The banquet hall was in the midst of a full-blown taste explosion caused by Kay's cooking.
Amid the chaos of fairies losing all reason and licking their plates clean, a towering woman approached with heavy footsteps and blocked Kay's path. It was Bagest.
"Hmm. The closer I get, the stronger the smell becomes."
Bagest looked down at Kay with her overwhelming 190-centimeter frame and licked her lips with her tongue. In her eyes, pure appetite and a fighting instinct were slickly mixed together.
"I am Bagest, king of the Fang Clan."
Using her introduction as an excuse, Bagest blatantly swept her gaze over Kay's solid chest and arm muscles. Every place her eyes landed sent a chill down Kay's spine.
"Human. Your cooking is excellent, but what stirs my appetite even more is that body of yours. You don't have much mana, and yet you can still unleash such tremendous power with pure strength alone. How very… delicious."
Bagest leaned her face in until it was right in front of Kay's and whispered as if she were proposing to him.
"What do you say, human? Care to test yourself against me? If you win, I'll do whatever you want, as much as I can. But if I win… I'll chew you up bone and all and make you part of me."
The air in the banquet hall froze in an instant. Even the fairies who had been eating happily stopped mid-fork at Bagest's savage proposal.
"B-Bagest, sir! What is this outrageous language? Sir Kay is an honored guest of this country!"
Queen Gloriana cried out in fluster, hurriedly covering her torn dress. But Bagest merely snorted.
"Outrageous? This is a pure expression of courtship, Gloriana. The strong coveting the strong. That is the way of the Fang Clan, the Black Dogs. And… you have no grounds to restrain my actions, do you? You owe me."
"A debt?"
At Bagest's veiled threat, Gloriana's expression darkened. She let out a sigh and explained the circumstances to Kay.
"...Sir Kay. It is shameful, but I do in fact owe Sir Bagest a great debt."
The story that came from the queen's mouth was the dark history of Cleopolis in the Fairy Kingdom.
"My predecessor, and the former chieftain of the Wind Clan, Aurora. She was the most beautiful, the purest, and the most… wicked being in fairy history."
Aurora. She was a fairy born with such extreme purity that she lacked even the very concept of malice.
But that purity was nothing more than self-centeredness that could not understand the feelings or suffering of others at all.
"She had to be the center of the world. So whenever something appeared that was more beautiful than her, wiser than her, or simply received more attention than she did… she would try to sweep them away without the slightest guilt. She even nearly drove the Wind Clan and the Mirror Clan, both fairies themselves, into crisis because of her jealousy."
Her wicked deeds were obvious even to fairies who could read minds through fairy eyes, but countless fairies were bewitched by her overwhelming beauty and her manipulative act of feigned purity, and followed her blindly.
"In the end, I had to make a decision. To protect this city, I chose the path of deposing Aurora and executing her. At that time… the ones who fought against Aurora's personal guard and took the lead in shedding blood were none other than the Fang Clan and Sir Bagest."
Gloriana said bitterly.
"Without her military strength, the Cleopolis of today would not exist. So… it is difficult for me to refuse her requests lightly."
After hearing the queen's circumstances, Kay nodded. Bagest, intoxicated by her sense of victory, urged him on with a smile.
"Now, you heard her, human? Even the queen has agreed. Come with me to the training grounds at once and let us have a proper—"
"Ah, sorry. I'm a bit tired today."
Kay cut off Bagest's words with a yawn.
"I'm completely drained. My arms hurt from cooking too. How about tomorrow morning? After breakfast, we can work off the meal."
Bagest frowned as if the wind had been taken out of her sails, but soon she clicked her tongue and nodded.
"Hmm. No fun in pouncing on tired prey. Fine. Tomorrow morning, I'll wait in the training grounds as soon as the sun rises. Don't run, human."
Bagest gave Kay one last sticky look, then left the banquet hall, swishing her enormous tail. Gloriana apologized to Kay, visibly uneasy.
"I am truly sorry, Sir Kay. Sir Bagest is the warrior with the strongest martial power among the fairies of Britain. If you were to be injured..."
"Don't worry, Your Majesty. I grew up getting beaten for five years by a woman far nastier and more brutish than that one. That's practically cute by comparison."
