Chapter 322: Chapter 322 – Kidnapping Done

“Urgh…”

The cold floor pressed against his cheek. Pain throbbed through his neck like someone had driven a spike straight through it.

Aerlic’s eyes fluttered open, blonde hair falling across his vision as he pushed himself up slowly. His hand instinctively went to the back of his neck, rubbing the tender spot. What the hell hit me?

The hallway stretched empty in both directions. Sterile white walls, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. His uniform felt rumpled, twisted from however long he’d been lying there.

“Where… where am I?” The words came out rough, confused.

His thoughts sharpened immediately. ’Yuna.’

She was being dragged to the director’s office. That’s why he’d followed. That’s why he’d—

The memory cut off there. Just pain, then nothing.

“Where is Yuna?”

The question barely left his lips when the air shifted.

Black butterflies.

Hundreds of them, thousands maybe, erupted from nowhere. They swarmed through the hallway like a living shadow, wings beating in perfect silence. Aerlic’s eyes went wide as they passed ’through’ him—cold, suffocating, like drowning in darkness itself.

A woman’s voice drifted through the swarm, casual, almost bored.

“Honey was targeting you, so let’s bring you too.”

Wait—’what?’

“What—” Aerlic spun toward the voice, but the butterflies were already converging.

His body seized. Not from fear, but from something pulling at him, sucking him backward like a vacuum had opened in reality itself. His fingers clawed at empty air as one massive black butterfly materialized behind him, its wings spread wide enough to swallow a person whole.

“No—wait—!”

The butterfly’s wings folded inward.

Darkness consumed him.

Inside was worse than anything he could’ve imagined.

Aerlic slammed against an invisible barrier, his fists pounding uselessly against nothing. The world outside remained visible—the hallway, the lights, the woman’s silhouette among the swarm—but muted, like watching through thick glass. He could see everything. Hear the faint buzz of wings, the click of heels on tile.

But when he opened his mouth to scream, no sound came out.

His breath caught in his throat. He tried again. Nothing.

’Trapped.’

The realization hit like ice water. This wasn’t just imprisonment. This was erasure. Stuck in this void-space, able to witness but never speak, never escape. A dimension folded inside a single butterfly’s cell.

Outside, the woman’s voice shifted. The casual tone vanished, replaced by something sharp and predatory.

“Now that snake one and blonde is here, where is that red cat?”

The swarm halted mid-flight.

Every butterfly froze in place, forming a perfect circle around the woman’s position.

’!’

“Sn-snake—!?” Aerlic pressed against his invisible prison, watching as the butterflies began to pulse with dark energy, searching.

’A red c-cat… She’s going after Yuna—!?’

His fists hammered against the barrier harder, desperately.

’Open it now, damn it—!!’

Suddenly, a swarm of butterflies flapped energetically towards the women’s dormitory, while his voice, which could not escape that void, mingled with the thousands of butterflies, vanishing without any identity. Only Xiang was aware of his presence hidden among them.

—-

Unaware of the heading swarm of the butterflies towards her direction within the women dormitory’s room belonging to Yuna.

And there on the bed, with clearly shocked expression, Yuna blinked while looking with her eyes widened at the professor who had finally woken up.

Her body was still completely heated due to the marathon she went through while flustered seeing him but his words seemed to be changing her mood from arousal to embarrassment.

“But it seems… I was really being childish…”

“Wait—!”

In a blink, he was gone.

Not faded, not teleported. One moment he was a semi-solid form of smiling regret, the next, there was nothing but an indentation on her bed and the lingering, intoxicating scent that clung to the sheets like a ghost.

“Professor?” Yuna whispered, her voice cracking.

She reached out, her hand passing through the empty air where his chest had been just seconds before.

Her fingers came away slick with her own fluids and his sweat, a tangible proof that he ’had’ been there. It hadn’t been a dream.

His final words echoed in the sudden, crushing silence. ’”…it seems… I was really being childish…”’

Childish?

The word struck her like a slap. He had seen her. Seen her lose control, seen her grind against him like a common animal in heat. He had watched her pathetic, childish display and had simply… left. He vanished because he was disgusted.

The last dregs of her lust-fueled heat evaporated in an instant, replaced by a cold, gut-wrenching shame. Tears welled in her eyes, blurring the sight of the damp, rumpled sheets. It was her fault. All of it. She had driven him away with her shamelessness.

A frantic energy seized her. She couldn’t accept this. She had to find him, to explain, to apologize. To beg him to come back.

Scrambling off the bed, her legs still trembling, she ignored the cold stickiness of her suit and the mess she’d made. Guilt was a fire in her throat. She threw open her door and bolted into the hallway, her bare feet slapping against the cool stone floor.

She ran, a choked sob building in her chest, and then she skidded to a dead halt.

