Tales of a Seductress

{You have used one point on Seduction.}

{Seduction has evolved into Allure.}

{Allure (Active) – Instantly seduce a single person. Success depends on the level.}

{You have used one point on Allure.}

{Allure had evolved into Enchant.}

{Enchant (Active) – Gain total obedience over a single target. 100% successful upon physical contact.}

“Hmmm, I’ll leave it there.”

{You have used one point on Black Widow.}

{Black Widow has evolved into Death Order.}

{Death Order (Active} – A sufficiently charmed target will die upon your command.}

“I might be able to use that.”

{You have used one point on Empower.}

{Empower has evolved into Demonic Might.}

{Demonic Might, Temptress, Command, Submission had all evolved into Queen’s Order.}

{Queen’s Order: You have complete dominion over anything loyal to you. You can relay orders from any distance. Loyalists will gain strength, experience, and power at your behest.}

“That will work.”

My eyes snapped open. It was nighttime now. Even in this place, they kept a day and night cycle. Maybe, they felt it was important for the birth of the babies. Maybe, they just didn’t want to waste the magical energy needed to keep the lighting working in this place. I didn’t know, but even though I had no window, I was certain that the outside was dark.

I had been spending the last few hours playing around with my points. I had so many these days that it didn’t even feel like it mattered. I had already used half of them, and already I was a bit terrified by the skills I had gained. Anyone I touched could be controlled by me. If I so wanted, they could die with a word. Perhaps I needed such skills. I thought about using the last three, but who knew what situation I’d end up in next, so I kept my options open.

“Your child is in another woman’s stomach, just like the previous ones. Why would we do anything differently?” I recalled the words of the woman from last night.

I should have been able to tell if she was lying. My Art of Manipulation had come from deception, and on top of being able to lie my way through everything, I was also able to tell if someone was lying. However, with her, there was absolutely nothing. While I didn’t attempt to use Seduction on her, I did allow my charm to reach its full. I saw no change in her. It was almost like the woman wasn’t even there. Did she have special skills that negated all of mine, or was she a doll controlled by someone else?

Either way, I was not able to decern the truth from lies, and I no longer had faith in this so-called organization. I pretended I bought into it, used my skills until she left thinking I was appropriately cowed. Then, I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, waiting for this moment. I used Stalker to check up on Reinhart, and what I ultimately saw was nothing. Did that mean he was dead, or they were trying to block him from me?

There were just too many questions, and I knew I wouldn’t get them from this woman who seemed immune to skills and charm. That had already messed with Illusions. That was my domain, and they tried to manipulate me. The terrifying thing was that they had very nearly succeeded. No, they did succeed. I might have broken out of it, and been aware I was in it, but in the meantime, I wasn’t certain what they had done with my body. This was something that shouldn’t have happened. Very powerful people would have been needed to do something like that to me. They would regret it though.

I stood up and quietly got dressed. Then, I walked to the door. I had been in this room or a few rooms near it for nearly a year of my life. It was a prison, but it was a prison of my choosing. They never could hold me. They probably had thought that was an exaggeration. I turned to the doorknob. At first, there was some resistance, but then it finally snapped open. Bondless, I could break from restraints and bindings easily.

I didn’t know how this special skill worked. Was it magic? Probably. I released mana and had it chop up, cut, or undo my restraints. Of course, there were plenty of times I wanted to be restrained, and in those cases, it wasn’t like my bindings out slip. It was only when I committed to leaving and felt myself being prevented from doing what I wanted, that Bondless came into play.

I’m sure there was someone out there who would see a lock on a door as something that didn’t qualify as a restraint, but it didn’t matter what they thought. My ability to use special skills was dependent on my point of view. If I saw something as sexual, it was sexual, and I could use sex-related skills. If I saw something as binding me, then I could break through it. Perhaps if the lock had some kind of powerful magical resistance, they might have been able to keep me trapped, but considering I had never attempted to leave my room without permission, they never prepared.

I stepped out into the dimly lit hallway, and then I picked the direction that Reinhart had previously led me and moved along. I reached the first room observation room to see a woman in it. She was pregnant, her stomach bloated far larger than a human baby. She also appeared to be in a lot of pain, her face red and her breathing frantic.

I moved on, not paying her much mind. I moved from door to door. They were mostly filled with women, all at various levels of pregnancy. I touched my stomach bitterly. I was the only one present who wasn’t pregnant, and I was probably the only one who had wanted to be. I heard some words whispering from down the hallway, and I immediately crouched by the corner.

“Have you taken care of the mess?” Someone asked.

