Lawrence was a hard worker. The black-haired, twenty year-old man had his own business, set his own hours, and aggressively scouted each area of the city that he plied his skill-based trade in before making any decisions about whether doing so would be worth his while.

Put more plainly, Lawrence was a thief.

He was a good one, too.

Why did he think he was a good thief?

Some might ask him that.

His reply would likely be something simple and to the point, because that's how he liked his life to be. He'd say that he thought he was good because he'd been doing it for almost fifteen years and he'd never been caught. He was so good, in fact, that no one he'd stolen from even knew his name.

What made a good thief?

The key, Lawrence believed, was in what he thought of as risk assessment.

Lawrence was a very cautious man.

He had to be, or he'd lose his job.

Possibly quite a bit more than just that, too.

That was the thing about thieving: it was a very lucrative profession so long as he didn't get caught.

Picking pockets was the easiest way to make coin as a thief. It was also one of the most dangerous.

Lawrence was very good at picking pockets, though he was never proud of that. He was proud of his ability to read people, of course, and to ascertain their temperaments and intentions at a glance. These were necessary skills for even the worst pickpocket, and he was far from the worst.

He preferred stealing from those who could stand to lose the coin, however, and they seldom moved slowly enough for pocket picking to be a realistic possibility given the penchant the nobles had for those dwarf-built steamcars that had begun to grow so popular of late. His work had grown more rewarding on a personal level, with each theft now requiring hours, days, sometimes even weeks of careful and thorough preparation. It also happened to be more financially rewarding, which was something that he appreciated.

Give part of what he'd stolen to the poor?

Lawrence was the poor. Or at least, he had been until years of hard, thankless work had paid off. He wasn't quite sure why he kept working with the small fortune he'd amassed when he stopped to consider it.

He didn't know any other way of life, he supposed.

And so it was that Lawrence had spent considerable time scouting his newest entrepreneurial concept: thieving from the Creature Market.

It wasn't particularly a secret that the place existed in the city, occupying a large building at the edge of the nobles' district up against the city wall. One of the few structures not made of brick, he'd noted in the course of his scouting. Yes, and there had been a reason for that, too.

In this building, one would find all manner of exotic creature. And some humans who were unlucky enough or pretty enough to be deemed to have lost their privilege of being treated as people.

Put more simply—the way Lawrence preferred—it was a slave market, mostly for selling and trading various humanoid creatures which tended to be used for recreational purposes.

He meant they were used for fucking—sexual gratification and breeding—obviously.

Lawrence didn't strongly care one way or the other about any of that. He wasn't looking to get involved with anything complicated; he was a simple man.

Relatively speaking.

The reason for his current contemplation, as he lingered briefly near the entrance of the side street that the slave market was located on, was that he'd heard a very interesting rumor an hour or two ago.

Lawrence had friends among the wealthy and the nobles.

Well, they thought of him as a friend, anyway, and that's what mattered to him.

Apparently, he'd found out, there was going to be something very special at the—

Laurence turned his head and glanced casually back down the avenue he was standing at the corner of and caught sight of a very tall man with a brown beard, short-ish brown hair, broad shoulders, bared feet, and wearing nobles' clothes—gray trousers, a long-sleeved white shirt with a collar, and a gray vest with a small dragon stitched over the breast in the light green favored by the Queen. The man was walking down the center of the avenue, apparently uncaring of—

The man looked at Lawrence.

Lawrence took the opportunity to fuck right off. He headed swiftly—but not too swiftly—into a nearby alleyway that he knew would take him to a network of side streets. There he could easily lose any pursuer by quickly climbing up and onto the roof of one of the nearby buildings after darting around a blind corner.

He'd assessed the risk, he'd judged the man's temperament, and he'd determined that it would be better to be as inconspicuous as possible for the time being; also he wanted to be nowhere near the annoyed-looking man with the fucking huge, glowing spear.

A good thief never risked trouble, no matter how unlikely it might seem.

Lawrence rubbed a finger over his right eyebrow as he walked, as he tended to do when he was deep in thought and alone.

He'd long finished his scouting and had come to a decision. The man he'd seen a moment ago had just given him the idea he'd been waiting for.

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Tomas Arderne. All nobles in the Charus Kingdom at least knew of him.

Of course they did. His father was the richest man in the entire kingdom.

The entire kingdom.

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That included the royal family.

Tomas groaned as the long-eared slut sucked him while he drove his steamcar around the city. Delsanra had been the favorite out of his father's playthings, and now she was his favorite. She had the longest ears, the biggest breasts, the most jiggly bottom, and she moaned when she sucked him.

It made him feel twice as good, knowing how much the long-eared slut was enjoying what she was doing.

Those training programs the long-eared devils were put through when they reached the Creature Market sure were something incredible, Tomas mused. He wondered if Delsanra had always been so obedient and sex-crazed or if that was somehow part of the devil purification process.

It didn't matter to him. He was quite happy with her current temperament.

Yes, Delsanra was everything he'd ever wanted in a woman—even if she wasn't one, in actuality, the twenty two-year old, brown-haired scion of his family thought to himself. She came when he called, she loved spending time with him, she'd do anything he wanted, and she came when he called.

Delsanra was much better than Isemeine, whom he'd been foolishly attempting to conquer until she'd gotten herself betrothed to the newest Hero.

