Ventorino Kingdom - Seeds of Discord (8)
So that was it, then…
Was sneaking in the best option after all?
He had lost a considerable amount of power through his impregnation sex with the Demon Queen. According to the officials and scholars of the Demon Castle, there was a theory that the more force a male demon poured out, the lighter the burden on the female demon became. So, for the Demon Queen’s sake, he had given her everything he had—semen, power, all of it—deep inside her body.
It would take quite some time to recover his strength, but slipping into Princess Clara’s bedchamber was still worth attempting. Of course, he would have to operate at full capacity when the time came.
This wasn’t an infiltration from outside, either; it would happen inside the royal palace itself. Over the past few days, he had also mapped out the magic circles installed throughout the palace. And, as luck would have it, the royal knight commander and the royal chief mage—two of the palace’s strongest defenders—were both due to be away tomorrow.
If he was going to make a move, tomorrow would be ideal.
I’ll have to watch the situation tomorrow and make my move in secret.
If he engraved only a Stigma spell, he could toy with and train his target with devastating efficiency.
It would be awkward to use a mere first-tier Stigma on Queen Katarina, who knew how to handle mana, but Princess Clara was a different story. Even if it was only first-tier, the effect on an ordinary person with low magical resistance would be overwhelming.
No wonder succubi caused such chaos whenever they showed up on a battlefield.
The Stigma magic had been built on the succubus’s techniques, and on the seduction magic he himself had newly refined. Its effectiveness dropped sharply against those who used mana, but against everyone else, few spells were more potent.
When he reached the dining hall, he spotted the blue-haired lady knight eating with her senior knight, Essex, in a corner. The moment she noticed him looking her way, she lit up with a bright smile.
"Ah! Jui… no, Valdes!"
"You little—."
He sat down beside her with a faint frown. The male knight who had been sitting there originally had already fled after receiving Ethylene’s icy glare.
Ethylene was smiling foolishly, as though nothing in the world could make her happier. Valdes reached behind the back of her chair and seized her ass before the other knights could notice.
"You’ve been getting careless because I haven’t been paying attention to you lately, haven’t you?"
"Ah, that’s… hah!"
"Looks like you need a little discipline. Come to my room later."
"Y-yes, m-master…♥"
Listening only from a distance, Essex had no idea what kind of conversation they were having. She swallowed the bread she’d been chewing and asked, "You two seem really close."
"Ah, w-we are? Hehe."
"Hmm."
Essex made a subtle face and scooped up some soup with her spoon.
There’s definitely something going on here…
She was Ethylene’s senior knight, and also a friend of Noisel, the male knight who had once harbored an unrequited crush on Ethylene. Essex had a feeling that the punishment Noisel received—more specifically, the incident where he’d been caught masturbating outdoors—was somehow connected to those two.
It was nothing more than intuition, with no hard proof to back it up, but her instincts were sharp. And she knew it well. Right now, those instincts were telling her to suspect them.
That idiot won’t ever say a word, no matter what…
She glanced across to the opposite corner. Noisel was there, eating with the other knights. On the surface, he looked no different from usual. But as his closest friend—at least, that was what Essex liked to believe, even while secretly liking him herself—she could tell he was crushed beneath an unbearable weight right now.
It had started the moment Valdes appeared and sat beside Ethylene. Even before that, something had been off.
Unlike before, he no longer kept sneaking glances at Ethylene. If anything, he was trying his hardest not to look in her direction at all. He wasn’t even asking her for romantic advice anymore. At times, he seemed to be avoiding Essex herself, too.
"…This is driving me crazy."
"Hm? Did you say something?"
"Haa, nothing."
"I see…"
Ethylene was puzzled, but she didn’t ask further. She simply assumed her senior knight had some private troubles of her own. It wasn’t entirely wrong, either.
What mattered more to Ethylene was what kind of punishment her master would give her tonight. Lately, Mercede and Mari had been monopolizing his attention, so she hadn’t been able to enjoy much in the way of physical intimacy—but she had still gotten little pleasures here and there with vibrators, a rotor, ropes, and the like.
I wonder what he’ll do to me today…♡
A few hours later, Valdes’s room was once again swept up in a storm of heat.
