The Hero's Lawful Wife, Mandarin (5)
Darin's head swam beneath a rising tide of pain.
What had she done so wrong to deserve treatment like this?
Her wishes as a woman had never been extravagant. Bury the wounds her husband had left her, and spend whatever years remained meeting her children—and the children those children would one day bear—from time to time, welcoming a quiet twilight in peace.
It had been the humble dream of a woman without a shred of greed.
Had even that been too much for her to hope for?
Only last month she had believed without a doubt that such a dream would come true…
"I prefer an obedient woman."
But what on earth was this situation she found herself in?
— Clack.
The sound of the man undoing the metal belt at his waist was so revolting it went past mere chills. That a beast who had met her all of three times would already try to bare his lower half before her was enough to make bile rise in Darin's throat.
"Why—why are you doing this!? How can a person change their attitude this completely in an instant!"
Her voice was desperately urgent. She was certain that if she truly joined bodies with this man, something inside her heart would crack. Through conversation alone, she wanted—if only for this moment—to escape the danger.
"You spread your legs for another man, yet you throw up an absurd iron wall against the one person who actually shares common ground with you. That doesn't make any sense, does it?"
"Of course it does! Even if you and I share a past life, we've only met three times—barely three times! What kind of woman opens her heart over something that small!?"
"What kind of woman opens her heart? Aside from you and a rare few others, most women have granted me their hearts at once."
"That's them—don't you dare judge me by the handful of people you've happened to meet!"
Darin's answer was the obvious one. Certainly the noble girls who idolized the Hero at social gatherings, or commoners whose barriers around sex sat low, might find their bodies stirring at a mere glance from a handsome blond Hero.
But she had never been that kind of woman. Before her son had forced himself on her, she had been a lady who had guarded her chastity and fidelity for more than twenty years—a mother of two. Beyond simple revulsion, the reasons she must not enter into a relationship with this man overflowed.
Clink, clink. Even as he spilled worthless excuses from that vile mouth of his, the hands undoing his belt never stopped. He looked as though he had long since lost his mind to the need to possess the vermilion-haired woman before him.
Darin decided to think of it this way.
And she was probably right.
The woman he had liked had turned out not to be a virgin—and to a man obsessed with virginity, such a woman was no longer someone to be sexually respected.
A man's lust and a man's consideration were entirely separate columns, after all.
Ah… what is this… Why is this happening to me?
A vast emotion—whether terror or sorrow, she could not tell—began to swallow the girl whole. To some women this might have been a simple matter of offering their body once and being done with it. But to Darin, whose chastity ran bone-deep, the fact that she would have to increase the number of men she had known was nothing short of catastrophe.
"Uuuugh!!!"
Then the thrashing of a creature fighting for survival began. Darin started gathering her energy toward the man undressing at a distance, and with a scream wrenched from the depths of her strength—her face flushing red—she wrung mana into both hands.
"O tangerines, grant me your power!"
As Darin cried out with fury packed into every syllable, a dazzling vermilion magic circle—incomparable to anything she had drawn before—etched itself beneath her feet. A scarlet aura more intense even than when she had fired magic at Kael drifted through the bedchamber.
"Darin…?"
The Hero looked at the girl with a puzzled expression, somewhat startled that she could wield magic so splendid.
But what good was regret now? The Viscountess had already long since lost her eyes to wrath.
"You rapist!"
With a fragile voice thick with resentment, the magic circle shuddered as though struck by an earthquake. Perhaps because she had just slept, her mana reserves seemed fairly full. The vermilion aura pouring from both her eyes blazed with fierce light.
"Tan—ge—rine—En—er—gy!!!"
⟨ Fire! ⟩
A chilling chant rang through the private chamber again and again—and with that final cry, orange light burst from both her hands.
— Ziiing!
A beam of energy thick with searing heat struck the defenseless Hero dead-on!
— Splurch-splurch-splat!
Bubbling orange energy slammed mercilessly into the man's face. And then, almost at once, liquids began streaming toward the floor.
— Pat-pat-patter.
It was tangerine juice.
— Fsssshhh…
Warm steam curled up in lazy ribbons from the juice spilled across the floor. It looked hot enough to scald; lower the temperature a touch and one could have opened an event bath that would draw crowds of guests.
"Da—Darin, what is this…?"
The Hero wore an expression of genuine bafflement, but the woman who had cast the spell remained utterly solemn.
"Haa… haa…"
Hot breath churned inside her mouth. She had unleashed a finishing technique that surpassed even Tangerine Meteor, and most of her mana had been drained dry.
Ah… it didn't do a thing…?
Despair painted itself across the girl's face. It was a powerful spell that would leave an ordinary person with low-temperature burns needing a full three hours to heal—and yet, as expected of a Hero, it had not landed in the slightest.
