A Pathetic Revenge, Splattered
A dull, heavy thud echoed as something incredibly weighty and wet slammed into the muddy ground.
“Huk…….”
What the hell was that…?
Carla held her breath and gripped the carriage door latch with trembling fingers. With a low creak, she cautiously pushed the door open and stepped outside. A frigid wind coiled around her neck. The carriage stood motionless in the middle of the moonlit dirt road.
The moment her gaze dropped to the ground—
“……!!!!”
Carla couldn’t even scream. She clapped both hands over her mouth. Right in front of the carriage wheel, on the cold dirt, lay the severed head of the elderly coachman who had been driving and holding the reins just moments ago. His eyes were still open, his face twisted in agony under the moonlight. The knocking sound she had heard inside the carriage had been the dripping of blood from his severed neck.
Carla staggered backward, only to be stopped almost immediately. With nowhere left to run, she turned her eyes toward the front of the carriage. The two horses that had been pulling it lay collapsed in a pool of blood, their heads completely severed as well.
“Ah…… aah……”
Carla frantically scanned her surroundings. The knights of the Grand Duchy who should have been guarding the carriage in layers were nowhere to be seen—not even their shadows. Her gaze fell to the muddy ground. The only tracks on the road were those left by this carriage’s wheels and the hooves of the two dead horses. There were no hoofprints from the knights’ warhorses at all.
Completely… wiped out…? That can’t be…
There was no way the escort knights could have been annihilated in battle. Even if some legendary hero destined to be remembered across the empire in ten years had appeared, there was simply no possibility that well-trained knights would be slaughtered without a single sound.
Which means…
The moment they left the Grand Duke’s residence, the knights had secretly turned back, abandoning only her carriage—or perhaps they had never followed her in the first place.
I’ve been discarded.
Just like Anna. Thrown away in the middle of this lawless northern forest where no one would come.
The instant that realization struck her, a shadow that blocked the moonlight crept up behind Carla.
“Mmph—!!”
She didn’t even have time to scream. A rough, filthy hand reeking of blood and sweat shot out from behind and clamped brutally over her mouth.
“Hehehe! Jackpot tonight, boys!”
A disgusting laugh bubbled from the man holding her. One by one, figures emerged from the darkness of the forest—bandits wearing tattered leather armor, wielding axes and rusted blades, grinning wickedly. They were the outlaws who lurked in the northern no-man’s-land, living off plunder.
“Hey, this is a real Grand Ducal carriage, isn’t it? But there’s not a single escort!”
“I saw those knight bastards whispering something to the coachman earlier, then quietly slipping away.”
The bandits’ mocking, cackling conversation stabbed into Carla’s ears like daggers.
Lumican……!!
Tears poured from Carla’s eyes as her mouth remained covered. The bandits’ words made the entire situation clear. Lumican had orchestrated this pathetic revenge. That morning, she had slapped him in the nursery and humiliated him in front of the maids. Her chest had been torn open, her breasts exposed before the servants… and she had revealed his disgusting scheme right in front of Sena.
Even though Sena had tried to protect her, Lumican—who had insulted her every single day—still clung to that petty pride and dreamed of revenge. While Carla had let go of her desire for vengeance for Lucian’s sake, Lumican found even the formal process of divorce or annulment too bothersome.
Dismissing the daughter of the Inspector General Lirium family without proper justification would have carried too heavy a political cost. So he had simply ordered his knights to drag his lawful wife out under the pretense of escorting her, abandon her in the middle of a bandit-infested forest, and return.
He planned to let the bandits rape the wife who had humiliated him, then disguise her death as an unfortunate accident.
“Oh, look at this! The old coachman had quite a bit of coin on him!”
One of the bandits rifling through the severed coachman’s pockets let out a cheer as silver coins spilled out.
“Lucky us! Gold trinkets, a fancy carriage, and even a usable woman as a bonus!”
The bandits, eyes gleaming with greed, closed in around Carla. The one covering her mouth roughly shoved her body against the carriage wall, knocking her down.
“Kyaa!”
Carla, terrified, scrambled backward on the ground. But the bandits licked their lips obscenely as they approached, reaching for their waistbands.
