Lily took her first five steps across the marble floor with her head held high, her hands clenched into neat little fists, and her ears standing flawlessly erect, doing everything in her power to project the aura of a formidable, confident entity in complete control of the situation.
She was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that behind every pillar sat dozens of curious demonic eyes watching her, so preserving even a shred of dignity in this skimpily cut, velvet bunny suit was a matter of utmost priority.
The problem, however, was that in his twenty-one years of life, the former Julian had never, under any circumstances, worn women’s footwear.
Instead of a smooth, graceful stride, Lily moved like a wooden doll. She took comically short bounds, her delicate ankles dangerously buckling outward every few seconds on the lacquered, needle-thin heels, her eyes glued to the floor in pure panic that she was about to take a humiliating spill on the polished marble.
To make matters worse, following her recent transformation courtesy of [Heavy Hips], her center of gravity had shifted drastically downward - her sweeping hips and dense, heavy buttocks generated a completely foreign movement dynamic with every step, one her brain simply had no idea how to navigate.
Initially, she tried to stay silent, gritting her teeth and bearing it. After enduring another ten meters, her patience snapped.
“How... how do women voluntarily walk around in these heartless instruments of torture?!” she groaned under her breath, adjusting her slipping corset as she fought for balance.
“Practice,” Cordelia replied shortly, leading the way with a straight spine, not glancing back for even a fraction of a second.
“Fantastic,” Lily sniffled, her fluffy ears wilting in helplessness. “So I just have to suffer until my brain stops noticing that it’s suffering. What a splendid prospect.”
The girl let out a heavy sigh, staring at the tips of her black boots.
“I guess I’ll just have to spend a few days forcing myself to run around the chambers in these to get used to them...”
“There will be no need for that,” the maid interrupted calmly.
At those words, Lily’s ears shot straight up in the blink of an eye! Her eyes widened, and a radiant, hopeful grin bloomed across her sweet face.
By all the demons, finally some good news!
She’s going to give me normal, flat shoes, or at least some slides! she thought in delight.
“Virtually no one in this castle wears footwear of such small proportions,” Cordelia concluded coolly, adjusting her glove.
“Yours was crafted by special, personal decree of Her Majesty. There are simply no other pairs in the palace, and knowing the Queen, you will not be wearing such a small size for very long.”
Lily: “...”
Her smile froze on her lips, and both of her bunny ears slowly, limply fell, covering her cheeks.
To Cordelia, this was neither an attempt at snark nor a malicious jab. To the Head Maid, it was merely cold, raw logistical data, which made the blow to Lily’s heart all the more devastating.
Lily continued her litany of grievances, advancing with the gait of a lame stork and complaining about every single aspect of her new existence.
“And this corset... I swear these gilded stays aren't just holding up my breasts, they're designed to slowly crush my internal organs! And this hole in the back? My actual, real tail is sticking out, reacting to every stray draft! I feel like a walking, free exhibit from a cheap casino in Las Vegas!”
Cordelia offered not a single word in response. Her pale face remained as immobile as carved stone, her gaze fixed straight ahead.
Yet a subtle shift occurred in her demeanor.
Just moments ago, the Head Maid had been moving at a rapid, military pace - crisp and precise, requiring considerable effort from a normal person to keep up. Now, she subtly, almost imperceptibly slowed her tempo.
The length of her stride shortened by a few inches, adjusting perfectly to the awkward, wobbly trek of the bunny girl.
Lily, far too busy with her latest tirade against the historical inventor of high heels and palace architecture, didn't even notice that she no longer had to scurry with frantic little steps or break into a jog to keep pace with Cordelia.
Just like when she had draped the blanket over her without a word and taken care not to brush against her sensitive ears, the maid simply performed her duty in quiet silence.
“And honestly... what is this supposed to be?!” Lily blurted out suddenly, grabbing her chest with both hands.
With every step, her small breasts - bouncing lively inside the corset with every wobble on her heels - sent strange, electric signals to her brain. Lacking any habit of possessing a bust, the girl kept trying to hold her chest with her hands to neutralize the uncomfortable swaying.
“Please refrain from doing that,” Cordelia stated dryly.
“Why not?!” Lily sniffled, refusing to let go of her chest. “They have a mind of their own with every step!”
“In that attire, it appears even more improper,” the maid explained matter-of-factly.
Lily let go of her chest immediately, her face burning with shame as she dropped her hands loosely by her sides. A moment later, however, her attention drifted lower.
