LP 2.17 Mages of the Neutral Zone
by SnowlynHe answered offhandedly, as men typically do after satisfying sex.
Well, he certainly seemed close to his right mind. His member was still inside that damp, hot hole, and beneath his palm, soft, pliant skin was being crushed, yet he was holding back well, wasn’t he?
“…Why?”
Kosha pulled his body back slightly with a puzzled expression. His slender hand fumbled over Lucian’s broad, firm chest muscles. For Kosha, it was a serious act of detecting the mana hiding near the heart, but to the one receiving it, it felt like nothing more than clumsy, teasing caresses.
“Strange, why suddenly? Why have the side effects disappeared? Is, is this detoxification?”
What did he do? His mind, still buzzing with pleasure, wasn’t working properly, but Kosha tried anyway. The moment the familiar mana burrowed into his own body, and the moment reason returned to Lucian’s eyes.
…Internal release?
Merely thinking of that explicit word made Kosha’s face flush bright red. No, but, really? Could the mana left in his body return to me through internal release? …Really?
How could mana work in such a shameless and lewd way?
Of course, the operation of magic primarily relies on intuition, and intuitively, it’s closer to an act of infusion….
At that point, Kosha’s head grew too hot to think further. Anyway, let’s try diagnosing again. Whether this one time completely detoxified him or if, per-perhaps, there’s more left….
While Kosha was lost in a Mage-like deep contemplation, Lucian was simply looking at Kosha’s nipple. Small, looking as if it hadn’t even matured yet, slightly redder and more inflamed than before.
Then, when Kosha, who had been groaning to himself, began kneading the area around his chest again, Lucian also decided he wouldn’t hold back any longer.
His two hands seemed to gently envelop Kosha’s ribcage before, without warning, touching the nipple. Pinching the small thing between his thumb and forefinger and rolling it, Kosha screamed and shuddered violently.
“Ah, uhn! Your Highness, suddenly, I, my right mind….”
“Uhn, right mind.”
Applying a bit more pressure with his fingertips pinching the nipple, the sensitive body fell backward completely. His stomach tightened, stimulating his member. It had long been ‘ready’ and stiff again. No, in fact, it was already near its limit. One pseudo-act and one act of penetrative sex felt a bit insufficient.
He had escaped the elixir’s influence, but strictly speaking, he wasn’t truly in his ‘right mind’ yet.
What kind of man could be in his ‘right mind’ during sex like this?
Supporting the waist of the body trying to fall back, he licked the nipple a little before laying him down properly on his back. As his member popped out of the hole with a thud, he also took off the bothersome trousers. Becoming completely naked finally satisfied him. The dizzying sensation of his bare legs tangling with the Mage’s smooth legs was intoxicating.
“I’ll do better this time.”
He whispered, burrowing into the space beside Kosha. He tried his best to speak sweetly, but his voice was hoarse and rough. Kosha blinked as if he didn’t understand.
“Do what…?”
“What else.”
He laughed and turned Kosha’s body sideways. They were lying side by side, facing each other. He took one of Kosha’s legs and placed it over his own body. Naturally, the space between the legs opened, and his member rubbed against the soft inner thigh, grinding.
“Not painfully, okay? I’ll go gently. As promised at the beginning.”
“Ah, no….”
Anyway, he needed to make up for it a bit too. At least, Lucian thought so. He didn’t even consider the correlation between sex and magic potion detoxification.
He liked the Mage’s body immediately, thought he would continue to, and simply wanted to continue this relationship if possible.
So, shouldn’t he make the Mage a bit more immersed in this act? Make the Mage crave his body too.
“But, that, it’s already too much….”
Kosha was flustered. His butt aside, the tip of his member was sore…. Could he really get it up again here? But Lucian only laughed as if he’d heard a funny joke.
“We’ve only done it twice.”
For Kosha, who had no idea what number was appropriate or average, he had nothing to say about that.
