The Knight Crest
Today, once more, the bath service began after the day's duties were done.
"Hair."
Water cascaded over the knight's head as I turned the thought over in my mind. How could I possibly get close to that mark on her lower abdomen?
"My neck feels a bit stiff today."
The knight rolled her head from side to side while I worked the shampoo through her hair.
"Then allow me to give you a massage."
"My neck?"
"Yes. I was taught that keeping a knight in peak condition is also part of a servant's duty. If you'll permit it, I'd like to massage it for you."
"Very well. I suppose that's a servant's job too."
The knight gave her permission. This is actually an opportunity. The answer had slipped out on instinct, but thinking it over, it wasn't a bad opening at all. Because I needed to confirm what was on her lower abdomen.
If I blurted out, "May I touch your lower abdomen?" out of nowhere, she would obviously be on her guard. But if I used the massage as an excuse to get her gradually accustomed to physical contact? I might be able to take a discreet look, couldn't I?
"Mmmmmm…"
The knight let out a lewd sound as I kneaded the back of her neck. Did she have any idea just how obscene that voice of hers was?
Perhaps it was because her voice sounded so lascivious—
"Your body is touching my back."
My thing had swollen up. And worse, it was pressed right against her back.
"Ah… I'm sorry!"
I yanked my hips backward in a hurry. In doing so, my stance ended up awkward and half-crouched.
"It's fine. Accidents happen."
The knight was surprisingly forgiving. Did she not realize that what had touched her back was my cock?
"Thank you for your understanding."
Thank goodness the knight was naive.
"I'll move on to your back now."
Riding the momentum, I proceeded down to her back.
"My back is fine… ah, no. Never mind. Do as you please."
She started to refuse, then relented. It seemed I was seeing new sides of the knight these past two days. She was famous for being utterly tight-lipped and closed off, after all.
"Nngh… yes, right there."
My hands found their mark, and the knight sighed in relief. Her back, it turned out, was far more knotted than I'd expected.
I pressed my thumbs firmly along either side of her spine while my remaining fingers crept, ever so casually, toward the side of her breast.
-Squish.
"Haaaah…"
The knight didn't seem to notice—perhaps her attention was all on her back.
This feeling is insane.
The side of the knight's breast, the first I'd ever touched. In that single instant, I understood completely why men were obsessed with breasts.
As much as I'd like more, this is my limit.
I did consider sneaking further toward her side-boob, but anything beyond this would be pushing it.
With that, I finished the massage and rinsed the rest of her back.
-Shaaaah.
Just as I splashed the final ladle of water and was about to conclude the bath service—
"Servant."
The knight called to me.
"Yes?"
"After the bath, how about a drink?"
A drink? Did knights and servants normally drink together? I'd never heard of such a thing.
"Yes… of course."
But I was hardly in a position to refuse the knight's request.
"I'll bring the alcohol myself. See to the preparations."
"Understood."
And so I found myself sharing my first drink with the knight.
The knight's bedchamber, at the table.
"Did I keep you waiting long?"
"Not at all."
-Glug, glug.
The knight poured wine into my cup. A vivid crimson fruit wine flowed down from the bottle.
As the fruit wine was poured, a sweet yet tart fragrance spread through the air—something I'd never had the chance to smell before.
"Fruit wine… I see."
"Yes. It's my first drink with a servant—I couldn't exactly serve mushroom swill for the occasion."
Given the nature of the Great Cavern, fruit could only be cultivated in a few strictly controlled areas. Wine made from that fruit. I'd heard it existed, but never actually seen it. It must have cost a staggering sum. So this was the wealth a titled knight commanded.
-Gulp.
The knight drank first.
"Kaaah!"
She set her cup down with a hearty, satisfied sound.
"I never understood the other knights who drank, but I get it now. This is why they do it."
"Is it good?"
"Drink up, servant."
"Then, with gratitude."
I raised the cup of red liquid in my hand, took it to my lips, and had a sip.
"Whoa…?"
A tart-sweet, slightly bitter bloom spread through my mouth. It was a different universe from mushroom liquor and its muddy, earthy taste.
"This is remarkable."
"Isn't it?"
The knight was in high spirits. Perhaps that was why—
"Hm-hmm~"
She hummed a little tune as she knocked back drink after drink. Her cheeks had flushed a warm red, and her usual icy gaze had softened just a touch.
I quietly refilled her cup.
"…You're drinking rather a lot."
"Hmph."
The knight snorted and drained her cup in one go. A rough, blunt gesture she would never have made under normal circumstances.
