A few moments since the last chapter…

Tristan, Royal Capital, Grayfield estate bathroom

 

This series of questions caught Ashe off guard, and he could only stare at the fox woman stupidly. Her next set of actions was to crouch down to all fours, revealing paws like foxes, and swiftly charge at him. This transformation caught him off guard and he was hit by her small shoulder. The force was much greater than he was expecting from her frame and he found himself rolling across the marble tiles.

 

The two of them began wrestling on the ground as they fought for control, but he quickly found himself being overpowered. The woman's thin arms were like iron rods that moved to secure his arms, but just as she got a firm grip on his wrists and climbed on top of him sparks began to emit from the thick silver collar around her neck. This caused her to lose her balance for a moment and Ashton took quick advantage of it.

 

She was on top of him with her legs spread over his chest and this disruption allowed him to use his legs to throw her over the top of him. Her dress fluttered and opened when it passed over him, giving him a full view of what was underneath it. What he saw was a fox’s back legs with sharp claws that were attached to the torso of a human, but it was swiftly changing into a fox's long slender torso and fur was erupting out of her pale skin. He couldn’t see above her stomach but he had to assume that it was undergoing the same changes. 

 

Using his arms to help him slide over the damp floor he was able to get to his feet when the shocks from her collar stopped. She was on all fours with a look of rage on her face as the sparks finally stopped dancing across her body. Instead of fear, he felt a sense of excitement as he felt his entire body come alive under the pressure. The first thing he noticed was that his vision was incredible and he was able to easily see every detail of the growling woman in front of him.

 

I need to focus! Ashton discarded his muddled thoughts as he didn’t have time to think about the differences in his new body.

 

Ashton quickly began to sort through his options, but his ring was empty and he didn’t have any weapons handy. Watching the woman’s face stretch forward and form a muzzle was something that caused his stomach to sink and he could feel bile rising his throat. Just as it got to this point the collar activated again and began to emit much larger and more violent sparks that danced across her body. She emitted a scream this time that sounded more bestial than human and it caused the hairs on his arms and legs to stand up.

 

What do I do in this situation?! This is what I wanted to avoid the most! He began cursing in his mind as he was worried something like this would happen, the worst part was that it came from one of the maids.

 

“You will free Kumiho! Kumiho will not be your pet!” The woman screamed as she tried to fight against the collar on her neck but it began to start tightening. Her voice became incoherent as the collar dug into her skin and he began to feel fear watching her face turn purple and her eyes start to bulge in her head.

 

Her bestial qualities began to recede as she started to look like a fish that was struggling for air as she fell to the ground and her struggles began to weaken. At first, he breathed a sigh of relief until he looked at her face and saw the fear and panic. He realized that if this continued she would be the first living being that he would have ever seen die in front of him. One look at the collar was enough to drive his body to action.

 

Before he knew what he was doing, he began to rush forward and started trying to pry at her collar with his fingers in hopes of getting the metal ring to stop contracting. His feelings of revulsion were gone as he started feeling the collar loosen when he pulled on the metal. Just as he got it to loosen enough that the woman could breathe again she took the chance to use her legs to push him off of her. A loud sound filled the room as his shirt was ripped by her claws but he wasn’t harmed by them sliding over his skin.

 

“Don’t touch Kumiho!” She began growling at him as she scuttled away from him on all fours and continued to growl at him. Her body had mostly returned to a woman’s with her nine long tails thrashing around in the air angrily. Her limbs had returned to a human form but he couldn’t get the image of her turning into a monster out of his head.

 

“I can’t free any of you, I don’t know what the command phrases for the collars are,” Ashton told her as he caught his breath and sat up onto the ground.

 

He felt better finally saying the words he had been keeping in his chest, the idea of pretending to be some high and mighty lord was daunting to him. It was so hard to have to try to pretend to be someone he wasn’t all of the time, he had already thought of informing the staff about it at some point. 

 

“Bring him back and make him free us!” She demanded of him angrily.

 

This sentence caused him to snap, and some of the anger he had been holding in was able to finally get out.

 

“If I could bring him here then I would demand that he send me back to my world! I don’t belong here! Slavery is dead in my world! Do you think I want any of this? I have to pretend to be Ashe Grayfield or people will think I am some demon and try to exorcise me!” Most people do not survive this process, that was what he had found in a book about religious persecution. 

