PoV Donovan. (Forgot to mention he has tanned skin.)
I waited for what felt like an eternity in that bathroom. Lady Alicia knocked by a couple of times and asked if I felt any better, and I didn't respond. As I washed my face with cold water, I started checking the mirror. I was curious about the man that the lady seemed so infatuated with. As I lived on the streets for most of the last couple of years, I never really bothered to check the state of my face.
The lady took great care of me. She had shaved my beard off and cut my hair short. She had even started to use skin care products on me, so I wanted to check what had changed. Those last few months were bliss.
I wasn't beautiful, not by my standards. The scar was deeper than I thought, and we completely ruined the right side of my face. I had a very small beard that was still growing, I had thick eyebrows, and my jawline wasn't that pronounced. The left side of my face was ok. I had dark eyes. My lips were a bit thicker than I remembered. Overall, I was probably worse than average. I would've definitely been a lot more popular with the ladies if I didn't have this scar.
'Maybe the lady enjoys this type of look.'
As I kept looking at myself, I noticed I was enjoying posing in front of the mirror and immediately stopped.
"What am I doing with my life?" I sighed.
I scammed this poor family. After that incident, most swordsmen threw away their swords in fear of something ever happening to them. Apparently, the emperor couldn't silence the rumors some of the villagers managed to spread before disappearing.
Of course, that didn't mean that new generations gave up completely on the swords; it's just that veteran blacksmiths stopped producing high quality swords and high quality swordmasters stopped teaching. Only teenagers or foreigners were dumb enough to walk down that path.
Apparently, even a lot of members of the Golden Order stopped using swords.
'At least I need to pass down the spiritual arts in a way that even if our style is dead, that particular energy will not die.'
It was our secret, something that wasn't aura or mana but worked perfectly fine against aura while not having any particular interaction with mana.
Her kid was a spoiled brat. He was not overweight at the very least, but was clearly unfit to become a warrior. His dream was to become a hunter, but apparently no school accepted him.
'He's definitely going to die at this rate as soon as he comes of age.'
From what I heard, dying on the first hunt wasn't uncommon. The numbers had been steadily decreasing, but newbies had a much higher death rate than veterans (40% to 15%). One could say that's obvious, but the veterans were the ones that always fought creatures created specifically for that hunt. They never fought the same creature twice. Going blind against those creatures was surely not an easy task, but the experience they had gathered was probably enough to make up for it.
I'm not a hunter, so I wouldn't know much about what happens there, but the injuries I saw...
I splashed some more cold water on my face before finally unlocking the door and getting out of the bathroom.
By that time, the sun was already in the sky, so I started stretching my body while also basking in the sun.
The mansion seemed weirdly silent. The only sounds in the air were the chirps of the many birds that had nested in the trees located in the backyard. The usual maids weren't happily chatting about various useless topics, such as: whatever happened to a distant relative's husband and how that small thing then led to the divorce of the husband's sister-in-law.
The kid wasn't throwing his usual tantrums because he didn't want to study history; the lady and her husband weren't shouting at each other profanities. Everything was calm.
'This seems weird.'
I didn't think too much about it and headed to the backyard to exercise.
There were few clouds in the sky today. In the backyard, there were just a couple of men that were cleaning the windows while the gardener was trimming the bushes.
"Hey, by any chance... Do you have any idea where everyone went? " I asked as casually as I could.
The men that were cleaning the windows just shrugged their shoulders in response.
"I heard they went to the house by the lake for a couple of weeks for vacation." Responded the gardener.
Then the gardener got closer. He took my right hand in his hand and flipped it to see the palm.
"The lady left this letter for you." he said, handing me the letter. He then returned to his work.
I wanted to put the letter somewhere else as I wanted to train for now, but it was then that I realized I was still in shorts.
'Why did he have to check my hand?'
I went back inside the mansion to check what she had written for me.
"Hotel Banges, 8:30 pm; bring some snacks with you."
'Where the hell is that?'
I've never heard of that hotel, so it probably isn't near our area.
'I'm not in the mood to travel. I think I'll skip this one.'
So I started to head towards the guest room to get some clothes.
Why were my shorts in the lady's room?
"Should I check her room?"
I didn't really bother to think about the weird things that were happening all around me; it was just something I recently started to notice. The lady was part of a rich family and her husband... I don't know much about him.
She is young, about 25 years old, meaning that if that was her kid, she got pregnant at 16. She had dyed her hair blonde and was very short (165 cm).
Once I got inside the guest room and opened my closet, I discovered that most of my clothes had been moved elsewhere.
'So that's what happened.'
But why? Was the lady really ready to ruin her family for just a fling?
I didn't want to think too much about it, or else I would just feel guilty about the whole situation.
In the lady's room, the maids were now changing the sheets and cleaning the floor.
"Sir Donovan, we still haven't finished working on the lady's room. If you could please return at a-"
"No need to call me sir, I won't be staying here for long anyway. Have you seen my clothes?"
"The young master's clothes?"
"No no no, my clothes, not the young master's clothes."
"Ah! The lady told us to put them in the trash this morning. "
"WHAT!" I involuntarily shouted.
