The air was thick with the metallic tang of drying blood, the scent of crushed herbs, and the heavy musk of fear, a brutal backdrop against which the towering form of Lark, stood.
Eighteen surviving knights, battered and bandaged, formed a cautious semi-circle around him. From the relative safety of the ornate, but slightly blood-splattered siege carriage, Princess Liana and Captain Liora watched with bated breath.
Lark turned his head, the movement producing a faint, unsettling hum. His multi-toned voice, half echo, half celestial drone, addressed the first subject, a woman whose armor was rent and whose side bore the ghastly evidence of a deep, ragged monster claw.
"I will apply an ability of mine directly," Lark stated, his voice vibrating the air. "I do not yet know the full extent of this power's feeling. Be ready."
The knight, a grim woman named Nicole, nodded curtly, though her face was already pale from pain and blood loss. She sat rigidly upright on a low stone, prepared for painful cauterization or burning restoration.
Lark slowly extended an elongated, perfectly symmetrical hand. The skin was flawless, veined faintly with shimmering gold that pulsed now with latent energy. He placed his massive, elegant fingers gently on her shoulder, just above the shattered plate mail.
The moment Harmonic Vigor surged from Lark's core and into Seraphina's body, the world shifted for both of them.
For Lark, the world dissolved into an unsettling, vibrant X-ray. He could instantly perceive the physical scaffolding of the woman beneath his touch. He saw shattered ribs pressing dangerously close to the pulmonary sacs, a thick, congealed pool of blood pressing against her lung, and the gray, ragged edges of the wound where necrotic tissue had begun to set in. It was a raw, horrifying internal landscape, utterly exposed to his sight.
Simultaneously, the subtle, high-frequency vibration that was the hallmark of Harmonic Vigor surged through Nicole. It felt like a mild or high volts of electricity, but instead of pain, it translated instantly into pure, overwhelming pleasure.
A choked sound tore from her throat, muffled instantly by her own hand as she slammed it over her mouth. Her eyes snapped shut, wide and startled beneath the lids.
The vibration centered deep in her core, then rippled outward, dissolving the pain, but replacing it with an acute, demanding euphoria. Deep in the wound, Lark watched in clinical horror as the Vigor aggressively forced the fractured bone to knit, and the messy, ripped muscle fibers began sealing themselves with unnatural speed. The purulent edges of the wound simply retracted and disappeared, replaced by healthy, pink tissue.
Nicole's entire frame seized. Her back arched slightly, and a sound escaped her, a low, guttural moan that was immediately louder than she intended. She bit down on her knuckles, sweat beading instantly on her forehead. The pleasure was too much, too intrusive. Her legs slammed together, and she grasped instinctively at her crotch, realizing with mortified shock the extent to which she was already drenched.
What in the hell is happening? Lark thought, his internal gamer panic clashing with the cold, alien focus of Alabaster Woe. I'm just regenerating her tissue. Why is she… gasping like that?
The healing accelerated. The deep claw wound began to close, the scarred tissue being pulled smooth and replaced by flawless skin. As the Vigor reached maximum intensity, aimed at purging the last traces of internal bruising, Nicole lost control. Her hand fell away from her mouth, replaced by a desperate, open-mouthed scream that was less pain and more utter, explosive release.
"A-Ahhn! Nnngh—Aahhh!"
The sound echoed off the carriage wheels. It was unequivocally, undeniably, a cry of profound sexual ecstasy.
All eighteen knights froze. Liana, the Princess, gasped, her hand flying to her own throat, her face a mask of scarlet shock. Captain Liora, ever the stoic, leaned forward, her jaw slack, her eyes narrowed in a mix of professional concern and intensely personal curiosity.
Nicole was now thrashing slightly, restrained only by the rigid necessity of physical pleasure. She was screaming right into the tense, silent clearing, utterly oblivious to the soldiers and high nobility watching her involuntary climax.
Lark, focused entirely on the microscopic process of cellular reconstruction, felt a wave of unexpected heat rise through his own colossal frame. That moan was definitely too much. He found himself staring at the taut curve of her back, the way her spine arched under the Vigor's influence, and reluctantly admitted that the sheer sound of her ecstasy was beginning to resonate with his own inhuman core.
He was definitely getting turned on.
Finally, the healing was complete. Her deep internal wounds were gone, replaced by the cool, marble-white perfection of Alabaster Woe's restoration.
Lark lifted his hand.
Nicole collapsed, gasping, her muscles limp, her body entirely spent. She seemed to swim up from a black depth, blinking rapidly to clear the haze of euphoria.
"What… what in the gods' name was that?" she whispered, her voice rough, hoarse from screaming.
"Are you healed?" Lark asked, trying to sound purely clinical despite the tightness in his own crude wooden trousers. "Does it… feel that good?"
Nicole shuddered, attempting to compose herself, her cheeks flushed crimson. "Good? It was… electric. A thousand vibrations, running simultaneously," she choked out, her breathing shallow. She suddenly looked down, seeing the dark, saturated patch between her legs, and she immediately gripped the edge of her tattered tunic to pull it low, hiding the evidence of her profound physical reaction. "Yes, Lark. It felt… impossibly... good."
A hush fell over the group. The implications were clear: healing from this monstrous being came with a terrifyingly intimate side effect.
