## Chapter 508 – #108_Cooperative Relationship
#508
1.
“I’m going to look around a bit more. There might be a place we can use. Can you start recovering your mana right away?”
“Ah, yes, I will…”
With those words, Siwoo left Deneb alone in the Deneb Church.
“……”
Left alone, Deneb hid her troubled heart and recalled what she had just seen.
His left hand, trembling like an aspen leaf.
It was a scene hard to imagine, seeing how he had fearlessly faced the Kraken.
“Haa…”
Deneb sighed.
She felt as if her own foolishness was stabbing her in the head.
Looking back, it was only natural.
Shin Siwoo was just a witch in her mid-to-late twenties, and it had been less than two years since she became a witch.
Moreover, her opponent was a monstrous beast that defied common sense.
Just because she had accumulated numerous battle experiences and survived near-death situations, it didn’t mean she was used to fighting.
Even so, Siwoo hadn’t suggested a simple mana recharge to Deneb.
As if it wasn’t even an option, she had volunteered to be the bait.
The time it would take for Deneb to recover her mana through normal means was about three to four days.
In this world, day and night repeat every eight hours, which meant Siwoo would have to face the Kraken alone for three or four times that many cycles.
Both Deneb and Siwoo knew that it wouldn’t be easy.
This world wasn’t a game where you were given multiple retry coins.
Rather, suggesting a mana recharge to Deneb was the obvious thing to do.
If your life was on the line, it was only natural to take the shortcut.
So why hadn’t Siwoo suggested a relationship with Deneb?
She wasn’t so oblivious that she didn’t know the reason.
He had even adamantly refused the ‘verification’ with Deneb.
“How foolish…”
Recently, Deneb had only looked at Siwoo with displeasure.
Almost as if it were second nature, she would scold him and kick his shins whenever she saw him.
Even just seeing him walking around would make her feel annoyed for no reason.
Deneb realized how childish her grumbling had been.
Even though there were many things she didn’t like about him lately, he was still her benefactor who had risked his life for her twin sisters, who were practically strangers.
And that wasn’t all.
He had defeated the Cowardly Witch for the sake of the people, fought the Witch of Desire to save his friend, and recently went to save Amelia.
If Siwoo was just a shameless, frivolous, and shallow person, he wouldn’t have willingly risked his life for others, would he?
Deneb had just been pretending not to know.
Using her dislike of him as an excuse.
She had been quick to judge him, seeing only what she wanted to see and devaluing him.
“And yet, I was disappointed in him as a person…”
She was the one who had been immature.
She hadn’t even grasped the situation properly, yet she had been rolling her eyes and doubting his actions.
Deneb, with her nightgown fluttering, chased after Siwoo.
2.
Siwoo wasn’t far away.
She was examining the bell in the church’s bell tower.
“What are you doing here?”
“The bell rang before nightfall. I was checking if there was any magical correlation.”
“Is there any connection?”
“It seems like there’s nothing after all.”
Siwoo gave a bitter smile and ran her hand over the surface of the bell.
She hadn’t expected it to be solved so easily, so she wasn’t particularly disappointed, but the hardships ahead made her sigh.
“Siwoo-gun.”
“Yes, Countess.”
“I have something to ask you.”
“Go ahead.”
Deneb steeled herself and took a big step closer to Siwoo.
This question wasn’t easy to ask.
Because the moment she voiced it, the solution he was trying to implicitly ignore would become clear.
“Why aren’t you choosing the easier way?”
“What easier way?”
“Don’t play dumb! You know! You know too, Siwoo-gun!”
But she had already made up her mind about this issue.
She just wanted to hear Siwoo’s thoughts.
“…Haa, we can just do it. With me.”
As soon as she said it, she realized how vulgar it sounded.
Deneb felt her face flush.
It was different from the verification.
Back then, she had been so worked up that she was practically out of her mind.
She had the justification of doing it for her twin sisters.
And more than anything, Deneb now vividly knew how embarrassing a physical relationship between a man and a woman was.
She wasn’t the Deneb who knew nothing anymore.
Embarrassed, Deneb quickly continued, speaking in her usual sharp tone.
