Rosalie von Rosenfeld peered through the gilded window of the luxurious carriage, heavily escorted by a formidable retinue of armored knights serving her Sire, Countess Margarethe.
The girl’s golden blonde hair, tied back into two neat, twin tails, caught the afternoon sun, perfectly highlighting the natural brilliance of her sapphire eyes.
Though she was only twelve years old, the plunging blue silk gown and tightly fitted corset she wore already draped alluringly across her frame. Her distinct hourglass silhouette promised a breathtakingly sensual, womanly figure the absolute moment she reached full maturity. A single bead of sweat rolled down her forehead as she rigorously fanned herself with a finely crafted folding fan.
She had traveled an agonizingly long way from the Greifenmark just to reach this modest, mountain barony. Rosalie was the third daughter of the terrifyingly powerful Countess Margarethe von Rosenfeld.
Completely against her own will, she had been formally betrothed to her older, chronically ill futa cousin - a woman who, during their last encounter years ago, looked as though she already had one foot firmly planted in the grave.
Yet somehow, by some absolute miracle, Seraphine had dragged herself to her twentieth year.
Rosalie had absolutely no idea how such a pathetic, frail creature had survived this long. However, she harbored a burning fury toward her own Sire, who had ruthlessly treated her as a mere bargaining chip to secure a vested stake in Karsfeld’s rich iron and coal mines.
As a young noblewoman, she was nothing but a tool for dynastic alliances, a grim reality she had zero intention of quietly accepting.
Still, she was forced to bow to the iron will of her bloodline, which was precisely why she had violently demanded a summit with the futa she was bound to marry. To her absolute frustration, her requests for an audience had been repeatedly and unapologetically stonewalled.
After enduring an entire month of pathetic diplomatic excuses, her patience had completely shattered. She had mobilized her mother's knights and personally marched across the Duchy of Ardenia to aggressively force a meeting.
In her eyes, the behavior of Seraphine and her court was nothing short of brazenly insulting. Clearly, something catastrophically fatal was happening to the heir's health if the Karsfeld family was panicking this hard to delay her arrival.
If Seraphine was truly too weak to even stand on her own two feet, Rosalie fully intended to ruthlessly leverage that fact to force her mother to shatter the betrothal. It was absolutely no wonder this futa was still utterly alone at twenty years of age.
As her carriage finally rolled into the borders of the Karsfeld settlement, Rosalie’s attention was instantly violently hooked by massive, suffocating pillars of black smoke billowing into the sky by the river.
Her first instinct was that a catastrophic fire had broken out. To her absolute bewilderment, however, throngs of peasant women were actually sprinting toward the inferno, cheering loudly as if witnessing some grand, miraculous spectacle.
Thoroughly intrigued, the young aristocrat ordered her driver to steer the heavy carriage directly toward the epicenter of the chaos.
When she stepped down from the carriage and strode into the freshly erected manufacturing district, her gaze didn't lock onto the bizarre, fire-spitting machinery towering over the riverbank. It immediately snapped to a tall, staggeringly alluring, and commanding futa.
The woman’s golden hair was slicked back with glossy, absolute precision, and her sapphire eyes burned with the exact same deep, aristocratic hue as Rosalie’s own.
Despite wearing an impeccably tailored black court tunic laced with gold trim - a garment that flawlessly accentuated the heavy swell of her breasts, her narrow, corseted waist, and her firm hips - the futa was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a soot-stained, common artisan.
Both women were laughing loudly, practically radiating raw, unadulterated triumph.
The young aristocrat didn't waste a single fraction of a second analyzing the forewoman standing beside her. She instantly recognized that face, despite the agonizing years that had passed since their last miserable encounter.
A violent, burning flush immediately stained Rosalie’s cheeks at the sheer sight of her older cousin, who had inexplicably mutated into such an intimidatingly breathtaking figure.
"Seraphine...?" she gasped, the word slipping from her lips in absolute, defenseless shock.
Her quiet voice was instantly swallowed by the deafening, mechanical roar of the manufactory. Seraphine was utterly consumed by the spectacle of her own engineering. Right before her eyes, the Bessemer converter was vomiting a massive, blindingly bright stream of liquid steel directly into the casting molds, where it would slowly cool into heavy ingots.
