Chapter 655: Face-Kissing Demon [Bonus - ]

Chapter 655: Face-Kissing Demon [Bonus Chapter]

She turned toward the center of the camp and waved for them to follow.

"Come on... Under standard Lord protocols, the first summoned Hero sets the tone of the territory but a lord can’t rely on one champion... The walls need standing infantry too."

They walked back to the rose-veined marble archway, with its gold-threaded pillars and the pair of carved sea-drakes curling around a star-silver sun.

The slender pedestal stood at the base of the right pillar with its circular holder gleaming.

Ther’Abella looked past it at the treeline, where iron-spined stalkers crouched beyond the barrier, which had knitted itself whole again.

"My Lord, do you want me to deploy my remaining starlight? Even at Level 1, I can project a terror-ward and suppress those beasts while you conduct the ritual."

Aki shook her head at once.

"No, Ther’Abella. Your core needs to recharge, and your ribs are broken from Thor’s kick so save your mana... Just stand there and look like a commander so the troops recognize you."

She opened her Lord’s tab.

"We’ll summon standard troops for now and maybe a second Hero when Silas comes back to check out the territory compltely... I want to do this slowly. In the Lord archives online, I read hundreds of accounts of novice lords who summoned five Heroes on their first afternoon and then suffered terrible backlash, because they didn’t understand the personalities or skill trees of their own vanguard."

She drew a stack of tickets from the satchel at her waist.

"I want to know every woman under my command. Names, weapons, home provinces... It’ll make me a slower lord than the others but I intend to build a kingdom that lasts."

She set the stack on the star-silver holder.

SHING!

All twenty tickets flared a soft uniform white as a tab appeared in front of her eyes.

[Would you like to use 20x Troop Summoning Cards?]

[Y / N]

Aki took a breath and pressed her thumb on the golden [Y].

HUMMMMMMMMM!

There was no sky-shattering pillar this time.

A warm ring of emerald light spread out from the base of the pedestal, turning slowly like a loom, and motes of white ether gathered into twenty pale pillars arranged in two neat ranks of ten across the marble base of the archway.

When the glare faded, twenty women stood there.

They were young and sturdy, with the build of frontier settlers, hunters, and village militia.

None wore heavy plate as they were dressed in plain homespun tunics, good leather boots, and canvas breeches, and they looked around the meadow with wide lost eyes.

The twenty stood in two neat ranks, blinking in the sun, and Aki felt her heart do something complicated.

’I need to get more confidence...’

She had read about this moment in a hundred chronicles, always written from a conqueror’s point of view.

None of them had mentioned how small and how human the people looked when they arrived.

Before she gave her speech, she went down the line.

"Name?" she asked the first, a tall, freckled woman with a hunter’s braid.

"B-Brynja, my Lord. Of the Eastern Marches."

"Brynja. Do you like the bow, or the spear?"

"The... spear, my Lord. I’m not very good with the bow."

"Then you’ll have a spear," Aki said, as though it were the simplest thing in the world, and moved to the next.

A stocky serious girl named Tove said she was a baker’s daughter.

A quiet bespectacled one named Ilse said she’d trained as a bonesetter.

Aki repeated each name once under her breath, like a charm, so she’d keep it.

By the end of the line she’d gotten twenty names and twenty provinces, and she hadn’t looked at her tab once.

Somewhere behind her, Thor muttered to Eluned. "She’s doing it a bit slow, you know... She does have the tabs I think."

"Of course she is," Eluned murmured. "She’s kind."

Aki heard none of it.

She walked back to the edge of the base and lifted her chin with all the natural authority of a Royal Family daughter.

"Citizens of the Sovereign Realm!"

Twenty heads snapped toward her. The murmuring stopped.

"I am Princess Aki," she said, meeting each of their faces with warm, honest eyes. "Lord of this domain, which is recorded in the Sovereign Realm as Vineworld... You’ve been pulled out of the ether into an untamed frontier, and I won’t lie to you... The woods beyond our walls are dangerous so taming this soil will take sweat and vigilance but under my banner you will never go hungry. You’ll have sturdy roofs, fair wages, and good steel to guard your hearths!"

She pointed at the huge runic circle on the eastern edge of the camp.

"And Vineworld doesn’t stand alone... We’re the recognized vassal territory of Blessed Land, a power whose shield covers our borders!"

She spread her arms toward the two women flanking her.

"Beside me is my First Hero, Commander Ther’Abella, formerly of an Elite Guard, who will teach you the spear and beside her is Lady Eluned, the Spirit of the World Tree, whose grace feeds our fields!"

The twenty looked at the tall silver-haired elf with stars on her cheeks and they looked at the gentle, green-haired goddess holding a tray of pastries.

Then they looked at the small, lapis-haired girl standing straight in front of them.

The hesitation left their faces.

THUD!

All twenty dropped to their right knees in perfect unison and put their fists over their hearts.

"We hear and obey, Lord Aki!" They rang out together across the meadow. "Long live Vineworld! Long live Blessed Land!"

A hot dizzying rush of pride rose in Aki’s chest.

...She’d done it.

’I’m... I’m good...’

She wasn’t the frail unawakened spare daughter shut away in the royal library anymore, instead she was a lord with a domain, an army, and a champion at her side.

"Rise, sisters!" Eluned chimed, stepping down from the base with the tray held high. "Come, eat! Warm pastries for everyone before we hand out the barracks!"

