Chapter 491

The residents of Arvil were calmly going about their daily lives, completely indifferent to us.

Merchants set up stalls on the streets, calling out to customers, while a young couple holding their child’s hand browsed the trinkets on display, picking out a gift for their daughter.

Women strolled around, laughing and chatting, while men leaned against building walls, smoking magical cigarettes and exchanging idle gossip.

Everywhere you looked, it was the picture of a peaceful, ordinary city.

Except for one thing.

For a person to live a proper human life, they must first fulfill three essential requirements. If even one of these elements is lacking, it can hardly be called a human life.

Therefore, it’s safe to assume that the residents of Arvil have already ceased to be human.

They seemed to have discarded the very first condition of human life—clothing, food, and shelter—without a second thought.

Every time the women walked by, their bare chests swayed, and between the men’s legs hung something so obscene that even Rana couldn’t bear to look.

It was as if the concept of clothing had been forgotten, and the residents paraded around in their natural, naked state, just as they were at the dawn of creation.

Literally, a mad, primordial village had manifested here!

—

…What the hell is this?

People walking around nonchalantly with their lower bodies exposed. It was a truly bizarre sight, so bewildering it made my head spin.

What kind of insane stunt have these cultist bastards pulled…? A nudist beach—no, a nudist city—right in the heart of the Holy Kingdom? What on earth were they thinking?

“What’s going on…?”

I hurriedly covered Rana’s eyes and looked around at the group.

And then I was shocked once more.

“Huh…?!”

A cigarette butt flew out of my gaping mouth and rolled on the ground.

It was the kind of thing that could have set the carriage on fire, but this was no time to worry about that.

Why?

Because everyone in the carriage was stripping off their clothes!

With the speed befitting masters, they were undressing at an astonishing pace.

Milia and Leonor had already thrown off their tops, baring their chests, and were in the process of pulling down their pants and underwear. Hersh was already completely naked.

Nigel had removed his breastplate and was unbuttoning his shirt, while Rana, whose eyes I had covered, was lifting the hem of her nun’s habit, revealing her pale legs and cute underwear.

Lacey and Agnes seemed a bit hesitant, but… even they were blushing as they reached for their clothes.

“Hey, what are you guys doing?!”

I shouted desperately, trying to stop them, but they just tilted their heads as if what they were doing was the most natural thing in the world.

“What do you mean? It’s common sense to take off your clothes when you arrive in the city, isn’t it? Ha-shal-leur, why aren’t you undressing?”

“What kind of nonsense is that…? That can’t possibly be common sense…”

Just as I was about to refute Milia’s absurd claim, I felt a strange sensation, as if some kind of smoke was seeping into my mind.

At first glance, it felt similar to the sensation of being under a translation spell… but there was a subtle difference.

Unlike the sharp, piercing sensation of the translation spell, this felt more like a sticky liquid coating my brain, slimy and sinister.

A mental spell… no, an authority? Could it be?

Don’t tell me they set up a trap like this…!

No, I can worry about that later. First, I need to deal with this…!

……Deal with it?

“What are you talking about? It’s common sense, right, Ha-shal-leur?”

Milia, her lower body fully exposed, patted my shoulder and laughed.

“Uh… is that so…?”

…Was it?

Is it common sense to take off your clothes when you enter the city…?

…No, that’s still weird.

Right. It’s definitely some kind of mental magic—

……

……What’s magic?

……

……

Huh… what was I just thinking about……?

Ah, right. We were talking about common sense.

So… clothes are for wearing outside, so it makes sense to take them off when you enter the city, right…?

“Common sense, right…?”

A confused, dazed feeling. My mind was foggy, as if filled with mist.

Why am I like this?

Did I inhale cigarette smoke through the top of my head…?

“Sister, can you move your hand for a second? I need to get undressed, and it’s in the way!”

“Ah, right. You’re from the east, aren’t you? You probably haven’t learned all the customs here. Let me help you.”

Rana whined as she pulled her nun’s habit up over her head, and Leonor, who had already pulled her pants halfway down, reached out to me.

“Uh… uh…? Do I have to get undressed too…?”

“Of course!”

…Right. That makes sense.

I’m a westerner now, so it’s only natural to take off my clothes when I enter the city.

……Is it?

“I think I taught you this before, but perhaps you forgot? When you arrive in the city, it’s proper etiquette for men to take off all their clothes so they can be ‘used’ more easily. Ha-shal-leur.”

Nigel, who had already thrown off his shirt, nodded as he undid my belt.

Used…? Was that… it?

Ah, right! Nigel told me before. Wearing clothes makes it harder to ‘serve,’ so you should take them off in advance and wait for the ‘masters’ to choose you!

“Ah. That’s right. I forgot. Go ahead and undress me.”

What was I even worried about? This is so obvious.

I should get undressed quickly.

I lifted my hips slightly to make it easier to pull off my pants and raised my arms above my head.

Nigel, who had pulled down my pants, grabbed the strings of my underwear and pulled them off.

Leonor had already stripped off my shirt and was unwinding the bandages around my chest.

And so, with the help of the two, I undressed, preparing myself to be ‘used’ by the men……

—

**No way in hell.**

The holy mark on my chest burned hot.

