Fairy Tale Chronicles

「…Why don’t you come with me?」

Haruna was beginning to seriously worry. If they were taking the bait for real, they were going to send their A-team. Even though Hiroshi was inhumanely durable, Haruna doubted how much that meant against for-real assassins. She hadn’t thought of this before in the heat of the moment, but now that she had gotten her emotions out and cooled down, she finally realized that Hiroshi had been given a pretty short stick.

Haruna had objected initially, but being killed by an assassin was beyond her imagination, and she hadn’t objected it as viscerally as Aearis did. Haruna shuddered, looking back on her cruel optimism at the time.

「I’ve got it set up so I can duck out if things hit the fan, and I got some leather armor on. Don’t worry too much ’bout me.」

「Still…」

「Besides, I ain’t takin’ much of a risk compared to ya. One wrong move, and they can wave the law in ya face, like slanderin’ or some nonsense like that, and get rid of ya legally.」

That was the tricky thing about a class-based society. If the vile things said at Haruna were spoken by a noble at a noble, or by a peasant at a peasant, it was about fifty-fifty if they could be prosecuted for slander. But when those things were spoken by a noble at a peasant, it was nearly impossible to prosecute. If Haruna responded with something similar (if there was proof and/or witnesses) she could be sentenced for the crime without much consideration, regardless of who started the ordeal. Even though Farlane had stripped a lot of privileges from royalty and nobles through its history, it would still take a long time for them to make the laws fair and equal across all social classes.

Most conversations at parties were insults anyway, so that alone wouldn’t amount to much of a punishment in court, but who knows what ridiculous claims they would make to inflate the crime and the punishment. The law wasn’t broken enough for them to easily blow up insults at a party into treason or something, but being sued meant that Haruna’s freedom would be limited for a certain amount of time. In fact, a noble could detain her for a day or two upon being convicted for slander. All in all, Haruna was walking on considerably thin ice.

「Elle’ll be here soon, and it’s already a done deal. Don’t worry ’bout me, just get yaself out of here.」

「…Okay, fine. Just get out of here as soon as things get hot.」

「I know.」

Then, there was a knock at the door.

「Here they are.」

「Mm-hm. Come in!」

As planned, the familiar trio of Aearis, Douga, and Rayna entered. With barely a greeting, Hiroshi urged them through the closet door to the workshop.

「Lessee what cards were dealt.」

To take them by surprise, Hiroshi hid behind the bed, holding his old axe in hand. He couldn’t really wield a pole axe in this room.

「…Here they come.」

It was nearing midnight when Hiroshi sensed the subtlest presence emerge. As soon as he did, he notified Layotte and prepared himself. The window opened without a sound, and a figure climbed in.
(Ya gotta be kiddin’ me…)
Hiroshi froze upon seeing the figure. The worst possible card he could have been dealt. From the method of entry and security, Hiroshi had subconsciously eliminated the possibility of this from his mind.
The assassin was a woman.

「…?」

Mercilessly for both parties, Hiroshi’s trap engaged as designed. With impeccable timing, the window closed and the door locked, isolated the room from the rest of the world. With the exception of a very specific method, Transportation spells and items were negated. The medicine that filled the room like mist prevent suicide by poison.

「…」

The intruder, even as she acknowledged the trap clasping around her, observed the interior of the room without any agitation. She wasn’t sure what the mist was, she saw that it wasn’t harmful, and decided to ignore it. Sensing the faint trace of presence Hiroshi let out from his surprise, the assassin threw something behind the bed.

「Woah!?」

「…」

As Hiroshi rolled out from behind the bed, quaking, she looked at him without emotion. Her weapon in hand, she skulked behind Hiroshi without a sound, to eliminate her frozen prey.

「Dang it!」

Hiroshi dropped his axe as he dove away. He was shaking. While it didn’t do him much good anyway, the difference between having and not having a weapon was significant. The gaze of the assassin (lacking even the will to kill) that only saw Hiroshi as a roadblock trigger him further. Lost in the moment, he charged in more recklessly than usual.

Easily parrying Hiroshi’s attack (if one could call it that) the assassin effortlessly wrapped herself around him from behind. A sure-fire way to kill Hiroshi through his full set of leather armor would be to slit his throat from behind. However, this move assaulted Hiroshi in a different way than the assassin intended.

The indescribable softness of the female body, and the two soft and sizeable (albeit not as large as Haruna’s) mounds brought back a certain memory in Hiroshi. Unfortunately for him, the assassin was clad in an outfit akin to a bodysuit (specialized for infiltration) which did nothing to prevent Hiroshi from fully experiencing the sensation of her skin.

Panicking from the softness of her body, Hiroshi flopped around violently. Struggling for a moment, the assassin slit his throat with a swift slash. That should have been the end of it…

「…?」

But her weapon, which could have sliced through a Giant Lizard’s scales like a piece of paper, had only left a tiny cut on Hiroshi’s throat. It was a palpable slice, but Hiroshi’s throat barely showed a mark, let alone any blood.