"Ugh, yesterday was absolutely brutal…"
"You left first thing in the morning, so you must’ve been with him all day. You really worked hard."
"Exactly! That brat just keeps clinging to me for no reason… Oraboni, please comfort Mari a little…♡"
As she spoke, Mari slipped into Valdes’s arms, where he was reclining on the bed. With a small smile, he patted her back. She burrowed deeper into his embrace and pressed her face against his chest.
"Mmm… you smell nice…♡"
"Honestly, you’re a real little charmer no matter where you go."
Watching that, her older sister Mercede—sitting in a chair—let out a dry laugh.
"But the real charm only comes out here."
"Sure, sure."
It sounded like a lazy answer, but Mercede was acknowledging her sister’s struggle in her own way. Even to her, Prince Alfonso had been coming on to Mari a little too hard.
He showed up at her room without warning, asking her to go for walks or have tea with him, just like a helpless boy who had fallen head over heels in love. Still, the one merciful thing was that he didn’t get snappy in an attempt to grab the attention of the girl he liked. If Alfonso had acted like that, Mari would have gotten annoyed long ago.
"By the way, Oraboni."
"Yeah?"
"After the summit the day after tomorrow, do I not have to keep smiling and playing along anymore?"
"You don’t have to keep playing along. Well, whether I’ll have the luxury to let you is another matter."
The wicked smile that appeared on his face made Mari shake her head. She didn’t know the details of his plan, but seeing that expression alone made her feel sorry for the Ventorino Kingdom.
"S-so, how’s the progress?"
"The progress?"
"With that mother-and-daughter pair. The queen and the princess."
"Ah, that? It’s still slow, but it’s moving along nicely."
Mercede seemed curious as well, because she stood up from her chair and settled down right beside Valdes. Then, like her younger sister, she nestled against his side and rested her head on his arm.
"Clara still seems untouched, but the queen’s been acting strangely lately."
"Right. I’ve already put a Stigma on the queen, and I’ve even been teasing her a little."
"Hmm… doesn’t sound like you’ve gotten very far."
"She’s a woman with a pretty solid guard, surprisingly enough. I’d bet that even when she was cheating before, she only allowed kissing and light touching. Compared to that, letting me have her breasts, ass, and tongue is already a huge step forward."
After he first brought her into his bedchamber, Katarina would occasionally summon him in secret. The place was naturally her own bedroom. It was the first place they had ever done anything, and at the same time, the most discreet location available.
No matter how much of a king he was, he still avoided that room as much as possible. Lately, he had been roaming outside half the night anyway, which only made things worse. And every time Katarina lashed out at him, his interest in her drifted further and further away.
That was when Katarina, burning with resentment, would call Valdes over.
"Hee, then what about Oraboni?"
"Huh? What about me?"
"How far have you… allowed him to go…?"
For an instant, a lascivious expression replaced the cute, coquettish look on the girl’s face. With a mischievous smile, Mari dropped both hands and began groping at the front of his trousers. Her fingers moved briskly, and before Valdes could even say anything, she had already worked his pants open.
"What’s there to allow?"
"You’re just saying weird things because you’re horny and want to touch it."
"N-no I’m not!"
At Mercede’s words, Mari let out a squeak with a face gone bright red. Even so, her hands kept moving steadily until she’d pulled off his underwear and finally fished out his manhood.
"Then stop talking and do it with your hands."
Valdes laughed and kissed the bridge of Mari’s nose. She muttered, "I’m really not…" under her breath, but she didn’t deny it any further. Instead, she quietly wrapped her hand around the shaft and began stroking it, making it swell under her touch.
Watching her, Mercede grew heated and lifted the hem of her dress before beginning to rub over her panties with her fingers. She had already enjoyed herself thoroughly the previous day, sneaking around without Mari noticing, but the atmosphere in the room was so filthy and suggestive that her body heated up again almost at once.
"Haa… It’s been a while since the three of us were lying on the same bed together…"
"That’s all thanks to me suffering through yesterday. Heh, you should be grateful to me… hnn…."
Because Mari had made such a visible show of being tired over dinner the night before, Katarina and Alfonso had told her to take the day off and left her alone. Mercede, who had to prepare for the summit, was simply a bonus.
