In Kuroinu

Author's Note - We're gonna have so much smut, you may even get tired of smut. And you'll say, "Please, please, it's too much smut. We can't take it anymore, Mr. Author. It's too much."And I'll say, "No it isn't. We have to keep having more smut. We have to have more!"

The first thing was pain. My whole body, all at once, like I'd been dropped from about three stories onto a marble floor. Which, given that I was lying face-down on stone and couldn't remember how I got there, might have been exactly what happened.

Light came next. Too bright. The kind of light that exists in churches or temples or places designed to make you feel small. I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them again, and the ceiling swam into focus above me. Vaulted. Stone. Old. Carvings I couldn't read running along the archways, and candles burning in alcoves that didn't need candles because sunlight was already pouring through tall windows.

I pushed myself up on my hands. My palms were flat against some kind of circle drawn on the floor. Lines and symbols, chalk or paint, radiating out from where I was kneeling. A ritual circle.

Three women were standing over me.

The first one was a redhead. My age or a little older, wearing plate armor over a blue tunic with a sword at her hip. Her hair was pulled back, loose strands framing a face that was all clean angles and blue eyes. Her hand rested on her sword hilt and she was looking at me like a package that might contain the wrong order.

"Can you hear me?" She crouched so her eyes were level with mine. Her voice was even. Measured. "Can you understand my words?"

"Yeah." My voice came out rough. I swallowed. "Yeah, I can understand you."

Her shoulders dropped a fraction.

"My name is Filia Shiora. I'm the leader of this party." She gestured to the other two without looking. "This is Tianne Ruthheim, our priestess. And Llusse, our scout."

"You forgot 'archer,'" said the elf by the window. Pointed ears, blonde hair past her shoulders, green eyes narrowed at me like I'd personally insulted her family. She had a bow across her back and her arms were crossed tight over her chest.

"I didn't forget. I was being concise."

Llusse's jaw tightened but she didn't answer.

The priestess was watching me. Dark hair, kind face, white robes with gold stitching at the collar. Her hands were clasped in front of her and she'd leaned forward half an inch when I moved, like she was ready to catch me.

Filia Shiora. Tianne Ruthheim. Llusse.

I clamped down on my face before the recognition showed. I knew them. I knew their names, their personalities, their backstories, the trajectory of their entire lives if nothing changed. I knew what Filia sounded like giving orders. I knew Tianne healed with her hands clasped together. I knew Llusse would call me useless within the first five minutes.

Because this was Isekai Harem Monogatari. The summoning scene. The ritual circle. The hero who gets pulled from another world to fight the Demon King.

Except the hero was supposed to be Naoki Oikawa. An otaku. A chronic masturbator whose main qualification was being horny and available.

And I was standing here instead.

I got to my feet. My legs were shaky and the room tilted for a second before settling. The stone floor was cold through whatever I was wearing. I looked down. Jeans. A t-shirt. Sneakers. In a medieval temple. It would have been funny if my head wasn't pounding.

"Where am I?"

"The Kingdom of Lesdea. You've been summoned here through a ritual." Filia stood, and she was tall enough that I had maybe two inches on her. "We brought you from another world to serve as our hero."

She said it like she was reading a briefing.

"Your hero," I repeated.

"There is a threat to this world. The Demon King, Maou, has been gathering power in the north. His forces are growing. Our kingdom cannot fight him alone, and the other nations..." She paused. Chose her next words. "The political situation is complicated. We need a champion with a specific power. That's you."

Staying upright was taking most of my focus. Keeping my face neutral was taking the rest. And underneath both of those, the same realization was running through everything.

If Filia, Tianne, and Llusse were real, standing right here, exactly as they'd been drawn, exactly as they'd been described, then this wasn't just Isekai Harem Monogatari. This world had Kuroinu in it. Celestine, Claudia, Alicia, all seven princess knights. Vault and his Black Dogs. The betrayal. The planned conquest, the "Sex Empire," every horrible thing that happened to every woman on the continent.

And Himekishi Lilia. Lilia, Mia, Queen Leila, all of them under Dirk's coup. Catue in Dragundaala with Guignol coming for her family. The elves. The hidden kingdoms. All of it.

Every bad ending I'd ever watched or read was going to happen here. To real people. To the three women standing in front of me right now.

I needed to sit down. I sat down on the edge of the ritual circle's raised platform. Tianne made a small sound and stepped toward me, and Filia held up a hand to stop her.

"Give him a moment."

"He's pale," Tianne said. Soft voice. Warm. "Let me check him."

Filia considered it, then nodded.

Tianne knelt beside me. Up close, her eyes were a deep brown, almost amber in the light from the windows. She smelled faintly of herbs, dried lavender mixed with something greener. Her fingers touched my forearm. Cool skin against mine. She held it there, palm flat against the inside of my wrist, and a gentle pulse of warmth moved through my arm and into my chest. Healing magic. Diagnostic, scanning.

