Chapter 163 – Strange Phenomenon
“We’ve arrived. Hehe.”
Nix successfully teleported to the right coordinates in one go. Before we knew it, we were back in front of that damn blue locomotive at the Rune Dungeon.
I reached out and gave Nix a gentle pat on the head.
“Good job, Nix.”
“Hee….”
A long, thin breath escaped her. Nix squinted as she accepted my touch. After a moment, she pulled away. Her eyes returned to their usual gloomy black.
“Just wait here for a second. I’ll be right back.”
“You can take your time coming back….”
“I can’t do that. You want me to leave you here while I take it easy?”
Their warm demeanor over there made it hard for me to act coldly toward them.
Even though Nix was hiding a ton of bizarre secrets and suffering from ridiculous delusions, she hadn’t really hurt us.
The worst she did was show up in the middle of the city and scare the hell out of some people, but no one died, and the actual damage was minimal, just a little incident we could overlook.
“Hehe… then go ahead and do your thing.”
Nix said that as she leaned back against a rock near the Rune Dungeon and flopped down. She attempted to hug her knees but hesitated, lying down awkwardly instead.
Perhaps she was originally trying to lean against the wall while hugging her knees, but her absurdly large chest got in the way.
‘Who designed such a body….’
I marveled at the imagination of mankind as I walked toward the city. After a similar passage of time it took to get to the Rune Dungeon, the towering castle walls came into view.
A long line stretched at the city gate. It felt like the line was much longer than when I left. Instead of waiting at the back, I boldly walked alongside the queue.
At the side, four female guards were inspecting people and carts. Of course, the guards were women, and the citizen being checked was also a woman. Their outfits were unmentioned.
Not only that, but I couldn’t spot a single man in the line that was easily over a hundred meters long.
‘Why are there only women here? Did the Modder design the city with that concept?’
Even the last time I stopped by here to meet Cassandra before heading to the Rune Dungeon, I hadn’t seen a single man on the streets.
As I approached the city gate, a guard stopped me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the same one from earlier.
“You can’t approach any further. Please go to the back of the line. Wait your turn—”
The guard was about to send me back behind the line, but paused as I pulled out my identification from my pocket. She looked me up and down.
Then, as if realizing something, she gasped.
“Are you, by any chance, Delta, the commander of the Dark Night Order?”
I froze, still halfway through retrieving my identification.
“How did you know?”
“The lord passed it down to the guard. If a handsome man with black hair and black eyes, wearing a gray blade at his waist, comes, let him pass. I also heard your name then.”
It seemed they had been given advance notice to avoid any confusion, even though I had already received my identification to pass through. I tucked the ID back into my inner pocket.
“Welcome. Please, go on in, Commander.”
The guard neatly cleared the way. I walked past her and entered through the city gate.
“……?”
As soon as I stepped inside, a strange chill washed over me, causing my body to shiver slightly while I scanned my surroundings.
The guard who had let me in earlier, as well as the citizens waiting in line to be checked, and even the women walking around casually, all fixed their gaze on me. I felt a sticky, hard-to-ignore gaze all around me.
‘What’s going on? Are they all collectively losing it?’
I slowly made my way toward Cassandra’s mansion. With every step I took, all those eyes followed me. I found it difficult to shake off the unsettling feeling.
Even as I tried giving subtle hints, no one looked away. They didn’t seem to care whether I was uncomfortable or not.
‘Still no sight of a single man.’
I kept scanning the street as I walked, but all I saw was a sea of women. Even though I must have passed hundreds of people.
And they all were staring at me, eyes locked onto me.
At this point, it was only natural to think something strange was going on. The unsettling gaze alone was enough to raise the hairs on my neck.
Earlier, when I had briefly come with Helga, I had garnered a few glances, but nothing like this. It was simply casual side-eyeing.
I continued to walk toward the mansion. The deeper I went into the city, the more the gazes became downright blatant.
‘What the hell is going on?’
Everything was far from normal.
Even though I walked through the main road of the city, there was not a single man among thousands, and all the women on the street were openly staring at me. Both facts were bizarre.
I made my way past the sticky gazes and arrived at the mansion. The guards stationed at the main gate turned their attention toward me. They were female knights dressed in loose white t-shirts and shorts that looked like triangle underwear.
On top of that, it seemed they weren’t even wearing underwear, as a pink silhouette faintly peeked through the chest area of their jiggling t-shirts.
They had been wearing armor just a few hours ago.
Our eyes met. As soon as the knight looked at me, she suddenly fanned herself with her hand, then lifted the edge of her t-shirt to reveal her well-defined abs.
The hem she lifted was tied just below her breasts. The outfit seemed like a lower-tier version of Nix’s attire.
“Are you the commander of the Dark Night Order, Delta?”
The knight casually initiated conversation. I nodded slowly in response.
“That’s right.”
“Please proceed. The lord is waiting for you.”
She gestured politely toward the beautifully paved marble path leading to the mansion. It was surely a path I had walked just before, but now it felt bizarrely unsettling.
It could be that the guards were staring at me with the same intent gaze as the women on the street.
I walked past the knights without even glancing at them, ignoring the fixed stares on my back.
Once inside, the mansion was eerily quiet.
Yeah, it was too quiet to be normal.
