Lepahn's All-Out Seduction
Right down to the inexplicable holes cut into the inner thighs of her outfit.
Beholding Commander Lepahn in all her enormous, aggressive glory — a figure who somehow wasn't an exhibitionist like Pashtura, and yet somehow managed to be even more extreme — left me speechless.
And so, standing face-to-face with Lepahn, commander of the Rhodes Mercenary Group, for the very first time, before I could even exchange a proper greeting…
The purest, most instinctive exclamation rose from the depths of my soul and tumbled out of my mouth all on its own.
"Damn, those tits."
"Excuse me?"
"Commander."
"Ah."
The moment the words left my lips, Jessica's voice snapped me back to reality.
Oh, I'm so screwed.
The thought that I'd just tanked my favorability by fifty points right out of the gate sent me spiraling into a private bout of self-loathing — of course my possession life couldn't go smoothly for even five minutes — but that didn't last long.
"Ahem, ahem. Sorry about that. I just… couldn't help myself…"
"Nuhuhu~ Look all you like, Commander. That's exactly why I was elected commander of the Rhodes Mercenary Group in the first place."
"Huh?"
"According to our staff officers, Commander Icarus has a rather well-documented fondness for large breasts."
"…"
"So if our generous patron desires it, looking is just the beginning…"
She pressed her arms together, pushing her already catastrophic chest into even more catastrophic prominence, a flush rising across her face as she continued.
"Holding me — that sort of thing — is perfectly fine too, you know?"
"What."
"…"
Looking at Lepahn like that, I felt… something. Culture shock, maybe. Her approach was a completely different style from anything I'd dealt with so far, and it left me thoroughly disoriented.
But just as the confusion started to set in—
Lepahn, the newly appointed commander of the Rhodes Mercenary Group, was selected by majority vote after her mercenaries conducted a thorough analysis of your preferences.
The reason? An expression of absolute loyalty through a monopoly contract with you.
More precisely: if she can solidify the arrangement by entering a physical relationship with you, all the better. If not, no hard feelings.
Confirming that her behavior wasn't genuine goodwill so much as an event-triggered reaction, I quickly recovered my composure and managed to steer the conversation with Commander Lepahn toward something more constructive.
At any rate — after Oxianor's appearance, then Smeragi and Tiamat, and now yet another shockingly memorable entrance from Commander Lepahn — once our meeting concluded and the mercenary situation was fully resolved, I decided it was time to check on the fortress repairs.
"Jessica, what's the repair status on this fortress?"
"The defense systems are currently about twenty percent restored. Full recovery will take about a week."
"Hmm…"
Hearing Jessica's report, I felt my eyebrow twitch at a recovery pace far slower than expected.
Of course, the person responsible for that "slower than expected recovery" was me — the one who'd ordered indiscriminate bombardment to destroy as many defensive installations as possible. So I kept my mouth shut, determined not to earn a thorough thrashing of my ears from Jessica's rabbit ears for running them unnecessarily.
No — beyond mere silence, continuing this topic at all risked me catching flak. So I promptly spun the conversation in a slightly different direction.
"Alright. Let's drop the defense systems for now."
"Yes, sir."
"What about the gates?"
"Those aren't a major problem. Aside from Gate Three, which was blown out by a battleship's magazine detonation, the rest just need their damaged sections patched."
"Hmm."
"Gate Three is a total write-off, though. And Gate One… a fortress battleship got completely wedged in the entrance while trying to sortie. It's unusable."
"…Ah. That one."
At Jessica's words, I recalled the battleship that had run aground — well, gotten stuck — in the entrance through a freak accident during the battle. It had lodged itself so perfectly that forcing it free was impossible.
"So right now, they're cutting away the entrance section of that gate along with portions of the battleship's bow and stern."
"I see."
"But since they're cutting through battleship armor, that gate will only be able to handle corvettes and smaller craft at best."
"Nothing's ever easy. How long until the remaining gates are operational?"
"Gate Five, which took the least damage, should be done in about three hours. Gates Two and Four will take a day."
I nodded, satisfied.
"Good. Very good."
But Jessica had something more important on her mind.
"Commander, what do you plan to do about the existing defense — well, combat fleets still inside the fortress?"
"Hmm?"
"Those people… maybe because they surrendered without even getting to fight, some of them are openly resentful toward you."
"Resentful?"
No sooner had Jessica finished speaking than a new event message materialized before my eyes.
Through the siege of Avalon Fortress, the fortress and its forces have been reorganized under your command.
However, certain fleet commanders and personnel are displaying open hostility toward the fortress leadership that surrendered so helplessly — and toward you.
For now, it remains mere discontent. Left unchecked, it may grow into a wildfire that consumes the entire fortress.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
And of course it had to be a rebellion-related choice event — with failure rates that were uncomfortably high. For someone with my luck, dumping this on me felt like a deliberate middle finger to the fortress stabilization I'd just finished securing.
But right after that…
A choice that looked suspicious by every possible metric, with one of its effects hidden behind question marks. I found myself wondering just what the hell this was supposed to be.
Post-conquest daily life at the fortress.
After a period of extremely deep contemplation (five seconds), I finally reached a conclusion.
I have no idea what the hidden effect is, but anything that drops the rebellion chance to a flat zero is clearly the most sensible pick.
Unlike the other options — one with a fifty-percent chance of extra costs, another with a twenty-percent chance of the entire fortress erupting into open revolt — a choice that eliminated the rebellion risk at the source was impossible to pass up.
With that settled, I relayed the decision straight to Jessica.
"Send every last one of them to the Nest of Life."
"Uh… are you sure?"
"Obviously."
Then I threw myself into the next item on the agenda: reorganizing the resource fleets.
It didn't take long, however, to discover what those question marks on Choice 3 had been hiding.
It meant sending every single person who'd harbored resistance and defiance toward me straight into Griyanaar's biological experiments as test subjects.
"Commander, what brings me so many test subjects all of a sudden?"
"…"
"Not that I'm complaining, of course."
And what followed wasn't particularly complicated.
Among those "invited" to the Nest of Life, the hardcore rebels were now one with the Nest itself, living lives of even greater fulfillment in our service.
The rest, sorted according to Griyanaar's classification system, either became raw materials (!) for producing chimeras and beast soldiers — or genuine bio-experiment subjects, or got brainwashed and shipped off to forced labor camps.
At any rate, once the rebels had been transformed into former rebels, it was as if the system had been waiting for exactly this moment.