11. Ventorino Kingdom - Seeds of Discord (5)
Press.
"Eek! ...Hah, haa... Huh? W-what is this...♡"
"This is Your Majesty the Queen's womb."
"My... womb?"
She knew perfectly well what a womb was. What she couldn't understand was the strange, prickling sensation spreading through her lower abdomen. How could being pressed there so firmly produce this kind of pleasure, from a place that wasn't even a pleasure point? It made no sense at all.
Even the simple touch of his hand made her burn and throb more fiercely than if some other part of her body had been handled. Not even if he had touched her breasts would she have felt quite this way. In fact, she had never felt anything like this during sex with her husband. And yet here she was, trembling and gasping beneath the hand of a boy who was not her husband, with his fingers kneading her lower belly.
"Haa... ahh, ahn...!"
Valdes's finger pressed down on her lower abdomen again.
This time it went deeper than before.
The soft, slightly protruding flesh of her belly sank inward beneath the pressure. Unless he pressed with considerable force, his finger would never actually reach her womb, but it hardly mattered. This was enough.
It's working better than I'd expected.
A few weeks earlier, just before he had parted from Mercedes and Mari in front of the royal palace, Valdes had given them one more order. He had told them to keep feeding a certain medicine to Queen Katarina and Princess Clara.
The method didn't matter. They could slip it into tea or hide it in food. He had only asked that they do it at least once every two days, and the two princesses had obediently carried out his command.
What the sisters had given the women of Ventorino was a pill Valdes had specially prepared with magic. It wasn't an aphrodisiac. Its only purpose was to store his mana inside the body of whoever swallowed it.
Anyone especially sensitive to mana, or of high enough cultivation, would have noticed it. But neither Katarina nor Clara was on that level. The queen was a mage, but only an ordinary one, and Clara had never learned magic or swordsmanship at all.
Using the mana that had gradually accumulated in their bodies, Valdes now intended to carve a Stigma mark.
At this point, I should be able to do it with far less suspicion.
His Stigma magic was so effective it could almost be called unfair, but it had a few drawbacks.
Because it drew a tattoo in mana directly over the womb, it required the target's consent, and during the process they would feel intense pleasure. In other words, it could only be inscribed on someone he had already broken, subjugated, or trained, whether mentally or physically. That was why he had once disguised it as contract magic when dealing with Ethylene.
To eliminate those flaws, Valdes had continued researching, and one of the results was this pill.
Rather than sending mana out from his fingertips, he could move the mana already stored in the other person's body and use it to inscribe the Stigma. That allowed him to ignore the target's resistance to magic and forcibly carve the mark without asking permission.
He couldn't completely remove the pleasure in the middle of the process, but he could lessen it to some extent. In other words, he no longer had to drive them to climax no matter what.
Wooooong—
A much fainter light than before rose from Valdes's finger and flowed toward Katarina's lower abdomen. To make the gesture seem as harmless as possible, he had first led into this with his words.
"If you keep pressing the womb like this, you can learn something interesting."
"Hah... something... interesting?"
"Yes."
After pressing her lower belly a few more times, Valdes spoke again.
"It's been quite a while since you last had sex, hasn't it?"
"?! "
"I've heard you sleep with your husband once a week, but I guess that's not happening anymore?"
"...I-it!"
"And I also heard you were rather free with your affections. That's amusing."
"......"
Katarina's face turned bright red.
H-how... how did he know...?
The first part she could perhaps accept. It was well known that the king and queen did not exactly have a loving marriage. There had even been vague rumors, the kind that passed around as half-gossip and half-truth, that each of them had affairs on the side. He might have simply been throwing out a guess. But the latter... it felt too unnervingly accurate to be a blind shot in the dark.
And then his next words drove the nail in deeper.
"Hmm... roughly... five years? No, seven? ...Ah. About six years, then."
"Hah...!"
He... he got it right...?
Just as he had said, the last time she had shared a bed with her husband had been six years ago. And even that had only happened because he had been drunk out of his mind and forced himself on her first.