I inspected the chandelier with every light turned off, as well as the candle holders along the walls, where the wax had hardened. Since all sources of light were extinguished, the hallway was dim even in broad daylight.
‘Now that I think about it, the curtains….’
Even though it was daytime, there was a darkness enveloping everything, as all the windows in the hallway were draped with curtains. Upon seeing this, I subtly gripped the hilt of the Wingless Nightmare, ready for anything.
I decided to look for anyone here. In such a large mansion, there had to be someone, and if I couldn’t find anyone, then that would mean something was definitely amiss.
I pulled back curtains from every window as I wandered through the mansion.
“Something’s wrong.”
I couldn’t find a single soul.
‘Could it be that thinking those thoughts caused this situation?’
After feeling a sudden thirst for blood, it hadn’t even been a few hours. How could anything have happened? I chastised myself for such needless worries. I should have just stayed calm.
I didn’t think anything would happen just because I felt uneasy, but regardless, I couldn’t shake off the feeling. Grumbling internally, I headed up to the top floor of the mansion, my final destination.
The top floor contained only a vast corridor and a lavishly decorated door. This was probably Cassandra’s room.
I drew the Wingless Nightmare. I could risk being seen as a lunatic bursting into the lord’s room with a drawn weapon but it was better than going in unarmed and getting ambushed.
At least in the former scenario, I could provide an explanation.
“Commander…?”
I reached for the door when I heard a faint voice calling me, causing me to freeze. Turning my head, I saw someone staggering toward me through the dim hallway.
Pink bunny ears perked up on her head. An X-shaped sticker barely covering her nipples and genitals. Her bare chest and abdomen were fully exposed, while her arms and legs were tightly wrapped up.
It was Helga.
“Helga? Where have you been until now…?”
I instinctively tried approaching Helga but hesitated. In this situation, trusting someone in such a strange state was difficult, even if that someone was someone I knew.
I turned the blade of the Wingless Nightmare toward Helga. It was a rude action, but verifying that she was truly Helga and that everything was fine took priority.
“Stop right there, Helga. Don’t come any closer, just talk from there.”
“Commander… please… Commander…”
Even with me pointing my sword at her and telling her to stop, Helga continued to stagger closer. It didn’t seem like she intended to stop at all.
The distance kept closing. Her chest, barely covered by a single X-shaped sticker, swayed lewdly with each step she took.
“That’s a commander’s order. Helga, stay right there.”
“Order… yes. Understood.”
Thanks to her thorough personality, even in a dazed state, Helga responded to the word ‘order.’
As soon as the words “commander’s order” left my lips, Helga came to a standstill. The Wingless Nightmare was mere moments from piercing her throat. Just one more step, and it would have certainly happened.
Though I would have inevitably lowered the blade in panic. But I had no intention of stabbing Helga with my own hand.
One thing was now certain after what just transpired. Helga’s condition was not normal. If she were in her right mind, she wouldn’t have approached me to the point of almost getting stabbed.
With the hallway still dark, I could only confirm Helga’s face now that we were this close.
Her cheeks and face were bright red with excitement, her breath carrying a tinged heat, her eyes were dreamy and glazed over, and her body radiated warmth, beads of sweat glistening on her skin.
It’s a terrible analogy, but she looked like Lize when she was all riled up after mixing bodies with me.
“Now we can talk. Helga, what happened? What’s going on? Where did the lord Cassandra and the others go?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Nothing happened? That’s obviously a lie!”
As soon as I stepped into the city, the women’s gazes were solely fixed on me, not a single man in sight, the mansion was empty, and now I find Helga in such a state, and you tell me nothing happened?
I looked at Helga with disbelief. But regardless of my reaction, Helga continued to stagger closer.
“Commander…”
“I told you not to come any closer. Talk from there.”
I sheathed the Wingless Nightmare and pushed Helga away with its hilt. From the looks of it, I felt like if I tried to push her with my hands, she’d catch my wrists before I could even do so.
Helga staggered back but barely regained her balance as she swayed, her dreamy gaze fixated on me as she continued to breathe heavily.
Then she suddenly licked her lips. Her bunny ears perked up.
“Commander… you’re a man, right?”
“What do you mean all of a sudden?”
“Commander. You are a man, right?”
Just one step. Helga’s lower half moved closer, her chest swaying up and down.
“I’m a woman. Because I have these things on my chest.”
Helga’s hands grasped her own breasts.
Then, she began to knead them like dough.
She pulled them wide, revealing her damp cleavage, or pressed them together, rubbing them, or swayed them up and down, flaunting their weight.
It was an incredibly provocative scene, but at that moment, the emotion of disbelief outweighed the excitement I should have felt at the sight. The tip of the blade trembled slightly.
“Helga, you….”
“Commander. Don’t you get it?”
She took a step closer, her hands leaving her chest. She had kneaded them so hard that red marks remained on her skin.
“When a man has an excited woman in front of him… there’s only one thing he can do.”
Her fingers reached for the sticker covering her nipple. She supported one breast with her left hand while her right hand began to peel away the sticker.
pop, pop> Helga’s fingernail grazed the edge of the sticker. Pink flesh peeked through the sticker. Her movements bore no hesitation whatsoever.
The sticker began to peel away slowly.