Standing at the end of the hall, bathed in the dim ambient light, was a woman. She wore a crisp white shirt tucked into a form-fitting pencil skirt, her posture ramrod straight. A pair of severe glasses rested on her nose, but even from this distance, Yuna could see her eyes.

They were a piercing, impossible shade of violet.

“Professor Xiang!” Yuna breathed, her eyes widening in recognition.

Professor Xiang’s gaze swept over Yuna’s disheveled form—the matted hair, the tear-streaked face, the suit still visibly damp and clinging to her body. A sharp, almost clinical look passed over Xiang’s face before she gave a slight, dismissive shake of her head.

Then, she began to walk forward.

With each step she took, her professional attire seemed to melt away. The white shirt and skirt flowed and darkened, the fabric shimmering like oil on water until it settled into a flowing black robe, sprinkled with glittering motes of purple that swirled like a miniature galaxy. Her black hair, previously tied back, fell loose around her shoulders. As she ran a hand through it, the movement revealed a glimpse of an intricate butterfly tattoo on the nape of her neck.

As if summoned by the gesture, dozens of ethereal, purple-dusted butterflies materialized from thin air, beginning to flutter lazily around her.

Xiang stopped a few feet from the stunned cat-girl, her violet eyes glinting. “If I do something to you,” she said, her voice a low, melodic hum, “he will think I lost to you.”

Yuna just stared, her mind unable to process the transformation or the cryptic words. “What?”

Xiang’s eyes flickered down to Yuna’s crotch, a faint, knowing smirk touching her lips. “But given your state… how you are smelling so strongly of him… he must have already tasted how your body is.”

Shock, confusion, and a hot flush of embarrassment warred on Yuna’s face. She didn’t understand what this woman was talking about. Tasted her? Professor Tianlong had been unconscious!

Xiang’s smirk widened. She raised a hand, her long fingers elegant and cruel. “Now,” she said, snapping her fingers with a sharp ’crack’, “let me give you a small show as to how he will always choose me over any other woman. Including you.”

Before Yuna could even react, one of the fluttering butterflies broke from the swarm and shot directly at her. It slammed into her chest with impossible force.

Her eyes widened in terror as a horrific sucking sensation pulled at her very being.

“What is happening!?” she screamed, her voice distorting as her body was compressed, twisted, and drawn into an impossibly small point of darkness.

The world collapsed into a suffocating black void.

Her last sensation was of her entire existence being squeezed into the tiny, fluttering form of that butterfly. It came to a gentle rest on Professor Xiang’s outstretched finger.

Trapped within, Yuna could only watch in horror as Xiang’s face loomed impossibly close, a triumphant, predatory smile on her lips.

“Let me give you a proper show,” Xiang whispered, her voice echoing through the void Yuna was now trapped in. “A show of how a ’real’ woman makes love to her man.”

And then, the world—and all of reality with it—vanished into blackness.

The transition was not a journey, but a reconstitution of reality. The suffocating blackness of the butterfly’s void didn’t open up; it bled away, dissolving into color and sound.

First came the red. A deep, decadent velvet that coated the walls and hung in heavy curtains, swallowing the light and sound.

Then, voices—low, tense, and urgent.

Xiang stood in the center of the opulent room, the last of her butterflies dissolving back into motes of purple energy that faded into the air.

A low, simmering heat coiled in her belly. She had just asserted her dominance, trapping the little cat-girl, loud-mouthed blonde boy and that snake professor within her power.

She was here to fuck her man.

But the scene before her was not one of passion.

Tianlong stood near an opening, his back partially to her.

His usual relaxed posture was gone, replaced by a rigid tension that pulled his shoulders tight. Facing him was a woman with long, silvery-white hair and a pair of sharp, twitching fox ears perched atop her head.

’Vixen came here before me?’

“…the idea of getting more in can be a bad choice husband,” Akane was saying, her amber eyes wide with urgency. “In the end, what if—”

“Akane, It’s urgent,” Tianlong replied, his voice flat and hard. “Everyone else is preapred, I just asked you because, I dont want you to burden our child.”

’What’s with him?’ She had expected him to be waiting, perhaps even anticipating her arrival after he’d fucked this cat women, wanting him to compare both of their holes and tell how she was best but…

The simmering heat in her belly turned to ice. All her arousal vanished in an instant as she took in his expression.

This wasn’t the playful, predatory look he gave her when they sparred, nor the teasing smirk he used on lesser women. This was cold. A chilling, detached focus that saw nothing but the mission.

He must have felt her presence.

Without turning his head, his gaze flicked to the side, then he slowly rotated to face her. His eyes, dark and fathomless, met hers. They held no warmth, no passion, no recognition of the mood she had been in moments before. They were the eyes of a commander assessing his assets.

“Let’s move out, Xiang,” he said, his voice a low command that cut through the tense air. “To the inner circles.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep