In the darkness, an enormous serpent was closing in.
The giant snake crawled across the ground with a slithering sound, its crimson eyes reflecting Rest's face clearly.
'Hss... hss...' The distinctive sound of its breathing. A long tongue flicking in and out.
He was being targeted. Completely locked on.
A fierce sense of danger washed over him, but... he was too slow to fully react.
'Ugh...!' Before he could escape, the giant serpent coiled around him.
Its supple limbs squeezed his arms and legs, its massive body constricting his torso until he couldn't move a single inch.
It was like being grappled by a professional wrestler or judoka.
'Gu... aah... can't... breathe...!' The serpent's soft, doughy body was pressed against his face, making it impossible even to draw breath.
The unexpectedly smooth texture—were those scales?
He had heard that snakes were cold-blooded creatures, yet a surprisingly high body temperature radiated from it.
'A... ghh...' Perhaps from the oxygen deprivation to his brain, a strange sense of euphoria was beginning to rise amid the pain.
A sensory thrill balanced on a razor's edge between life and death.
The sensation of his entire body being wrung tight was generating pleasure, and in exchange, his ability to think was slipping away.
'Ah...' A burst of light shattered the darkness.
Was this white light a welcome from beyond...? Rest's hollow consciousness was swallowed whole by the radiance pouring down upon him.
○ ○ ○ "Nn...?"
When he opened his eyes, Rest found himself lying in a bed at an inn.
An unfamiliar ceiling stretched above his gaze. Light streamed through the window, and he realized sometime had passed — it was morning.
"Where... exactly am I...?"
Rest groaned, his voice strained.
It took him an agonizing while to piece together his situation.
Why was he in a place like this? What had that giant serpent been?
It took well over a full minute before Rest recalled that he was not at House Rosemary's estate, nor at the frontier development corps' base, but in an inn on the eastern side of the plains.
He had come here on a request from Urla of House Lavender, the margrave's family, to subjugate a monster known as a worm.
"Right... I was..."
"Snore, snore..."
"Gah...!"
And then... he also recalled the unprecedented crisis he was currently in.
Rest was lying in bed, but he was not alone.
In the single-person bed, besides Rest, there was one other person sleeping.
"Y-Yuri...!"
"Mmph mmph..."
It was Yuri Cattleya.
She was Rest's classmate and friend, as well as a party member who had joined him in the frontier development.
There was nothing strange about Yuri being in the same room.
That was because they had been staying in the same room.
However... this was a twin room. Yuri was supposed to be sleeping in a separate bed beside him, and sharing a bed together should not have been permitted.
"Hey, wake up... Hey!"
"Zzzzz..."
"Gwroooooo...!"
Yuri had been clinging to Rest while she slept.
Her powerful limbs pressed down on Rest's entire body, making it impossible for him to even sit up.
The great serpent he had seen in his dream turned out to be none other than Yuri.
On top of that, her clothes had come loose, leaving her in practically just her underwear. Even those were halfway off, and her full, ripe breasts were pressed right against Rest's face.
For a man, it was quite the wonderful situation... but at the same time, he felt his very life was in danger.
Being squeezed by Yuri's monstrous strength was no different from being coiled up by an anaconda.
"Ugu... ggh... wake... ughhhh!"
"Mnyamnyaa..."
He wanted to shout, but the pressure on his lungs made even producing a sound a tremendous struggle.
Yet, in stark contrast, Yuri had a blissful expression as she slept soundly.
(No... isn't this seriously dangerous...?)
Being under the same blanket as a woman who wasn't even his fiancée was dangerous enough on its own, and physically, he was in genuine peril.
What kind of cosmic misfortune could have possibly landed him in a situation like this?
"Mmm, mmm... I can't eat anymore..."
"Th-that's such a cliché sleep-talking line... OOOOOOOOH...!"
In the end, it was a full thirty minutes before Rest was finally able to escape from the bed.
Even with body reinforcement magic pushed to its absolute limit, all he could do was barely endure the crushing weight—he had no strength left to crawl free on his own.
Until Yuri finally woke up, Rest was left to savor every last bit of her warmth, her softness, and her sturdy build.
—————————— I'm also posting other works on this platform.
If you're interested, please give them a try!
I'm Just a Mob Priest, but I Realized This World Is an Otome Game, So I'm Going to Raise the Heroine.
I Kept Fighting Exactly the Way My Little Sister Told Me to, and Somehow I Became King. The Princess I Forced Into Marriage Is Giving Me Death Glares, Though—What Do I Do?
I Was Summoned to Another World and Abandoned, and Nobody Knows That I'm Actually a Dark God... Probably.