The tight bottom section of the suit - snug against her new, heavy hips - dug shamelessly into her narrow crotch. The fabric rubbed against her small shaft and deeply hidden, tight slit with every movement of her legs.
Lily’s body, endowed with a strange, built-in hyper-sensitivity, reacted entirely beyond her control - sweet moisture slowly began pooling beneath the thin satin, and her tiny penis hardened slightly.
“Did... did Mistress really fail to foresee basic biology when designing this skimpy suit?!” Lily hissed through her teeth, clenching her fists as she fought against her own body.
Cordelia paused for a fraction of a second.
“On the contrary,” she replied in a voice devoid of illusions.
Lily looked at her sideways from beneath her drooped ears.
“...What?”
“I am afraid she foresaw it with absolute precision,” the maid finished coldly.
Lily went rigid, then hung her head in resignation.
“...I hate answers that make that much sense,” she mumbled under her breath.
Cordelia ignored the comment, continuing forward with a steady stride down the corridor.
Seeing that the strict administrator met her every remark with near-robotic calm, a quiet, mischievous urge to compete awakened in Lily’s mind. She tried every way she knew to break that stony facade: complaining loudly, cracking awkward jokes from her modern world, asking absurd questions, sighing theatrically, and shooting sideways glances, hoping for a single blink or a shadow of annoyance.
Yet Cordelia remained unfazed. To every question, she offered brief, single-sentence replies, without shifting her tone by half a pitch.
Lily began watching her with growing fascination.
Does this woman even have facial muscles? Does she smile once every fifty years?!
Determined to test her limits to the very end, she blurted out the most absurd, nonsensical statement she could construct:
“You know what, Cordelia? I have a sneaky suspicion my new, wide hips are slowly trying to take complete control of the rest of my body!”
Cordelia didn't even slow her pace.
“Please inform me if they prove successful,” she tossed out dryly.
Lily: “...”
At that response, the girl finally gave up. Resigned, she released a gust of air from her lungs, stopped forcing reactions, and simply walked quietly beside her, heels clicking against the floor.
Yielding for the first time since leaving the bedroom, Lily lifted her head and looked around.
The architecture of the Demon Queen’s palace was staggering. The corridors possessed an overwhelming height of several dozen meters, the walls lined with smooth black marble whose glossy surface reflected the ambient light. Along the ceilings ran intricately carved silver and gold ornamentation depicting ancient runes and predatory, winged beasts. Giant arched windows reached from floor to ceiling, while crystal spheres suspended in midair cast a soft, purple glow.
Suddenly, a strange, unsettling realization struck Lily.
The corridors were completely empty.
It wasn't that there were fewer people around. Along this grand avenue, there was no one at all. The girl turned her head right, then left, then looked behind her...
No guards. No maids. No dignitaries or demons of any kind.
Yet just a few dozen meters back, the moment she had stepped out of the bedchamber, hundreds of entities had line the walls, staring straight at her!
She walked in silence for another few dozen seconds, looking back nervously over her shoulder. In the desolate, cavernous halls, only the muffled clicking of her small heels and Cordelia’s measured footsteps echoed.
“Cordelia...?” she finally ventured cautiously.
“Yes?”
“Where... did everyone go, exactly?” she asked, narrowing her eyes adorably and twitching her ears slightly. “This corridor was full of demons a moment ago.”
“Nowhere,” the maid answered smoothly.
“...What?”
Cordelia stopped before giant, arched double doors and turned to face her.
“The entities you observed upon exiting Her Majesty’s chambers were not real.”
Lily froze in her tracks.
“What do you mean they weren't real?!”
“It was an illusion,” Cordelia explained without a trace of emotion.
Lily stared at her with her mouth open while the maid casually laid out the truth.
Vespera - knowing precisely what her little bunny would be wearing and how terrified she would be upon leaving the room - had personally prepared a massive, spatial illusion. She had constructed false guards, maids, and demons, arranging them along the threshold for the sole purpose of having all those fake eyes lock onto Lily the second the door swung open.
She simply wanted to secure the satisfaction and amusement later of knowing her little bunny had marched down the hall petrified, convinced the entire palace was admiring her skimpy bunny suit.
“Her Majesty left explicit instructions to activate said illusion the moment I turned the doorknob,” Cordelia added professionally.
A profound silence fell.
