Rust, Assaulting Lady Milione!? #2
Lady Milione.
She had me backed into a corner.
Her enormous breasts pressed against my stomach, softer than anything I had ever felt before.
"What is the meaning of this?"
I asked in a fluster. Milione clicked her tongue, then put some distance between us. She snorted through her nose.
"From the stories, you sounded like a ridiculously fun man. But meeting you in person? I can't even feel the tiniest spark of a flame."
"My heart is filled to overflowing with the flame of the Holy Spirit."
"The fact that you even say crap like that is boring and lame. Honestly, when I heard Psyche had taken a husband, I came here full of expectations. But you're a total dud."
Lady Milione delivered her scathing verdict. Psyche bristled at once.
"My husband Hyde is a fascinating man! He writes the most wonderfully entertaining stories, you know? Milione, you've never even seen anything like them!"
"He writes stories? You mean novels?"
The frown on Milione's face softened into a flicker of interest. As if she had been waiting for exactly that, Psyche produced a book from somewhere.
Backstreet Nymph's Village.
It was the very first fairy tale of my life, the one I had written to show Dihon.
Psyche handed it to Milione and declared,
"It's so good that I've decided to print it at my own expense this time. I'm certain my husband Hyde's name will spread far and wide!"
Her eyes flicked toward the crates the soldiers had carried into the reception room.
"This is what a proper book looks like. Not those blasphemous, filthy pornographic rags! Go on, read it. Then you'll understand just how magnificent my husband Hyde truly is!"
The praise was so lavish I almost felt embarrassed. My heart gave a little flutter.
In my pastoral days, writing a book of faith in my twilight years had been my dream. Now I found myself wondering how Milione, daughter of Archbishop Archibold, would judge a volume that contained the very essence of my faith. Perhaps she would heap praise upon it. After all, both Psyche and Dihon had loved it.
What if she finds it so entertaining she decides to gift a copy to the Archbishop?
Then Archbishop Archibold might take notice of me, drop to his knees and say, "Become my disciple. No—let me become yours. Teach me! And take my daughter as your second wife while you're at it!"
With that hopeful image in mind, I watched Lady Milione read my book for about ten minutes. It was a tense stretch of time.
Then—
Thud.
"Boring. Low-level, childish trash. Especially this 'nymph'—what even is that thing? Weird way of talking, acts like an idiot. Probably just the author projecting himself, right?"
A scathing review. An absolutely crushing one!
I felt as though my body were being ripped open from crown to tailbone. Meanwhile Lady Milione picked up the copy of Gwichukdo she had left open in front of her. She flipped through the pages, lightly biting her lip.
"This is what you call a real book. It's like an axe crashing down on a frozen world. I've never seen language this direct, this scathing. Rust—this man is a genius, no question! Cocks and cunts. How does a human brain even come up with words that crude and vulgar?"
She had savaged my Backstreet Nymph, yet she was elevating the erotic trash that was Gwichukdo. Psyche looked utterly appalled.
"H-how can the daughter of an archbishop use language like that…!? Lady Milione! How vulgar! I want to wash out my ears!"
Psyche's anger was one thing, but I was getting a little angry myself.
How dare she trash the Backstreet Nymph I wrote?
Clearly this girl was far too young to grasp the spiritual essence of my work. So I decided to explain it kindly.
"Lady Milione, Gwichukdo is not a book. It is a mere assemblage of type. Nothing but empty boasting designed to tickle the basest nerves with pleasure. The man behind Rust's mask is surely some worthless coward. That is precisely why he hides his face behind a—"
Bang!
Before I could finish, Lady Milione slammed her fist onto the table. Crack. The reception-room table of House Agarpe split cleanly in two.
"You. Are you saying that some worthless nobody killed the second son of House Archibold? That House Archibold itself is worthless?"
"No—" The second son of Archibold wasn't killed by Rust. He died of shock from blood loss.
But before I could get a word out, Milione pressed on.
"Let me tell you something. Rust is an extraordinary man. The world must never take him lightly. Look at this 'metric system' that appears in Gwichukdo. I've never seen a unit of measurement this spine-chilling."
