The world was mud and the coppery tang of his own blood.
Rognar's vision swam, blurring the trampled grass and the blood-soaked earth of the battlefield into a grim watercolor.
The orc's cleaver had carved a canyon of flesh from his ribs, a wound that wept life into the cold ground with every shallow, ragged breath.
He had fought with the ferocity of their barbarian ancestors, his muscular frame a testament to a life of brutal hardship, but ferocity wasn't enough.
Strength wasn't enough.
He could still hear the guttural laughter of the chieftain who had struck him down. He could still see the contempt in the eyes of his tribe's strongest warrior, Gorn, who had glanced at his fallen form and sneered, "The weak cull themselves."
Gorn, with his braided black hair and scars that told tales of victory, had simply stepped over him to claim a felled orc's axe.
Defeat was a bitter ash in Rognar's mouth. He lay half-submerged in a ditch, the icy water a merciless thief of his remaining warmth.
His thick, yellow hair, usually a mane of wild pride, was matted with gore. His beard, caked in mud, did little to warm a face pale with exsanguination.
He was dying. He knew it with the primal certainty of a beast caught in a hunter's trap.
It was in this forsaken moment that a sound cut through the haze of his pain—a soft whimper.
A girl, no older than eighteen winters, was huddled nearby. Lyra.
A thrall, captured from some nameless southern village; her existence in the tribe was one of servitude and fear.
Her tunic was torn, her face smudged with dirt and tears, but her eyes, wide and terrified, were fixed on him.
She, too, had been left for dead.
A flicker of something primal, something deeper than the will to live, stirred in Rognar's gut. It was the instinct of a species that clawed its way to dominance not just through strength, but through a furious, indomitable need to persist.
To leave a mark. To not vanish into the uncaring earth without a final, defiant act.
He dragged himself toward her, a Herculean effort that sent white-hot agony screaming through his nerves.
Every inch was a war against oblivion. He reached her, his bloodied hand covering hers. She flinched, expecting a blow, but saw only the fading embers of life in his eyes.
"They left us," he rasped, his voice a gravelly ruin.
She nodded, a single tear tracing a clean path through the grime on her cheek. In the shared space of their impending deaths, the rigid hierarchy of barbarian and thrall dissolved.
They were just two souls shivering on the precipice of nothingness.
He saw the resignation in her eyes, the acceptance of her fate. He refused it. His entire life had been a struggle against the scorn of the strong.
He would not die pitied by a slave. He would not die forgotten in a ditch.
His grip on her hand tightened, not with menace, but with a desperate, unspoken plea. He pulled her closer. It was not a gesture of love, nor of simple lust.
It was a raw, biological imperative—a final roar against the encroaching darkness.
A demand to feel something other than pain, to affirm his existence in the most fundamental way possible before it was extinguished forever.
She understood. In the ruins of their world, with the crows already circling, she met his desperation with her own.
Their lips touched, tongues interlocked and hands exchanged comfort.
"Mmphh.." she cried out when they finally joined.
His mouth accepted her cry, mixing it with his own primal roar. It was a clumsy, frantic collision of two dying people, a desperate search for warmth in a world gone cold.
It was ugly and beautiful, a sacrament performed in mud and blood.
And in that final, shuddering moment of release, as his consciousness began to fray, something impossible happened.
A sound, cleaner than any birdsong, sharper than any blade, chimed in the core of his being. A cold, blue light flooded his mind's eye, pushing back the encroaching darkness.
[Lust System Initializing... Requirements Met: Life-Threatening Danger + Procreative Act]
[Genetic markers analyzed. Latent desires quantified. Compatibility confirmed.]
[Welcome, Host.]
The voice was not a voice. It was pure, distilled information pouring directly into his soul. Rognar's dying brain struggled to comprehend the glowing text that now superimposed itself over his fading vision.
[Host Status: Stabilised]
[Vitals: Normal]
[Love Points (LP) Acquired: +10]
His eyes snapped open. The pain was still a raging fire in his side, but the fog was lifting. The blue screen remained, an impossible artifact hovering in his perception.
He could see Lyra's startled face, her eyes wide with utter shock. He had collapsed atop her, but his breathing, while still labored, had steadied.
"Aaahh.." she yelped as he restarted moving.
'Pluck.' 'Paa..'
The sound of their joining was weirdly comforting in the open space of the battle-ridden ground.
Love Points? System? The concepts were alien, yet the interface felt strangely intuitive. He focused his will on the floating text, and it responded.
[System Menu] > Status > Shop > Skills > Talents
With a surge of frantic curiosity, he focused on Skills.
[Skills Menu]
[Starter Package Unlocked]
[Select one (1) F-Rank Skill]
> Seduction Glance (F): Gaze into a target's eyes to momentarily stir feelings of attraction. Cost: 1 Stamina.
>Basic Rage (F): Convert a sliver of health into a temporary boost in strength. Cost: 5% Max HP.
His gaze flickered between the two options. Basic Rage was the barbarian's way. Gorn and the others were strong because they embraced their fury, trading life for power.
It was the path that had led him to bleed out in a ditch.
He looked at Seduction Glance. It was an absurd, contemptible skill for a warrior. A trick for bards and perfumed nobles in the southern cities.
Yet… he had just earned "Love Points" from an act of intimacy. His path to this power, it seemed, was not paved with blood, but with something else entirely.
With a grunt, he selected Seduction Glance.
[Skill Acquired: Seduction Glance (F)]
[System functions now fully unlocked. Good luck, Host.]
The screen faded, though he knew it was still there, waiting in the back of his mind. He pushed himself off Lyra, his muscles screaming in protest.
He sat against the cold mud wall of the ditch, his mind racing faster than it ever had. This was a tool. A weapon.
And he was a warrior who had just been handed a new, impossibly sharp axe.
He needed to test it.
He turned to Lyra, who was watching him with a mixture of fear and awe. Lyra is slight of build, with the lean, wiry frame of someone who has known more hunger than feasts.
Her southern origins are marked by a cascade of tangled, raven-black hair that falls around a heart-shaped face, its dark strands currently streaked with mud.
Her skin, though pale with fear and cold, holds a warm olive undertone, a stark contrast to the fair-skinned barbarians of the north.
Her features are delicate, with high cheekbones and a small nose that are nearly lost beneath the grime and her current expression of terror.
Her most defining feature, however, is her eyes. They are large and the color of dark, rich earth.
Set wide in her face, they are expressive pools that currently reflect the horror of her situation, giving her the look of a startled fawn cornered by wolves. She is a picture of fragile beauty obscured by hardship and fear.
The cock of the barbarian suddenly throbbed.
"How about we finish the things we started?"