The Favor Returns
Favor always returns someday. There's immense pride in watching a student you've personally taught rise to greatness. Edwin, once known as the darkness of high society, the Golden Darkness. No, Chloe no longer lives in the shadows. She has stepped into the light, embracing an ordinary life like everyone else. To earn this life, she had to raise one particular student into a fine adult as her family tutor. And Chloe had raised her into a truly exceptional adult.
"I hereby abdicate. The seat of Grand Duke is now yours."
"I am deeply grateful, Retired Grand Duke. From this moment, I shall serve as Grand Duke to ensure the prosperity of House Evergreen."
Now twenty years old, Chloe's student was taking over the seat of Grand Duke. Her first student, whom she cherished with emotion, and her last. Marian Evergreen had become the Grand Duke.
The girl Chloe had practically carried on her back had become the empire's second most powerful figure.
"Miss…."
Now living as an ordinary commoner, Chloe watched Marian from amid the crowd, tears of joy streaming down her face. But in an instant, Marian paused and checked the watch-shaped artifact on her wrist.
"Chloe…."
The artifact on Marian's wrist was tracking Chloe's location.
"Then, as the new head of House Evergreen, I issue my first command to all of you."
Confirming this, Marian turned from the former Grand Duke and addressed the knights of the order, along with the territory's residents gathered at the Grand Duke's Castle.
"Capture Chloe. Bring her before me at once."
"…!"
Realizing something was wrong, Chloe bolted into a mad dash for escape.
"There she is! Grab her!"
Edwin, born in a brothel, was taken in by an assassin guild. Edwin was a genius. Proficient in alchemy, stealth, hand-to-hand combat, swordsmanship, rhetoric, languages—everything needed for assassination. It took exactly eleven years to surpass the lifelong achievements of his masters. That year, at fifteen, Edwin annihilated the assassin guild he had so despised.
Someone from the guild might say, "We taught the whore's son, fed him, housed him—what more do you want?" But didn't they say you shouldn't adopt a black-haired beast? Of course, Edwin was blond….
Edwin was the type who could never be satisfied. Missions requiring sexual services, tending to an old man's shit and piss, jobs that dragged on for over a month. He hated them all. The nightmares of abuse endured while learning assassination techniques still kept him awake at night.
"Pain-numbing potion, my ass—what a fucking joke."
For eleven long years, Edwin had been fed a drug that erased sensation. All that remained were faint touch, enhanced vision, and hearing. It was meant to prevent spilling secrets under torture, but to Edwin—who'd been on missions since thirteen without a single failure—it was just those bastards destroying his healthy senses.
And so the guild was wiped out by one of the very assassins they raised.
But even after, Edwin stayed in the assassin trade. All his lifelong skills were assassination-specific; he couldn't do ordinary work. Taste and smell gone ruined restaurant jobs; manual labor made him think, Why bother when I could just assassinate?
The genius assassin who destroyed his guild at fifteen and quit the trade returned after mere weeks, becoming legend once more.
But despite his experience, Edwin was still young. His path was utterly solitary, pushing everyone away. Who could call themselves his ally?
Then, at nineteen, disaster struck. On his way back from a routine assassination, he was ambushed. He handled it perfectly. Just one attacker, sword tracing a familiar path, clearly inferior to Edwin.
But as he delivered the killing blow, disaster. He pierced the heart successfully, but the bastard injected him with some bizarre syringe.
And the syringe's contents were….
"You fucking bitch! Undo this now! Give me the antidote!"
"Edwin, you know your crimes—think I'll let you go? Huh?"
A potion that turned him into a woman.
His tall, handsome frame that enchanted high society ladies shrank by a head. Firm thighs swelled plump. Hips and ass ballooned, making every step uncomfortable. Breasts the size of his head seriously impeded checking his feet.
"Antidote, you fuck!"
"Aigoo, can't even speak without cursing? No wonder you stabbed your assassin guild in the back, you little shit."
"Bullshit…!"
And Edwin… wasn't exactly refined. He'd learned fancy vocabulary to infiltrate nobility, but only enough to get by.
As he bit his lip, glaring at the attacker….
"Eat shit, you cunt."
"You… dog…!"
"Gah…."
The attacker flipped him double birds, waiting politely until he saw them, then collapsed with a short death rattle.
"Dead? You fucking bastard…!"
The moment breath stopped, life rapidly drained from the attacker's eyes. Horrified, Edwin tore open his clothes, rummaging inside.
"Nothing, nothing…!"
Pockets everywhere—five inner ones alone. But empty. He stripped the top completely, confirmed nothing, then yanked down the pants.
On the exposed lower belly, writing.
"You… fucking…!"
It perfectly predicted Edwin would strip the corpse for antidote clues—a mocking jab. But with the bastard dead, there was nothing to do….
In the midnight forest, only a naked male corpse and the whore's spawn remained.
And to strip that spawn….
"Edwin, you ungrateful scum!"
"Thought you'd survive betraying the guild?!"
"We'll make you birth as many as you killed!"
His accomplices ambushed. They'd hidden their presence, waiting until he read the belly message—to thoroughly humiliate him.
But.
"Birth as many as I killed? You can do that?"
Even as a woman, Edwin was Edwin.
"Don't you know who wields your assassin techniques best? Huh? You fucking dogs!"
In the shadowed forest, Golden Death descended. Mere apprentices were nothing—a single swing each.
Three late arrivals? All slaughtered. Slaughtered, then back to the hideout.
But Edwin was still a woman. Swollen breasts, hips, ass, thighs unchanged. Shrunken height and strength showed no sign of returning.
Worst case.
"Fucking bastards…."
Depressed. Killed the last three, stripped and searched their bodies too. But the exposed flesh bore only:
Accomplices from years in the same guild, they knew his psyche and habits inside out.
"Aaaah!"
Suddenly, Edwin screamed. He wanted to die. A female assassin's end was set: sell your body killing men, get seduced, launder your past as some lord's concubine. Or stay pure, assassinate honorably, then get backstabbed and whored out.
He didn't want that life. It was his mother's. The mockery he'd heard in the guild—"fit for a whore's son"—that life.
He hated it.
"Fuck…."
Seriously depressed, his exhausted body and clothes reeked of sweat from the fight. First, wash up, he thought, entering the bathroom.
[Coo, coo, coo-coo-coo.]
Meanwhile, Edwin's pigeon familiar brought new work. Pigeons delivering commissions was routine.
But this client was special.
To my esteemed Lord Golden Darkness,
A Grand Duke. The empire's one and only.