No. I can still do more…!
But if she gave up here, she would be raped without escape. Even knowing the effect was negligible, Darin had no choice but to keep resisting. In this sealed room, no other option existed.
She sincerely did not want to spread her legs for Lucas. Her sexual preference did lean toward men, and Lucas was a man as handsome as her own son—yet strangely, nothing in her stirred at all.
If she were raped in this state, she would spend the time in nothing but hideous pain, dry and unready.
Darin wondered. Had she, as a woman, already been physically conquered by the men of the Bayorn family? Why, in a moment like this, did Kael's face keep rising in her mind? At any rate…
"Uwaaah!"
Darin let out a wretched cry, clenched both hands into fists, and wrung out what mana remained. An orange magic circle began to rise once more.
To others it might have looked like a little girl's antics. But she was burning with fighting spirit more earnestly than she ever had in her life.
⟨ Double Mandarinire Ball ⟩
The scream of a girl desperate to escape the threat of rape rang through the bedchamber once more.
— Pong! Pong!
Two vermilion objects fired from her hands.
— Swaaash!
Ultra-high-speed orange spheres approaching three hundred kilometers an hour. The two orbs sliced the air as they flew straight for the Hero's chest on either side.
— Thwack! Splat!
Once again her magic struck its target with perfect aim. Two lumps then dropped toward the tangerine juice already sprawled across the floor.
— Thud-thud.
They were two tangerines.
Because the spell had been packed with even more output than when she had used it on Kael, the tangerines were not merely steaming—they were scorched black…
"……"
And yet even this effort had been too much to ask against a Hero. Outwardly, Lucas did not appear to have taken a single injury. He simply stared down at his half-naked, tangerine-drenched body with dazed eyes.
"…What do you think you're doing?"
Kael would have recognized it at once as his mother's usual antics and welcomed it warmly. He would have topped the boiling tangerine juice with the hot fruit and soothed his hunger besides.
But Lucas had passed beyond disbelief into outright offense. That she had burned through her mana until her body was wrecked could only mean one thing: she wanted that badly not to have sex with him.
Even a princess had never thrown a fit this deranged to push him away. For a man of blood superior to anyone else's to be met with rejection this absolute was an enormous humiliation.
"Huu… huup…"
But the girl could not even answer; her mana had bottomed out, and she could barely manage her own breathing. From the magic she had squandered far beyond necessity, her body felt heavy as a waterlogged sponge.
Before long, muscle pain drew her whole frame tight. And whether the fierce coupling with her son had yet to heal, the space between her thighs began to ache.
Realizing that magic fired at full power had not worked at all, the girl's body locked rigid with terror and tension. It was a truly pitiful sight—but the man, blood rushing to his head with rage and to his lower body with arousal, no longer had any intention of showing mercy.
"Originally, I planned to join bodies with you first, and then pay a visit to House Bayorn…"
To Lucas's eyes, she seemed to have lost all respect and affection toward him. She looked in urgent need of training, so that attachment to her husband might properly take root.
"I've changed my mind."
But the true punishment for this was clearly not sex. For reasons he could not quite name, Darin seemed to want to return to the arms of Kael—the very man who had raped her. Enough to resist Lucas this fiercely.
Then if he simply erased the man, would he not become the arms she fell into instead? At first she would surely resent him—but a fragile woman like Darin was fated to lean on a man to survive. In the end she would fall to him.
Besides, his whole body was already soaked in juice and the mood was thoroughly ruined. There was no reason not to act at once.
"I'll have to tear Akael apart first. Once that's done, you might look at me a little more kindly."
A beggarly barbarian like that could be reduced to rags in a single morning. Ruining Darin's cunt for the sake of training could wait until afterward; there would be time enough.
But the trembling woman was thinking not of her own safety, but of her son. The words Lucas had just spoken had carved themselves clearly into her ears.
I'll have to tear Akael apart.
The moment the Viscountess heard that, her eyes flew wide—so startled that even the terror that had been devouring her until a moment ago seemed to evaporate somewhere.
"W-wait! What are you talking about?"
She opened her mouth in a frantic voice without even finishing the recovery of her breath; the urgency was plain. But from Darin's position, she could hardly have done otherwise.
No matter that he had taken her—Kael was her son, her first flesh and blood. The treasure of treasures who had become the first friend in a life spent alone. One way or another, that he was more precious than her own life was only natural.
"Exactly what I said. In order to make you entirely mine."
Yet the expression on the man delivering a death notice against her own blood was so calm it was chilling.
"I mean I will tear that worm called Akael Bayern apart and kill him."
As casually as if he were simply clearing away an obstacle.