Rion fell to his knees with both hands resting on the ground. A few seconds after the needle struck his shoulder, he felt stuffy, he felt stuffy. His heart was pounding, and his body temperature rose drastically as if a fire was burning him from within.
By the second, his condition was getting worse, as he started to sweat, his ears were ringing, and his vision was blurry.
Ten meters from him, from behind a tree, a purple-eyed girl was watching.
"Yeah!! It worked!" She smiled triumphantly. "I'm sorry Big Brother, it would feel a little bad, but all of this is for my future and the future of the Panthera Kingdom."
"Princess Anwen?"
"Huh?" The girl's eyes and mouth widened when she heard a voice from behind. She pressed her lips when she saw the king's wild dog appear behind her. "Tri-Trishy? You? Hi, how are you? Hehe."
Anwen smiled awkwardly and started to get nervous when Trish looked at her appearance in a Panthera soldier's uniform. He saw a vial and a small needle-thrower device she was holding.
"I-I can explain," Anwen said with a wry smile.
***
Dew dripped from the leaves when the wind blew.
"WAIT.. WHAT?!" Trish could barely breathe from being so shocked by the explanation from the 17-year-old girl in front of him right now.
It turned out that Anwen had participated in the battle against Redragon. She had followed them secretly all the way here to complete a ridiculous task from Her Highness Cristela, the king's grandmother. The task was to give Anwen's handmade aphrodisiac potion to King Arion.
Well, Princess Anwen, the grey-haired girl with a very short haircut that resembled a boy, was an amateur alchemist. And one who liked to cause trouble with her strange inventions.
Unfortunately, Trish and Arion often became the object of the girl's experiments.
Anwen excitedly explained that the aphrodisiac potion she formulated with fairy powder had very extraordinary properties. One just needed a drop to make anyone turn into a beast. Ahem.. a beast in bed.
It seemed Her Highness Cristela was already very frustrated, thinking of the next succession to the Panthera throne. Just think about it, since Rose's death, Rion seemed to have lost interest in women.
Whenever Her Highness Cristela discussed marriage, then Rion would immediately dodge. He avoid the conversation about marriage and children like the plague. However, his grandmother was one persistent woman.
One day, Rion was really fed up with his grandmother's insistence on marriage, he issued a decree stating that 'Anyone who discusses marriage before King Rion will receive the punishment of get their tongue cut off. This decree applies to everyone, INCLUDING HER ROYAL HIGHNESS CRISTELA D-PANTHER.'
Meanwhile, the reason why Anwen had accepted the ridiculous task was that she wanted to save her own butt.
If Rion didn't have any children, then their grandmother would marry Anwen off to some lords, so she could give birth to an heir for the Panthera throne, and Anwen was completely unprepared for that. So either way, she would make sure her brother have a child.
"Now wait and see. Soon, Rion junior will be born… hehe.." Anwen's smile broadened, her face lit up like a flower that had just bloomed. However, both of those things faded as she noticed Trish's scornful gaze.
"W-why are you looking at me like that?"
"Do you want to see a fool, Your Highness?" Trish asked without any clear context.
"What do you mean?" Anwen furrowed her brows, not understanding.
Trish tilted his chin toward Princess Anwen's reflection in the water, which irritated the Princess, but Trish didn't care.
"Arion junior will be born IF His Majesty the King found a woman… BUT WE ARE CURRENTLY IN THE FOREST! There are no women here! Only monkeys!" Trish spoke with such emphasis, as he looked very irritated about the girl in front of him.
Anwen suddenly hiccuped.
Oh my gods… that's right, they're in a forest.
There were no women here, only monkeys.
Whoopsie!
Her breath hitched, and her eyes went round. Slowly, her forehead turned blue. Anwen suddenly thought of something horrible.
"Tri-Trishy, w-what if my brother did that thing with… uhm.. a monkey, and then, uhm...the monkey becomes pregnant?"
"Nonsense."
"Humans and monkeys are one species, right? At least we are closely related. So… it can happen…." Anwen said, quietly as she bit her fingertip.
She swallowed hard.
Trish shuddered. The heir to the mighty King Arion D-Panther is... a half-monkey? Ah, his heart couldn't bear to accept that fact.
"Oh my gods… Big brother!" Anwen frantically rushed to get to her brother, but the figure she was looking for was no longer there.
***
Meanwhile, Rion didn't know where he was now. He staggered while holding his head.
Was he poisoned? Yes, he would think that, if only all the symptoms he felt were not accompanied by itching below the stomach and wild imaginations about women.
He knew the reaction was not of poison but an aphrodisiac. Ah, this must be his grandmother's doing.
Her Royal Highness Cristela once mixed an aphrodisiac into Rion's drink on Anwen's fifteenth birthday. However, at that time, the effects were not as severe as now. He really couldn't believe what his grandmother did. The old woman didn't even care which woman her great-grandson would be born from.
It seemed, at this point, any woman would do.
When Rion realized that the symptoms he got were caused by an aphrodisiac, he immediately ran to hide himself. He was worried that his grandmother would also send women to seduce him.
"Arrgh!" his hand rested on a tree trunk, his sweat dripping like rain. In the past, the effects he endured weren't this strong.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
All the symptoms he felt continued to grow by the second.
"Ah!" He really couldn't stand it, his heart begged that the 'evil spirit' inside him would not come out and he would not meet with a woman. However, his request was never granted.
"Hahaha. HAHAHAHA!" Rion laughed like a maniac, but in the next second, he was crying while muttering about life being unfair. The next second he barked like a puppy.
"Arrgh!" He shook his head a few times and stayed still.
His body was burning, his lower stomach was rumbling. He really wished he didn't meet a woman but–
Crack!
The sound of twigs being stepped on made him startled. He shook his head once then turned to see what was behind him and that… and that… Rion saw the last thing he wished to encounter, which was a woman.
A woman in white was standing three meters in front of him. For some reason, when he saw the woman, it was like seeing a swan.
He looked at her, blurry from bottom to top. The woman's body was wet and the clothes she was wearing stuck to the flesh to reveal her sexy curves, especially at the bottom which was covered by a short skirt.
Drops of water from the skirt that fell between the two exposed thighs made him gulp.
The sight burned his desire to a boiling point, he.. ugh, he couldn't take it anymore.
Run and save yourself!
He wanted to shout those words to the woman, but he couldn't find his voice. His throat was parched.
Now he felt starved and wanted to eat a swan. A sexy swan.
Shit!
His imagination of the woman in front of him really started to run wild.
"No! No way!" He clutched his head and fought against himself.
With his remaining consciousness was only the size of bacteria, he ran and distanced himself from the woman. However… the woman chased after him instead!
That's it! That woman must have been a seductress sent by his grandmother.
While running and maintaining his sanity, Rion looked at the river earlier as he noticed how he was in complete chaos. He thought he was running north but actually, he was running south, while the 'temptress' was still chasing him.
His grandmother must have paid her very dearly for her to be this determined to do her job.