"Those most heavily injured next," Lark announced, ignoring the staring eyes and the obvious physical state of the first healed knight. "We need to move quickly."
A new figure stepped forward. It was a younger, fiercely loyal knight whose right arm was missing entirely, severed just below the shoulder in a vicious blow, the stump still wrapped clumsily in a blood-soaked field dressing.
"Lark," the woman asked, her voice laced with desperation, "Could you… could you regrow my arm?"
Lark paused. Regrowing a limb was far beyond simple mending. It required creating complex structures from scratch. "I am uncertain," his echoing voice admitted. "It requires immense Vigor. But I will attempt it. I will try my best."
The woman, Ser Knight Myra, sat down, bracing herself. She looked terrified, yet resolute.
Lark placed his enormous hand on her remaining shoulder. The sapphire eyes on his cheek focused, and he pushed the Harmonic Vigor deeper, seeking the severed nerve endings and the raw, flat bone of the humerus.
Myra felt the overwhelming surge instantly. Her head immediately snapped back, and a low, astonished moan escaped her before she could even process the sensation. The blissful, electric vibration rushed through her. She was already confused by the sheer pleasure, questioning why agonizing pain had been replaced by a body-shaking climax.
And then, the impossible began.
Lark stared at the raw, brutal end of the stump. He forced the energy to concentrate, pushing past reconstruction and into true creation.
First, a tiny, sickening sound, like wet clay being molded quickly. A thin cap of pale, smooth bone began to extrude from the center of the severed humerus. It grew rapidly, encased in a thin layer of glistening, raw pink tissue. It was visceral, horrifying, and yet utterly majestic. The raw, bloody stump was transforming itself before their eyes.
Princess Liana made a faint sick noise in the carriage, turning away briefly. Captain Liora, however, watched with a terrifying, professional intensity, her hand resting instinctively on her sword hilt, disbelief warring with the undeniable reality of the miracle.
Myra, however, noticed none of it. Her arm was regenerating, bone extending, muscle coiling, tendons weaving together but she remained utterly lost to the relentless waves of physical ecstasy produced by the Vigor. Her moans escalated into ragged, drawn-out bellows. Her eyes remained tightly shut, tears of pure, unadulterated pleasure squeezing out the corners.
"Nnnnnngh! Oh, gods! Yes! Deeper!" she screamed, her voice hoarse, her hips grinding involuntarily against the stone where she sat.
The Vigor hummed, Lark pushing his internal focus past the point of exhaustion. A pale, perfect forearm formed, followed by a hand that slowly, perfectly, achieved symmetry and definition. It took minutes that felt like an eternity, filled only by the sounds of Myra's increasingly loud, desperate cries.
Finally, Lark removed his hand.
Myra sagged forward, utterly drained, muttering breathlessly, "Holy... It felt… so good. So good."
She gasped a few times, then slowly, hesitantly, she looked down at the location of her missing limb. She saw a fully formed arm, pale and new, resting perfectly in her lap.
Silence. Then a strangled sound escaped her. She moved the fingers. They responded. She slapped the palm. It felt real.
Her disbelief shattered, replaced by a devastating wave of joy. Tears streamed down her face, tears of pain, of relief, of euphoria.
With a sudden, explosive burst of movement, she launched herself off the stone and dashed toward Lark, throwing her arms around the towering, eight-foot frame of Alabaster Woe.
"Thank you! Thank you! I thought I was crippled forever!" she sobbed into his chest, clutching him tightly.
The force of her grateful embrace, combined with the sudden, violent movement, was too much for Lark's crude, vine-bound wooden garments. The covering he wore around his waist shifted violently, and the hastily secured knot snapped.
Lark's protective frontal panel fell away.
Eighteen knights, Captain Liora, and Princess Liana all saw it simultaneously.
Lark, who inhabited the body of his in-game creation, Alabaster Woe, a creature of sculpted marble and horrifying symmetry, was endowed with an anatomy that matched his monstrous scale. It was thick, veined with faint gold, and shockingly long, hanging heavy against his marble-white thighs.
A collective, sharp inhalation swept through the surrounding knights. Princess Liana, who had been struggling to regain her composure, stared openly, her eyes wide with unblinking shock, a faint, undeniable blush rising from her neck.
Liora, the Captain, choked, swallowing a laugh that threatened to escape. Nicole, the first healed knight, stared with clinical fascination.
Lark, late to realize the catastrophe, registered the sudden shift in the knights' collective gaze. His dozens of sapphire eyes followed their focus down to his exposed groin.
"Ah! Fuck!" he bellowed, scooping up the discarded modesty cloth and attempting to hastily cover his massive appendage.
"Alright, moving on!" Lark declared, his multi-toned voice cracking with embarrassment. "New topic! Who is next most heavily injured? And please, try to be less… enthusiastic with the hugging."
Despite the shock of the revelation, the pain of their wounds was a worse motivator. One by one, the remaining injured knights approached. They sat, endured the embarrassing ecstasy of the Harmonic Vigor, screamed their way through cellular regeneration, and emerged fully healed and undeniably spent. Every single woman who received Lark's touch, no matter the severity of the wound, ended the treatment gasping for air and deeply, completely satisfied.