“What are you?” the wolfman growls, his eyes narrowing as he glares down at me suspiciously. He sniffs the air between us a few more times, only resulting in even further furrowing of his furry brow.

What am I, huh? I think over his words carefully. I’m definitely a lot of things, but I’m not sure which one of those things he wants to hear.

The room starts to feel strangely hot as the seconds tick by in silence—a heat that seems to radiate from the Warden himself. Unable to bear it any longer, the guard at the Warden’s side quietly removes their helmet. Placing it underneath their arm, they take a frilly green handkerchief from their belt and wipe the sweat from their forehead, pushing a beautiful lock of golden yellow hair back behind a blushing pointed ear as they do.

Fwa—?!

I can’t believe I didn’t notice until now... I had assumed this place was nothing but a den of gross, sweaty dudes. But from the scum and filth, a single golden rose blooms beautifully amongst it all—a girl. A cute girl. A cute elf girl.

What am I? What am I, you ask?

I inhale deeply through gritted teeth and clench my fists.

“Pepper Black is a woman who will kiss one thousand girls! On the mouth!” I answer proudly, my words slicing through the heavy silence as they bounce off of the stone walls, echoing across the room—and then I flex.

The metal shackles around my wrists instantly shatter, exploding off my body in pieces at the sheer force of my tightened muscles.

Locking eyes with the cute elf, I open my mouth to confess my love, and then— I blink. When I open my eyes, she isn’t there anymore.

“... Fweh?”

It was just a blink, but all of a sudden she’s gone. In fact, everything is gone. The guards are gone, the Warden is gone, and all the other prisoners are gone too. The only thing left in front of me is the view of the stone wall on the other side of the room.

Hm? Am I.. lying down? Wait, that’s not a wall, that’s...

I sit up, peeling myself from an indent in the floor. I feel a warm liquid running down the back of my head and shirt. Something wet drips from my nose and off of my upper lip. Licking it instantly confirms what it is. Blood. Demon blood. My demon blood. Looking up, I spot the Warden step through a crumbling hole in the wall. A very Pepper-shaped hole in the wall.

“Hmph. Broken.” he huffs, nursing an oddly bent finger on his left hand. “Definitely not human.”

“Fweheh... So it’s like that, huh?” I chuckle under my breath, quickly jumping to my feet and facing the approaching wolfman head-on.

It wasn’t everything else that was gone. It was me. I was gone. In a single blink, the Warden had thrown a punch, striking my face and slamming me through the wall. It wasn’t the back wall I suddenly had such a great view of before. It was the ceiling of a different room entirely. There are books and papers strewn across the floor from where my body had burst through into the new room, split a desk in half, and knocked over a bookshelf. An office of some kind, I guess. Perfect.

Hooking my toes underneath the toppled bookshelf, I kick it up at the Warden before he can get any closer. It explodes in a shower of wood and paper as he effortlessly swipes it aside with a huge claw. Using the debris as cover, I slip around the side of the wolfman to end up directly behind him.

It's too late for him now. I've already won.

“Fwahaha! Pepper Black is— Fweh!”

My gloating is interrupted by a swift backhand tearing above my head as I deftly duck beneath it. Tumbling backwards, I quickly leap back through the hole in the wall. The guards—still caught in stunned silence—all glare at me anxiously with half-raised weapons as I emerge from the wall and casually slip back into my original place in line with the other prisoners.

Not having moved a single step in the few short seconds since I was punched, the cute elf is still where I left her, frozen in shock. She stares back at me with wide eyes, still clutching the frilly handkerchief between her beautiful fingers. Her helmet had clattered to the floor at some point and was now rolling around by her feet.

Gently clasping my hands around hers, I pull them close to my chest and look deep into her enchanting emerald eyes.

“After you’re finished wiping the sweat off your face with that handkerchief...” I tell her in my smoothest voice. “... I wouldn’t mind using your downstairs handkerchief to wipe the sweat off of mine.”

"...”

Hearing the Warden climb back through the hole in the wall, I turn my head behind me and shoot him a smug victory grin. It's too late. I win. I had already won the moment I slipped behind him.

Clearly intimidated by my dynamite-D-cup aura, the jealous Warden must’ve realized I was going to steal away that cute little elf following him around and punched me into a different room to keep me away from her. Too bad for him, Pepper Black is a woman who won't be kept from pursuing her dreams so easily. Slipping past the Warden was child's play!

The Warden returns my smug grin with a cold glare, a hint of uncertainty on his scowling face. It’s an expression that lies somewhere between wanting to punch me again, and not wanting to escalate the situation while things are still relatively calm and in control.

With my victory already decided, I turn back to the cute elf—looking back at me with visible disgust.

“That’s actually...” She pulls her hands away from mine and steps away from me. “... Really gross. I hate stuff like that.”

“... Fweh?”

N-no way... My victory was assured. It was already in my grasp, and yet...

“Downstairs handkerchief? Not only is it gross, it’s not very clever either. What does that even mean?"

... I fumbled it right at the most crucial point!

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I-I dunno..." I stutter back. "It just came to me in the moment...”

I stare down at my feet as I twiddle my fingers together awkwardly, avoiding her scornful glare. Eventually, she lets out a sigh, taking her handkerchief and gently wiping the blood from my nose.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “You’re bleeding quite a lot, you know? A punch like that would have killed most people, I think...”

“Fweh? Oh, this isn’t from being punched.” I gesture to my still-leaky nose. “I just get a bit excited around cute girls.”

It’s true. A punch like that isn’t enough to make me bleed. I make sure to train my nostril muscles every day after all. It had already started bleeding moments before the Warden’s fist even connected with my face.

“I-I see... How about your head? Is that bleeding? I mean, you did hit that wall pretty hard...” she asks, nodding to the crumbling hole behind me.