Lily’s face slowly, steadily assumed the shade of a ripe tomato. Her small fists clenched with all her might, and both of her bunny ears shot straight up with such intense tension they trembled in the air.
“SHE... SHE DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO BE HERE PHYSICALLY TO TORMENT ME?!” she screamed down the corridor, though thanks to her [Sweet Voice] perk, it emerged merely as an impossibly adorable, squeaky trill of an enraged bunny girl.
“Does that woman have a dedicated shift for planning psychological torture for my brain?!”
Once the first wave of fury slowly subsided and Lily stopped huffing with anger, she surveyed the empty corridor in resignation.
“So... there really is no one here besides us?”
“Practically speaking - no,” Cordelia replied, resuming her walk.
“We are situated deep within the private wing of the palace. Everyday, unrestricted access to this area is granted exclusively to Her Majesty Vespera, her official wives, myself as Head Maid, designated cleaning staff, and individuals possessing a personal, written royal invitation.”
Lily fell into thought, processing the information. The revelation instantly altered her perception of her situation - she hadn't been dumped into a general harem or thrown into servant quarters. She was at the very heart of the most heavily guarded, private zone of the palace.
Suddenly, a single phrase clicked in her mind.
“Wait... wives? Plural?” She blinked in surprise.
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Seven,” Cordelia replied shortly, without batting an eye.
Lily swallowed hard.
Seven powerful, demonic wives... Oh fuck, this wing must be a total minefield.
Though her anger at Vespera still burned, her former gamer mind took over.
Alright... Mistake made. I fell for the simplest, stupidest visual illusion and embarrassed myself to myself, she scolded herself internally.
It’s not enough to just watch out for Vespera. I need a specific System skill!
She recalled the layout of her purple progression tree.
In the Sensory Arts and Bodycraft branches, she had seen perks responsible for perception, threat detection, and manipulation resistance.
I need to unlock illusion resistance and false entity detection as soon as possible! she declared mentally with a resolute expression.
Next time that capricious hag tries to make a fool of me, I’ll just walk right past her illusions with a cool smile!
The two women continued onward in silence for another few dozen meters. The excitement of planning stats slowly faded, and Lily felt the first real strain in her leg muscles.
Suddenly, Cordelia stopped in the middle of a massive hall and turned her head toward her.
“Lady Lily.”
“Hm?” The girl raised her eyebrows, adjusting a drooped ear.
“Are you alright?” the maid asked in a calm, subdued voice.
Lily automatically assumed the question pertained to her skimpy attire and aching legs.
“NO!” she blurted out immediately, waving her hands. “These heels are literally killing me, the corset is crushing my ribs, and this cursed suit - ”
“I am not asking about the attire,” Cordelia interrupted quietly.
Lily froze.
“...”
A first, truly heavy, deep pause descended upon their conversation.
“I am inquiring as to your mental state,” the maid clarified gravely, gazing at her from behind her glasses.
Lily closed her mouth. All her accumulated energy and stream of complaints evaporated in a fraction of a second.
Cordelia had no intention of delivering medical lectures or playing therapist. Her approach was cool and purely practical.
From the information conveyed earlier by the Demon Queen herself, an absurd picture emerged: this little soul before her had died tragically in her world, endured eons in the black abyss of Purgatory without a body, been violently ripped from her existence, crammed into a completely foreign, female hybrid frame of a rabbit with a penis and a pussy, granted an S-rank Sex Slave class, made the personal pet of the Demon Queen... and mere minutes after waking up, was throwing punches into the air, joking about becoming a combat machine, and planning stat progression.
“That is not a typical, natural reaction,” Cordelia said calmly. “Most entities I have known would require an entire century or extensive therapy to fully accept even one of those alterations. You accept them all with a smile in a mere hour.”
Lily looked at her in genuine bewilderment. She hadn't given it any thought until now - she was operating on pure survival instinct.
She lowered her gaze to the marble floor. Her fluffy ears went completely limp, drooping on either side of her face. For the first time since awakening, she spoke without a trace of rehearsed sweetness or humor.
“You know... back in that abyss... there was nothing at all,” she said quietly, her voice sounding soft and genuine. “At first, I thought it was just a moment. That in a second I’d open my eyes in a hospital or some angel would show up.”
Cordelia remained silent, walking slowly beside her and granting her full space.
“Then I started counting... One, two, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand... Until I lost track of the numbers. To keep from going crazy, I tried remembering my family’s faces, street names, the furniture in my room. And then the worst part happened.”
