"Please call me anytime if you need anything."
The two maids who had brought me here with me in the middle bowed their heads at the same time and went to the edge of the banquet hall, where they stood upright with their hands clasped in front of their lower abdomens.
Left alone, I looked around.
On one wall, a five-member band was leisurely playing music with uniquely shaped instruments. It was a shape I had never seen before, but the sound was similar to a piano or violin.
'That damn air conditioner is here too.'
It was somehow much cooler inside than outside, and beyond the chandelier in the banquet hall, I could see the air conditioners working hard on the ceiling. Perhaps because the place was so large, there were five of them.
It's not that I hate the fact that such modern items exist. They definitely make my body more comfortable. It's just that the sense of disconnect is so severe that I still can't get used to it.
In the middle of the banquet hall were three rows of large tables, each as long as or slightly larger than the immense tables in the Knights' underground dining hall.
The table was lined with food: a whole roasted turkey, a cake layered so high it was almost as tall as a person, and an incredibly thick piece of fish.
There was a huge spread of foods that would come to mind when thinking of a banquet or party.
'I think I'll be full if I just try one or two bites of each type.'
It's better to have too much food than not enough, but the amount of food in front of us was so much that I wondered if the five of us could eat even a tenth of it.
From what I've seen, all the knight commanders, except for Lize, are on the picky side, and Lize isn't the type to really eat a lot of food.
'There's something like that too.'
A clear liquid was gushing out from the fountain placed in the exact center of the table. I wondered what it was, so I approached it, and a maid immediately came up to me.
"Would you like to try it?"
"Before that, what kind of alcohol is this?"
"Please wait a moment."
The maid took it as acceptance rather than rejection, and quickly picked up the glass with her white-gloved hand and turned on the faucet next to the fountain.
The clear liquid inside it gushed out, and when the glass was half full, he turned off the tap again and held it out to me.
"Here it is."
"...."
I accepted the glass with a blank expression, having tasted it myself in a way I had never imagined possible. The maid bowed her head politely and slid back to the wall, standing up straight again.
I absentmindedly sipped the contents of the glass.
'It was fruit wine.'
As soon as I took a sip, the scent of alcohol and fruit filled my nasal passages. I couldn't tell what kind of fruit it was, but I was certain that this liquid was fruit wine.
"Ta-da, newbies! Here we come!"
Just as I was almost done with my glass, the banquet hall door opened wide and Lize came in. Her outfit was still so eye-catching, but her chest was imbued with a magical power that stole my gaze.
After that, the knight commanders followed one after another. Erica, Iris, Claudia, and Aurora were the last.
"What have you been doing?"
"What have you been doing?"
"How would I know that?"
I looked at Lize with a dumbfounded look on my face after being answered with a question. Lize calmly ignored my gaze and walked over to the table, picking up a snack and eating it.
Suddenly, her tongue protruded seductively from between her lips and licked the cookie crumbs off her fingers.
"You'll find out later, right?"
"So why is it that I feel more anxious? How do I find out?"
"Come on, come on! There's no need to overthink things after coming all this way. Let's just let it all go and enjoy it!"
Claudia appeared before I knew it and put her arm around my shoulder. The smell of wine was strong in the air.
"Then, you can just explain what you did outside so that I don't have to think too hard about it, right?"
"Oh, rookie. There are some things in this world that are no fun if you know about them in advance."
"No, really, what on earth did you do that even the Commander of the Knights is like this?"
"Just drink! Drink and think!"
Claudia picked up a bottle of liquor from the table and pulled out the cork with just her thumb. There was a distinctive, crisp sound as the cork came out.
'He's popping the cork with his hand.'
I sneaked away from Claudia, who was holding it in one hand and starting to blow on the bottle. Right next to me, Erica and Iris were looking at me with mysterious eyes.
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"You guys aren't going to tell me either, are you?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Newcomer."
"Don't worry, you'll find out later, just like Lise and Claudia said. Just know that there's no need to rush."
'What on earth are you plotting?'
At this point, I'm starting to want to find out what kind of conversation they had.
But Erica and Iris walked towards the other two with a gait that emphasized their buttocks, and Aurora was the only one standing there with a smug smile on her face as if to say, "Ask me if you want."
His determination to never reveal anything was clearly evident on his face.
"Aren't you going to ask me?"
After a while of just looking into each other's eyes, Aurora grumbled softly.
"You're not going to tell me anyway. There's no need to waste your energy."
"But there's such a thing as manners, manners. Don't you know that it's also impolite to ask all the knight commanders but not to ask me, the lord of this place?"
"That would be very true."
Aurora covered her mouth with the fan in her hand and laughed. Then she approached me with a cautious gait. Her black high heels clicked on the red carpeted floor.
"Okay, that's fine. So what do you think?"
"yes?"
"This dress. I put a lot of thought into choosing it. Inside it is a woman's body that many men have tried all sorts of tricks to get their hands on. She was even packaged so well and presented in front of you, so shouldn't you at least say a few words of appreciation?"