“Hmm? I’ll make you feel good.”
And without permission, the swollen glans pushed its head into the fully loosened hole. Lucian pulled the thigh Kosha had placed over him a bit tighter. The penetration deepened slightly.
“Ah-ut…!”
“This way it doesn’t go in deep, right?”
Can you call that a statement now? Kosha unconsciously burrowed into his chest, trembling. It certainly went in less. However, that strangely curved thing kept touching somewhere on the shallow inner wall. A place that shouldn’t be touched.
The feeling of needing to pee returned, and the leg draped over Lucian’s body struggled. Sweat-dampened thighs slickly rubbed against the man’s waist and pelvis. It looked like nothing more than a petulant display.
“Ah, here? You like it here?”
See, I said I’d do well. Lucian whispered, coaxingly embracing Kosha, who had buried his head. He didn’t seem to expect an answer.
As he promised, the intercourse continued gently and slowly. Lucian leisurely enjoyed the inside of the Mage’s body like someone who had put out an urgent fire, and Kosha… panted, dripping all sorts of things below.
The slow lovemaking continued silently for a long time. Kosha had no way of knowing what he was doing properly, but he could gauge the man’s pleasure from the low moans and breaths settling in his ear.
The body of the Mage, with its fragile and pitiful stamina, soon reached its limit.
The moment his vision went dark, it seemed like the man holding him was ejaculating inside the inner wall, or maybe not. Anyway, for Kosha, there was nothing more to come out, and no mind left to hold on.
When he opened his eyes again, it was the bluish dawn.
Thinking he was alone, he felt body heat behind him. Also the thick forearm supporting under his neck. Lucian’s limbs were completely entwined around Kosha’s entire body.
They were still naked. He could feel the volume of the member nestled between his buttocks. Feeling a bit disgusted, he fidgeted, and a languid voice came from behind.
“Hmm… awake?”
He seemed to have woken from a light sleep too. Kosha sluggishly turned his body to look back at the man lying behind.
The relaxed expression, slowly blinking eyelids, and the bluish-gray pupils revealing themselves within them came into view one after another.
Suddenly, a chill ran shiveringly up his spine. Kosha trembled uncontrollably, and he frowned and asked again.
“Cold?”
He wasn’t cold. Because Lucian was there. But somehow, saying that straightforwardly felt embarrassing, so he hesitated, and the man got up from the spot.
He tried to grab him, but his body was sluggish. Lucian covered Kosha’s body with the blanket, then roughly picked up the trousers that had fallen on the floor and put them on. In the end, Kosha just lay there dazedly, watching him rummage around the room.
Soon, as if he had found what he wanted, he knelt before a small fireplace in one corner of the room. The way he added firewood and struck a flint to light the fire was quite skillful.
Warmth instantly filled the small room. But more welcome than the fire was the warmth of the man returning to the bed. He burrowed under the blanket and embraced Kosha from behind again.
“Sleep a bit more. Anyway, there’s a curfew in the capital now….”
Lucian had the authority to pass through the city gates regardless of the curfew, but he pretended not to know and hid that fact. However, since Kosha also wanted to enjoy this time a little longer, it wasn’t really a problem.
He slept and woke repeatedly until sunrise. The boundary was very vague.
Lucian heated a little water over the fireplace embers that had burned all night and were about to die out. He took out a dry towel, dampened it, and wiped Kosha’s body, but his touch was somehow clumsy. Finding a clumsy aspect in someone who seemed skilled at everything felt strange and delightful, so Kosha secretly swallowed a laugh.
Since Kosha wasn’t in a condition to ride a horse normally, Lucian had to wrap him tightly in the gray robe, carry him in his arms, and mount the horse.
It wasn’t far from the subsidiary fortress on the rear hill to Ostbrahe’s main castle. Even riding very slowly, it was in the blink of an eye.
It was when they entered inside the inner wall. An urgent voice shattered their tranquility.
“Your Highness!”
