.

His neck, his chest, his waist…… every time Isaac flinched, the sensation of tenaciously tormenting, biting, and stroking those spots instantly covered his entire body.

But it wasn’t just Isaac. The prince’s breathing, too, was rough and hot, as if surging with sweltering heat. As if searching for a place to pour that heat, he persistently swept over every inch of Isaac’s body.

He had spent several days and nights like this with this man already, so it shouldn’t be unfamiliar by now, yet every time the prince’s hands touched Isaac, he gasped and his body jolted. It shouldn’t be unfamiliar; it should be something he was used to, but it seemed to get more vivid as time went on. He felt his body reacting more sensitively to this touch as time passed.

Even now——the moment the prince swept up Isaac’s chest with his tongue, the moment he bit down on the sharp peak, Isaac let out a short cry, his body thrashing. The moment that sound reached his own ears, it was a panting moan that made his own face flush hot.

Instantly, the prince seemed to stop moving for a very brief moment. Then, the prince let out a hollow laugh, a low sound like a growl.

“Living as a human with a body like this will be harder now. With a body panting and craving vital energy like this, do you think you can live like a normal human?”

“——.”

“But remember this, witch. If you dare act like a witch where I cannot see you, I will not let you be. Anywhere. ——If you drink even a drop of anyone else’s vital energy, know that I will not let it slide.”

The prince grabbed the back of Isaac’s neck. From right above his face, the prince looked down at Isaac. Looking down as if he was going to devour him, the prince thrust his hips between Isaac’s legs.

Isaac flinched involuntarily. He had a premonition of what was about to happen. A faint fear swelled largely in his chest.

However, there was no time to even feel the fear. Looking down at Isaac’s anxiously tense face, the prince bit Isaac’s lip. Simultaneously with that short burst of pain, the prince’s hand roughly gripped and pushed open his inner thighs, and something massive touched him. Soon, it pushed inside, stretching Isaac’s body open.

“——!!”

Tears welled up in his tightly squeezed eyes. A moan burst out, but it disappeared into the prince’s mouth and couldn’t be heard outside.

The prince’s member was digging into Isaac’s body. That terrifyingly swollen thing felt like a giant beast’s, not a human’s, and the narrow passage struggling to accept it felt like it would tear apart at any moment. As the thick tip forced its way into the narrow entrance and barely managed to get inside, the member, which seemed to pause for a very brief moment, relentlessly pushed in, as if pounding heavily into his body that was stretched to its absolute limit.

“…—!! —!!!”

Isaac’s body thrashed. The prince, pressing down on him with his own weight, thrust his lower body even deeper. *Fwop, fwop, fw-oop.* Even with such forceful thrusts, his body was so tight that it took three or four pushes before it finally went all the way in.

Only then did the prince part their lips and repeatedly press light kisses to his cheek. Underneath him, Isaac stared up at the ceiling, tears streaming down reflexively.

Something massive was inside his body. Something that absolutely shouldn’t fit inside a human body was forcibly digging in. He couldn’t breathe. He wanted to just stay still and curl up, but eventually, the prince began his thrusting again. At the sweltering sensation of him beginning to slide in and out of his tight body, Isaac hugged the prince’s back tightly and closed his eyes.

It was no longer unfamiliar. They had joined bodies dozens, hundreds of times; it couldn’t even be counted. But every time he did it, it felt new and unfamiliar. To the point where his lower body trembled violently……. Despite that,

“Yes, eat. I’ll give you plenty, so eat your fill.”

The prince suddenly laughed lowly in Isaac’s ear.

Hearing those words, Isaac realized that at some point, he had started moving his waist on his own. Craving the terribly sweet vital energy that began to seep from that heavy, massive flesh. He knew he had started to greedily desire the vital energy.

At the same time, another realization was that whenever this happened, the prince would always let out rough breaths mixed with faint laughs and embrace Isaac so tightly it felt like he would be crushed. He looked extremely satisfied that Isaac wanted him.

Isaac hugged the prince’s neck. Suddenly, his fingertips touched crisp hair. The ink-soaked hair gave a rough, coarse texture. As he hugged his hair with his eyes closed like this,

“…… It feels like someone else,”

He muttered without realizing it.

In that exact instant, Isaac realized something had gone wrong. The prince, who was leaning over Isaac, stopped moving.

