What Remained
As soon as Regina gave her permission, Conrad spread his legs wide. Beneath him, already slick and wet, clear fluid was running in a steady stream.
Watching the round stain soak through the sheets, a wave seemed to crash over Conrad’s body. Taking Regina’s lips between his own, he dragged his gaze downward.
“……!”
Her insides tingled, and once more a rush of moisture spilled out in a sudden gush. Conrad’s hands grew busy.
Shuddering at the fierce stimulation, Regina tried to close her legs, but the hand gripping her thigh would not allow it.
“No. You can’t work me up like this and then run away.”
The lower lip he had nipped now swelled thick and red.
Conrad, who had not once taken his eyes off Regina’s lips as they gleamed with spit, slowly lowered his face.
Heat slid from her throat, down over her belly, and kept moving lower. When he reached even farther down, Regina panicked and grabbed for his head.
“Regina.”
At the low call, almost a request for permission, her hand flinched and loosened. Conrad, still holding one of her legs, straightened his upper body.
“If you keep this up, I won’t be able to give you mana properly.”
His voice was soft, soothing, and reflexively her tension gave way. Conrad spread her legs wider and pressed his lips to her calf.
Those lips nipped at the tender flesh, leaving marks as they moved lower and lower.
Trailing red impressions along the inside of her thigh, Conrad openly devoured the sight of Regina trembling as she took the stimulation in.
“Ah—!”
When his tongue touched the split in her flesh, fluid surged out with a rush and a moan spilled from Regina’s mouth.
Even Conrad could not hold himself back any longer after that provocative sound.
He licked greedily at her lower body, then at last found the hidden pearl inside and pressed his tongue hard against it.
“Hhng!”
A sobbing moan echoed through the room.
Her body swallowed the thick finger slowly pushing inside with unsettling ease.
When Conrad slipped in a second finger and spread them apart like a pair of shears, moisture dripped down in slow drops.
“Nng!”
He pushed in a third finger through the gap and worked them back and forth, probing deep inside, and Regina bit her lip to stifle a groan.
The heat consuming her whole body left her unable to make a proper sound, and when something blunt brushed the entrance to her body, she instinctively tightened, squeezing around his fingers.
“Thinking of biting my hand off?”
At his quiet murmur, she lost her hold without realizing it, and the fingers slipped free in an instant.
“Ahh!”
With what had filled her so completely gone, the empty entrance twitched in protest.
Conrad, witnessing the wanton little sight in full, could bear it no longer and brought the hard shaft between them to her opening.
Feeling the entrance quiver and take the head of him in, Conrad slowly pushed the thick length inside.
The thoroughly soaked interior swallowed his shaft with a wet, sucking sound.
As her body shuddered and drew at him, Conrad let out a low groan of his own.
“Ugh!”
Regina trembled all over at the sensation of him pulling back slightly at the waist and then easing in again, inch by inch.
The feeling of something burrowing into her lower body was unfamiliar, yet unbearably arousing.
The bedsheet in Regina’s hands crumpled mercilessly, but Conrad showed no mercy and only added more of his weight.
The moment his thick shaft filled Regina completely, she wrapped her arms around his neck.
Her heated breath spilled over his ear, and the inside of her, fully taking him in, tightened desperately around him.
“I told you I couldn’t hold back if you kept stimulating me.”
The hoarse voice that scraped from his throat slid into Regina’s ear.
As the penis filling her so tightly that she could not even move seemed to grow larger still, Regina’s eyes flew wide in shock.
“Ah—hng!”
The sensation of him slowly withdrawing made her whole body tremble on its own.
The rigid length slipped back out to the slick, wet entrance.
The tip of the head pressed shallowly downward, and another moan escaped Regina’s lips.
That thick, round pressure the size of a child’s fist widened her entrance and moved back and forth, and Regina flinched and shook hard.
Trying to endure her own arousal, she clenched her lips shut, the corners of her eyes reddening.