Instantly, Kosha sensed an ominous aura for some reason. Lucian, who had jumped off the horse first, helped Kosha down, and the moment Kosha’s feet touched the dirt ground of the castle courtyard.
It was the moment he returned from a hazy, dreamlike space back to solid reality.
A brief moment of dizziness overwhelmed Kosha. Lucian reflexively supported Kosha, but the approaching voice was faster.
“Your Highness, all night, where, no….”
It was Gosrick. His voice was urgent and desolate. The expressions of the other knights who followed him were also stiffly frozen.
Gosrick’s gaze urgently alternated between Kosha and Lucian before he lowered his voice as much as possible.
“Last night, the King approved Bastian’s expedition.”
“…What?”
“Three thousand infantry and two thousand royal cavalry. Your Highness, the King signed the petition.”
The King, who had long withdrawn from all frontlines, suddenly? Lucian frowned. He heard it, but couldn’t comprehend it immediately. There had been no warning or sign. It was also something he never expected to hear upon returning after enjoying just one day of rest.
“That’s utter nonsense.”
…No wonder the air felt ominous and foreboding. Kosha took a deep breath, and Gosrick shook his head.
“Precisely on the day Your Highness was absent from your post, we had our limits in responding. I heard the Tower Lord incited the King in private….”
“How could that woman meet the King in private?”
Wasn’t everything related to this visit of the Gaikrux envoy controlled through the Regent, Lucian? Lucian tried to move hastily but stopped short. His gaze turned toward Kosha, who was standing awkwardly.
And the gazes of the vassals as well.
Kosha rolled his eyes and gulped.
“I’ll go back to my room.”
He said, sensing the mood, but Lucian frowned. He reflexively looked around as if searching for someone to entrust Kosha to.
The castle always had many people, but few were trustworthy. And the trustworthy personnel would be needed by him immediately. Kosha shook his head again. It wasn’t like he couldn’t walk right away.
“I can go alone. I know the way well now.”
And, because he’s a Mage. Kosha smiled awkwardly, and Lucian’s expression hardened further.
But he also seemed to have no other choice. Hesitating briefly, he grabbed Kosha’s shoulder and pulled the hood over his head.
“Go straight to your room. I’ll send someone separately.”
“I will.”
“Go straight.”
He spoke as if driving in a nail and turned away. His quickly receding footsteps looked urgent.
Kosha watched that for a moment, then looked up at the sky. The long wall of the West Wing curving with a gentle arc, the tall towers rising at regular intervals, and the deep blue sky hanging above them.
Certainly, an unprecedented ominous aura was swirling.
Kosha did not keep his promise.
Of course, it wasn’t intentional. It was just that human thought and Mage thought were ambiguously mixed. He would go straight, of course, eventually, he would go….
First, he wanted to wash his body a bit. Even though Lucian had wiped him, his skills were still clumsy, and it felt like what he left inside was still there.
So, stopping by the bathhouse on the way to his room to wash off—wouldn’t that be included in going straight?
However, not going to the bathhouse closest to his room but heading to the public bathhouse located at the far end of the West Wing… was just a whim, probably.
Because a Mage can go anywhere he wants and do anything he desires.
Kosha walked slowly. His nerves were automatically on edge due to the strange atmosphere permeating the castle. Not many people were immediately visible wandering around, but signs of life were everywhere. Those voices, breathing sounds, and unfamiliar auras.
Kosha pulled the hood of the robe Lucian had put on him deeper. This was a new protective barrier to hide him, replacing the now unusable ‘Human Shell’. It wasn’t something Kosha intended, but it was a Mage’s instinct-like action.
It was when he turned a secluded corner rounding the back of the West Wing. The sound of footsteps pattering one after another abruptly stopped.
The back of a man crouching in a corner came into view. He didn’t seem to be doing any particular business, and above all, he was wearing quite decent clothes. Not an attire for being alone in such a secluded place.