The slag - a massively phosphorus-rich byproduct of the violent process - was immediately being scraped off to the side exactly per her rigid instructions, destined to be pulverized into a revolutionary agricultural fertilizer.
Rosalie stood utterly hypnotized. Her body moved entirely of its own accord, taking slow, trembling steps toward the towering futa. Meanwhile, the heir of Karsfeld remained completely oblivious to the heavily armed retinue of knights aggressively clearing a path through the gawking crowd.
"Sabine, you executed this flawlessly!" Seraphine shouted over the roar of the forge, aggressively praising the master artisan. "We are going to violently inject the profits from this very first batch straight into the deep mines. Within a year, we will be drowning the Alarian Empire in surplus steel!"
Before Sabine Keller could bellow a reply, Seraphine’s razor-sharp peripheral vision finally locked onto the approaching young noblewoman, heavily flanked by armored warriors proudly bearing the crest of House von Rosenfeld.
Seraphine felt a jarring spike of déjà vu - she definitely recognized this stunningly beautiful girl from somewhere. She noted the violent flush on the girl's cheeks and the sheer, awe-struck reverence in her gaze as the young aristocrat timidly dropped her eyes to the muddy earth and asked quietly:
"Seraphine... is that truly you?"
Clearly, they had met before, but Seraphine’s violently scrambled memories absolutely could not match a name to the face. It was incredibly embarrassing to ask outright, but she had absolutely zero tactical alternatives:
"Who are you, my lady?"
Rosalie felt her heart violently soar with absolute infatuation for a fraction of a second, before instantly plunging straight into a freezing abyss.
This arrogant futa mutated into an absolute goddess, and she doesn't even recognize me?! What the hell is wrong with her?!
Violently choking down her boiling fury, Rosalie composed herself. She delicately pinched the folds of her silk skirt and dropped into a flawlessly executed, highly sophisticated court curtsy, before rising proudly:
"It is I, Rosalie. Your betrothed."
Seraphine froze solid.
She absolutely wasn't expecting her today!
Adelgarde had explicitly sworn over breakfast that the convoy wasn't projected to breach the borders until tomorrow morning!
Damn it all, did that manipulative old bat completely outmaneuver me again?! Seraphine’s deeply rooted irritation toward her Sire violently flared back to life, but the damage was already done.
Standing right in front of her was her fiancée from House von Rosenfeld. And she had to admit the cold, hard truth: for her age, the girl was developing phenomenally well. Give her three or four years, and she was mathematically guaranteed to blossom into a breathtakingly stunning woman.
Naturally, Seraphine felt absolutely zero physical attraction toward her - Rosalie was still literally a child barely crossing the threshold of puberty. However, she found cold comfort in the strategic reality that the future of this alliance looked incredibly promising. She instantly adjusted her posture, flawlessly slipping into the persona of a regal, highborn lady.
Lacking any actual, practical experience in seducing women, Evelyn’s modern consciousness frantically dug into the absolute bottom of the barrel for reference material: the shoujo manga and trashy romance novels she used to read during her fleeting downtime.
Without a single shred of shame, she flawlessly adopted the courtly manners of a textbook romantic lead. She gently took the girl’s delicate hand, pressed a soft, lingering kiss against her knuckles, and spoke with a velvet-smooth smile:
"You have my deepest apologies, my lady. The very last time my eyes had the privilege of seeing you, you were merely a little girl. Today, you stand before me as a truly breathtaking young woman."
Internally, she was violently cringing at her own incredibly cheesy, theatrical performance, but if those romance novels had taught her one absolute truth, it was that charm, shameless compliments, and a flawless physical appearance worked absolute miracles.
And it worked flawlessly. Rosalie flushed a violent, burning crimson all the way to the tips of her ears, completely seduced by Seraphine’s commanding presence and devastatingly smooth tone. Every single ounce of her boiling fury and wounded pride evaporated in a fraction of a second.