"Your body is strained but undamaged," she said. "The summoning was hard on you. That's normal." She didn't take her hand off my arm. Her thumb rested against my pulse point, and I couldn't tell if she was still reading my vitals or if she'd forgotten to let go. Her eyes lifted to mine and held for a second too long before she pulled back and stood.

"You said a specific power." I looked at Filia. "What power?"

The muscles around her eyes tightened. Rehearsed delivery incoming.

"The hero summoned by our ritual carries a unique blessing. Your bodily fluids, when shared with a woman, have the ability to dramatically enhance her combat capabilities. Strength, speed, magical potency. The effect is significant and measurable."

Silence.

I looked at Filia. Filia looked at me. Tianne was studying the floor with tremendous focus. From behind us, Llusse made a sound like a cat stepping on a nail.

"My bodily fluids," I said.

"Yes."

"Enhance women's combat abilities."

"Correct."

"When shared."

"That is what I said."

I pressed my lips together very hard. The laugh was right there, sitting in my chest, and if I let it out it would be the wrong kind. It would be the kind that said I already knew all of this, and that would raise questions I could not answer.

So instead I nodded slowly, like a man processing deeply uncomfortable information for the very first time.

"So you summoned me here," I said, "across dimensions, through a magic ritual, to fight the Demon King. And my weapon is..."

"Your bodily fluids," Filia confirmed. Her face was very slightly pink.

"Right. Just making sure I heard that correctly."

"THIS is the hero?" Llusse had come around to face me. She was shorter than Tianne by a few inches, compact and sharp, and her green eyes were doing exactly what I knew they'd do. "He's a civilian. He has no mana. He has no weapon training. He's wearing peasant rags from a world we've never heard of, and his POWER is that his spit makes women stronger?"

"It's not just spit," Tianne said quietly.

"I KNOW IT'S NOT JUST SPIT."

Llusse's ears had gone red. Elven ears, I was learning, were extremely honest.

"I didn't ask for this either," I said. Which was true. I'd woken up on a stone floor with a headache and three women I recognized from adult media. I'd chosen exactly zero of this.

"Nobody asked you," Llusse snapped.

"You literally did. The ritual. The summoning. That was you asking me."

Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"The ritual was Filia's idea."

"And you participated," Filia said, without turning around.

Llusse's ears went redder. She walked to the far window and stared out of it like the courtyard owed her money.

I liked her already. That was going to be a problem.

Filia walked me through the basics while Tianne prepared a cup of water from a clay pitcher on a side table. The Demon King was real. The northern territories were slowly falling to his forces. The human kingdoms were fractured and politically distracted. The Shield Alliance, she said, and I kept my face perfectly still when she mentioned Celestine's name, was holding the line with seven fortress-cities, but the war had been grinding on for years and the mercenary companies they relied on were becoming more powerful than the kingdoms paying them.

She didn't mention Vault by name. She didn't know she needed to.

I listened. Asked questions I already knew the answers to, because that's what a man hearing this for the first time would do. "How many fortress-cities?" "Who leads the Alliance?" "What's the main threat right now?"

Filia answered each one directly, and with every answer I cross-referenced what she was saying against what I knew. The map was the same. The politics were the same. The timeline was pre-betrayal, as far as I could tell. Early. Before Vault's campaign began. Before any of it went wrong.

Which meant I had time. How much, I didn't know. But some.

Tianne brought me the water. Our fingers touched on the cup, hers wrapping around it from one side, mine from the other. The ceramic was cool and her fingertips were warm. She held on for half a beat, then smiled and stepped back.

"Thank you," I said.

"Of course." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. I'd known her for ten minutes and she was already doing things like that.

The water tasted clean. Colder than I expected. I drank half the cup and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

"Alright," I said. "So you need a hero. You got me instead. I can't fight, I can't use magic, and my power only works through..." I gestured vaguely. "Intimacy."

"Physical intimacy," Filia corrected. She was going to be precise about this if it killed her.

"Physical intimacy. With women. Who then get stronger."

"Significantly stronger."

"And you're okay with this?"

Filia met my eyes. "We discussed the nature of the power before performing the ritual. We understood what we were summoning."

From the window, Llusse said, "Speak for yourself."

I looked at Filia. Filia looked at me. Outside the temple a bird was screaming at another bird about something that sounded urgent but probably wasn't.

"I'll do it," I said.

Filia blinked. She'd been ready for me to argue.

"You're agreeing?"

"You have a world full of people who are going to die if someone doesn't do something. You're telling me I'm that someone. And the cost is sleeping with beautiful women who then become strong enough to fight the thing that's threatening everyone they love." I shrugged. "I've heard worse deals."

Llusse's head whipped around from the window. "Beautiful? Who said anything about, we're not, this isn't about-"

"I said I'll do it. What's the plan?"

Filia stared at me. Then the corner of her mouth moved, and she pulled a rolled map from a case at her belt.

"We leave tomorrow. I'll brief you on the route tonight." She spread the map on a stone table. "And Haruto?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself."

I smiled at her. She looked away, but not as fast as she meant to.