 

Tristain had one thing that set it apart from the other two major nations in the area, and that was that they did not have a centralized religion. The two other major powers had a hatred for each other that came from gods that the two used as the foundation for their nation's religious doctrine. Tristain was the largest food producer in the area, they supplied food to both the Holy Empire of Artollia and Galvos, named after the war god himself. Because of this position they had been able to skate by with only small battles here and there with the two major empires. 

 

“You’re not a demon?” She asked in confusion.

 

“Of course not!” Ashton exclaimed.

 

He sighed out angrily as he ran his hands through his hair, it was becoming clear to him that the collars were much more insidious than he ever imagined. It used the same technology as golems and enchanted weapons; they were originally developed as a way to imprison powerful monsters. Instead, they became the basis for Tristain’s farming industry, only Galvos had outlawed slavery completely. That was because at the age of eight you were taken from your family and moved to a barracks and separated into males and females and trained until the tender age of twenty-two.

 

They were taught reading, writing, math, and philosophy, then they were taught battle, tactics, and strategy. Galvos had one of the most powerful militaries on the continent and a landmass twice the size of Tristain. The only thing holding them back was their reliance on food from other nations, this was due to the rocky and harsh soil that made up the lower part of Galvos and the frigid tundra that made up the north. While these extreme conditions bred hardy people they had a lower population when compared to both Tristain and Artollia, with Artollia having the largest population.

 

The two were interrupted by the sound of crashing coming from the door, and Ashe turned to see the catkin maid with a broken plate of food sitting on the floor. A look of disbelief was on her face as she looked at the black-haired man sitting on the ground.

 

“You’re not Lord Grayfield?” She asked.

 

“I somehow ended up in his body, I was just taking a nap and woke up in this world.” He told her honestly.

 

“When did this happen?” She asked.

 

“Yesterday.” There was no point lying to the people who spent the most time with him, he would never be able to deceive them. 

 

“And you don’t know the commands to the collars?” She asked with hesitation.

 

“No, I don’t have any of his memories. I don’t even know where his bedroom is…” Ashton himself was starting to freak out the more he thought about it. “Taxes are due in a few weeks, I don’t know where his money is or how his businesses operate… He killed himself yesterday for some reason and left a note filled with grievances. Now I am left to figure out why he would do something like that…” 

 

This information caused the two maids to look at each other as the realization came to them; yesterday all of the collars in the mansion activated and almost killed the entire staff. She had then decided to check on Lord Grayfield and found him in a pool of blood on the top of his desk. This is what led to them eating all of the food that was prepared but he had been acting strangely since that time. He even paid them which was completely out of character for him.

 

“He was being investigated by the house of lords…” The maid said quietly.

 

“For what?! Was it fraud?!” This would be a quick path to a prison in the modern world.

 

“I don’t know…” She muttered with fear.

 

“The Duke didn’t say anything about it… but why would he…” Ashe began muttering to himself as he felt his heart rate increasing. It was the same as hearing that he had the FBI launching a criminal investigation against him. 

 

Wait, is this why he was so interested in my sister?! If Ashe was going to prison, or worse executed, then his sister would get everything that he had. Suddenly the Duke’s insistence on sending his son to meet his sister made a lot more sense. That asshole!

 

Normally Ashton was not an emotional person, but now he felt like he was being drowned in them, never before had he ever felt so scared and alone.

 

“But if you die, how will Kumiho get livers?!” The fox woman in the corner asked in fright.

 

“Liver?” Ashton muttered as the organ came to his mind.

 

“If you die then all of the people in the mansion will die with you!” The catkin-looking maid muttered in horror.

 

This is happening much faster than I expected… I need to do something…. A human only has so much energy, they are like a tower made of blocks. Whenever someone is doing or thinking about something, it is like taking the blocks from the top of the tower and stretching them out in various directions. When someone is in a panic they are exerting that energy in every direction and this is inefficient.

 

Panic and fear are not going to help me here, I can’t change the situation I am in so accepting it is the best choice. I need to get these maids on my side and use them to help me convince the rest of the staff… I can’t free them if I can’t trust them to keep my secrets… This isn’t how I wanted things to be revealed but I just don’t know enough to play his character…

 

“We are all in the same boat together, if I die then all of you will die with me. If I get arrested then you will all be sold to someone else. However, if you help me then freeing you is possible and I can even pay you all.” He had just finished saying this when the fox woman in the corner began to laugh at him as if she had heard a joke. 

 

“You will free Kumiho?!” She started laughing so hard that she couldn’t say anything further.