One of the older maids then took out a suit from the closet.
"This is what the lady left for you to wear." Said the proud maid.
In the meantime, I noticed the younger maids stealing glimpses at my body. I even directly caught one of them. She was immediately scolded by the maid holding the suit.
'What's the meaning of this? Is it because I rejected her this morning?'
I didn't like the idea of wearing a suit. Those are definitely not the type of dress a warrior would wear...
'But I'm not a warrior anymore.'
While I was still immersed in my own thoughts, the maid put the suit over my shoulder and started pushing me outside the lady's room, and once I was out, she shut the door in my face.
'Welcoming as always.'
So I carried on. I started wandering in the mansion, looking at the many paintings that were adorning the walls of the mansion, the carpets, and lastly, the furniture.
Everything looked so expensive and unnecessary.
"Maybe when you reach that level of wealth, things like this become... No, I'm pretty sure she does this so that when people come over to her house they get reminded of the difference in status and wealth. That must be it."
As I wandered, I then found myself back in front of the guest room. This time a couple of maids were waiting in front of the door. One of them was wearing the mask of an angry demon, while the second was normal.
"Do you need something from me?"
"We're here to dress you… sir." Said the one wearing the mask
Maids who had a prettier face or were simply younger than the lady were forced to wear these hideous masks to hide their faces in this house.That meant that she was either a beauty or a beauty.
"I'm not like the young master, I can dress myself." I answered in the same cold tone before opening the door to my room.
I wanted to lie a bit on the bed, but the normal maid immediately stopped me.
"If the YOUNG MASTER wants to rest, he should do so in his own room." She added.
I smiled at her and jumped on the bed. Before I could reach the bed, a thin layer of ice formed on top of it.
"I never expected an aura master to work as a mai-" I didn't manage to finish the line when she grabbed my ankle with her water aura and threw me out of the room.
It wasn't a gentle throw either. If I hadn't protected my back with my spiritual arts, I would've died right there and then.
"You're in trouble, miss. Now you're going to pay back the wall you broke plus any further damage to the furniture." I was playing it cool, but I was wary of her.
"Young master, it's time to stop with this nonsense." She said this in a sweet and lovely tone.
"I just want to take a quiet nap."
"You have an appointment with the Lady of the House. We need to make sure you are perfect for the event." She replied in the cute tone from before.
'Fighting them is pointless; they're just following her orders. Who would've thought that a little fling would escalate to this extent.'
"Ok, I surrender." I said while getting on my knees.
"Then put on these special handcuffs. It'll help us relax a bit more." She said while taking out some handcuffs from beneath her skirt and kicking them towards me.
"What are these?" I asked while picking up the handcuffs.
"Anti-mage handcuffs." The masked maid responded.
'You idiots, I don't use mana!'
I remained silent and put on the handcuffs as she asked. Something weird was going on, but I for sure wasn't ready to fight a skilled aura user.
They proceeded to shave my beard, trim my hair; they cleaned every inch of my body; they waxed it; and then proceeded to cover me with lots and lots of creams for skin care.
After all of that, they prepared another bath for me. I don't know why I had to bathe a second time, but I did anyway. Then they started treating my nails. They started putting some sort of liquid in my hair and started working on my hairstyle.
Once that was done, it was already lunchtime. They didn't have anything prepared for me. They wanted me to not eat or drink till the appointment with the madam.
I noticed that during the whole process, the maids that seemed trained in combat never once served me; they simply remained still a couple of meters away, ready at any time to knock me out in case I tried to resist.
'If she doesn't like her spineless husband, it's one thing, but that doesn't mean she can treat me the same as him. Why did she put all these precautions in place? It's not like I can simply run away. I barely have any money and I'm sure she confiscated the little I had.'
Although it was true that if I had to decide whether to go or not, I wouldn't have gone there, that didn't give her the right to treat me like a sex slave.
Once I was finally ready to meet her, they asked me to go back to her room where they had prepared some special candles that were meant to "relax" my nerves.
"If I cut off a finger for each crime she committed against me in the span of the last 48 hours, I wouldn't have any. Isn't it funny?" I asked the maids.
Most of them remained silent and simple, while some others started hissing at me like some kind of beast.
"You're lucky the lady has chosen a worthless scammer like you to be her next warrior." one of the masked maids said
"I feel so honored I'm jumping from-" She kicked me inside the room, and the other maids shut the door in my face.
'I've got no choice but to fall for it, huh?'
I could easily break free from the handcuffs and try to run away, but escaping from at least nine trained warriors was simply an impossible task, at least for me. I had given up in training. I was merely maintaining my body at an above average state, meaning I would've stood no chance against an actual warrior that spent his last 20 years refining his arts of killing.
'It's not like money rained from the skies; I had to save up to afford food and work as hard as I could-'
And by work I meant just standing on the side of the road begging for some generous donation. It did bring me enough money to not starve. Sometimes some people would just bring me food, and even that was still fine to me.
'I lived in a remote village. I had no qualifications. No job would have hired me.'
Slowly, my body started to feel heavier and heavier, so I decided to lie on the bed where at least I was comfortable.