My demon resistance, stronger than ever, blew away the fog in my mind.

A sense of crisis and anger surged up, hammering my consciousness awake.

These bastards.

A city-wide brainwashing authority? Where the hell did they pull this crap from…!

“Lacey! Agnes! Cast mental defense! It’s a trap set by the cultists!”

I pushed away Nigel and Leonor, who were stripping off my underwear, and shouted at the saint candidates who were starting to undress with trembling hands.

They were the only ones I could rely on.

Agnes and Lacey weren’t completely free from the brainwashing either, but thanks to their holy marks, they were able to resist to some extent.

“Cultists…?”

“Cultists…!!”

Like Pavlov’s dog hearing a bell, the two reflexively reacted to the word ‘cultists’ and unleashed divine light.

– Whoosh!

A dazzling divine light filled the carriage, mixing together.

Two types of miracles unfolded simultaneously. The light of Elpinel protected our minds, while the divine light of Menes restored our fading consciousness.

The brainwashing authority that had infiltrated all our minds shattered under the force of their power.

“Huh…?”

Their eyes regained clarity.

Milia, who had been naked and opening the carriage door, froze in place. Hersh, who had been leaning out the window, stiffened.

Nigel, who had been holding my lower body, and Leonor, who had unwrapped my chest bandages, also regained their senses and stared in shock at my naked body and their own.

Soon after, the faces of the entire group turned bright red.

The fact that no girly screams erupted was only because everyone in the carriage was female.

If Damian or Seilon had been here, it would have been a complete disaster.

We might have ended up with two blind men in the group.

“Men… using us…? How disgraceful for a knight to even think such a thing…!”

“What… what was I thinking…! Someone other than Damian…!”

The group, now back to their senses, sat down in shock, clutching their heads.

“See! I told you it was dangerous, Ha-shal-leur! We almost became breeding slaves!”

Hersh, who had quickly climbed back into the carriage and closed the window, trembled as she protested.

“Just put your clothes on, damn it…”

I sighed and shook my head.

I didn’t want to find out that Hersh had pink parts in this kind of situation.

The others, their faces still bright red, quietly picked up their clothes and started dressing.

Lacey and Agnes, who had been the only ones still dressed, finally remembered Seilon and Damian and cast protective miracles on the coachman’s seat at the front of the carriage.

“What kind of trap is this? Is this what demons and witches are like?”

“I know, right…”

Leonor frowned in disgust, pulling up her pants and buttoning her shirt as she grumbled in an irritated tone.

She looked pale, clearly shaken by the thought of almost becoming a plaything.

I snatched my underwear back from Nigel’s hands and rewrapped the chest bandages Leonor had undone, grinding my teeth.

…I almost ended up fathering a hundred kids with the city’s residents.

Just the thought sent shivers down my spine.

It was a stroke of luck that we had three saint candidates in the group. Otherwise, we might have been wiped out here.

—

After escaping the shocking trap, we turned the carriage around and quickly left Arvil.

It was clear that once the protective miracles wore off, we’d fall under the brainwashing again.

Sure, Lacey and Agnes could just recast the miracles, but it seemed more reasonable to retreat, make a plan, and then move forward rather than blasting divine light all over the city.

“…That was close. At this rate, it’s safe to say that Arvil has already fallen into the hands of the cultists.”

“A city-wide brainwashing, and one that even affected us… I never thought a demon could pull off something like this…”

Lacey and Agnes sighed, a mix of shock and relief, as they patted their chests.

“Belcus couldn’t have done this alone. Whether in scale or power, it’s too much for a single demon’s authority. It’s likely a combined effort of Belcus, the heretic Eljure, and other cultists.”

“Yeah, I think so too.”

I nodded, agreeing with Seilon’s assessment.

From what I could tell, this didn’t seem like a trap Belcus could have set up alone.

His authority, Alpha Mail, does have a brainwashing-like effect, but it’s nowhere near this level.

And it has strict prerequisites.

So, as Seilon said, it’s probably a combination of Belcus’s authority and the powers of others.

“To bewitch innocent citizens and turn the city into a den of depravity… it’s exactly the kind of vile, despicable act you’d expect from cultists. We should judge every last one of them without mercy.”

Seilon muttered, glaring at Arvil as if he wanted to burn it to the ground.

It was only after we left the city that I learned Seilon had been resisting the brainwashing the whole time.

Apparently, whenever his consciousness started to blur and strange thoughts arose, he immediately cast a mental defense miracle.

He couldn’t completely block it, but at least he was able to grit his teeth and maintain his sanity instead of blindly following the voices in his head.

He’d even been holding back Damian, who had fallen under the brainwashing.

“By the way, what kind of brainwashing were you under?”

I puffed on my cigarette and asked Seilon.

Since Seilon and Damian were the only men in the group, their brainwashing must have been different from ours. What was it?

“Uh…! That, that is… how should I put it…?”

Seilon hesitated, as if the subject was too blasphemous to speak of, but Damian, who didn’t care about such things, answered for him.

“When you arrive in the city, it’s common sense to take off your clothes, use your companions, and then hand them over to the citizens… We almost had a real problem.”

Even Damian, who doesn’t understand human emotions, thought the city’s ‘common sense’ was utterly insane.