Chapter 24: Chapter 23: The Lamia Lord’s Motives

“O-Okay! I’ll talk! I’ll talk!” Tephalia exclaims before taking a breath to compose herself. She looks at me with a serious expression. “Though I’ve observed how you managed to wield the cursed tanto without getting possessed last night, please understand that this has never happened before, especially by a human who bears the ‘Devil Eyes.’ Previous holders who’ve been possessed in the past exhibited violent outrages, going into madness, or extreme arousal that leads them to ravage the one nearest to them that seems even slightly sexually attractive, whether they be of another race or not. These go on until they let out all of their steam, and even if they were restrained, they die a day later. This is from internal blood loss due to the bursting blood vessels from the rising blood pressure and heart rate.

“I warned the slaves here that they’d possibly lose their lives if they were near you, but they wouldn’t have any of it, and so with their merchant’s permission and contract we signed on, should anything happen to them, they would serve as sacrifices to appease your urges and I would pay for collateral. I didn’t want anyone to lose their lives for something like this, but I was left with little options at the last minute. I didn’t think no harm would even be brought to them like they were when I found you, and so you piqued my interest, but I still wanted to play safe. So, when I ordered breakfast, I asked for our most potent sleeping poison on the side to spike your food with just in case you showed suspicious behavior, as well as one other … the one I put into you through the mouth with my own.” Tephalia averts her gaze with tinted cheeks during her pause.

“M-Mouth to mouth, you mean …”

“K-K-Kissing?” Erizora and Ren ask respectively before their faces turn red.

“… Okay, I admit suddenly going to the toilet and staying there for a long time might count as suspicious, which is around the time the food came in and you spiked mine with the sleeping poison, but what was that other one?” I ask.

“It’s a special one that relaxes all the muscles in your body to the point of numbness as well as reducing the heart rate and blood pressure, a poison specifically designed to counteract the curse’s side-effects on the tanto’s previous holders. It’s only temporary while still in its experimental stages, and we haven’t even tested it to whether it will make the curse’s side-effects disappear. I thought that when the numbing poison takes effect while the sleeping one does you in, you might have time and space with a clearer mind to think about my offer after both of them wear off and we talk some more … whether or not the curse’s side-effects have disappeared by then.”

“You mean … about you being my ‘first.’”

Tephalia nods her head.

“W-Wait, first what? What is she talking about?!” Erizora exclaims.

“Why, exactly what you’re thinking, of course~.”

“It should a great honor for him, you know? For Lady Tephalia to be his primary wife,” Ashe and Salelia say respectively.

““What?!”” Erizora and Ren exclaim.

“I-I wasn’t thinking that far ahead! Don’t make this any more complicated than it already is!” Tephalia exclaims while flustered.

Despite how shocked I am and how much I wanted to ravage her right now, I still desperately try to maintain my clarity of mind. “But wait, you said the numbing poison might not stop the curse’s side-effects, that would still put you in danger the most if you were near me while I wake up. Why would you, the lord of this city, go out of your way to take that risk?”

“Because it’s my fault that I jumped to conclusions about your ‘suspicious behaviors.’ I didn’t realize how much you were suffering until you confessed. Opening your heart like that, revealing such concerns that affect us, seeing us as ‘beautiful women’ and not just ‘those of another race,’ it moved me. Whether or not you wanted to take things further with us, I needed to take responsibility for my miscalculated judgment while showing my gratitude to you for saving my city, and … well, you’re pretty much my type. Your level of ‘Poison Resistance’ was also something I’m most impressed with as my grandmother was at that same level. I don’t think I’d mind getting a little roughed up if it’s with someone of your caliber, Jinma.” Despite being aloft in the air, she manages to look up at me with a blushing smile.

““Aaaaah! Lady Tephaliaaa!”” the handmaidens squealed.

I’m … so confused.

<“She wants to be your girl! What’s not there to get?!”> the tanto girl exclaims in my head.

I just … I can’t think like this. My mind is overwhelmed with images of me and Tephalia doing lewd things together. More of them appear as I glance at the other girls.

