“Damn it, that useless bastard! Just when the hell is he going to fall for it? After everything I’ve done, shouldn’t he be crawling to me by now?!”
While Mars and his group had gone up the mountain behind the house to investigate, Lilia was seething with frustration at Mars’s behavior, which completely defied her expectations.
To seduce him, she had braved the cold morning air wearing the thinnest of clothes and even casually brushed her chest or hips against him while pretending to strike up a conversation. Yet he barely gave her a glance. For someone like Lilia, who had total confidence in her charm, it was enough to drive her mad.
“Do I have to push even harder? Should I just strip naked? No, that would make me look like a total psycho…”
Determined to make Mars hers and turn him into her personal, never-ending source of life force, Lilia racked her brain for more seductive tactics.
Click.
“Oh my… you’re all—”
“What do you mean this is my fault?!”
Just as she hurriedly adjusted her clothes to greet the returning group, Lilia was met with a rather awkward scene.
“Hey, Mars. I get that people call you Aura Lord and all, but don’t you think you’re being a little reckless?”
“Yeah! Because of you, we were all nearly put in danger!”
“And didn’t I give you a warning in advance? Who was it that ignored the warning and nearly fell off the cliff?!”
Three women were standing in front, criticizing Mars, who fired back at them in a loud voice. In the middle of it all stood Pollo who was clearly torn and unsure whose side to take.
“Damn it! I’m done with this! Do whatever you want!”
With that, Mars stomped up the stairs.
As Mars stomped upstairs with an angry look on his face, he came across Lilia and gave her an awkward smile.
It was understandable. Fighting loudly with his teammates in someone else’s home, then acting like a sulky child, was certainly something to be embarrassed about.
“Ah… I’m sorry, Ms. Lilia. That must’ve been unpleasant to witness.”
“Oh, no… It’s fine. But what happened all of a sudden…?”
While it was actually beneficial for Lilia if Mars drifted apart from his teammates, she still needed to understand the situation first.
“Well… I’ve been friends with Pollo for a long time, so we usually go around together. But those women seem to be interested in Pollo. I think they see me as an eyesore for always being by his side…”
“Oh dear…”
“While we were investigating, they started picking fights over petty things, probably because they didn’t like that I was with Pollo… and we almost had an accident. I warned them repeatedly, but they just wouldn’t listen…”
Lilia found his story understandable, but something about it still felt off.
Having absorbed life force from all kinds of men thanks to her abilities, Lilia considered Mars’s looks to be more than decent.
In a world filled with men who looked like malformed beasts, Mars, with his mixed-race charm, was handsome enough to rank near the top even within the empire.
Still, perhaps because his rival was Pollo, Mars’s glow seemed to pale a bit in comparison. But did that really justify treating someone who merely stood near the object of their affection so harshly?
What foolish women. Choosing a man based solely on looks, how shallow~
He was even known as an Aura Lord, and the prestige that came with that title was far greater than most imagined.
The Emperor himself would likely be desperate enough to offer up a gold mine if he could have an Aura Lord like that as a son-in-law.
All I have to do is stay still. If they’re going to throw away a gem like that on their own, I’d be a fool not to pick it up.
“Oh dear… Please don’t be too upset. I know just how amazing you really are, Sir Mars.”
“Ms. Lilia…”
Seizing the moment, Lilia quietly took Mars’s hand and offered him comforting words. As Mars took a moment to collect himself, he suddenly realized he was holding her hand tightly and quickly pulled away.
“S-Sorry! I don’t usually have contact with women… That was rude of me!”
“It’s okay. I actually liked being able to hold your reassuring hand, Sir Mars.”
So he’s not resistant to women. He just doesn’t know how to deal with them. Now that I’ve given him the opening, all I have to do is make a move!
Perhaps it was Lilia’s kindness taking effect, but Mars began having trouble meeting her eyes and was reacting like a bashful virgin.
Lilia who was inwardly grateful to the three women who had judged Mars by his looks gently patted him here and there while continuing to comfort him with kind words.
“Um, Ms. Lilia… If it’s alright with you, could you just call me Mars? It feels strange being addressed so formally by someone I’m grateful to.”
“Fufu… Alright. Then from now on, I’ll just call you Mars, okay?”
From that point on, Mars and Lilia stuck together all day around the mansion.
Perhaps their sudden closeness was irritating to others, as the looks from the other team members grew colder. But since they’d already had a confrontation, saying anything further might just stir up more trouble. So both sides simply kept to their work, expressing nothing more than visible displeasure.
Perfect, just perfect! Then tonight it is!
Lilia who was delighted by the unexpectedly favorable turn of events gave a little shoulder shake of joy and decided to barge into Mars’s room later that night, once everyone had fallen asleep.
She had no idea that there was already a group inside the mansion waiting for her to make a move on Mars.
***
Late at night.
As silence blanketed the mansion, a shadow stretched across the corridor.
“Well~ he may be a little stubborn, but in the end, he’s still just a man.”
She recalled the scene from the afternoon. Mars clashing with the other team members.
For her, who had wanted Mars to end up alone, it was the perfect situation.
