Chapter 3

“Haa…”

Trudging through the filthy mine shaft, Leonhardt leaned heavily against the rough stone wall and let out a shuddering sigh. The journey to visit his imprisoned knight order—a fleeting reprieve granted for only a single hour each day—felt impossibly long and agonizingly steep.

“I don’t have time… to be standing around here…”

Trembling violently against the rock, he forced his shaking legs to take another step, though he threatened to collapse with every stride.

It wasn’t merely the exhaustion of being tormented by the monster all night. As if brutally fucking his hole until it swelled raw wasn’t enough, Kelles had insisted he needed to breed faster, sealing his semen-filled insides shut. The demon had fashioned a plug out of living flesh, wedged it deep into Leonhardt’s rear, and threatened him against uttering any nonsense.

Worse still, the monster hadn’t bothered to remove the tentacled leeches that had clung to his chest throughout their copulation—bloated parasites that had gorged on his vitality, spread wide, and flattened out to cover nearly half his pectorals, their bright red forms plastered across his chest in a grotesque mimicry of women’s lingerie. Kelles had found the sight utterly delightful, forcing the creatures to intertwine while still latched onto the knight’s flesh; the resulting tension squeezed Leonhardt’s already swollen chest together, carving a deep, humiliating cleavage.

Ears burning scarlet with shame, Leonhardt had been unable to voice even a whisper of protest, left to tremble helplessly in place. The fleshy dildo lodged in his rear was horrifying enough, but the parasites suckling at his nipples like living garments eviscerated what remained of his dignity. Taking it a step further, Kelles had draped additional tentacles over him to deliberately accentuate his chest and groin; while the muscular vines clinging to his flesh didn’t act aggressively, their grotesque arrangement was deeply unsettling.

The cluster encircling his groin closely resembled a strappy undergarment, emanating a sickening foulness. His cock, now so sensitive that even the slightest brush sent aching jolts through it, jutted out from the tentacle-panty—leaving him bewildered as to whether this exposure was a blessing or a curse.

“Why stand there gaping? It’s visiting hours.” Kelles sneered, shoving the knight’s back. “Shouldn’t you go see your beloved subordinates?”

Wiping his defiled body clean had been the monster’s sole display of superficial mercy, but realizing it was merely another facet of his sick mockery forced Leonhardt’s fists to clench.

“Or have you become so addicted to my cock that you no longer care to see them?”

“…Spout your nonsense.” Leonhardt snapped, his patience finally shattering. “I was going anyway, so do not interfere. God is merely waiting for the day He can carve out your wicked tongue.”

Whatever the demon found so amusing, he merely chuckled, tapping his tail against the floor in a dismissive gesture to hurry along. The moment he did, the flesh-plug wedged inside Leonhardt began to writhe, stretching deeper into his core.

“Heuk…!”

“I told you to get going.” Kelles’s tone darkened. “Keep in mind that I despise repeating myself.”

Grinding his teeth in silent fury, Leonhardt exited the den without another word. The monster only permitted a single hour a day, and despite his usual despicable nature, he was surprisingly punctual about this specific promise. Yet today, as if possessed by some sadistic whim, Kelles had orchestrated this wicked prank, making the trek to the knight order’s prison feel exceptionally treacherous.

“Ah… heuk, damn it…”

He could feel the leeches and tentacles draining his strength. With every exhale, every grueling step, the flesh-plug rubbed against his inner walls, sapping whatever energy he had left.

Shaking his head to dispel the creeping despair over why he had to endure such an irrational trial, he shoved the resentment aside. Confirming his men’s safety had to come first. The fucking monster had graciously allowed him to wear clothes in a mock display of mercy, though strictly forbidding him from disclosing the terms of their twisted pact.

While the demon’s behavior was abhorrent, Leonhardt was equally desperate to hide the fact that he had coupled with a monster, making him more than willing to comply with the gag order. He had no choice but to accept whatever unreasonable demands Kelles threw at him; daring to cross the beast would undoubtedly result in his men being torn apart alive right before his eyes.

Deprived of sunlight, he had lost track of how long they had been imprisoned in this abyss. Yet he held an unwavering faith that if they merely survived and endured, reinforcements would eventually arrive. Until then, his absolute priority was keeping his men alive without a single additional casualty. The bitterness of it gnawed at him, but catering to Kelles’s whims and enduring the unendurable was the only way to protect them.

“Haa… hah. Alec, are you there?”

Panting heavily, Leonhardt called out to his subordinate as he arrived at the dirt cave where the order was held. Kelles, who commanded low-intelligence orcs as his minions, had claimed this abandoned mine as his breeding ground, forcing the captured knights into hard labor—refining useless rock to harvest mana-stone dust.

“Commander…! You’re safe!” Tears welled in Alec’s eyes.

“Get up, Tariq. The Commander is here!”

Gathering behind the iron bars of their cramped cell, the knights looked as though they had just encountered their savior. Relieved, Leonhardt noted that while they were filthy and drained of energy, none seemed to have suffered any critical injuries.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t visit more often.” Leonhardt’s voice was thick with guilt. “I will try to negotiate with the monster to somehow extend our time together.”

“No, please. Just knowing you’re safe puts our minds at ease.” Alec quickly suppressed his excitement, his expression sharpening. “What did the bastard say? Have you figured out what kind of scheme he’s plotting?”

Just as Leonhardt opened his mouth to reassure him, a sharp jolt pierced his senses.

“Keuk…!”

As if warning him against uttering a single misplaced word, one of the tentacled leeches latched to his chest viciously bit down on his nipple. Sucking in a breath at the electrifying sensation radiating across his pectorals, Leonhardt went pale, his eyes darting frantically.

Outwardly, there was no sign of the obscene spectacle hidden beneath his clothes. Yet the moment that hypersensitive peak was stimulated, an unbearable, maddening itch flared in its twin—the nipple not currently under assault.

Alec’s brow furrowed with concern. “Are you alright? You look terrible… Why don’t you sit down instead of standing there?”

“Haa… I’m… I’m fine. Having suffered under that beast all night, I suppose I just saw an illusion for a moment.”

Sweating profusely, Leonhardt averted his gaze. Joining the wicked prank, the tentacle wedged inside his hole began to pulse, pressing down hard and rhythmically against his prostate as if to taunt him. Had it not been for the tentacles tightly constricting the base of his cock, he might have hardened right there in front of his men. Face flushed with a feverish heat, he cleared his throat and continued.

“I haven’t yet discovered… exactly what the beast hopes to achieve by imprisoning us here. Nor have I found an escape route. But significant time has passed; reinforcements are undoubtedly on the march. None of you must give up hope.”

Every word was entirely true. Despite the carnal degradation forced upon him by the lust-crazed monster throughout his captivity, he remained ignorant of its actual motives. Part of it stemmed from his refusal to listen to the beast’s ramblings, but more so, he simply couldn’t fathom what possible benefit the demon gained from sodomizing a grown man. Unable to bring himself to confess that he was being violently raped every single day, Leonhardt merely bit down on his lower lip before reaching his hand through the iron bars.

“Regardless of the situation, your lives and health come first. Alec, roll up your trousers so I can tend to the wound you suffered in the last skirmish.”

Alec offered a bitter smile, deferring. “I’m alright. The scrape is still a little swollen, but… please check on Eren first. Perhaps because it’s so cold in here, we haven’t been able to do anything about his rotting flesh.”

Knowing their Commander’s time was painfully limited, Alec prioritized a comrade in dire need over his own discomfort. He also placed immense faith in Leonhardt’s divine healing. Through these fleeting, hour-long daily visits, the Knight Commander had already nursed a significant portion of the order back to health, sealing most of the wounds inflicted by demonic miasma. Fixing frostbite that had worsened into necrosis would be quick work for him, allowing minor scars to wait until the end of the session.

