Chapter 50

Protecting against what? Lino shook the vial, examining the pills. Ch-chk, ch-chk. The sound of the tiny beads clinking together was surprisingly pleasant.

“If you take one pill every morning before breakfast, the vast majority of poisons will be completely neutralized before they can affect your body.”

“May I take one right now?”

Grondil had fully expected a barrage of paranoid questions: Does it actually work? Where did you get it? Who made it? What are the ingredients? Instead, Lino accepted his word with absolute, blind faith, immediately asking if he could consume it. Grondil clicked his tongue internally.

And yet, a bizarre sensation bloomed in his chest.

Lino Cliff was not only being hunted by Baron Haklan, but he was also suffering relentless, escalating abuse from Yuneria. Grondil knew for a fact that Yuneria was lacing Lino’s food with highly malicious substances.

Given those circumstances, shouldn’t he be fundamentally suspicious of anything he puts in his mouth?

Yet, looking at Lino—who was smiling politely and expressing genuine gratitude for receiving such a miraculous drug—there wasn’t a single shred of doubt or suspicion on his face.

How does he expect to survive in this brutal world being such a naive fool? Just as a faint, entirely unfamiliar emotion resembling ‘concern’ began to form…

Wait… is it because I am the one giving it to him? Does he believe it is safe simply because it comes from me?

The moment that thought crystallized, an entirely novel concoction of superiority, profound satisfaction, and deep affection surged within Grondil—emotions he had rarely, if ever, entertained.

Even if he hadn’t ingested lethal toxins designed to melt his esophagus or cause hemorrhagic bleeding from every orifice, Lino had undeniably suffered through agonizing bouts of food poisoning and gastric distress.

Realizing the depth of Lino’s absolute trust in him, Grondil felt an inversely proportional surge of violent disgust toward Yuneria.

“This is my oversight. I assumed my previous discipline would bring him to his senses, but I vastly underestimated his petty vindictiveness. I should not have exercised mercy.”

I should have simply killed him, Grondil muttered, his tone dripping with lethal irritation. Detecting the faint but unmistakable killing intent threading through the Duke’s voice, Lino hastily popped open the vial, swallowed a pill dry, and waved his hands frantically.

“Haha, ha… If he were a sworn enemy of my bloodline, perhaps, but this level of harassment is manageable.”

“You vomited blood, yet you claim it is manageable?”

“Well… I woke up bleeding from my lower half as well, so it’s all relative. Wow, this pill acts instantly, doesn’t it? My throat doesn’t hurt anymore. And the taste of blood is completely gone.”

If only it could erase the agonizing pain in my stomach as well. But I suppose that’s from physical trauma, so a pill won’t help.

A few nights ago, while trapped in a grueling nightmare, Lino had bolted upright, alarmed by a sickeningly wet sensation between his buttocks. Convinced he had wet the bed in his sleep, he forced his shattered spine to move, dreading the confirmation on the sheets. His assumption was half right and half wrong. The bedsheets and his trousers were soaked, but it was definitively not urine. The stains spreading across the fabric were perfectly round, crimson halos. A deep, pulsing ache throbbed in his core, followed by a rush of hot fluid spilling from his intimate entrance. The horrifying sensation of blood sluggishly trailing down his thigh toward his ankle still made his skin crawl.

“Hmm. I do apologize for the hemorrhaging. The unexpected arrival of my rut caused me to execute the knotting without proper consideration.”

“Knot…ting?”

Lino echoed the unfamiliar term, and Grondil nodded smoothly. With every movement, his luxurious silver-gray hair shimmered. Lino felt a bizarre disconnect, realizing it was the exact same color as the beast’s fur from that night.

But what exactly is a knotting? Lino recalled his consciousness completely blanking out toward the climax of the brutal mating. A massive hand had pressed down on his stomach, violently compressing an anomalous, hidden organ inside him… he had felt a catastrophic surge of sensation that blurred the line between agony and ecstasy—and that was where his memory terminated.

What happened after that? Something traumatic enough to cause me to bleed out from below.

“Did you… shove your fist inside me…?”

Lino’s voice trailed off into a terrified whisper. The rational part of his brain screamed, No, surely not, while his survival instincts countered, This man is absolutely unhinged enough to do it.

“Why would I shove my fist inside you? My cock provides a far more delicious penetration.”

“……”

Penetration is penetration. What the hell makes it ‘delicious’?

As Grondil casually spewed such vulgarity, Lino desperately tried to cling to rational thought.

“Knotting is, hmm… in simple terms, a primal, instinctual mating mechanism employed by males to drastically maximize the probability of conception.”

“Conception… mating…”

“It involves burying the cock to the absolute maximum depth and flooding the chamber entirely with seed. In a human form, the cock merely engorges and that is the end of it. However, in my beast form, backward-facing barbs erupt along the shaft, and the root swells massively, locking inside the mate like an anchor to ensure they cannot escape until the process is complete.”

“Barbs…”

“Because your body felt so exquisitely tight, I continued to move slightly while we were fully locked.”

Lino dazedly repeated the deeply traumatizing words that refused to process logically in his brain. Conception. Mating. Barbs. Every single term was horrifyingly explicit. And extrapolating from Grondil’s clinical description, the reality was beyond nightmare-inducing.

Anyone with basic biology knowledge knew how incredibly fragile internal organs were. And he moved around… while locked inside me with a barbed cock?

“Are you ins—”

“Haha. No, I am not insane.”

Before Lino could scream ‘Are you insane?!’, Grondil seamlessly cut him off. A small mercy. However, his subsequent explanation was so appallingly depraved it instantly made Lino regret not screaming it anyway.

“You will not die. The medicine you received was crafted by Erin, a master among healers, and I personally administered your treatment, so there will be absolutely no internal scarring. Ah, though I suppose you have no way of verifying the lack of scarring yourself. It seems I will have to conduct a daily palpation with my cock to ensure you are healing properly.”

