On a stormy night, furious drops of rain fell from the sky, creating puddles across the uneven forest floor. A man was running through the rain as if his life depended on it. He was huffing and trying to breathe to get some of the necessary oxygen to his lungs, but he still didn't stop.
He kept running, creating occasional splashes as he stepped through the puddles.
His face was muddy and dirty, clearly having gone through a bad time, but the angular shape of his jaw, his piercing blue eyes, and his flailing golden blonde hair were still prominent. He was an extremely handsome man with a trained and muscular body, but today all of that was marred as he ran for his life through the forest.
He looked back to see behind him, hoping to have lost his pursuers, but they were still on his tail. Just as he turned to look ahead again, he was struck by an arrow that pierced through his shoulder.
"Argh! Fuck!" He wanted to stop. To mend his wound and take some rest, but fearing for his life, in that moment of adrenaline-fueled rage, he ignored the pain that he was feeling due to the arrow and kept running.
Now, his steps were irregular, he didn't want to get struck by another arrow so he was moving in an irregular pattern.
A few moments later, another arrow brushed past his face, leaving a slight graze on his ear.
'Did they bring her too?' He thought with annoyance as he noticed the accuracy of the archer. If the first strike was a fluke, the second was definitely not. His movements were as irregular as they could get, and to be able to even come close to hitting him, the archer had to be extremely skilled.
Soon enough, even his irregular movements faltered as another arrow struck his back.
"Fuck…" He couldn't see any escape from the current situation for him. All he saw was faint darkness at the edges of his vision that was threatening to envelop his entire being, 'Poison…' He realized.
"Just give up, Leopold. Marquis Louis sends his regards. The Louis family will be taking over the Solomon Duchy after your death. Since there's no one for your father to pass his title to, the emperor will naturally select the next best candidate." He heard the extremely annoying voice of a woman drawing closer to him.
By now, the poison had slowed him down enough that he couldn't keep running away. So, he fell to the ground, falling directly into a puddle of water, clearly feeling the raindrops hitting the groundwater and creating tiny ripples. He could feel the rainwater washing the arrow wounds in his back. But the poison was still spreading. No one had removed those arrows after all.
"Go fuck yourself, Ingrid." He turned his head to the side and saw a brunette walking toward him with an entourage of guards. He even noticed two knights standing at her sides.
'I didn't have a chance from the start…' He thought to himself. In the empire, knights were extremely respected existences. And the source of that respect was the power that they commanded. Knights were unrivaled existences in the empire. To the point that a single knight could annihilate a troop of a hundred soldiers with utter and complete ease. This was possible due to the power of Aura.
Knights could command the aura in their bodies to extend outwards and affect their surroundings. There were many distinctions among the Knights, with some only being able to take on less than a hundred people and some being strong enough to contend against tens of thousands of people with utter ease.
Leopold also wanted to be a knight but he was a mere Novice trainee for now. His aura core was only recently unlocked and he was just slightly stronger than a normal human.
But even the weakest knight was far more than what was needed to take care of a scion like Leopold. Especially since his own guards had been ambushed and killed within mere moments. There was no fair play involved in this situation.
Ingrid came up to him, her bow slung across her back. She was wearing leather pants that hugged her legs with a tunic under the armor that she was wearing. Her hair was formed into a single brait that went down the side of her shoulder. She was the definition of a typical warrior woman.
She walked to him with confidence in her steps as she squatted in front of his face, "I'd rather have your pretty face squeezed between my legs as you eat me out and make me moan." She stated while grabbing the arrow in his back and pulling it out.
"Argh! You bitch…" He screamed in pain.
"Now now, no need to be rude. I still have to take out the other arrow." Ingrid said with a sadistic gleam in her eyes. She was enjoying the torture that she was inflicting on Leopold.
"All this because I refused to fuck you? Is this really necessary?" He decided to play a different tactic.
"I told you, Leo. I'm a vengeful woman." She stated before pulling out the other arrow too.
"Motherfucker!" He screamed in pain again, "Go to hell!" Leopold screamed again and a slight glow started coming out of his mouth. He'd decided to sacrifice himself to at least kill these people. The explosion of a person imploding their aura core was utterly massive, covering a significant distance. He wouldn't just kill Ingrid with this, he would be weakening the Louis family by killing two of their precious knights.
"Everybody step back, he's exploding his aura core!" Ingrid never thought that Leopold would be so decisive and hurriedly stepped back, wanting to run away. But it was all useless as the golden glow covered all of them within an instant. But for some unknown reason, that explosion never came and instead, the golden glow turned murky pink and enveloped everyone within the party that had come to attack Leopold.
…
"Huh?" Leopold woke up, expecting that he would be dead by now, "What the hell…" He said as he looked at the area around him.
"Did they throw me to one of the tribal hoards?" That was his first thought after he saw the state of the people around him. The area was full of blood and cum. A very atypical mixture. That's why he could only imagine that he was thrown to the tribal areas.
The tribal borderlands are a place where true savages live. Their culture completely revolves around food, combat, and sex. They regularly have murder orgies that end in most of the participants dead in the most horrific ways. And that's what Leopold was seeing now. Men with their crotches sliced off, their guts spilling from their abdomen, even the scant number of females around him weren't spared, either having been skewered through by a man's rod and beheaded, or skewered through by a sword.