 

Ashton looked over at the catkin-looking maid but he saw that she was shaking in fear as she looked at the nine-tailed fox woman. 

 

“She is a high-tier monster who is close to stepping into the supreme tier. Releasing her would be a crime!” The catkin-looking maid yelled at him in fright.

 

“A monster?” He muttered as he turned his eyes back to the fox woman and remembered her changing into a large fox before his eyes. The collar had worked hard to restrain her, but she had never grown larger than a human, and in the end, she couldn’t do more than scratch him. Suddenly he wondered if the human form she was presenting was her real form, or if the fox was.

 

“And you?” He asked, pointing at the catkin-looking maid.

 

Suddenly he saw ripples and bulges under her childlike limbs as she suddenly started to grow larger and thick cream-colored fur began to erupt from her body. It only took a few moments for her to become taller than him and for her thin limbs to begin growing large muscles, but she retained a humanoid form. Her ears, face, tail, and limbs were all a black color that made her resemble a tall walking siamese cat. The moment she took this form though the collar around her neck began to tighten and she quickly started changing back to her normal appearance. 

 

The thing that was most shocking to him was watching the dresses easily stretch to accommodate their changed forms and he realized that they had been carefully designed to do so. The change was rapid and the sounds of her bones popping and crunching caused him to go pale until she returned to her smaller catkin appearance. She looked tired then turned to him with a hateful expression on her face.

 

“I am a lycanthrope, I am also considered a monster…” She told him.

 

“What about the elves and dwarves?” He asked, remembering them from the banquet hall.

 

“Those are elementals, Sari is a sylph.”  The catkin maid was looking at him with caution in her eyes.

 

“Those were elementals… What about the mermaid?” He muttered.

 

“Narinae is a water nymph, she isn’t a mermaid. All of the staff here are monsters, do you even understand the kind of man Lord Ashe Grayfield was?” The catkin asked him.

 

“All monsters…” Suddenly he was starting to get a better idea of the kind of man that Ashe Grayfield was. On Earth, the closest behavior he could think of was people who collected exotic animals.

 

Wait, that doesn’t make any sense! Monsters kill tens of thousands of humans a year! It exceeds traffic accidents on Earth! He realized that he couldn’t use the people on Earth as a metric anymore. 

 

“Everyone in the mansion is a monster?” He asked the question he was worried about.

 

“Yes… Lord Grayfield found it amusing to make monsters pretend to be humans or the other sentient races…” The catkin told him. “We would be killed, or worse if we left this mansion…”

 

“Look at how scared he is! Kumiho thinks that fear makes humans' livers tastier!” The fox woman licked her lips causing her mouth to bulge and stretch for a moment before pulling back into her face. Her bones seemed to shift under her skin like a liquid.

 

“Kumiho! This is bad! Without the Lord to protect us we will all be killed!” The catkin called out in fear. “Or worse, we might go to the colosseum…” 

 

Kumiho began to laugh mockingly at the catkin woman, she looked like all of this was fun to her. The two of them were standing up facing each other, as Ashe could only look up at them from the ground. The idea that he had been surrounded by monsters the entire time was just starting to set in on him.

 

He was feeding them scraps like they were dogs! Is that what he thought of them… The feelings he was experiencing were complicated, that was because he could understand the thoughts of the humans on this planet. On Earth, if a dog bit someone and drew blood there was a good chance that it was going to be put to death. While modern humanity liked to think they had moved far past their savage ways nearly a million shelter animals were euthanized each year.

 

“You just feel sorry for him because you used to be human! Kumiho thinks you see yourself in him!” The fox woman accused.

 

This piece of information caused Ashton’s brain to stop in its tracks, and he couldn’t help but turn his eyes onto the small cat woman. She looked angry and it was pretty clear to him that Kumiho had touched an area that she shouldn’t have. The fox woman didn’t seem to care as she seemed happy to have caused the cat woman some torment. However the cat woman was looking at him with disgust and revulsion, or at least she was looking at his body that way.

 

“I care about myself, the only good thing about being here was that I could get medication to prevent my lycanthropy from progressing. Without it I will become a beast one day, that is the only reason I care!” The cat woman was yelling at Kumiho and her body was starting to change due to her anger.  “What about you? You were betrayed by the moment he found out yo-” 

 

“Shut up!” Kumiho growled back at the catwoman, her muzzle and teeth starting to appear and stretch out of her face. 

