NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 365
Side Story: Divine Union – 6
“……Ha.”
As soon as I opened my eyes, I snorted internally at the familiar ceiling in front of me and got up. This was the room where Eclipse and I last mixed our bodies.
Right beside me, Eclipse was pretending to be asleep. Of course, as a goddess, she didn’t need sleep.
After mixing our bodies, we were just lying together, waking up under the morning sunlight.
‘What a crazy goddess.’
Seriously, for the first time since my physical abilities awakened, I felt a sense of lethargy. With this body, I had been fine even after bringing in twelve people at once and mixing our bodies for a whole week.
By the middle, not just Floretta and Luna, but even Minerva had begged me to stop, despite using methods to amplify pleasure with mana and divine power.
Making tongue-tied sounds, crying while desperately clinging to me, I thought she might get dehydrated from all the climaxing, but Eclipse never yielded or collapsed.
In fact, the longer we mixed our bodies, the more she seemed to grow.
At first, Eclipse lowered herself to a human-like existence and tempted me with vulgar words, but as time passed, it seemed she realized something and changed her methods.
She’d scoff at it, say it wasn’t that big of a deal, look like she could hold out longer than expected, provoke me with insults, and then just before crossing the line, stop and lower herself back down, submitting again.
I don’t know if it’s because she’s a goddess, but it was a truly genius-level talent. Clearly, she was aware that she was doing it on purpose, yet she crushed me multiple times.
‘How much time has passed?’
Out there, time became meaningless, but it was different in here. I wanted to know roughly how long we mixed our bodies. That way, I could at least estimate how often lethargy would come.
‘……I don’t know.’
But that was difficult too. If it had only been a few days, maybe I could tell, but once it had been this long, due to the property of Eclipse’s realm where day and night are always fixed, it became nearly impossible to perceive time.
What was certain was that a significant amount of time had passed. Even considering the minimum, it had to have been over ten days, and if I tried to guess as accurately as possible, it seemed like it could be two weeks.
Zzaaak!
“Hya?!”
Seeing the goddess who was pretending to sleep beside me, I got so annoyed that I slapped her butt. Here I was with a tangled mind, and she was so nonchalantly acting like that.
With a cheerful Zzaaak! sound, Eclipse let out a sweet yelp. Despite being slapped countless times, her bouncy, soft peach-colored skin remained intact, wobbling like pudding.
“Uhng…”
Having been spanked, Eclipse pretended to toss and turn in her sleep, subtly shifting her posture. Watching her, I couldn’t help but chuckle.
‘Who sleeps in a cat pose like that?’
It was exactly like the things the Popes would do. Floretta and Luna would often pretend to sleep and then subtly—or outright—try to tempt me.
Of course, they never did it as openly as Eclipse. I got even more annoyed and slapped her again. A bright red handprint remained on her butt. Eclipse trembled her raised buttocks.
I got out of bed. I knew that if I fell for her temptation now, it wouldn’t end in just one or two rounds. I didn’t want to get caught up and have my essence drained.
Realizing I had no intention of continuing, Eclipse’s enticing butt soon returned to its original position. Her body turned to face me as she lay on her side, her eyelids gently lifting.
“Umm… is that you?”
Eclipse, pretending to just wake up, yawned and rubbed her eyes while looking up at me. Should I call it great acting, or just shamelessness?
If I had seen that for the first time or had no idea what was going on, I would’ve been curious if a goddess actually sleeps. Eclipse’s act of ‘just waking up’ was that perfect.
“Yes, goddess.”
“Good morning.”
“Good morning. I don’t know how many times it’s been morning, though.”
“Are you not going to drop the formalities?”
Eclipse, who was holding my wrist while lying down, smiled brightly. Completely naked, her hair had come to rest perfectly over her cleavage, obscuring just the right amount of pink.
“The night hasn’t ended yet.”
“But there will be as many nights to come as you wish. You could keep treating me with contempt if you wanted.”
“To speak informally with you, goddess, I would need to call you by name. But if you’re okay with your name being called without reaching climax, I’ll gladly do it.”
“Ah, you caught me, didn’t you?”
Eclipse stuck out her tongue and smiled cutely. She was someone you couldn’t let your guard down around.
“Are you getting up now?”
“I guess I have to. There are people outside who have been left for too long.”
No matter how much I stopped time and made a bed of flowers, it was basically the same as leaving them outside. I felt a little sorry for having left them like that for so long.
“You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Pardon?”
Eclipse silently pointed to the window where warm sunlight was pouring in. I walked over and looked down outside.
There, a gigantic temple made of flowers and grass had grown. It looked just like the Sun Cathedral and the Moon Cathedral.