Moreover….
“What are you doing there?”
Kosha spoke abruptly. The man, engrossed in something, jumped as if startled and fell flat on his backside.
“Ah, shit, you scared me!”
Seeing the fallen figure, his attire seemed like that of a typical court noble. Kosha tightened the collar of his robe more firmly.
“No… what are you?”
He scrambled to dust off his backside, got up, and faced Kosha. He was a red-haired man with a shiny face. His clean-shaven face without a single beard was quite handsome, but his pointed chin made him seem somewhat petty somewhere.
He narrowed his eyes and stared at Kosha as if observing him.
“What? A Mage? …One who came with the Tower’s envoy?”
Kosha did not answer. The man looked at Kosha as if sizing him up, then laughed shortly.
“Seems like a young one. Looks like someone who didn’t exist until thirty years ago.”
The man muttered that, though by appearance alone he didn’t look older than mid-thirties at most. Kosha hesitated, then opened his mouth.
“…Are you a Mage?”
“Huh? You don’t know me?”
He gaped as if he’d heard something absurd.
“Not knowing the great Alpeisa! What on earth are they teaching in the Tower these days?”
“…Alpeisa?”
“Also called Alpi.”
He boasted, but… Kosha shook his head. Anyway, Kosha wasn’t from the ‘Tower’ either. The man scowled.
“That crazy bitch, the senile old hag. Seems she’s trying to erase even my name, huh?”
He grumbled. Unlike his attire, his manner of speech wasn’t very dignified. Kosha wasn’t very curious about the man’s name either. Kosha opened his mouth again.
“I asked what you were doing.”
“Doing what?”
He grinned.
“Just doing what needs to be done. A young one wouldn’t know.”
“……”
“Hey, what’s this? Weren’t you guys planning to intervene gradually anyway? I have ears that hear everything too.”
The man rambled incomprehensibly.
“Don’t worry, I won’t interfere with that woman’s affairs for now, okay? Huh? This time, it’s like, what’s it called, we’re in the same boat.”
“……”
“Anyway, the third prince must be the most bothersome for you guys too, right? Strictly speaking.”
The man approached with a swaggering gait. Kosha shrank back as if avoiding him, but the man unceremoniously patted Kosha’s back.
“…So, can I go and tell them?”
Kosha asked in a voice like the wind. The man frowned.
“What?”
The man, who seemed to think for a moment, grinned.
“Doesn’t matter, but….”
And without warning, he raised his hand. His palm made a smack! sound as it struck Kosha’s forehead.
“Forget everything!”
The voice imbued with mana shook the space. Though he was wearing a hood, it was insufficient to absorb the impact, and Kosha staggered backward. The man laughed heartily again and turned away.
“Go tell that old hag you met the great Alpi!”
He waved his hand dismissively as he walked away.
Leaning against the wall, catching his breath, Kosha quietly lifted his hood and looked in the direction the man had disappeared.
“He’s crazy, isn’t he…?”
Confirming that the surroundings were completely silent, Kosha moved slowly. He stopped right at the spot where the man had been crouching and doing something.
Kosha’s toes lightly dug into the dirt around that area. It didn’t take long before something caught.
A round metal Pendant. Not very large, engraved with the pattern of a beast resembling a fish.
And the dark aura emanating from it. Only a Mage could recognize it.
…The source of the ominousness swirling in the castle. What had been gnawing at his nerves ever since returning to the castle.
Kosha surveyed his surroundings. From the exact diagonal direction of where the Pendant was buried, he could sense Lucian’s presence.
Just then, the green lizard peeked its head out from inside his robe sleeve. Kosha bent down and placed the lizard on the ground. The lizard clambered down into the pit on its own, then opened its mouth wide.
And swallowed the Pendant. The iron Pendant corroded red from where it was bitten, soon turning into crumbling powder and mixing with the soil.
“…How dare you.”
The green-eyed Mage muttered. The lizard let out a small burp.
