"Your... curse?" Ryuk asked, and she nodded.
"Yes. I’m a Cursed Succubus in the sense that the more time you spend around me, the more you’ll start to feel a burning sensation rising through you, especially if you’re of the opposite sex."
"Soon, you’ll be unable to hold back your desire. And I’m in chains."
"You understand?" she asked as Ryuk’s eyebrows furrowed in concentration.
"And sadly, the weaker you are, the more quickly you’ll be overtaken by the curse. You’ve been here for almost ten minutes already. Just wait thirty seconds more, and you should feel it," she said as Ryuk waited silently.
After five minutes had passed, he turned his head and looked at the lady.
"Sounds like a dumb lie. But I wasn’t expecting truth from a being like you anyway," Ryuk said, unimpressed—but he noticed the shock flashing in her eyes.
"Impossible. He’s not affected by my curse!?" she asked herself in shock.
No matter how strong, any opposite sex that lingers near her will immediately feel the burning sensation coursing through them.
They’ll be overtaken by desire and start walking toward her like a zombie, and she kills them immediately before they reach her.
But now, the ladyboy before her was standing absolutely unfazed, even though he had been here for fifteen minutes now.
Most of the men who had come here previously couldn’t even last three minutes before they were instantly ablaze with desire.
"You... You’re a lady?" she suddenly asked, as Ryuk’s eyes twitched.
"Are you blind too?"
"No! I know what I’m saying. There is a succubus curse on me, and it’s amplified by this godforsaken card!" she said as Ryuk warily looked at the floating card before her.
"Sounds like an excuse," Ryuk said, disbelieving.
"It isn’t."
"The bastard who locked me down here made it a test."
"He chained me down here and then gave me this card, which is the passing code to leave this place. I can’t break the chains, so I need to wait for a person to come in here, break my chains, and rescue me."
"I thought no matter how weak someone is, so far they kept trying and cracking even just an inch to break the chains."
"Then one day, they should be able to crack it."
"But then I realized—the pass card isn’t as simple as it seems."
"For one, it has been ingrained with a passive ability amplifier. Every succubus has the aura that attracts the opposite sex of any race, but they can control it to a point where their presence doesn’t affect others... that much, if they will."
"But I noticed when the men come here and try to break the chains, five minutes in, they suddenly become mindless, controlled by desire."
"That was when I discovered that the card is an amplifier. It increases my charm to an unbearable level that they can not handle, eventually turning them into desire zombies."
"But a lady has once come here and I noticed a massive difference."
"She didn’t fall for the charm. She tried as much as she could to break the chains, but then the heat back then was unbearable, as I’ve not been able to completely infuse my aura to control the lava and make it mine."
"In the end, she died. But that means the charm doesn’t work on females. So, if it’s not working on you, you must be a female," she said.
But when she looked at Ryuk, she saw him yawning.
"Yeah, right. That’s all so true."
"You don’t believe me?" she asked in disbelief, as Ryuk raised an eyebrow
"And why in hell would I believe a dark succubus who kept the skulls of men as treasure, with four horns sticking out of her face, and her gigantic maw even wider than that of a tiger—with a tongue literally like that of a snake—and her hands and feet ending in claws?"
"And to top it all off, she’s chained?"
"Hello? You want my trust?" Ryuk asked her in disbelief as the lady shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, will this guarantee your trust then?" she asked as Ryuk turned to look at what she was pointing toward.
A lava hand pulled out another iron handle from the wall, and Ryuk’s eyes narrowed when he looked at the wall platform half-lifted down to him, resting just a meter before him.
"This is the body of the lady that wasn’t affected by my curse."
"As you can see, she was unburnt anyway, nor does she have a scar."
"She just couldn’t get enough oxygen and died, and I was able to preserve her body by placing her in the wall and with the aid of the lava, which I eventually gained control of," she said, as Ryuk focused his gaze on the corpse before him.
And true to her words, there were no burn marks or scars on her body.
The platform was carried away and kept within the wall as Ryuk’s eyes narrowed further, emotions flickering in his eyes, but then,
"I still don’t believe you."
"Okay. But why?"
"Your story might be a lie."
"How?"
"Maybe the men know that you’ll cause chaos in the world when you’re free and decide to fight until their deaths rather than rescue you."
"But you left the woman for last, and when she saw the fate of the men who had died, she had no choice but to agree and help you—only to succumb to the heat in the end?" he said.
"You make a good point. But can you explain why I didn’t burn her body and keep her skull as a treasure like the rest?" she asked as Ryuk replied fluidly:
"Because you’ve cooked up this scene, waiting for another person to come—and it’ll make it easier for them to believe your story," he replied as she laughed out loud in irony.
"And that sounds believable to your ears?" she asked.
"Well, it definitely sounds more believable than even thinking a succubus like you is a good soul," he said with a helpless shrug, as her eyes flashed.
"Well, you just said the truth then."
"It’s not that you don’t trust my words."
"It’s that you don’t trust me, because I have four horns sticking out of my head, and my hands and feet end in claws, and my tongue is that of a snake."
"You hate me because of my looks!"
"Because I’m a succubus?"
"Or maybe because I’m a...monster?"
"And now that I’m a succubus, it doesn’t matter if I saved a lady’s life and killed the people who tried to take advantage of me."
"I am still a monster—and will always be a monster, no matter what good I do."
"That’s who you are. That’s who you all are."
"Pathetic existences who will judge everything by what they are in name and looks and ignore whatever good they do, no matter how hard they tried!" she shot back in anger, as Ryuk’s heart thumped hard in his chest from her words.
"But... of course, I shouldn’t be surprised anymore. I’ve lost hope of being believed or truly seeing without bias, a long time ago anyway."