The Grand Duke's Slumber and the Duchess's Slap
I was walking through the halls with the ruler of the North, Grand Duke Lumican von Gestein, slung over my shoulder like a sack of rice. Effortlessly. Wait—could you even carry a sack of rice that easily? ‘Holy shit, this body is insanely strong……’
Even now, I couldn’t help but be stunned by the specs of this physique. Grand Duke Lumican looked well over 190 centimeters tall. A giant built from dense, high-density muscle. By weight, he had to be pushing well past 100 kilograms. Basically a fantasy version of Shohei Ohtani. And yet Sena’s delicate, twenty-something female frame was carrying him without even breaking a sweat. If anything, there was a rhythmic bounce to my steps.
So this was what Knight-Captain Level physical ability felt like in the novel’s setting. If this had been my original body, just lifting one of the guy’s arms would’ve given me a herniated disc.
Thud. Thud. The only sound filling the quiet corridor was the echo of my footsteps. But my awe at this body’s wonders lasted only a moment. My mind quickly flooded with very real fear and confusion.
‘Hold on. When you actually think about it… isn’t this an insanely fucked-up situation?’
The man passed out and dangling over my shoulder was the absolute sovereign of the North. And I was nothing more than a hired hand in his household—a mere nanny. No matter how secretly we’d been sleeping together, in a class-based society where master and servant relationships existed, knocking your master unconscious by striking the back of his neck? That went beyond insubordination. It was outright treason. A capital crime where I could be summarily executed and lose my head on the guillotine without a word of protest.
‘Fuck, at this rate won’t they do a lingchi execution for lèse-majesté? No—more importantly, what if the Grand Duke wakes up pissed?’
No matter how strong Sena’s body was at Knight-Captain Level, Lumican was the undisputed top-tier powerhouse of this world. If he drew his sword in earnest, slicing up one nanny would be child’s play. And judging by that horny, deranged look in his eyes earlier, when he woke up he might show not just rage, but an even more bizarre and sinister obsession.
‘Should I just run away like this?’
I seriously considered it. My physical specs were already broken anyway. I could just dump the unconscious Grand Duke in some corner of the hallway, scale the castle walls, and bolt. My soul was still a Korean man. Even if I was stuck in a woman’s body, with this kind of physique I could probably live like a mountain hermit—hunting bears for food and doing just fine.
‘Yeah, let’s run. Male lead childcare, breastfeeding play—none of that’s my problem. Survival first!’
I firmed up my resolve and started to stop walking—
“Whoops.”
The moment I turned the corner, I came face-to-face with someone. A man in clanking armor holding a lantern in one hand. It was a knight of the Gestein family on night patrol. The lantern light illuminated both me and the Grand Duke’s face, limp and dangling over my shoulder.
“……!!”
My heart plummeted. Shit. Caught red-handed. This was the perfect scene to be mistaken for an assassin trying to flee after attempting to kill the Grand Duke. I moved my lips, desperately searching for an excuse. For example… Ah, no! His Grace suddenly collapsed from a chronic illness……! Even a third-rate excuse like that had to come out. Or should I knock this knight out too and run? With Sena’s body, subduing the knight in front of me in one second seemed entirely possible.
As a thousand thoughts raced through my mind, the knight opened his mouth. But then—
“Sigh…… Sena. Did His Grace throw another tantrum?”
“……Huh?”
I stared at the knight, letting out a dumb sound. He glanced at the unconscious Northern Grand Duke hanging over my shoulder, then scratched the back of his neck with an indifferent expression.
“You’ve got it rough. Taking care of the young lord day and night must be hard enough, and now His Grace is like this too. Honestly, he’s just a big baby in an oversized body.”
“……Pardon?”
This guy’s committing lèse-majesté too? Sure, the Grand Duke was unconscious, and yeah, he wasn’t wrong, but still—what the hell was he saying about his own lord?
“Hurry and take him to his bedchamber so you can rest. His neck’s going to snap at this rate.”
Max patted my shoulder a couple times like a coworker comforting someone dragging a drunk, troublesome boss home, then clanked off to continue his patrol.
