The Demonic Cave — Chapter 17: A Civil Servant's Sigh

The bewildered aides quickly remembered Libitina, who had collapsed without warning back when they were slaying the Ant-on. They had carried her to the camp and examined her at the time, but there had been nothing to do but watch her lie there sick. Then, as time passed, the fever had broken on its own and she had regained consciousness. Presumably she still needed a little more time even now.

Well, after all, it had been Asselin who witnessed the whole thing. So surely their superior knew what he was doing. Convinced by roughly that line of reasoning, the aides nodded.

“Understood!”

Libitina, who had only just managed to poke her head back out from under the cloak after much squirming, watched the knights withdraw without a shred of suspicion and stared at them in open disbelief.

Even if it was their superior's order, honestly—how could they obey so meekly, every last one of them? Had they been brainwashed as a group? Or was Asselin such a tyrant of a commander that not a single word of protest was ever tolerated in his knight order?

With the knights walking off without so much as a backward glance, the only person Libitina could turn to for help was Asselin. Staring blankly at the spot where they had stood, she spoke in a listless voice.

“Don't tell me you expect me to keep washing myself in a stream full of floating monster corpses? I don't have the strength to bathe right now. I'm going to collapse either way, so I'd rather do it on a bunk in the barracks. If you're going to dump me somewhere, dump me there.”

At her words, Asselin let out a sigh. Then he took her by the arm to steady her and began to walk—in the exact opposite direction from where the knights had gone.

“…Where are we going?”

Don't tell me he'd decided to quietly do away with her while she was at her most vulnerable?

At the sudden thought, Libitina jolted and tried to shove him away—but her limbs, already burning with fever, could only go limp and boneless.

Asselin scooped up the feeble, swaying Libitina and carried her away from the camp in the opposite direction, stepping out of the water and hoisting her up. With Libitina slung over one shoulder like a sack of grain, he spoke.

“If you lose consciousness again like this, we'll be held up on the road a second time.”

With every stride he took, a fresh deluge of water poured out from between the plates of his armor. Only then did Libitina realize he had been in full heavy armor. To fight off a demonic beast without so much as stumbling, in armor that heavy, with one arm wrapped around her—

Libitina hung from his shoulder, watching the water droplets patter to the ground in a dotted trail, when Asselin suddenly spoke.

“The method you mentioned before. Does it truly resolve an unstable condition like this?”

Perhaps it was the fever, but his words weren't quite reaching her brain. Blinking slowly, Libitina answered anyway.

“Yes.”

“Then let's deal with it quickly.”

Wait—what exactly had she said to Asselin before?

Even as she was carried along like luggage, Libitina racked her fevered brain, dredging up the old memory. To relieve the heat in her body—in other words, she had asked Asselin to find her a partner for the night. Because Saintess Livia, five hundred years ago, had released her heat that way. Through regular intercourse with a man…

…Oh?

His steady footsteps stopped. Not far from the stream, hidden behind dense brush and trees, stood a cave whose existence she hadn't even suspected. It wasn't particularly deep, but its interior curved in such a way that nothing inside could be seen from outside. Asselin set Libitina down at the cave's entrance. For a man who had hauled her here like a sack of cargo, he was remarkably careful and courteous about putting her down.

“You said we'd deal with it quickly—here?”

“The knights aren't fools. No matter how far away the barracks is, a scrap of cloth like that can't completely conceal what goes on inside.”

Libitina stared blankly at his blunt reply, then managed to open her mouth with difficulty.

“Um… you did understand exactly what I meant, right? What I need is….”

“I know.”

Seeing the twisted expression on Asselin's face, Libitina pulled a dissatisfied look of her own. Still, the fact that he had resolved to see to her needs himself was a fairly remarkable achievement, so she decided, for the moment, to resign herself to the situation.

“Do I just wait here? Who are you going to send?”

Asselin, who had been turning to leave her there, froze at the question. He turned back to her, utterly serious, and answered coldly.

“Who would I possibly order to do something that hideous?”

His tone bordered on a rebuke as he strode away and left her standing there. Libitina watched him go with a strange look in her eyes. That answer just now had meant he would be the one to take her himself. Was he serious? Really?

…But would it be too paranoid of her to think that receding back carried something of the wistful anguish of a civil servant confronted with a complaint he loathed yet was duty-bound to process?

