188. Gradually Rolling Along
188. Gradually Rolling Along
The two Masters opened their eyes in the bed of their mansion located in the capital.
"Ugh... my head..."
"The best in the Empire isn't all that! You're that easy, huh."
It was strange because she distinctly remembered passing out from exhaustion on the third floor of the tavern, yet she came to her senses in the mansion.
And with the clothes they had messily torn off now properly back on, at that.
For a moment she wondered if she'd had some ludicrous dream all by herself, but she quickly grasped the situation thanks to the fact that her twin, Wendy, would never have slept in the same bed as her.
"...That guy, leaving without even saying goodbye..."
"Aren't you thinking it's a relief he left first?"
At Wendy's giggling remark, Linda couldn't even refute it and just pummeled the innocent pillow.
Right now... she was at a loss as to what kind of face she should greet him with.
Whether she should face him as the Captain of the Imperial Knights, or as Linda, the tomboy from the western port.
Unlike Wendy, who had always shown Atlas her bare face, Linda still had many sides she hadn't shown Atlas yet.
"Still, I'm not going to do that again."
"Are you really not going to? Didn't borrowing the power of alcohol help quite a bit?"
"Euk...!"
Her face rapidly flushed bright red.
It was because the events of last night came flooding back.
She had spouted words that would normally be considered incredibly vulgar and mated like a beast.
The Empire's foremost sword, the strongest on the continent, did not exist there.
There was only a single female stripped of all her masks.
"No matter how... still, those... those vulgar words... what if... Atlas sees me as... a loose woman?"
"What useless worries."
If the other knights saw Linda right now, they'd all fall backward in shock.
The always confident and composed Captain of the Imperial Knights was clutching an innocent pillow and pummeling it, thinking about the sexual relations she'd had with her subordinate.
It was the bare face of Linda Westhaven that only came out in front of family.
"This is all... all because of you!"
"What did I do? All I did was give you advice and help because you were having a hard time!"
"It's because you said those vulgar...!! things that I got swept up in the mood!!"
"You enjoyed it, so what. You need to be more honest. You need to have a way to relieve stress too."
It was infuriating, but everything her twin Wendy said was right.
Recently, the stress she'd been piling up had been considerable.
Even though she was said to be the strongest on the continent, that didn't mean she could go around cutting down everyone in her path without a care for the consequences.
Coordinating the opinions of insect-like bastards who would die if she pressed them slightly with a finger, and creating a suitable 'pretext' to smash them down, was an incredibly mentally draining task.
Originally, she relieved accumulating stress by destroying terrain features or something with her sword, but lately, the remote mountains she used to smash had been smashed too thoroughly, to the point of being irreparably damaged.
People who knew nothing saw that and made a huge fuss, saying some god was angry.
This method of stress relief wasn't very healthy for her as a Master.
Because if she struck hard enough to feel somewhat refreshed, most things couldn't withstand it and broke.
So Linda wanted to have a child instead.
Watching people around her start families one by one and raise children, at first she didn't think much of it, but as time went on, she grew envious.
The biggest trigger was when her parents, who had supported her, passed away.
She keenly felt that only she and her twin, Wendy, were left in this world, and she became intensely lonely.
As the foremost sword, Linda, who always had to show a strong front to everyone, was deeply anguished that the family she could show her weakness to had disappeared.
She needed family she could rely on without reserve.
But that didn't mean she could just grab anyone and make them her spouse.
By a Master's standards, finding a 'decent man' was an immensely difficult task.
Linda had quite high standards when it came to judging people.
Around her, the Master of the Empire and its foremost sword, high-ranking and strong men were a dime a dozen, but none of them met her standards.
They were either hopeless idiots with not a shred of thought for the future, smart but with miserly characters, had dirty personalities, were too weak, etc... they all had various problems.
Courting Atlas was absolutely not an impulsive decision.
It was a thought she had harbored for quite a long time.
Atlas came from the prestigious Titan family, had a decent personality, excellent skills, and backbone.
It was hard to find a better match for a spouse than Atlas.
When she first saw Atlas, she hadn't thought that way.
Because he was tiny and had a face full of poison, she'd just treated him like a cute puppy that barked at everyone.
She started seeing him in a different light after Wendy took him under her wing to teach him and made him into a Master.
The poison hadn't disappeared, but his face had grown deeply profound, and seeing him bring and raise a child named Casey let her see a kindness she hadn't seen before.
From then on, it seemed she had kept watching Atlas without even realizing it.
The sight of him struggling and trying his best with his small body to shatter the world's prejudices was incredibly cute and reliable.
It was to the point that she thought if she had a child, she'd want to raise a son like him.
By the time she realized that, Linda had been wanting Atlas.
It was just that, for the sake of her dignity as Captain of the Knights, she hadn't pulled those thoughts out from deep in her heart.
Though that broke immediately when Wendy gave her a slight nudge with the power of alcohol.
"But Wendy, you... seemed pretty experienced... since when have you been doing it...?"
"Did I not tell you?"
"You didn't."
