Chapter 37
#037
1.
We toasted to our success.
“I’m impressed. I didn’t expect you to pull this off.”
“I didn’t expect it either.”
“You can be a little more proud of yourself. Even if the method was ridiculous, you stopped the project being carried out at Twilight Resource Development. I’ve genuinely become interested in you.”
Ceres swirled her wineglass with a languid motion.
It was almost as if she was desperately denying the flustered mess she’d been just a moment ago.
Man, every time I think about it, that gap is seriously the best.
“This is all thanks to Lady Ceres’s patronage.”
“Shut up.”
Ceres frowned hard at my flattery.
Anyway, if we look back on this run...
This body had been so impressive that Ceres might even consider remarriage.
Because so much overlapped with the previous run, I only managed to earn 22 challenge points over 15 days, but...
I didn’t use a single Joker.
In other words, my cost was zero.
But the results?
Dream job: hired at Ceres House.
Becoming Shien Yiming’s unofficial right-hand, Youppi, and joining the secret cross-dressing club.
Learned the insanely cool zero-tier spell “Sign Sentence.”
Parked Arbel in a C-sector two-room apartment, not to be outdone by Cheongdam Xi.
And finally even stopping the long-anticipated Project Z, to boot.
I pulled all of this off with nothing but the silver tongue, stockings, high heels, and anklets I got from Ceres...
You could say it was on the level of the miracle where five loaves and two fish fed the crowd.
Hallelujah!
Now all that’s left is to lift Ceres’s commandment and we’re done with the accounting.
“Then we should settle the matter between us as well, right?”
“Of course I’m not forgetting. You mean breaking the commandment, right?”
“It’s true I’ve been treating you cutely... but if that were a lie, you’d really come to regret it.”
I know.
Even if she’s been unusually kind this run, Ceres Cassian is still a cold-blooded director of Twilight Resource Development.
I don’t trust Ceres.
Didn’t I say it? Professionalism means I’ll give her my body but not my heart.
I will never again repeat the foolish mistake of trusting Akit and Arung.
The only thing I can trust in this city is Arbel.
But leaving that aside, Mama Ceres, can’t you see your body getting all hot and bothered before the commandment break you’ve been longing for, right?
Until the “breaking” is actually carried out?
That means Cedric has the upper hand and Ceres is the one at a disadvantage.
“Heheh.”
“…Why are you laughing like that?”
Do you know how amazing this is?
If you want to save Lady Ceres from the commandment, you need a ton of bunny girls.
Say that and she might even wear a bunny girl suit for me.
I want to see Mama Ceres turning bright red with embarrassment!
‘Hmm, I guess I’ve been too soft on you.’
And then, after radiating murderous intent and grinding her teeth, she’d end up putting on the bunny suit.
‘W-what’s so good about this that you want me to wear it?’
I want to see Ceres scolding me, tears in her eyes, while saying that!
If you want to see it, you’ve got to make it happen.
“To break the commandment, we need lots of bunny girls. If Lady Ceres wears one, that should do.”
“Hmm? Really? Let’s see if that’s true.”
“Cancel, cancel, cancel!”
Ceres had picked up the wine opener and was staring me down, so I quickly backed off.
“Would you close your eyes?”
“Closed.”
“You absolutely must not open them.”
“Am I an anime character?”
Instead, I took out the seal I’d kept in my pocket.
「Mystical Contract Seal」
- Rank: R
- Description: Makes a promise with the world, or breaks a promise.
- Effect: You can form a new commandment or break an existing one.
- Note: Can also be used on other people. Remaining uses: 2.
“Um... could you at least tell me what the commandment says?”
“There’s a restriction against revealing it. Anyway, I only have one commandment, so just break that one.”
“Yep.”
The moment I used the seal, a change rippled through the room.
It was as if a video were being played back at 0.0001x speed.
All sensations and actions slowed down.
The classical music playing in the room became a low, muddled sound, and the rain falling outside froze in midair.
Hm, it feels like a Quicksilver experience.
But now I haven’t paid for premium, so my movement speed is still the same.
A status window floated up.
[Would you like to break Ceres Cassian’s commandment through the 「Mystical Contract Seal」?]
