Eros had expected the cycle to continue until the phantom of the World Tree behind him withered away, but the eldritch girl suddenly shifted. She lifted her head from his neck, and another resonant hum vibrated through the air.

  Eros blinked, staring at the porcelain-pale body so close to his own. He noticed that the girl’s face, once deathly white, had regained a faint, healthy flush from consuming his life force. To be honest, having a creature with a face identical to his mother’s feasting on his blood created a sense of cognitive dissonance that was beyond "weird." It was unsettlingly macabre.

  The girl’s pitch-black eyes fixed on him, devoid of emotion, as if she were calculating a more efficient way to drain the prey before her. Though he knew most denizens of the Sin-Domain were beyond communication, being stared at by those cold, lifeless orbs sent a shiver down his spine.

  He offered a dry, nervous laugh. "Uh... hello there. If you’ve had your fill... could you maybe let me go?"

  The girl ignored his plea, her gaze remaining unblinkingly intense. Suddenly, a flash of pink flickered within her black pupils, and a surge of eerie power began to crawl over Eros’s body.

  Eros stiffened. Is she trying to corrupt me with her essence? He quickly scanned his internal state. Aside from a slight rise in body temperature, there was no abnormality—except for one thing. Under the corrosive touch of that power, his clothes began to rot and fall away in tatters. Soon, he was just as bare as the girl. He finally understood why she was naked; apparently, using this specific power obliterated any fabric it touched.

  Just as Eros was reeling from the awkwardness of his predicament, a sharp pain shot through his back as he was slammed onto the ground. He was pinned. He wanted to voice a firm refusal, but his body had stopped listening to his mind.

  In the next second, the life force within him seemed to find a massive breach and began to pour out of him with frantic intensity.

  Eros was dumbfounded. Wait! Who taught you to absorb vitality like this?! He was reeling. This was far beyond what any "prey" should have to endure.

  And it didn't stop there. Because of her petite stature, the girl couldn't reach his neck while he was pinned flat, so she simply sank her teeth into his chest. It felt as if she had hit a major artery; blood erupted like a fountain, yet every single drop was swallowed greedily by the entity.

  Eros felt like a dam that had just opened its floodgates—and in this case, there were two of them. His vitality was hemorrhaging at an alarming rate. Just as he thought he was about to be sucked into a dry husk, the World Tree phantom sprawled beneath him on the forest floor suddenly ignited with light.

  Specifically, one of the nine nodes that formed the World Tree began to glow. An inexhaustible torrent of life energy erupted from that single point.

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  The tainted, crimson soil of the Sin-Domain began to sprout emerald grass. In the blink of an eye, as far as the eye could see, the wasteland was carpeted in vibrant green. Saplings burst from the earth, growing into towering, ancient giants in a matter of heartbeats. Within seconds, this dark, twisted corner of the Sin-Domain had been transformed into a lush, thriving forest.

  Eros blinked in disbelief at the sudden, infinite well of vitality within him. The girl clearly sensed the change in the environment as well. She raised her head, her dark eyes still locked onto his, but now he could see a blatant, overwhelming greed within them.

  Tendrils of black mist began to seep from her small frame, snaking their way into Eros’s body. They lunged toward his soul. She wants to devour my very spirit?

  Instead of fear, Eros felt a surge of grim relief. He didn't resist. He allowed the black mist to rampaging into his soul space.

  Suddenly, a tentacle topped with a singular, lidless eyeball extended from the depths of Eros’s soul. It tilted slightly, observing the uninvited guest with a sort of clinical curiosity.

  A piercing, blood-curdling shriek echoed inside Eros’s mind. Fine, jagged cracks began to spiderweb across the girl’s smooth, pale skin. They multiplied rapidly, as if she were a porcelain doll about to shatter into a spray of gore.

  Watching this, Eros felt a new concern: Is she going to explode and cover me in raw meat?

  At that moment, a wave of profound, submissive pleading washed over him. The source was the girl pinned against him. An instinctive realization dawned on Eros—he understood that if he mentally accepted this plea for mercy, the creature would become his property.

  Eros hesitated, offering no immediate response. The desperation in the pleading intensified, and the cracks on the girl’s body widened. Just as the submission turned into pure, existential terror, Eros reached out with his consciousness and touched that feeling of surrender.

  What happened next left him stunned. The girl dissolved into a cloud of gray-white mist. The fog compressed inward, eventually solidifying into a dull, gray-white ring that hovered in mid-air.

  So... the thing that just pinned me was... a ring? A ring that had gained sentience? Or was the girl merely the "spirit" of the artifact?

  But do artifact spirits bleed? Eros looked at the bloodstains on his own body, utterly perplexed. He reached out and caught the ring. The moment his fingers closed around it, he felt a rhythmic pulse of life—not like metal, but like a living heart.

  Before he could process this, his shadow began to ripple. He looked down to see a figure "growing" out of the darkness at his feet. First the crown of a head, then the face, the neck, the shoulders...

  It was Irina. She had finally awakened from her slumber.

  But as he watched her emerge, Eros realized something was very wrong. Why is Irina naked too?

  Wait, why did I say 'too'? Oh... right. I'm naked. In a flash of delayed realization, Eros frantically tried to cover himself.

  Irina froze, staring at the bare youth before her. Then, she noticed her own state. Having only emerged as far as her waist, her face turned a bright, vivid crimson. She immediately dove back into the shadow, leaving only her head bobbing on the surface of the ground as she peered at him with wide, curious eyes.

  The sight of a lone head growing out of the grass was, quite frankly, terrifying.

  "Where... where are we?"

  Irina finally spoke. While she stared at Eros, her eyes darted toward their surroundings. The leaden, heavy sky looked like the Sin-Domain, but how could there be such a lush, vibrant forest in a place defined by rot and death?