Chills ran up her spine.
He can really tell that just by pressing on my womb...?
In reality, he had merely pieced it together from information he had already gathered, gossip from the royal servants, and the way her expression kept changing. But Katarina was in no state to realize that now.
"Even back then, he doesn't seem to have used it much. And on top of that..."
"Ahh...!"
As the hidden circumstances of her private life were laid bare, an involuntary groan escaped her lips in a wave of shame.
"It must have been small. Your womb still doesn't know the taste of a real man."
"......"
At Valdes's lewd chuckle, Katarina's body twitched.
It wasn't as blatant as before, but it was still more than enough to keep her cheeks burning.
How big was his again...?
Without realizing it, she began to picture her husband's manhood in her mind.
The last time she'd seen it had been six years ago. She couldn't remember clearly. Maybe that was why Valdes's words felt so convincing. She was sure she'd felt pleasure during those nights with her husband, but it had never been like this — never like when Valdes kissed her and fondled her body with those shameless hands.
As Katarina truly began searching her memory, he smiled. Even with his seduction magic working steadily, she was more shaken than he'd expected. Perhaps today he could make a serious crack in her composure.
"Why don't you compare them?"
"Wh-what...?! "
She gasped when he suddenly seized her wrist and guided her hand downward. Then she was shocked all over again by the enormous mass she felt through his trousers.
I-it was that small...?
Unconsciously comparing it to the husband from her distorted memory, she swallowed hard.
In truth, Marc's tool had been above average, but because she was thinking back to something so long ago while standing here with Valdes's overwhelmingly large manhood in her hand, her perception had been warped. And curiosity crept in. What would it feel like to take something like this into her body?
W-what am I thinking...!
"You're curious, aren't you?"
"!!"
"Everyone makes the same face you are right now. And then... they start panting in satisfaction."
"Haa..."
His sweet voice brushed against her ear. It was slick and seductive enough to make one believe it carried demon blood. She was getting used to the pleasure, or perhaps that was why she was making fewer noises than before, and she could just about endure it now, but her body was still hot. Hot enough that she worried he might simply drag her straight to the bed.
But that worry became pointless.
"I'll head back for today."
"...Huh?"
"Let's take our time and enjoy this properly. The queen and the half-demon... having a secret affair."
"Hah...!"
The moment Valdes vanished, Katarina collapsed to the floor and drew in ragged breaths. Compared to everything that had happened throughout the day, those few moments just now had been more exhausting than all of it put together.
And yet, at the same time, she had enjoyed it.
"An affair. Was it really adultery...?"
The queen lifted her hand and looked down at the bandage wrapped around her finger. Not long ago she had only just taken off the bandage she had worn over the cut on her palm, and now she was already binding it again. Every time she looked at this bandage, she would probably remember the man who had set her body alight.
"Then..."
That husband of mine... I'll probably stop thinking about him, won't I?
Just like now.
A wicked light gleamed in Katarina's eyes.
"So the Stigma's already been carved?"
Clang!
"That's right."
Whoosh.
"Hehe, you know it's all thanks to me."
Thud!
"Strictly speaking, it was thanks to you and Mari."
Bang.
"Anyway!"
Clang.
"That's why I'm handling you like this."
Chaeng—
"Haa, you win."
Valdes's sword had reached right in front of her throat in the blink of an eye. Mercedes planted the blade she had been holding into the floor and raised both hands in surrender. Only thirty minutes had passed, but she was satisfied simply because she had lasted longer than before.
The princess removed her helmet and took a refreshing breath of air.
"Phew. This is hard."
"You did well. You've improved a lot."
This wasn't the first time Valdes had sparred with Mercedes like this.
It was their first time doing so in the capital, but even in Ulsro, and again on the way here, Valdes had made time to teach her through sparring whenever he could. Lasting thirty minutes was a first, though.
"You worked hard too. Well, if the hero I admired is teaching me swordsmanship himself, then of course I'd better give it my all."
