Earth's SSS Pornstar to SSS Combat God in Another World-Chapter 38: Enlightening a Lady’s Troubled Heart

The Lady of the Swamp clapped her hands and an assistant capybara folk appeared as if he had been waiting behind the wall.

With a cheerful bow, he led Alaric, Walter, Lilina, Kobto, and Kobluk away for tea in a side room that smelled of warm herbs and wet reeds.

Joji did not get that mercy.

The Lady looped her arm through his again and guided him to a table that looked too rich for a swamp, lacquered wood, cushioned seats, plates set with sweets that shone with sugar glaze.

Steam rose from a teapot shaped like a lotus bud. Joji sat. He did not relax.

People like her did not open doors for charity. They wanted something.

If you were lucky, it was simple. If you were unlucky, it was all you have.

Joji waited. He watched her hands as she poured tea. Her fingers were steady. Her eyes were not.

"I want to get out of the curse," she said at last. "I know you are at a level where you can give pleasure to any woman. Am I right?"

Joji did not answer right away. He emptied his mind on instinct, the way he had learned to do when someone might be reading the surface of his thoughts.

He sipped the tea instead. It tasted of mint and something faintly bitter underneath.

Joji let the silence brew and simmer, watching the Lady’s confidence cycle across her face.

First superiority, then a brittle strength, then something that looked like regret, then helplessness that she tried to strangle before it could show.

Joji had seen that look before, on people who had power but not control.

"So you want true pleasure with a man," Joji said. His voice stayed even. "Do you even know what pleasure is?"

"Of course I know," she snapped, then hesitated as if the word itself had teeth. "It is feeling good."

"You are not wrong," Joji said. "Tell me what gives you pleasure. Not what you think should. What actually does?"

She blinked, caught off guard by the question.

"Making new concoctions," she said. "That is what I do all day. That is at the top."

She even raised her hand as if ranking it above everything else.

Joji nodded slowly. He understood that kind of person.

He had known one back on Earth, a mind so swallowed by work that love became a visit, a release, a brief warmth, then a door closing with no explanation.

They did not mean to be cruel. They just lived inside their obsession and expected everyone else to breathe there too.

The Lady watched him, waiting for the crude offer, waiting for the obvious solution.

"So," she said, impatient now. "What do you think?"

Joji turned the teacup in his fingers. The porcelain was warm.

"I think you want this settled right away," he said. "I also think rushing is how you end up a tree."

Her mouth tightened.

He leaned forward a little. Not close enough to invite, close enough to make the words feel unavoidable.

"Sex might be part of it," Joji said. "But what if the curse has conditions after? What if forcing it makes it false? If you chase the act instead of the pleasure, you could still fail. Is that possible?"

The Lady’s eyes shifted. She had not liked thinking about it. That alone told Joji it was important.

"And what counts as success?" Joji pressed. "Is it once? Is it a hundred times? Is it a thousand? What if your master meant that finding true pleasure in a man meant building something, a bond, a life? Did you ever consider that?"

Silence fell so hard it felt like the room had thickened.

The Lady’s teacup trembled in her hand. Then it shattered.

The sound was small and sharp. Tea spilled over her fingers and she did not react to the heat.

Joji watched her face collapse into exhaustion.

She swallowed. Once. Twice. Her eyes shone, and when the first tear fell, she looked furious at it, as if her own body was betraying her.

"I searched for her," she whispered. "Half a century. The world is too large."

Joji stood and stepped around the table.

He did not offer a solution made of skin and breath. He did not promise anything he could not pay for.

He simply wrapped his arms around her and held her while she cried.

Her perfume mixed with salt and tea. The mansion stayed quiet, as if even the walls understood.

When her breathing finally slowed, she pulled back, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

She stood, and Joji’s eyes flicked without meaning to, not to her chest, to her outline.

Something had changed. Her hips looked a touch less exaggerated.

The weight of her body seemed to sit differently, as if a belt had been loosened.

"I think," she said, voice unsteady. "I think something changed."

She did not wait for him to answer. She ran to a balance scale in the corner, one of those old merchant scales with stone weights on the other side.

She stepped on. The scale tipped.

"Check," she demanded, a tremor of hope in the word. "Am I lighter?"

Joji approached, eyes on the balance. It leaned toward the stones. He began removing weights, careful, patient, until the beam leveled.

One stone. Two. Ten. Twenty.

They were small stones, fingernail sized, but the count made the Lady’s mouth fall open.

"Oh," she breathed. Then louder, desperate with relief. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."

She grabbed him and hugged him hard enough that his face sank against her exaggeratedly large chest.

"I understand now," she said, and her voice shook with the kind of certainty that frightened more than it soothed.

"I need to be around you. But..."

Her gaze darted to the room, to the mansion, to her things, to the life she had built around her curse like a fortress.

Joji raised both hands, calming.

"There is no rush," he said. "Decide what you will do with your place. I have a mission to finish. I will come back when I can."

Her lips pursed. She did not like the delay. She liked the promise in her bones even less, because it meant waiting.

"Don’t worry," Joji said. "A knight does not go back on his words."

He said it like assurance. He knew it was also a trap. Still, Joji was making a deal with a witch, and the reason was simple.

It was a safety net.

’Sugar mommy? So what,’ he thought.

On Earth, missiles boomed and made the sky honest. Guns needed a hand, a line of sight, a finger to pull the trigger.

Here, magic could slide into you without a sound. No smoke. No report. No warning.

One moment you were breathing, the next you were dead, and you would never know what hand had done it.

If he could buy a sliver of protection with pride and a promise, he would pay that price and keep walking.

Before he could stand fully, she lifted a finger.

"Before you go," she said. "A gift, friend."

She rummaged through a cabinet and returned with three jars.

Each held a different specimen suspended in clear fluid that caught torchlight and bent it.

She pointed at the first.

"A gorgon’s eye. It can be used for a staff. I feel you have talent with mana."

Her finger moved to the second.

"The stomach of a mineral armadillo. For artifacts. With an artificer, it can become evolving armor. Good for knights."

Then the third. A dull silver ingot that seemed to drink light rather than reflect it.

"Mithril. For magic swords. For aura blades." 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Joji’s mind cataloged value and risk. The gorgon’s eye was a trump card, but the moment anyone saw such a niche power at work, it would draw attention like blood in water.

Mithril was rare, but he was still uncertain what weapon he meant to commit to.

The stomach was practical, quiet, and useful now. With Sir Engine, he could eat it, and he knew there would be skills to be gained.

"I could give all of this do you now but... I don’t want to invest blindly," the Lady said. "I don’t know you yet."

Joji nodded and chose without drama.

"The stomach," he said.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

He reached for the jar. Her hand clamped around his forearm.

Pain flared, hot and sudden, like a brand pressed to flesh. Joji’s breath hissed out through his teeth.

He did not yank away. He forced his face to stay calm.

The Lady released him and a mark remained on his skin, a dark, elegant imprint of her hand.

"Assurance," she said. "If you run, I find you. Anywhere. We can also talk through it."

"Don’t worry. I will not make your life hard. I will only call you now and then."

Joji flexed his fingers, feeling the sting fade into a dull throb.

"It is over," he murmured. "Truly over."

Joji looked at the mark and thought of Daisy’s face hearing another woman’s voice slip out of his hand at the wrong time.

’Being skinned alive might not even make the list,’ he thought.

Instead of wavering, Joji exhaled and moved to his next agenda.

"I heard you deal in beasts," he said. "Do you have a mount that would suit me?"