Could you please let me...

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Location: [Dungeon], [Candles], [Shackles], [Monastery]...
Genre: [Coercion], [Imprisonment], [Exotic], [Immoral]...
In a scene that clearly suggests a dire situation based on the keywords alone, [Woman] and [Youth] lock eyes, slowly drawing closer amidst the flickering light and shadows.
Snap.
The woman grabbed the youth by his... collar, and asked in a low voice, "...What are you doing?"
"Doing? Didn't I tell you? I'm here to sleep with you... What, not welcoming?"
"What exactly do you want?"
"Afraid the night is too dark, afraid you're too lonely, so I came to keep you company in the middle of the night. How about it? Am I not great?"
To this, the youth, held firmly by his collar, shrugged his shoulders and innocently explained that he was merely fulfilling his duties as a warden, providing nighttime care for the prisoner.
The focus was on the three-part service:
Accompanying for meals, drinks, and conversation.
As for accompanying in sleep, that would be a separate fee.
Of course.
No one would believe the nonsense Herbert was spouting—including himself; he didn't really think such words could fool the dragon lady.
"Mmhmm?"
Valentina squinted and hummed, loosening her grip and letting go of the shameless paladin.
She leaned against the bars, watching the white-haired youth who had nonchalantly leaned against the railing as well, scanning him up and down.
While she wasn't particularly intelligent, as a cast-off abandoned by her parents early on, she naturally had her own ways of surviving to this age.
Purely by having a tough life—cough!
My mistake.
Valentina relied entirely on the instinctive intuition inherent in her bloodline to seek advantages and avoid harm, to turn bad luck into good.
If there was a fatal threat, she ran; if not, she attacked.
Her philosophy was essentially: "As long as you can't kill me, I'll kill you!"
However, this instinct didn't work every time; there were occasions where she misjudged.
For instance, when she first encountered the Archbishop of Mists, Valentina truly did not sense a fatal threat.
She assumed he was just an ordinary old man. After trying to chase him away several times and failing, she grew annoyed and tried to blast him into a dead old man with a breath of dragon fire.
And then... she got beaten up.
In the face of true power, Valentina had no power to resist and became a punching bag that could only take hits.
Of course, it was hard to say whether her intuition was inaccurate—after all, judging by the result, she didn't die.
The Archbishop of Mists had no intent to kill; the injuries Valentina sustained were bone-deep but not irreparable.
The poor dragon lady was tossed into an alien prison as a door-guarding geezer after being thoroughly pummeled.
Regardless of the process, one has to wonder if her intuition was accurate.

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Just ask yourself: did she survive?
She survived.
But sometimes, living is truly worse than dying!
Locked in an alien prison, it was a case of being unable to die even if she wanted to, and unable to get anything to eat.
The only things left to do besides sleeping were exploring her own abilities.
Although Valentina had been locked in this dark, sunless cell and seemed to be rotting away, she was actually constantly strengthening her abilities.
On one hand, it was to ensure she wouldn't make the same mistakes again; on the other, it was because there was nothing else to do.
The day Valentina took the initiative to speak with Herbert, it was because she had a strange premonition—that if she spoke to him then, it might bring about a new turning point.
And now... the dragon lady caught the scent of a lie on Herbert!
Something was wrong. There was definitely a trick.
This guy was definitely hiding something from me again!
"So, what's the truth? What exactly do you want to say to me?"
Valentina stared intently at Herbert, refusing to back down even when he turned his head to look back.
Hey!
You must spill the truth today!
Seeing her persistence, Herbert realized he couldn't hide it any longer. He sighed helplessly, shook his head, and said, "Tsk... this is why I hate brats with keen intuition."
"Fine, since you insist, I'll tell you."
He emphasized with a serious expression:
"A special disclaimer: you forced me to say this, so don't blame me later."
"I was originally planning to bring it up when the atmosphere was better..."
Hm?
Seeing him like this, a very ominous intuition suddenly surfaced in Valentina's heart.
No...
"Wait! Wait a moment!"
"No waiting~"
Herbert turned, grabbing the hand Valentina tried to pull back.
!!?
"Valentina, ever since the day we met, there has been something I've wanted to tell you..."
The handsome youth gazed at her deeply with his pale gray eyes, a flicker of embarrassment crossing them, but it eventually hardened into resolve.
"I don't know if this request will be offensive, but I really don't want to endure this alone any longer."
Valentina: ???
You, what are you doing?

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At this moment, Valentina could still forcibly pull her hand back, but doing so would inevitably hurt Herbert, and that made her hesitate for a split second.
But she didn't know.
In a battle between experts, that split-second of hesitation is the moment of defeat—
Herbert took a deep breath, gripped Valentina's slender hand tightly to prevent her from escaping, and said earnestly:
"Although it is ill-timed, I sincerely hope you can grant me this somewhat overstepping request."
"You..."
At this moment, time seemed to slow down in Valentina's eyes; she could clearly hear the powerful beating within her chest.
Thump-thump!
Having lived a solitary life and never having been close to men, where would Valentina have experienced such a situation?
She looked into those charming eyes, felt the warmth from his palm, and combined with the scent on him that had been tempting her all along, the entire dragon was completely dazed.
"Uh, ugh, you, uh..."
Forget about answering; her mind went blank. The intuition she had honed for hundreds of years was of no use at this moment.
She couldn't remember anything, leaving only a chaotic, mushy mess of thoughts in her head.
What does he want to say?
Is he proposing to me?
Ugh!
Should I agree to him?
We, we don't seem that familiar yet, do we?
We shouldn't be, right!?
I, I, I... No!
Although this situation was special, although Valentina wasn't smart enough, and although the target was indeed very good-looking!
She wasn't naive enough to be so charmed by a few honeyed words that she would hand over her body.
She really wasn't that stupid.
After all, the foundation of their relationship was far too thin.
Then, just as Valentina made up her mind to reject Herbert, she heard the second half of his sentence:
"Can you... let me touch your tail?"
He said it. She had to reject him immediately!
"Um, although you are good-looking and smell very nice, we can't—hm?"
Hm?
Hm!!?