“Flesh rotting in a single day?” Leonhardt’s brow creased. “How did that happen…?”

“His foot got caught in a rock pile while he was still recovering, and he was left stranded there for far too long.” Alec gestured toward the darker recesses of the mine. “Perhaps because it’s an abandoned mine, there are many hazardous zones.”

“You’ve all suffered so much. It constantly weighs on my heart that I cannot be here with you.”

Bending down, Leonhardt examined Eren’s affliction. While it wasn’t a difficult wound to mend, the miasma-induced scarring looked truly gruesome. Undeterred, the Knight Commander laid his hands directly over the rotting flesh and began to draw out his divine power. Having spent his entire life as a holy knight, the innate ability to channel divine energy for the sake of others had always been his greatest blessing.

“…”

Yet he immediately sensed something was terribly wrong. The holy light radiating from his fingertips lacked its usual brilliant luster, and while the necrotic tissue began to knit together, the process was agonizingly slow.

“Heuk… haa… haa…”

Worse, the more power he exerted, the more a dizzying nausea washed over him, causing his hands to shake violently. Before he could even finish the healing, Leonhardt was left dripping in cold sweat, his face completely drained of color.

“Commander…?” Eren’s voice was hesitant. “Are you truly alright…?”

“Yes… It seems I just haven’t been sleeping well…”

Even in that desperate moment, the leeches were brutally gnawing at both his breasts. They ceaselessly pumped demonic miasma and aphrodisiacs into his system, swelling his pectorals ever larger and stimulating his mammary glands until sweet milk began to leak.

None of the knights trapped behind the iron bars could ever fathom that their revered Commander was currently standing with a massive lump of writhing flesh crammed between his thighs. They simply pitied him, assuming he had been dragged away as their representative to be exploited through some other form of brutal labor.

“What exactly is that bastard doing to you…?” Flustered by Leonhardt’s gaunt, exhausted appearance, Alec dropped all formalities and reached through the bars, addressing him as a father figure before the entire order—a desperate attempt to channel his own comparatively feeble divine power to help replenish his commander’s fading strength.

“N-no, don’t. I’m fine…”

The second Alec’s hand brushed his cheek, Leonhardt flinched as if burned, slapping the knight’s hand away. The sudden movement caused the tentacle-plug lodged inside him to scrape dangerously close to his newly formed womb, forcing him to curl into himself, shaking uncontrollably.

“I-I’m just… tired, having been forced into unreasonable labor all night, just like the rest of you…” Leonhardt stammered, fighting to catch his breath. “I’m sorry, Eren. I should treat you more…”

“It’s perfectly fine. It feels much better already.” Eren covered his half-healed wound and bowed his head. “There’s always tomorrow, so I’ll manage it to make sure it doesn’t get worse. Thank you, Commander.”

From his resolute expression, it was clear Eren firmly believed this entire ordeal was just a cunning ploy by the monster to hinder their recovery. The rest of the knights shared the exact same sentiment. They were completely ignorant of the horrifying truth: that Leonhardt’s divine power was sputtering out because he had spread his legs beneath a demon. Incensed, Alec slammed his fist against the frigid cave wall.

“Using us as slaves wasn’t enough; now it’s interfering with our recovery… This beast is exceptionally wicked. Where in God’s name are our reinforcements? Facing a monster this strong and intelligent, they’ll need to prepare far more thoroughly.”

“…I will find a way to communicate with the outside. I’ll return tomorrow to see you all… You must endure.”

As if signaling that playtime was over, the mass of tentacles packed inside his gut flared with impatience. Stabbing sharply against his internal walls, the intrusive flesh forced Leonhardt to shoot up from his spot, his body shuddering.

“I must go now. I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”

Unable to offer proper replies to his men’s worried protests, he fled the scene like a coward. The parasitic plug, previously resting quietly inside him, had begun squirming violently as if threatening to burst out, making it utterly impossible to focus on the conversation.

“Heuk… eup… Why are you doing this? I followed our promise exactly, didn’t I? Ah, heup…”

Coming to a halt barely twenty paces away from his men’s cell, Leonhardt demanded answers from Kelles, his voice laced with bitter resentment. Realizing the divine power he had cultivated his entire life was extinguishing was devastating enough, but this ceaseless, degrading torment was pushing him to the absolute brink of fury.

Manifesting his consciousness through one of the tentacles clinging to the knight’s body, Kelles let out an amused chuckle before issuing his command.

“Step inside. Your free time is over; it is time to perform your duties. Do not forget—you swore to offer your body to me. Your current role is no different from that of breeding livestock.”

The monster cruelly coerced him into entering another cell directly adjacent to the one holding his knights. Reluctantly obeying, Leonhardt stepped into the damp, murky cavern, immediately assaulted by a stench so foul it stung the inside of his nose.

“W-we cannot do this here… The knight order is right next door. At the very least, take me back to the other room…”

“I see no reason why we can’t.” Kelles’s voice was smooth. “Strip.”

“…”

Realizing exactly what depravity Kelles had planned, Leonhardt stood frozen, staring blankly at the wall. The only thing separating this cell from the outside corridor was a few measly iron bars. If he let out even a single sound here, his moans would inevitably echo down the entire mine shaft.

“Are you hoping I shred what little clothing you have left? At that rate, you’ll be greeting your subordinates completely naked tomorrow. If you wish to flaunt that milk-swollen chest of yours to a bunch of men, I certainly won’t stop you.”

Kelles’s consciousness was still residing within the tentacles under his clothes. The moment the monster expanded his mass to return to his true form, those garments would be obliterated. Left with absolutely no alternative, Leonhardt bit his lip until it bled, his trembling hands slowly reaching for the waistband of his trousers.

The pitch-black cave was so eerily quiet that even the soft rustle of fabric brushing against flesh seemed deafening. Though highly improbable, Leonhardt was plagued by the paranoid delusion that his men could hear every agonizing slide of cloth.

“…Are you truly certain we cannot go elsewhere?” he pleaded quietly.

“…”

Historically, it had always been the holy knight who ignored the monster’s words. Yet this time, the roles were cruelly reversed. Dismissing Leonhardt’s desperate plea entirely, Kelles simply waited in silence for the human to strip bare.

“Haa…”

A mournful sigh echoed through the cavern. Leonhardt removed his trousers with agonizing sluggishness, neatly folding them in a corner. Strangely, Kelles didn’t rush him. The demon merely observed the human’s profound suffering, calculating that to fully subjugate this inflexible, righteous knight, he needed to subject him to the most absolute, soul-crushing humiliation possible.

“…Damn it.” Leonhardt stood awkwardly, hands covering his groin after shedding the last of his clothes.

Of course, calling him perfectly naked would be a gross mischaracterization. Vivid red tentacles remained plastered across his pale chest and encircling his crotch, making his muscular, sculpted body look as though it had been stuffed into the sordid, skimpy lingerie of a cheap whore.

“Perhaps shredding your clothes would have been more entertaining after all.” Kelles mused. “Who knows? If you went to your visitation dressed like this, your men might become so incredibly motivated they’d shatter those iron bars with ease.”

Ignoring the vile taunt, Leonhardt kept his eyes glued to the floor. In truth, the maddening itch radiating from his hole and both his breasts had reached such a fever pitch that merely standing upright demanded everything he had. The pitch-black dirt beneath his feet seemed to flash with blinding white spots—a clear sign he was teetering on the very edge of his limits.

Despite standing completely exposed in a freezing cave, he felt feverishly hot. Whether it was blood rushing to his face from overwhelming shame, or the wicked demon employing some insidious new trick, he couldn’t tell.

“You seem quite aroused. Were you actually looking forward to being defiled?”

“What absolute non—heuk, euk…!”

“Shh. Raise your voice, and your beloved subordinates will hear everything.” Kelles’s tone was silk over steel. “Hands on the wall. Turn around.”