 

Sparks began to fly as Kumiho’s collar started to act to suppress the fox woman and deter her from fighting. Ashton could only look on in wonder as his mind worked to process all of the information he was given. The fact that humans could become monsters was something he had read a few times but he thought it had been metaphorical. Even books like the bible on Earth contained passages warning of humans giving in to their baser desires and becoming demons.

 

This isn’t what I expected… It’s beyond what I was mentally prepared for… But does it matter? What is humanity and who cares what you started as…. Humans were once upon a time monkeys, and centuries of evolution turned them into what they were today. 300,000 years isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things… If you go back a few thousand more years then you will start to find monkeys trying to walk upright… If our ancestors still walked the Earth, would we also treat them like animals and put them in cages?

 

He didn’t need to ask that question as he already knew the answer. If it could seriously threaten humanity then it would be eliminated, and if it couldn’t it would be treated as a pet. This was how humans had treated every other species they had run into on the Earth, there weren't any exceptions. Zoos, research facilities, wildlife preserves, there were so many examples of this practice on Earth.

 

Hold on, the monthly expenses for the staff seemed incredibly high… Do they all have special needs? Can I use this to get them on my side? Right now he was looking for any way he could to get the staff on his side, that was even after he knew they were all monsters. When it comes to surviving a bad situation, you will reach your hands out to anything that seems like it can help you. And he knew that if the staff could easily see through his mannerisms then it wouldn’t be long before others started to suspect him.

 

***

Meanwhile…

Tristain, Royal Capitol, Duke Everim’s estate

 

“Braden! Where the hell are you?!” Duke Everim’s kind demeanor had changed now that he had returned to a modest two-story estate in the capitol. 

 

It was nowhere near the luxury or grandeur of the Grayfield estate, but his monthly income was only a tiny fraction of what the Grayfield’s pulled in. But with Liselotte Grayfield coming back into town, he felt like a golden opportunity had presented itself to him to increase his family's fortunes. He just needed to get his useless son together with her and then he could finally achieve the power that the Everim Family used to have. Ever since King Prosperity broke the old noble system, and established the noble houses in its place many of the old noble families had sharply declined.

 

Signs of this could be seen in the estate that the Duke was living in, there were many gaps where fine art pieces once stood alongside empty tables where expensive vases once provided a floral fragrance to the estate. Instead, the cloying, smokey smell filled the estate from the smoke that could be seen drifting down the stairs. It was a grayish blue and smelled of tobacco and other products that were mixed in, a look of disgust crossed the Duke’s face as he walked up the stairs of the foyer towards one of the rooms off the side of the hall. This was where the smell of smoke was the strongest in the large ten-bedroom estate.

 

“Braden! Is that Fairy Dust I smell?! Are you smoking that shit again!” Duke Everim was furious as he kicked open the door to the room and paused at what he was seeing. His jaw slowly dropped open and he reached up to rub his eyes to make sure it was true.

 

“Sapa… You bought sapa… and tobacco!” The Duke had his eyes fixed on a jar that was filled with an almost black syrup that was being used to flavor shisha and a light blue powder was mixed into it. “Molasses and fairy dust… Are you trying to bankrupt us!?!”

 

On the floor with a blanket wrapped around him was a large man with a stocky build and well-defined muscles like a bodybuilder. Over his green eyes were a pair of spectacles that were gray and foggy, and he had long brown hair that hung freely down his back. In his hand was a wooden tube connected to a leather hose that was rigged to a large stem and made its way into an expensive vase he had stolen from the hallway. The contraption he was smoking out of was something he had just come up with when he was trying to find new ways to try out Fairy Dust.

 

He had used a candle holder to make the stem since it was hollow and the hoses were something he had come up with so that the smokers could all lounge. Around his small table on the carpet of the smoky room were several maids in various states of undress. 

 

Hoooooooooooo! The sound of the man taking a deep draw from the contraption he made could be heard along with the sound of bubbles. Kaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! The man opened his mouth and disappeared as he breathed out a large cloud that obscured the room. 

 

“That’s right… I’ll call it a hookah!” The large man on the floor had to pause as he was struck with a powerful giggling fit, his eyes were red and swollen.

 

“Braden… How much did you spend…” The Duke was shocked when he saw the ingredients that his son had carelessly spilled all over the coffee table. 

