Chapter 427: Verification Required
What kind of stockings are the hottest kind?
Sheer blacks that just barely let the skin show through? Or whites that come all the way up the thigh? Or maybe striped ones, for a slightly younger look?
Tastes differ from person to person, so there’s no ranking them, but I was certain about exactly one thing.
"Which is hotter, blacks or whites?"
If anyone asked me that, I could answer with my head held high.
"Freshly removed stockings are the hottest of all."
I presented the Marquis with a pair an elf had just peeled off.
***
A short while later. I left Eila in charge of guarding the market, hurried back to our main base, and went straight into a meeting with Shaitan.
"How the stockings spread doesn’t matter. What matters is that they’ve spread all the way to the capital."
"And that they’re selling for a considerably higher price than we expected, which is strange. I think I understand why they sold at all. Human greed."
We had sold the stockings off dirt cheap. Some humans had even stolen a batch and run.
There was no point resenting the fact that those stockings, however few of them, were circulating in the capital and changing hands for enormous sums.
A true capitalist should be asking how to turn that into profit for himself.
"It’d be hard for us to sell stockings directly, wouldn’t it?"
"Yes. Word would spread that stockings are goods made by monsters."
"Damn it. So it really was a stretch to make blacks belong to humanity and whites belong to monsters...."
I had deliberately tried to draw the line, but the world doesn’t divide neatly into black and white after all.
Blacks or whites, either way, put them on a pretty woman and the lust rises just the same.
"Damn. It won’t work. Let’s change the plan completely."
"Do you intend to sell every type of stocking to the Marquis’s house?"
"I do. Since it’s come to this, let’s make stockings our legion’s specialty product. We’ll stamp the Seal of Wrath at the crotch, so that pressing on the seal with your hand tears it open easily."
"Then it feels a bit like our legion’s symbol is the thing getting torn, which is somewhat.... Is stamping the seal on that important?"
Shaitan’s question left me at a loss for words.
No matter how close she was to a modern outlook compared to my other subordinates, Shaitan was still a demon of this world.
"It’s important. Because a name has value. Ah, that thing is what we call a ’brand.’ Take two weapons of equal dwarven make; wouldn’t the one bearing the crest of a genius craftsman who comes along once in a thousand years sell for a fortune?"
"...I see. If even a daily consumable like stockings carried a brand, the price would shoot through the roof. Ah!"
Shaitan actually clapped in surprise.
"It would also head off counterfeits before they start. If our legion’s symbol is on them!"
"That’s exactly it."
By putting our legion’s symbol on them, we could spread a new kind of stocking, different from the ones already circulating in the world.
"The method is... hmm... one moment, Shaitan. Pardon me."
I pulled Shaitan to her feet and yanked her skirt off.
Bared beneath her white dress shirt, Shaitan’s legs showed off a smooth, striking line along with the stockings. I ran my hands over her legs here and there, hunting for a suitable place to plant the seal.
"On the instep, where there’s plenty of surface? No. Shoes would cover it. The calf? The thigh? No good. It’d have to be on both sides. Then the crotch it is... no, that part has to tear, so that’s out."
"Hnngh...."
Shaitan let out a faint moan every time my hand moved higher. I swept over her entire lower body in search of a place for our legion’s symbol.
Smack.
"Shaitan, how about here?"
"I, I think it needs to be made large, on both sides."
I grabbed a handful of Shaitan’s rear. That ample backside, with the soft feel of the stockings over it, kneaded into whatever shape my grip forced on it.
"Then how about here?"
"Hyaah...!"
Press. I found Shaitan’s back hole and pushed hard with my middle finger. When I scraped and poked at the weave of the stockings with my nail, I found a pair of pure white panties sitting under there, hardly what you’d expect from a succubus.
"Say. While we’re at it, should we sell panties too? We make the lace pattern along the panty line into the shape of our seal."
"Th, that would mean selling them separately from the stockings, wouldn’t it.... Panties are already distributed all over the world, haah, hnngh!"
"Or should I stamp the seal right here, where it’s getting wetter and wetter?"
When I flicked a finger between the gently swelling mounds, Shaitan grabbed my head and shivered lightly.
"Hm? What do you think?"
"I, if you put it there, the seal would end up being pierced. Hnnng, and to keep it from being pierced you’d have to pull the stockings down."
"Right? So if I take hold of the stockings and drag them down like this.... Eureka!"
Found it.
I had finally found the place where our legion’s symbol would go.
***
[At that moment, Regulus Castle.]
"...Is this truly the genuine article?"
"Yes. Would I lie to Your Excellency?"
The Marquis brooded a long while over the wooden box set in front of him. Whatever Anthonius had sealed into that box on the spot for his lord’s sake was surely in exactly the same condition it had been in before it went inside.
"Sir Anthonius. Could it be that these people were sent to us by the Goddess herself, for our sake?"
"Your Excellency?"
"Well, isn’t it so? How else could they aim so precisely at our weak points and offer up only this sort of thing?"
"Get hold of yourself, Your Excellency. What matters now is verifying the information they gave us."
The head butler set two paper boxes on the table.
One held the used black stockings they had traded for in the capital, along with expensive jewels, under the pretext of a gift. The other held brand new stockings, wrapped in stiff paper with the seal still unbroken.