"Someone you admired? That's past tense, isn't it?"
Seeing him ask with a hint of injured pride, Mercedes grinned.
"Of course it's past tense. Right now..."
"Right now?"
"You're my beloved hero, of course♡"
Valdes fell silent when her playful question returned such a sweet answer. He couldn't quite suppress the twitch at the corner of his mouth. At this rate, there was no way he could ever stay completely detached from Mercedes.
"Hehe, happy?"
"...Ahem. Still, is this really okay?"
"What is?"
"Your wish. To use it on something as trivial as this."
Valdes had made several requests — and orders — of the Ulsro princess sisters as preparation for training Katarina and Clara. True to his give-and-take philosophy, he had also promised to grant each of them one wish in return.
Mercedes's wish had been this sparring match.
"Yes, this is plenty."
"Hmm. I was ready to grant you almost anything."
"Saying it like that does make me a little disappointed... but this is enough for me. Yes, this is enough."
At her odd reply, Valdes tilted his head.
"Vald. It looks like your bootlace came undone."
"Hm? Ah."
He looked down and saw that, just as she had said, one of the laces securing his boot had come loose. He had thought it felt a little awkward to move, and apparently it had slipped during their sparring. As he bent down to tie it again, he suddenly sensed something strange.
Huh? Didn't Merce tie this for me?
Clack— thunk! ...thud!
"Hm?"
Wondering what that sound was, he lifted his head slightly and looked toward where it had come from. More precisely, toward the floor beneath Mercedes's feet.
There, pieces of the light armor that had just been covering the princess knight were lying scattered. Not all of it, but most of it — the sections below the elbows and knees, and the pieces that had covered roughly half of her thighs. The rest had fallen to the floor of the training hall.
"Ha...!"
Valdes let out a dry laugh and raised his gaze further to look at Mercedes.
"Hngh...♥"
So that's why she wore detachable armor today.
He had thought she only wanted to make it easier to put on and take off by herself, but it seemed she had been aiming for this from the start.
"What's wrong~?"
Dragging out her words, Mercedes spoke in a sultry tone. The way she looked down at him was soaked in seduction. A look meant to tempt a man. And it wasn't just her eyes.
The full-body stocking she should have been wearing beneath the armor had been cut to pieces so it no longer served its purpose of protecting her skin.
Above, it had been cut so that her breasts bulged out a little below the armpits; below, the fabric ended around the sides of her waist, as though her panties and top had been stitched together into one outfit. Even then, the lower portion covered so little that it clung right over her groin, and if she turned around, half of her buttocks would surely be visible.
And perhaps the stocking itself had been made thinner, because it clung to her sweat-dampened body, tracing the curves of her female form so clearly that even the faint outline inside showed through, bringing the memory of her nude body sharply to mind.
"You prepared... quite a bit."
"Hmm? I don't know what you mean~?"
Mercedes played innocent and lifted both arms to begin adjusting the hair tie that had been binding her long blond hair. Thanks to that, her smooth, neatly shaved armpits were laid bare to him, despite how revealing her outfit already was.
The sweat trickling down along her arm and gathering in the fold of her armpit made it look as though women had two more axe marks there, and the sight was so indecent that a breathless exclamation escaped Valdes's lips before he could stop it.
"Wow..."
"Whaaat?"
Her tone suggested she didn't understand a thing.
And yet she never once took her eyes off Valdes. There was no way she didn't know exactly where his gaze had gone, and still the princess kept pretending otherwise.
"...Merce-noona, do you know something?"
"Mm?"
"When my women get aroused, their Stigma starts glowing too."
"...Ah."
It was exactly as he said.
Through the thin fabric of the stocking, the Stigma on her lower abdomen was glowing a vivid, unmistakable pink.
"Did I make a mistake?"
"No, it's fine."
Valdes straightened up.
"That just made the effect even clearer."
With his lower body already hard and straining, he rushed at Mercedes.
"Kyah♡"