“Yes… I did. It was really bad though.”

“It doesn’t matter. Once the room is clean enough, move the next subject in.”

“Y-yes…”

I heard a brief exchange and then waited as it sounded like they were walking in different directions. One person was heading my way. As soon as they hit the corner, my hand reached out and I grabbed their arm. They couldn’t even let out a sound of alarm before I released Enchant. It appeared to be some kind of scientist. At least, he wore what seemed to be a unitard. Was he a janitor? He didn’t seem to be an alchemist. His eyes immediately went slack, and he turned to me, a look of adoration on his face.

“Mistress…” He whispered.

“My children, where are they?”

“I do not know anything.” He answered honestly. “I just clean the place.”

There were previous levels of seduction where he might have been terrified of telling me the wrong answer. A beguiled person could be unreliable. Some would lie just to please their mistress. My upgraded seduction seemed to move far past that. He was completely under my control. Even if I told him to die, he would just die.

I clenched my teeth. “Is there an office? Is there a place they keep the paperwork?”

“Um… yes… I have a key…”

“Lead me,” I ordered.

The man immediately turned and walked. He only looked back to make sure I was following him. Once again, my seduction once worked where the guy might be flustered or falling over himself, desperately sneaking more peaks of the one he loved. Queen’s Order seemed to iron out all of these details, or maybe it came from Enchant. Either way, he followed his orders completely.

We moved down a couple of hallways, leaving the section with the observation windows and entering an area that looked a bit more comfortable. Even in a world of fantasy, an office space looked like an office space. The man pulled out a long chain of keys and then opened a doorway that lead into a room filled with cabinets. There were at least fifty wooden cabinets and shelves. They contained scrolls on them, not binders or something easy to look through. I gave him a side look.

“You wouldn’t by chance know where my file is, do you?”

“Wh-what’s a file?” He asked.

I shook my head. “Keep guard.”

I began at the beginning of the piles, hoping that with a name like Aria, I’d be in the front of the list. Perhaps I was lucky, as I only reached the second cabinet by the time, I found my name. I pulled off the string binding it and unrolled it, then started to scroll down the information.

“Aria is typically passive and restrained. Although she can be dangerous in the correct circumstances, those dangers have all been pacified. She had been acting wild and problematic of late. It is of our opinion that her frequent requests should be denied, and a stronger hand should be used.” I read out loud before making a face.

It was only the last thing written about me. There was an entire five-foot scroll with frequent updates speaking of my behavior. At first, there seemed to be some anger over me killing someone’s brother during my capture, and then there were more positive statements as I was producing offspring and making them all rich. As the scroll went on, those sentiments became increasingly negative. In particular, a specific, writer had seemingly taken over in the last few entries. They signed their name under each statement. The name looked familiar to me. I cross-referenced it to the name of the person I had seeming killed.

“It seems like someone was promoted.” I snorted.

Was that all it was about? That person who had been cut down while they captured me was the brother of someone here, and that person was promoted to a director position, and had a personal hatred for me? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. In some ways, it made me relieved that this was such a meaningless thing. On the other, they had inconvenienced my life, and I didn’t like it at all.

I was just about to roll it up and put it back when I noticed the back of the scroll also had writing on it. This was a log as well, but this one was instead a log of my pregnancies.

“First-generation demons are far too difficult to bother with. No demon families want to take care of some other bloodline. There is no profit in creating new demon bloodlines. Unless a first-generation demon has been financed, terminate them.” As I read the last line, my blood went cold.

There were dates and species. If the species was one of the ones they requested, the numbers continued. However, if it was one of the ones I had slept with for fun, at some point there was the writing after it in red ink. Terminated.

Slime baby – terminated

Morgawr baby – terminated

Illiad baby – terminated

I desperately scrolled up the list.

2^nd Generation Goblin baby – terminated.

The scroll fell from my hands, and I took a horrified step back. It had all been an illusion from the beginning. If they showed me a pregnant woman and said that she had my goblin baby in it, or any monster, how would I know? They kept a few of my children and showed them to me from time to time to placate me, but they had done that less and less.

Now I knew why they had been making it harder and harder. They didn’t have anything to show me in the first place. At some point, they had decided demons that didn’t belong to some already existing and established line weren’t worth replenishing. They had been killing them, one after another, only caring about the lines people were paying for, and merely humoring me. Maybe the others were just a curiosity for them. Maybe they experimented on them or cut them up and put them into jars.

“Do you understand now?” A voice came from behind me, and I turned around to see that woman standing there. “We own you.”