Dungeon of Lust: Managing Otherworldly Beauties

Chapter 245: World Without Witness

’What just...’

Vale watched as Alpha froze mid-step. Behind him, the pool of blood beneath Salome had stopped growing.

The only one who still moved...

’Lor.’

The knight halted his steps for a moment, then looked around curiously, blood still trailing down his body.

’What’s happened?!’

Vale heard that he’d gotten a new Trait, and moments later, time for all but him and Lor seemed to have stopped.

’Wait—’

"Stop!"

Vale called out to Lor, who wasted no time figuring out what had happened. Instead, he swung his sword at full force into Alpha’s skull...

only for the blade to bounce off the Archer as if she were a solid wall.

’T-thank the gods!’

Vale didn’t understand much of anything at the moment.

’But those frozen can’t be hurt. Is that it?’

Also...

A little outside the translucent octagon, there was a raging pink flame that encircled them.

’Is this my doing?’

Vale wanted to read his ability, to understand what he’d just done, but Lor had quickly learned Alpha was invulnerable and turned his sights on Vale, the moving target.

With no time for questions any longer, Vale pointed his blade.

’I see.’

The tip of his sword and where it pointed...

’That is all that matters at the moment.’

Frozen time or something else, Salome wasn’t bleeding out — nobody else was in danger. Who knew how long this state would last, but Vale didn’t wish it to end until Lor’s head lay at his feet.

Vale kicked off his back foot, shooting toward Lor; Lor laboriously copied Vale’s action.

For the first time in the whole fight, two swords clashed.

The piercing shriek of metal grinding against metal faded into the distance, only to be swallowed by the gurgling roar of the vibrant pink flames.

’Ack!’

Vale nearly lost his grip on his sword as his arm was flung away, but he shapeshifted his hand to improve his grip in time to bring it back down to block Lor’s sword before he disengaged.

Lor grunted as he stood up again.

’I can win!’

While Lor demonstrated increased agility, his injuries were substantial. Despite the knight’s considerable superiority in strength over Vale, each encounter exacerbated his bleeding.

Vale didn’t know his time limit, if he had one, but victory seemed guaranteed as long as he didn’t take a terrible blow head-on.

Grinning, Vale taunted the man.

"Looking a little tired there, Lor. Everything alright?"

Lor, with his busted jaw that swayed side to side with each step, couldn’t even respond if he wanted to.

"I’ll take silence as a no."

Vale stepped forward again, sending a cross strike at the burly man’s stomach.

Lor swung his sword into Vale’s, then carried through and sent his own strike.

Vale let go of his sword, then rolled under Lor’s leg. As Lor’s blade claimed a few strands of his hair, Vale pushed off the ground while kicking up into the knight’s groin.

The knight vomited a torrent of saliva and blood down onto Vale, then teetered forward.

Vale swiped the nasty substance away with his hand before diving away toward the bike.

’Got it!’

Vale smiled as his hand gripped the handlebars.

’Huh...?’

But he soon found the bike was stuck in place, as if transfixed to the ground.

’Shit.’

Vale, on his hands and knees, looked up at the bloodied man who was lunging toward him.

"Ah, shit."

Before Lor could reach him, Vale let go of the bike and fled.

Lor, despite being able to run now, let Vale go in favor of dropping to his knee and leaning on his blade.

With the distance created, Vale headed toward one of the broken swords Salome had used to bash Lor.

’It too?’

Just like the bike, no matter how hard Vale pulled, it was stuck to the ground.

’How vexing.’

Vale didn’t have time to fully dwell on it, but it seemed everything other than what he and Lor had been touching was frozen in place.

Meaning, Vale could only use the sword which lay at Lor’s feet, his body, and...

’Surely not.’

Vale’s eyes fell on his armor.

’On a human?’

There was a line there. A thick line that Vale didn’t want to cross.

Sure, it may work. But would he ever mentally recover from it? Would he ever be able to see himself as anything but a monster named Lust?

’...’

But also, he once again remembered his thoughts from when he had read [Charm].

’I’d be a fool not to use every tool at my disposal, no matter how nefarious.’

Vale, empty-handed, let his armor shrink back into his bracers.

There was a flaw he’d always been aware of with that line of thinking.

’That’s how tyrants and monsters are born.’

That’s how someone like Greed operated before Vale had helped her remember her lost self.

Vale took a fateful step toward Lor.

However, Vale was thinking of much more than his own survival at the moment — he was thinking of what his survival meant. If he died, everyone bound to Lust died. Plus, if his ability had a time limit and deactivated prematurely, he might still win the fight, but Salome could bleed out.

Not thinking of his intent to be monstrous, but what was necessary to protect his people...

Vale took another step.

His method in mind wasn’t humane; it wasn’t one a normal human could ever recover from.

’But who am ‌I to claim humanity?’

He had to accept it; his humanity wasn’t something to weigh. He thought maybe he had lost it when he killed Laertes, maybe when he gave Salome the order to execute the chameleons, or when he culled the village, but no...

"The moment I awoke as an Aether construct."

That was the moment he’d been lost from his humanity — or more so, this version of him, which had been defined, never knew humanity.

Vale looked down on the kneeling knight and beckoned him to stand.

Valentin, Master of Lust, quoted himself.

"Why should I try to preserve something that never existed?"

He vowed to become his own being, unbound by such labels — all for the sake of protecting those closest to him.

Unarmed and bare-chested, Vale closed in.