One of the tentacles tightly corseting his waist to make it appear sickeningly slender slithered down to the ground like a snake. Channeling his presence through it, Kelles writhed and rapidly regained his true form. Within moments, he morphed back into a colossal demonic beast, his head nearly brushing the high ceiling of the cavern, staring down with gleaming, predatory eyes at the human who was obediently preparing to be fucked.

“…”

God, please tear this bastard’s very soul to shreds.

Leonhardt cursed him with the most venomous prayer he could summon. Judging by the fierce, blazing hatred in his blue eyes, he looked ready to cave the monster’s face in with his bare fists. Yet his ultimate reality was agonizingly pathetic: all he could do was grip the cold, dry stone wall so fiercely his knuckles turned white. He could never overcome the beast with sheer strength, and with the lives of his entire order hanging in the balance, he couldn’t dare utter a single word of genuine defiance.

“Why so sullen?” Kelles chuckled, bringing a massive hand down hard against Leonhardt’s ass. “You couldn’t even last through that single hour of visitation without burning for my cock.”

Smaack!

The dull, wet sound echoed throughout the cavern, causing Leonhardt to flinch in sheer terror. The noise was reverberating all the way down the shaft; there was absolutely no way the adjacent cell had missed it. A horrifying chill crept up his spine at the realization that his men would hear every vile, obscene sound produced from here on out.

“Aheuk…! S-stop. If you’re going to rape me, just get it over with, why…”

Why must you be so incredibly cruel?

It was agonizing enough to submit to his own defilement, but enduring this psychological torture was completely unbearable. Still pinned against the wall, he glared back over his shoulder, his eyes brimming with absolute, unadulterated resentment. Gently stroking the beautifully swollen cheek of his ass, Kelles purred.

“Rape? Let’s speak plainly, shall we? With the way your hole squeezes my cock so deliciously tight, I can’t imagine calling this anything but enthusiastic consent.”

Spreading the human’s cheeks wide, he revealed a hole obediently clenching around a mass of writhing tentacles. Having been ruthlessly fucked so many times, its initial pristine, chaste appearance was entirely gone, replaced by a wet, heavily flushed, deeply erotic hue.

The knight seemed completely unaware that possessing such a filthy, inviting hole beneath his stoic, ascetic exterior was intensely arousing in its own right. With a low, rumbling laugh, Kelles yanked out the flesh-plug sealing the entrance.

“Ah… Hah, keuheuk…”

Leonhardt locked his trembling legs, fighting desperately to keep from collapsing. As the thick mass scraped against his internal walls on its way out, a bizarre, hair-raising sensation crashed through his lower abdomen.

Simultaneously, an unbearable frustration washed over him. He felt the overwhelming urge to harden, yet his cock, bound tight by the tentacle chastity cage, remained pathetically flaccid. It was impossible to deny that his lower half had become so hypersensitive that a mere graze against his hole brought him to the brink of arousal. With the intermittent writhing suddenly gone from his insides, a hollow emptiness took its place, causing his gaping entrance to reflexively twitch and pucker, begging to be filled.

“Your breasts have ripened so plumply too. A body perfectly engineered for breeding.” Kelles declared it with immense satisfaction, gazing at the hole leaking semen the moment the plug was removed. Having greedily absorbed every last drop of demonic miasma, the once highly viscous fluid had turned thin and watery.

The monster felt an overwhelming urge to check just how mature the infantile womb had become, while simultaneously desiring to crush the defiant human’s spirit once and for all. Toying with a former holy knight provided endless amusement, but he was beginning to crave the sight of Leonhardt shedding his pride and fawning over him like a proper slut.

“Relax.”

Smack. Another sharp crack rang out. Now, without even bothering to prep or stretch him, Kelles shoved the thick, meaty tip straight in. Despite the merciless penetration, the hole obediently parted to swallow the massive cock, trembling and drooling as if overjoyed by the intrusion.

“Hah, heueuk… Ah, keueup…”

The cock, brimming with demonic energy, was scalding. It radiated such intense heat that faint steam seemed to rise from the tentacled surface in the freezing cave. As that scorching mass relentlessly forced its way up inside him, it felt as though his internal walls were being boiled alive, tearing an involuntary moan from his lips.

Leonhardt dug his nails into the stone wall, desperately trying to stifle his cries. Whether a blessing or a curse, his men couldn’t hear the monster’s voice. So, if he could just endure this silently, perhaps he could pass it off as if nothing had happened.

He had held out so well until now; if he could just endure this one more time…

Thwack—!

“Ugh, aheueuk…! Ah, haaah…!”

Gripping Leonhardt’s hips with his massive hands, Kelles mercilessly yanked the human’s body back against him. With a vicious sound like a fist slamming into raw meat, the crimson cock plunged violently into the deepest depths of his innards.

Thrusting in hard enough to nearly crush the entrance of the womb, the cock pulsed inside his belly as if it possessed a heartbeat of its own, brazenly flaunting its presence—while his prostate was utterly crushed beneath the onslaught.

“Aheu… ah… heueuk…”

Leonhardt bit down on his bruised lip again, but he had already let out a loud scream. The tentacles suppressing his erection had already uncoiled, and clear pre-cum was steadily dripping from the tip of his fully erect cock.

“N-no… this isn’t, anihiik…! Eek, eugeuk…! Ah…!”

Leonhardt tried to deny that he had leaked fluid the moment he was impaled. But Kelles gave him no quarter, hammering his cock in and out with brutal, jackhammer thrusts as he sneered.

“No? Your skill at welcoming your husband’s cock is quite extraordinary.”

“Aheup…! Euk, keuheup…! Eueuk…!”

“Hmm? Despite having your cock pitched this hard. With your hole reeking of such a filthy, inviting scent begging to be fucked, how could I possibly resist devouring you?”

Pressing Leonhardt so hard he nearly crushed him into the wall, Kelles began driving his lower half like a piston. Slap, slap. The wet, violent sounds of their friction filled the cavern in an instant.

Every time he thrust, the thick erector muscles bulging along his lower back rippled ceaselessly. His thighs, as thick as a human torso, flexed like boulders.

With a body of such terrifying vitality slamming into him, Leonhardt, trapped in his grasp, could only tremble and wail helplessly against the cruel surges of pleasure washing over him.

“Ah, keuheup…! Eu, euk…! Stop…! Stop…!”

Regardless of his will, he could feel semen trickling down between his legs. Every time the monster’s cock gouged his insides and pulled back, it felt as though his sanity were being carved away. His vision flashed intermittently, and all strength abandoned his arms and legs. From his lower core down to his perineum, it felt like he was on fire—a searing, electrifying heat that forced his body to writhe uncontrollably.

“No, heueuk…! Eup, keuk…”

“No? Even knowing full well your subordinates can hear everything, you’re leaking fluids like a filthy cum-dumpster. Perhaps exhibitionism is your true fetish?”

Squelch. The cock dug even more tenaciously into the entrance of the womb. Leonhardt ejaculated the moment he was struck, his body convulsing violently from the shock. Even so, he shook his head at Kelles’s shameless taunt, bowing deeply to hide his feverishly flushed face.

“N-no, heugeueuk…! Euk, I’m not…! I said I’m not…!”

“For someone claiming that, your rear hole seems to be flooding. You’re dripping wet with slick juices. I had no idea a holy knight could be such a gusher.”

“Hieeut…! I hate it, d-don’t do that…!”

The shrill voice hardly sounded like his own. Fearing that calling out to God aloud would only invite greater degradation, Leonhardt was reduced to begging the beast to stop in a breathless, wheezing whisper.

But Kelles did not cease his torment. Reaching around from behind, his hands moved toward the tentacles draped modestly over the knight’s chest. Sliding beneath the tentacle-bra insulating his skin, the demon’s fingers began to fondle and tug at his nipples. The touch itself felt so profoundly filthy that Leonhardt’s ears burned scarlet as he clamped down on his lip.

