Chapter 3 — Certainty
From then on, the Knight kept drinking.
Her usual knightly poise was nowhere to be found. The alcohol loosened her tongue bit by bit, until at last her head drooped and she drifted off to sleep.
"...My Lady? Sir Liana?"
I called to her carefully, but all I got in reply was the soft rhythm of her breathing.
She's completely wasted.
Should I just leave her like this and go? The trouble was, she was surprisingly heavy. A knight's trained body, I supposed — for all her delicate looks, she weighed a good deal more than she appeared to.
"Hnngh... heavy."
Somehow, I managed to haul her to the bed. Laid out on the mattress, she slept deeply with her silver hair splayed across the pillow.
"...She's beautiful."
Asleep, she looked like nothing so much as a doll. I'd been drinking too, and all that sudden exertion in my muddled state had drained the strength right out of me.
Maybe that was why — I collapsed, landing right beside her with a thump.
"...Haah."
I sighed up at the ceiling. And I found myself thinking about the Knight sleeping there next to me.
She had spent her whole life whipping herself forward over a single fact — that she was adopted. And now I thought she looked... a little pitiable. Yes, just a little.
She must have been cornered. A great knight honored with an epithet, and yet still a knight who hadn't earned her family's acceptance. She must have been hollow enough to drink with someone like me and pour out her heart.
Her will — bearing the stigma of her adopted birth and clawing her way to knighthood through blood and sweat — that was genuinely remarkable. I don't like this woman, but separate from that, I respect her.
"Whew~"
I turned my head slightly and looked at the sleeping woman. Her flushed cheeks, the quiet rise and fall of her chest, that fragile slumbering face I would never have been allowed to see otherwise. And the fragrance drifting through her neatly kept room. And me, three sheets to the wind.
Something strange stirred in my chest.
Gulp.
Right now, total crime would be possible. Of course, doing that to a knight who trusted me — who drank with me all the way down to this state — would be about the most inappropriate, faithless act imaginable...
I'm conflicted to the point of madness.
Why did she have to show me this unguarded side tonight, of all nights? If she'd been as stiff and prickly as usual, I wouldn't be wrestling with this guilt.
Sliddddge.
While my brain agonized, the lower half of me was offering a perfectly clear verdict — Strip her and ravish her already! — or so it seemed to scream. My left brain and right brain stood deadlocked, and then a third brain cast its vote for the right. Score, 1 to 2.
That's right. It can't be helped.
Really, the Knight was largely at fault — for being born with a doll's face, big breasts, a slim waist, and wide hips. If she'd been an ugly knight, desires like these would have sunk without a fuss. Of course, that was nonsense.
But even if it's nonsense, I have to rationalize it somehow.
With my mind made up, I reached for the loosened collar of her blouse.
Pop.
One by one, I undid the buttons of her top.
"Mmmmh~"
The Knight murmured in her sleep. The attendant she'd tried so hard to trust was undressing her.
Slip.
When I pushed the shirt aside, the swell of her soft, plump breasts met my eyes. The memory of the side of her breast from the other day flooded back. I had to touch them. I had to taste again that supreme sensation where springiness and softness coexisted.
No.
My left brain threw itself desperately in front of my hand. Tonight's purpose was the sex slave tattoo. This was about verifying whether it was truly a sex slave tattoo — not simple sexual harassment.
I looked at her lower abdomen. A lewd tattoo in pale pink.
It said to rotate clockwise, I'm sure of it.
I rested my hand lightly against her stomach.
"Hahhh...!"
Eek — that startled me. The barest touch, and the Knight reacted.
Gently. As gently as possible...
Like reciting an incantation, I traced slow circles — soft, but not so soft it would tickle.
Sssslik.
Focusing on the sensation in my hand, even the whisper of my fingertips over her skin seemed to ring out loud.
Is it working...?
I checked the tattoo on her lower abdomen — and it had begun to glow, faintly, from the bottom up. As if something were being filled in, little by little, from below.
There's no way this is some sacred Knight Crest.
