Demon of Lust in the Land of Water (Patreon)

Commissioned by Kejmur

-VB-

Demon of Lust in the Land of Water
Chapter 3

-VB-

The strong scent of pork woke her up.

She moved quickly, jumping up from where she had been laying down - and finding no weapon on her person - and quickly looked around. She calmed down a little when she realized that she didn’t seem to be in any kind of trouble.

Because just how much trouble was she in when she was inside the home of a peasant?

And the only other person in the room was a man, well built man, humming as he cooked something over the fire in the middle of the room with his back to her.

He turned around and saw her sitting on the bed. “Ah, you’re awake,” he said with a smile.

She felt her heart drop for a second.

Sitting across from her was a black haired man with high cheekbones, strong defined jaws, kind laughing eyes, and a soft smile; she liked what she was seeing.

“I-umm… yes, I’m awake,” she muttered as she looked away before drawing the bedsheet closer to herself. This place wasn’t as damp as most homes tended to be. The temperature was just right.

And the windows were open.

She stiffened.

“Oh dear,” the man said as he noticed her tightening body.

Was he an enemy?!

“Are you cold? Here,” he said as he stood up and walked over to a wooden cabin and brought out another sheet. He unfurled it and shrouded it around her shoulders. “There, that should make it better, right?”

Mei blushed like a academy student fawning over a crush.

But a corner of her mind took over quickly because this handsome peasant was clean and healthy, two adjectives that no ninja would normally assign to a peasant.

“... Who are you?” she asked honestly. Curiosity and duty demanded she know.

“Someone who found you dying on the forest floor,” he hummed as he went back to tending over the fire and whatever it was he was cooking. “The pork stew will be done soon, so be patient with me.”

It was at this point that she noticed how hungry she was.

“How long has it been since you found me?”

“Two days. You looked like you had some nasty poison in you, so I did my best to remove it,” he replied easily as if he wasn’t talking about something ridiculous. What would a peasant know about poisons?

Unless he wasn’t a peasant at all, despite wearing the clothes of one.

“What village are you from?” she asked curtly. As grateful as she was with being saved, she couldn’t allow herself to drop her guard so easily.

“Village?” he asked. “You must mean something other than a gathering of a few families in a location.”

He spoke well, not like a peasant would.

“Are you a ninja?”

“I will have to say no. I’m a newcomer to this world and lack any kind of military training.”

She blinked. “This world?”

“Life exists beyond a single world, though it probably isn’t your field of specialty if the intense battlefield you and the other two left behind was any indication.”

Her mind ground to a halt.

How did he even enter the battlefield? It should have been saturated with her toxic gas.

“Who are you?” she asked again. “No, what are you?”

“Well, I suppose I am a nobody in this world,” he chuckled as he brought out a metal scooper and wooden bowls. He filled both bowls with broth, vegetables, and meat before adding a wooden spoon. He turned around and handed the bowl to her with a smile, and she took it in a daze. “As for what I am, I guess I was dead a few days ago?” He paused as he, now facing her, grasped his spoon and was about to take a spoonful before he stopped. “Oh, I guess by most standards, I am a god?”

She stared at him with furrowed brows and an incredulous stare.

He didn’t sound like a mad man, but his words definitely were when she took them one sentence at a time. Another world? God?

“You aren’t joking with me?”

“I wish I was. Dying during sex was an experience I didn’t think I’d ever have. Dehydration and extreme fatigue will do that to you after being hopped on drugs that were never meant for the body.”

She blinked.

Umm…

“Oh, how about I show you?” he said as he let his hands go from the bowl and yet the bowl and the spoon stayed midair, not even bobbing up and down. Then he waved his hand, and the walls of the room gave away, crumbling down to dirt and mud to show a world outside that-.

“How the hell…?” she muttered and let go by accident. The bowl that used to be in her hands didn’t drop to the floor. It stayed floating with the spoon in it.

The world around her was like a fever dream. There were mountains hovered far above a green ocean. Clouds roamed the pink sky at speeds that said the winds should be howling and yet all she felt was nothing.

“Kai!” she abruptly shouted and circulated her chakra intensely inside her body.

Nothing changed.

“Ah, sorry. Was it too much?” he asked. “I’m getting used to my newfound powers, and this place between reality was just perfect. If I had to give this place a name, then it would be the dreamland of your world, though only because your people enter it sometimes in your sleep and not because you shape it.”

Mei shivered as he waved a hand and two flying mountains that had been still abruptly came to life and slammed into each other. Boulders and dirt flew everywhere and then back together to form an even bigger mountain from the two parents.

“Though I suppose I do know how to do what you say ‘ninjas’ do… This chakra thing, yes?”

“... You have me in a completely flawless genjutsu,” she sighed. “What do you want?”

“Genjutsu? That is an illusion technique. No, you’re not in one,” he lied.

“No, this is impossible,” she snapped as she gestured towards the flying mountains. “Mountains don’t fly!”

“Not in your world,” he replied with blasely. “It really makes for interesting ecosystems, though. Too bad you can’t have paradise beach resorts on flying continents. Water just doesn’t hold the same.”

She huffed and looked away. Obviously, he was toying with her before he did whatever it was he wanted to do to her.

“Would you like to go back home?” he asked.

She blinked and looked back at him. “Excuse me?”

“Would you like to go back home?”

“... Yes.”

He sighed. “I guess I’m being a little bit too aggressive-”

Only a little?

“-by showing you all of this. Very well,” he said as he snapped his fingers, and there was a door where there wasn’t to her left. “I would ask you to at least finish the stew. The boar I killed would otherwise have died in half vain.”

“Only half?”

“Well, I am eating it too, aren’t I?”

“How do I know that you haven’t poisoned it? Or put other agents?” she said. At this point, she was even sure she was eating what she was eating. That was the horror of fighting against a genjutsu master. Where did reality stop and illusions begin? Where did illusions stop and become hallucination?

“If I wanted to drug you, then I could have done it when you were asleep. It’s easier on me to do so, yes?”

She reluctantly agreed. She ate the stew - wonderful stew - and then … the bowl and spoon was gone.

“Great!” he said with a smile. It was a wonderful smile. She looked away as she tried to suppress those thoughts. “Whenever you are ready, go right on ahead,” he said as he gestured towards the door. She looked at it and then looked back.

Her eyes widened as she saw nothing. The stool he’d been sitting on, the bed she’s been sitting on, and bowl, the fire, nothing!

She was alone on a floating land in the middle of a pink skied green ocean.

Mei shuddered and walked up to the door, threw it open, and walked through.

She came out exactly where she ended up fighting her late teammates. She looked around. The forest was damaged from the fight, but nothing more had changed. She looked over her shoulder and shuddered.

The doorway was gone.

Yet the taste of the stew remained in her mouth and her stomach sat contently, filled and warm.

What was real, what was not?

She hated genjutsu specialists.

“Oh, I might also visit you, by the way,” his voice rang from everywhere and nowhere with a casual note. “You are hot, and I think I like you.”

She barked out a laugh.

What a way to find a man.