“Her tits are small, but they’ll probably squeeze real tight, huh?”
The moonlight broke fully through the clouds and illuminated Carla’s fallen form. Her elegant, noble features—impossible to find among commoners or ruined aristocrats—were laid bare. The refined beauty of the Grand Duchess of the North shone clearly under the moon.
“……Hey.”
The footsteps of the largest bandit, who had been approaching first, suddenly halted.
“This woman… that outfit, that crest… isn’t this the Grand Duke’s wife?!”
At those words, every grinning bandit froze solid. Anyone who wanted to survive as a bandit in the North had to know, at the very least, who they could touch and who would result in the extermination of their entire bloodline. Even the most deranged bandit knew that laying a hand on the mistress of the Gestein Grand Duchy meant being drawn and quartered.
In the sudden silence, the bandits’ eyes wavered with clear panic. A flicker of fear crossed their faces—the dread of having touched someone they should never have touched.
But that fear lasted only a moment.
“……Oi.”
The bandit leader who had decapitated the coachman rested his bloodstained axe on his shoulder and grinned.
“So what if she’s the Grand Duchess? Look around—did even a single escort knight follow her here?”
“Ah……”
“She’s been abandoned. The Grand Duke must’ve really taken a dislike to her and tossed her to scum like us as prey. Remember that one from last time? Otherwise, there’s no way she’d be left alone in a forest like this, right?”
The bandit leader’s logical sophistry caused the hesitant bandits’ eyes to spark with excitement once more. A perverse sense of conquest at the thought of claiming the Grand Duke’s woman paralyzed their reason.
“An abandoned Grand Duchess, huh… Looks like we hit the real jackpot today. Wait, now that I think about it, this reminds me of another girl.”
One of the bandits bared his yellow teeth and cackled.
“Was it about two years ago? There was a woman abandoned around here, just like this lady. We took turns with her real good. I think her name was… Anna?”
“Ah, that bitch! Her body was covered in blood, but her skin was pretty decent. Worth using.”
“……!”
At the familiar name that slipped from the bandit’s mouth, Carla’s body, which had been retreating, turned to stone.
“Anna……? Y-you bastards! What did you do to Anna?!”
When Carla screamed, forgetting even her terror, the bandits laughed even harder.
“What did we do? Our brothers took turns with her about three full rounds and she just croaked.”
“Yeah, yeah. Even while dying she kept apologizing to someone. ‘Oh, my lady, my lady…’ Just babbling nonsense. So that lady was this lady? Hahaha!”
Hearing the miserable end of her loyal maid, tears dripped endlessly from Carla’s eyes. Her faithful servant. Anna, whom powerless Carla had failed to protect. Just imagining what horrific things this beastly scum had done to her in the cold forest before killing her tore Carla’s heart to shreds.
The bandit leader looked at Carla’s face and mockingly bowed deeply toward the direction of the Grand Duke’s residence.
“Thank you once again for the useful provisions, Your Grace!! We’ll devour her right down to the bone! Hahahaha!”
The entire bandit group burst into vulgar laughter. The leader tossed his axe aside and approached Carla with lewd eyes.
“Well then, shall we have a taste of the wife His Grace personally sampled and left for us?”
“Please spare me……! Don’t come near me!!”
Carla struggled and tried to back away, but behind her were only the cold carriage wheels. There was no escape. The bandits, breathing heavily, closed their encirclement like a pack of wolves.
In this forest where no one would come to save her, Carla squeezed her eyes shut.
“Where do you think you’re running, Grand Duchess?”
The bandit leader rested his blood-dripping axe on his shoulder, baring his yellow teeth in a sneer.
“His Grace kindly left this precious food for us brothers to fill our bellies. You think we’d refuse just because it got a little dirt on it? Right, boys?”
“That’s right! Hehehe! Just look at that white skin!”
“When are we ever gonna get to pin down a noble bitch like this again!”
The bandits’ filthy, lecherous gazes slithered stickily over Carla’s entire body. Shame tightened around her throat. She clutched her bruised breasts with both hands and trembled violently.
Is this… is this really how it ends?
