Chapter 82: Predator in the Woods, Prey in the Sheets
Two naked bodies lay intertwined on the narrow bed. Ayla was hugging Kenji tightly, her head nestled into the crook of his collarbone while her slender arms and legs wrapped firmly around his torso.
Her smooth, pale body was now completely marked by the dark purple signs of his possessiveness. The bruised hickeys and slight teeth marks were especially prominent along the sides of her full breasts and the sensitive crooks of her neck.
The exact same could be said for Kenji. Ayla had left deep, crimson scratch marks and biting bruises over the most visible parts of his body, places that would easily show even if he wore a full, high-collared academy dress tomorrow morning.
At this point, they simply did not remember how many times they had actually had sex. The thin medical mattress beneath them had already been heavily stained and soaked with their mixed body fluids.
Yet, both of them were far too lazy to even think about moving or cleaning the sheets. They simply lay there in the quiet room, enjoying the heavy, radiating warmth of their resting bodies after the intense physical exertion.
"Now are you satisfied?" Ayla muttered softly against his skin, her voice dropping into a low purr. She raised a slender finger and pointed directly at the prominent purple hickey on her neck. "I will never remove them. I promise."
"Same here," Kenji murmured back, his rough voice full of a tired but profound satisfaction. He tilted his head slightly, showing her his own marked neck before giving her a small, gentle peck on her smooth forehead.
His right hand was still positioned beneath her, supporting the full weight of her ass, while her left hand was resting comfortably between his thighs, her fingers lightly cupping his balls.
Kenji’s lips twitched slightly in a mixture of amusement and mild apprehension.
Over the course of their multiple rounds, Ayla seemed to have taken a very special, specific interest in holding his balls.
When he had finally asked her why she kept her hand down there during their rest periods, her deadpan answer had been both thoroughly horrifying and deeply fascinating to his human mind.
"By holding them like this, I feel like I am holding a human brain," she had explained with absolute seriousness. "A simple press and puff. It feels like the seat of your entire nervous system."
If any ordinary, common man in this world had heard a naked woman say something like that while cradling his lower region, he would have been absolutely terrified out of his mind.
But not Kenji. Really, he wasn’t shaking right now because of any hidden fear, but simply because of the sudden, sharp physical sensation her light touch generated down there.
Yeah, it was just the sensation. Trust him, okay?
He was a seasoned Crusader, so a little non-human logic wasn’t going to make him flinch.
"What are your actual plans for tomorrow?" Kenji asked, his large hand slowly massaging her ass to keep her relaxed. "The city is in a panic. Everyone in the academy is currently searching for you."
"Why would anyone be searching for me?" Ayla asked, her golden eyes remaining entirely closed as she enjoyed the rhythmic stroking of his hand.
Her soft question was completely genuine. In her primitive, self-centered mimic mindset, she truly did not know or care that her systematic feeding habits had forced the entire high administration of the academy into an emergency lockdown.
To her, she was just eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Kenji gave her smooth cheek a light, playful spank, making her let out a sharp, surprised yelp against his throat.
"Acting innocent after literally driving the entire outer ring monster population to complete extinction," Kenji scolded her softly, a dark smile touching his lips. "You cleaned out the training grounds so thoroughly that the first years can’t even finish their practical exams."
Ayla opened her golden eyes, staring up at him with a look of pure confusion. "Oh, so serious over a few common beasts." She rolled her eyes slightly, her long silver hair shifting across his chest.
She looked incredibly cute making that face. Kenji couldn’t help himself, so he lowered his head and gently licked a stray tear of pleasure from the corner of her eye.
"So, tell me. What is your actual plan once the tactical teams march out?"
Ayla fell into a deep, silent thought, her core processing the human data he had provided. As she calculated the parameters, a highly efficient strategy began to take form.
She could easily act as the prey being hunted in the woods, drawing the academy’s search units deep into the heavy foliage.
Once they were separated from the city walls, she could systematically harvest and extract the traits from the human hunters themselves.
The students and instructors of the Supreme Beast Academy would undoubtedly possess far better, high-tier combat traits than the common earth boars and stealth cats of the outer rings.
