Sera trembled as his tongue entwined her own. His mouth hungrily devouring hers and she responded in kind. So tasty, Sera thought. So hungry. I want to keep eating. She licked the roof of his mouth and felt him jerk in response. He moaned and moved forward, his hands wrapping around her waist pulling her body closer to his. Simon sighed and nibbled her lip before parting her lips and searching for her tongue again.
What if I just ate my fill? She thought dazedly. Just a little more. She accepted his desire readily as he pressed himself against her, heavy and insistent. What if, I-
A harsh alarm trilled through the air. Damn it, I shouldn't.
Sera flinched, breaking their kiss with a sigh, and unwrapping herself from Simon's arms.
Simon leaned forward for another kiss, his eyes locked greedily onto her lips, his own already parting in anticipation, but Sera pressed a gentle hand against his mouth to stop him.
"Why?", he asked, a little breathless. He looked up at her, eyes glazed and breathing heavy.
She laughed and cupped his cheeks with her hands before rising from the sofa. "Time's up, Simon. The guiding is over."
"Oh," Simon stared silently for a moment, and then nodded, straightening his posture and smoothing out his clothes. 15 minutes of guiding. That was all Sera ever provided once per esper once per week. If he pressed for more or disrespected her boundaries, she wouldn't accept his request again, like other espers had tried before. He knew that and she liked that about him. He knew her line. He wouldn't cross it.
Sera knew he had a crush on her. She saw it in the way he blushed, the way his bright green eyes snuck yearning glances at her when he thought she wasn't looking, and how nervous and careful he was with his words because he wanted to be in her favor. It was cute and she enjoyed his company and budding friendship.
But he was a meal and Sera was never going to find a lover. She couldn't. She would eat them down to their very bones.
Sera began neatly tidying the tea set she had set out for Simon, while he reluctantly shuffled to the door.
He paused, his hand on the recessed door handle, before turning back to look at Sera.
"Thanks again for the session. My work, or, uh, my time at work has been more pleasant, with you here, Sera," he mumbled, cheeks flushed. Sera knew they didn't have a good corruption cleanse rate, especially since he was a rank higher. But nonetheless Simon showed up and, without fail, requested her. He always rated her highly on the post-guiding survey when it came to subjective points. That was enough for her and it was good for her rating at work. Definitely good for her year-end bonus.
She smiled sweetly, "Of course, Simon. See you next week." She bowed as he left the room.
When the door closed with a gentle click, Sera collapsed haphazardly on the black leather sofa they had just been making out on.
Silence filled the room until it was broken by a loud, churning grumble. Sera's stomach was complaining.
"Auughhh, I'm so fucking hungry, god damn" Sera grumbled, pressing a hand to her stomach, staring glumly at the ceiling lights. "What a short meal."
15 minutes. 15 minutes was the rule she had established for herself for feeding. Otherwise, she would go too far, and then, she might eat them whole - every little drop of their corruption, mana, and life essence. She would eat it all. So 15 minutes was enough to get a little bit of food and keep her sanity intact. That was her rule and her line, to keep her humanity. Any more and she might snap.
It was a blessing to have landed here, she thought. A world with no uppity Instructor hounding me day and night. But I'm always hungry.
When Sera had arrived on this planet, an immature civilization not yet past the Great Filter, she had initially felt free. A place where she was untethered by expectations, limits, and her nagging Instructor always pestering her about becoming a mature, responsible succubus. Feed properly on pleasure, he would say. Stop eating things that aren't good for you. Behave, Seraphil. Be good and do what you're meant to do.
Sera had felt suffocated. She knew to properly feed she would eventually need to have sex, continuously and for the rest of her life as a proper succubus, but there wasn't anyone who could handle her. Every woman and man she had been deeply intimate with weren't able to tolerate such intense energy drain. She would eat too much and they would wilt, their pleasure and life essence fading faster than they could handle. They almost always nearly died. Being with her was a death sentence. Except for the Instructor, the Instructor was the only one able to handle her. But he was…he was like...her older brother! And with him, with the limiters he shackled to her during, it felt like feeding through a straw. Sera didn't want to do it with him. He was an annoying, nagging guardian always lecturing her on feeding slowly and being mindful…perverted, stuffy old man, she thought. So she stole something she shouldn't have and she had run away to this world.
But soon, hunger had become a problem. For two years, she had struggled with feeding, siphoning pleasurable kisses off interested women and men at night clubs and part-time work as an apprentice massage therapist. But it wasn't enough and it was getting dangerous. Sera was starving, maddeningly so, and if she didn't find a consistent food source soon, she was going to end up devouring someone or something whole. She almost did once, even. And if she made waves, then well, then her Instructor would find out and she'd be taken home. Back to an imprisoned, suffocating life.
Causality was weird that way. As an aberration, an intruder, in this world, Sera couldn't do too much. She couldn't stand out or the rules of the universe would throw a fit and recorrect.
And if Sera wanted to hide, she needed to blend in. But she was starving - all the time.
As if by a stroke of luck, a dungeon gate had manifested near her subway stop on her way to her part-time job and monsters spilled out of the portal like burst dam water. It was then, in that destruction and fire, that Sera was able to eat her fill just once under the nose of causality, and also where she learned that she could eat the corruption produced by espers, much like how the guides of this world purified them. Eat just enough not to disturb causality, pretend to be a guide right under its gaze.
Suddenly, she had found herself a reliable meal and a job. Conveniently, able to eat both pleasure and corruption and still obedient to this world's innate laws. She could be a guide - an excusable reason for the meta to accept. After saving a rampaging esper in that dungeon break, the government had employed her as a guide and she had worked diligently at the government-sponsored guiding facility before being recruited to join Ratha - one of the nation's top guilds focused on dungeon clearing.
Eight months in, Sera had successfully passed her probationary stage, received her own office, and established continuous scheduling with a satisfactory amount of espers.
But never enough to be full. She was always just below satiated. That was her curse, she was always hungry.
Be good, Seraphil. Sip like a bird. Her Instructor's words echoed in her memory.
If Sera was a vase about to overflow, her water was always right against the edge of the ceramic lip, delicately dancing the line.
But she couldn't eat more. Firstly, because of her own principles of do no harm, and secondly, because of the debuff. She glanced at the corner of her vision. A game-like interface flickered into existence. This was the System - the way the Great Filter, a survival of the fittest mechanism, tested and communicated with immature worlds.
< Dimensional Transfer Debuff >
A post-Filter evolution has defied the System.
Power is capped at 60% output.
Time left: 7306:34:23s
This was the cost of her escape to this world. A world she didn't belong to. A world she wasn't supposed to be in.
For defying universal law, she had been debuffed, unable to eat properly and unable to do much of anything for the past 3 years. If her stomach was like a container, it was an abysmally small one. She was hungry all the time, but she couldn't eat too much or she'd encounter a capacity rebound. She had a little under a year left. 1 year left and then she could eat properly, then the capacity limiter would be released. Like chewing a meal thoroughly or swallowing a satisfying bite. Eating right now was like drinking a waterfall from a straw. Nourishment was like cupping leaking water with her hands. But if she was at her full power? She could eat as much as she wanted. Her stomach could hold more. She could consume so much more. She was always going to be hungry, she always was, but at least she'd have a fork to eat with. She could store more, too.
"I hate being nerfed," she thought, pressing the back of her hand against her forehead.
A large bell tolled from a distance 12 times. Sera looked outside her window, watching pink blossoms fall delicately onto the lawn below. Guess it's time for lunch, she thought.