“YES.”
======
【Ceres Cassian, First Commandment (第一戒律)】
〔改(개)〕
Ceres Cassian can incarnate into 「Thousand-Faced Comedy (千面喜劇) - Masquerade」.
〔Restriction I〕
She must remain incarnated for 6 out of every 7 days, leaving only one day as an exception.
〔Pledge I〕
The existence and conditions of this restriction must never be divulged.
======
“Break it.”
The instant I whispered it inwardly.
-KRAAACK
Suddenly, as if film had warped, space tore open and a black void appeared.
A darkness with no end in sight.
What flickered beyond the veil were hundreds, thousands of chains.
The snake-like chains slowly slithered toward Ceres and tried to coil around her body.
I knew it instinctively.
That was the world’s punishment.
I had just learned Ceres’s commandment.
Which meant it violated “Pledge I: The existence and conditions of the restriction must be kept secret.”
“W-wait, wait, wait! Boss!”
What happens in a case like this?
Wasn’t the contract seal supposed to break the commandment?
-SNAP!
As if a camera flash had gone off, the seal burst into a pure white wave, and the chains scattered like dust.
Time, which had been stretched to the limit, instantly regained its proper speed.
“Woah...”
I feel like I just saw something incredible.
[Ceres Cassian’s [First Commandment] has been broken]
[「Mystical Contract Seal」 remaining uses: 1]
Still dazed, I felt my heart drop at the scene before me.
“Kyaaaak!!!!”
The Ceres mama who had definitely been in front of me just a moment ago!
Had turned into a horrifying 2.4-meter mannequin!
You know, that thing!
The sewn-up doll I used as a punching bag when I first learned Sign Sentence!
“Hieeeek!!!! C, Ceres mama! Mama!!!”
While I was screaming like a duckling that had lost its mother.
-clunk
Ceres’s darling daughter, Ines, appeared as the door opened behind me.
“N-no way... something like this... something like this is really possible...? Breaking the commandment...”
Her face had gone as white as her hair.
Even pale, you’re beautiful, Ines-chan!
“Perfect timing! Help me! Ines, help! Ceres mama...!”
Like a panicked ant, I was about to dive into Ines’s skirt before I belatedly noticed something.
Commandment, Thousand-Faced Comedy Masquerade, must remain incarnated except for one day out of seven.
A mannequin the same height as Ceres.
Ceres who wanted the commandment broken, Ceres who had thrown away her high heels.
Ceres’s daughter, Ines. Another bed of a different size that had been set up in Ceres’s house.
“Ah.”
I ended up sinking to the floor like a child before this terrible truth.
“What the hell... give me back my mother-daughter combo platter...”
2.
230 years ago.
What ruled Necropolis was neither Twilight Resource Development nor Overnus Pharmaceuticals.
The foundation launched in Arden to purify, quarantine, and develop the Human Wall Moat.
The ‘R.C.D. Foundation’ ruled Necropolis all alone.
Necropolis back then was said to be an even more horrific hell than it is now.
Less developed, with more trash pouring in, and a more barbaric city.
The era of raging waves, when fissures would rise up whenever they felt like it and take anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of lives in a single night.
Even in the middle of all that, abandoning losers in Necropolis seemed to be an age-old tradition in Arden.
“My family was a fallen marquisate that had been driven all the way down to Necropolis. We could at least keep barely surviving by cooperating with the RCD Foundation.”
However, the Foundation was made up of three factions.
The other two pooled their strength, purged the remaining faction, and split apart.
The Ceres family had the rotten luck of being attached to the faction that got purged, and were crushed beneath the wreckage of the throne.
Still young and inexperienced, little Ceres formed one commandment in order to survive.
She would change her appearance by incarnating into her innate magic, 「Thousand-Faced Comedy (千面喜劇) - Masquerade」.
“That’s how all the other family members were executed, but I survived the disaster.”
Having become an eight-foot-tall giant to survive, Ceres kept grinding her way up through the ranks.
Like me, she adapted to the city and took revenge one by one on the people who had massacred her family.
In the end, she rose all the way to the post of director at Twilight Resource Development.