Kay shrugged and put the remaining steak into his mouth. To the warrior of the demonic frontier, the king of the Fang Clan was not frightening in the slightest.
Of course, that did not mean she was someone he could ignore.
Maybe…
"Still, aside from Scáthach, she might be the strongest I've fought so far. She's nowhere near comparable to Tacuin, or even Grandotte, the one Medusa beat. Why is Vortigern just leaving someone like that alone?"
Among all the enemies he had faced so far, she might be the most formidable—and perhaps one of the monsters that would remain at the top of the list even in the future.
Of course, with Scáthach around, she could never be the strongest enemy.
After the banquet ended, Kay and the others were given the castle's most luxurious guest rooms by the queen's consideration.
Deep in the night, as the moonlight of the Fairy Kingdom seeped through the window.
"Hoo. That was another long day."
Britomart, who had become a fairy by receiving fairy lineage as a special reward from the queen, could not sleep from excitement and was patrolling the castle grounds.
Before long, her steps naturally led her toward the corridor of the guest room where Kay was staying.
"I wonder if Sir Kay is asleep? He really did work hard today… Tomorrow he has that fight with Sir Bagest, so maybe he's preparing?"
Just as Britomart was carefully about to pass by the guest room door, she noticed that it was open just a tiny crack.
"...?"
Drawn by curiosity, she peeked inside through the gap in the door.
"Ah, ahh! Husband, there…♡!"
"Haa, haa…♡ Master, that's too intense!"
"D-don't lick there like that! Ngh♡, I-I'm already going to—!!!"
"Uuugh, you perverted big brother♡ So deep…!"
What lay before Britomart's eyes was a cauldron of shock and terror.
On the huge bed, centered around Kay, Tamamo, Medusa, Jeanne d'Arc Alter, and Caster—four women with not a single thread of clothing on their naked bodies—were tangled together in a fierce five-way act of lovemaking.
"H-hiiik…?!"
Britomart was so shocked she could not even scream, and clapped a hand over her mouth.
Then it happened.
Bagest, who had been sent flying by Kay's blow earlier, had been nursing her grudge and was moving to sneak into the guest room. She spotted Britomart frozen in the corridor and approached in confusion.
"What are you doing here? Don't tell me you're spying on that human's bedroom…."
Bagest also turned her gaze toward the open crack in the door. And then.
"...?!?!?!?!"
Bagest's eyes bulged as if they might burst. What entered her sight was a debauched and obscene scene of human mating beyond anything she had ever seen before, transcending the very concept of reproduction.
Fairies were naturally born, so they had no real concept of family, and the concept of sexual intercourse itself was faint at best.
Bagest knew pleasure through blood-drinking, but she was completely ignorant about the physical union between man and woman.
"W-what is that…? Humans… reproduce like beasts?!"
Bagest's face instantly flushed red like a ripe apple. As Kay's imposing manhood, the women's moans, and the heat and scent of sweat rushed through the crack in the door, her mind went completely white.
"L-let's go! Sir Bagest! This is no place for us to be!"
Britomart grabbed Bagest by the wrist and pulled. The two fairy knights fled the scene without even being able to look at each other's faces.
The next morning.
As soon as day broke, Kay appeared in the training grounds with a refreshed expression. Thanks to the intense exercise from the previous night, his condition was at its peak.
But Britomart, who had come to greet him, and Bagest, who watched from a distance, were both in no normal state.
"G-good morning… Sir Kay."
Britomart could not look Kay in the face and kept her gaze fixed on the ground. But looking at the ground only made the huge thing she had seen through the crack in the door last night flash through her mind, and her face burned.
"...Hmph. Pervert."
Bagest also muttered while glaring at Kay from afar. She still had not recovered from last night's shock, and was trembling at the depravity of the human race.
And in the center of the training grounds.
Bagest stood waiting for Kay, radiating a grim and ominous aura.
"You've come, human. I thought my neck would snap from waiting. The courage to face me without running away—I acknowledge it, human."
Kay loosened his neck lightly and rested the golden axe on his shoulder.
"Yeah. Let's have a nice, refreshing morning workout."
The warrior of the demonic frontier and the strongest warrior of the fairies.
A fierce clash that would awaken the morning of Cleopolis was about to begin.