Asselin, who had vanished briefly after leaving her in the cave, reappeared carrying a dry blanket and a change of clothes among other things—presumably the very items he'd ordered the knights to bring along earlier. He had apparently left his armor behind entirely, dressed light.

Libitina watched blankly as the huge man crouched and spread the dry blanket out deeper inside the cave, then glanced around. They were still en route to Elham; the stream had been a stop they'd made only by chance along the road. And yet the way he'd swept her off to this cave, as if he'd been waiting for the moment—didn't it look exactly like someone who'd planned it all in advance?

“How did you even find a place like this?”

Don't tell me he'd scoped it out from the start—

“I checked the area around the stream earlier during the perimeter sweep.”

Right, of course. Nothing so sinister.

Even as Libitina's head grew tangled in a thousand thoughts, Asselin calmly finished preparing the spot. Then he began washing his hands with the drinking water he'd brought. There was something almost reverent about the gesture, like a man preparing for a sacred rite. Having cleansed his hands, he sank formally down onto one knee and offered up a prayer. His lips moving faintly suggested he was reciting the words of the prayer in his head.

A knight about to ride out to war couldn't have looked more solemn. Somehow, this man seemed to regard her as being in the same category as a demonic beast he had to subdue. Glaring at the back of the praying man's head with utter incredulity, Libitina pressed her fingertips to her heart.

O God, I offer You this body—stay Your wrath. Burn away the sins of my soul with Your flame, and grant me a pure and faithful heart.

She made the sign of the cross, murmured the brief prayer, and opened her eyes—whereupon Asselin, who had finished his own prayer first, spoke as if he'd been waiting for it.

“Is penetration the necessary act?”

It was a question far too vulgar to follow so solemn a prayer. Blinking rapidly, Libitina tilted her head.

“Probably?”

At her unconvincing answer, Asselin narrowed his eyes.

“Then what principle does it even operate on?”

Holy power was the power of God; its side effects were the Devil's curse. No one, standing before that self-evident truth, had ever thought to question the mechanism behind it. And so Libitina, likewise, knew not the slightest thing about the principles underlying a Saintess's power.

“I don't know.”

The instant Asselin's expression began to twist, Libitina hastily added an explanation.

“When I use holy power, heat builds up inside my body. To release it, I have to share a bed with a man. Five hundred years ago, the Order used to arrange a Saintess's nighttime partners for her on a regular schedule.”

Asselin looked at her with an expression of open horror.

“Carnal desire clouds a pure mind. That is precisely why the Order has always prized the virtue of temperance above all else. I find myself gravely doubtful that the Order you speak of is the same Order I know.”

For once, he and Libitina were in complete agreement. She, too, was gravely doubtful that the Order of today was truly the Order she knew.

“So the conclusion is that your lust must be relieved?”

“Is that… the conclusion…?”

What had Saintess Livia's nights actually been like? She had waited outside the door, of course, but sound alone couldn't tell her everything that went on within. So she honestly didn't know the precise conditions under which the heat was fully released. Still, remembering not only the Saintess's moans but the way the men who attended her had burned with a passion they couldn't contain—aching and pleading—it seemed a stretch to call it purely one-sided service.

“Then regardless of the method, it's enough that you feel pleasure?”

She couldn't bring herself to add that the attending men, too, had indulged freely. This was, after all, a man who couldn't bear to order anyone else to do something so hideous, and had stepped up to take her on himself. Forcing pleasure on him as well—someone who'd volunteered only under protest—struck her as a genuinely wicked thing to do.

Libitina chewed at her lip, worrying it, then finally pulled it free with a sigh.

“Seems like it. So try whatever you like.”

“If intercourse isn't strictly necessary, I'll use my fingers. That much should be on par with any decent man.”

…Was he out of his mind? Since when were fingers and a cock the same size?

Even as the thought crossed her mind, her eyes drifted to his hands of their own accord. The man's hands, calloused and hardened, were thick-knuckled and substantial. Maybe it was because she'd only ever seen them gloved, but just looking at them now felt strangely indecent, as though she were seeing something she wasn't meant to. She had no idea why she was the one feeling embarrassed, staring at a man's bare hands.

Pursing her lips, Libitina kept sneaking sidelong glances at Asselin's hands, then quietly looked away.

So that's what he was planning to use on her?

…It didn't look entirely inadequate, she supposed.