Depraved Noble: Forced To Live The Debaucherous Life Of An Evil Noble!

Cassius had been sleeping peacefully, his arms draped around Skadi, his cheek resting lightly against her shoulder. To anyone else, he looked completely at ease, lost in dreams, his breathing calm and steady.

But even in slumber, his body was never truly unguarded. His ears twitched faintly now and then, catching fragments of the girls chatter, their bickering, their laughter.

Every so often, the corner of his mouth would lift into the smallest smile. Their silly arguments, Aisha's lecturing tone, Skadi's endless hunger, Julie's weary sighs, it was noisy, childish even, but to him it was warm.

He thought to himself, half-drifting between rest and awareness, that this kind of peace was nice too. A fleeting moment of something almost normal.

And then, everything shattered.

"Hyaaa!!!"

Faint. Distant. But sharp enough to pierce his half-dreams.

A scream.

Not the startled squeal of a villager, not a playful yelp. This was different. It was raw. A girl's voice, high-pitched and trembling, breaking through the night as if torn out of her chest. A scream born from fear, from the realization of impending death.

Cassius's body jolted awake instantly, every nerve in him lighting up. Along with the scream came another sound, the unmistakable crashing of water, heavy and violent.

The surface of something enormous shifting. Either a massive creature diving down into the depths, or rising up out of them.

The cry only came once. Then silence.

That silence chilled him more than the scream itself.

Had she screamed once and frozen stiff, paralyzed by fear? Or...had she been killed already?

He stiffened. He prayed it was the first. He prayed he wouldn't arrive to find only a body he couldn't save.

Without hesitation, he moved.

One heartbeat he was still, the next he blurred into motion, darting off the horse and tearing through the forest at impossible speed. Branches cracked against the sudden gust of his passing, leaves spiraled into the night air. His eyes locked forward, his instincts pulling him toward the lake, faster, faster, faster.

And then he saw it.

Breaking through the tree line, he stopped, crouched low behind the thick cover of a bush. His eyes widened at the sight before him, a flash of genuine surprise cutting across his usually composed face.

There it was.

Jhutan Lake.

Aisha's voice from earlier echoed in his mind, her eager tone explaining its history. But no words had prepared him for this.

The water stretched out endlessly into the darkness, so vast it could have been the sea itself. The moonlight spilled across its rippling surface, casting silver glimmers across the waves.

He could not even see the far side of it. Only the shore here, quiet and deceptively calm.

But the lake wasn't what stole his breath.

It was the thing rising from it.

It dwarfed the trees along the shore, a mountain of scaled flesh towering over the girl trapped beneath its gaze. Its body was like a snake, but grotesquely exaggerated.

The white, glistening scales shimmered with a sickly sheen, each as large as a man's torso. Its length stretched on and on, vanishing into the shadows, easily long enough to coil around castles and crush them whole.

If one measured it, perhaps it would span more than the length of ten ships laid end to end. Its height, reared up from the water, loomed taller than a fortress wall.

Its head was also hideous. Broad, flat, its jaw stretching wider than a cottage, lined with short but jagged fangs, each slick with venom that dripped in thin, burning trails into the earth below.

Its eyes were nothing but soulless pits of gold, glowing faintly in the night, filled with hunger. Its face alone was enough to freeze most men in place.

Cassius's lips pressed into a thin line. He didn't need a label to tell him.

This was the Leviathan...The legendary beast whispered of as if in fairy tales, dismissed by most as myth.

And yet here it stood, living, breathing, dripping venom before his eyes. A monster from a story, real.

He didn't know whether he was cursed or blessed to witness such a sight.

But what rooted his eyes to the spot wasn't only the beast.

It was the girl standing beneath it.

She was the source of the scream, the one caught in the monster's shadow.

At first glance, she looked human. Her upper body was that of a woman in her prime, curves generous, skin glistening under the moonlight.

But her skin wasn't the shade of peach or tan he was used to.

It was a rich, smooth blue, striking and luminous, like the surface of the lake itself had been painted across her flesh.

Long, tapered ears also jutted from the sides of her head, marking her as something inhuman. Her eyes were a vivid yellow, glowing faintly as they stared up in terror, wide and unblinking.

