The insects that had hatched in Demeter’s garden were disgustingly large.

The insects with dozens of legs like centipedes were so fast, skillfully evading Actius’s arrows as they fled.

The densely packed trees that stood like a forest served as cover for the insects, making them difficult to catch. Still, after drawing his bowstring hundreds of times, the insect corpses had piled up like a mountain.

“Phew. I think this area is cleared out now.”

When Actius stretched his hand over the pile of insect corpses, they suddenly swelled up as if they were absorbing water. Actius waved his hand toward the swollen corpses once more. Then all the moisture drained from the bodies, and they instantly crumbled into wet soil.

After finishing the cleanup, Actius looked around with wary eyes. Knowing Sion was somewhere in this forest made him feel uneasy.

His heart was pounding, and Actius felt weak, as if he had become prey rather than hunter.

‘Damn woman….’

Her temperament was so vicious and brutal that she never let go of prey once it caught her eye. Yet after spending however long it took – ten days or a month – to catch her prey, she showed neither affection nor attachment.

So Sion’s desire to catch him was probably just competitive spirit or obsession with uncaught prey. Though he couldn’t understand why she viewed her fiancé as prey…. Actius shook his head to clear away the unsettling anxiety rising within him. The silence and stillness was unbearable.

‘This won’t do. I need to clear out these insects and get out of here.’

Actius left the eastern garden and headed south. Though his arms were numb from drawing the bow so much, he didn’t want to delay for even a moment.

And so until the dusky evening, he repeatedly drew his bow dozens of times and cut off insects’ heads with his sword.

Each time an insect corpse piled up, Actius looked around with heightened vigilance. But it was all useless. Even after quite some time had passed, Sion’s absence was strange. The day was growing dark and he had cleared out all the insects in the east and south, so surely she must have made some progress on her assigned north and west areas….

‘This is really strange…. Why is it so quiet?’

Surely she couldn’t be struggling with mere insects like these….

Sion was an excellent warrior. Her spearmanship was admirable even to Actius, and her fighting skills were second to none. Moreover, her persistent nature meant she would keep charging in until victory, earning her the name of the undefeated warrior.

So while she wasn’t the type to be defeated by mere insects, the unusual silence made him worry needlessly.

‘That’s ridiculous. Worry? More like anxiety…. Wondering if she’s causing trouble somewhere….’

Though Actius tried to deny his feelings by keeping even busier, his steps kept halting. And so, unable to move forward, he stood frozen in place looking back at the quiet northern garden.

‘Maybe… I should go check?’

Just to observe the situation. Since they received the mission jointly from the goddess, the task wouldn’t be complete even if he finished his part alone.

‘…Right, I have no choice if we want to finish the goddess’s task quickly. I’ll just keep an eye on things.’

Having made his decision, Actius’s footsteps turned north.

Not knowing he was walking straight into a trap.

***

Actius’s expression went stiff as he surveyed the deep part of the garden. From a certain point, the insect corpses disappeared. And from there, suspicious bloodstains stretched out long….

While insect blood was murky and sticky with sap mixed in, the blood spattered on the ground was clear and bright red without any viscosity.

‘N-no way….’

Actius’s heart throbbed hotly with needless suspicion. Though thinking it couldn’t be, that it was an impossible assumption, he couldn’t stop his feet from following the bloodstains deeper inside.

Stars rose one by one in the increasingly dark sky. The forest, having lost its daytime bustle, was as silent as if it had swallowed everything. Walking with heavy steps, probing that silence, and heading toward darker places, Actius stopped with a start.

“…Sion?”

He saw a bloody mass collapsed between rocks. Since it appeared roughly the size of one woman, Actius’s heart plummeted. He rushed to the rocks in one breath to examine the bloody figure. Though not clearly visible from afar, up close the identity of the collapsed form became clear.

…A ram? Why is this here….

At that moment, just as he felt an eerie sense of déjà vu, he heard something cutting through the air. Simultaneously, a massive spear pierced into Actius’s ankle.

“Ugh!”

A scream burst out involuntarily at the searing pain. As he staggered and looked down at the spear stuck in his ankle, Sion jumped down in front of Actius.

“Don’t pull it out carelessly, Acti. What if your ankle really gets cut off?”

With an expression too excited and joyful for someone who had just speared her fiancé’s ankle with her own hands.

Actius shouted with a pale face:

“Sion! What are you doing!”

“I didn’t think you’d really fall for it either. I never thought you’d worry about me.”

Sion sat down on one knee in front of Actius, smiling shyly with a flushed face. Looking at Actius’s contorted face, she reached out and wrapped her hands around his neck. His lips were devoured in an instant.

“……!”

A heated tongue invaded without hesitation between his lips that had parted in shock. As if savoring the cool man’s body temperature, she stroked and caressed every corner of Actius’s mouth with her small tongue. Actius, belatedly coming to his senses, pushed Sion away and shouted:

“Crazy woman! You’ve completely lost it! You stab someone with a spear and then kiss them?”

Actius’s voice echoed thunderously through the dark forest. Though he glared at Sion with fierce eyes, she merely ran her tongue over her lips as if regretting that his lips had pulled away.

Unperturbed by his fierce voice, Sion leaned her body closer toward Actius.

Actius wanted to back away but couldn’t move easily with the spear piercing his ankle firmly into the ground. As she drew closer, her purple hair swayed in the moonlight.