An ominous premonition suddenly washed over him, and Isaac opened his mouth to say something, but what burst from his lips was a loud moan.

The prince started pushing into Isaac roughly. Like a beast striking with fire, like pounding a body with a body, he thrust upwards fiercely. *Fwop, fwop!* the sound of flesh colliding began to ring harshly.

“Ky, Kyan, Ky,”

He tried to call him. Without knowing why, he tried to plead with the suddenly angry man to stop. But his entire body was shaken so violently that not even a single name came out properly. His lower half burned as if on fire.

“——Ha right, so you do know. Who I am?”

The prince leaned down, bit down hard on Isaac’s shoulder, and whispered softly. His deep, low voice sounded as terrifying as the growl of a wild beast.

“Pr, prince Ky, Kyan,”

“Yes. Witch, whose vital energy are you eating right now?”

“Pr, prince Kyan’s.”

“Good, well said,” the prince whispered into Isaac’s ear. And as if his anger still hadn’t subsided, he bit his earlobe. But more than the bite on his earlobe, the sensation of his lower half being thrust into even more fiercely made Isaac lose his mind, only able to gasp for breath. Even as moans resembling sobs occasionally mixed into his breath, the prince’s movements did not slow down.

“Do you want to eat another bastard’s vital energy?”

“——, I never, thought of that,”

Isaac couldn’t answer until the very end. His body was shaken so violently that managing to say even that much was a struggle. The thrusting was getting even faster. The object densely filling his body swelled even more. This time, genuinely feeling like his body might split in two, Isaac hugged the prince’s neck. The prince laughed lowly.

“Remember this well. You must not have such thoughts. Do not even think of another bastard. For the rest of your life, the only vital energy you will ever be able to eat is this. Understood?”

“——.”

No answer came out. He couldn’t answer because he couldn’t breathe. But Isaac somehow managed to nod his head, and the prince must have known as Isaac’s drenched face touched his neck and nodded. The prince seemed to laugh roughly like a beast.

“Good. But instead, I will never let you lack for it for the rest of your life. So much that it overflows enough that you won’t feel lacking for even a single moment——every day.”

The prince whispered through his teeth. At the same time, he drove into Isaac roughly below——and just as pleasure stole Isaac’s breath away, the prince also stopped moving. A sweltering heat burst violently from deep inside Isaac’s body. That explosive burst of vital energy fully merged with and permeated every cell of his flesh and skin.

Like warm water slowly rising from the bottom, the vital energy piled up layer by layer inside his body. Within that vivid and clear sensation, Isaac lay exactly as he was, like a person who had lost his mind. He hadn’t lost consciousness, but his mind felt like it was floating somewhere in the air like a dream.

The prince, still on top of Isaac, didn’t pull out. Without moving out of Isaac’s body, he continuously kissed Isaac’s cheek, lips, and ears. Sometimes brushing softly, sometimes fiercely running his lips over Isaac’s skin like a sudden beast attack, the prince lifted his head. And he looked down at Isaac. Isaac’s gaze, which had been blankly wandering in the air, slowly returned to the prince.

“Call me.”

“—…, Prince Kyan.”

Isaac whispered in a hoarse voice, like the sound of the wind. The prince kissed Isaac’s lips lightly, as if satisfied. Then he asked again.

“Who am I?”

“Prince Kyan.”

“Yes. Call me again.”

It’s strange. Such a low and soft voice. It doesn’t seem like the person he knows. That unfamiliar feeling he had sometimes felt lately brushed past him again. That unfamiliar yet somewhat embarrassing——warm feeling.

“Hurry and call me,” the prince gently nibbled on his lip and continued to whisper seductively. Isaac reached out and hugged him. Letting out a languid sigh, just as he was about to open his mouth and call his name,

「Ah, Cornucopia! Cornucopia!!」

「Why do you keep asking?! Don’t you even know your own name?!」

……He swallowed his words.

In front of the closet door that started to rattle and shake, Isaac went dead silent and froze. The prince also went silent.

「How long are you going to keep doing that in front of us?!」

「Our eyes are rotting! Our ears are rotting!」

「Have some decency in front of your elders!」

The padlock on the closet door rattled loudly. Through the crack in the door that was wedged open about an inch, three pairs of glowing eyes were looking out sideways. The rotting eyes were quite shiny, and the rotting ears were perked up.

