Pov Erica:
"You know you're going to regret provoking him like that, right?"
Erica was on the floor, panting. "Why did that feel so good, even compared to my own touch?" She swallowed hard. "I want to have him just for myself!"
The beautiful feminine voice she kept ignoring tried to warn her once more. "If he is who I think he is, Dex will evolve soon—and you will be the one getting dominated!"
But once again, she ignored it.
Erica then went to her bed and released her lust upon herself.
Pov Dex:
By then, Dex was already in the kitchen, calm and free from the charm's influence.
"Echidna, you mentioned that when the sins awaken their soul and circles, they undergo an evolution—does that apply to me too?" he asked while drinking from a half-full bottle of water on the kitchen counter. For some unknown reason, it was the best water he had ever tasted.
"Yes, you will also leave your humanity behind."
"Do you have any idea what I'll become?"
"You'll probably become some kind of ancestral demon, but we can't be sure due to your special conditions."
"What do you mean by special conditions?"
Echidna rolled her nonexistent eyes. "A reincarnator who's human, contracted to a dragon, has Demon King powers, and an insatiable desire to screw a blonde—what could possibly go wrong?"
Dex blushed at the "blonde" part. "I said that on impulse."
"You know you're a terrible liar?"
Dex tried to change the subject. "So how do I awaken my soul?"
"Didn't you play the damn game?"
"Yes, but in the game it was simple: train and meditate for a while, click a few buttons in a mental mini-game, and that was enough to awaken as a mage."
Echidna let out a long sigh. "Do not interrupt me during the explanation."
"As you said, mages, when creating their first circle, need to meditate to synchronize with their primary magic type. That 'mental game' you mentioned is the very formation of the magic circle that will be tattooed on the user's body."
"The process is a bit more complex, but you don't need much more than that—after all, you're a knight."
"This is the part you really need to pay attention to: when a knight awakens, they don't 'form' something like mages do; they must wake their primary soul."
"To awaken it, much like mages need meditation to find their essence, knights must expose themselves to something that fully triggers the soul, and the only thing I think we can use right now is me."
When Dex heard her talk about her own aura, he was confused—after all, she didn't have a body anymore. "What do you mean by…"
"Didn't I tell you not to interrupt me, idiot?"
"Yes, I don't have a body, but I have a soul that can be used as a catalyst."
"And by using it, we can solve two problems: your awakening and my lack of a body."
"By fusing me with the Demon King's power to awaken your soul, we can also address that issue."
"We're going to enter the Demonic Soul Realm you possess. There, you will use Gluttony to devour my soul and fuse it to your own; that will awaken it, and perhaps when you evolve, you'll be able to create a body for me."
Hearing the insane plan, Dex spoke out loud. "No!! Are you trying to get yourself killed??" He didn't stop. "I'd rather endure two days or more to awaken like everyone else than sacrifice you out of selfishness."
Seeing him worry about her made Echidna happy. "I'm truly glad to see you so concerned about my safety, but this isn't something I came up with in response to a selfish request of yours. In truth, it's much more my selfish request than yours—I expected to have this talk with you in two days." She would have smiled if she could. "After all, I don't want to stay in their shadows!"
"But the main reason is strength. You can't be like the others—you must be stronger, because our final objective is a being that managed to kill the Demon King and kept getting even stronger."
"For those reasons, this method—"
Dex asked only once, serious. "You won't regret it regardless of the outcome?"
"No."
Upon hearing his companion's answer, Dex walked toward the room beside Erica's.
The room was relatively well decorated, but it seemed colorless compared to Erica's.
"So this will be my room for the next year. I'll have to buy something to decorate it."
But he quickly returned to the reason for his haste.
He swiftly took off the uniform he still wore and lay down on the bed.
Already lying down, he spoke to Echidna in a serious tone. "How do I use the skill?"
"Say its name out loud and it will respond."
Dex took a deep breath and spoke: "Demonic Soul Realm!"
His consciousness then transitioned from the real world into the new one.
The sky was completely black, untouched by any star across its infinite expanse. Except, of course, for the island floating amid the void.
This island had trees with red leaves and grass of the same color. And yet what stood out most was a throne of stone and the people there.
Dex opened his eyes and could see his surroundings. He saw the void, the trees, and the grass, but nothing drew more attention than the beautiful woman standing before him.
She was short, around 1.50 meters, with black hair tipped in purple and red eyes with slits in place of pupils, skin white and immaculate except for a tattoo she bore on her hand with a dragon symbol. But among all these striking features, one detail stood out: a broken, cracked horn, with something beneath it pulsing red.
Even without recognizing the person before him, Dex rose from the throne where he sat and examined her broken horn.
"Seeing you so worried about someone you don't even know almost made me jealous, but you're lucky it's me." She looked up and met Dex's eyes with a provocative smile.
"Is that you, Echidna?"
She let out her signature laugh. "Haha, you were thinking I'd be a scaly lizard and not a beautiful woman, weren't you?"
Dex completely ignored the joke and focused only on the wound on her horn. "Why do you have that wound—does it hurt, and who did this???"
Seeing him so worried for her made Echidna's heart flutter with a hint of felicity, and she started smiling widely. "Calm down, you don't need to be so worked up—it's just a little gift left by that Gluttony bitch."
At the last part, Dex felt his blood freeze. "That's a… a gift?"
"She said it was a mark to symbolize that I belonged to her, thus a gift. It hurt like hell at first, but I'm used to the pain now."
Without thinking, Dex hugged her in a protective gesture. "I promise I'll kill that bitch—and she will never dare touch you again!"
With her head against his chest, Echidna murmured in an inaudible tone, "I know, and that's exactly why…" She felt her heart crack for not being able to say it out loud. "…that I love you."
Still with her heart numb, she pushed him slightly away. "I know I'm pretty, but just because you care a little about me, I won't let you squeeze my breasts like a certain someone."
Dex snapped back, angry. "Never say something like that again. Even if they're destined to be mine, I don't love them—or at least not now. You're the only person who truly knows me and lets me be myself, and since I arrived in this world you've helped me whenever you could—and when you didn't, you made jokes to calm me down. So in this damned world, you are the most important person in my life." When he finished, he was breathless.
Hearing such deep words from Dex's heart, she had only one reaction. "Kneel."
Dex obeyed without thinking.
Echidna then placed his head against her chest.
Dex was bewitched. Not by the sensation of their skins touching or by the delicious scent. The sound of her heart beating fast was beautiful, and it brought him a peace of mind that no handful of huge breasts could ever give.
Though her face was completely red, Echidna wore a smile on her lovely face as she watched her beloved. "His breathing feels so good."
But then her smile slowly faded. "If there truly is a god of fate, please make this work!"
Slowly, she began to condense her energy into a small sphere. The whole process took several minutes, and her beautiful figure became more and more ethereal. Dex, bewitched by her heartbeat, could only notice it seemed to grow quieter yet just as steady—until he heard nothing at all. He looked up—and was greeted by a kiss from the now translucent draconian woman. The kiss was intense and romantic, but it had a purpose. Dex was forced to consume the sphere that contained the soul of the person he loved most in this world.
The sky, once pitch-black like Dex's eyes, was illuminated by two great stars that looked ready to collide at any moment.
And when the two stars collided, two new beings were born.