Her hair was long and dark, flowing down her back in waves, damp at the tips as if she had just come from the water. It framed her face and spilled against her shoulders, where the neckline of her clothing clung to her like a second skin.

And her breasts, full, round, straining against the fabric of the white sweater-dress she wore. The garment hugged her form tightly, the knit stretched taut over her chest, making every curve stand out in the cold moonlight.

But when Cassius's gaze lowered, his heart stilled.

Her lower half was no human's.

From her waist down, her body shifted seamlessly into the thick, scaled length of a serpent's tail. It stretched out behind her, long and winding, its sheer size rivaling the length of several men.

The scales gleamed white, brilliant and pale, almost radiant, shimmering under the moonlight like polished pearl.

An albino tail. Beautiful and terrifying all at once.

Cassius's eyes widened.

A lamia.

Aisha had spoken of them. She had laughed off their existence here, said they had left a century ago. And yet, here one stood, trembling under the gaze of the Leviathan.

For a brief, absurd moment, Cassius thought to himself that perhaps Aisha's mouth was cursed, that the moment she spoke of things, they manifested before him.

The girl's expression was also enough to make him both amused and sympathetic.

She trembled violently, her eyes darting up at the towering beast, her lips trembling. The wetness between her crotch betrayed her terror, she had quite literally lost control of herself—a dark stain spreading across the fabric at her crotch, dripping faintly onto the pale length of her tail beneath her.

Yet despite that, her face didn't hold the tragic nobility of someone about to die.

No, her features twisted into something absurdly human, an exaggerated grimace, her lips trembling like she regretted every decision that led her here.

Her eyes screamed: I should've stayed in bed today or why did I decide to go for a walk today of all days.

Cassius blinked once, then actually stifled a chuckle behind his hand. The situation was dire, life-threatening, monstrous beyond compare, yet the girl's expression, so awkwardly exaggerated, made her look less like a tragic maiden and more like someone cursing their own bad luck.

"...What an idiot." Cassius thought to himself, his lips curving.

But still, his eyes softened. She was strange, fascinating, utterly unlike any woman he had ever seen. And yet, she was also in mortal peril, because the Leviathan loomed closer, its maw opening wide, deciding whether to swallow her whole or bite her head clean off.

Seeing this, he also decided he had enough of watching the girl's ridiculous expressions. A legendary beast was about to snap her in half like a twig, and though Cassius wasn't the type to feel pity easily, he decided that tonight, he would play the knight in shining armor.

Besides...the thought amused him.

If he swooped in now, cutting down the Leviathan or at least saving her from it, she would look at him with overwhelming gratitude. Maybe even admiration. Maybe even...love.

The image flashed in his head of the blue-skinned beauty staring at him with sparkling eyes, whispering thanks, clinging to him in relief.

His lips curled smugly.

And if she was truly grateful enough, perhaps she'd even let him touch that tail of hers.

The scales gleamed under the moonlight like polished pearls. They looked soft, smooth, cool to the touch. His fingers twitched at the thought of running along those shining coils, feeling the way they shifted and flexed beneath his hand.

Yes. If he played this right, perhaps he'd get to indulge his curiosity.

Smirking to himself, Cassius shifted, ready to step out of the bushes.

But then—

"Wait!"

The voice, high-pitched, panicked, but oddly goofy, made him freeze.

"Wait, Mr. Snake!...Please, you don't have to do this!"

Cassius blinked. 'What?'

His eyes flicked back to the girl, and his eyes almost dropped out of their sockets.

There she was, standing under the shadow of the Leviathan, waving her hands wildly in the air as though she was trying to flag down a carriage on a busy street.

"Y-You know, you really don't have to do this, okay? I know you're all big and scary and...and all white and legendary and, um, people say you're like a god, but really, we don't need to fight!"

"...We're not enemies! We're the same, after all!"

Cassius actually rubbed at his temple. 'She's...negotiating? She's negotiating with a legendary beats that even the royal family couldn't handle.'

The giant serpent stared down at her with those dead golden eyes, its tongue flicking out, dripping venom, and she, this ridiculous lamia girl, was trying to talk it out of eating her!