The World Is Mine For The Taking

The operation to capture the Princess had finally been made official after all the preparations were completed.

Once that objective had been accomplished, the members of the Republic who had come here would immediately begin bombing the Kingdom with their raining bombs, dealing enough destruction to leave the entire nation crippled beyond easy recovery.

That was exactly what he had explained to me during our discussions.

His plan wasn’t simply about winning this war in the usual sense.

He wanted to make the people of this Kingdom feel completely insignificant, to the point where even entertaining thoughts of revenge would seem meaningless because they would never have the strength to accomplish anything against the Republic. He intended to force that reality into their minds so deeply that resistance itself would eventually feel pointless.

Honestly, I had absolutely no desire to end up on his bad side.

Someone with that kind of military strength wasn’t the sort of person anyone could casually oppose and still expect to sleep peacefully afterward.

Besides, after we successfully captured the Kingdom, I would become the Puppet President of this nation once it had been reorganized into a puppet republic under the Republic’s control.

I couldn’t deny that the title sounded rather pathetic.

Still, it was much better to stand beside a nation powerful enough to erase entire countries than to foolishly challenge one that could literally obliterate almost anything standing in its path.

Looking at it logically, the decision practically made itself.

That was exactly why we were now inside the castle, quietly making our way through its halls before launching our full invasion. Once I managed to capture the Princess, everything else would naturally fall into place, and this entire nation would eventually become mine to govern under the Republic’s authority.

At long last, I was finally going to enjoy the fruits of everything I had worked toward.

Sure, it was unfortunate that I wouldn’t get the opportunity to have a taste of the Princess herself.

Even so, that was honestly a very small price to pay considering everything I was about to gain from this operation.

We managed to slip into the castle without encountering much trouble along the way.

After all, I had once served this Kingdom as one of its knights.

That alone meant I knew practically every hallway, hidden passage, staircase, and corner of this castle like the back of my hand.

Getting inside was almost embarrassingly easy for someone like me.

Honestly, the whole thing felt less like infiltrating an enemy stronghold and more like returning home after being away for far too long. That thought almost made me laugh at how simple everything had been.

Soon enough, I found myself standing inside together with all of my men.

Everything had gone exactly according to the plan we had carefully prepared beforehand.

At least, that was exactly what I believed at the time.

"Fufufu. Look at all of you, sneaking into the castle while everyone’s asleep. You really do know how to think things through, don’t you?"

A woman’s voice suddenly echoed throughout the quiet hallway.

The cheerful tone immediately sent a chill running down my spine for reasons I couldn’t quite explain.

Without wasting another second, my men and I instinctively drew our swords before taking our battle stances, preparing ourselves in case a fight broke out.

"Are you a maid or something?" I asked while letting out a small laugh. "It’s unfortunate that you’re working this late into the night, but I don’t think you understand the kind of danger you’ve just walked into."

I slowly raised my sword and pointed it toward the darkness where her voice had come from.

"We might not get the chance to have a taste of the Princess anymore, but we’ll gladly settle for anything else we happen to come across during this little visit."

A satisfied grin spread across my face almost on its own.

"That includes unsuspecting little maids like you."

The moment those words left my mouth, my men burst into loud laughter.

That reaction honestly wasn’t surprising in the slightest.

It had been quite a long time since any of them had enjoyed the company of a woman.

When someone spent too much time suppressing those kinds of desires, eventually they started losing their minds over them whether they wanted to admit it or not.

At least, that was how many of my men seemed to be feeling these days.

Honestly, I couldn’t even blame them very much.

Given enough time under the same circumstances, I probably would’ve ended up feeling exactly the same way myself.

"Hoh?" the woman replied, sounding much more amused than threatened. "You’re going to eat me? According to who? You? Is that really what you’ve convinced yourself?"

She sounded genuinely entertained by the whole conversation.

Her voice even carried a hint of excitement that somehow made the situation feel even stranger.

That kind of reaction simply didn’t match someone who had just been threatened with being raped.

Instead of sounding frightened, she spoke as though someone had just told her an unexpectedly funny joke.

A strange sensation suddenly spread beneath my boot without any warning.

Instinctively, I lowered my gaze toward the floor.

A bluish substance had somehow wrapped itself around my foot before I even noticed it.

It looked like a thick fluid, yet its consistency was far too unusual to be mistaken for ordinary liquid.

The substance almost resembled living slime more than anything else.

Naturally, I tried lifting my foot away from it.

My foot refused to move even slightly despite my effort.

I pulled harder while putting more strength into my leg.

The strange substance continued holding me firmly in place as though it had completely fused my foot to the floor beneath me.

"So..." the woman’s voice echoed through the hallway once again, sounding just as amused as before.

"You’re going to eat me, huh?"

That was the exact moment my instincts began screaming that something had gone terribly wrong.

All of the confidence I had been carrying until now disappeared almost instantly.

My men also grew visibly tense as they realized the situation had changed completely.

Whoever had been hiding within the darkness hadn’t stumbled across us by pure coincidence.

This entire encounter had clearly been planned from the very beginning.

"You were planning to eat the Sin of Gluttony?"

The moment those words reached my ears, something slowly emerged from the darkness ahead of us.

What appeared before us was an absolutely grotesque creature unlike anything I had ever seen before.

Its body resembled an enormous ball of slime, easily large enough to swallow an entire grown person without the slightest bit of difficulty.

A gigantic mouth stretched across its body, revealing countless enormous teeth that looked more than capable of tearing through flesh with horrifying ease.

Before I could even process what I was seeing, the creature suddenly lunged toward me with terrifying speed.

Before I even had the chance to scream for help or shout an order to my men, the monster had already reached me.

My entire body disappeared into its enormous mouth as it suddenly gobbled me up whole without leaving me even a single opportunity to resist.