Vol 2 Chapter 9 – Honorary Succubus (Male)【Vol 2 – The Succubus Knight Order】

I was staring blankly at the succubus army in front of me when something suddenly occurred to me.

“…Hey, Shion. This knight order—you said only succubi can join, right?”
“Of course. After all, it was founded on Master’s Succubus Supremacy Theory—”
“Yeah, putting that aside, I’m obviously not a succubus, you know? I mean, I’m a guy.”

If memory serves, Shion had just asked me to join the knight order and train the members.
But there’s no way I, a non-succubus, could join an organization that only accepts succubi.

“No, that’s not an issue. Master is an Honorary Succubus (Male)—spelled out in parentheses—so there’s absolutely no problem.”
“A male succubus doesn’t even make sense!?”
“Also, the fact that the Succubus Knight Order consists solely of succubi is nothing more than the natural result of aiming for the strongest knight order possible. —Therefore, under normal circumstances, it would indeed be unthinkable for anyone other than a succubus to join the Succubus Knight Order. But when it comes to someone like Master, whose overwhelming strength transcends the boundaries of race itself, joining the order is less an exception and more an inevitability.”
“Your logic is completely broken.”
“In any case, there are absolutely no legal or ethical issues whatsoever with Master joining the Succubus Knight Order. As its founder and current captain, I swear this on my very soul.”
“Uhhh…”

Well, if the person who made the system and is in charge of it now says so, then I guess the institutional side of things checks out.
That said, that’s not my main concern. Not even close.

The real issue is me—a man—joining an all-female knight order.
It’d already be hard enough just being the lone guy in a squad of women, but in this case, every last one of them is a succubus.
In other words, I’d be spending all day, every day at work surrounded by insanely high-level, huge-breasted beauties.

Even just looking at the members like this, they’re all honestly so ridiculously cute that I’m confident I’d fall in love at first sight if I passed any one of them on the street.

When I calmly picture what that would be like, it seems brutally harsh.
If I joined, it’d be boing, boing to the right and sway, sway to the left.
And since they’re succubi, of course their flowing hair and the sweat trickling down their skin would smell amazing, too.

From the outside, it would probably look so enviable that people would be crying blood in jealousy.
But thinking about actually being the one in that situation, it’s not hard to imagine just how intense my day-to-day life would be.

After all, every single member of this order is one of Shion’s precious subordinates.
On top of that, she personally scouted each one of them, persuaded them, and brought them into the order, and almost all of them are nobles.

In other words, here’s the reality:
No matter how cute they are, I absolutely cannot lay a hand on any of them.
If I ever did, even by accident, I’d be dragging my disciple’s name through the mud after she’d chosen to trust me.

That level of hell would make the rumors about teachers at all-girls’ schools sound like a joke by comparison.
It’s not just “there’s a girl I really like but I have to hold back”—this is danger on a whole different level.

So, drawing on my naturally well-honed danger-avoidance instincts, I did the only sensible thing and firmly resolved to turn this offer down.

…That said, if I gave my real reason straight out, Shion would definitely just brush it off with a “You’ll be fine, Master!” or “If it’s you, Master, there’s nothing to worry about!”
Knowing that airheaded disciple, she might even go as far as, “Then we’ll just cling together every day so you can build up a tolerance to succubi!” or something equally ridiculous.

So.
What I need is some kind of angle like, “I actually want to do it, but there’s this unavoidable issue, so I just can’t.”

“Uhmmm…”

I started carefully observing the knight order members again, hoping to find a good excuse.
…Huh?

For all that Shion had been boasting about them earlier, they actually didn’t look that strong…

At a glance, they certainly seemed to have talent, but that talent hadn’t been polished at all.
Aside from Shion herself, every member present looked that way to me.

If I had to give an example, say one of them went one-on-one against some elite from another knight order.
Judging strictly by their current ability and ignoring any seductive tricks, I had a feeling Shion would be the only one who could reliably win…

And there was something else.

Judging from the way the members were looking at me, I wasn’t exactly being welcomed with open arms.

…Leaving aside the fact that getting looked at like that by girls stung my pride a tiny bit.
Honestly, it was only natural.

Right now I was here as a special guest Shion had brought along, so they were all doing a good job of hiding it, but deep down, the idea of a man barging into their all-girls’ sanctuary was something they wanted no part of.

“…Master, is something wrong?”
“Yeah, about that.”

I decided to use that as my excuse to back out.
Looking at one of the girls standing sharply at attention in the very front row, I spoke.

“Shion. Deep down, I get the feeling the members are against me joining, don’t you?”
“That’s impossible.”
“Well, you might feel that way, but think about it normally—of course nobody wants a lone guy thrown into a group that’s all women, right? …Sure, if they were exactly like the man-crazy succubi you hear about in popular stories, they’d probably be thrilled. But the reality is different, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is, Master!”
“Then let’s ask that girl over there how she really feels, for example. And don’t worry, I won’t get mad no matter what she says.”
“Understood. …Marina, Master has given his permission. Answer honestly.”

The girl standing right in front of me—Marina, apparently—hesitated for quite a while before finally opening her mouth.

“…To be honest, we’re against it.”
“How could you say such a thing!?”

Shion raised her voice, but, well, this was the obvious answer.

Personally, I felt relieved—though there was also a tiny part of me that was disappointed I wouldn’t get to spend every day frolicking (maybe?) with a succubus army.

But overall, yeah, mostly relieved.
The tension finally drained from my shoulders at last.