Chapter 4: Do it again
Stefan’s POV
"Fuckkk!"
Water hit my face like a slap, and I woke up cussing before my eyes even opened.
Every muscle in my body screamed at once. My ribs felt like a drum that had been beaten all night, which, technically, they had.
"Damned system! Fucking damned system. Son of a gun!" I gritted out.
The agony of that accident had been very real and I had been made to go through it again and again.
Just because I failed one silly mission??? How could anybody be that heartless?
Okay, the system didn’t have a heart. It should just fuck off!
My nostrils flared as I cracked my eyes open slowly and saw men scrambling around the tent. They were carrying big clay pots, splashing water across the dirt floor like they were trying to wash away whatever had happened here last night.
"What the hell is going on?" I croaked out, pushing myself up onto one elbow. Even that small movement lit up fresh pain through my whole side.
One of the men flinched at the sound of my voice. He glanced at me sideways, like just talking out loud was dangerous here.
"We’re up for work," he said in a small, almost apologetic voice.
"You should get up too. If you are slow, they take your head off your neck. I’ve seen it happen many times with my own eyes." He added.
He didn’t wait for me to respond. He scurried off with the rest of them, water sloshing out of his pot with every step, and just like that, I was left in the tent with a few men.
The few men around were adjusting some things I couldn’t see on their tattered clothing which looked like a gown, sleeveless and in a dull color.
I hissed through my teeth and dragged myself fully upright. My whole body felt like one long complaint.
"Fuck you," I muttered out loud, to the System, to this planet, to whatever god thought sixty days of this counted as a fair trade for a second chance at life. The pain alone made me wonder if dying once had really been the worse deal.
But underneath all the pain, something else had just settled into me. A decision I hadn’t even noticed myself making until right now.
I wasn’t failing another mission.
"Not again. Whatever it takes!" I mumbled under with breath with both determination and anger.
That was when the System finally decided to show its face.
[MISSION 2: Fondle the breasts of the next woman you see. Make her beg for more.]
[TIME LIMIT: 5:00:00]
[PENALTY: ⚠️ LOCKED]
[REWARD: ⚠️ LOCKED]
[PENALTY ENDURED - MISSION 1.]
[SUFFERING CONVERTED: +50 ANGUISH POINTS]
[SHOP UNLOCKED.]
**ANGUISH SHOP**
- Numbing Salve (effect lasts a few minutes) - 15 AP
[CURRENT BALANCE: 50 AP]
I stared at that notification for a good five seconds before I found my voice again.
"Numbing salve?"
"You beat the hell out of me all night, and now you want to heal me?" I shook my head, half laughing, half furious. "Unbelievable. You’re really something else. Of course you are!"
Furious or not, I wasn’t stupid enough to turn it down. I tapped on the salve, bought it, and a small tin appeared in my palm out of nowhere, like it had been sitting there the whole time waiting for me to notice it.
I was still turning the tin over in my hand, studying it, when she walked into the tent... One of the warriors.
She didn’t shout. She didn’t announce herself the way Wildrose had. She just appeared at the entrance, scanned the space once with sharp eyes, and every man still inside bolted past her without anyone needing to tell them twice.
"You?" Her head turned over to me and fixed me a glare.
I recognized her immediately. That voice, it was the one that had stopped Wildrose’s axe mid-swing back at the clearing.
Jonquil. That was her name. I heard Wildrose called her while they carried me to the camp.
I stayed exactly where I was, sitting in the dirt, partly out of curiosity, partly because standing up too fast right now sounded like a genuinely terrible idea.
"On your feet." Her voice left zero room for negotiation.
I managed it anyway, groaning the whole way up, and that was when I actually saw it properly.
The swelling along the upper curve of her chest. An ugly bruise blooming dark and angry just beneath her skin, distorting the shape of her like she had grown some kind of deformed third breast overnight.
"Guess I’m not the only one with extra anatomy around here." I muttered and chuckled lowly, more to myself. My brain, despite the pain wrecking every part of me, still found room for the joke.
The woman’s glare remained the same. It was as if she didn’t even hear a word I had said. I swallowed hard, as if to swallow the joke and became serious.
"You’re hurt," I said, nodding toward the injury.
She glanced down at her own chest like she had genuinely forgotten it was there.
"Move." She commanded, barely a second later, instead of saying anything to what I had said.
"That looks like it hurts. Like, a lot... Aren’t you feeling pain?" I lowered my voice, softer than I meant it to come out. Genuinely soft. Not the fake kind I usually used.
"Pain? Pain isn’t something we nurse here." She said it flat, almost bored, like the whole concept of comfort was foreign to her, a luxury she’d never once been offered the chance to consider.
That settled it for me. I wasn’t running a line this time. I was making an actual decision.
"Stefan, use your brain!" I told myself inwardly and while I held her gaze, I put my hands behind me and quickly emptied the tin of the salve on my palms.
I reached toward her chest before she could stop me, fully expecting another slap hard enough to break something this time.
Yes, I expected it and even braced myself for it because it would be worth it. I wasn’t going to fail again.
My palm landed flat against the bruise and the effect was immediate. She went still. Completely, totally still, her breath catching somewhere deep in her throat.
The numbing salve worked through my palm against her skin, and wherever it touched, the tension just melted out of her. I could feel her shoulders drop in real time, the fight draining out of her whole body.
"Do it again," The words came out of her mouth in a quiet tone, as if she was almost confused by the sound of her own voice saying it.
I smirked despite the pain still wrecking my own ribs, and pressed my palm against her again, slower this time, working it in proper circles right over the bruise.
Her breath hitched hard. "Again."
It was as if the salve had somehow communicated to her senses just how terrible the pain should feel.
I let my hands drift slowly down from the injury to the soft weight of her breasts, cupping it gently, my thumb brushing over skin that had gone tight and sensitive under my touch.
The breasts were soft yet firm just as I had expected...
"Again," she muttered, her voice cutting through my lewd thought. I saw her eyes fluttering shut as she said the word again, like that one word was the only one left in her whole vocabulary.
I felt the mission notification buzzing quietly in the corner of my vision. I wasn’t done yet, though.
"You want me to do it again? Then beg me to." My voice came out rougher than I expected. That was definitely the effect of touching those succulent oranges on her chest.
She opened her eyes then stared at me as she hesitated, something flickering across her face that looked almost like confusion at herself, like she didn’t even recognize the shape of the words about to come out of her own mouth.
"May you..." She paused, swallowing hard, her eyes locked on mine. "May you be kind enough to do it again?"
It was the strangest, most formal begging I’d ever heard in my entire life. And somehow it hit me harder than anything smoother ever could have.
"Of course, at your service, my lady." I said and my smirk grew bigger.
I rubbed slow circles from the bruise down into the soft curve of her breast one more time, gentle and thorough, and the second my hand moved, the System chimed in my head.
[MISSION 2: COMPLETE.]
"In less than twenty minutes! I did that, motherfucker!" I yelled at the system in my head.
Jonquil stared at me for a long, silent beat. Then something unreadable flickered behind her eyes.
"Hey, are you feeling-" I couldn’t complete my question before she cut me off by her action.
Without a single word of explanation, she scooped me clean off the ground and threw me over her shoulder like I weighed absolutely nothing at all.
"Wait - what are you doing? Put me down!" I tapped her back as I yelled.
She didn’t answer. She just carried me straight out of the tent.