Absorbing their compressed human souls and contract parameters would rapidly improve the percentage of her Bronze core.
After she finished devouring the tactical teams, she could simply move deeper into the inner rings of the supreme forest to hunt the higher-ranked monsters.
As the ruthless plan solidified inside her mind, she glanced back up at Kenji’s face. For the first time, a heavy wave of reluctance hit her. She really did not want to leave his side so soon. She wanted to stay like this forever, and hold his balls to keep him in check.
Kenji had a soft, amused expression on his face as he watched her golden pupils shift. With his own perception, he could easily read the exact trajectory of her emotions.
He felt deeply satisfied to know that she would miss him just as intensely as he missed her.
It was a strange, completely unfamiliar feeling to have someone you loved, and to have that specific entity reciprocate that love with a raw intensity that often exceeded your own.
Even if her way of showing that love involved suggesting to casually kill him just to heal a bruised lip, cough.
Anyway, Kenji felt like all the deep mental exhaustion and psychological weight he had accumulated since entering this Spire event had completely disappeared within her arms.
But the reality of their situation also made him think deeply. Would Ayla’s active, chaotic appearance in the forest affect the core progression of the Spire event in some unpredictable way?
Her designated role in the system interface was explicitly listed as Bystander. By the laws of the simulation, a bystander was someone who should only watch the grand narrative unfold from the sidelines without any direct need to alter the main plot points.
But Kenji knew that didn’t mean the end result of the massive chain reactions formed by her violent actions wouldn’t completely derail the simulation’s parameters.
He calculated that it was strategically better to not include her any further in his immediate academy storyline, though he knew he couldn’t stop the local reactions she had already set in motion.
To his deep disappointment, Ayla would have to part with him for now.
The pressure of his arms around her naked waist increased significantly, pulling her body so close against his chest that there was no space left between them.
Ayla instantly sensed his sudden internal unease as she read the ripples of his mind. Though her primitive instincts hated the idea of parting from her designated mate, she also possessed an unyielding desire to grow stronger so she could protect his fragile self in the future.
"Even if we cannot always be together inside these white walls, I can shadow blink to your side at any time," she finally said, a rare, beautiful smile breaking across her porcelain face as she looked up at him. "Though, I truly wonder about one thing."
Her dark golden eyelids fell significantly, her gaze sliding down her lap to lock onto his now resting, flaccid member. "I wonder if your little human thing will actually have enough stamina to satisfy me next time. If you cannot keep up with my evolution, I might have to find another-"
Ayla’s teasing mouth was suddenly, aggressively sealed by his lips. Kenji plunged his tongue deep into her mouth, his hands moving down to grip her thighs with a sudden, dominant strength that completely cut off her words.
The lingering tension between them had completely dissolved into the warm air of the room.
While such a wholesome, warm scene of domestic intimacy was happening inside the safety of the locked room, the world outside the academy walls was in absolute, terrifying chaos.
The early morning mist had barely begun to clear from the grand stone plazas, but the campus grounds were already crawling with frantic activity. Hundreds of students were running toward the main armory, their faces pale with an infectious panic.
"Did you hear the news from the eastern border?" a third-year student shouted to his companion as they ran across the central courtyard.
"That high-tier monster from the woods isn’t just in the forest anymore! It somehow bypassed the outer wards and is inside the lower residential blocks right now! Word from the scouts says it has already wiped out an entire city block of thousands of common people!"
"What? Bypassed the spatial wards?" another student cried out, his hands trembling as he gripped his beast-summoning staff. "How could a forest monster move past the academy’s automated defensive arrays without triggering the main alarms?"
"I heard the killings were absolutely brutal," a nearby female scout whispered, her voice shaking violently as she huddled near a stone pillar. "The tactical teams that went in to investigate found nothing but empty, deflated hides and dissolved stone. Whatever that thing is, it isn’t even leaving the domestic animals alive! It’s eating everything down to the bone!"
The rumors were spreading like wildfire through the crowds, completely morphing Ayla’s quiet forest hunt into an apocalyptic invasion scenario.
They were entirely unaware that the terrifying apex predator they were arming themselves against was currently being tasted clean by the cripple of first years.