“Your teats are absolutely overflowing. A bountiful harvest. They look so plump and ripe for suckling; why don’t you go over to your subordinates and serve them some milk?”

Of course, if anyone actually dared to drink that precious milk, Kelles fully intended to rip their tongue out. But he couldn’t help uttering empty taunts simply because he adored the way the pitiful holy knight’s hole clamped down tight every time he was humiliated.

“It makes me want to suck them dry.”

Bitten and suckled relentlessly day and night by the tentacled leeches, his nipples had swollen into long, perky peaks. The sight of those heavily bitten, cherry-red nipples set against his pale chest evoked the luscious flesh of a ripe peach—full enough to tempt a man to bite.

As Kelles’s crimson fingers pinched and pulled at a nipple, the round bud yielded to the pressure, squirting a stream of sweet milk. Seeing the milk shoot from his own chest and splatter wetly against the cave wall, Leonhardt was so utterly traumatized that his words failed him, replaced by a pathetic hiccup.

“Hic…! Y-you…”

“Surprised? You’ll likely pass out once you’re actually knocked up.”

Gripping the Knight Commander’s voluptuous pectoral tightly, Kelles kneaded it with heavy pressure—like milking a beast—while withdrawing his cock. Rolling his hips in a slow circle to grind the tip of his shaft against the entrance of the womb, he found the sight of the knight wheezing and curling into himself quite spectacular.

“Heueup…! Euk, hah, why… why… is this…”

Leonhardt couldn’t finish his sentence. A profound sense of injustice washed over him. Why was he forced to endure this hellish nightmare? Was it even conceivable for a male body to produce milk?

Just how many more trials was he expected to suffer?

Why was God ignoring his prayers?

“Nngh…! Heueut…! Aeuk…! Hah…!”

His tangled thoughts were completely obliterated by the monster’s ruthless thrusting. Every time the flesh pillar hammered into him, scalding fluids splashed from their juncture, and whenever his chest was forcefully kneaded, milk streamed from his peaks as if a spring had burst.

Before long, a puddle of his own ejaculated semen began to pool at his feet. The wall looked as though someone had publicly urinated on it, splattered with grotesque trails of semen, while slightly above that, it was a mess of smeared milk.

“Aheu, heuk…! Eut…!”

“Listen closely. Your subordinates seem curious as well, so I’ll grant you a special explanation.”

Kelles pressed Leonhardt’s head firmly against the cave wall, his free hand continuing to molest the knight’s chest as he spoke.

“I am not defiling you merely out of boredom. What I truly desire is for you to conceive my offspring.”

“Eugeut, kkeuk…! Heueueu…!”

Leonhardt couldn’t focus on the monster’s words. Enduring the cock relentlessly battering the entrance of his womb was already pushing him past his limits. His vow to remain silent had long been forgotten.

Squelch, squelch, thwack!

Every time the head of the cock struck the cervix like a brutal blow, a dizzying sensation radiated through his pelvis. The numbing ache stretching from the base of his shaft to his testicles was beyond what sheer willpower could endure. With every agonizing thrust, a blistering heat flared in his lower abdomen, sending electric, spark-like tremors shooting up his spine, making his head ring and leaving both of his breasts throbbing.

As he was swept away by the pleasure, his consciousness grew faint, leaving him incapable of coherent thought. His cloudy, unfocused eyes no longer held any trace of their former brilliance. With a gaze as sunken as a dark, abyssal sea, he merely wept, forcibly receiving the agonizing pleasure the monster bestowed upon him.

“Do you know why I want an offspring?”

“Haa… ah, euk… eueut…”

Kelles slowed his brutal violation of the human’s body. Leonhardt weakly shook his head.

Kelles ground his cock languidly against the tender inner flesh. “Because I require an exceptional mage to break my seal.”

“Heueu, heuk… what do… you mean…”

“To shatter these crude shackles forged by the humans I so utterly despise, I need a mage born of my own bloodline.”

Savoring the soft, embracing texture of the internal walls, Kelles plunged his cock deep into the colon and halted his movements. Sensing an ominous shift, Leonhardt frantically shook his head as if to scream no, but the monster merely hoisted one of the knight’s legs higher—positioning him to receive an even larger payload—and continued.

“Furthermore, the first generation of crossbreeds is always guaranteed to be exceptionally powerful. It truly is a blessing that those foolish humans delivered a holy knight—and such a handsome, high-quality specimen at that—right into my hands.”

“Ah, eueueu…! Heut, no, it’s—it’s too hot…!”

Effortlessly ignoring the human’s screams, the monster violently erupted, blasting semen from the tip of his tentacled shaft. The murky fluid not only packed the knight’s insides to the brim but burst outward, frothing and pooling thickly at their raw, reddened juncture. Kelles was unbothered by the overflowing semen; he merely prodded the entrance of Leonhardt’s womb as if urging it to absorb the demonic miasma faster.

“If a normal human were to harbor my seed like this, they would melt away without a trace in no time. The frail, pathetic creatures are uselessly clever, it seems.”

Releasing his rhythmic kneading of the Knight Commander’s firm chest, Kelles moved his hand down to trace the knight’s lower abdomen. Bulging prominently from the sheer volume of the cock inside, the belly still managed to maintain a somewhat flat appearance.

“But a holy knight will not die, thanks to that blasted divine power. You possess at least enough resilience to serve as a vessel to bear my young, so I suppose I should consider you somewhat useful.”

“Nngh, heuk…! Ah…! Aaaah…!”

Pressing firmly against Leonhardt’s belly, Kelles concentrated his demonic miasma at his fingertips. A pitch-black radiance—the absolute antithesis of holy light—coiled around his crimson fingers, a sight profoundly vile to behold.

“Aeueuk…! Don’t…! Stop…! Ah…!”

Despite being utterly impaled, Leonhardt thrashed and struggled in a desperate frenzy. Wherever the monster’s fingers trailed, a burning sensation flared, and he could feel the corrosive miasma seeping into his flesh.

“Euwook…! Heok, eueueuk…!”

His divine power—the pride of his entire life—instantly transformed into sharp spears, stabbing inward as it viciously attacked the corruption. The internal war to purge the defiled areas was catastrophic. Pinned by the monster, Leonhardt dry-heaved repeatedly, his body convulsing in sheer agony.

He could vividly feel the seed of evil taking root deep inside his womb. It literally felt as though he were rotting alive; the torment was so absolute that he couldn’t even form the thought to call upon his God. He only wanted to flee from this suffocating horror.

“You look much more appealing now. Ah, don’t squeeze so tightly. It only makes me want to fuck you again.”

Sprouting tendrils directly from his own back, Kelles completely ensnared Leonhardt’s naked form. Pressing his massive frame flush against the knight, refusing to allow even a millimeter of space, the monster patiently waited for the pathetic human vessel to fully absorb the miasma.

The demonic energy Kelles injected from the outside reacted violently with the copious amounts of semen packed inside, forcing the womb nestled near the colon to mature completely. It even seared a brand-like crest into the knight’s previously flawless lower abdomen.

With his pectorals ballooned and leaking milk, and a breeder’s crest branded onto his belly, he looked every bit the perfect sex slave. Let alone pious devotion, he now looked as though he’d be far better suited straddling a man and shamelessly grinding his hips.

“If you beg for my mercy, I will grant you a special exception and let you bear only one child. So, go on. Beg.”

“Heueuk… heuk… heok… Sh-shut up… God will… your soul…”

The fallen holy knight’s eyes were bloodshot. Overflowing with such murderous intent that it was hard to believe he had been drowning in pleasure just moments ago, he looked as though he had been swallowed by an evil spirit.