 

Sapa was made from grapes, the same grapes that the Grayfields grew to make the wine that they sold in brothels and taverns. It was an expensive commodity that took a lot of work to produce a small jar like the one he had purchased. Molasses was a thick substance that came from refining sugar cane or sugar beets, it was as expensive as sugar and considered a commodity. Tobacco was another commodity that was sold by the desert tribes in the south, it was expensive with a large market among the nobles.

 

“A hookah!” The large man on the ground exclaimed. “I’ll call it a hookah!”

 

“Braden! Are you trying to ruin us! Do you know how much I had to spend to get rid of that bastard brother of yours?! Our profits are being destroyed by all of the tolls and I just sold off some of your grandfather's precious artworks!” The Duke had to take several breaths to reign his rising temper in as his son looked up at him with glassy eyes behind his spectacles.

 

“Dad, when did you get here? I thought you went to visit... him…” Braden began when the blankets around his body rustled followed by a blonde head poking out of the blankets.

 

A maid’s headpiece was haphazardly hanging in her hair and her lips and cheeks were still slick with saliva. The moment he saw this maid a vein on his forehead started to rise against the skin.

 

“You little shit! That is my favorite maid!” The Duke yelled in outrage as if his imaginary tail had been stepped on. 

 

“Dad, that doesn’t matter! Look at what I made!” Braden said quickly and pointed to the hookah sitting on the small table. 

 

“Braden, get dressed. We are going to Windy Run.” The Duke said simply.

 

“Windy Run? Isn’t that a part of their territory?” Braden’s mind was slowly turning over the name of the location and he remembered that it was known for its sunflowers and grapes. A large lake existed in the area and provided fresh water to produce some of the best wine grapes in the kingdom. “Why would we go there?” 

 

“Liselotte Grayfield is returning to the Grayfield estate. I want to take this chance to get the two of you togeth-” The Duke couldn’t finish his sentence before his son shot to his feet throwing the small table and all of its contents spinning through the air.

 

“NOOOOOOOO!!! SHE WILL KILL ME!” Braden’s face went pale and his eyes bulged out of his head in fear as a memory resurfaced from his days in the academy.

 

***

10 years ago…

Tristan, Royal Capitol, Winfield Military Institute 

 

“Ohhhhhh! Brrrraaaadddeeeennnn! Stop hiding… and face me!” The sound of mad laughter rang through the air followed by the crack of a gunshot.

 

A cloud of smoke was produced from a pistol that had the image of a smiling wolf carved into the wood and a large metal wolf heads ornament attached like a pommel. The bullet rebounded off of a large black marble square that was a part of the tile floor, creating a chessboard pattern with each square large enough to lay down in. It bounced from the floor between the legs of a knight wearing jet black armor and holding a large shield, it’s head was round with no features and reflected the magical lights coming from the ceiling. The bullet traveled from between its armored legs and under the large shield it was holding up and into the round face of another knight in white color.

 

The white knight was forced back as the round bullet entered its head and cracks began to form that ran down the length of its body before it shattered like porcelain revealing delicate clay parts covered in runes filled with silver. The large metal shield clattered to the floor and revealed that it was the only metal component in the knight. Behind this knight and shield was a large man with long hair and spectacles, he was also holding a flintlock pistol. Out of panic, he chose to move several squares back on the chessboard behind more of his pieces.

 

“Double move! Grayfield can act twice!” A man wearing robes and sitting on a large chair off to the side of the tiled floor was watching intently. 

 

Braden looked down and noticed his foot had stepped into a second square when he was panicking, he had moved through two of them by accident. Looking at the amount of shield-bearing pawns left in front of him he decided to move into the square he stepped into by mistake. The reason he chose to move into the square was that there were more pawns between him and his opponent in the duel. He could hear mocking laughter coming from the people in the stands who were watching the battle from behind a translucent square force field that looked like it was made from a bubble.

 

“Oh… How… thrilling!” The man paused each word as he reached both hands palm up and a pistol appeared from thin air into the palm that was on top. He closed this hand over the grip of the pistol and used his other upturned hand to pull the hammer back on the flintlock using the back of his hand. This action caused the hammer to snag on a wheel built onto his signet ring changing the number that was shown in the slot, this caused a second pistol to appear in his upturned hand. With a snap of the sleeve of his coat, he cocked the hammer on the second pistol and held one forward and one in the air.

 

“Braden… You shouldn’t have challenged me... to a duel…” The teenage Ashe Grayfield said with a twisted smile on his face. The empty pistol he had fired was smoking at the floor by his feet. “I… hate duels!”