"For a mere servant, you meddle a great deal."
"Ah… my apologies."
"By the way."
The knight rested her chin on her hand and studied me.
"Were you very startled yesterday?"
"Pardon? I'm not certain what you mean…"
"My lower abdomen."
"Ah…"
Ah, she was talking about that lewd mark engraved below her belly. The womb tattoo of a sex slave android.
"Yes… a little…"
"That is the Knight Crest."
"I'm sorry?"
"Knights undergo the Knight Ceremony. That mark appears at that time."
"I see."
Just like that, the sex slave android's womb tattoo had transformed, inexplicably, into a sacred Knight Crest. The Knight Ceremony. Within that ritual lay the secret that connected the age of myth to the present day.
"I was startled too, at first. It simply looks far too obscene."
"…"
"To pour in all that effort, only to have something so obscene branded onto me."
Silver-white hair spilled down over her shoulders, and the wine had softened the knight's eyes beyond their usual sharpness.
"Effort. You say effort…"
Murmuring to herself, the knight sank into thought.
"Yes… effort. I had to work myself to the very brink of death, you know."
There was, somehow, a faint trace of sorrow in the knight's eyes.
"You wouldn't understand. What it feels like to be adopted."
"Adopted?"
This was news to me.
"My mother, the previous head of the house, had no second daughter. So I was adopted."
So she had two mothers.
"Is that so? This is the first I'm hearing of it."
"Perhaps because of that, the people of the house… have always called me 'that child.' Since I'm not true blood. And my sister—the current head of the house—keeps me at arm's length."
"…"
The knight set her empty cup down on the table and gave a thin smile. An unmistakably bitter one.
"Should I count myself fortunate, I wonder, that I wasn't sold to a brothel in the slums of the eighth tier."
It was an expression far too bitter to call a smile. The mood had grown so heavy that I had no idea what I should say.
"Honestly, I've always known it. That winning the family's acceptance would be near impossible."
"I see."
"My mother, the previous head, never once let me forget that I was adopted. Work harder, and the family will accept you—she used those words to spur me on, over and over."
"Uh… I see…"
Out of nowhere, the secrets of the noble house came pouring out. The sudden weight of it wrung an involuntary "uh" out of me.
-Glug, glug.
When I glanced up, the knight, seemingly unbothered, was pouring more wine into her cup. But wait—repeatedly reminding an adopted daughter that she was adopted, just to whip her harder? What kind of situation was that? Some sort of aristocrat culture? Even slow-witted me could tell that this was not what normal adoptive families looked like.
"You've been through a great deal."
"Hmph."
-Glug, glug.
The knight poured again.
"If nothing else, I suppose I had Dame Kashimira. My little mother—the one who showed me what a knight ought to be."
"…I'm glad for that."
The air had grown suffocating.
"Knight of the Silver Moon, of all things. Doesn't it make you laugh? All I ever did was drench myself in blood—to survive, and to be acknowledged by the family."
"I see."
"I never wanted the title. I only wanted the family's acceptance. For them to see me as their daughter, as their sister—that alone would have been enough."
"…"
With her head slightly bowed, the knight traced slow circles along the rim of her cup with one finger.
"And what do you think, servant? Do you believe that I—an adopted child—could one day, one day, be accepted by my family?"
I looked at the woman before me. The knight's voice had shed its usual coldness, honesty bleeding through the haze of drink. And there she was, looking at me—flushed cheeks, deep blue eyes, a doll-like face. Clothes loosened and disheveled by the alcohol. The swell of her cleavage, the line of her bare shoulders.
"One day, without fail, they will have no choice but to accept you. I believe that."
"Foolish child."
The knight murmured it softly and raised her cup once more. Perhaps because she looked so utterly worn down—the woman I had sworn to make my sex slave—suddenly she began to look pitiful.
…Pitiful? Her?
…No. This is a knight's secret hallucination technique. The knight has seen through my lecherous scheme, and now she's using some sacred art to make me feel guilty. It's a trick.
I clenched my teeth inwardly. I could not fall for it.
"Even if the family does not accept you this very moment, the achievements you have built, Dame Liana, will not simply vanish."
The knight stared at me for a long, long moment. Her eyes seemed to waver, just slightly.
"For a mere servant, you do talk big."
But even as she said it, the faintest smile brushed across the knight's lips. And that smile… how should I put it—it felt like all my own hard, bitter years were being repaid. A beautiful smile.
Is it really all right for me to toy with the body of this knight—who is only just beginning to open her heart?
Seeing the knight's smile made something ache in my chest.