But.
“After climbing through the 5th tier and reaching the wall before the 6th, the commandment became a prison for me. My body twisting every week blocked me from advancing to the 6th tier.”
She was shackled by a severe limitation in the ‘body’ part of mind, body, and spirit.
“And being 240 cm tall is way too much for a woman as charming as me, don’t you think?”
So she researched a way to break the commandment.
And in the end, after meeting Cedric, she succeeded in breaking it.
And so, happily ever after.
That was the grand, dramatic tale.
And after learning all the backstory, I was feeling cosmic terror.
My teeth were chattering.
“Then... I was just...”
I looked at the mannequin sitting with me on the sofa.
Its eyelids were stitched with wire, its teeth were sharp as nails, and the entire front of its face had been scraped away, leaving white nostril holes like Voldemort’s.
So...
“I’ve been doing it with this thing all this time!! Fucking hell!!!!”
“I painstakingly told you the truth, and that’s your reaction? How very infuriating.”
Ceres mama, transformed from an eight-foot widow into a silver-haired, white-eyed beauty, replied indifferently.
“Lady Ceres! It’s not that simple!”
I was the only one being serious about this!
I was talking about rubbing up against a hideous love doll while wearing VR goggles and being held in Mama’s arms!
It feels like my soul is being ripped to shreds!
“Haah, I suppose it depends on how you look at it... My Masquerade is magic that controls a body without a soul. In other words, the moment a soul enters it, the vessel changes too. Of course, the real body is this one.”
Ceres said this while poking her own cheek.
So the mannequin becomes the Ceres mama I know, a kind of clone avatar, the moment Ceres possesses it.
“Then did you feel good too, Lady Ceres?”
“......”
Ceres didn’t answer.
Since I’m the kind of person who can even accept Arbel, my resistance had eased up a little.
But my despair didn’t end there.
“......”
It may be something far, far in the future, but...
I wanted to spend time with the Ceres-Ines mother-daughter pair in ways that defied the family tree.
I’d been dreaming of that apricot-hued future...
“Why are you so disappointed? Don’t you like this form better than some stupid giant woman?”
“Lady Ceres doesn’t know anything.”
“......?”
Ceres mama tilted her head, looking confused.
Wait.
I felt like, in my despair, I was missing an important fact.
The eight-foot-tall ‘widow’ Ceres was a cover identity used to present the ‘real body,’ Ines, as her daughter.
Then?!
“Lady Ceres. So you’re not a widow?”
“...Cedric, you always ask such pointless things, don’t you?”
Seriously? Really not?
Hold on...
I recalled the big data from every run.
Ceres always tried to take the lead with me.
She put on an air of ease, raked my body over with lustful eyes, and kept saying things like, ‘You’re better than my husband~.’
But compared to that attitude, her actual skill was honestly nothing special.
Besides, to be exact, I had never once seen her bring another man into the bedroom.
So until now, I’d interpreted Ceres mama’s clumsiness as, ‘Maybe it’s because it’s been a while~.’
But.
If you strip away the preconception of ‘a widow who’s been through every storm and the witch of Twilight Resource Development’...
And put on the filter of ‘a woman who has deceived everyone all her life just to survive’?
I asked, with a tentative hope.
“Lady Ceres.”
“Mm?”
“Am I your first?”
“First what?”
“Th...”
I curled my fingers into a circle and moved them in and out.
Ceres’s expression turned cold.
“Shut up. As if that could be true.”
I firmly pressed down the corners of my mouth as they tried to rise like a Joker’s.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Oh, I haven’t smiled yet.”
“You really do look down on me. You picked up a terrible habit from the moment you found me. I should have gouged your eyes out from the start.”
“Heh-heh-heh.”
A desperate attempt by Ceres, who can’t lie, to smooth things over with a dead-serious face.
This is some serious gourmet material.
“Anyway, now that it’s come to this, we need to talk about the next matter.”
Silver-haired, white-eyed Ceres, looking a little red in the ears, said while fanning herself with her hand.
“Cedric, do you want to keep working with me?”
-Ding!
An alert sounded.
It’s here! My choices! Save point updated!!!