So I Have to Fight a Catfight Now?
A catfight? I have to do a catfight?
"How many times did I tell you not to wash together? Didn't I say it over and over?"
"But you two were the ones who taught me that a man must never hold back when the situation calls for it!"
Once we were reminded that people were waiting outside, we hurriedly dried ourselves off and headed for the reception room.
Three women were already seated on the sofa, waiting for us.
"How did the three of you even get in here?"
"Lady Estelle said something felt off, and the moment we stepped outside, we found ourselves coming right back in."
The Saintess explained how they had ended up returning.
"You stepped outside and immediately came back in?"
Watching her nod and answer as if there wasn't a single shred of a lie in it, I found myself at a loss for words. Something was wrong here. As far as I knew, once they left, Vincent and I had spent quite a long time in the bathroom—and yet they'd come back the instant they stepped out?
My spiraling thoughts were cut short by Lady Estelle's furious outburst, which bore down on Vincent and smacked the back of my head along the way.
"I told you to use that on me! Why on earth did you go try that stuff on some random woman instead? The two of you twisted time itself and just cuddled away in there—did that feel good to you?!"
"Who else would I use it on besides my wife? Stop spouting nonsense."
You too?!
Between the splitting headache and the bone-deep exhaustion, I wanted nothing more than to lie back down again.
"You look unwell. Please, lie down. Your body is in no condition to be up and about yet."
For some reason, the angelic smile on her face felt vaguely ominous.
"Adela, are you okay?"
Vincent, who had been bickering with Lady Estelle, dropped the argument entirely the moment he heard I felt dizzy and rushed over to me.
Lady Estelle, suddenly ignored, grabbed hold of him.
"Running away again the second things get inconvenient? We were in the middle of a conversation! Hey, let go of me!"
Vincent yanked her off him, dragged her around in front of me instead, and asked,
"Adela, are you all right?"
His face said he was worried about me more than anyone else in the world, while Lady Estelle—dragged over by the wrist against her will—had cheeks and ears flushed a deeper red than her hair.
Oh, honestly. Anyone who saw that reaction would reach exactly one conclusion: the young lady was in love with Vincent the Hero.
"Vincent, you can't just go dragging people around like that. It's rude."
When I gently chided him, he looked me in the eye, said he understood, and smiled.
The sight dredged up old memories, and before I knew it, my hand was reaching toward the head that now stood taller than my own. Vincent, clearly delighted by the touch, lowered his head to make it easier for me to pat.
Watching the two of us like that, the Saintess's cheeks colored faintly, and she spoke up.
"You two look... lovely together."
Her Holiness Kiara, unable to meet my eyes, stammered out a question about what had happened in the bath.
"D-did you... really do, um... that... inside the bathroom?!"
I suppose even the Saintess of the Holy Kingdom has no immunity to this sort of thing.
"H-Her Holiness... that is, well..."
"Kiara, why would you even ask that! A man and a woman go into the bath together and spend an enormous amount of time in there—that says everything already!"
When I failed to produce an answer, Lady Estelle seized on it and flared up all over again.
It occurred to me that she might be disillusioned by Vincent's promiscuous escapades, so I stole a glance at the Saintess's face—and to my astonishment, her cheeks were blazing red, hope written plain as day across her features.
"Sir Hero, um... I'd like to do that kind of thing too, if that would be possible?"
I'm sorry, what?
What on earth is wrong with this woman?
"No. Absolutely not. I'm only ever doing that with Adela, my wife. Actually, wait—you're the Saintess. Should you even be saying that?"
If anything, it was Vincent calling her out.
My dizziness tipped over into vertigo. This—this was...! So the reason Vincent came back after so long with his knowledge of the flesh warped in the strangest directions, only to assault his master of old at their reunion, was because these women had stained him?!
I wrapped my arms around Vincent's head, pulled him into my chest, and radiated enough menace to block their approach at the source.
"Oh my. Has the true wife finally awakened to a sense of crisis?"
"That's too cruel! We love Sir Hero too, you know!"
They kept coming anyway, utterly shameless.
"S-stay back! I will not allow you to have any more of a bad influence on Vincent!"
Apparently even my warnings didn't scare them in the slightest.
Off to one side, I caught sight of the Princess, a step apart from the rest, turning her head away and feigning indifference.
Yes—of course. If anyone could hold these women back, it would be Her Imperial Highness.
She had gone so far as to propose marriage to Vincent, so a situation like this could hardly be to her liking. And a woman as scrupulous as she was about principles and propriety could surely reprimand these deviants for their outrageous nonsense.
"Your Highness! Say something about this situation, please! Didn't you propose to Vincent yourself?"
"You're asking Emily that? Right now? Good luck."
At Lady Estelle's oddly confident attitude, I grew suspicious and called out to Princess Emily, checking her face.