Standing just off to the side, Sabine Keller was practically biting through her own lip to strangle a booming laugh at the sight of this ridiculous aristocratic courtship. Seeing that the situation had been successfully defused, however, the master artisan clapped Seraphine on the shoulder:
"Do not trouble yourself, my lady. I will personally oversee the rest of the casting. Take your chosen bride for a proper stroll and get something decent to eat."
Seraphine shot Sabine a look of profound, silent gratitude. Both women knew perfectly well that the heir would vastly prefer to stay glued to the blast furnaces, but feudal politics demanded their due.
"Since you insist, I leave the forge entirely in your capable hands. Thank you for your tireless labor."
Rosalie stared up at Seraphine with rapidly escalating fascination. Despite being the sovereign heir of the barony, Seraphine spoke to a lowly, soot-stained artisan as an absolute equal. While any other highborn lady would have viewed such fraternization as a disgusting degradation of their station, the young Countess found the incredibly warm, egalitarian dynamic deeply charming.
Seraphine elegantly bent her arm, offering it to the young lady. Rosalie eagerly slipped her delicate hand into the crook of the futa’s elbow, and the two began a slow, dignified stroll back toward the heart of the settlement.
Along the way, Seraphine warmly greeted the local peasant women they passed - she knew the vast majority of them by name, and the women eagerly returned the greetings with wide smiles and deep, fiercely genuine bows of respect to their future warlord.
For Rosalie, it was an absolute, jarring culture shock. The commoners weren't sprinting away in sheer panic; they weren't cowering in the mud, utterly terrified of an aristocratic futa, nor were they desperately avoiding eye contact.
They approached freely, eagerly initiating conversation with the heir. Back in the Greifenmark, the peasantry would literally throw themselves face-first into the mud the absolute second the Countess's armed retinue appeared on the horizon. The atmosphere here was entirely, radically different.
One of the local flower girls even bounded right up to them and, with a warm curtsy, handed Seraphine a freshly cut, crimson rose. With a devastatingly smooth, courtly bow, Seraphine immediately presented the flower to the heavily blushing Rosalie.
The locals instantly deduced from the heavy silk that the newcomer was a massively important highborn match, and seeing her practically glued to Seraphine’s side, they eagerly treated the girl with the exact same fierce warmth they harbored for their young lady.
When they finally arrived at the small tavern, Helga - a broad-shouldered, mature woman whose heavy breasts strained aggressively against her canvas apron, and the wife of the local baker - was bustling energetically behind the wooden counter.
"My lady, it is an absolute honor to host you again!" Helga beamed, dropping into a deep curtsy.
"Helga, I’ll take two of the usual, if you please," Seraphine replied with a warm smile.
The woman immediately and meticulously scrubbed her hands in a wooden basin of lye soap - an ironclad habit Seraphine had ruthlessly beaten into the local taverns - before expertly assembling two massive slabs of fresh sourdough, aggressively stuffed with roasted chicken, fresh herbs, and thick cuts of cheese. She poured two heavy clay mugs of fresh milk to wash it down.
Seraphine withdrew a heavy silver pfennig from her purse - a coin that vastly exceeded the actual cost of the meal.
"Keep the change," she ordered casually, carrying the heavy wooden platter out to a sturdy table situated beneath the sweeping shade of a massive oak tree. The crisp spring air of the Karsfeld valley was incredibly refreshing, absolutely perfect for dining outside.
Rosalie took her seat across from the heir, staring down at the massive sandwich with profound, utter bewilderment. Every single thing she had witnessed today aggressively contradicted the vicious rumors of a lazy, malicious, and sickly heir.
Someone was actively, maliciously spreading vile lies about her across the imperial courts. Suddenly, however, Lady von Rosenfeld froze, frantically scanning the bare wooden table.
"Is something wrong? Does it not suit your tastes? You haven't even taken a bite," Seraphine asked, flashing another devastating smile that made the young girl’s head spin.
"There... there are absolutely no utensils..." the young aristocrat stammered, completely unable to comprehend exactly how she was supposed to physically consume this bizarre architectural construct the locals called a "sandwich."
Seraphine let out a soft chuckle. She had completely forgotten about the aristocracy's absolute horror at the concept of eating with their bare hands.