Aaugh! I can’t do it! Not like this!

“Master?! Are you all right?!” Ren exclaims as I hold a hand to my head. I’m panting heavily and feeling very hot.

“… Tephalia, you think having sex will relieve the curse’s effects, but I just need to blow off steam, right?” I ask her.

“M-More or less, yes.”

Trying to do the best I can, I recall all the places I’ve been to so far since coming to this world until one image jumps out at me. “In that case … I’ll be borrowing this for a while. [Portal]!”

With the tanto and its sheath in my hands, I open up a hole in space and deactivate the Darkness Manipulation magic. The girls who were held aloft by them drop abruptly before I jump through the hole.

““Master!””

“Jinma?!”

I hear the girls scream behind me before I close the hole. I find myself in front of a familiar cave, the same one I came out of just yesterday after killing that Toxic Troll.

<“What the hell?! She was totally giving you a booty call! You could’ve picked it up!”> the tanto girl exclaims in my head while I suddenly make a sprint in a random direction, leading to a steep hill that I climb. Many trees in the dense forestry pass by me as I make a run for it, hurdling over the occasional rock or bush in between.

“I don’t want to just jump right into it like a wild animal! I want to be a man who can hold his spoken word when everything’s put on the table, and I can’t do that while I’m in some kind of fucking heat like a raging horndog!”

<“So, what are you going to do? Just seeing you bail out like that, I’m seriously turned off right now.”>

“I just need to let out my steam, right? Don’t you think it would benefit you more if I got you in on the action? Remember the fun we had last night?”

<“?!”>

Finally, after about a few minutes of sprinting up the large hill through the dense forest, I come out of it and into a large clearing, a field of wide-open plains where I could see mountains in the distance, as well as what appears to be the silhouette of a castle that my eyes could barely make out from so far away. Looking down to another direction, I could see the large city viewed from above is Dondegarm. The layout looks more urban than what I’d expect in a medieval fantasy-like world as it consists of a bunch of large buildings spread over a wide area. A few of the biggest ones I could guess to be Ms. Tephalia’s manor and the adventurer’s guild, but then there’s what looks like a coliseum that stands out the most out of everything else. There’s a jungle that begins from the outskirts of the city and I could see the blue oceans past above it that fade into the horizons. A trail comes out of Dondegarm that goes up a steady incline, passing by a rock that I’m guessing is bigger than the Toxic Troll and King Bear Mole I fought combined based on the proportions from this distance. Seeing small specks of dots lining up and moving towards that rock, those must be people. They look like they’re in line for some kind of attraction one would see in an amusement park. Further beyond the trail and more off to the side I could make out the side of another city that’s about the same as Dondegarm’s in size, but I could see a distinguishing difference in the architecture even from this far away. There looks to be two more cities past that, but they’re about as far in distance as the castle-like silhouette in the mountains as I can’t make out much of their distinguishing features, so they must be farther than the closest city I can see from here.

“So beautiful … what a perfect place to get wild!” I exclaim before giving a big smile. I look at the black weapon in my hands. “Tanto Girl! Do what you did last night and summon as many monsters as your power can attract! You and I are gonna dance the bloody tango until we drop!”

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<“Now you’re speaking my language! Let’s do it!”>

I thrust the weapon to the air as if I’m piercing the sky itself. The dark, ominous aura radiates from the blade and shoots up like a geyser. As if a beacon has risen, I could hear the monsters’ roars responding to it, sounding very ferocious, and in this new and strange world, who knows what they even are?

My entire self is raging hot and while my heart races, but not out of the traumatic fear of heights, or the powerful urge to vandalize and defile a woman, but out of the anticipation of what enemies I’d be facing that could mean the death of me.

It’s as if I’m declaring war against the world itself, and right here, right now, I’m going to hack and slash my feelings of doubt and the majority of worries out of my mind. I couldn’t be more excited, even a little turned on, for what’s in store for this heated onslaught.

“Come at me, bitches!” I scream before giving a boisterous laugh to the world.

