The Shut-In Brute (2)
"...So you're really saying that girl is your daughter?"
By then, evening had fallen.
Before dinner was even ready, I was already asking Mars about his daughter—the little delinquent—face to face.
When I came back after clearing my head for a bit, things had already been settled, and Rain and the others were resting in the room Mars had prepared for them.
"Yeah. She's my one and only precious child. Even if some accident happened long ago and turned her into that."
Mars said that while cleaning a fish.
She was his darling daughter, so precious he could hold her in the palm of his hand without a second thought; before that old "accident," he said, she'd been a bright, lively kid, not the coward she was now.
An accident, huh? He probably means that.
The delinquent Mares.
Before she was ever called by that name, that was the story of her childhood.
She hadn't been like that until she got caught up in the "portal" of the Grendel Mountains and took on the burden of being its guardian.
But after a god bound her to the name of portal guardian, she could no longer leave the Grendel Mountains by her own free will.
"Even the Great Sages, who supposedly know every truth in the world, said there was no way to get her out of here."
They'd prevented her from becoming another lost soul trapped in the cracks of the world.
...I guess so. Fate itself must have pushed her into that role.
But they couldn't save her.
Now Mares wore an invisible leash.
She couldn't leave this place, and if anyone came here, she had to drive them off whether she wanted to or not.
She had been chosen by the "world" and drawn into it, and in exchange for escaping that rift, she had been made to guard the portal here until the day she died.
The guardian of a portal was chosen directly by the world inside that portal.
The guardian of the portal leading to the Forest of Dawn had been a being created by the Transcendent of Time for the sole purpose of protecting that place from the beginning, but Mares had not.
That was why, being human in her emotions, she must have suffered terribly.
Being sucked into that portal by accident.
Her parents going through all sorts of hardship to save her, and still being trapped here to this day...
Because she thought all of it was her fault, centuries had worn down Mares's emotions, stripped away her social instincts, and now seemed to be eroding even her sense of self.
Finally making some sense of it.
Through Mars, I learned more about the delinquent, and at last I understood why the Mares I knew and the Mares I saw with my own eyes felt so different.
So she wasn't originally that kind of personality.
You could think of it as a sort of mental domination.
A guardian, literally, will do anything to protect the portal.
Against their own will, they are mentally controlled and made to act according to the wishes of the god who created this world.
...And among those methods of control, there were even things that would erode the mind itself—in other words, twist a person's personality.
"I see. What a devoted family man. But may I ask you something?"
"What is it?"
Still, there was something I was curious about.
"If what you say is true, then that delinquent—no, your daughter—should be driving off anyone who approaches this mountain range. We were even attacked ourselves, after all. But why is everything fine now?"
Why, even though I was inside these mountains, wasn't the delinquent charging at me like she usually would, as if she wanted to kill me on sight?
Even more than that, she had reverted to her original personality instead of the one I knew, and the fierce aura and overwhelming force she used to have as a demon king had vanished. The only thing that was the same then and now was that pathetically straight line she called a chest.
Since I'd liked that delinquent character of mine quite a bit—aside from the chest, of course—the shock had been considerable.
"...Strictly speaking, this isn't the Grendel Mountains, so that's probably why. This is the only place where the child my wife created four hundred years ago can keep her sanity and talk to me. I get attacked if I get too close to the mountains, too."
So the reason this temple was safe from the delinquent was that it sat in the only spot within Mars's range of movement where his duty as guardian didn't activate.
"These days it wouldn't matter much since I'm a ghost and blows just pass through me, but when I was alive, I once nearly died after going near her alone without my wife."
"She calms down when your wife is with you?"
"She takes the hits for me. Dragons are sturdy."
"...Well, dragons are sturdy, yeah."
"What about you? Did you marry a dragon too?"
"No, I keep one like a pet."
"That's fine too. Male or female?"
"Female. A red dragon."
"Hmm, red dragons have terrible tempers, so that must be rough."
"If you beat them into shape a bit, their personality improves."
"Oh-ho."
That was why we could talk like this, and why Mares—when she was in her right mind—lived here together with him.
But inviting people here was not easy.
This temple was surrounded by the Grendel Mountains, so you had to be able to survive at least five minutes against the rampaging delinquent if you wanted to get in.
Which was why most people had already run far away by the time they approached, driven off by Mars once he transformed into a guardian.
Without a parent's level of determination, you couldn't make it this far.
"...Honestly, the reason I invited you all here was because I wanted you to have a little conversation with my daughter, even if only for a moment. I don't know exactly who you are, but this is the first time you've crossed the Grendel Mountains head-on, after all."
"So that was it. I thought you were putting a lot of effort into this for something as simple as letting us stay the night."
"I was... Still, of all things, my daughter had to be the one... Haah."
"Is something else bothering you?"
"No, nothing. It's just a very personal matter, so you needn't worry about it."
Anyway, I had more or less cleared up everything I was curious about.
That sigh Mars let out at the end bothered me a little, but since he'd said it was a personal matter, I decided not to pry.
Still, I am curious.
At least there was one good thing: I was able to learn why Mars had been like that sooner than I expected.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
That night.
Deep darkness fell, and the castle sank into silence.
-Thud.
《 ~Danger Stage~ Sabna Royal Palace, King's Chamber 》
The sound of heavy footsteps rang out.
It meant the king had once again gone to visit that one today.
The king of the beastman kingdom.
The Beast King, said to be the strongest of all beastmen.