This was, without question, a sex slave tattoo. I called the words of the [Babel Tower] back to mind.
Feeling pleasure from nothing more than a light touch on her stomach... the Knight was unquestionably born to be a sex slave.
The knight I served was actually born a sex slave. I found it hard to put this feeling into words. Sympathy? Arousal? Shock?
As I sat frozen in that tangle of emotions —
"Mmmmh..."
the Knight's expression changed. A slight furrow in her brow, a faint flush creeping across her face.
A phrase surfaced from the [Babel Tower] texts that recorded the world's secrets: sensitivity doubles with every input.
How many times had I rotated it, exactly? In my daze, I must have circled over and over.
I screwed up.
How high could her sensitivity be now? The moment I confirmed her tattoo was real, I should have fled on the spot.
What if the amplified sensation woke her? Then the heart she'd begun to open toward me would slam shut for good. At worst, I could face punishment. No — tonight, I had to stop here and slip away. I absolutely could not anger the Knight. She was strong enough to tear me apart with her bare hands.
I have to get out of here.
With exaggerated care, I redressed her, tucked the blanket in, and slipped out the door.
Liana was receiving her bath service.
"That's... a lie..."
She was struggling to accept the reality in front of her. The attendant's hand, which had been massaging her back, had suddenly traveled down to her waist.
"Attendant...!"
She warned him, lacing her voice with alarm and anger, but the attendant paid her no mind. Then his hand began caressing her lower abdomen.
"Ahh...!"
Liana desperately seized his arm. The attendant's body was merely human — it should never have been able to defy her strength. And yet she could not stop his hand.
"What... is happening...!"
No matter how hard she strained, his arm would not move. His fingers kept kneading her lower abdomen whether she refused or not — and it wasn't simple touching. He stood his fingers upright and drew slow, deliberate circles over the place where her womb lay.
"Hyaaah...!"
At that lewd handwork, a lewd sound spilled out of her before she could stop it.
I have to refuse this...!
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It felt as though her womb had become her heart, pulsing and pounding. If this went on, she would become a wanton woman who craved nothing but that hand.
"I told you to stop, Jorus!"
She called his name, loading it with even more menace. The attendant flinched — then carefully withdrew through the door.
"..."
Left alone, Liana had no way to explain the feverish feeling coursing through her. It felt as though hot blood had pooled in every place his hand had touched — as though her body resented her for chasing him away.
"Was I... always a lewd woman?"
A man had touched the body no one had ever laid hands on, here and there, all over. And it hadn't felt unpleasant. If anything...
"Did it... feel good?"
Left alone in the washroom, Liana found herself at a complete loss before this strange feeling she had never known in her life. She had taken pleasure at an attendant's touch. At an unconsented, one-sided touch, no less.
She had heard the stories — other knights who lay with their attendants. She had laughed herself hoarse at them. Those aren't knights, they're just lecherous bathhouse girls.
And now she herself had been touched against her will — forced — and had felt it. When the thought struck her that this put her on par with, or perhaps below, those very knights —
"Impossible!!!"
Liana shot upright, screaming — and blinked. Around her was her own bedchamber.
"...It was a dream."
Relief washed over her. Yes. There is no way I am that kind of shameless knight.
She had to remain chaste. She had to be more knightly than any knight alive, so that her family would finally accept her.
"What a shame."
I'd succeeded at tonight's goal — confirming the Knight's true nature. But seeing that tattoo filling in had, admittedly, stirred up the urge to fill it the rest of the way. Still, I wasn't at that stage yet.
"There's plenty of time."
To witness the Knight's climax... first, I had to make it so she could not consciously refuse sexual acts. She would have to accept, at the level of her own subconscious, that she loved this beyond all reason.
"Is there any knowledge on that?"
I searched the [Babel Tower] for subconscious and conditioning, and read the most thoroughly organized post I found.
Since the Knight is far stronger than I am, the means available to condition her are extremely limited — which means I have to make use of methods like this.
And so, mulling over tomorrow's conditioning, I pulled my sleep mask down over my eyes.