Master’s Smile

Notice me senpai!

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“Guh… Lady Limil…! First, she muddles my mind, indeed, and then she runs off… Truly, I should have expected no less from a woman tough enough to infiltrate our guild as often as she pleases…!”

Sorglos stood atop a tree, perfectly balanced on one of its branches as she recalled the few moments before she had extended her invitation to the Master. As far as people went, there was really only one who could move through the grounds of a guild that prided itself in its top-tier members, and that just so happened to be Limil.

She had managed to pass through the guild’s defenses so many times that it was difficult to see her coming as anything but miraculous. That wasn’t to say that the guild members were pushovers, not by a long shot; they never hesitated to come up with a Search and Destroy plan the second they found her out. By some stroke of luck, however, she kept finding the means to escape.

But Sorglos, as much as she had failed the initiative this time around, remained absolutely blind to her own shortcomings.

“Aaaah… Master…!”

Right in her line of sight was the Master’s figure, beloved above all, and already softening her gaze. His back was turned towards her, occupied as he was with fighting off the Lizardmen. He looked rather gallant, she thought. The sight of the Master’s strongly-built back greatly appealed to her more feminine side, to an almost thrilling extent.

“Indeed, the Master fights with brilliance. The way he takes down his foes with one swoop… Truly admirable, indeed…!”

As Sorglos treated herself to the view of the Master knocking down one Lizardman after another with magical orbs dense with extremely powerful sorcery, she felt herself drawn to his manliness. Any overt displays of masculinity and power wouldn’t have left Sorglos in such a chaotic state, not normally.

Rather, when the Master came into play, it was his expression that remained smiling, unchanging even as the battle continued to rage. This was what really made Sorglos feel her heart clench, what made her feel a tingle in the pit of her stomach.

“Aah… That smile, indeed, I can never have enough of it…! Oh, I would love to see him from the front, truly I would, but…!”

But she never moved a muscle, continuing to watch over the Master’s back. Jumping from one tree to the next presented little difficulty for her and her endurance, and if she truly wished, she could be basking in the Master’s frontal view in no time at all. There was only one reason she didn’t do so, and that was to protect what every living creature is considered at its weakest – namely, its back… Well, that was at least part of the reason why she did this. The crux of the whole matter was that this was simply her fetish.

“Aaah… Master. I’ll always be in the shadows… always protecting you, indeed I will…!”

Sorglos was, at the end of a day, the kind of woman that could only be called a stalker. She loved observing her Master from behind. That wasn’t to say that addressing the Master from the front brought her no pleasure at all, perish the thought. That was also enough to make her heart feel at ease.

It was just that being able to look after the Master from his rear and without betraying her presence was all the more arousing for her. And that was Sorglos, a pure and unmitigated stalker by nature.

She would keep an eye on the Master, wherever, whenever. It was then quite unfortunate that she had her own observational duties to attend to, just like the other girls at the guild. If not for those, she would be keeping the Master in her sights around the clock. Despite this clear obstacle, Sorglos had managed to devise a certain plan, one that would allow her to protect the Master.

“Fuhuh… Nothing’s better than watching him from behind, truly not. But there’s nothing wrong with seeing the Master from all sorts of angles, indeed there isn’t.”

Sorglos brought a hand to an eye, all the while giggling in a disturbing manner. A closer look might allow one to see that everything down from her right wrist was missing.

It goes without saying that the Lizardmen hadn’t cut the hand off, since Sorglos never engaged anyone in close combat. She had done it herself.

Her long-lived pining after the idea of keeping the Master in constant observation had led her to a certain method, a method which involved dividing herself into pieces. She would cut off a portion of her own body and allow whatever information this dismembered piece of her received to be sent back to her.

“Master’s profile from the right isn’t bad, indeed… Ooh! His left side is even better!”

Sorglos had already split up her severed hand into multiple smaller parts which she had strategically placed in the Master’s surroundings, giving her a good view of him from all angles imaginable. Her cheeks flushed red, and a strand of saliva began drooping down her lips as she let out a few perverted giggles. Luckily for her, this was all hidden behind her cloth and was, for now, difficult to discern.

“Oops. Going that way might be cause for worry, indeed.”

Let’s not assume that drooling over the Master was all she was up to. She was keeping an equally alert gaze on the grossly overabundant Lizardmen, taking into account any that approached the Master from a direction that might cause problems and disposing of them before they could act.

She let her kunai fly towards a lone Lizardman that was attempting to stealthily strike the Master from behind. Kunai flew into both of its eyes, effectively robbing it of its sight, and one more pierced its neck before it could cry out. To others, this may have appeared excessive, but if the Master was in danger, she really saw no other option.

“…?!”

Sorglos let out a relieved sigh at a job well done. Then she saw the Master turn to look her way, though he never ceased his discharge of magic orbs. His lips, still firmly in their usually pleasant arc, moved to mouth the word ‘thanks.’

“…Pheeew.”

Her body seized up for a good while before she finally relaxed, letting out a long breath. She sounded extraordinarily happy.