Looking annoyed, the prince glanced at the closet and ignored the sounds, about to lean back over Isaac, but Isaac, who had already had cold water poured over his head, slowly rolled his body and half-escaped from beneath him.

“Witch……, I need to see what Alikisa is doing. Who knows what she might be doing even while we’re like this……”

Half excuse, half truth.

The prince, who seemed to press down on Isaac’s body for a moment to resist, looked down at Isaac, who was looking up at him appealingly, then let out a short click of his tongue and stepped aside from above. “Fine, we can just do it again a little later,” the murmured words strangely lingered in his ears with an unsettling feeling, but anyway, he had escaped for now. Despite that, seeing the prince still sending him displeased glances, Isaac hurriedly sat up and turned his attention away.

‘What is the witch doing? Alikisa. Where is she right now, not far from here?’

Closing his eyes and concentrating his consciousness, his eyes slowly began to feel hot. Even after experiencing it several times, the unchangingly painful sensation made Isaac frown. The inside of his eyelids grew hot as if on fire, and his heart began to beat violently, as if to make that heat even fiercer.

Behind his burning eyelids, it felt as though they were being seared. The heat grew increasingly intense, causing his heartbeat to begin pounding wildly and relentlessly. Even with his eyes tightly shut, Isaac could clearly sense the surroundings starting to warp as a violent wave of dizziness swept over him. Then, from deep within that pitch-black darkness, his vision began to glow faintly. Finally, like a painting slowly emerging from thick fog, he began to see a scene.

The first thing he saw was a long, long mountain range. A mountain range that seemed to stretch endlessly in the distance. The long ridge, seeming both familiar and unfamiliar, was likely somewhere surrounding Heilen. Below that ridge, sparsely dotted with snow-covered peaks, a closer place came into view.

There was a forest. A dense, thick forest.

Underneath the branches covering the sky, making it feel like dark evening even though it must clearly be broad daylight right now, the next thing he saw was the water’s surface.

saac was startled for a moment. The water level was too high. The surface of the water was right below his eyes. Every time he exhaled, ripples spreading out were visible right below his line of sight. Only then did he realize he was submerged in water up to his neck.

They were in a lake somewhere in that dense forest. The young wizard, with Alikisa inside him, was submerging his body up to his neck in the lake.

It might be more accurate to call it a pond rather than a lake. Not that big—just wide enough for the thickly overgrown branches to reach overhead and cover it—they were submerged in the middle of that pond.

The pond they were soaking in was covered with a thick layer of dark green moss, making the bottom impossible to see. It appeared to be a desolate, secluded place with no signs of human passage and no living creatures inhabiting it. Yet, the murky green water, right in the area where they were submerged, was emitting a faint blue glow from deep beneath the surface, as if someone had just released a lantern into the pond.

A silent, lonely space without a single sound.

If Isaac had been watching them this much, it was about time the witch noticed, but the witch didn’t move, as if her attention was stolen by something else. She just stayed in that spot, lowering her gaze only underneath, where the light rippled and rose.

Isaac, too, just looked at that solitary place.

Then, at some point, he felt a touch quietly stroking his cheek.

Isaac, who had been borrowing the witch’s vision, momentarily thought someone was stroking the witch, but soon realized this touch was happening in his own reality.

Someone was stroking Isaac’s cheek. Slowly and softly, like sweeping away something new and rare. Isaac knew whose somewhat cool body temperature this was. So Isaac opened his eyes, as if that hand was calling him.

“…….”

The moment of returning from the witch’s vision back to reality always made him feel as if he had been violently ejected by a powerful force. Even though this time he had actively opened his eyes by his own will, rather than being discovered and expelled by the witch like previous times, Isaac still felt a violent wave of dizziness crashing over him, making the world around him seem to spin wildly. He quickly brought his hands to his temples and massaged gently to calm himself. His eyes, which had felt as if they were burning with fire moments ago, now throbbed with a dull ache. The frantic, drum-like pounding of his heart from earlier now became distinctly felt once more. At the same time, the vital energy within his body suddenly plummeted without warning, draining out of him.

In the midst of that dizzying, disorienting spell, Isaac suddenly realized he was quite naturally and composedly accepting the prince’s kiss, a realization that startled him. He hastily swallowed the abundant vital energy flowing into his mouth through their entwined tongues. The dizziness quickly subsided, and his rapidly depleting stamina was instantly replenished. Yet their kiss continued for quite some time longer. Only when their lips briefly parted did Isaac suddenly murmur.