She had lived her entire life as the daughter of a great noble house. As the dignified Grand Duchess of the North. Though her heart had rotted from her husband’s lack of love, she was a woman of high pride who had never bowed her head to anyone. And yet her end was to be gang-raped by these filthy, stinking savages.
Lumican…… you beast… you devilish bastard……!
Resentment and curses toward the husband who had driven her into this trap surged like bile, but they were not enough to push back the immediate terror before her eyes.
“Huk, huuk……!”
Perhaps it was because the stress and fear had crushed her breathing. A sudden, abnormal heat flared up in her chest as if it had been set on fire.
“Ah…… ngh!”
Carla unconsciously clutched her breasts and let out a moan. The forbidden medicine she had taken that morning to nurse her son Lucian was acting without regard for the situation. With a wet rush, her dry breasts—which had not been producing milk—swelled painfully, and with a stinging sensation, pink breast milk gushed forth.
“No…… please, no……!”
Even as Carla desperately crossed her arms to cover her chest, she could not stop her body’s runaway reaction. Streams of milk began to pour helplessly through the gaps in her dress. Against her will, her shame was being expelled. It soaked the front of her dirt-stained dress completely. Droplets of milk caught the moonlight and fell to the ground with soft plops.
The bandits who witnessed the obscene sight all widened their eyes larger than the full moon.
“……Huh?”
“Hey, that, that’s…… isn’t that milk?!”
“This is a proper jackpot!! She gave birth not long ago?! She’s leaking all over the place!!”
A noble Grand Duchess, crying from shame and terror while helplessly dripping pure white milk from her breasts. There could be no more sadistic stimulus for their lust—even in the back-alley brothels, such a scene would be impossible to find.
“Hahaha! Boss, can I have the first suck?!”
“You crazy bastard, of course the leader goes first! Hold her down!”
The largest bandit leader threw down his axe, grabbed his waistband roughly, and strode toward Carla. His disgusting yellow teeth filled her vision.
“Don’t come near me!! Don’t touch me—!!”
Carla swung her hand wildly in desperation, but the bandit leader laughed and seized her slender wrist in one brutal grip.
“Stay still! This big brother will suck every last drop of the milk His Grace tasted!”
The bandit leader’s filthy mouth lunged toward Carla’s soaked chest.
Slurp. Slurp, slurp. Suuuuuck—.
“……?”
In the quiet, desolate northern forest—filled with the bandits’ vulgar laughter and Carla’s screams—a strangely alien sound rang out with perfect clarity.
The sound of something being sucked with great relish. With tremendous force.
The bandit leader, who had been pressing his head toward Carla’s chest, froze mid-motion.
“Eh?”
With a stupid expression, he tilted his head and looked behind him.
“Hey, is one of you already sucking on her?”
“What? No, boss! We haven’t even taken our pants off yet……”
“Then what the hell is that sound?”
The bewildered bandits stopped licking their lips and all turned their heads toward the source of the slurp-slurp noise. From the deep darkness between the trees just ten paces from the carriage—
Rustle.
With the sound of leaves being stepped on, the silhouette of a woman slowly emerged.
“……!!”
Not only the bandits, but even Carla—who had been sitting on the ground shaking—widened her eyes and gasped. Under the moonlight, a silver-haired woman wearing the plain, modest uniform of a Grand Ducal maid appeared. Yet somehow, she did not look ordinary at all.
In her arms, she cradled a one-year-old baby wrapped in a small blanket. And right in front of the bandits trying to violate Carla, in the middle of the forest, she had casually undone the front of her top and was breastfeeding the child with perfect composure.
“Goo…… slurp, slurp, abu…… suuuuck.”
The baby gripped the woman’s ample breast with both tiny hands and suckled with a peaceful face that feared nothing in the world.
“What the… what the fuck is that crazy bitch……?”
One of the bandits holding a knife muttered, completely dumbfounded. The bandits who had been aroused by the sight of the Grand Duchess’s wet breasts just moments ago now stood frozen, utterly bewildered by this surreal scene of genuine breastfeeding that had suddenly appeared in the forest.
“Ah, fuck.”
My head tilted sideways at an angle.
“If you’re done drinking, let go already, damn it.”