FFF-Tier System, SSS-Rank Wife

"There's something going on down there." Peter muttered as he stood on the wall of the massive tower designated to garrison his unit.

As an A-rank swordsmanship system holder, his privileged position extended beyond just preferential treatment when it came to training or what he was provided with.

Sure, better food, better servants and even women willingly jumping into his bed were all fine… But they were meaningless when compared to the two other boons Plenarian military gave him.

First, his freedom.

While pretty much everyone else would be confined to their barracks, forced to get ample rest before whatever would come tomorrow, he was free to explore.

Sure, he was still confined to his tower… but just the fact that he could walk out of the barracks was something only few others were afforded.

It was also the only reason why he could stand atop the keep's walls, looking down upon the open field separating his tower from all the other defensive structures in this extensive network of strongholds.

But his freedom wasn't all. And while mentally soothing, it was the lesser of the two practical boons that he enjoyed.

"It sure is," Lena, the official officer of his unit that served as a liaison between Peter and his men while also warming up his sheets at night and acting as his training partner, confirmed his guess.

No weird sound reached their ears. They couldn't spot a single soul stupid enough to walk through the kill-zone grounds.

But the change in the air was almost palpable. And while neither of them could tell exactly what changed, the fact that something did change was indisputable.

"How are the men doing?" With his eyes still locked in on the ground below the keep's walls, Peter asked.

"Gathered in the barracks, resting. But if you just give the order…" Lena suggested while wrapping up her arms around Peter's arm and looking down the wall just like he did.

Yet, while her veteran's instincts appeared to confirm Peter's guess, she couldn't find a single real proof to back it up.

"Just give the order, huh?" Peter chuckled. "And then what, bring them out to that hellish place?"

Peter squinted his eyes as he locked his sights on a patch of land he selected at random.

He couldn't see it. But just like with that change in the air, he could feel it. The heavy air hanging low above the ground, a weird, oppressive feeling that instinctively made that ground seem repulsive.

Now that he stood at the top of the keep's wall, this feeling was quite minute, easy to miss if he didn't focus on it. But just the memory of when he walked through that no man's land just to reach the keep's gates was enough to rekindle Peter's vigilance whenever boredom and stillness made it falter.

Peter shook his head.

"That place is vile. I can't tell you why, but I can tell it is," he muttered, his voice faint enough to make it more of a thought escaped from his mouth than an actual attempt at conversation.

"So what?" Lena brought herself even closer to the man's side, her hands moving from Peter's arm over to his chest. Then, while he was still focused on the ground below the keep's walls, one of her hands snuck into his pants.

Yet, after just a few moments of gently caressing his shaft, Lena's fingers moved even further down before suddenly grasping at his family jewels.

"Ah!"

Unprepared for such a sudden, unexpected and vicious attack, Peter nearly keeled over, his knees nearly buckling as most of his strength left his legs.

"Every night you prove to me how full those balls of yours are. And I can't feel them shriveling now," Lena leaned in over Peter's ear and whispered, her voice filled with as much lust as it was filled with mockery. "So why are you now acting as if you never had any in the first place?"

Lena squeezed down, forcing out a pathetic squeal out of Peter's mouth before finally letting go and moving back up to his shaft, grasping at it before she started to jerk her hand up and down.

"Aren't you an A-rank system holder?"

"Aren't you special?"

"Don't you believe in our men? Even though you've handpicked all of them?"

"Where did your balls go?"

"Are your balls just for show?"

"Are you a man only when it comes to screwing whores?"

Word after word, sentence after sentence, Lena poured vicious mockery into Peter's mouth, soon bringing him to the point when he had to lean over the wall's battlements, no longer able to keep himself upright without support.

"Aren't you a man?!"

"Who's going to brave the dangers and explore the unknown if not you?"

"I bet that Kayle girl is already scrambling her unit to investigate it!"

"Don't you remember what happened to that guy who wasn't worthy of Jahel's blessing?!"

If all the mockery combined with the handjob was enough to make Peter lose enough strength, then the last mention was enough to restore all of his strength.

"WHAT?!"

Powered up by the mention of the one thing that he couldn't clear out of his head, Peter rose up against the battlements… Only for Lena to squeeze her hand down and move it faster, near instantly causing him to discharge right into his pants.