Lily paused for a moment, swallowing hard.
“At some point, I realized I couldn't remember what my own mother’s voice sounded like anymore. The features of my loved ones just washed away like sand. I was terrified... terrifyingly scared of two things: that I’d be left there for eternity, and that eventually I’d forget who I was altogether. That I’d become just a blind, empty consciousness that didn't even remember its own name.”
Cordelia offered no commentary, nor did she toss out cheap words of comfort. She simply slowed her pace further, walking step for step beside the small bunny girl.
Lily lifted her head and looked at the maid with a slight, somewhat crooked smile.
“So... yeah. When I compare the two options...”
She pointed a trembling hand at her body: at the skimpy bunny suit, her heavy hips, her small breasts, her heels, and the fluffy tail behind her.
“Maybe... maybe it’s not exactly the second life I would have chosen for myself in a dream scenario.”
She paused for a moment, then finished with raw, cool pragmatically:
“But I’d still rather be the Demon Queen’s perverted pet a hundred times over, wear these cursed heels, and let myself be groper than endlessly rot and dissolve in that black hole.”
She didn't deny that her current situation was absurd and humiliating. Her reference scale for “suffering” had simply been shattered by the solitude of Purgatory.
Following Lily’s words, the heavy mood lingered for a few seconds. Lily couldn't and wouldn't drown in depression - her innate optimism and charm immediately resurfaced.
The crooked smile on her lips slowly broadened until her former, brilliant expression bloomed across her face.
“Besides... since I’ve mindlessly fallen down the rabbit hole into this whole mess anyway, I might as well squeeze every single thing I can out of it!” she blurted out briskly, waving her hands.
“In what manner?” Cordelia asked, raising an eyebrow slightly.
“I’m going to level up!” Lily listed off excitedly, her ears perking proudly.
“I’ll unlock the most OP skills, raise my stats, find a way to stop falling for Mistress’s stupid illusions... And in a little while, I’ll become the most powerful, most seductive, and sweetest bunny girl in this whole damn world!”
After those words, Lily suddenly froze. Her eyes flew wide open, and her ears flopped in a fraction of a second.
“...That sounded a lot better in my head before I said it out loud,” she mumbled, flustered.
Cordelia observed her in silence for a long moment. On her strict, pale face, the corner of her mouth twitched imperceptibly.
“Ambition is certainly a far healthier impulse than idle despair,” the maid replied gravely.
Lily looked at her uncertainly.
“Was... was that a compliment just now?”
“Please do not interpret it as such,” Cordelia replied coldly, accelerating her pace.
As they continued onward, Lily went quiet, lost in thought after discussing her past. Cordelia glanced down at her from the corner of her eye.
In that exact fraction of a second, the maid’s deep, burgundy eyes flared with a soft, red aura. Through her advanced, unique analysis skill, a semi-transparent status window unfolded before her vision for the girl walking beside her:
Race: Moon Rabbit
Class: Sex Slave
And then Cordelia’s gaze rested upon an entry in the passive traits section:
[Perk: Mental Adaptation]
The Head Maid froze internally for a split second.
As someone who had managed the palace for centuries, she knew precisely what that perk represented. It was no common, free starting bonus. That trait formed within a soul exclusively after enduring extreme, months-long psychological trauma, sensory overload, and forced adaptation to conditions exceeding the boundaries of a normal psyche.
Cordelia looked at Lily walking beside her, struggling with her heels in her skimpy bunny suit, trying not to take a spill on the polished marble.
Mental Adaptation... the maid thought with quiet respect.
So it is not mere reckless stupidity or childlike optimism.
How much did this tiny soul truly endure in the void for the System to deem complete psychological adaptation of her fundamental character trait...?
After walking in silence for a short while following the bunny girl's confession, both women saw monumental, double-winged doors crafted from dark wood rise at the end of the long marble avenue, decorated with gold fittings and bas-reliefs depicting vines and royal banquets.
“We have arrived,” Cordelia announced calmly, stopping before the threshold.
Lily lifted her head. Above the doors boasted a gilded inscription: Royal Private Dining Chamber.
The girl took a deep, slow breath, feeling her former energy return to her body. She adjusted her velvet corset, aligned her fluffy ears, puffed out her new, wide hips slightly, and struck her fist into her palm.
Cordelia placed her hand on the gilded latch and pushed the heavy doors inward.