“Oh, Master. Indeed, you’re still annihilating all those Lizardmen. I should expect no less, truly.”

Now overcome by a powerful wave of calm, Sorglos could look at the Master with improved composure. Out of all the reptilian corpses that lay around him, only a few were fully intact.

This came as no surprise; almost all of the creatures that found themselves struck by the Master’s magic orbs would find whatever part of them was hit completely obliterated. In fact, the only corpses that were even remotely recognizable as Lizardmen were the ones riddled with kunai.

“This should take care of our quota; it should. But… Indeed, how to spend what precious time is left with the Master…?”

The main reason behind accepting this sort of work was to give the Master some way to vent off the frustration he had accumulated over the course of his being cooped up in the guild. The secondary reason was that Sorglos had wanted to see what the Master looked liked from behind when he fought.

Both reasons had been sufficiently fulfilled at this point. Whatever time remained might just as well be spent leisurely strolling about town. It could also just as well be spent trying to seduce the Master and then dragging him into an inn.

There was plenty of reason to believe that the other members of Yelquchira had their own pieces on the playing board in anticipation and that they were already observing them both. But out of everyone in that guild, no one was as well versed in the art of obfuscation as Sorglos. Throwing them off their scent would be ridiculously simple.

“Ugheheheh… Master…”

Dangerous – that was an apt way to describe the smile on her face. Her mind was already teeming with all manner of lewd fantasies. It was because of this that Sorglos failed to immediately notice the new presence approaching the Master and her.

“C-confound it, truly…!”

Four presences, to be more specific. None of them seemed to possess any kind of power that was worth mentioning, and each one of the four was far beneath what she and her prowess in battle would consider a challenge. That in itself was a relief.

If these four approached the Master with intent to harm, then it would be more prudent to cut them down before they could harm a hair on his head. The Master, appearing to have noticed the newcomers as well, turned their way.

“Whoa!”

Emerging from a rustling thicket came four men, the same group Sorglos had sensed. They were all equipped with weapons and armor, and it was quickly deduced that they were adventurers affiliated with some guild or another. At their lead stood a youth with auburn hair.

“Hey, you…!”

Those were his words as he made to approach the Master, his manner anything but respectful. The expression he wore was rather ghastly to look at, and the Master could only respond with his patented, though now somewhat bewildered smile.

…Well, that certainly wouldn’t do, would it?

“You there. Stand still, still indeed.”

In the blink of an eye, Sorglos had leaped out of the tree she had been using as cover to keep an eye out for the Master and moved behind the young man. She brought her kunai to his neck, making one thing abundantly clear – one wrong move, and something would be slit.

“Wargh?!”

“Lucille!”

The young man – Lucille, as he was called – let out a panicked shriek when he felt the kunai prodding his throat. The men in his company, unsure of what to do, could only call out his name.

As much as they were itching to go save the lad, Sorglos was much too close for them to do anything to help. One wrong step and Sorglos was well in the position to slash through his neck.

“I’d advise you to refrain from sudden movement. Indeed, that goes for the boy too.”

“Urgh…?!”

Applying just the smallest amount of force, the well-sharpened kunai made a shallow cut in the boy’s skin. It manifested as a thin, red line that oozed little drops of blood.

“Y-you’ve got us all wrong! We weren’t trying to hurt you or anything, we swear!”

“Spare me the nonsense. You approach Milord with an expression like that and expect me to believe you, truly?”

The seemingly eldest member of the group attempted to do away with any misunderstanding, his worry evident in his expression. His words, however, didn’t come through to Sorglos. She only had ears for the Master, after all. Her mind was already made up; she was going to dispose of these four.

“Wait! This really is a misunderstanding!”

This time, Lucille had decided to pitch in. Not that his proximity made any difference to Sorglos, as his words also fell on deaf ears. It was almost time for her to drag her weapon through this brat’s throat.

“Hm. Understood, indeed.”

The Master had just told her to stand down. As unresponsive as she had been to the loud exclamations of Lucille and the unnamed man, the Master’s directions was all she needed to remove her weapon. Then, in a flash, she was behind the Master.

“S-she’s fast…”

One of the other men who hadn’t spoken up yet, a rather feeble-looking fellow, finally made his voice heard as his eyes went wide. Lucille’s eyes were equally wide, but when the realization that he had escaped death finally hit him, he let out a long sigh of relief.

“O-oh, right!”

The Master had approached him, kindly asking him what reason he had for approaching them. This expression of tolerance only served to deepen Sorglos’s loyalty towards him.

In any case, it was well known that one adventurer shouldn’t recklessly approach another when out of town, not unless he had a good reason to do so. When adventurers left the town, they generally had some kind of mission to see through. Approaching them would only mean getting in their way.

This was why it was so well-advised to keep away from other adventurers unless they found their lives to be in immediate danger or something. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that these were the members of a grey guild, here to relieve adventurers of their coin…

If that turned out to be the case, Sorglos would waste no time. It wouldn’t take a minute before every one of them dropped dead. But, alas… this enthusiasm proved to be quite short-lived.

“Please! You have to save us!”

His head held low in a deep bow, Lucille begged.