Kelles traced the clear tear tracks staining Leonhardt’s face and let out a low chuckle. “It seems you still haven’t grasped your own predicament.”

Kelles clicked his tongue and effortlessly hoisted Leonhardt into the air. His heavy pectorals bounced violently, and his painfully erect cock, along with the crest branded onto his belly, were left disgracefully exposed.

“Shall we go advertise to your subordinates that you’ve been reduced to a monster’s breeding cum-dumpster? We can place bets on how many of them pitch a tent at the sight of you.”

“Heuk…! Ah, ah…! Stop… I said stop…!”

Shaking his head, Leonhardt weakly struck Kelles’s arm. However, his fully matured womb was so hypersensitive that mere friction caused it to quiver with arousal and leak slick fluids. He could feel his insides pulsating.

His desire to breed was boiling over in direct proportion to his burning hatred for the beast. Entirely against his will, a desperate craving reared its head—a primal urge for someone to ruthlessly pound into that very spot.

“Heo, heook…”

Confronted by this swelling, primal lust at his very core, Leonhardt forgot his curses and his eyes shot wide. He couldn’t even form the words to deny it. The vile, sticky hunger spreading through his belly was actively coercing him to hurry up and receive the seed.

“Beg. Ask politely, like a proper seed-receiver. Do so, and I’ll end it here.”

“…”

Leonhardt let out a stifled groan. In truth, he just wanted to give up on everything. He was exhausted from being tortured by the monster, and the reality that his body had been hopelessly tainted by evil was too much to bear.

“Haa, heuk…”

He tried to summon his divine power, but there was no response. It felt as though his connection had been entirely severed; he couldn’t draw upon even a fraction of his strength. That realization alone made him feel utterly broken.

Perhaps enduring without dying was God’s final act of mercy. As a servant devoted to such a gracious deity, begging a demon for mercy was unthinkable.

But the agony was unbearable. Just passively housing that scalding lump of flesh inside his body was driving him mad with thirst. Half of him wanted to abandon his pride and end today’s rape right here, while the other half simply wished to be ravaged until he completely lost consciousness.

“Haa…”

Exhaling a heavy sigh that felt as though it were boiling up from his very soul, Leonhardt wet his dry lips. He could barely force the words out. But unable to hold out any longer, he finally surrendered his pride.

“Please… stop… I beg of you…”

His small, whispering voice echoed softly in the cavern. The strangely defeated tone sounded like a desperate prayer, or perhaps an attempt to soothe an enraged beast.

The despairing middle-aged man bowed his head in resignation and closed his eyes. He had tried to resist, but he had reached his absolute limit. Drowning in self-loathing, he knew that if he were paraded in front of his knights in this state, his sanity would shatter completely.

“No, no. When making a request, you must be far more polite, and honestly demand what it is you truly want.”

Pleased by the human’s broken spirit, Kelles bound both of Leonhardt’s breasts with his tentacles, his tone softening slightly. Instead of squeezing them roughly with his hands, the tendrils moved with a deep sensuality, as if promising a reward for obedience.

Thin tendrils gently tickled the nipples and caressed the areolas, creating a bizarre sensation that felt like a combination of fingertips and tongues. His milk-swollen chest yielded to even the slightest pressure, oozing sweet fluids.

The murky drops pooling around the areolas and nipples quickly formed tiny streams, cascading down the peaks of his chest. Never missing an opportunity, the tentacles lapped up the sweet milk, savoring the human’s brimming vitality.

“Eut… ah, haeuk… Just what exactly do you want me to say…? Keut…!”

Leonhardt trembled at the illicit pleasure spreading across his chest. It felt as though his entire body were tingling with an unbearable itch. Whenever he writhed his upper body to escape the tentacles’ obscene caresses, the massive cock lodged inside him inevitably gouged his womb.

The more he was stimulated, the more his body screamed to move wildly, forcing him to clench every muscle in a desperate bid for control. Submitting to the beast at all was already profoundly humiliating; he absolutely refused to stoop to begging for anything else.

“‘Please fuck me with your cock.’ That should suffice.”

Kelles pulled his hips back with agonizing slowness before snapping them upward in a sharp, shallow thrust. Leonhardt’s entire body jerked violently as if struck. Feeling as though the monster had pierced straight through to his darkest, hidden desires, he shook his head in denial.

“Who would ever utter such vulgar… ah, eueut…”

“You are hardly in a position to be picky, are you? Being so difficult… Let’s compromise on ‘Husband, please fuck me with your cock,’ then.”

“That’s abs—hieeuk…!”

Smack! The demon’s agile tail whipped out, landing a stinging slap on the ass of the knight currently stuffed full of his cock. Acting as though negotiations were officially over, Kelles gripped the naked human and took a step toward the cell exit.

“Ah…! Haeuk…! W-wait…! Ah…! H-husband…!”

Leonhardt cried out frantically as Kelles grabbed the iron bars, ready to crush them. The sight of the knight desperately trying to keep his voice hushed to prevent it from echoing out into the shaft was the ultimate masterpiece.

“With… with your…”

He had been relentlessly degraded by the monster’s foul language until now, but forcing those specific words from his own lips was a completely different nightmare. Feeling his eyes sting once again despite having no tears left to shed, Leonhardt murmured in a broken whisper.

“Please fuck me… with your cock…”

“Whining and moaning every time I ram into you, practically broadcasting that you’re getting fucked, yet you still insist on weighing your pride.”

Having successfully obliterated the human’s dignity, the monster let out a quiet snort and casually tore the iron bars away. He sent a mocking sneer through their telepathic link and abruptly yanked his cock entirely out.

“Your subordinates are likely already well aware you’re getting defiled; hell, they’ve probably jerked off to the thought of it a few times by now.”

“Heuk…! Eup…!”

Leonhardt caught his breath, trembling like a leaf at the rough extraction. They had undoubtedly heard his wails from inside the cell; he didn’t even want to imagine the horror of being openly mounted out in the corridor. But Kelles merely resumed his relentless assault, brutally targeting nothing but the womb as he spoke.

“You should have done it properly when I gave you the chance. Use this opportunity to learn exactly what your useless stubbornness brings upon you.”

“Heubeup…! Eup…! Nngh, heup…!”

The monster’s thick hand clamped over the human’s face. Smothering Leonhardt’s mouth, Kelles began thrusting with a ferocity that eclipsed all his previous efforts. The grotesque, knotted, bright red demonic cock slid out from between the human’s legs with a wet slide, only to be sucked right back into the slick depths before it could fully surface, producing dirty, obscene slapping sounds. Slap, slap.

“Aeup…! Geut, heueueuk…!”

Pounded relentlessly from behind with his mouth forcefully covered, the violation felt absolute—horrifying in its totality. Yet his body betrayed him completely. Nestled deep where only the demon could reach, the womb was practically buzzing with arousal from the savage thrashing, constantly twitching and gushing fluids.

“Realize your place. I am the only one capable of accepting you in this thoroughly corrupted state.”

“Eup…! Euk, euk…! Eueut…!”

“Even if I were to sever both your legs to prevent you from escaping, you would ultimately crave me.”

“Heueueueu…!”

Squelch, squelch. Every time the monstrosity surged in and out, a frothy lather of semen churned around his hole. Amidst the sensation of his very brain melting into mush, the monster’s cruel curse carved deep into his heart. Leonhardt shook his head in desperate denial as tears streamed endlessly down his face.

He didn’t want to feel it. Yet he had lost count of how many climaxes had already ripped through him. His cock, entirely depleted of semen, only managed to sporadically leak pitiful spurts of clear fluid, reducing most of the climaxes ravaging his body to agonizing dry orgasms.

The sensation was so intensely pleasurable it was terrifying. Feeling as though he were tumbling endlessly into an abyss, he reflexively flailed and struggled before repeatedly going entirely limp.

“Haeu, eu… eut…!”