Along with the gift for the Marquis, the Legion of Wrath had provided a full ten boxes of stockings. Officially it was payment for the goods the Marquis’s house had sold them, but even allowing for goodwill mixed in, it was far too generous an exchange.
"Y, yes. Erectile, head butler. We must verify it. Sir Anthonius, did they say anything in particular about these?"
"They said that if we put them on, we would naturally understand the difference."
"...Put them on, he says."
The Marquis despaired. It was a fair point, but who exactly was supposed to wear them?
"Aren’t stockings a woman’s article? How are we to verify anything?"
"I have heard that some of the nobles do wear them, though...."
"That’s because those men are perverts. Fellows a good ten years younger than me who developed some strange kink in their old age. The sizing alone is made for women; how does anyone even think to put them on?"
"They say they’re warmer than you’d expect. Excellent insulation, and they boast better protection than most leather armor. Apparently adventurers consider them indispensable."
"...Yes, those men are the problem."
The Marquis stared down at the stockings for a long time, sunk in anguish.
"We don’t want a fight with the Legion of Wrath. No, at minimum, we must not start a war until Andaihal has grown into the bearing of a marquis. He’s my son, but he still lacks too much for me to hand him a battle on the scale of a territorial war. If he’d make good use of men like you, perhaps, but...."
"The young master will not employ the old retainers."
"Just so. Until that rotten attitude of his is corrected, we must maintain stability as best we can. And what happens if the world learns that these stockings come from the Legion of Wrath?"
"...If the adventurers come to buy them, we’re lucky. There’s a strong chance they’d come to take them."
Chaos was a foregone conclusion. The Marquis sank into deep deliberation.
"Is there enough value in acting as middleman for these goods to be worth bearing all that? Sir Anthonius, you saw it, didn’t you? An elf wearing them."
The Marquis tapped the wooden box. Anthonius straightened his back and answered boldly.
"Yes!"
"How was it?"
"As lovely as my wife in her younger days! And... I drew my sword!"
Anthonius put it delicately, but the Marquis and the head butler understood him perfectly well.
"You’re saying the visual impact is enough to make you draw your sword.... Ngh. Troublesome. Which means we can only judge the effect by wearing them ourselves."
"Wear what, now?"
"...!"
For a second, Anthonius nearly drew an actual blade. But it was the woman who had opened the door and come in, Electra, who jumped at his violent reaction.
"Sir Anthonius...?"
"F, forgive me. I overreacted badly. What brings you here, though...?"
"I baked a creampie for Andaihal, but he wasn’t in the study, so I thought I’d check here...."
"..."
The Marquis put a hand to his forehead. His son had clearly slipped out of the study again, unable to keep his young blood in check.
Grrrowl.
The smell of fresh baked pastry tickled their noses. Mealtime was drawing near anyway, and the creampie Electra had brought was a good sized one.
"My dear, would it be all right if we ate it?"
"You, Father? Yes! As much as you like! I brought hot tea as well."
Beaming, Electra set the pie on the table. As she arranged the tea, she picked up one of the paper boxes sitting there.
"What are these?"
"Ah, those are...."
"Oh my! Aren’t these stockings?!"
Electra’s eyes sparkled as she lifted the box of stockings. The three men looked at one another and nodded all at once.
"...My dear, hear me out without misunderstanding. We had a good opportunity to acquire stockings in the capital this time, but the two sets are different from each other, and we were just puzzling over it."
"Yes? Do you mean...."
"We suspect someone may be circulating fakes. The trouble is that one of the two must be genuine, and we cannot tell them apart. With stockings, surely you can only know the difference by... putting them on yourself?"
Grin. Electra gathered both boxes into her arms.
"May I try them on myself?"
"O, of course."
"Thank you. I’ll go put them on right away!"
Electra swept out of the office, delighted as a child. Watching her light up as though she’d received a birthday present, the Marquis smiled warmly.
"Is it really so wonderful?"
"It’s the fashion in high society, is it not? Ever since the Saintess wore them, they’ve been an enormous craze among the young noblewomen."
"...It isn’t only the young noblewomen they’re a craze with, either. Heh heh."
Anthonius and the head butler laughed under their breath. The Marquis tugged at his white hair and let out a sigh.
"Yes. It’s an item of that much value. And we chose the path of not fighting, so we can trade for it easily. And yet... and yet, you know."
The Marquis picked up a slice of creampie with a complicated look on his face.
"Why do I feel so uneasy about it? Like eating a bowl of poisoned soup, like something is going to go wrong? Was trusting demons ever a good idea in the first place?"
"Your Excellency...."
The Marquis was beginning to waver. He felt uneasy at how well everything was flowing, and out of that unease, suspicion was starting to breed monsters.
"Could this be a demon’s trap...?"
"Father, may I come in?"
"Come in."
When Electra entered, all three men sucked in a breath.
"Heh heh, well? Do I look pretty?"
Electra had rolled the front of her dress inward, baring her legs all the way up above the knee. For a moment the Marquis and the other two forgot entirely that Electra was the daughter in law of the house, lost in the beauty of those lines.
"How do I look... Father?"
"You’re beautiful, Electra."
"...Thank you. Truly."
Electra covered her face with one hand and laughed, cheeks flushed. The Marquis turned his eyes to the wooden box at the edge of the table and squeezed them shut.
"Is this truly the will of the Goddess?"
If the Saintess wears them too, then there’s no problem... is there? The Marquis gave up on agonizing over it any further.