The metric system. I had put it into Gwichukdo because feet, yards, and pounds still confused me, so I simply used the units I knew.
Milione continued.
"One meter… the standard of that measure is supposedly based on the length of Rust's manhood when it is fully erect, isn't it? Just as the founding king declared his own foot size to be a 'foot,' Rust proclaimed his own system of weights and measures. This is already open rebellion against the kingdom!"
I'm going to lose my mind.
My vision swam.
"…How could any part of the human body possibly reach three feet? It is clearly a lie."
"Not three feet—one meter. And just because yours is small, don't go around belittling other men's. More importantly, were you castrated by the Crescent Moon Sisterhood or something?"
Castrated? I was perfectly healthy. In fact, I was so healthy it was a problem!
Psyche flinched as well.
"C-castrated…? Hyde, was that why you refused to share a bed with me? Hyde, have you… ceased to be a man?"
Tears welled in Psyche's eyes, making them sparkle. She was genuinely worried I might have been castrated. Watching her, Milione frowned.
"Psyche, didn't you swear to live as a chastity fanatic even after marriage? The whole kingdom already knows the stories about 'Virgin Psyche.' So what does it matter if your husband is a castrated eunuch? Wouldn't a eunuch actually be better?"
She had a point. Whether I was a man or not should have been irrelevant to a chastity-obsessed Psyche. Psyche herself looked flustered.
"Th-that's—"
"Hmph, whatever! Anyway, congratulations on the marriage! That crate stuffed full of Gwichukdo is my wedding gift. And I think I'll take a little tour of this territory. Hyde, you're going to show me around."
Me, guide her? Wasn't that usually something same-sex companions did? The verse about men and women keeping pious separation sprang to mind, but Milione spoke first.
"I don't even see you as a man. And even if you went crazy and tried to jump me, you couldn't beat me. I've beaten Psyche in a fight before, you know."
Lady Milione had beaten Psyche? Was that even possible? As I wondered, Psyche scowled.
"That was because you ambushed me like a coward, Milione!"
Even if it had been an ambush, it was still astonishing. Lady Milione was a terrifying person.
"That is said to be the tallest spire in the Agarpe territory. A full four stories high. Quite impressive, is it not?"
"Hmph. The tallest building is only four stories? Lame."
Lady Milione yawned in boredom. She wiped a tear of sheer tedium from the corner of her eye and continued,
"I came expecting something almost on par with the capital. But the Agarpe territory is pure countryside—a dull little backwater with nothing interesting. I almost feel sorry for the people who have to live in a place this boring."
She was trashing the Agarpe lands. I rather liked the place, so my expression soured. Milione spoke again.
"But in this dull, quiet territory, Rust is definitely hiding somewhere."
"……!"
It was a razor-sharp deduction. To possess instincts that keen… Had she somehow extracted my existence from the two books—Backstreet Nymph and Gwichukdo?
No. Absolutely impossible! I had deliberately made the handwriting, style, rhythm, and every minute expression of the two works completely different. There was no way anyone could realize both authors were me!
Yet this world was full of uncertainties—magic and holy power. Had some mysterious Archibold family sorcery already pierced my identity—?
Tense, I carefully asked,
"Why do you believe that man called Rust is hiding in this territory?"
"Huh? You don't even get that? Because I'm here. Because this Milione Archibold is in the Agarpe territory, that man is definitely here too."
…What?
A reason I had never even considered.
"A moron like you wouldn't understand. But according to Gwichukdo, Rust is omniscient and omnipotent. Of course he would have known that I, the daughter of Archibold, would come to this territory."
"Ah—ah?"
"The contents of Gwichukdo are the story of Rust the Beastly Ravisher assaulting and forcibly defiling the most famous women in the kingdom. Doesn't that make it a book of prophecy?"
The contents of Gwichukdo were simply the plot of "Isekai Beastly Cult," the story that had once won me first prize in a contest. A heretical priest protagonist who beds every famous woman in the kingdom—princesses, saints, renowned female knights, the works. In twenty-first-century erotic fiction, if a woman was famous, she had to get railed. That was the trend.
