The garden was no longer a place of manicured beauty; it had become a visceral masterpiece of slaughter.

  The air was thick and heavy, a humid fog of steam rising from the heaps of the fallen.

  It was a chaotic symphony of steel meeting bone, the freed slave warriors, fueled by decades of suppressed rage butchered. Knights who had been focused on our front found themselves with crude blades and scavenged daggers driven into the gaps of their armor from behind. The fight was over.

  The ground was hidden beneath a carpet of nearly a hundred bodies, the polished silver of the knights’ plate now stained a deep, muddy crimson. Through the haze, I saw Earl Thaddeus stumbling toward the mansion’s side entrance, cradling what was left of his right hand. The explosion of the control box had shredded his fingers, leaving a trail of gore across the white marble steps as his remaining twenty knights formed a frantic, crumbling wall of steel around him.

  "Alan... stay still," Joshua rasped, his voice barely a shadow of its usual boom.

  He stood over our wounded friend, his hands trembling as he channeled the final, desperate dregs of his mana. A soft, incandescent glow bled from his fingertips, weaving into aureate threads that stitched themselves directly into the gashes in his own armor and the deep puncture in Alan’s thigh. The gold sutures hummed with a divine warmth, sealing the flesh, but as the last spark faded, so did the light in Joshua’s eyes.

  His knees buckled, his heavy plate clattering like a falling mountain.

  I didn't think. I moved. I pushed off the gazebo roof, my body uncoiling with the springy, feline tension. As I plummeted toward the grass, I hit the ground with a soft thud, the bodysuit physics manifesting in a heavy, rhythmic jiggle of my chest and thighs as the suit’s internal dampeners absorbed the kinetic shock.

  I reached Joshua just as he hit the turf. I slid into a kneeling position, catching his head before it could strike the stone.

  "I've got you," I whispered, the smoky lilt of my voice softening into something almost tender.

  The garden fell into a strange, ringing silence, punctuated only by the wet squelch of the freed slaves picking through the dead for coins and gear. Eren moved toward Alan, her tail drooping with exhaustion as she pressed a handful of fresh dressings against his newly stitched wound.

  I found myself in a position I never could have imagined back in our world. I was kneeling on the blood-soaked grass, my legs spread slightly to create the perfect, cushioned cradle for my friend’s head. My thighs, encased in the slick, compressive obsidian-black latex, felt like dense pillows beneath his weight. Joshua’s eyes were closed, his breathing heavy and rhythmic as he slipped into a state of total mana-collapse.

  As I leaned over him, the hyper-sexualized proportions of this body created a strange, intimate sanctuary. My large breasts, pushed forward by the lingering tension of the combat stance, almost entirely blocked my view of his sleeping face. I looked down at his sweat-matted brown hair, my obsidian-black fingers, usually meant for crushing throats and pulling triggers, gently brushing the grime from his forehead.

  There was a profound, quiet irony in it. I was a weapon of war, a hyper-detailed "Phantom" build designed for maximum lethality and tactical distraction, yet here I was, acting as the softest place for a warrior to land. I felt a surge of protective warmth that had nothing to do with the suit’s programming. I cradled him while the slaves finished their grim harvest and prepared to vanish into the night.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  The lap pillow trope. I’d seen it a hundred times, usually played for laughs or a sudden blush, but I never expected to be the girl providing it. Sitting there on the blood-stained grass, I felt the heavy, grounded weight of Joshua’s head on my thighs. My legs were shockingly soft, the obsidian-black latex acting like a high-end memory foam. My large breasts still framed the view of his unconscious, weary face, a sight that would have been hilarious back in our dorm room but now just felt… right.

  Ivan Vondstein strolled over, his battered sword sheathed and his daughter, Elara, clutching his hand. He looked at the mountain of corpses with a detached, clinical eye, then looked at me.

  "Well," he grunted, lighting a fresh cigarette. "Suppose I’m officially unemployed. Gonna be a hell of a task finding a new job that pays enough to clear my debts, but honestly?" He looked up at the moon and let out a small, genuine smile. "I hated my contract here anyway. That Earl was a prick."

  He gave a sharp nod of thanks, his eyes lingering on Elara for a second before they settled back on us. "Stay safe, whatever you are. You’re too much trouble for this town." He drops a small ornamental badge of two and a half swords next to me. With that, the S-rank swordsman turned and disappeared into the shadows of the garden, leading his daughter toward a life that finally belonged to them.

  Behind us, the mansion was a hive of panicked movement. Through the thermal overlay, I could see servants and remaining staff sprinting for the exits, hauling whatever valuables they could carry. No one was coming to help Earl Thaddeus. Between the death of his heir and the slaughter of his guard, the man was a ghost in his own home. Barnaby’s earlier words echoed in my mind, there was a feudal war a town over. The local authorities were too busy with border skirmishes to care about a disgraced Earl’s garden party. This place would be reclaimed by the weeds and the rats by morning. The moonlight occasionally covered by clouds, it was calm in this garden of blood.

  "Oi! Holy Mother of… is that you folks?"

  A familiar, creaking rumble of wheels and the smell of aged dairy preceded the arrival of Barnaby’s wagon. The trader pulled his horses to a sharp halt, his jaw dropping as his eyes scanned the nearly one hundred bodies littering the lawn. He still had his crates of cheese in the back, clearly nothing traded, but he’d hitched an extra, empty wagon to the rear.

  "Barnaby," I called out, wearily waving a black composite hand. "Perfect timing."

  He scrambled down, stepping carefully over a dead knight. "Some old man and his daughter told me to come here! I said I was looking for weapons and armor to trade in the war zone, but I didn't mean for you to go and harvest a whole regiment!"

  "Fifty stacks," I said, my voice returning to its smooth, business-like purr. "High-quality plate and enchanted steel. You collect, we sell. We need the coin and a ride out of here."

  "Deal. By the gods, a deal!" Barnaby started hauling gear with a frantic, profit-driven energy, while we focused on the living.

  It took the combined effort of Alan, limping heavily with his stitched thigh, and Eren’s last bit of telekinetic strength to drag the massive, unconscious Joshua into the back of the extra wagon. I hopped in last, the wood creaking under the weight of my obsidian limbs.

  "Take us wherever you're going next," I told Barnaby. "Just get us away from the Crossing."

  As the wagon began to roll, the rhythmic clack-clack of the wheels acting as a lullaby for the wounded, the adrenaline finally began to ebb. I felt a hollow, gnawing hunger in my stomach, the suit’s energy reserves demanding fuel. Eren reached into a crate and pulled out a thick wedge of sharp cheddar. She broke it in half, handing me a piece without a word.

  We sat there in the dark, the two of us eating cheese in a quiet, tired moment of silence. I looked at my black hands, then at my sleeping friends. A few hours ago, we were clearing rats for three gold pieces. Now, we were mass-murdering fugitives who had just toppled a local power structure.

  "We really aren't in a game anymore, are we?" I whispered, the smoky lilt of my voice catching. A transition from gamer adventurers to killers.

  Eren just shook her head, her cat ears drooping as she chewed. "Games have reset buttons, Taylor. This… this just smells like old iron and cheese."