"If you really choose your words carefully, what would be the point?"
Aurora came up to my nose and tapped my lips with her fan. There was a faint lipstick mark on the spot where my lips had touched, as if it had been engraved just a moment ago.
It was the exact same color as Aurora's lips.
"I'm not a person who is very careful. How about telling me your impressions quickly?"
"Yes, yes. You're pretty. It suits you very well. Okay?"
"You are insincere. You fail."
Knock, this time the fan touched my head.
"What happens if I fail?"
"You deserve to be punished."
The eyelids that covered the golden eyes slightly curved upward and downward. A smile appeared on the face, drawing a graceful curve.
"Have fun here. That's your punishment. If you don't enjoy it properly, I'm really not going to let you off easy."
Aurora finished speaking and smiled, then walked away with a gait that emphasized her buttocks like the other knight commanders. As the main characters of the banquet gathered, the sound of the orchestra became even more cheerful.
A maid wearing an extremely rare form of clothing by local standards, wrapped tightly from head to toe with absolutely no exposure, approached carrying a silver tray with a glass on it.
A purple liquid was slowly bursting bubbles inside. It looked like some kind of alcohol, but it was unclear what kind of alcohol it was.
Aurora picked up a glass and stood on a platform slightly raised above the surrounding area.
Iris, Lize, and Erica each grabbed one. Claudia was already blowing on the bottle excitedly, so it didn't matter. The empty glass bottle rolled around on the floor.
The maid approached me and handed me a silver platter. I grabbed the last one. Aurora, who had been glancing over here, raised her arms when she saw that I had also participated.
"Okay, I won't talk at length because you're probably too busy having fun. We all suffered under that piece of shit, we all suffered listening to that piece of shit, and we all suffered trying to stay pure under that piece of shit."
Phew, I was the only one who could hear Aurora's sudden remark and gulped. What has that crazy person been saying all this time?
Judging from the way he was smirking at me, it was definitely intentional. He said that on purpose to see how I would react. The other knight commanders were looking at me in the same way, so it couldn't have been otherwise.
"Today, we're gathered here to celebrate that. You should enjoy it as much as you've struggled so far, no, even more. So-"
Aurora emptied the glass in one gulp. She threw the empty glass carelessly to the side, then looked at us one by one and smiled faintly.
"-Have fun. It's the lord's orders."
The banquet went on for quite some time. At some point, the sound of the orchestra playing could no longer be heard. When I looked around with my hazy eyes, the surroundings were already empty.
During that time, we drank a truly enormous amount of alcohol. Aurora was surprisingly strong with alcohol, and so were the Knight Commanders.
Claudia, in particular, was not a real person. Later on, she even carried and drank from oak barrels filled with wine. It weighed 50kg on its own, and when filled with alcohol, it weighed close to 300kg.
'… … Wow. I'm going to die, really.'
I was like that too.
The knight commanders and even Aurora were laughing and chatting, so I couldn't just drink moderately to control my drinking capacity or refuse the drinks offered to me.
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Even if I had refused, I would have been caught by Claudia and Lize and ended up drinking it. There was no way they would have just watched me take a step back on my own.
Because of this situation, I drank so much that I couldn't even remember how many glasses I had.
'Thank goodness I don't feel like throwing up.'
He was sitting with his head down on a chair at one end of the banquet hall, almost drunk.
The world was spinning. Even though I was sitting still, the distinctive fruity aroma kept flowing into my nose and mouth, and I had a hard time controlling my limbs. All I could do was keep myself from falling from the chair.
My mood kept getting higher and higher, so it was hard to control my actions. My body kept reacting to physical contact that I would normally have taken lightly.
That was also the reason why I was sitting in the corner. Because this was really the minimum amount of rationality I had. If Lize tried to seduce me now, I felt like I would just pounce on her.
"Newbie, what are you doing?"
'Is this possible?'
A familiar voice was heard. It was Lize. Why on earth did Lize appear as soon as I thought I couldn't resist tempting her?
"… … Just, take a break. I drank too much."
"Hmm, really?"
Lize brought a chair from nearby and sat down right next to me. The sweet alcoholic smell of fruit wine wafted through the air, and Lize's scent mixed in.
Maybe it was because of the alcohol, but every single sense in my body was hypersensitive.
"How drunk were you?"
"… … A little, a lot?"
"Hmm, I see… … ."
Lize's tail stretched out. Something felt wrong.
"Newbie."
"...why?"
"You said you were wondering why we came in so late?"
"… … That's right. But?"
"I told you that you would find out later. Do you remember that?"
Nodding, I nodded. As soon as I did, a shadow appeared above my head. I raised my head to see what it was. The knight commanders and Aurora were standing around me.
He didn't look drunk at all. He definitely reeked of alcohol, but unlike me, he looked no different than when the banquet began.
Lize chuckled.
"Now is the later."