The new troops broke ranks with relieved cheerful smiles and clustered around her like schoolgirls, laughing and thanking her as she passed out honeyed lotus cakes.

Brynja took two and looked at them as though they were made of gold.

Thor floated over with a cask in each hand, grinned at the nearest row, and bellowed.

"Who wants to arm-wrestle?" Every one of them took a step back.

One, a broad-shouldered smith named Gudrun, took a step forward, and Thor’s grin became downright pleased.

Aki stayed at the edge, watching with a soft smile then her gaze drifted south and the smile slipped.

’Silas.’ Her fingers tapped her leather belt. ’He’s been back in Valoria City for a long time... What could be keeping him that busy?’

A sharp dangerous thought slid in as the memory of a certain red-haired Bloom heiress with a very sharp tongue came to mind.

’He had better not be spending his evening with that Sera woman,’ she grumbled inside with her lower lip pushing out into a tiny royal pout. ’If I find out he was drinking foreign wine in some fancy lounge while I was out here hauling stone for the palisades, I’m locking the Anchor Gate... and I won’t talk to him for a week! Hmph!’

The pastries went around twice.

By the time the sun had slid toward the western treeline, the new troops were laughing in clusters on the grass, Thor was winning loudly in an arm-wrestling match to a smith named Gudrun, and Ther’Abella had sat down on the marble base of the archway to rest her ribs.

She didn’t mean to fall asleep.

She sat bolt upright with a half-eaten honey cake in her lap and her chin on her chest with her free hand twitching and in under a minute her breathing went slow and deep for the first time in four hundred years.

Aki noticed first.

She slipped off her own traveler’s cloak, crossed the grass on tiptoe, and laid it over those broad scarred shoulders then she put a finger to her lips at Eluned, who was already watching with her whole heart in her eyes.

"She’s safe," Aki whispered. "Isn’t she?"

"She is," Eluned whispered back, and she sat down at the elf’s side and stayed.

...

The master bedroom of the Silverleaf apartment was dark and filled with the monotonous sound of the climate control unit blasting air from the ceiling vents.

Silas lay flat on his back, staring up at the white ceiling plaster with an expression of soul-weary resignation.

SMACK!

Silas winced with his eye twitching slightly.

Draped across his entire torso like an overgrown silk-clad octopus was Harper...

Her long slender legs were tangled so thoroughly between his thighs that any attempt to extract his left knee would require him to use space to teleport.

’But I already tried that...’

She would just sense his presence and lock him harder, this was the third time she had done so in fact.

Harper’s left arm was hooked securely around his neck, pinning his chin downward, while her entire upper body pressed flush against his ribs, radiating an absurd amount of heat that completely mocked the freezing air from the air conditioner.

’She said she wanted to sleep in my room because the alleyway lights disturbed her thoughts,’ Silas thought with his breathing coming in shallow careful drafts so as not to disturb the knot of limbs. ’So I allowed it...’

According to what he had heard Penelope say while doing her homework, Harper had spent the last two days complaining to anyone who would listen swearing she hadn’t slept a solid four hours since the whole incident.

Yet, the exact second her head had hit Silas’s chest, she had gone limp as a sack of wet flour and out cold before he could even finish pulling the down quilt over her shoulders.

Silas had felt a genuine quiet warmth in his chest at first.

It was nice to know that House Whitmore’s Head trusted him enough to drop her defenses completely, leaving her throat bare and her core dormant in his bed.

’...Which would be deeply touching,’ Silas reflected bitterly, ’if she didn’t have this one horrifying nocturnal habit.’

SLURP-SMACK!

Harper’s violet head shifted against his collarbone.

In the dead peaceful throes of deep sleep, her lips parted.

She leaned her chin up, pressed her mouth squarely against the side of Silas’s nose, and proceeded to vigorously lick the bridge of his snout with her tongue, letting out a soft contented mumble.

"Mmm... sweet pastry... needs more sugar..."

SMACK!

She planted a loud wet kiss directly onto his left nostril, followed by an aggressive suction-cup nuzzle against his cheekbone that sounded like an octopus detaching from a ship’s hull.

It was almost like she was a Face-Kissing Demon...

Silas lay completely paralyzed with his hands hovering awkwardly in the air beside her ribs.

’Why does she keep sucking on my face in her sleep?!’ Silas screamed silently at the dark ceiling molding with his left eyelid spasming with distress. ’Is she dreaming about fruit?! Am I an oversized peach in her subconscious?!’

He tried to gently slide his right shoulder back to gain half an inch of clearance.

"Ugh—!"

Harper’s arms and legs instantly contracted with the terrifying force securing a submission hold as her ankles locked behind his calves and her fingers dug deep into the silk of his pajama shirt, pulling his face right back down into the line of fire.

SLURP!

Another enthusiastic lick across his eyebrow.

Silas let out a long defeated breath through his teeth, letting his head sink back into the pillow.

He was a Gold Core Lord who could do many things but right now, he couldn’t even escape a woman in matching pajamas because he was terrified that using his physical strength might accidentally dislocate her shoulder while she was sleeping.

’I don’t want to wake her up... She looks so cute while she’s sleeping too.’

Resigned entirely to his sticky fate, Silas let his arms fall... gently resting his hands against the small of her back.

"Mmmph~"

Harper let out a dreamy purring sigh, burrowing her forehead deep beneath his chin with her breathing settling back into a slow hush against his throat.

Silas stared up into the dark, listening to the quiet hum of the apartment, and closed his eyes.

’I need to sleep.’