The Little Devil's Verdict
After receiving the report that distribution was proceeding smoothly, I set the documents down and looked at Alphonse.
"……There's something I'm curious about, Your Highness."
「 Ask. 」
"I was wondering why you ordered us to craft the magic stones in our own proprietary specifications."
"Are you a fool?"
Midway through writing my answer, Dana, seated beside me, let out a sigh.
"You seem to possess remarkable ingenuity and skilled hands, but…… you have no talent whatsoever for the other side of things."
"Even if we're no longer producing quantities for private sale, the Magic Tower won't exactly be pleased about it."
Artifacts — objects combined with magic stones.
When crafting them, the standard practice was to follow the stone-cutting regulations jointly established by the Magic Towers of each region.
There were three standardized types, determined by the insertion socket of the artifact.
With the shapes fixed this way, you didn't need to buy a whole new object — you simply purchased a replacement stone of the same specification and engraving, and the job was done.
But I had ignored those proprietary standards.
Engraving spells directly onto magic stones was one of the Magic Tower's primary revenue streams, so as Alphonse said, it was bound to ruffle their feathers —
「 I was thinking of the future. Hoarding could occur midway through — no, the stockpiling purchases have probably already begun. And since our stones take a proprietary shape, they're incompatible with every other artifact on the market, so even if the Towers are displeased, they won't lodge an open protest. 」
"Thinking of the future…… in what way?"
"Since it would pain my lord's hand, this girl shall speak in his place."
Dana's tone, so markedly different from the deference she showed me, felt strangely unfamiliar.
"No one may realize it now, but as time passes, the magic stones consumed by artifacts cannot help but dwindle. And after my lord passes from this world, that decline will accelerate far more rapidly. So while it is a pity, the artifacts that have seeped into daily life for private use…… their traces must be erased swiftly. It is only natural that permanent magic stones are released in a form incompatible with them. After all, they are slated to be allotted exclusively to approved buildings from the start."
"Won't the backlash be too severe……? No, perhaps not immediately, but when that time comes, there will be considerable discontent. Especially with so many citizens relying on them to get through the winter."
「 I'm aware of that, which is why I plan a final distribution later, limited strictly to assisting indoor heating. However ample our stockpile may be, if we replaced every consumable stone in all the artifacts currently on the market with permanent ones, it would amount to self-destruction. 」
"Well, if you've considered it this thoroughly, Your Highness, I have no complaints."
Knock knock!
Right at the tail end of the conversation, a knock echoed through the room. Thinking someone had come looking for me specifically, I gave the bell on the desk a light shake, and the butler stepped in, bowing at the waist.
"Your Highness. Princess Aria has returned."
It had definitely been Aria who wrote to say that after entering the Magic Tower located in Duke Altair's former territory, the workload would keep us apart for some time.
And yet she'd returned to my side far sooner than expected.
「 Bring her in. 」
"At once."
Seeing the butler out, I also dismissed Dana and Alphonse, and after a short wait, I was greeted by the sight of Aria walking in, rubbing her weary eyes.
"……You really pushed yourself too hard."
I opened my mouth naturally, investing the words with the power of my Lingual Magic.
"I didn't want to stay cooped up in there any longer."
Aria walked over to me, yawned, then rapped her knee against my thigh twice.
"Knees together. How many times do I have to tell you — read the room."
Perhaps she was simply exhausted, because even with her sharper-than-usual demeanor, I drew my knees together, and she settled comfortably on top of them, burying her head into my chest.
"You worked hard."
The mages who entered the Magic Tower were required to review a set number of magic papers each quarter and submit reports on the experiments and applications they had conducted based on the theoretical contents.
The papers themselves were made public to every Magic Tower across the land, but the results of applying those papers were never shared beyond the mages of the Tower in question.
"……It's only been about a month, hasn't it? And you've already finished the entire quarter's workload?"
"Otherwise I'd have lost my mind and kicked the door down halfway through?"
Well, with talent like hers, I suppose it wasn't impossible.
"By the way — were you dressed like this at the Tower, too?"
"What a strange question."
"It's not strange. I'd say it's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask."
The hem of her skirt wasn't exactly short, but depending on how she sat, it could easily ride up to bare the full length of her thighs.
"It's getting warmer out, and the environment's completely closed off. It's stifling in there."
"That's the first time I've ever heard a mage complain about the weather……"
"Ha."
With a hollow laugh, Aria lifted her head from my chest, looked at me for a moment, then rose slowly and perched herself on the edge of the desk.