“Hmm...” I touch the warm liquid running down the back of my neck and bring my fingers up to my nose. “Smells like dirt?”

“Oh. That's... coffee? Somebody must have left it in the office.”

She sighs at me again and then turns back to the Warden, her face shifting from concern to an angry pout.

“What were you thinking?" she snaps at him. "You can’t treat the prisoners like that! They're still people!”

“People?” The Warden scoffs. "This one is just another animal. It tried to break free of its cage so I simply did what was necessary."

“How is this necessary?” she snaps back, gesturing to the mess behind him. “How long was she in those tight cuffs? You can’t blame her for wanting to take them off, can you? She didn’t try to hurt anybody either. She did sexually harass me, but... I don’t think violence was really necessary!”

I nod my head in vigorous agreement. As a lover of violence myself, I can’t exactly agree with her words, but I can agree with the cute, kissable mouth that those words are coming out of.

“You wouldn’t understand,” the Warden growls, tapping a claw to his furry snout. “This one smells like that one.” He points a claw up to the ceiling.

“This one, that one... They have names, you know! This woman’s name is Pepper! She tried to tell you before you hit her! Twice!” The elf crosses her arms. “And that one you keep talking about is Miss Valentine. I don’t think she deserves the kind of treatment you’ve been giving her either! Put to sleep and locked away by herself on the top floor like that... It’s inhumane.”

“Lus— Valentine is... You don’t understand,” he growls, absent-mindedly rubbing the scar that runs down from the top of his eye to the bottom of his jaw, before clicking his tongue.

“Tch. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Just take this one away. Floor ninety-nine," he huffs, and then moves down the line to the next prisoner.

The entire room nervously watching the argument between the two all breathe an audible sigh of relief as it reaches its conclusion and the situation resolves. As a couple of guards step forward to take me away, the elf gives me a soft smile.

“Do try to behave yourself from now on, okay?” she says sweetly, before turning back to her position next to the Warden as he addresses the next prisoner.

Cute!

Blood continues to gush out of my nose as the guards escort me away.

Fwah~! I want her. I want her to say more things to me in her sweet voice! I want to sniff her pretty golden hair! I want to lick the sweat off her cute, pointy ears! I want to kiss her on the mouth!

“... trespassing, forty-seven counts of assault, twenty-one counts of murder...”

The voice of the Warden judging the next-in-line trails off as the two guards escort me out of the room, down a hallway, and into another, much larger room. A much larger room. This room is massive.

Hundreds of people scurry about from one place to another, most of them in guard uniforms. Some are escorting prisoners like me. Some are wheeling about carts or trays. Some look like they're slacking off in their own corner, enjoying a much-needed break. Almost all of them are heavily armed or armoured. It's like a town plaza. I've never seen a town plaza before but I imagine it'd look like this. Except in this case, everybody in town is just some guard.

Acting as the centrepiece of this plaza, a giant mesh cage stretches up from the floor all the way up to the ceiling. Hundreds of people gather towards the base of the cage, with many of them stepping in or out from one of the multiple moving platforms inside.

“Fwahaha! What is that?!” I laugh, amazed by the sheer scale of the absurd contraption I was looking at.

“It’s an elevator.” a guard says, guiding us closer to the base of the giant cage. “A bunch of ‘em. Dwarves built it when they built the whole Spire, I guess. Dunno how it works but it sure beats the stairs! Haha—! Oof.”

The other guard nudges him in the ribs with the butt of his weapon.

“Stop talking to the prisoner.” he hisses. “The Warden’s going to yell at us again, I daresay!”

“A-ah, right. My bad...”

Making our way to the base of the cage, the guards walk me around it until we finally come to a stop at an open gate with the number ‘12’ painted above it with an arrow pointing upward.

“I don’t remember how this dumb system works.” one of the guards complains.”It’s this one, right?”

“Yes.” The other answers him. “We ride this elevator up to twelve, take another up to twenty-eight, and then thirty-five, fifty-six, sixty-six, and then finally take one of the advanced ones the rest of the way to ninety-nine. Should take us no more than half an hour, I daresay.”

“See what I mean? Why’s it gotta be like that? Why not just build those advanced ones on every floor? Spread 'em out even like.”

“I wouldn't have a clue. I’m not a dwarf.”

After a short minute of waiting, I watch as a moving platform descends from the ceiling and stops in front of us. We all step on board and it immediately begins to move up above the ceiling again.

“Fwahaha! It’s moving! We’re really going up!” I wave through the metal mesh at the other platform riders passing in the opposite direction and to anybody waiting on another floor as we slowly ascend. “It’s like magic! Dwarf magic!”

I’ve never met a dwarf before but they’d have to be really smart to build something like this. Maybe Trish’s seed origin was a dwarf? That would explain why my sister’s so smart.

Mom always said my seed origin was a beautiful elven king who fought valiantly against her up until his dying breath, even as she was stealing his seed while devouring his limbs one by one. Trish told me my seed origin was a lizardman who was too drunk to realize his entire town was being razed by demons, or that he himself was in the middle of being defiled and devoured. Apparently, he died of alcohol poisoning before Mom could even finish him off. I choose to believe Mom's story about the elven king.

“Hey... Are we gonna get in trouble if she keeps waving to the others like that?” one of the guards whispers to the other.

“I... I don't know. I figured leaving her like that was fine after Ginger lectured the Warden about it but perhaps we should’ve put new cuffs on her after all, I daresay...”

“Cute girls! Dwarf magic!” I continue waving happily to the confused guards as we pass them by. “Fwahaha! Floor ninety-nine, here I come!”

Surstrom Spire is great! I wonder what they serve for lunch here...

I hope it’s full of protein!