Kazuto sighed. His shoulders slumped. He felt his stomach churning as his thoughts traveled down the same path they'd gone so many times that day. She's not cheating on me, right? She said she was bored, but that was just to motivate me. The goddess always gives her summoned hero something to motivate him, doesn't she?
It wasn't that she'd been his first.
Kazuto had plenty of girls now, from best girl tsundere Ise-chan, to the deredere Neko-chan, then there was the kuudere queen-chan, and the kanedere Jeanette-chan, and that wasn't even getting into all the elf girls he got to bang when he snuck into the auction house once in a while to hang out with Neale.
Lucia was still special to him despite all the others though, even if he couldn't figure out why.
I really want to get Ise-chan back at least. Then again, if I had to choose, catgirls seem really rare… Kazuto looked around. Neale's really good at magic, he wouldn't fuck something this important up. This Carl guy must be around here somewhere.
Finally, he figured it out and looked up, like he should've done all along.
But there was nothing above him except the same stars and moon as always. He made a grunt of irritation. This was supposed to just take a couple hours tops. I should've been back at the castle by now getting rewarded by my harem.
At that moment, a wide expanse of the ground below him vanished, and he began to fall, then slide down a steep, rocky slope into total darkness.
"What the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!" Kazuto shouted as he fell, surprised by the sudden event even if he wasn't actively being harmed by it. He slammed a hand into the slope beneath him, bringing himself to an immediate stop. "Seriously, what the fuck?" he said again, breathing heavily. He looked down the slope behind him, but there was only darkness at the edge of the soft glow that his goddess-provided armor produced. Maybe… Is that what Neale's spell was pointing to?
The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. The tracking device was only designed to track along the ground, not below the ground. It made sense that it would behave weirdly when he was on top of what it was pointing to, just like the objective-seeking compasses from some of his favorite RPGs, which he played on the easiest difficulty because he was there for the story.
"Alright, fuckface," Kazuto muttered as he stood himself back up. "Time to get my girls back." He started making his way down the slope, unable to use anything approaching his full speed due to the steepness of the decline. Still, he moved much faster than anyone else could move, partly due to his lack of fear—the knowledge that even if he fell over it wouldn't hurt him. Having a fuckton of stamina is smart as fuck.
His descent continued for several minutes, which was surprising to him when he considered how fast he was moving. How the fuck did he even get down here? Whatever, this must be his secret fortress or something. Classic isekai villain.
Abruptly, he came upon a rectangular doorway ahead of him which was not dark. It was, in fact, very brightly illuminated, though he couldn't see any particular light source. He squinted as he approached, his eyes taking time to adjust to the brightness—something his overpowered stats and equipment somehow still couldn't compensate for.
Kazuto stepped into the doorway, holding a hand over his eyes. "What the fuck…" he said as he looked around.
He was at the edge of a brightly-lit room with a dark gray floor and ceiling and lighter gray walls, all of which seemed to be cut into uniform-sized squares and rectangles respectively. The room was narrow and long, more of a corridor, now that he thought about it, which was only a bit wider than he was. At the opposite end, maybe ten or twenty paces away, he saw what looked like a metal, irising door that was currently closed.
The sight of the room which was so obviously constructed gave him some pause. He might have an overpowered build and goddess-provided armor, but that didn't mean he wasn't still cautious when his situation warranted it. This feels like a trap. Maybe I shouldn't have thrown away that tracker. He must be in here though. Fuck, he's probably… With Ise-chan and Neko-chan…
Spurred on by the fear that the longer he stood there, the greater chance there was that he might be getting NTR'd, he pressed a foot softly against a tile on the floor. Just in case there were traps. Sometimes the RPGs he played had traps that activated when stepping on certain floor tiles, and he hated those types of mechanics which got in the way of his enjoyment of the story.
Nothing happened, so he stepped more firmly onto the tile, then took another step. When nothing again happened, he began walking forward with growing confidence. Asshole probably never thought anyone would find him all the way down here. You can't hide from a hero, you fucking idiot.
Kazuto reached the irising door without incident, and he relaxed when it opened to reveal another corridor which was identical to the first in every way. "Idiot," he muttered, feeling confident enough to start running. It wasn't like anything some fucking NPC like Carl did could hurt him anyway. They were all way too weak to do anything that might affect a hero.
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He reached the end of the room without issue, then had to wait while the slow door opened. He could have destroyed it, but by the time he considered it, the door was already most of the way open and he scrambled through.
The next room was identical to the first two, and Kazuto groaned before speeding through. He reached the door, then punched it lightly, expecting it to be blown away.