【 King of Beasts 'Nemea' - Lv.380(★) 】
Nemea staggered toward the bedroom, one hand pressed to his forehead.
"Grrrrr..."
The headache was brutal.
It felt as though his skull were spinning around and around, and the pain kept pounding at him like he'd spent the previous night drinking himself stupid.
Staying like this would drain a tremendous amount of mental strength, and if he used up all of it, he might lose his reason altogether.
If that happened, he'd collapse unconscious.
He thought he should sleep.
If he slept beside that one, beside the most beautiful being in the world, he would recover in no time.
-Creeeeak!
He opened the door.
"Ugh...?"
But something was strange.
"Where... where are you..."
The one who should have been waiting for him here, the one who always greeted him from the bed, was nowhere to be seen.
Had she disappeared? Or had she abandoned him?
Not being able to see her was terrifying to Nemea, and more than that, it was something that should never have happened.
"Where are you! Where are you...!"
And yet there was no sign of her.
She wasn't anywhere, no matter how hard he looked.
-GRAAAAWN!!!
So Nemea let out a great roar that shook the surroundings to their core. The roar of a giant lion kept spreading, as if it would swallow the entire castle whole.
Then, all at once, it stopped.
-Rustle
"...Oh? Were you looking for me, Nemea?"
"Where are you! Where are you speaking from!"
A girl's clear voice came from behind Nemea.
At the sound of that calm, fresh voice, Nemea stopped roaring and hurriedly began searching for her.
-Tap.
"I'm here, Nemea."
And then he felt a soft touch as a luscious thigh settled onto the shoulder of his massive frame.
...It was hers.
Next came glossy black hair draped over Nemea's mane, and her generous breasts brushed against his face. That softness—that was hers.
That woman... no, she was truly beautiful.
Skin as white as snow, a color unheard of among beastmen, and the smooth stomach visible through the gaps in her clothing made him want to lick it without even thinking.
-KWOOM!
"Grrr..."
In the end, Nemea couldn't resist the temptation and threw her onto the bed.
The pitiful sight of that figure being cast aside—no, of her being thrown.
It was exactly the same as the "her" Nemea had encountered in childhood so long ago.
Hundreds of years had passed since then, but aside from her breasts having grown a little larger, she hadn't changed at all.
She was still exactly the same as the woman he respected and longed for.
-RIP! RIIIP!
"Ahh..."
Nemea looked at the scraps of cloth covering her breasts and the secret place below her belly, then tore them apart like a beast.
The black-haired woman shrank back as if embarrassed.
But pulling in her limbs could hardly hide that voluptuous body.
-Plop, plop, plop
At last, the sticky saliva dripping from Nemea as he stared at her began to soak her body little by little.
He was soiling her body.
To stain the body of the one he loved so deeply, the one he admired so deeply, with his own hands...
It stirred up a kind of unbearable sense of betrayal.
As he pounced on the woman, Nemea's lower body stiffened, and the huge thing between his legs was as thick as her waist, its length stretching from below his belly all the way up to where her breasts were.
The shadow of that thick pillar covered the woman's body.
"Oh, how violent... Did you miss me that much?"
The woman blushed faintly as she said it.
"Grrr... My head... hurts... L-like then... Heal me again..."
He really was a beast—no, one could call him a beast without any exaggeration. He possessed the wildness worthy of the title King of the Beastmen.
Seeing that, the woman thought that even if she was a demon, taking on something like that would be hard indeed.
"Heehee... Is that so? It certainly looks that way."
Even so, she smiled seductively.
White horns sprouted from her head.
Between her plump buttocks, a black tail swayed side to side, and the woman used it to hide the intimate place between her legs.
It was all to entice Nemea before her eyes.
He was the Beast King, the king of beasts, and though he possessed tremendous power and an influential faction that made him indispensable to her "plan," controlling him required considerable care and mental manipulation.
...Even then, after some time, he would still turn into a beast and throw himself at her like this.
But that was fine.
On the contrary, the savage vitality he possessed became her strength.
"...Looks like I won't be sleeping peacefully again tonight. The treatment's going to take quite a while."
【 Seven Great Demons, Succubus '???' - Lv.??? 】
That was possible thanks to the woman's true identity: one of the seven great demons of the Demon Realm, a female nightmare called a succubus.
Thanks to that, she could even accept something that enormous.
"Grrr!"
Unable to hold back any longer, Nemea pounced on the woman.
"Ah...!"
-Creak!
At once, the woman's body trembled with a moan and her breasts shook violently; then she wrapped both legs around Nemea and began shaking without even a moment's rest.
That "treatment" continued for dozens of hours without a break, and when it was finally over, the woman let out a deep sigh and let her legs fall limply.
Her golden eyes had already rolled back so only the whites showed, and from her pink lips she drooled faintly while bobbing her head weakly.
"Grrrr..."
But even though the treatment was over, Nemea, king of the beastmen, was not satisfied.
"Grrrrr...!"
The lion's face he wore bared its fangs.
Beastmen and beasts were different, and yet the same.
No one knew where their origins truly began, but most beastmen inherited the habits of the beast mixed into their bodies.
And the mating of lions ended in thirty seconds.
It was also said that a lion did that as many as five hundred times in a single week.
The same was true for Nemea, the lion beastman.
Even if the succubus had lost consciousness, even if she had fainted so completely she couldn't move a single finger, it still wouldn't be over.
-Creak! Creak!
The squeaking sounds from the king's chambers did not stop.
They went on even after a whole day had passed, and only after he had spent about forty full hours in there did Nemea finally emerge, satisfied.