"AH!"

Peter's entire body tensed up, his eyelids lowered down while his face filled with the look of near-endless bliss.

For a moment, his hips continued to shake up, as if begging for Lena to keep moving her hand…

But she didn't.

Instead, while hiding a look of disgust on her face, she pulled her hand out of the man's pants before voicelessly uttering a few words, somehow keeping them within her mouth only to then spit them right into her hand.

A flash of intense light later, there wasn't a single bit of filth left staining her hand.

For a second, Peter looked over at the girl, a sense of longing mixing in his eyes with a sense of humiliation and helplessness.

Then, knowing full well of the limits of what Lena would do for him and what she absolutely would not, he shook his head before turning his eyes back to the no man's land and gritting his teeth.

"Call the boys," Peter muttered through his gritted teeth, his voice far weaker than it was before. "We are going to check out what the hell is going on down there."

<<<>>>

"Ma'am, what was all of that for?" Irene, Kayle's second in command, asked, her eyes brimming with annoyance and irritation.

Not only was she stopped from taking her time to rest after the long, intense march… Kayle's orders shook up everyone, scrambling them all up for an expedition right when they were supposed to regain their strength!

This wasn't how a commander should act, not when they cared for the men that had no other choice but to follow their orders!

'Fucking girl,' Irene thought while doing her best not to let her thoughts show on her face. 'What does she think we are? Her slaves?!'

Rather than letting her unit rest, Kayle scrambled them pretty much as soon as they arrived at the barracks, forcing them to don all the equipment they'd managed to take off before pushing them all out to the small courtyard before the keep's gate.

Normally, this was a place where the defenders would try to fend off the attacks in case of the enemy forcing the gate to open or breaking past its massive, iron-reinforced doors. Today, however, it was a place where she ordered all of her men to form up.

Kayle, however, didn't bother responding.

She just stood there, a step away from the doors of the gate, with her hand pressed against the wood of the thick wing of the door.

"Ma'am, everyone is ready, so whatever it is that you wanted us to do, now is the right time to reveal it!" Irene insisted.

This wasn't how an officer should act, putting their whims and feelings over the actual needs of the troops. But within Kayle's unit, contrary to how it was in the units of the more regular otherworlders, she was merely a liaison officer.

A supporter, rather than a commander.

Kayle, however, didn't utter a word.

She just stood there, her hand pressed against the door of their keep, her eyes shut as tight as were her mouth.

Which is why, when she finally pried her mouth open to speak, Irene couldn't help but listen to what she said with all the attention she could offer.

"Forget it. Change of plans. Get everyone to parade around for ten…" she squinted her freshly opened eyes, "no, five more minutes. Then, everyone is to hurry back inside."

Kayle released a shallow sigh before taking a step back away from the gate, allowing her hand to slowly slide down its wood before it fell freely by her side.

"Get everyone off the walls, whether they are from our unit or not, and stuff them all into the barracks. In five minutes, not a soul is to be left outside," Kayle gave her her orders while her face grew worryingly still, her jaws clenching harder than ever before.

"Ma'am?" Irene asked, her face full of confusion but now free from all the irritation from before.

She was a veteran and a former field officer of the Plenarian regular troops. And she could easily recognize the difference between a whim of a free-spirited newbie commander and one born out of proper reasons — even if she was never going to learn them.

"Five minutes it is, Ma'am," Irene replied with a nod of her head before turning back to the group of roughly twenty men and women assigned to Kayle's unit, all to the one veterans of Plenaria's past wars.

"Rally on me!" she called out from the bottom of her lungs. "First decant, prepare to march out! Second decant, clear the walls! I don't want to see a single soldier outside! In four minutes, we rush back to the barracks!"

Already turning from nearly powerless liaison officer at mercy of Kayle's whims back to her old self of a field officer actively commanding her men in the heat of the battle, Irene turned her head over the shoulder to give Kayle one last look, one last fleeting glance of confusion.

And then, she saw it.

The sight that made her blood run cold.

For what she saw was a look of poorly restrained terror flashing in the eyes of the supposed genius of this generation. A look that begged a question, 'just what is it that an impossibly powerful genius like her would fear so much?'