I stood there like a stone statue, watching the knight Max’s retreating back.
‘No…… just how the hell has that Grand Duke bastard been acting for the reaction to be like that?’
It was so absurd I almost laughed. The ruler of the North should be walking around with terrifying titles like Blood Monarch or Sword Master. Yet here a knight of his own order was reacting with total calm to the sight of the Grand Duke being carried off unconscious after getting knocked out by his nanny?
Just how many times had he pestered Sena, whined at her, and gotten physically subdued by her for this kind of reaction to come out like it was everyday life?!
‘This insane household…… there isn’t a single normal person here.’
Shaking off the bewilderment, I started walking again. At this point, the idea of running away had completely vanished. In this bizarre ecosystem where even the knights took it as a given that the Grand Duke got beaten up, there was no need to freak out about treason or whatever. Most of all, the moment I’d decided to run earlier… twitch! I had felt the body stirring again, as if ready to choke me if I tried to abandon Lucian.
This body would never allow me to run away and leave Lucian behind. In the end, I followed where it led and arrived in front of the Grand Duke’s bedchamber.
I opened the heavy wooden door and stepped inside. An old-fashioned, stately ducal bedroom appeared before me.
“Ugh—hya!”
I hurled the Grand Duke onto the wide bed like I was dropping a piece of luggage. Thump. The over-100-kilogram giant bounced once on the mattress before sinking deep into it. He remained completely motionless. I rolled my stiff shoulders and looked down at Lumican’s face sprawled across the bed.
It really was a sculpturally handsome face. Jet-black hair, a sharp nose bridge, firmly closed lips. If he were just lying there breathing quietly, he’d be the very picture of the Northern Grand Duke that made romance-fantasy readers’ lower halves tingle.
“Mmm……”
At that moment, a faint sleep-talking murmur slipped from the Grand Duke’s lips.
“Sena…… slurp. No…… me too……”
“Ugh, fuck……”
I instinctively gagged and stumbled backward. To think such perverted sleep-talk could come from such a handsome face. The dissonance between sight and sound made my mind go blank. Seeing that crazy beast in heat licking his lips and clutching the bedsheets brought back the exact deranged tension from when he’d stared at my breasts earlier. Goosebumps erupted all over my body.
‘Ugh…… if things keep going like this it’s really going to get annoying.’
What if this bastard woke up and stormed the nursery again? What if he woke up and started spouting nonsense about giving him milk again? Would my body knock him out on its own next time too? And what if the body actually started obeying the Grand Duke’s demands instead?
Just imagining it made the male pride inside me want to commit suicide. I had to put physical distance between myself and this Grand Duke somehow. Raising Lucian couldn’t be helped, but becoming this bastard’s cum dump was something I had to desperately prevent.
‘Let’s get out of this room quickly.’
With that thought, I turned and took a step toward the bedchamber door—
“So he came looking for you again.”
“……!”
A prickling sensation ran down my back. The voice came from beyond the open bedchamber door, from the darkness of the corridor. A woman’s voice, sharp as an ice pick and steeped in coldness. Unlike the easygoing tone of the knight Max who had been patrolling earlier, this one was downright venomous.
I slowly turned my head to look toward the doorway. The silhouette standing with the dark corridor at her back wore a luxurious indoor gown with a reddish tint and had long platinum-blonde hair cascading down.
‘Oh, she’s pretty? As expected……’
A beautiful but sharp-tempered woman. Those venomous eyes were alternating between her husband sprawled on the bed and me, the one who had brought him here.
‘Carla von Gestein…… Lucian’s biological mother. He definitely took after her face. The Grand Duke only gave him the coloring.’
Lucian’s biological mother, the lawful wife of Grand Duke Lumican, and the legendary villainess mother-in-law who would one day gaslight her son Lucian, toy with him at will, then get utterly destroyed by a refreshing counterattack from her daughter-in-law. The very wicked woman who had delivered the first strike in that absurd turn-based mother-in-law versus daughter-in-law battle was now standing right in front of me.
‘Her chest is small, but she’s definitely beautiful. Even in the original story she was still pretty even at middle age.’