She had nearly shouted with joy at the sight of their quarrel but forced herself to hide it. She put on an expression of sincere concern as she approached Mars.
Since then, as she continued to get closer to him, had his attitude toward her softened compared to yesterday?
“Could it be that he’s into older, mature women?”
That was what Lilia came to believe.
When she shifted her approach from a young, beautiful lady to a more alluring and experienced persona, Mars’s reaction changed. And she was convinced she’d found the right answer.
Knock knock—
Click.
“Who…? Eh, Ms. Lilia?”
“Shh. Mars. What were you doing?”
Mars had been staring blankly out the window, seemingly lost in thought, with the window left open as he gazed at the sky.
The mood was quickly broken when Lilia barged in, but the pensive distant look on his face became the perfect fuel for her to start seducing him in earnest.
“No, it’s just… I couldn’t sleep.”
“Could it be… because you’re feeling lonely?”
Flinch!
It was a small reaction, but Lilia caught it instantly and silently cheered.
Now that she had identified his soft spot, it was completely her turn to play.
“Oh dear… Even someone like me, an older woman, wants to be of help to you, Mars…”
“M-Ms. Lilia?”
Before he realized it, Lilia was right beside him. She pressed her thin silk nightgown against his forearm, so close that he could feel the warmth of her skin. It was an unmistakably bold move.
“Ms. Lilia, you shouldn’t be doing this. You have a husband…”
“It’s alright. With the way my husband is now, I’ve been feeling so lonely too. Just think of it as doing a little service, and help me, won’t you?”
A dark room with just the two of them man and woman.
The soft moonlight bathed them in its glow like a grand chandelier, and when Lilia’s sultry gestures filled the air with heavy tension, Mars’s body visibly stiffened.
“Are you nervous? How cute, fufu. Don’t worry….just leave everything to me~”
A historic moment. The very instant her dream of making this man hers was about to come true.
Lilia had laid out a grand plan to seduce Mars with her charm technique and make him her eternal servant.
Just before her hand could reach his groin—
Beeeep—!
“Wh-What!?”
A whistle sound echoed through the mansion in the middle of the night.
Thud!
“Kyaa!!”
Startled by the sudden noise, Lilia hesitated in confusion. Taking advantage of that brief moment, Mars shoved her away and quickly ran toward the direction of the sound. There, next to the food storage room on the first floor, he found the team members rescuing the captive men.
Though they had been found, the condition of the men was anything but good.
Most of them were emaciated as if they hadn’t eaten in days, and their eyes were unfocused. They were staring off into space while their bodies trembled.
They seemed to be muttering something, but with an ordinary person’s hearing, it was impossible to make out what they were saying.
“How did you find them?”
“It was an illusion spell. The secret door next to the food storage had been disguised to look like part of the wall.”
“If it was an illusion, shouldn’t you have been able to sense it through the mana?”
“They spread the spell in such a thin layer that the mana was barely detectable. We only found it because the saintess spread divine power around, which clashed with the illusion magic. If we had to rely on our eyes alone, we never would’ve found it.”
An illusion spell crafted to maximize efficiency with the bare minimum amount of mana.
Thanks to that, the men had been trapped underground and controlled, unable to escape. But now, things were different.
“We need to move them to a safe place first and check their condition. We also need to confirm if there are any casualties—”
“You bastards—!!”
A shrill, piercing voice rang out from behind.
“You damn brats dared to deceive me!? Get over here now and give me back my food!!”
“Food?”
At the word food, I looked around at the others, but they all wore expressions that said they hadn’t seen any bodies or body parts of the village men in the basement.
“If by food… you mean you were going to eat these people? That can’t be right…”
If she had intended to use them as food, she would’ve fattened them up somehow. As unpleasant as it was to say, even humans had to have some fat on them to have any texture when chewed.
“Ha! You think I’m some barbarian who gnaws on human flesh? I feed on life force!”
“…life force?”
“Yeah, life force! The life force, the essence of vigor that all humans carry—I feed on that!”
“Ah.”
“I came in advance to secure some test subjects and prepare lunch boxes who would offer me their life force, and now you’ve come and ruined everything… Wait, no, this isn’t right, no.”
Lilia, who had been baring her teeth and venting her fury at Mars and the club members, suddenly grew calm, as if something had just dawned on her.
“It’s a deal, Mars. If you become mine, I’ll let those people go.”
“Wha—!?”
For some reason, the absurd terms of the exchange made the women even more outraged, but Lilia continued speaking.
“Your life force is different from others. The taste, for one, and no matter how much I feed on it, it never runs out. And it’s so pure… After feeding on your life force, my power completely changed, you know? So here are my terms. If you agree to be mine, I’ll let you do whatever you want with my body~”
Apparently no longer bothering to hide anything, she seductively brushed down her sweat-soaked clothes from running over, trying to entice Mars.
“How about it? Isn’t a voluptuous, sensual woman like me much better than those little girls who still smell like milk—urk!”
“You slutty bit*h!!”
But Lilia’s seduction was abruptly cut short by the furious strike of the saintess’s staff to her head.
Leave a Reply