His father had tried to hurry him along, he supposed. There had already been that incident with her tutor, and it was only a matter of time until some greater misfortune or boon made her regrettably unobtainable. Yes, he should have—

Tomas frowned. He'd driven over a small bump of some kind and Delsanra's teeth had scraped him slightly. She looked up at him with teasing eyes, and he moved a hand down to spank her bottom just the way he knew she liked it, setting it jiggling just the way he liked it.

The long-eared devil-turned-slut let out a muffled, high pitched whine, and he grinned with the knowledge that he'd need to have the maids scrub out the passenger seat of his car once again. Then she went back to work.

Tomas still wasn't sure what course to set regarding Isemeine now. He'd been considering the matter for a long while—though mostly in the capacity of idle musing. He was no longer as interested in her, of course, the change in the fourth princess's marriage status bothering him far less than it would his father were he to be discovered continuing his pursuit.

The wager he'd made with his… Well, they were not his friends, precisely, given their lower status, but Erneis and Taff were close enough. He'd wagered that of course he would be the one to finally conquer the princess whose heart seemed to be made of ice—or so it seemed given how she brushed off her parade of suitors without the slightest of considerations. For a girl as incredibly beautiful and willful as she—and the success of the wager, obviously—Tomas had even been willing to take his time for the inevitable conquest; it wasn't as though he lacked for female company in the meanwhile.

Still, though, in the years since he'd begun his slow campaign he'd never been able to determine how he felt about a girl who could think as the fourth princess could. Not simply think, either. When they'd met for tea, she'd spoken of topics that he found he knew nothing about. It confused him. Could she be smarter than him, a noble who'd had only the best tutors for every conceivable subject matter as he was raised?

He remembered how his head had spun as she'd explained with no small amount of eagerness the inner workings of a steam engine to him several years earlier and her idea of how…

Well, it had been a complicated topic, and her dress had shown off her early-blooming cleavage quite nicely as she'd leaned in over the table in excitement.

Tomas frowned, this time entirely in reaction to his own thoughts.

It would be so much easier for him to consider matters regarding the fourth princess if she wasn't also so beautiful. Her golden hair looked like it was spun from sunlight itself, her aristocratic nose was just right, and her dazzling green eyes had captivated him.

Also she had truly eye-catching breasts. For a human, that is, as they couldn't compare to Delsanra's. But Isemeine's looked so… Supple was the word that came to mind. Was it the word he was looking for?

Tomas's eyes widened. Yes! It was the word he wanted! He'd—ooh, he'd heard it used before to describe exactly that spot.

Delsanra swallowed.

The youngest child of Reynard Arderne sighed as the long-eared slut who'd been with his household since before his birth cleaned him off. Why should he care what he'd thought of Isemeine, anyway? It wasn't as though he'd ever sought to marry her. Or anyone at all, for that matter; he'd simply have Delsanra bear his children. He was certain that she'd be happy to do it for him if he asked. She even had brown hair just like his, so the spell to change the babe's ears to that of a full-blooded human would be that much easier for her to cast afterwards without the need to also change the hair's color.

It wasn't as though he'd be the first to do such a thing. No, there were plenty of nobles with some devil blood in them. There was no harm in it—once purified, of course. Rather, it brought only benefits: longer lifespan, natural immunity to most diseases—especially the ones that came from fornication, a stronger inclination towards magic, and being generally more attractive.

Tomas was a very attractive man based on how the young women and girls of the court always looked at him. Maybe he'd even—

No, no, of course not. Everyone knew that his human mother, Odelina, had died, tragically, while giving birth to him, leaving behind a bereaved father and Tomas's much older sister. And it was natural that he wouldn't get sick often; he had a master of healing magics who slept with him every night.

He ran his free hand through Delsanra's soft brown locks, urging her to start again. That's what he'd brought her along for, after all.

He was on his way to investigate a message that had been delivered to the attention of his father. The Creature Market had received a very special item, and it was being sold with the utmost urgency at that evening's auction with the seller remaining unknown.

The idea of an unknown seller was not new. It happened regularly when a noble wanted to be rid of something they didn't wish to ever be known for having.

Delsanra's technique was making it a little hard for Tomas to continue thinking as he drove, but he persevered under the strain. He was a noble of nobles, after all, so he could do what many could not. He could not, however, conceive of something he'd ever need to sell as an unknown at the Creature Market.

He shook his head as his thoughts continued back on their earlier path. No, what was new to both him and his father was not knowing what the special item was in advance. The Arderne household always knew in advance. They even paid extra for the information.

Somehow, though, that annual payment did not produce the knowledge of what was being sold that night.

Tomas would find out and report back to his father. If it was something good, perhaps he'd even attend.

Delsanra was amazing—the perfect long-eared slut. She was so amazing that he'd long since removed her leash, leaving her with only the pink collar that marked her as having been purified. It was against the law to remove one of those collars, or he would have taken that off as well.

But she'd been with him his entire life; she was a companion given to him by his father.

Tomas had recently been thinking that he'd be more happy if he had a blonde-haired long-eared slut, too, though. One with large breasts, if possible, though they didn't have to be as large as Delsanra's.

It wasn't as though he'd give the brown-haired beauty up.

He simply found himself with the strong urge to enjoy the conquest of a fresh, buxom, preferably green-eyed, blonde-haired girl in addition.