They were barely twenty paces away from the cell where his men were imprisoned. It felt entirely surreal to be standing naked, impaled by a monster’s cock, his belly swollen tight with its semen.

Even as he processed that thought, Kelles continued carving out his internal passage, and Leonhardt’s body had long since adapted to accommodate the monster’s massive length. Taking that colossal girth no longer bothered him; in fact, the heavy ache of having his hole stretched to its absolute limit sent euphoric shivers coursing through him.

“Ah…!”

Once again, the monster’s sticky semen began to flood his insides. Overcome by an involuntary wave of absolute ecstasy and profound fullness, Leonhardt’s pupils contracted sharply. Soon after, his eyelids fluttered, his lashes damp with tears.

Trembling violently, the very moment the monster’s hot load was injected into him, Leonhardt expelled a forceful stream of urine onto the floor. He desperately flexed his abdomen to stop himself from pissing, but the tight, swollen skin stretched over the embedded cock merely rippled in a pathetic, undulant rhythm.

“A true masterpiece. Do you love my cock that much? Or do you simply enjoy the thrill of getting fucked right where you might be caught?”

Splatter.

The sound of his fluid hitting the ground was excruciatingly loud. Kelles’s mockery didn’t even register in Leonhardt’s mind anymore. He truly felt like nothing more than prey caught in an inescapable trap.

“Heuk… heueup…”

He had wept before from the sheer agony of being violated by the beast, but this was the first time he was sobbing from pure, unadulterated misery. And even then, he was doing everything in his power to stifle his cries, terrified that someone might hear him.

“Pathetic. Bawling your eyes out…”

As hot tears soaked the fingers smothering the human’s mouth, Kelles narrowed his eyes. He had never considered Leonhardt weak-willed, so seeing him break down crying over a slightly more intense fucking was certainly unexpected.

“This is why you should have been obedient from the start. I suppose I’ll just have to fulfill my husbandly duties until you’re completely exhausted. There’s truly nothing better for soothing a crying whore.”

Naturally, Kelles possessed neither the talent nor the inclination to genuinely console him. Saying he would soothe him was merely an excuse; staring at that beautifully ruined, tear-stained face made his lust boil over anew. If possible, he wanted to fuck him until he was reduced to a quivering puddle of mush, ensuring he couldn’t stand up again no matter how potent his holy resilience was.

“I will keep my promise. We’re done doing it ‘outside.'”

“…”

Leonhardt had no energy or strength left to argue. He never truly believed the damn monster would honor his word to begin with, but hearing the clear intent to continue the rape inside made his vision swim with darkness.

Father, Father…

With nowhere left to turn, he inevitably resorted to calling upon his God in silence. Having relied on Him for his entire life, the truth was that Leonhardt practically didn’t know how to center his mind or endure hardships alone, without God’s presence.

“…”

Please forgive this sinful body…

Even after the monster removed the hand smothering his mouth, Leonhardt remained silent. Instead, he simply begged for God’s forgiveness in his heart.

If he could just hold out for a few more days, reinforcements might truly arrive. But he no longer believed he could ever return to the way things were. The agonizing reality that a holy knight abandoned by God had nowhere left to go washed over him, drowning him in an abyss of torment—just as the monster had promised.

“Heueuk…”

Kelles did not break their union. Carried back to their original cell with the monster’s length still sheathed deep inside him, Leonhardt wept, praying over and over again.

May no one else be harmed…

And please, burn the soul of this wicked beast until nothing remains.

***

Time had lost its meaning.

The entire Order of Knights, Leonhardt included, withered away day by day, consumed by the biting cold and creeping despair. One knight had managed to track the passing days by counting their meager rations—a grim tally revealing that over two weeks had slipped by in this dungeon, yet reinforcements remained nowhere to be seen.

“Damn it, I’m freezing and starving,” a knight grumbled from the shadows of his cell. “How much longer are we supposed to play slave to these monsters?”

The beasts seemed entirely uninterested in directly exploiting their captives. Instead, they merely mobilized the knights for menial labor, extracting whatever marginal use they could from the surplus lives they barely sustained. Rations were carefully calculated to keep them hovering at the edge of starvation, leaving the majority of the Order hollowed out by severe malnutrition.

While divine power could mend their physical wounds, it offered no salvation against the relentless exhaustion of starvation. Once a day, whenever Leonhardt came to visit, the men feigned resilience, but their endurance had finally reached its breaking point.

“Reinforcements will arrive if we just hold on a little longer,” Alec snapped. “Quit your whining and wait.”

In the Commander’s absence, the mantle of leadership fell to Alec. Having watched Leonhardt command the Order since he was a young boy, he had grown adept at mimicking his mentor’s authoritative cadence.

Beneath that facade, however, Alec was just as exhausted. Far worse than the hunger gnawing at his sanity was the suffocating weight of helplessness. He agonized over whatever horrific torments Leonhardt was being subjected to, plagued by the creeping dread that their reinforcements had already marched into a monstrous trap and been annihilated.

“I can’t take this anymore…” a knight muttered from the dark.

“The things that locked us down here… they aren’t normal.”

“I have to agree,” someone chimed in. “You all heard it the other day. Aside from us, these sick bastards are definitely dragging humans down from the village and using them for their twisted breeding.”

The knights murmured their agreements, utterly oblivious that the source of those desperate, obscene moans had been their own Commander. Just days prior, the agonized wailing echoing through the halls had undeniably belonged to a man. While starving to death in this rusted cage was a horrific fate, a far deeper, primal terror lurked in their hearts—the realization that at any moment, they too could be dragged away to serve as a beast’s plaything.

“Why else would they have us doing meaningless grunt work in a dried-up mine?” a knight argued, making a crude gesture with his hands. “Once we’re too weak to fight back, they’re going to use us for something a hell of a lot more fucked up than manual labor. Mark my words.”

Born in the gutters, the man only ever feigned refinement in front of the Commander; otherwise, his tongue was notoriously foul.

“Shut your mouth with that cursed talk,” another knight hissed. “As if they’d want a bunch of grimy men for that.”

“Then what about the guy we heard the other day? You think they kept him around because he was pretty?” the foul-mouthed knight retorted. “From the sound of it, he seemed pretty damn old, too.”

The memory of those hoarse, fractured moans was enough to make their skin crawl. The man had sounded as though he were being tortured, weeping in agony, only to inevitably break down into breathy, pleasure-drunk whimpers. Assuming it was merely some unfortunate villager, the knights refrained from speaking too harshly of the victim, though they universally agreed the entire ordeal was nauseating.

“If you’re just going to spout useless garbage, why don’t you try sleeping?” Alec interjected, his tone sharp. “Save your strength.”

He understood well why his men were complaining, which only frayed his nerves further. These restless knights ultimately harbored only a single, desperate desire: escape. They yearned for freedom with a ravenous hunger.

“Listen to me, Alec,” a silver-haired knight named Chez pressed, leaning forward. “Shouldn’t we get the hell out of here before we end up like that guy? The way I see it, waiting for reinforcements is a lost cause. They’re either dead, or they’ve already been turned into those monsters’ bitches.”

“So…” Alec glared at him, his voice dropping to a glacial chill. “You’re suggesting we abandon the Commander—the man who saved us—and run away?”

He placed heavy emphasis on the word abandon. While Alec agreed a hundred times over that their situation was dire, he harbored no resentment toward Leonhardt. Had the Commander forsaken them to escape the forest alone, his body would have been melted down by demonic energy by now, leaving not even a corpse to recover. Their only honorable path was to bide their time and find a way for all of them to escape together.

At Alec’s cutting question, the silver-haired Chez snorted in disbelief, a sly, calculating look creeping onto his face.

“Abandon him…!” Chez scoffed, waving a hand. “Anyone listening would think I’m proposing treason. But be honest… you’ve all felt it. The Commander isn’t the same as he used to be.”