“……A pond.”

When Isaac murmured, the prince looked down at him without a word. Isaac looked up at him and spoke.

“She was submerging her body in a pond. Up to her neck. She didn’t notice me watching, perhaps focused on something in the blue, mossy water……, Something in the water was glowing blue. Blue, like light shining on ice.”

“It was too blurry, so I couldn’t make out what that glowing thing actually was,” Isaac said. Despite his words, he felt as though he had already guessed what it was. The very thing the witch was pouring all her focus and power into. The thing hidden at the bottom of that desolate, secluded pond, tucked deep beneath the dense canopy of trees in the treacherous mountains where no soul ever passed. The very thing she was frantically channeling all the life force she had stolen into.

「So Alikisa was there……!」

The cats spoke. At some point—probably while Isaac was watching the witch—the three cats, having escaped from the closet, were sitting side by side on the table, looking at Isaac with shining eyes.

「In a deep, secluded pond.」

「Like the old days when witches went there to absorb the essence of heaven and earth.」

「She was submerged in there……!」

The cats’ eyes flickered like jet-black fire.

「Where was it? That pond?」

The three witches asked Isaac with glistening eyes. But Isaac couldn’t answer quickly.

It was a deep forest densely overgrown with trees, seemingly unvisited by anyone for a long time, and a small pond as if hidden under those trees. And the peaks with sparse snow on the summits, visible in the distance.

“……There aren’t many snow-covered peaks in warm Heilen.”

Isaac murmured to himself as he pondered. Then he tried to push himself up and get out of bed, but his limp, utterly powerless legs gave way, causing him to collapse back onto the quilt. He had no choice but to ask the prince to fetch the maps from the desk and bring them to the bed. And he began scanning and locating mountain peaks with high altitudes.

「If we just know which pond it is, pulling the body out is simple.」

「There isn’t just one or two witches grinding their teeth at Alikisa.」

「If we pull the body out of the pond, the curse that has been searching for her body for a long time will finally find its destination.」

The cats’ black bodies swayed excitedly.

After intently scanning and meticulously analyzing the map in his hands for a while, Isaac decisively pointed his finger at a specific location on the map.

“Around here……. Where these peaks align. The summits didn’t look that high, so the land itself is probably quite high in altitude. And…… a place covered in birch trees.”

The beautifully radiant, golden-hued trees. Isaac envisioned the witch’s true body quietly soaking in the water beneath the birch forest canopy. It had been hidden away for so many years in such a peaceful and beautiful place.

Fixing his gaze on the map in Isaac’s hands, the prince suddenly spoke in a low voice: “Rihan.” 

Though it was merely a deep call at a moderate volume, the door immediately swung open and a man walked in. It was the same unfamiliar man Isaac had seen in the forest earlier. Dressed in the distinctive attire of the borderlands. The one who had shot one of Roberni’s subordinates through the neck with an iron arrow.

Although he had now changed into the ordinary attire typical of Heilen residents, the fierce and dangerous aura emanating from him was impossible to conceal. It was said that he was a trusted subordinate directly under the prince’s command from the time His Highness was still stationed at the border.

Borderland soldiers had long been infamous as some of the most brutal, bloodthirsty, and ferocious fighters. They could be considered the most elite and battle-hardened military force in the entire kingdom. And this man was the prince’s direct subordinate, which meant that he surely held one of the highest positions among the ranks of those borderland soldiers.

When Isaac asked why such a man was here, the prince had simply replied, “Because I summoned him.” Isaac didn’t press the matter further. The man occasionally conversed with the prince, but only for brief moments; otherwise, he remained almost entirely out of sight.

Nevertheless, seeing him appear instantly the moment he was called made it clear he was always keeping close by….. ‘Come to think of it, even when the prince and I were rolling around in bed, that man must have been right outside listening to every single sound……’

Though there was little point in feeling self-conscious about it now, the half-naked Isaac hastily gathered his scattered clothes and began to dress himself. Meanwhile, the prince handed the map to the man and issued an order.

Suddenly, a question from the prince caught Isaac’s ear.

“How many have arrived?”

“Enough to serve our purpose.”

The man’s answer was deliberately vague, but the prince seemed to find it sufficient. With a nod, the prince declared,

“We must begin preparations to hunt the witch.”