Today is the 25th. Fo, day of Fire. The day when forges all over the world burn the hottest, so it's said to be the day of smiths. Elves don't really do smithing, though their smokehouses all take advantage of this day, making parts of the town smell strongly of elven scented logs.
Kaatohe wakes me up, encouraged by the girls to join the Ryder Cum Guzzlers. She's an okay dick-sucker, but her specialty is looking snobbish and haughty, which makes it extra satisfying when she's bent over and struggling to keep up her composure as I wreck her.
The vulnerable woman from yesterday is gone, and she gives me a smug smile when she notices me waking up.
I pull her face forward and kiss her furry forehead. "You should start sleeping here more often," I gently suggest, the tone of my voice catching her off-guard for a split second.
"I very well may…" She stiffly replies.
Ciel suddenly hugs her from behind and rubs her face against the soft fur of her back. "You'll always be welcome among us."
Kaatohe freezes, seemingly not knowing how to react to the angel's boundless sweetness. The fact that this cat is also a woman of culture who knows how to appreciate large breasts just adds to the chaos inside her mind.
Hana takes advantage of her vulnerable state to steal a kiss from her, but she's always ready for lewdness, so she immediately responds to the sudden invasion of her mouth with her own tongue.
But then the cheeky dragonkin abruptly breaks the kiss, leaving Kaatohe hanging and wanting for more.
"You're pretty thirsty, and we have endless love to give," Hana smugly states.
"Presumptuous land-dwellers…" Kaatohe grumbles and turns her face away snobbishly.
We smile at her tsun, but we don't tease her any further than that.
My [Summoning Magic] increased by 2 (now 8+34). I'm not really sure what, exactly, triggered the double level up, but I bet it's because of [Otherworldly Summoning].
Roxanne actually learned [Alteration Magic] with two points because of yesterday. Even though she tried to suppress the level up, what she did was so intense that the skill was forcefully learned.
Krysta makes nutty chocolate brownies with a warm, creamy inside, making me squeal internally in happiness.
"These are… nuts?" Safiya questions curiously as she picks up a muffin.
"Indeed they are," Ciel softly replies as she quickly fills her plate with a selection of chocolate dishes.
"The chocolate revolution is just beginning," I cryptically state, but everyone quickly becomes too enthralled by the sweets to play along with my joke.
"This is…" Midori begins but is left speechless as she foodgasms from the supreme deliciousness of the brownie. "This is genius!"
"Indeed, it is," Osaria rather smugly replies. "Rande specifically brought a dragonkin chef from Yukiyama so that we can produce sweets like these to sell."
"It's going to rain coins over here," Nour casually states, and everyone agrees.
After breakfast, it's time for goodbyes.
Nour and his harem get their ID tablets back, though now with our seal, which will allow them to use the Imperial [Eternal Gate] Network throughout all the elven lands for free. It feels kind of nice being the one who's giving out favors instead of receiving them, for once.
"We really appreciate this, Wolf," Nour affirms with a smile as he receives his tablet.
I walk up to him and offer a handshake. "I know you have your reservations about mixing business with friendship, but we should be able to keep them separate," I assert as he returns it.
He hums softly and nods. "I admit I was quite nervous about how our meeting would go, but you've assuaged my fears and helped me calm down quite a lot."
I grin and earnestly confess, "It's because of you that I met Alissa, a woman who's stolen my heart, so it'll take something truly monumental for me to renege on our friendship."
His back stiffens as he's briefly overwhelmed with emotions, then he breaks into a mirrored grin. "For the brotherhood."
Now you're getting it.
"For the brotherhood."
I sigh as I sit down on the sofa and take in the view of the sea.
"Missing your boy lover already?" Roxanne teases with a shit-eating grin.
I turn my face away and point my nose up just like an elf would. "Hmph, bro love is something you girls wouldn't understand with your filthy, corrupted, fujoshi minds."
"Look who's talking…" Alissa retorts and brings up the memories of what I forced her to go through just yesterday.
"I never said that I wasn't corrupted," I shamelessly reply.
"He's feeling something that isn't lust, so of course, his cock would be confused," Yunia casually remarks.
"The way Wolfy treated Nour was so gentle and warm that it felt similar to how he treats Lina," Aoi adds, part innocent remark, part evil teasing influenced by Roxanne.
She's corrupting even my loyal dragon wife.
"Gih," even Gify piles on.
I just close my eyes and begin my mana circulation training. It's easier to just ignore the relentless teasing than to engage with them.
The truth is that I'm starting to understand why Oritiki wanted us to continue treating her so casually. When everyone is always showing me such a degree of respect, it creates a wall between me and everyone I meet, making things a bit lonely.
Nour's casual behavior is now quite refreshing to me, so I want to preserve it, and the similarities between both of our harems also makes it quite easy to relate with him.
I've always been a bit of a recluse, and I never had to put much effort into maintaining friendships since I could easily socialize with like-minded people in the MMORPGs I was addicted to, but now, a friend is a rare commodity, so I need to preserve what I have.
After the girls calm down, the morning goes peacefully as usual, then we have a hearty meal, and the time to conquer the Stinky Goblins dungeon finally comes.
We armor up in an instant with [Equip], then we gather in the entrance hall, where one of our mages opens a [Gate] to the dungeon for us.
The Celestial Horns have already secured the area, so on arrival, we find a few monster corpses spread out around us.
Cave monsters are quite peculiar. Aside from a few types that mimic already blind animals, like Giant Moles, they all have pretty good vision even if they might not need it for 99% of their lives. They have that sense because humanoids have that sense, and all adventurers use [Spirit Light] to explore dungeons, so dark dungeons like this one are generally disfavored by the adventurers because they need to light a beacon that clearly tells every monster within line of sight for kilometri exactly where they are.
