Chapter 11: NTR

Not only was Jenna a full head taller than Gima, but her power level was also several tiers higher. Anyone who could participate in the glorious subjugation of a Demon Lord was no weakling.

Gima may have been acting on a reckless impulse, but in her heart, she was ready to shut off her powers at a moment's notice if things went south.

When her gaze fell upon the Saintess’s magnificent, holy, and frankly enormous chest, she saw the seven-colored clouds of desire. They were generally only the size of grapes, but the pink cloud symbolizing jealousy was as large and vibrant as a baby’s fist.

Her… balloons are that big, yet she’s such a jealous woman? Wait, no, those aren't balloons. Focus, Gima.

Gima immediately understood. The lofty Saintess had likely interpreted her earlier, very thorough, and very professional ogling as a form of deliberate provocation. A strange sense of disappointment washed over her. Alright, from a normal person’s perspective, no one would think I was just appreciating the view like a true art connoisseur of the female form.

However, this was an unexpected but very welcome development. It would be a great help to her upcoming experiment and her grander, more nefarious schemes.

Although she knew she was taking a huge, stupid risk, if Gima didn’t vent some of her pent-up frustration today, she was afraid she might actually die from sheer, chest-tightening indignation.

“I was right, wasn’t I?” Jenna said confidently, looking like a proud, victorious rooster that had just won a fight. “Alright, that’s all I have to say for today.”

She didn’t notice me peeking… Perfect. Gima’s little finger gently, invisibly, flicked at the pulsing pink cloud on Jenna’s chest. At the same time, she said with wide-eyed innocence:

“Are you… jelly?” Gima asked, her face a mask of sudden, dawning realization. “I’m so sorry, Brother George hasn’t taught me what ‘jelly’ is yet. Is it tasty?”

Jenna felt a sour, unpleasant pang in her chest. She crossed her arms defensively.

“He teaches you?” she repeated, her voice sharp and brittle.

“Of course,” Gima said brightly, her voice dripping with the sweetest, most weaponized form of false innocence. “I sit right next to him with my book, and I ask him questions whenever I have them. He even makes me copy books for practice. Sometimes, when my hand gets tired from writing, he holds it for me. It’s so warm, and the pain goes away instantly. He’s the best~.”

Jealousy churned in Jenna’s chest like a tempest, but she didn’t notice how strange and disproportionate her own reaction was. Her eyebrows shot up in anger. She struggled to restrain herself, staring fixedly at Gima, her carefully maintained holy aura diminishing by more than half.

Gima saw the pink cloud of desire deepen and swirl with a satisfying intensity. Bingo. I succeeded… A triumphant, wicked smile spread across her face.

Jenna could no longer hold back. She leaned down, her face inches from Gima’s, and warned in a low, threatening voice:

“George will eventually find out that you don’t hide your tail very—mmph.”

Gima’s arm snaked around her neck, and she pulled her down, pressing her lips against the Saintess’s. Their eyes were so close they could see every single, shimmering golden eyelash. The Saintess’s warm, surprised breath ghosted across her cheek, tickling her.

Jenna’s pupils dilated in utter, uncomprehending shock. Taking advantage of her surprise, Gima gently, but firmly, rubbed her lips against hers. A profound, exquisite thrill of NTR-ing George rose from the depths of her soul, flooding every pore of her body with pure, unadulterated joy. Gima felt so good, so wonderfully triumphant, that she wanted to break into a glorious opera solo right then and there.

Jenna shoved Gima away, her white-gloved hand flying to cover her lips as if she’d been poisoned.

She guessed, in her pure and uncorrupted mind, that Gima was playing some kind of bizarre, “naughty” game with her, and now, somehow, she had lost.

“Hehe,” Gima laughed triumphantly, pointing a thumb at her own chest with all the swagger of her former self. “Now that was the taste of a first kiss. I bet you haven’t even kissed George yet, have you? Your first kiss wasn’t with your precious George. It was with me, the great Gima!”

Jenna was momentarily, completely baffled by this line of reasoning. “Then… your first kiss wasn’t with George either.”

“Huh?”

Gima was stunned speechless. Jenna’s reaction was completely, utterly unexpected. According to all the scripts in her head, Jenna should be acting like a defiled maiden who had lost her precious virtue, crying her eyes out and trying to scrub her mouth clean with muddy water. And why was she bringing that damn virgin into it again, as if Gima wanted to kiss George?