Then, wrapping my face in the drape of her skirt, she said:
"Why beat around the bush about your filthy possessiveness? You hate seeing me show skin, don't you?"
"……I wouldn't go so far as to say I like it."
"Don't tell me you actually believed I worked in an outfit like this? That I'd happily let myself become material for my seniors' lewd fantasies?"
"……"
"When work grinds you down, there are days you go unwashed, when you can't tell day from night. So I just lived in whatever was comfortable."
"Then I'm relieved."
"But you can't just swallow your words and let it slide — that'd be too kind of a fate. After suspecting the woman you love of being a shameless harlot at the drop of a hat."
"That's a bit of an exaggerat—"
Or perhaps it wasn't. The look in Aria's eyes as she glared down at me was sharp enough that I obediently buried my face back into the drape of her skirt.
Sarak.
Sarak.
The hand stroking down the back of my head was gentle and soft — so why couldn't I feel it that way? Perhaps it was simply my imagination.
"A man ought to be consistent from birth to grave — anything less is a disgrace. Rohen, if you truly suspected me like that, you should have at least donned your blindfold of self-deception."
"……"
"Rummage up my skirt right here, seize my underclothes and drag them down, and confirm my maidenhood yourself."
"That's……"
"Wouldn't you say that's a rather acute case of jealous husband syndrome?"
Kuk. A faint giggle — the laugh of a little devil — settled against my ear.
"Me? I rather like it. Because I can feel, in full, the affection and obsession for me entangled in that insane jealousy."
"……"
"Do you know? A woman's fantasies are no different from a man's. Filthy and clingy. Sometimes I imagine you interfering with my every move, binding me down to the most trivial details. The way you'd bare that vulgar jealousy over a single word exchanged with a man you'd never met and drag me straight to your bed…… I like that side of you too."
Stretching out both hands, Aria took my cheeks in her grip, made me look up at her, and smiled brightly.
"In any case, by my verdict, you are guilty."
Swift, summary execution — not even a chance to mount a defense.
"Your sentence is life imprisonment. Will you lodge an appeal?"
"……I don't think I will."
"What an obedient model prisoner."
Sliding one hand down to her side, Aria covered the back of my hand where it rested on the desk and began to stroke my fingers.
Then, after tapping idly at the joints of my fingers, she glanced down and murmured:
"Your nails."
"……"
"You've kept them well."
On the surface, it meant nothing — a drifting cloud of a remark, no more than idle mumbling to herself.
But she remembered what had happened at that inn months ago, in the whispering rain, and so I couldn't help reading something unspoken into that flat, careless tone.
"Sly thing."
Had she read the thoughts right off my face?
With a soft snort of laughter, Aria stepped down from the desk she'd been perched on. Her face was full of mischief, looking for all the world like she was about to seize the ear of the man sitting in the chair and give him a proper scolding——
Sureok.
But the little devil before me did no such thing. Instead, she took hold of her own skirt and boldly hiked it up.
Porcelain-white skin.
A darling little navel.
And beneath it, revealed to the light, black panties embroidered with a pattern of roses.
But what seized my gaze most of all was the vivid, unbroken line pressed into the fabric — the plump flesh of her mound filling every inch of it, clinging snugly to the cloth.
Hkk—!
"……"
A surprising amount of force had gathered in the hand gripping Aria's skirt.
For all the boldness of the lewd display, the shame she refused to let show on her face was telling me everything about the embarrassment churning beneath it.
And yet — pulling that skirt back down for her, tidying her clothes, striking a noble pose of chaste restraint all on my own — wouldn't that be the truer insult to her?
Having settled that thought——
Kkuuk.
I extended my index finger.
Pressing firmly down on the plump mound biting into the fabric of her panties, I traced faintly along the subtle seam between them.
"Hik……!"
I knew Aria was no naïve, innocent girl.
Whether from curiosity, or from the natural desire any human being carried — she had surely, at some point, touched herself on the basis of those feelings.
And yet her legs trembled and quivered, accompanied by sweet little moans, as if the touch of my finger were something utterly foreign to her.
Stealthily, carefully, I stroked upward along the slightly parted seam of her mound, and there, at the tip of my finger, I felt it — a shy little bud rising to meet me.
Seuk.
Teasing that spot in gentle circles, toying with the barely parted seam——
Jjeokkeok.
Before long, a lewd sound rippled quietly through the office.