Only her eyes were filled with murderous intent. That was only natural. She was the lawful wife of the Northern Grand Duke, after all. Night after night her husband chased after a nanny’s skirt, her nipples, and even his cock, and now she had to witness with her own eyes the sight of him being knocked unconscious by that same nanny and carried back like this. It would be strange if her blood didn’t boil in reverse.
‘First of all…… I absolutely do not want to make an enemy of that woman.’
I quickly assessed the situation. Carla was one of the main axes of conflict in the original story. Although I had failed to possess the male lead Lucian and ended up like this, there was no reason to deliberately oppose the story’s main villainess and make my own life miserable. If I just stayed low, acted as deferential as possible, and treated her like the mistress I served, her hysteria would probably pass me by.
I carefully lowered my head and crafted the most polite, calm voice I could manage.
“It is not like that, Your Grace. His Grace…… came looking for Lucian.”
I tried to convey the nuance that he had come to see his son rather than his mistress. I thought it was the model answer. However—
“Ha……!”
A bone-chilling, icy sneer burst from Carla’s lips.
Click. Click. She slowly stepped into the room.
‘W-why is she acting like that?’
“You call him so comfortably.”
“Pardon……?”
“Lucian, you say. For a lowly nanny to dare address the heir of the Gestein Ducal House by name.”
Carla approached until she stood right in front of me and looked down with a harsh gaze. Although she was shorter than me, the aristocratic arrogance and suppressed fury she radiated were considerable.
“Do you now think you have become that child’s mother?”
“……!”
Oops. It felt like I’d been smacked in the back of the head.
‘Fuck…… I made a verbal slip.’
When I had read the original story as text, casually using the characters’ names had felt completely natural. To me the male lead had simply been Lucian. But this was a strict class society and I was nothing but a nanny. I should have used the highest honorifics—Young Master or Young Lord. My modern-person soul had caused the mistake.
‘But damn, she really is vicious.’
I clicked my tongue inwardly as I looked at Carla’s distorted face. Of course, given the situation, I could understand. Sold off to the North through a loveless political marriage, she had mechanically given birth to an heir only for her husband to ignore her completely and become obsessed with a lowborn orphan nanny. And now that nanny was monopolizing even the son she had borne and casually calling him by name—it would be strange if her blood didn’t boil over.
Honestly, even when I had been reading the original novel……
‘I actually liked Carla more than the female lead who possessed the body or the gullible Lucian.’
When I put myself in Carla’s position, she really was a pitiful woman.
‘Sigh, with a husband like that it’s no wonder the wife went crazy. Well, I get it, but it’s still not my business.’
Making any more excuses here would only fan the flames of Carla’s anger. I needed to get out of this suffocating place first. I had no idea when that unconscious beast in heat would wake up, and I didn’t have the energy to engage in a battle of nerves with this venomous duchess.
I bowed deeply once more.
“My thoughts were short. Please forgive me, Madam. I must look after Young Master Lucian…… so I shall take my leave now.”
The moment I finished speaking I turned to leave the room. But—
Grab—!
“Where do you think you’re going?”
My steps halted the instant I tried to exit. Carla had roughly seized my wrist and yanked me back. Bang! The bedchamber door slammed shut with a heavy thud. And the moment I turned my head to look at Carla—
Slap—!!!!
My head snapped hard to the left. My vision shook for a second and my cheek burned as if on fire. I had been slapped. I had never been hit by my father, but of course that was because I had been an extremely filial son. At any rate, in a life where I had never once been slapped by a woman, this was the first time I had received a full-swing slap.
‘Crazy……!’
I stood there dazed, one hand covering my cheek. Fortunately, because Sena’s body was so sturdy, the physical damage wasn’t as bad as the way my head had whipped around. My teeth weren’t broken and my lip wasn’t split. It only stung like I had been bitten hard by a mosquito. But the mental shock and sheer absurdity hurt far more than any physical pain.
‘She’s clearly done this more than once or twice. That snap was pure art.’
It had been a ferocious hand worthy of the pinnacle of hysteria. Experiencing firsthand the power of that signature slap she had used to torment the female lead in the original story left me feeling utterly miserable.