At this moment, the assassin wondered if Hiroshi was immortal.

Still, she had no intention of abandoning the mission given to her. In fact, with a majority of her cognitive capabilities erased with drugs, she lacked the concept of giving up.

The knife was useless, and poison seemed futile given the durability of his skin. If she could beat him to death, he would be dead already. So, she decided to go with strangulation. Lucky for her, she already had his back. In a split-second decision, she extracted a wire in a blink of an eye (so fast, in fact, that no one could have stopped her) and went to tighten it around Hiroshi’s neck.

「Stop! Don’t touch me! Get off me, already!」

Perhaps fueled by his phobia, Hiroshi struggled with immense strength. He was being strangled, but it didn’t show. As expected, the assassin lacked the strength to fully strangle him. So, she decided to use their body weight to her advantage. This turned out to be an unfortunate decision for both of them.

「Ahh!?」

Hiroshi’s flailing foot grazed passed an awkward spot of her anatomy. The assassin, who had remained silent until now, couldn’t help but cry out. Her voice was surprisingly young and innocuous. The weirdly sensual reaction fueled Hiroshi’s panic further, driving him to struggle harder, without realizing that he was only worsening his predicament.

When two people are practically attached at the hip, with one of them with a wire long enough to hang a man, what could happen if one of them flailed about with reckless abandon?

What followed was entanglement. Just like the cat that plays with a string only to end up being trapped in it. The assassin loosening her grip on the wire because of the surprising physical contact would spell their doom. The wire, which had been starting to tangle here and there from Hiroshi struggling, had now entangled the two of them beyond repair.

「Aggggggghhhh!?」

「Ah! Ahh!」

The constricting wire brought them closer together, which fueled Hiroshi struggling, which entangled them further, which worsened their physical contact. It didn’t take long for this vicious cycle to lock the two of them in a NSFW position. In the process, Hiroshi’s hands and feet had brushed the assassin’s sensitive areas, unintentionally teasing her body.

Now that they were so tightly entangled, Hiroshi’s struggle was reduced to small jerks and pulls. Neither of them were in a position to do any damage to the other in any capacity. The assassin was still subconsciously shifting her weight to reduce the impact of Hiroshi’s flailing, anyway. In the end, Hiroshi was (unknowingly) just brushing up on the assassin’s body here and there and everywhere.

Normally, this kind of tactic would have had no effect on this assassin. Drugs were administered to her to eliminate these sensations, along with her personality. This drug, in exchange for enhanced physical strength and learning capabilities had extinguished every last thing essential to human (or any) life. The drug had given the assassin incredible powers, especially for an assassin with no allegiance.

The downside of this drug was that the numbing effect would wear off over time, and in turn enhanced sensitivity. The all-purpose potion (in its mist form) had negated that effect entirely. The potion had only taken effect after the assassin had slit Hiroshi’s throat because inhaling the potion took longer for it to kick in. To boot, perhaps with consideration for using it with Stamina potions, the all-purpose potion did not negate any side effects…

「Aaaaagggggggghhhhhh!」

「Ah! Ahh!?」

As a result, Hiroshi flailed like a madman only to continue teasing and building up heat in the assassin’s body. By the time their bodies were hopelessly entangled, a dangerous switch had been turned on within the assassin, and she was primed. In contrast to the assassin (who couldn’t help but let out sensual sighs at every touch) Hiroshi was about to lose his mind, his face looking dangerously pale. His struggle had subsided significantly, leaving him more quaking than flailing.

「Aaaaaaggggggghhhhh!?」

「D-Don’t stop…!」

When their eyes happened to meet, the assassin let out a plea. The mask that was hiding her face was torn off through the struggle. As her voice would suggest, the assassin was young, fifteen or so. This dangerous whisper from this girl sent Hiroshi mind over the edge, leading him to let go of his consciousness. His twitching body illustrated the peril his mind was in… Although…

「Mmm! Mmmgh!」

Unconscious or not, Hiroshi’s limbs were still touching her danger zones. His twitching didn’t help mitigate the situation at all.

「Ahh!」

Even after Hiroshi had fainted, the assassin was switching up her positions. However, before she could escape the entanglement, she discovered a position that gave her more pleasure than before. Even as she was entranced by this new sensation, the assassin was starting to get frustrated since the only action she got was an unconscious body twitching. In the end, she immediately surrendered to Layotte and his men (who barged in ten minutes later, as planned) and spilled all sorts of information, unable to lose her NSFW expression.

By the way, after going to the workshop as is she was going to keep a low profile there, Aearis (in collusion with Alfemina) was planning to send in Douga at the right time. However, Alfemina had betrayed her after deciding that Hiroshi’s predicament wasn’t suited for the eyes of a little girl (in every sense of the word) so Aearis’ plan was utterly foiled.