"Your Highness?"
At my call, the Princess flinched, and at last her firmly sealed lips parted.
"I-I also like the Hero... n-no, V-Vincent. As do Lady Estelle and Her Holiness Kiara, who are all here."
The Princess's face flushed so deep red it looked ready to burst.
"A-and I have no intention of giving up the position of true wife to anyone!"
It sounded very much like a case of well, I've already said this much, damn it all.
Hold on. So all three women here—every single one of them—is after Vincent?!
"Vincent, you... you had women who actually liked you, and you still did that to me?"
"There's only ever been you... Adela. Only you."
Looking around at the women gathered here, any one of them possessed beauty so breathtaking you'd believe a god had descended and sculpted her personally—each radiant in her own way. And their positions were no less extraordinary: the sole Princess cherished by the Emperor of the Empire; the daughter and heir of the chairwoman of the Assembly and Mistress of the Mage Tower, the rising powerhouse of the Republic; and finally, the Saintess, who held even more influence than the Pope herself in the Holy Kingdom.
And even with women like these openly throwing themselves at him, he'd brushed them all off, come straight to me the moment the Demon King's subjugation ended, and done that?
"Dizzy" doesn't begin to cover it. I wanted to smack the head of that accursed disciple of mine, the one currently burrowing his nose into my chest and kneading my breasts. And the grinning faces of those women crowding around me could stand to take a few hits too, if only to vent my anger.
My internal energy, lost when my demonization progressed, had been painstakingly rebuilt through years of fresh training—and I'd burned through all of it two days ago beating Vincent senseless. But now, I figured it might be safe to rouse the demonic qi sleeping in my dantian after all.
The women, sensing the shift in my mood, quietly backed away, and only Vincent remained at my side, calling my name.
"Adela...?"
In the end, the whole affair concluded with me coughing up blood, my meridians tangled as the demonic qi—having awakened straight into the Hworma acupoint—raged out of control.
"I'm sorry, Adela."
The moment I vomited blood from my mouth, Vincent rushed over, pale as death, and begged forgiveness, insisting the fault was entirely his.
Her Holiness Kiara and Lady Estelle examined my body and each offered their diagnosis.
"The demonic qi in your body is quite unusual, Miss Adela."
"Unusual is putting it mildly. At this point I wonder if it even counts as demonic qi."
"Even in my experience, I've never encountered qi of this nature."
Their conclusion was this: I had been cursed with demonization and transformed into a demon, and my body simply refused to accept conventional demonic qi.
"Demonic qi rejecting other demonic qi instead of devouring and absorbing it? My, this is dissertation material."
"Academic curiosity is all well and good, Lady Estelle, but please prioritize Miss Adela's health."
"I know. I said I know."
Apparently, the demonic qi I carried possessed properties radically different from what ordinary demons used, and when my body transformed into that of a demon, it triggered a violent rejection response. When I gave them a brief explanation of the principles behind the Heavenly Demon Divine Art, I was branded a madwoman of the ages—a lunatic who absorbed mana through her own flesh and refined it into demonic qi.
"Why on earth would you force mana into your body and convert it to demonic qi? That seems terribly inefficient."
"So you truly could wield demonic qi. They did say you were the Hero's master."
Their explanation went something like this: for years, my half-demon body couldn't even absorb the demonic qi stored in my dantian, and when it tried to draw in demonic qi generated naturally by other means, the qi rooted in my body rejected the impure, low-grade stuff—leaving me in a state of near-forced fasting.
"Think of it as malnutrition, in human terms."
"Among knights, there are cases where mana runs dry and one collapses from exhaustion. It is much the same."
So that was why neither meals nor rest had done anything to restore me.
The one mercy, they said, was that during our union with Vincent, our demonic qi had mingled the way dual cultivation arts blended energies—and the qi released in the process agreed wonderfully with my body. With every act of intimacy I shared with him, my condition would improve.
The problem was that I'd just lost my last pretext for rationing out our nights together. I'd been planning to beg off, citing my frail health as an excuse to reduce how often he visited my bed—and now that the truth was out, Vincent was grinning from ear to ear.
Please, for the love of everything, show some restraint.
The women who'd reached this conclusion were all wearing remarkably sour expressions. The more Vincent glowed with anticipation at the prospect of bedding me, the more irritation seeped into their faces.
Well, fair enough. Even I—if the person I loved were rutting with another woman morning, noon, and night, and getting aroused this very second just thinking about it—I couldn't imagine a filthier feeling than that.
Oh, what a mess.
Even back in my previous life, before all of this, there'd been a companion in our party who carted around a whole string of lovers, and I'd watched the women's quiet wars up close. They say if you get dragged into a war between women, you learn what hell tastes like—and this time, I've been conscripted into one.