Fire flickered in Regina’s blurred gaze. Seeing it, Conrad’s eyes softened.
“You take it well.”
With a tug at the corner of his mouth, he drove his hips up hard.
“Hah—!”
Conrad bit down hard on her red lips.
Her moan was swallowed into his mouth, and with the heat rising from below, every sense narrowed to that one point.
Conrad’s shaft, buried so deeply it could go no farther, ground mercilessly inside her, and Regina’s legs kicked helplessly in the air.
“……!”
The moan that could not fully escape vanished inside her mouth, and Conrad’s movements only grew rougher.
The bedroom, sunk in darkness, filled with the thick, wet sounds.
The unrestrained, feverish passion did not stop until the next morning.
***
The imperial palace of the Ferman Empire was just as loud as ever, filled with nobles exchanging opinions.
The nobles crowding the council chamber were discussing the current crisis with worried expressions.
“We’ve succeeded in driving all the monsters out of the country, but... our own laborers are now having trouble traveling through the Monster Zone.”
“Then where are we supposed to get mana stones now?”
Mana stones, the core energy source used in magical engineering, had until now been quarried in the Monster Zone or smuggled in from Fredericks.
But with the roads sealed by the Magic Barrier, they were now forced to find an entirely new source of supply.
With the monsters gone and their own lives made safe, they had started to miss what they had lost in the bargain.
“I heard it’s possible to manipulate the magic circles through a special method and briefly open a small passage in the barrier. But even then, only two or three people can pass through, and the cost is significant….”
The noble gave an awkward cough.
The only person who knew how to create a gap in the Magic Barrier was Prince Herais himself.
It was a veiled jab at the fact that he had recently been extorting desperate nobles for mana stones by using this very method as leverage.
Someone shouted that they should simply use mages, but forcing a mage to pour mana into a magical device every single time was truly inefficient.
Then one man rose from his seat and bowed his head toward the emperor.
“Your Majesty.”
“Do you have an opinion as well, Count?”
Count Daniel Wallace.
He was the only Sword Master in the Ferman Empire.
In truth, he was nothing more than an Aura User, but in Ferman, an empire of mages, there was no one capable of exposing the lie, so he could pass himself off as a Sword Master.
Count Wallace was the older brother of the imperial consort, Regina’s mother.
By rights, the family should have been wiped out together when Regina was exiled for the crime of murdering the empress, yet he had allied himself with Herais early on.
Outwardly, it was because he supported the imperial line, but there was another hidden secret beneath that reason.
Because of it, the count was able to survive by entering into collusion with Herais.
“Why not force the mage corps, led by a traitor, into labor? They can use mana, and on top of that, they’re experts in monsters.”
Ferman had developed its civilization by relying on magic. The country simply could not function without mages.
In that sense, Regina’s mage corps, made up of exceptionally talented mages, had served far more than a simple military function.
They were involved in everything from resource supply and technological research to distribution. It was hard to find a single sector of industry their hands had not touched.
The problem was whether they would obediently accept the imperial family’s orders after losing their leader.
The emperor stroked his chin, looking troubled.
“And do you have some good method in mind?”
He had relied on Regina’s mage corps for so much over the years. He had executed Regina out of necessity, but it still rankled a little.
That bastard child had been a criminal who murdered the empress, so she could not be allowed to live, but the mage corps was different, wasn’t it?
There were plenty of talented people there, too valuable to kill outright—especially ones of low birth who could be used well as tools.
“Why not fit them with mana shackles to limit their mana, then assign adequate supervision only while they work and let them use their power then?”
“But each and every one of them is a powerful mage.”
Listening quietly to the exchange between the count and the emperor, Herais felt irritation rising little by little.
He had thought that once that bastard child was removed, he’d be free of all this talk about “exceptional mages.”
Yet his father still relied on Regina’s mage corps and did not even ask for his opinion.
Forcing his expression back into place just as it threatened to crumple, Herais stepped forward.