Silence blanketed the cell.

No one voiced their agreement, but neither did anyone rise to deny the claim. In the stifling darkness, their silence served as a heavy, unspoken consensus.

“The way I see it, the Commander has already lost his power,” Chez continued, pressing his advantage. “I’m grateful he saved our lives, sure. But… if he no longer wields any divine power, doesn’t that change everything?”

“Get to the point,” Alec demanded. “What exactly are you trying to say?”

“You know better than anyone that a man without divine power cannot serve as Knight Commander, Alec,” Chez sneered. “Our dear Commander might have already turned.”

Alec’s jaw clenched.

In their order, “turning” or becoming an apostate implied far more than mere betrayal. There were only two primary ways a Holy Knight could lose their innate divine power. The first was excommunication, wherein the priests would permanently seal the offender’s abilities. The second was apostasy—a loss of faith triggered by some deeply traumatic event that shattered their convictions. More insidiously, the term carried a quiet, ugly sexual nuance; knights who broke their vows of chastity to commit immoral acts were frequently degraded as “mutants” or fallen ones.

“Ha.”

Alec didn’t bother responding to the insidious mockery. He simply lunged forward and threw a devastating punch.

Crack!

“Agh!”

The silver-haired knight collapsed backward, his head snapping to the side from the impact. Still seething with unresolved fury, Alec towered over him, chest heaving.

“Have you forgotten the Commander’s teachings?” he roared. “He taught us never to believe anything we haven’t seen with our own two eyes! If anyone here is a traitor, it’s you, forsaking your honor over baseless assumptions!”

“Alec, calm down,” another knight urged, stepping between them. “He hasn’t eaten in days. His nerves are just shot.”

“He’s right. Fighting amongst ourselves is just going to drain whatever strength we have left,” someone else added. “Let’s just focus on figuring out a way to escape this place.”

“Do you still not understand?” Alec growled, forcibly swallowing his boiling rage. “I’m not leaving without the Commander. He saved our lives. I refuse to become a coward who cuts and runs just to save his own skin.”

It infuriated him to hear the man he respected most being doubted so casually, but what truly filled him with contempt was knowing he shared an Order with someone who could so easily discard a life debt. Like Alec, Chez was an orphan. Alec simply couldn’t fathom the twisted mindset required to brand their Commander a traitor—the very man who had sponsored them and taken them into the Order. To cling so basely to life without a shred of knightly loyalty or courage… what kind of existence was that?

Sensing the utter revulsion in Alec’s glare, Chez rubbed his bruised cheek and sneered. “Ha! Do whatever you want. You wouldn’t understand since you’ve always been his favorite pet, but I’ve hated his methods from the start. We’ll find our own way out. You can stay here and become a monster’s concubine for all I care.”

While Chez acknowledged that Alec was an exceptional knight—gifted enough to be discussed as the next Commander—he despised how Leonhardt always prioritized the young man. The Commander never outright called Alec his son, but witnessing Leonhardt treat him like his own flesh and blood always made Chez’s stomach churn with bitter envy.

“You son of a bitch, I let you off easy!” Alec exploded, his temper snapping.

Shoving aside the knights attempting to restrain him, he lunged, seizing Chez by the collar, ready to beat him into the dirt. But just then, the heavy, dragging scrape of footsteps echoed down the corridor, accompanied by a deeply familiar voice.

“Alec. Chez. What do you think you’re doing?”

“C-Commander…!”

Alec hastily released his grip on the man’s collar, though he could do nothing to hide Chez’s swollen, bruised cheek. Instantly grasping that his Order was on the brink of internal collapse, Leonhardt clicked his tongue and reached his hand through the iron bars.

“I see the harsh conditions have exhausted you all,” the Commander murmured. “However, Alec, I believe I specifically instructed you to take responsibility for the Order in my absence.”

“…I apologize, sir,” Alec replied, bowing his head.

Contrary to Chez’s bitter assumptions about favoritism, Leonhardt was fiercely impartial. He merely placed heavier burdens on Alec because the young knight was being groomed to succeed him.

“Chez, come here,” Leonhardt instructed gently. “Let me heal that.”

He extended his warmth equally to every man under his command. The only reason he had prioritized healing Alec during battles was because Alec possessed the second strongest divine power in the Order; keeping multiple healers active was a simple tactical necessity.

Despite resenting the Commander, Chez desperately craved the relief of his healing touch, and so he begrudgingly offered his face to the bars. Of course, his compliance was also driven by a sly, underlying motive: he wanted to test if Leonhardt had truly lost his power.

Contrary to Chez’s suspicions, a faint, pure light bloomed from Leonhardt’s fingertips, just as it always had. As the Commander’s fingers gently brushed against his bruised cheek, the throbbing pain melted away.

“Hah… hah…” Leonhardt panted quietly.

However, the toll of using even that fraction of power was glaringly obvious. While the Commander hadn’t completely lost his divine abilities, he was clearly no longer capable of wielding them with his former ease.

The moment Leonhardt withdrew his hand, Alec pressed himself flush against the iron bars, looking as though he wanted to tear through them. “…Are you alright, sir?”

“I still haven’t been able to sleep well…” Leonhardt lied, forcing the words out through a layer of cold sweat. “My body just isn’t what it used to be.” The mere act of soothing a swollen cheek had thoroughly drained him.

Beneath his heavy clothing, his body was bound in grotesque lingerie fashioned entirely from living tentacles. His chest had swollen even larger than his last visit, requiring a writhing, leech-like brassiere to ruthlessly compress his engorged peaks. His nipples had become so agonizingly sensitive that the mere friction of fabric against them sent sharp, electric stings through his nerves, making the simple act of wearing clothes a torment. A stark, humiliating brand was seared into his lower abdomen—absolute proof that he had been claimed as a monster’s breeding vessel—while a thick, phallic tentacle remained firmly lodged between his thighs. He had been utterly reduced to a subjugated slave, his degradation concealed from his men by nothing more than a single layer of cloth.

The parasitic appendages served a dual purpose: physically forcing him into demure submission, and acting as a conduit to eavesdrop on every word he exchanged with his knights. Because of this, attempting any action unapproved by Kelles was entirely out of the question. It filled Leonhardt with an agonizing, silent grief that he could not pass along a single piece of meaningful intelligence to his men while under constant surveillance.

Instead, he forced a weary smile and passed a handful of apples through the bars—fruit he had painstakingly secured. “These were difficult to come by,” he whispered. “It breaks my heart to see you all starving and filthy. I managed to bring enough for everyone, so please… eat these and keep your strength up.”

“…Thank you, sir,” Alec replied. But as he reached out to take the apples, a profound, instinctual sense of dissonance struck him, freezing his hand in mid-air. An indescribable strangeness clung to the Commander, evoking a deep, unsettling premonition.

Since being dragged away by the monster, Leonhardt’s complexion had grown increasingly pale and shadowed, resembling a man drowning in unfathomable depths of sorrow. Yet, unlike the knights who were visibly wasting away from malnutrition, his hands remained full and healthy. If anything, his calloused skin had grown inexplicably softer, smoother, and the hollows of his cheeks had noticeably filled out. It was deeply disturbing—his body radiated a lush, blooming vitality that violently contradicted the crushing depression suffocating his aura.

Despite his sunken expression, a strange, vibrant flush painted his features, creating a bizarre dichotomy. This gloomy, blooming health bordered on the decadent. The knights were simply too accustomed to viewing him with absolute reverence to recognize him as a sexual entity; otherwise, they would have clearly seen the faint, unmistakable haze of eroticism clinging to the older man’s face. Violated by a demon day after day, pumped full of obscene, corrupted instincts, his body was slowly forgetting the rigid discipline of a knight. He was being forcibly molded into a new role, inadvertently radiating a uniquely melancholic yet intensely sensual allure.