Instead, however, the door felt solid when he struck it, continuing to open at its relatively slow speed. He grew distracted when he thought he caught sight of something at the end of the next room—which was also identical to the first two—and charged forward, but by the time he stepped through it was already gone.
He reached the exit door of the fourth room, then punched the door more powerfully. Still, however, the door held, again feeling disturbingly solid. He paused for a moment and frowned at it. What the fuck is this made out of? And how did he even manage to make something so big so far underground?
Kazuto stepped through the now-open door and was feeling annoyed because the next room was also identical. He ran to the end and punched the door as hard as he could.
The space around the door visibly vibrated from the impact somehow, and his hand hurt. Kazuto stared at the door in amazement. He again caught sight of a shape at the end of the next room and raced forward, but the figure was gone and the room was now empty again with yet another closed door at the end.
In rising anger, he punched the stone wall to his left, but the wall somehow withstood the impact, just as the door had, and now his gauntlet-clad hand hurt even more. "Fuck!" He clutched at his throbbing hand, feeling almost like he'd broken something. He'd definitely never broken a bone before, but he imagined that maybe this was what it was like. He glared at the door at the far end. "Okay, you piece of shit, now you're pissing me off," he said, starting forward again.
Kazuto ran through a fuckton of identical rooms. After fifty, he stopped counting. How fucking big is this place?
Several times now he'd caught sight of a figure just ahead of him, and it spurred him on as he felt his anger and irritation grow. The fucking guy who stole his girls was taunting him?
He never managed to catch up, however, and he couldn't even make it into the next room before the man-sized figure—who wore armor, as he noticed one time when he watched while it rested for a moment at the other end of the corridor—vanished into the room beyond.
The next time he caught sight of the armored figure, who he now saw also had dark hair, he came to a halt. His eyes widened. He didn't move even an inch forward and instead just watched. Then, very slowly, he turned his head to the side, keeping an eye on the other armored person.
The figure at the end of the next room turned its head in time with him, and when he saw its face he realized it.
What the fuck?
The figure at the end of the next room was him.
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Kazuto was fucking furious. He'd grown enraged when he realized this Carl guy was just fucking with him by warping him back to the first room every time he went through the exit of the second room, but it had taken him fucking forever to figure out the trick to get around it because whenever he got too close to the warp point, it sucked him in and warped him back. Each time he caught sight of himself as he exited the first room, he grew even more furious, imagining that Carl was somehow watching him while taking advantage of girls from his harem.
He couldn't give up now. He was caught in this trap—though he tried leaving and could walk out whenever he wanted—and he had to get past it. This was the first time anyone had ever really challenged him since he came to Eden, and the fuck if he was going to give up and abandon his two favorite non-goddess girls.
Neko-chan especially, he'd decided. Ise-chan was great, and she was so fucking hot, and he really liked training her, but she wasn't a catgirl.
He'd always dreamed of having a catgirl girlfriend. This wasn't quite that, since Neko-chan always did exactly what he said, but that was almost better in a way. Plus she never got tired or said no; he enjoyed Ise-chan's continued attempts to pretend she disliked him in public, but lately she'd just lay there, convulsing in nonstop orgasms while they banged, and he'd begun to wonder whether he'd been spoiling her too much.
At last, he'd finally figured out the trick to the room. He'd tried stepping on specific tiles, crawling on the floor, breaking every possible section of floor, wall, and ceiling tile and hurting his hands in the process, but in the end all he'd needed to do was squeeze himself against the side of the second room's exit after the door was fully opened and shuffle through.
He'd gotten the idea when he'd decided to spend some time looking around in front of the door to try finding a hint, and through the edge of the doorway he spotted a small plaque with the number "3" etched into it next to the exit door in the room past it.
He'd never been in a room with a number next to the door.
Kazuto squeezed through the doorway, barely even able to fit through the narrow space between the portal and the edge of the door, then ran forward in a burst of speed, eager to finally be rid of…
He tried to stop suddenly, losing his balance and tumbling over from the frictionless floor tiles that he'd attempted to halt himself on. His rolls carried him out through the glowing doorway he'd first come upon, which was the same fucking doorway that led to the fucking identical corridors with the fucking portals.
"Fuck you, Carl!" Kazuto shouted as he sprang to his feet and barreled back into the fucking corridor, determined not to lose to this guy who was obviously just trying to stall and give himself more time with Ise-chan and Neko-chan.
A few seconds later, and despite continuing to hug the wall as soon as he'd entered the room with the "3" at the end, Kazuto came back out through an open door and into the rocky tunnel he'd slid down, screaming his irritation at the top of his lungs when he realized the third room was another room with a portal in it somewhere.