Except for the fact that the materials used to build it were flowers and grass instead of gold, silver, jewels, and marble, it matched almost perfectly with the cathedral in my memory. Even the tower soaring high into the sky was the same.
“Everyone must be sleeping comfortably inside. Oh, but from the outside’s perspective, not even 10 seconds must have passed, so saying they’re sleeping might sound a bit out of place, right?”
“……”
I was sure that by the time I entered the house, there was nothing like that. I had no idea when it was prepared. Could it be that the bed was made on the floor just to make me come in a little sooner?
Eclipse, sitting up, carefully covered her lower body with the slipped duvet. But she didn’t look the least bit embarrassed. She appeared to be flaunting her chest with her arms crossed.
The flirtatious smile was an added bonus.
“It’s no use. I won’t be doing it.”
“Hiiing.”
Eclipse made a pouty face.
How could she be so similar to the Popes? I felt like I understood why Floretta and Luna ended up like that.
“It’s a shame to fall asleep in a world created by the Sun…”
“I hope we didn’t offend the Moon…”
The frozen time was released as soon as we stepped outside the house. The flowers and grasses that had towered in the shape of spires returned to normal, and those who had been asleep were also waking up.
They said that time had stopped from the moment I entered the house, so it must have hardly been even 10 seconds since I fell asleep.
“……”
I stared intently at Floretta and Luna, who were stepping out cautiously with anxious and worried looks. Upon sensing my gaze, the Popes approached me one by one, tilting their heads.
“Why are you looking like that, Delta?”
“Do you have something to say?”
“……No, it’s nothing.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t just directly say that their actions of always trying to tempt me reminded me of someone. So I let the Popes pass as they tilted their heads.
As soon as Floretta and Luna stepped away, Minerva took their place. Her eyes curved mischievously, glinting with mischief.
“How was your ‘conversation’ with the goddess, child?”
“Well… it was enjoyable if you could call it that.”
From the way I emphasized the word ‘conversation,’ it was clear that Minerva was not referring to a typical conversation. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be wearing that suspicious grin.
“How long did you stay inside? Here, it was… 1 or 2 minutes? Hmm, perhaps even shorter than that. It seems time hardly passed.”
Minerva was indeed Minerva. It seemed she had noticed the disconnect between the sense of time inside and outside.
“I’m not sure myself. It doesn’t change between day and night here, and there wasn’t a clock or calendar in there.”
“Then that means it lasted long enough for the child to lose track of time.”
I didn’t deny it. That was true. Seeing the way I hesitated to answer, the gleam in Minerva’s eyes only widened.
“Be sure to tell me what happened later, okay?”
With a bright smile, Minerva walked away. I had a feeling that there would be more than one person wanting to hear about my time with the goddess, so I called the awakened women together.
“What do you want to do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m asking if you want to stay here longer, or if you want to go down to the surface. No matter how long you stay, the goddess promised to take care of you, so you don’t need to worry.”
Upon my words, the women seemed to ponder for a moment but ultimately chose to return. I told them I wasn’t concerned, so I would follow the majority, but it was a bit surprising that none wanted to stay.
When I heard their reasons, they could be roughly divided into three categories.
Floretta and Luna, Stella and Selene were concerned about being a burden to the goddess, while the Knight Commanders, Nix, and Aurora felt uncomfortable remaining in the goddess’s realm.
However, Kaiquilia and Minerva were a bit different.
“It is indeed a beautiful place. I won’t deny that fact.”
“But it’s just beautiful; it doesn’t offer much else, does it? I don’t enjoy just staring at the scenery.”
That was a reason I couldn’t refute. The eternal division of day and night, and the flowers and meadows were beautiful at first glance, but that’s about all there was to it. Once you got used to it, it was just another natural landscape.
If I asked Eclipse, she could probably recreate my apartment in its entirety, but just a few minutes ago, I had been trembling in awe of her divine power. It would feel a bit awkward to make such a request.
Moreover, even if she recreated my apartment and I stayed there, I could just go back to my real room instead.
“My realm doesn’t have much to see.”
Eclipse seemed to agree with Kaiquilia and Minerva’s viewpoints. She said that there would be little to do but to walk or watch fish if we stayed here.
Everyone around me was looking tense seeing Eclipse right beside me, but unlike before, there was no instinctive kneeling this time. Last time, she had actively exerted her divine essence, which led to that outcome.
“So I’ve ended up staying with Delta, so I hope to get along well from now on.”
Eclipse winked at me with a smile.
Twelve pairs of eyes turned towards me in unison. It seemed that even Minerva was considerably taken aback by the fact that Eclipse would be living with me, as her alabaster-colored pupils widened in surprise.
“Delta……?”
Someone muttered like that.