Tilting my head up, I found Aria panting under the pleasure, biting down hard on her lip — whether out of frustration at how practiced my hands were, I couldn't say.
It was thanks to the memories of my past life and the Hundred Ghosts that I was so adept with a woman's body.
It was certainly not something I had learned through Lapis.
'……Not that Aria would see it as anything but a pathetic excuse if I said so.'
The latest possible scheduled point for the Demonic World Tree's resurrection was three years.
She'd said that if our relationship could be officially acknowledged within that window, she would be satisfied.
The wait had swollen to triple the year or so we had originally promised.
She'd claimed this suspended deadlock was, for the moment, not a bad arrangement — framed around the three of us and our tangled bond……
But honestly, wasn't I the only one of us who could afford to wear even a thin veneer of composure about it?
Pok.
"What are you——!"
So I bowed my head and pressed a kiss to her darling navel, and while firmly pinning her startled, jolting hips in place, I drew her panties down.
Jjideok.
With the lewd, elongated trail of that line, the scent of a female luring her male tickled the tip of my nose.
"It's my first time."
A statement with the front and back both generously omitted.
But grasping its meaning wouldn't be difficult.
"Hikkeuk……!"
With the thumbs of both hands I pried her sealed mound apart, baring the pink flesh within without reservation.
The sight of a maiden who had never known a man but me, gasping in ragged breaths as sticky nectar dripped down in fat drops — it was obscene beyond words.
Aria must have sensed my eyes drinking her in, because the hand gripping her skirt reached out toward me——
"Ah……? Ngh……! Kkhik……!"
But I was a step ahead of her. Bowing my head far lower still, I defiled that bared flesh with my tongue, and she jolted in shock, seizing handfuls of my hair.
Her legs quivered like grass in a storm, pitiful and helpless.
Yet her slender body, as if drunk on pleasure it had never once tasted in its life, began to soak my face thoroughly — her body betraying her even as her bewildered mind cried out otherwise.
I'd expected something fishy in taste, but to my surprise there was almost nothing. Instead her scent came through overwhelmingly thick, like I was savoring that distinctive fragrance of hers in its purest form.
"D-don't……!"
Whether she heard the sound of my throat swallowing, or felt the motion of my lips drinking down what dripped from her——
Aria's voice, trembling between dismay and the high cries of a female, grasped my hair roughly.
But she believed every one of my movements had been rehearsed in advance through Lapis.
If I gave her an experience devoted to her and her alone like this, perhaps the anxiety rooted in her heart might fade, even a little.
Before long, Aria's hips jerked and spasmed in convulsive little bucks, and she tried desperately to shove my head away.
But I held her hips fast and refused to let go, and by now she'd forgotten all her shyness — I prodded her swollen bud once with my tongue and pressed my teeth in close——
Jjarang—!
A delicate ringing filled the office to its corners.
The little devil's triumphant swagger was gone without a trace.
Shaking the bell on the desk with the face of a female quivering and gasping in the pleasure of desire — her way of demanding I release her at once, no doubt, since she'd rung for the butler of the main estate……
Kkadeuk.
"Ah……! Ngh……! Nngheuk!"
Unfortunately for her, a single ring was reserved for calls made from this side — anyone answering had to knock first, and when we summoned someone, the bell had to be rung twice.
I had arranged it that way in advance, precisely because there was a chance I might knock the bell by accident while buried in work.
Thanks to which, once I'd had my fill of toying with her swollen bud between my front teeth and finally lifted my head——
Ttok.
Tudung.
Staggering backward on unsteady steps, Aria gripped the desk, shuddered violently, and spilled her pale, murky nectar out as if it were urine.
"Ah……! Aheuk……!"
Head thrown all the way back, displaying her most undone self — somehow, rather than embarrassment, what welled up in me at the sight of her was an overwhelming surge of something achingly dear.
So I rose from my chair, drew Aria gently into my arms, pressed a firm hand against her lower belly, and saw to it that she sank all the deeper into the lingering aftershocks of her peak.
……No. Was that really consideration?
No — it wasn't.
I simply wanted to watch her a little longer, the way she'd become a female in heat inside my arms, so sweetly serving a male's instincts.
Haa……
Haa.
How much time passed like that, I couldn't say.
Gradually regaining her composure in my embrace, Aria forced strength back into her trembling, newborn-calf legs and stood up straight.
And the very first place her eyes went was the floor of the office — stained with lewd patches.
She'd really and truly——
"You are the worst, you know that……"
The familiar invective drifted into my ear.