"Grateful?"
Mercede put on a teasing look and reached out with her free hand to grab Mari’s breast.
"Hyaah! A-ah, hngh… t-this big sister is…!"
"Then as thanks, this big sister will make you feel good♡"
"A-ah, haa, hnn…"
She kneaded Mari’s breast with shameless hands, and when that wasn’t enough, she started stripping the dress off her body. Mari’s dress was designed so that undoing just a few buttons at the chest would expose everything underneath.
With practiced ease, Mercede flicked the buttons open one by one and slipped her hand inside. As she massaged her younger sister’s soft, small breasts, she sank deeper into her own masturbation.
"Haa, haa, y-yes, hnn…♡"
Mari, too, used both of her tiny hands to rub Valdes’s thick member back and forth, pressing the head against her clitoris to tease herself. With how perfectly she’d positioned herself, Valdes couldn’t help wondering if Mari had climbed into his lap already anticipating all of this.
That brief masturbation show on the bed ended only after Mari and Mercede each came twice, and Valdes once ejaculated.
Mari licked the semen from her hand and tasted it.
"Lick, haum… slurp."
"Come to think of it, what kind of Stigma did you put on Queen Katarina?"
"The Betrayal Mark."
"Betrayal?"
It was a broad word, yet it struck the meaning home at once. Hearing Katarina’s innermost thoughts from Valdes only made it hit harder. She had said that she still loved her husband, Marc, all this time.
Even when he cheated on her, even when he got angry at her. Her own inability to express herself had led her to cheat back just to get his attention, and the sharp, needling way she pointed out his flaws was all because she loved him. Once the word betrayal was involved, there was only one kind of answer.
"So then…"
"Yeah. The more she loves her husband, the more pleasure she’ll get from doing things with me. And all the while, she’ll keep blaming the husband she still loves."
"Wow… that’s kind of terrifying."
Mercede shivered lightly as she straightened the drape of her dress.
Thinking about it like that, the Stigmas carved into them were actually pretty mild. Perception, sensation, obedience, and so on. In contrast, some of the other marks he had branded into women had names that sounded frightening right from the start—things like toilet, betrayal, and masochism.
Of course, Valdes controlled the effects appropriately, but if she thought about it the other way around, it meant that if he ever decided to, he could ruin a woman whenever he pleased. Add seduction magic on top of that, and corruption really could happen in an instant.
"Ventorino is a little different from Ulsro. I’m only touching Katarina and Clara to torment Marc, more than anything else."
The Ventorino Kingdom simply didn’t have much in the way of useful land. It wasn’t that the soil was poor; rather, they didn’t have the leisure to develop it over the long term. Most of that was due to the demons, of course, but even the Dezac Empire would probably find the place unappealing.
On top of that, the people’s attitude toward demons was violently hostile. Hatred built up over generations, then the war eighteen years ago, then the royal family’s policies—all of it had piled into a grudge that wouldn’t be settled so easily.
Because of that, Valdes intended to conquer the Ventorino Kingdom by force, pure and simple.
By contrast, his plan for the Ulsro Kingdom was to annex it while leaving as much of its strength intact as possible. That was why he had put so much more effort into Beatris and the two princesses. The biggest reason was that Beatris had played only a limited role in the betrayal, and that she had shown a love so sincere it was almost naive.
"I see… then I guess that’s a little sad."
After sliding down and licking every last drop of semen from his cock, Mari said it with a look of genuine pity.
"Really? Then if I told you I could reduce the time you spend with me, maybe I should revise the plan."
"Huh? …No, wait, maybe it doesn’t seem sad anymore."
Valdes and Mercede smiled at the way Mari immediately changed her tune.
Mari put on a slightly disappointed expression, then knelt up on the bed and lifted her dress. Unlike before, she had recently stopped wearing a petticoat so that she could have sex with Valdes more easily.
As a result, the moment she raised her skirt, a damp, pure-white pair of panties came into view, soaked right through in the center.
"Mari’s little slide—wouldn’t you like to take a test ride on Oraboni’s cock…?"
"…Climb on."
"Hehe, yesss~♥"
Creak—