The atmosphere in the office was like thin ice.
Since morning, he had met with the King, the Minister of Finance, the Capital Cavalry Commander, and finally, his half-brother who had somehow managed to secure the expedition. Among them, the most dreadful was not his half-brother, but the audience with the King.
‘You didn’t have tea with me.’
The King whined as soon as he saw Lucian. When asked why he had done such a thing without consultation, hearing that kind of answer made Lucian have to restrain the impulse to smash a teacup over his biological father’s head.
‘Anyway, listen, Lucian. That damned Gaikrux bastard is showing signs of trying to get his hands on Maleste territory, isn’t he? Joining hands with the northern Itaha tribe.’
‘The Tower Lord, Maleste? What on earth…’
‘So, isn’t our Maleste territory surrounded by enemies above and below? But Betsy, our son, is wise. Has foresight. He says he anticipated this and has prepared everything in advance.’
Betsy, our son—he always referred to his eldest son like a child.
‘He says he’ll attack the Tower while the Tower Lord is away. Then wouldn’t that bastard be completely blindsided? Amazing, isn’t it? If this goes on, it wouldn’t be impossible to eradicate the subversive elements from this land…’
‘Attack the Tower? The royal family? How on earth does that make any sense right now!’
Unable to listen any longer, Lucian raised his voice, and the King flinched in surprise, then trembled like a child.
‘Wh-what did I do wrong? But Lucian, listen…’
And the same words repeated.
‘You didn’t, didn’t have tea with me, so how could I consult with you…’
Damn it.
He left the delirious father as he was and stormed out of the King’s reception room. That one was already beyond saving. He had to salvage what could be salvaged.
“Even if the King’s mind has grown dull, it shouldn’t be to that extent. The Tower Lord must have intervened for sure.”
“The King’s Mage? What is he doing?”
“He hasn’t shown his face since the Gaikrux Tower Lord arrived. No one has seen him.”
“What benefit would the Tower Lord gain from Bastian’s expedition?”
“If Bastian colluded with the Tower from the start…”
Voices tangled chaotically.
Lucian simply listened to it all with his forehead resting in his hand. He only listened.
If he tried to say something, he didn’t know what sound would come out of his mouth. It felt like something utterly inappropriate might emerge. Countless possibilities and distracting thoughts rose and vanished simultaneously. Among them were things resembling curses.
On the game board of managing factions by attaching and detaching forces, Bastian and the Tower Lord were positioned at opposite ends. There was simply no conceivable link between them.
“Enough of this!”
Cutting through the commotion was Renata’s clear, sharp voice.
“Are we just arguing about causes now? Bastian’s expedition is in just five days. We must respond first!”
In any case, the King’s approval had been given. Even under the regency, the King’s authority does not disappear. To overturn this, a new royal decree would be needed, but that seemed distant. At least, too distant to resolve within five days.
“At least it’s fortunate we moved our troops to Silvern first. Your Highness, as a knight directly appointed by the King, you are fully qualified to command the royal army.”
“Assuming they obey meekly, that is.”
Lucian retorted irritably. Renata nodded.
“We can mobilize them enough to buy time in an emergency. We must focus on making that happen from now on. If it were me, I would also involve the Commissioner of Public Safety.”
Renata moved a few pieces on the game board as she spoke.
“And recall my incompetent younger brother. In military matters, that one is still better than me.”
Lucian gestured vaguely in agreement. In any case, this much could be considered a sufficient period of self-restraint. She paused her hand briefly while removing and arranging a few pieces on the game board, then spoke again.
“And lastly… Lend me some people, Your Highness.”
Looking around the office filled with people, her voice lowered. Lucian lightly furrowed his brow.
“Why?”
“…Regarding that Mage, I have something to report. I assume you would not want word to leak out.”
The eyes of the Eldest Daughter, said to be the wisest in Koherben, gleamed meaningfully.
<Continued in Volume 3>