"Hmm... let's see, timing-wise... well, it was probably about 3 months after Atlas became a full member?"
"That's almost right away!! I told you to teach him, and you gobbled up a naive kid?!"
"Whoa... you wouldn't have been able to resist if you'd felt that mood either. How do twins have such similar tastes in men..."
Linda was frustrated that she couldn't refute Wendy's words.
"...Don't tell me... you two, every time you went training or on a mission, you did it?"
"Sometimes we did... sometimes we didn't..."
It seemed they did it to the point it was hard to remember.
"Ah~ well, that's not the important part. What comes next is the important part."
Wendy stroked her own belly.
"We did it that much, don't you think it'll happen?"
"It seems like a child isn't something that happens that easily... but if it doesn't happen, we can just keep doing it until it does, right?"
She was sincere about wanting a child.
--------------------------------------------------
When I returned to the Academy, the sun was rising.
Dawn had definitely been breaking when I left, and I came back as dawn was breaking.
"Ugh... I'll never drink again..."
I didn't even want to remember what happened in that detached room.
The faintly lingering hot heat and vivid sensation made it clear once again that it hadn't just been some midsummer night's dream.
Sincerely, booze is a nemesis.
I did things I'd never normally do and just let the mood carry me, saying 'whatever happens, happens,' but once I came to my senses, a terrible sense of shame washed over me.
It was even worse because I'd had to handle all the cleanup afterward by myself.
The whole way back, after properly dressing everyone and leaving them at the mansion, all sorts of thoughts swirled in my head.
'How do I face them next time... I'm going crazy.'
What kind of face should I make when I see the Director and Teacher next? I could just brush it off as something done under the influence of alcohol, but that felt too uneasy.
If the two of them really get pregnant as they wanted... it felt like my vision was going dark, but let's think about it one thing at a time.
First, if we're only talking about families, my family, Titan, naturally wins by a landslide.
The Director's surname, Westhaven, was a surname newly created when she became a Master, taken from the region where the two were born.
No matter how much a family was founded by a Master, the Titan family, the master of the Blade Mountains feared by all the surrounding nobles, easily wins in terms of sheer weight class.
In that case... would the Director take the Titan surname when she came?
As I walked through the corridor thinking about it, the thoughts branched out uncontrollably, one leading to another, until they came to a stop in front of my room.
"...What's this?"
Someone was inside the room.
I hadn't set up any particularly great security devices, but to have someone breach it already... I need to reinforce it quickly.
Thinking I wouldn't let it slide if someone was rummaging through my things, I entered, only to find Liber sleeping soundly on the bed.
The moment I saw that sight, my confused mind cleared up.
"...Uh... Atlas, you're here?"
"I told you I was going out yesterday. You could've slept in the dormitory, so why'd you come here?"
"Your bed... is better than the dormitory bed, you know. And... I thought you'd be back by the middle of the night..."
He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and then stretched both arms out toward me.
"...."
"Hug me?"
"Yeah..."
It was something I'd learned recently, but when Liber isn't fully awake, he acts cute and clingy in ways he absolutely never would when fully sober.
I sat on the bed, slipped my arms under the armpits of the still half-asleep Liber, and hugged him tight.
I could hear a warm, incredibly soothing heartbeat.
Liber also buried his face in my shoulder and started sniffing my scent.
"Sniff sniff... Atlas, whose smell is this?"
In that instant, a chill ran down my spine.
"I went to the capital and met some other members, did it rub off on me?"
"...Are you sure you only met them? It's really strong..."
It'll be tough, but since he's not fully awake, let's try to talk my way out somehow.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
After putting Liber back to sleep, I stepped out of the bedroom, trembling with a cold sweat.
Even to my own ears, it sounded like I'd spouted confusing nonsense I couldn't make sense of myself, but since he was in a half-asleep daze, Liber quickly fell back asleep.
'He noticed that right away.'
Liber's physical abilities, harboring the Wolf God's Essence in his body, were growing fiercely as if reaching their prime, and it wasn't just his muscle strength that increased; his five senses, like smell and hearing, had also become incredibly sensitive.
'I need to come clean soon.'
I still wasn't mentally prepared and couldn't rashly bring it up, but I at least knew that dragging it out like this wasn't good for either of us.
It was pathetic how I'd rushed in without the slightest hesitation to kill Demon Archbishops, but when it came to talking about women, I became unnecessarily cautious.
When I opened the door, someone was standing in front of the house.
Who on earth could it be at this early hour, I wondered, and it was someone I knew.
"Lucia?"
"...Huh?"
Lucia Russell was standing in front of the main gate, her head deeply bowed.
Just why was she standing there like that?
I hoped she hadn't been standing there all night or something.
"Ah... Atlas??"
"Why are you standing out here? No... since when have you been standing here??"
When I got closer, she wiped tears with her hand.
A bandage was wrapped around Lucia's hand, and her eyes were red and bloodshot.
"I... I... it's nothing. Just... on a morning walk."
Lucia stepped backward, avoiding me as I approached.
I could quickly tell it wasn't just a brief stop, as she'd claimed.
"Come inside first."