BFT | Chapter 15

The frustration of his own cock rising against his will was maddening. Rlyel kept staring at the ceiling and moving his hand. He tried to think of it as kneading dough. Before he realized it, the towel under his grasp had become wet and heavy.

This should be enough.

After massaging the left breast as well, Rlyel removed the towel. Beneath the blouse, which he had pulled up to the collarbone, the beast looked at him with a dazed gaze, her milk-white breasts glistening. From that sight, Rlyel could not help but feel an embarrassingly decadent impression. Could even the obscene nude paintings secretly circulated in back alleys and made by a famous nobleman’s commission be this erotic?

Soon disgust surged up toward himself. Strictly speaking, that milk was baby food for the infant taken away by the senior priest’s side, and he found himself disgusting for feeling even more aroused by the sight.

Worse still, that was the result of being forcibly impregnated.

Rlyel silently recited the alphabet in his head while wiping the beast’s chest with a dry towel. Even though he had squeezed milk out through massage, the milk kept coming, but this was as far as he could push himself. In his mind there was only one thought, to rush out of this cell as quickly as possible.

The next moment, Rlyel sucked in a breath. The beast wrapped both arms around Rlyel’s neck and pulled him toward her. The nipple, still beaded with white milk, pressed hard against Rlyel’s mouth.

What is this... Does she want me to suck it with my mouth?

It seemed the beast, after being suckled by the prisoners, had naturally learned that this was the normal thing to do. Rlyel reflexively shoved her away.

"Don’t do that. That’s baby food."

Even as he said it, he felt stupid, so Rlyel shut his mouth. He had never felt so relieved that the beast could not understand words. If the guards had seen a warden chief as imposing as Hercules saying something childish like baby food, they would have burst out laughing.

The beast stared at Rlyel with a dazed face. Rlyel was wiping the milk from his mouth with the back of his hand when he paused. That look in the beast’s quiet gaze....

It was a clearly shaken look. In an instant, Rlyel’s whole body turned icy cold.

This guy, could it be?

"Did you just understand what I said?"

Rlyel grabbed the beast’s shoulders with both hands and asked. The beast only looked back at him with that expressionless face of hers. The flicker of agitation that had brushed through those eyes just a moment ago had vanished almost without a trace.

Rlyel and the beast remained silent, gazes locked. After a long time, Rlyel stood up.

He splashed himself with pump water and got dressed. Until he left the cell, Rlyel did not look toward the bed.

***

The next day.

"I might have to go on a business trip tomorrow. If I leave, I won’t be back until the fourth day."

Rlyel said this while dressing the beast in her blouse. Again, the beast gave no answer.

Was that just my imagination?

Rlyel fastened the blouse buttons and silently glared at the beast’s face. Suspicion had begun to sprout, and even though he had spoken to her often today, the beast had not reacted at all.

Of course, in a situation like this, being intelligent would be poison. If she had intelligence, she would go mad. Still, that was only from a human point of view.

There had been one reason why everyone, including Rlyel, had always thought the beast was unintelligent. During rape, the beast seemed to feel the male orgasm repeatedly, and she showed no sign of fear toward the prisoners at all. That sort of reaction would have been impossible if she had a normal intelligence.

From a human standard, that judgment was reasonable. The problem was that the beast was a devil. Her outward appearance only resembled a human’s, but her ecological habits and modes of behavior could be entirely different. What if a devil’s body, whether by choice or by force, felt unconditional pleasure during sex?

I made the mistake of overlooking the difference between species.

After the first suspicion arose regarding the beast’s intelligence, Rlyel had spent the night thinking. The devils’ way of thinking. Their values. Their attitude toward sex.

He still had no answer regarding intelligence, but he could reach one conclusion. Even if the beast was intelligent, she did not seem to feel deep despair or shame from gang rape. At least, she certainly felt it less than humans did. The devil was free from the feelings humans first recognized after eating the fruit of knowledge of good and evil.

But whether devils were free from anger too was another question. If intelligence existed in the beast, then in a situation like this, where she had not only had her goat horns and tongue cut off but had also been forcibly impregnated, could she really accept it without any anger? Separately from the physical pleasure obtained through intercourse, that is.

If the beast truly had been hiding her anger and playing dumb all along, that was frightening in its own way. There was only one reason she had not asked Rlyel for help even after more than two months. She was wary of humans to such an extent that she doubted even the warden chief caring for her. Such mental fortitude would be impossible unless she were a devil.