“You have the ability to replicate mana, Siwoo-gun. If you recharge by having a relationship with me, you don’t have to risk your life.
Why do you insist on taking the dangerous path? Or were you waiting for me to say it?”
As a result, she had blurted out words she didn’t even mean.
“No, it’s not that…”
“Then?”
“Countess Deneb is also my mother-in-law. Even if we consider the previous incident unavoidable, doing more than that feels like a terrible thing to do to Odile-nim and Odette-nim…”
As expected.
So, is it not betrayal to play around with other women? How can someone so wishy-washy boast about such a history with women?
If it were her usual self, she would have cornered him right there.
But now, his trembling hand was more deeply etched in her mind than such arguments.
“I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. There was no guarantee that we had to do it either. I thought I could buy time on my own.”
Could someone who said they could do it tremble like that?
His attempt to reassure Deneb with bravado made her feel even more pathetic.
“How foolish…”
Deneb bit her lip and grabbed his wrist.
Deneb and Siwoo returned to the bishop’s room where they had shared a drink earlier.
She wished she could take a bath or shower, but there was no way such a thing existed in this dilapidated facility.
It was fortunate that there was at least a bed that resembled a bed.
Deneb snapped her fingers and cast a cleansing spell on both of them once more.
“Deneb-nim?”
“Take off your clothes. We’re going to do it.”
Deneb, tying her hair back with her hand behind her neck, spoke as if throwing a casual remark.
Siwoo was visibly flustered, staring blankly at Deneb.
“We don’t have three or four days to wait. My sisters must be worried, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll survive until then.”
“Deneb-nim? It’s only been a day. Even if we do it, we should wait a little longer and see how things go…”
“Think about it. If you get hurt while I haven’t fully recovered my mana, then I’ll be the one who gets hurt next, without a vanguard and with insufficient mana. This is the safest and most accurate way.”
She wasn’t just making excuses.
Last night, Deneb had enough mana, and Siwoo had also shared the aggro in perfect condition.
But if Siwoo was even slightly injured, Deneb would have to flee while preserving and recovering her mana at the same time.
If they dragged things out while worrying about mother-in-law and son-in-law, things could really get complicated.
“You don’t have to feel sorry for Odile and Odette. If I die here, that would be even more regrettable. What are you doing? Aren’t you taking off your clothes?”
“Deneb-nim, I know you’re agitated, but…”
“Don’t worry. It’s not like we’re going to have sex.”
“…Huh?”
But it wasn’t like Deneb had dragged Siwoo into this room without a plan.
Deneb had a very good idea.
“Siwoo-gun, you only need to ejaculate inside me to recharge your mana, right?”
Deneb continued her explanation with a slightly smug look, as if she had come up with a very clever idea.
“Sex is a mechanism consisting of insertion-reciprocating motion-ejaculation. It’s an act of confirming each other’s feelings while experiencing mutual pleasure in the process. Right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“But we’re going to exclude the reciprocating motion, mutual pleasure, and confirmation of feelings.”
In other words.
“You’ll insert just before you ejaculate… You know what I mean?”
“……”
“Even though it’s an unavoidable situation, this way, you don’t have to feel guilty towards my sisters. What we did wasn’t sex. It was just a brief insertion for mana recharge.”
Coincidentally, Deneb’s idea was the same as Countess Yesod’s idea a few days ago.
Of course, back then, she had received guidance from Yesod Mama’s ejaculation, but if you only looked at the result, there would be no difference in the fact that mana was recharged.
“But Countess, aren’t you… that… a virgin?”
But there was a slight difference between Countess Yesod and Deneb’s situations.
Deneb was a virgin.
Siwoo was worried if it was okay for her to experience her first time like that.
“So what? My priority is to return safely, even if it’s for my sisters. Anyway, I wasn’t planning on being with a man before my succession.”
Siwoo pondered over Deneb’s proposal.
“We don’t have much time. Night will come soon.”
She didn’t know if this was the right thing to do.
But it was definitely the fastest shortcut.
“…Okay, I understand.”
“Good. I’ll get ready.”
With those words, Deneb told him the rest of her plan.
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This is Lucy Yesod Mama, drawn by God-Made Rice-sensei