She decided to lead by example. She grabbed the massive sandwich with both hands and, without a shred of hesitation, tore a huge, aggressive bite out of it. Rosalie’s face was absolutely priceless - she stared at the futa with a wild mixture of sheer horror and deep fascination, as if she were watching a breathtakingly sensual savage tearing into raw meat.
However, seeing the sheer, unadulterated pleasure on Seraphine’s face as she chewed the crusty bread, Rosalie couldn't hold out.
She gingerly reached out with her delicate fingers, picked up her portion, and took a tiny, incredibly hesitant nibble. Seraphine almost choked on her own laughter - the girl was eating it with the agonizing caution of someone handling a live explosive.
It reminded her sharply of how the older Marielle used to act.
Suddenly, Rosalie’s sapphire eyes blew wide open in absolute awe. She had never in her entire life tasted anything so violently packed with flavor!
The cuisine of the highborn lords was notoriously bland and rigidly monotonous; the aggressive spices and complex flavor profiles Seraphine had injected into the local taverns were an absolute culinary masterpiece.
The girl instantly abandoned every single rule of court etiquette and began ravenously devouring the sandwich, leaving a noticeable smear of herb sauce right on her chin.
When she finally finished and noticed Seraphine watching her with deep, unconcealed amusement, her entire face erupted into a fiery blush.
"What are you staring at?!" she snapped defensively.
"I simply thought you looked incredibly adorable. That is all."
Rosalie’s face instantly flushed a shade of crimson that rivaled the rose she was holding. Her little heart hammered violently against her ribs, her mind completely short-circuiting in pure infatuation. This futa truly had absolutely zero shame, deploying such devastating compliments without batting an eye!
Once they had drained their mugs of milk, Seraphine’s expression sobered, flawlessly slipping back into the persona of a cold, calculating aristocrat:
"Well, it is high time we returned to the fortress to formally present ourselves to my Sire. If she discovers that you breached the borders of her barony and failed to immediately pay her homage, she will fly into an absolute fury."
Those words violently ripped Rosalie out of her infatuated daydream. The girl went ghastly pale, suddenly realizing she had completely shattered the most fundamental protocols of feudal diplomacy. She viciously kicked herself internally for letting her curiosity hijack her brain instead of rigidly adhering to court etiquette.
She had absolutely no idea that Seraphine was simply, brazenly messing with her. Had it been a foreign noblewoman, Adelgarde absolutely would have flown into a rage over the slight, but Rosalie was her own niece and her firstborn’s betrothed. The Baroness would be absolutely thrilled by the mere fact that the young futa and the girl were actually spending time together.
However, seeing Rosalie’s delicate shoulders actually begin to tremble in sheer terror of her terrifying aunt, Seraphine felt a sharp pang of genuine guilt. She reached across the rough wooden table and gently enveloped the girl’s tiny, shaking hand in her own strong, warm fingers.
"Relax, it was merely a harmless joke. My Sire won't be the slightest bit angry that you spent the afternoon with me. And even if she is - I will absolutely shoulder the full blame. After all, I am the one who kidnapped you for lunch."
Rosalie aggressively wiped away a small tear that had pricked the corner of her massive eyes with the edge of her silk sleeve.
"T... truly?"
"You have the absolute word of House Karsfeld," Seraphine nodded firmly. She made a mental note to stop terrifying the young aristocrat with the threat of diplomatic executions.
Rosalie immediately stood up from the table, smoothed down the blue silk violently clinging to her narrow waist, and shot Seraphine a fiercely defiant, fiery glare:
"Well then, what are we waiting for?"
The betrothed couple began the steady climb back up toward the castle hill. Maintaining a highly respectful, discreet distance behind them marched the heavily armored retinue of knights from the Greifenmark.
The veteran warriors knew perfectly well that if they ruined the young lady’s first intimate moments with her fiancée, Rosalie would have their heads on pikes.
So they maintained their vigil from afar - though, given that they were currently walking through a settlement where Seraphine was practically worshipped as a living deity, there was absolutely zero threat of danger anyway.