In any case... he had to draw the knife.

Rlyel quietly looked into the beast’s eyes and spoke.

"If I leave this place, the guards and prisoners will go insane. Even if I ask the superintendent to clamp down on them, it won’t matter. He’s over seventy, so the guards ignore him."

There was no change in the beast’s expression.

"If you want, I won’t go on the trip. If you understand me, blink three times."

Again, the beast did not respond.

"Does that mean it’s okay for me to go on the trip?"

Still silent.

After a brief pause, Rlyel spoke.

"Then I’ll go. When I come back, I’ll ask you a question, so if you’ve been treated harshly, blink three times. I’ll take revenge for you."

Rlyel wanted to know the beast’s intelligence as soon as possible. For the beast, the real struggle for survival would begin only after escaping Abaddon Prison, and in that struggle, intelligence was the most decisive factor. Only with sufficient intelligence could she survive in the human world. There was no need to keep delaying, and Rlyel could still smuggle the beast out later.

After combing the beast’s hair, Rlyel left the cell. Just imagining what would happen here while he was away made nausea rise in him. Though he had decided on this trip because he judged the beast would not suffer deep despair from the gang rape, he still did not feel good about it. If it were up to him, he would have wanted to beat every single one of the sexual criminals here to death right away.

Soon Rlyel steeled himself coldly. If he wanted to get the beast out of hell, this trip was an unavoidable hurdle. There was no such thing as a free lunch in this world, and sometimes the most merciless choice had to be made. This was that moment.

He would finish it, no matter what.

***

He arrived in the capital, Vibris, in a single day. Although prisoners’ heads were publicly displayed all over Vibris every day, the situation seemed to have grown even more severe lately. Even Rlyel had never seen the market lined with rows of severed heads hung on pikes. Merchants were selling freshly baked bread in front of those maggot-covered heads.

When he received the list of condemned prisoners from the court, Rlyel was slightly surprised.

"A lot, aren’t there?"

The young judge who handed him the list was the very person who had placed Rlyel in the position of warden chief at Abaddon Prison. Perhaps because he was the illegitimate son of a noble, he treated Rlyel, a commoner, without any distance, and Rlyel liked him as well.

"They’re royals sentenced to death for refusing conversion, heresy, plotting treason, and all sorts of things. If it had been last year, they would have only lost their lands and titles. Bad luck, really."

Even Rlyel, the executioner recognized by everyone as first-class, had never once beheaded as many as sixty-seven people in a single day.

"I’ll need several axes."

"Of course, I’ve prepared five spares. The execution grounds haven’t had a day without blood for the past half year. His Majesty’s health isn’t good. Concerned about the future of his only son, who will succeed him, he’s been cleaning house among the royals, nobles, and even the clergy. That Bishop Pyerd is supposedly being beheaded in the square in front of the palace tomorrow afternoon. Apparently it’s a sodomy charge, but after turning a blind eye to it for so long, to suddenly make an issue of it now...."

The judge shrugged.

"Do you know how chaotic things have been because there aren’t enough executioners? The labor fee has jumped from the usual twenty gold to thirty-five. It was the biggest boom the executioners have ever had, and meanwhile you were reading books in prison, which is enough to make me sorry. In any case, get some proper rest today."

After the judge left, the palace maid McGhee pushed in a cart. It held food sent by the families of the condemned, meant to help him eat well and keep up his strength. The main dish was a bag of gold coins.

"This is the fee the big shots gave you for your trouble. Drink, but only a little. You can’t have shaky hands from a hangover tomorrow."

McGhee, who set the food on the table, had always been the one to look after Rlyel whenever he came to the palace. Rlyel and McGhee were, in a sense, classmates. They were both orphans and had grown up seeing each other since childhood. Like lowborn people, they had learned about sex early and had slept together several times.

McGhee was well informed and could not stand not gossiping in detail. For this trip, she was Rlyel’s first target.

"When are you going back to the square? Didn’t you already take a year off? You know how many people are waiting for you, don’t you?"

Perhaps she was in a lull with her husband lately, because McGhee ran her hand along the inside of Rlyel’s thigh and gave him a sultry look. Rlyel only lifted his glass of liquor without a word. He never refused when a woman seduced him, but he despised adultery.