Gima stomped her foot angrily. “I don’t care! Your first kiss was mine, and that’s a fact! I win!”

“Then your first kiss was mine, too,” Jenna pointed out with flawless logic. “So we’re even.”

“You… you infuriating woman!”

“I’ve never met such a stupid demon,” Jenna added, twisting the knife with a serene smile.

Gima felt her manly pride, the very core of her being, being stabbed, trampled, set on fire, and then pissed on. She turned on her heel and stormed off in a huff, hearing Jenna’s suppressed, melodic laughter behind her.

The cold wind on her face felt like ice, a stark contrast to her burning cheeks.

After walking some distance away, Gima took a deep breath, regained some semblance of her shattered composure, and reflected on her catastrophic “mistake.”

I’m jealous of George, and I really, really wanted to NTR him. But I forgot, with my current body… that doesn’t even count as NTR! The Saintess didn’t feel a thing! She probably just thinks I’m a complete and utter idiot… The more I think about it, the angrier I get…

And no matter how I think about it, this is all George’s fault.

If it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t have been reduced to this comical, ridiculous, and deeply humiliating situation.

Gima gritted her teeth, forcing three words out from between them: “Damn… virgin… Hero.”

As she cursed, Gima mentally stabbed a little voodoo doll of George a few dozen times. She wished him a lifetime of lonely virginity. She wished he would be chopped into tiny pieces by a axe-wielding psycho. After a thorough and creative round of curses, Gima finally felt a little better. She found a stone bench and sat down.

Having calmed down, Gima felt a strange sensation, as if her grasp of her supernatural powers had become more familiar, more intuitive, like her left hand gradually becoming as nimble and dexterous as her right.

She opened her personal information panel and saw a new notification.

>DM: You have successfully provoked Jenna’s jealousy and achieved your scheme, causing her to be momentarily dominated by her jealousy without noticing anything was amiss. You have taken a great step closer to leveling up.

So that’s how you level up. You make the other person lose their head to their negative desires, and in doing so, achieve your own goals. And if the target is stronger, and my actions go unnoticed, then I’ll level up even faster. Heh.

Having figured out the upgrade requirements, Gima’s mood improved considerably.

The sound of hushed whispers, mixed with the word “succubus,” drifted to her ears on the wind. Gima looked over and saw a few monks passing by. They weren't just glancing at her; they were whispering and pointing amongst themselves.

The whole Sanctuary knew about George’s little… incident. There must be many who were jealous, just like the young priest this morning… Gima’s eyes lit up, and she was about to activate her “Eyes of Desire.”

Just then, her stomach rumbled loudly.

She was low on lust again. Using her supernatural abilities multiple times had consumed a lot of her reserves.

“Being a succubus is so damn annoying,” Gima muttered to herself.

…...

“Achoo!”

George let out a sudden, powerful sneeze. He rubbed his nose. “Someone must be cursing me behind my back.”

“May God bless you.”

Beside him, Cardinal Gregory placed his five fingers over his heart and spoke the benediction automatically.

After speaking, he opened the secret treasure chest that had been sitting on the long table. On a bed of rich red velvet lay a single, pristine white scroll.

“This is from my personal collection,” he said solemnly, handing it to George. “If you find yourself in a desperate, life-or-death situation, just tear it open. It will teleport you to a random location two hundred kilometers away.”

“This is too valuable.” This was only the second time George had seen such a scroll. The last time was during the Demon Lord campaign, when the Sanctuary had scoured its entire treasury just to gather three of them. “It’s not like I’m storming a Demon Lord’s castle.”

“Last time you fought a Demon Lord, you had your loyal teammates with you. This time, the succubus by your side will surely betray you.”

“Then why did you agree to it earlier?” George asked, genuinely confused.

This was not a private matter. If Gregory had objected, according to the rules, the minority must obey the majority, and he would have had no choice but to take Jenna with him.

“George, when doing what is right, one must also be practical. You are young and talented, and you have suffered very few setbacks in your life. You always look at things with a certain… naive attitude,” Gregory said with a heavy sigh. “No matter how much we old folks talk, it won’t do any good. It’s better to let you suffer a little and learn a hard lesson.”

“That succubus is very eager. It’s because she knows the best time to strike at you is when you are outside the Holy Sanctuary. This scroll is for you to save your own life after you’ve been inevitably betrayed.”

“Forgive me, Your Eminence, but I cannot agree,” George said stubbornly. “Gima is essentially just a very mischievous and playful child. She’s a little evil, yes, but she can be corrected. I believe in her.”