“P-palpations are supposed to be conducted with hands…”

“Hmm. Do you possess an unexpected preference for rough play?”

“…Pardon?”

What absolute nonsense is he spouting now? Lino stared at Grondil with a look of pure, unadulterated bewilderment. Meeting Lino’s gaze, Grondil offered a terrifyingly bright smile, displaying his pristine white teeth. It was the breathtaking smile of a devastatingly handsome man, yet it radiated pure horror.

“Or perhaps you require something substantially thicker than my cock?”

“No, wh-what do you mean…”

“You stated palpations are conducted with hands. Therefore, you are requesting I use my hand, are you not? And my hand is considerably thicker than my cock.”

Pausing his explanation, Grondil raised his clenched fist, tapping the inside of his elbow with his other hand.

“Shall I shove it in up to here? Would that finally satisfy you?”

“……”

He’s a lunatic. Even among lunatics, he is spectacularly unhinged. Lino internally bemoaned his catastrophic fate. I am a lunatic for ending up here, and I’ve had my neck bitten by a beast whose insanity defies all logic.

Lino had always firmly believed that no matter how dire the crisis, maintaining one’s wits would inevitably reveal an escape hole. However, in this specific moment, the only ‘hole’ involved was plunging him into complete, apocalyptic darkness.

Still, I have to draw the line somewhere.

He absolutely could not allow a man’s forearm to be shoved between his buttocks. Dropping his eyebrows into a deeply submissive slant, Lino shook his head frantically.

“That… ahem… Your Highness’s lower half… is pl-plenty sufficient.”

Therefore, please refrain from using your arm. Lino managed to squeak out, his face burning a violent, humiliating red. Desperate to escape the aggressively obscene and terrifying trajectory of the conversation, he hastily resurrected Grondil’s initial prompt.

“But what exactly did you wish to discuss with me?”

“Ah, it is nothing major. The other day, your interior felt so spectacularly good that I left my confession unfinished. I intend to resume it now.”

“……”

It sounds extremely major to me.

Lino gulped audibly, crippled by tension. Nothing major, my foot. Nevertheless, he waited obediently for Grondil to speak. In truth, Lino was burning with questions regarding that specific event. Particularly because of its undeniable connection to Isberg.

The legends of Isberg he had devoured in the Duke’s library spoke specifically of ‘The Beast Beloved by the Sun God Aquila.’ The oral traditions never definitively categorized the beast as a specific animal, but the eyes of the monster that had ravaged him that night conjured the image of a violent, raging blizzard far more vividly than Grondil’s human gaze. Its fur had resembled dense pine needles heavily laden with pristine snow.

“Ah…”

Lino unconsciously let out a soft groan, pressing a hand firmly against his lower abdomen.

“Does it still hurt?”

“Ah… um… yes. Still a bit…”

“My apologies.”

Truthfully, the sudden groan hadn’t been triggered by pain. Pressing down had stimulated a spot deeper inside—the exact location his entrance had been ravaged—sending a sharp, electrifying jolt of pure pleasure rocketing up his spine. However, if he confessed the truth, the man sitting across from him would undoubtedly demand to ‘verify’ the sensation, strip his pants off, and pounce on him immediately. Thus, Lino lied and claimed it was pain.

However, Lino had once again forgotten that Grondil was a beast. It was an easy mistake to make, given that Grondil was currently wearing a flawless human disguise and projecting a deeply concerned expression.

“I believe another application of the ointment is necessary,” Grondil declared.

“…Pardon? Ah, no! I am completely healed!” Lino objected frantically.

“You were hemorrhaging. There is absolutely no way you healed that rapidly.”

“The bleeding stopped ages ago!”

“I can still smell blood on you, though?”

“That is merely because I vomited blood after yesterday’s breakfast! It is absolutely not blood from down there—”

“Then a thorough examination is even more imperative,” Grondil interrupted smoothly. “Since it was my oversight for failing to anticipate Sir Disson’s immediate retaliation upon his return, I must take full responsibility for your health. If the toxin was potent enough to make you vomit blood, there is zero chance your fragile, soft, scorching, and perfectly tight internal walls emerged unscathed.”

Hmm. The back of my neck is stiff. Lino rubbed his nape, wondering if this was the infamous spike in blood pressure the elderly always complained about.

Despite his relatively short life, he had endured being hunted by Baron Haklan and suffering the brutal indignities of the slums, yet he had never once experienced this specific, suffocating brand of sheer rage. The fact that he couldn’t simply scream at the Duke or demand he stop only compounded his maddening frustration. He felt like he was going to lose his mind.

Desperately attempting to suppress his boiling blood pressure, Lino recalled a manual he had once read regarding how service industry professionals managed impossibly difficult clients. Forcing a painfully stiff, customer-service smile onto his lips, he tried a diplomatic approach.

“I truly believe the miraculous pill you provided earlier has entirely cured me?”

“The bleeding may have ceased, but internal lacerations likely remain,” Grondil reasoned with terrifying earnestness. “And while we are at it, we should conduct a thorough inspection of your throat as well. Now, will you choose my fingers or my cock for the examination?”

“……”

Listening to Grondil’s proposition—which was a terrifying amalgamation of genuine medical concern and blatant sexual harassment—the stiff ache in Lino’s neck violently migrated directly into his skull. It took every single ounce of Lino’s mental and physical fortitude to soothe, coax, and physically fend off the Duke, who was already shifting his hips with the explicit intent of shoving his monstrous anatomy into Lino’s throat and entrance under the guise of a ‘palpation.’ Only after successfully neutralizing the immediate threat was Lino finally able to sit back and listen to the Duke’s actual confession.