Either way, the scene was brutal and had Leopold extremely weirded out. However, he didn't get overwhelmed. This kind of scene wasn't something that could make him go crazy. Especially as the heir of a duchy, he was trained to keep a calm mind in the most stressful of situations.
'Is that…' He noticed a familiar face, away from the conflict. She was enveloped within a protective shield, presumably a relic that could protect her. But inside there, she didn't seem as safe. Her clothes were all torn apart and her sensitive bits were bloody and red presumably from rubbing them too hard.
'Now that I look around… Is this the result of my explosion?' He thought and then his first action was to call something out.
'Status.' He thought.
{ ‹Status›
Name: Leopold Solomon Credits: 3.194
Physique: 12 Mind: 15
Aura: Novice Mana: None
«Lust Magic Lvl 1»}
This was a basic status panel that everyone in the world had. It served no purpose other than allowing someone to quantify their own abilities with ease.
'Lust magic?' He thought as he remembered an ancient story about Solomon the Great. The founding ancestor of his noble Duchy who was known to have a harem of 365 women. One for each day of the year.
He treated it as mere legend since he didn't care much for the history of his practically fallen duchy but now it seems that that man's huge harem might have had some significance in his strength.
'Still though… 365 chicks. Insane…' Leopold thought as he looked at his now bare left wrist. He was wearing a bracelet before deciding to explode himself, 'I guess this heirloom was the thing that kept me alive and gave me this Lust Magic…' He thought as he saw his empty wrist. The bracelet was said to be indestructible and couldn't have been destroyed. He could only assume that it was now merged with him and was what allowed him to access this new magic.
As for the presence of magic itself, it didn't surprise Leo that much. The existence of Mages was somewhat common knowledge among the upper echelons of the empire, mostly because of specific products that were made by mages. Some were circulated widely and were available even to the general populous, while some were merely available to the nobles of higher society. Mages, however, lived in a completely different world than the people of the empire. A competent mage had the power to level countries and destroy regimes, the empire was merely a singular business venture for beings of their caliber.
At least that's what Leopold had heard from random sources. He hadn't ever run into a mage before. So he didn't know any concrete information about them.
But seeing that he at least had some kind of potential to be able to match beings of such caliber, he was incomparably excited, but he kept that excitement to himself. He needed to get things done.
Looking around, he realized that some of the people were still alive so he decided to kill them. For no other reason than wanting their credits.
What were credits? They were the basic currency that was used all over the world. Credits could only be transferred by two methods. Either by voluntary transfer or by killing. It was a very secure and convenient system.
Leopold looked around and started mentally recreating the scene, trying to understand what happened.
…
As the pink mist exploded from Leopold, every single one of the people froze in their spots. And within seconds, all of their rationalities disappeared, replaced by endless emotions of lust. The men turned to whatever hole they could see and skewered their rods through.
And the women weren't any better, taking everything with gusto, serving multiple men at the same time. It was a true scene of debauchery.
But the number of men was much more than the number of women, and fights broke out, even the two knights started fighting each other over a mediocre woman as if she was the most beautiful courtesan that they'd seen in their lives.
As everyone exploded into lust-filled debauchery, Ingrid watched from the side, having already torn off her clothes and pleasuring herself in the roughest manner, unable to stop herself. Even after she was sore and bleeding, she kept going, trying to quench the unending thirst within herself.
No one was able to see within the shield that she'd conjured up with her ancient artifact, otherwise, it wouldn't be able to hold off against the combined assault of two knights for more than an hour. And the scene lasted the whole night.
By the time Leopold woke up, the shield had already flickered and lost most of its power. It would now take quite a while to recharge again.
…
Understanding what happened, Leopold didn't waste any time and started killing the leftover people one by one. It wasn't a big deal for him since he was already old enough to be considered an adult. He'd already seen more than his fair share of blood as the only scion of a duchy.
By the end of his killing spree, he had almost 15 credits.
'To think that two shitty knights from a marquess house would have more money than the sole scion of a duchy… We've really fallen.' He lamented.
After taking care of everything, he walked to Ingrid, deciding to take the artifact that she must have.
After looking around her, he found a dim orb that must've been her shield generator.
'I'll keep this. Now, what about her…' He started thinking. Ingrid was a very beautiful girl and the only reason that he'd rejected her before was that she was utterly annoying and had a shitty personality. She was the kind of girl who would make one bang their head against the wall at least 5 times a day. That's why he'd refused even to have any kind of relationship with her.
'I need a test subject for all this Lust Magic stuff… She would be perfect for that.' He thought darkly. He'd only refused her completely because he was being decent. He would have to be gay to not be attracted to her body. And now that she'd tried to kill him, and so brutally at that, he had no remorse for her. She would disappear from the face of the world, only to live as his 'test subject' on whom he tested his Lust Magic.
With that decision, he wrapped her up in her own torn-up clothes and carried her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
He didn't put much thought into how he was healed, or what's the purpose of this ability that he'd received. He didn't care about any of that for now. His thoughts revolved around bringing his Duchy back from its near-dead state with the help of his father — Henry Solomon. And also stay alive in the process.
...
(A/N: Okay, so this is actually something that I wrote a while ago and am only now posting here on Webnovel. I have around twenty-five chapters written for it that I will be posting daily. Depending on whether or not it gets any traction in that duration, I may write more for it. So any help from your side would be very beneficial for this novel.)