Approaching unhurriedly and slowly, Sion looked both creepy like a witch who devours people and enchanting like a fairy said to completely bewitch men.

Because he didn’t want to acknowledge this, Actius put more force in his eyes to hide his emotional turmoil. Fortunately, his face pale from pain concealed his embarrassing emotions, but Sion seemed to see something else.

Stopping in front of Actius’s face contorted with pain, Sion pulled up the corners of her mouth in a smile and put her hand between his collapsed legs.

“You call me crazy, but are you normal for getting hard when that crazy woman stabbed you?”

The witch with a fairy’s face whispered against Actius’s pale lips with an amused smile, her hand gripping his c*ck that stood fully *rect and stiff.

“Finally caught you. My lover who’s been running away so skillfully.”

“…I’m not your lover.”

“We’re engaged and I’ve had your c*ck, but still not lovers?”

“That time was a mistake…!”

Sion bit down hard with her teeth on Actius’s lips as he tried to spout more nonsense. It was time to tell her lovely fiancé, who was looking at her in shock with a groan, the truth he was avoiding.

“Look, Actius. You came looking for me because you couldn’t see me. You run away from me, but when I’m not in front of you, you come to find me.”

“…Stop it.”

“Most importantly… you get hard for me even with a broken ankle.”

She smiled mischievously while gently rubbing her fiancé’s c*ck that couldn’t even fit in one hand. Actius grabbed Sion’s wrist in a hurry and growled:

“Don’t. Don’t touch me.”

“Just admit it already. You and I are perfect for each other. Why do you keep denying it?”

“……”

“I want you. You want me too. So why do you keep saying no?”

Sion whispered softly while planting kisses on Actius’s tightly closed lips. With each brush of her lips, she could feel his cool lips twitching and parting slightly.

And what about his c*ck standing so stiff in this state? Far from shrinking, it was getting more taut and hard as time passed – clearly showing that Actius wanted her too.

“Today I must get your surrender.”

“…Damn woman. You even involved the goddess?”

“You didn’t know? She’s been quite fond of me since I was young.”

Smiling mischievously as she whispered, Sion took Actius’s hand and brought it to her br*ast. His stiff touch froze without even properly grasping her round br*ast. Sion overlapped her hand on top of his and began kneading her br*ast herself.

“Ah… Acti….”

Moaning softly, she slipped her hand between her skirts. She moved her hand while keeping her gaze fixed on Actius. Actius too couldn’t take his eyes off Sion. When wet sounds started coming from between her slightly trembling legs, Actius couldn’t hold back anymore and pulled Sion’s neck in for a kiss.

Their aggressive tongues moved freely against each other. Even while stabbing, licking, and biting, Sion didn’t stop moving her hand and moaning. Finally, when her abundant love juices were flowing down her thighs, their lips parted briefly.

“Crazy woman…. Being with you makes me feel like I’m going crazy too. That’s why I hate it, it’s strange.”

“You think you’re normal for getting hard like this? Really?”

“That’s why I said I hate it. I’m confused enough already but you make me feel like I’m going insane. Becoming a madman because of a woman, it’s really not what I wanted.”

At Actius’s words, Sion felt chills run down her spine. Her gr*in grew intensely hot with an unexpected thrill.

An enormous excitement she had never felt in her life overwhelmed Sion. Unable to hold back, she grabbed Actius’s face and rubbed her lips against his frantically while speaking:

“That’s the best confession ever.”

“…Is something wrong with your head? How is this a confession?”

“Why? It’s totally sweet….”

Giggling, Sion pulled out the spear stuck in Actius’s ankle with one hand. She blocked his lips that were about to cry out in pain with her own lips, then straddled Actius’s body while frantically throwing off her clothes.

“Let’s have a baby, Acti.”

“W-wait, Sion…. Wait! This is Goddess Demeter’s…!”

Sion pulled out his fully *rect member from between Actius’s frantically moving clothes and aligned it with her wet entrance. When the head met that slippery place, Actius’s struggling movements stopped.

“Mmm…. We….”

When he met Sion’s eyes with a bright red face, not knowing what to do.

“We’re going to have lots of babies….”

Sion flashed a smile and slammed her hips down in one go.

***

Sion and Actius only left the garden the next day. Demeter, who had been taking a nap, smiled seeing the two emerge in complete disarray.

“Someone seems to have achieved quite a wicked victory.”

At the goddess’s words, Sion smiled brightly while Actius held his forehead with a resigned face. The goddess pretended not to see Actius’s expression and handed him the flower pot she had prepared.

“As it happens, I have one in full bloom. Take it, Actius. You earned it through quite a struggle.”

“Surely this wasn’t planned from the start, Lady Demeter?”

“Of course not. I just gratefully accepted Sion’s offer to help.”

The goddess spoke as if she knew nothing, and Actius didn’t press further. As he accepted the goddess’s flower pot with words of thanks, Demeter held out one more small red fruit to Actius.

“Take this too, Actius.”

“What is this?”

“An invitation. Please deliver it to your master.”

Demeter’s gaze reached the blue sky beyond the temple. Beyond the world of eternal abundant autumn, the true face of the seasons was revealed.

The season when harsh winter ends and fresh green sprouts emerge.

“The spring banquet will be held soon.”

It was time for Demeter’s daughter, Persephone, to return.