Gregory shook his head wearily. “Have I ever told you why I joined the ‘Redemption Army’ when I was a young man?”

George immediately felt a surge of profound respect.

The Redemption Army was an elite, almost mythical unit of the Holy Sanctuary. They fought with legendary bravery, without fear of death, and often fought to the last man. Only volunteers who truly recognized their own sins and sincerely repented could pass the grueling redemption ritual and join the army. They usually believed that only death in battle could atone for their sins and were deeply, almost reverently, respected by the people.

As for why the great Cardinal Gregory had joined the Redemption Army, it had always been a mystery.

“No, you haven’t,” George said, his voice hushed.

“When I was young," the Cardinal began, "I was a carefree shepherd. One day, I saw a group of grim witch hunters come to my village, searching everywhere for a witch.”

“I hated them. A bunch of foul-smelling, arrogant men, always with fierce faces and aggressive tones, turning our peaceful village upside down. In the bards’ poems, they were all raving madmen.”

“The old women in the village said they were hunting the young daughter of a local merchant. The merchant’s daughter was targeted because she liked to dabble in strange, herbal things.”

“I just wanted them to get out of my village as soon as possible.”

George nodded in fervent agreement. “Nine out of ten witch hunters from Gray City are madmen. The last one is especially mad.”

Gregory continued, his voice distant. “I met the ‘witch’ in the bushes. Her red hair was like wild strawberries. I simply couldn’t connect her with the evil, ugly hag the witch hunters described.”

“I saved her, secretly bringing her food every day. The witch hunters never found out, because a shepherd is always out and about, wandering the hills.”

“She was very grateful to me. She would draw pictures in the sand with a stick and taught me how to read. I was very, very happy during that time.” Gregory looked out the window, his eyebrows relaxing for a moment. George rarely saw such a peaceful, almost happy expression on his face.

“Then,” Gregory said, his voice turning to ice, “she sacrificed my entire village to a powerful demon and turned the witch hunters who came for her into mindless bloodly skeletons. I was the only one who survived because I was out herding sheep on a distant hill.” Gregory gave a harsh, self-deprecating laugh. “From then on, I understood a simple truth: those who are not by the Lord's side, by their very nature, have a wicked heart.”

“I… I’m very sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Gregory said, his face a cold mask. “In the end, I personally sent her shattered, screaming remains to the burning stake. With her dying breath, she told me she regretted not sacrificing me along with everyone else.”

George suddenly understood Cardinal Gregory’s well-known fondness for the burning stake. “But everyone’s experience is limited,” he argued. “And Gima hasn’t sacrificed a village or killed any witch hunters.”

“I never intended to convince you. I was just reminiscing about my foolish youth,” Gregory said. “Take the scroll.”

George shook his head. “It’s useless to me.”

“Yes, I understand. If there’s only one scroll, the one to escape would most likely be that succubus.” Gregory then, with another heavy sigh, pulled a second, identical scroll from his red robe. “And here I was, wondering if I could keep one for myself.”

“Thank you,” George said, taking both scrolls with a grateful nod.

“Don’t disappoint the Sanctuary’s considerable investment in you,” Gregory said, his tone shifting to that of a weary accountant. “Since your return from the demon realm, you’ve become synonymous with a net financial loss.”

“If Gima were here, she would be amazed by your sense of humor.”

“I will prepare a large pile of firewood and wait for you to bring that succubus back for a proper baptism.”

“I will prove that my convictions are true,” George said. “Give me your seal. I need to go to the armory to prepare.”

“Alright. Remember not to choose the shiny silver armor. People will know you’re from the Holy Sanctuary at a glance,” Gregory said as he stamped the document. “Try to use ‘Holy Heal’ as little as possible. If you absolutely must save someone, remember to cover the glow with your cloak.”

“Mm, I’ll be careful.” George took the document and quickly left the room.

“And don’t use ‘Sacred Smite’ at night! The bright light will wake everyone within a ten-mile radius. And for the love of God, remember to change the barding on your celestial warhorse,” Gregory called after him. “Oh, right, the mercenaries near Salem City are quite fond of brown cloaks with iron-gray armor these days. I believe there’s a perfectly serviceable set in the armory.”

George quickened his pace, disappearing down the stairs in a few seconds. Only when Gregory’s nagging voice finally faded from his ears did he breathe a sigh of relief and rub his tired ears. He decided to go find Gima so they could prepare for the battle ahead together.