“Kuhk… ah, eugh…”

The tentacle burrowed deep inside him suddenly gouged at the entrance of his newly-formed womb with a spiteful jolt. While he had been conditioned to crave its phallic thrusting, this deliberate, scraping invasion of his deepest core was agonizingly painful. Unable to hold back the reaction, Leonhardt gripped the iron bars with violently trembling hands, right in front of the entire Order.

“Commander…?”

“D-don’t worry about me…” he stammered, fighting for breath. “Haa… keugh…”

He managed to swallow his moans, but he couldn’t stop the furious red flush burning the tips of his ears. The tentacles frequently harassed him during these visitations, but today they were punishing him with a vicious, spiteful intensity, as if displeased by something.

Kelles had showered him with an abundance of fresh fruit—a near-impossible luxury in these frozen lands. The monster claimed it was essential nourishment for a body preparing to carry young. It was a repulsive justification, but Leonhardt reasoned that a creature intent on making him an incubator wouldn’t bother poisoning his food. Having detected no trace of demonic energy in the apples, he had deliberately smuggled more than half of his spoils down to the cells, fully aware his captor was watching. He couldn’t possibly stomach all that food alone anyway, let alone gorge himself in comfort while his men starved in the dark.

“Commander…” Unable to bear the sight of his mentor’s suffering, Alec reached through the bars and gently covered Leonhardt’s trembling hand. It was the habitual, instinctive reflex of a Holy Knight comforting the afflicted.

“Keuhk…!”

But the moment their skin met, searing agony ripped through Leonhardt’s hand, and he violently yanked it away. Not only was the sudden flare of pain unbearable, but a blazing red mark was left scorched across the back of his hand from Alec’s divine aura.

“I t-told you I was fine…!” Leonhardt gasped, clutching his wrist. “You don’t need to help me…”

“Commander…”

Leonhardt hastily lowered his injured hand, but Alec, who wielded his own divine power, couldn’t possibly have missed the demonic rejection. Already on edge from Chez’s baseless accusations of apostasy, the young knight spoke in a crushed, hollow voice.

“We begged you before we left,” Alec pleaded softly. “We asked you to trust us, to lean on us if anything happened… What kind of labor are they forcing you to do? What kind of twisted deal did you make to buy our lives?”

“That’s… heugh…”

Leonhardt flinched, his legs trembling. The parasite that had been ruthlessly probing his most sensitive depths suddenly swelled inside him, ballooning with a suffocating pressure—a silent, agonizing threat to answer carefully.

“We’ve been locked in here for weeks in complete darkness, waiting for a rescue that might never come…” Alec continued, his voice cracking. “We are all breaking. Commander, what we need right now is faith. We need unity.”

“I’m so sorry…” Leonhardt whispered, swallowing thickly as he met Alec’s gaze. Looking into those pure, trusting eyes, a desperate desire to protect the boy from disappointment clawed at his chest.

But he was already tainted. He was a creature fouled by a demon. No matter what excuse he offered, the Order would be devastated by the truth, and if he misspoke now, Kelles might slaughter them all before any help arrived. Should he risk everything and confess the truth? Or…

Since my body is already defiled, he reasoned miserably, should I commit perjury just to keep them safe?

It felt as though a dagger had been driven straight through his heart. After a long, agonizing silence, his lips parted several times before he finally forced the lie into the open. “I… I made a pact with the sealed monster.”

Squirm.

The tentacle writhed violently inside him, an explicit warning that it would tear him apart if his tongue slipped any further.

“In exchange for sparing your lives…” he choked out. “I surrendered my power to it.”

Silence. It was a half-truth. Interpreted loosely as “providing assistance,” it wasn’t entirely false, but paired with the blatant fading of his divine aura, it was the perfect bait for a massive misunderstanding.

The squirming parasite stilled, seemingly satisfied with his performance. Simultaneously, a chaotic array of emotions swept across the exhausted faces of his knights.

“But that makes no sense,” Alec protested. “Why would a demon want divine power? It should be annihilated the moment it absorbs it. Why…”

“What it truly wants is to break its seal,” Leonhardt lied smoothly. “It may be trying to repurpose my aura for some profane sorcery. That is why we are still alive. We are useful to it.”

It was a string of utterly hollow words. Unable to meet Alec’s gaze directly, Leonhardt hurriedly added, “It only feeds me to siphon more of my strength… But I refuse to submit. I’ve memorized the layout of these mines as best I can, and reinforcements must be closing in by now. You must not lose hope.”

Did these empty words of encouragement carry any real weight? Even as he tried to rally his men’s spirits, an icy knot of guilt twisted in his stomach. He knew full well that if rescue were coming, it would have arrived days ago, but he couldn’t bear to shatter their last illusion. It felt like over a fortnight had passed, which meant they might have realistically been trapped here for nearly three weeks. Unless the reinforcements had already been slaughtered by the beasts, this total silence was unnatural.

But escaping on their own power was mathematically impossible. The only viable path left was to wager his very soul, begging the monster to spare his subordinates in exchange for his eternal servitude.

As that realization settled in, Leonhardt cast a despairing glance down at his own chest.

Why else had Kelles forbidden him from telling the truth? The demon held absolute, overwhelming power. It cared nothing for whether the surviving humans languished in helplessness or barely clung to life. A creature so brazen would happily mutilate the knights beyond recognition and still smugly claim it had “spared” them.

It was a terrifyingly cunning beast.

The reason it had deliberately left an uncorrupted, pure group of holy men alive right next door was glaringly obvious. It knew a responsible Knight Commander would willingly surrender everything—his body, his honor, his soul—just to guarantee their safety. Furthermore, by forcing Leonhardt to look upon the chaste, unsullied men he once led, the demon ensured he would constantly confront his own filthy degradation, drowning in endless humiliation.

Ultimately, the only person who would never return from this dungeon was Knight Commander Leonhardt.

Perhaps the acceptance of his fate brought a measure of peace. The agonizing pain stabbing at his chest slowly melted away, leaving in its wake a bleak, unwavering resolve wrapped in unbearable bitterness.

Leonhardt pushed his arm through the bars once more, tightly grasping Alec’s hands. “No matter what happens,” he vowed softly, “I promise I will get you out of here. I will ensure you all climb the steps of the Royal Castle once again, and offer your prayers of gratitude to the Goddess.”

“…Father,” Alec choked out.

“So please, do not sever your tethers to hope,” the Commander urged. “No matter how dark it gets, you must rely on one another, trust one another, and hold onto your gratitude for the divine grace that watches over us.”

The bleak shadow that had previously clouded his features had vanished entirely. Meeting the fierce, brilliant blue of Leonhardt’s eyes, the knights found themselves unconsciously nodding in agreement. That intense, piercing light did not belong to a fallen mutant. Though countless questions remained unanswered, the simple, unshakable confirmation that their Commander had not betrayed them was enough to steady their wavering hearts.

“…We will hold the line,” Alec swore. “We’ll search for escape routes whenever possible. But you must not break either, Commander. If we pray… the Goddess will surely restore the grace that was stolen from you.”

“…Yes. Let’s all stay strong,” Leonhardt agreed, forcing a smile. “I’ll do everything in my power to bring you good news soon.”

The leech-like tentacle clamped down hard on his nipple, a sharp nip indicating the visitation was over. Giving Alec’s hand one last, firm squeeze, Leonhardt stepped back and offered his men a relaxed, reassuring wave. It was a display of lightness that could only be managed by a man who had fully embraced his own destruction. Steeling himself, Leonhardt turned and walked back into the darkness, desperately trying to convince himself that being ruined by a monster was simply another facet of the divine will, and not a tragedy to be mourned.

The pitch-black tunnel stretched before him like the yawning maw of a beast. But he had to walk into it.

It was the final duty he would fulfill as their Knight Commander.