~~

“… Well, this is peculiar.”

Off in the far distance where Jinma currently is, at one of the buildings in the earlier spotted city that goes by Palocaesy, there’s a girl on a balcony of a luxurious cottage, sitting in a chair enjoying a drink from fine china as she witnesses his geyser of purplish-black magic. A gentle breeze blows through her long crimson locks as if they were made from the magic’s pressure going at such a distance. The open parasol above her keeps the sun’s rays from hitting her near porcelain skin. The majority of her body is covered in a monochrome, Lolita-like dress.

“The pillar of dark magic is one thing, but it’s where that’s coming from that has me piqued,” she says to herself. “I’ve never seen such a unique aura before and I can’t even make out which of the three kin that individual’s from. A rare spectacle for anyone with ‘Magic Sense’ to be able to witness.”

“Milady.”

The crimson-haired girl tilts her head to the woman who called her. Kneeling in front of the door that leads inside is someone wearing black armor, but missing a head. Purplish-black flames that lick the air are what is placed in the head’s stead. The disembodied head in a helmet is positioned in a bowing gesture while being held by the matching armor’s hands.

“Yes, Gabriella?”

“I know I’ve said this already, but are you sure you want to do this? Lord Rowling may have appointed me for this task out of concern for your safety, but having at least one adventurer, or a small party of them, with no connections to either of you or any noble household back in Korangar, carrying a high rank, and of a unique background? Dondegarm’s guild master may have taken the task of finding such an individual under his own hands, but all I hear is that we’re letting one of a suspicious character accompany us on this dungeon crawl.”

The lady furrows her brow at the headless kneeling knight. “Are you doubting my judgment, Gabriella?”

“A-Absolutely not, Milady! It’s just that—”

“We may have reached a compromise, but I am the one who wanted to do this, I will say who’s allowed to join us, and it is I who will make the final call on whether they’re worthy to venture with us or not. Neither of you has any say on this matter, and that’s final. This discussion is closed.” The lady then turns back to the direction where the geyser of magic shot up from and continues drinking the crimson liquid out of her china.

“Y-Yes, Milady. Would you care for more blood?”

“If you would,” the lady answers without even looking back.

The beheaded knight bows her disembodied head before going back inside while the noblewoman continues to stare at the scenery.

“If anyone, I’d like to see the one who created that spectacle,” the lady says to herself, “but … I shouldn’t get my hopes up. It’s a miracle I even convinced him to let me do this before that. Whoever the guild master ends up finding, I’ll have to make the most of what’s given to me and pray that this venture will be at least a little interesting.”

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, making sure no one else is around, Gabriella pulls out a colored crystal that lights up once she applies magic to it. “Tyvera, status report,” she whispers.

<“Ugh, boring. No threats nearby that could harm Lady Krauss.”>

“Did you see the dark pillar that shot up in the distance earlier? Did you see what caused it?”

<“Oh, that? I took a quick peek and it was just a human showing off his magic.”>

“A human? What could one be doing way out there? In the Demon-Kin’s Territory?”

<“I dunno, but the guy will wind up dead in minutes with how much attention he’s grabbing. Not worth wasting energy to check any further with how far he is. I’m gonna take a nap for a bit.”>

“Be cautious to not give away your position. Lord Rowling says—”

<“If the adventurer(s) they bring out deems too suspicious, I drop in and be Lady Krauss’ second escort whether she likes it or not, I know. I feel disgusted enough doing this for that possessive bastard behind that girl’s back, I’m not looking forward to fighting as vanguard underground.”>

“But there are lights inside, plenty enough for Harpies to see even in a little darkness.”

<“Yeah, but there’s not as much space for me to spread my wings! Ugh, at least I’ll get stronger with whatever’s given to me at the end of the dungeon. Tyvera, out.”>

With the ‘call’ ended, the crystal light in Gabriella’s hand dims to nothing.

… Can’t say I disagree with Rowling being a ‘possessive bastard.’ Truly, my pride and honor as a Dark Knight are put to the test in this task.

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