But Milione seemed to have wildly misunderstood it.
A book of prophecy?
"The most famous woman in the kingdom is me, Milione Archibold. So of course Rust wants to assault me, and he's lurking somewhere nearby waiting for his chance."
"……."
"Maybe the reason he so brutally castrated, tortured, and killed Oscar Archibold was because of me? He predicted I would come to the Agarpe territory to claim Oscar's corpse—!"
No. Oscar wasn't killed by Rust. And he wasn't castrated by Rust either.
"Rust… truly a terrifying, dreadful man."
I'm starting to find you even more terrifying, Milione.
Why did I ever think of taking a woman like this as my second wife?
"But well, I've put a bounty of fifty gold coins on him, so he'll be caught soon enough. I really want to see the face behind that mask. What kind of villain's face is he hiding—!"
Fifty gold coins. That was serious money. Bounties that high usually only went to famous heretics from the witches' council Walpurgis or the serial-killer union Psychos. And now one had been placed on Rust, who had merely written some dirty books.
Rust the Beast.
The thought of wanted posters bearing that name once again throwing the kingdom into an uproar made my back itch as if ants were crawling all over it. To push the itch away, I spoke to Milione with deliberate gravity.
"Rust is not in this territory. He is surely a coward who would never even dream of assaulting Lady Milione, daughter of Archibold. We shall protect you."
"Coward? That's a word for someone like you, who hid in a shit-pit because he was scared of dying! Rust is the most fearless man alive. I know! I've already read Gwichukdo hundreds of times!"
So that was why the book was so tattered.
It was time to invent a decent excuse and get away from Milione. If I stayed any longer I felt a hole might open in the top of my head. The digitalis I had gathered for Dihon—by now the medicine made from it should be finished—
I was about to use that as my exit when Milione said,
"As the person who knows Rust better than anyone in the world, I can tell you: Rust is going to attack me tonight. Because there's intelligence that the one called 'Great Sin Seat Las' will raid the territory tonight."
Las was going to raid the territory? Tonight? What on earth was going on?
"According to survivor testimony, Las and Rust formed a team, right? Las will appear, and Rust will use the chaos to appear as well. Then he'll try to assault me!"
It was absurd. Yet the intelligence network of House Archibold was reliable. My vision swam again. At the same time, a question that had been nagging me forced its way out.
"Lady Milione, what happened to the bandages on your hands?"
"Ah, these? Nothing special. Anyway, I'm leaving. Looking at your boring face and listening to your boring talk has made me bored and dull."
With a whirl of her skirts she simply walked off.
Time passed, and evening came. I informed everyone that Las would raid the territory that night and ordered them to tighten security. But that alone would not be enough. If Las truly attacked, countless commoners would die en masse. The Agarpe territory was not yet strong enough to face Las.
"If it's true…"
I have to stop it. There's no one else.
"F-fuck. Lord, please forgive me for becoming a righteous heretic just for today. There really is no other way. No other way—"
I pulled on the mask. Using a trip to the privy as my excuse, I climbed the tallest spire in the Agarpe territory. On the top floor stood a woman wearing a mask.
A woman in a swirl mask.
"Las."
"Rust! What are you doing here?! You really are omniscient and omnipotent just like it says in Gwichukdo! You figured out I was here!"
How the hell would I not know, you bitch!
You always like to look down over a place from the highest point before you raid it!
And in Agarpe, this four-story spire is the tallest building!
And then—
Bounce, bounce.
Height 160 cm. F-cup. Probably around 48 kg. Bandages wrapped around her hands, too. Wounds from crushing Psyche's sword with raw grip strength, no doubt.
"……."
Behind the mask, my eyes swam.
Great Sin Seat Las. My partner in so many crimes, yet a complete unknown whose face I had never seen behind the swirl mask. Only today did I finally feel as though I understood her true identity.
Las… your true identity was Lady Milione!