As Lords, we need to take these things into consideration because it's our responsibility to decide if this dungeon is a good place for adventurers to train or not. Considering how "disease" is a strong theme here, which is another thing that adventurers hate, there's zero reason for us to put in the effort to maintain this dungeon and keep it from overflowing.
We're going to blaze through it until we find the core.
Oritiki lands before us, and Paraaone, her bull-headed bodyguard, lands a bit behind her, then he gives Lina a small wave.
It's quite comical how most of Lina's friends are big, burly guys.
She jerks her head to face me and blinks blankly in surprise.
"Everyone is bigger than me!" She protests through [Bind].
Just to mess with her further, I send her imagery of my thick, draconic tool stretching her little flower to the limit while I pound her ass.
You definitely love big things.
She immediately blushes and lowers her head as she silently fumes at my bullying.
"Your Highness, everyone's eager for some action," Oritiki cheerfully greets us and offers her hand.
I give her an armored handshake as I reply, "I don't want to visit this wretched dungeon again, so let's break through any and all resistance without stopping. I want to finish this dungeon in one go."
She releases my hand and nods diligently. "This will be a long dive, then?"
"Indeed. We don't know how deep it goes."
"Then I suggest that the Horns fight on foot to conserve mana."
I nod back, and she takes flight again, then starts ordering her men.
I make one final check to ensure that our group is ready, then we put on our helmets and begin our advance.
The Horns assume a wedge formation with the girls, the golems, and I at the tip of the spear, then Alcander, Silvano, and a small detachment of support court mages behind us, and a few Companions to protect the mages, not that Silvano needs protecting.
The support mages summon two light and two air elementals to keep us from catching a disease from this contaminated, stale air. This helps me quite a lot since I don't need to reduce my MP by summoning them myself.
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The Stinky Goblins dungeon is just one long tunnel that spirals downwards and widens the deeper we go, and it's seemingly too simple to sustain complex monster life, so the only living beings that can survive here are those that can adapt to the hostile environment.
The flora is made up of mostly moss, weird mushrooms, and a few even weirder, alien-looking plants. They primarily feed on the mana that seeps down from above, the mana that the core exudes and rises upwards, and the constantly trickling, nutrient-rich water and debris that comes in from the High Forest through the entrance.
The monsters here are mainly insect and mole-like variants, but they don't have much to eat, so they're quite weak as only the ones that are as tenacious as cockroaches (like goblins, for example) can survive in the upper part, but as we descend, there'll be so much mana coming from the core that stronger monsters will be able to survive.
We still find the odd, large monster that has just recently spawned, but since they're always alone, they pose no threat to our formation as we bulldoze through everything.
Lina and Roxanne quickly tire from our jogging pace, so I summon a quadrupedal earth-Lina to carry them. It has seats, and it doesn't shake that much while it's moving, so they can actually rest quite leisurely on it.
"I'm surprised that you are keeping up, old man," Silvano teases Alcander.
"I'm an experienced… court mage, Sir Silvano," Alcander replies pompously, though he's starting to lose his breath.
"I can summon a few more of these elementals, so don't overexert yourself," I kindly declare.
"That won't be necessary… your Highness. I can handle this pace…" Alcander assures me.
I simply nod and face forward again. If he can't, then he'll learn to be more modest about his own limits.
Yunia merely gives Roxanne a single glance, and the decidedly nonathletic succubus grinds her teeth in anger.
Then Lina preemptively warns her through [Bind], "Don't even try to use me as an Escape Bomb. My legs are simply too short for long-distance running."
"I wouldn't!" Roxanne protests.
"You were thinking about it!" Lina accuses her back.
And Roxanne glares at the little armored girl beside her. "Oi! Don't you start judging me before I even do anything!"
"It was just a warning…" Lina mumbles.
Roxanne angrily crosses her arms. "Hmph!"
"Focus, girls," I softly call them out.
The crystalline infection that affects all living beings in the dungeon seems to grow more prominent the deeper we go, possibly fed by the dungeon's mana.
The crystals that grow on the monsters' skin seem to give them access to stronger magic, but as the crystals increase in size, the monster's behavior starts to become strange.
The cadence at which we encounter the monsters gradually decreases, but the number of them that we find together increases, so it's a bit like we're encountering "waves" of monsters.
The way they fight also puzzles us as they become dumber, acting more like zombies than anything.
"They're obviously working together," Yunia points out, and we all agree.
Then the environment suddenly changes. Nearly all of the flora is gone, seemingly eaten almost completely, leaving only small stalks, roots, or patches of moss.
"Something big is up ahead," Oritiki reports.
"I'll send scouts," I reply and summon three Hollys, then they dash ahead while we maintain our pace.
For a long way, the landscape remains completely desolate, aside from the random starving monster that spawned recently.
But the Hollys eventually find the hulking mass that has been eating everything around here.
It's a huge, ugly monster that seems like a mix between a turtle and a frog, with a body that's been disfigured by the uncountable numbers of faintly glowing pink crystals growing all over its skin like a shell. Even its eye is covered in transparent crystal, making it look like it's wearing goggles. An Aberrant, most likely.
This is why Lords are tasked with maintaining a dungeon. There's no way the average adventurer party could defeat such a thing on their own as it's likely far too hard to kill in comparison with the average "power level" of the common monster found at this depth.
Putting up a special request at the monster hunters' guild, like the one for the extermination of the goblin village, would be a good opportunity to train the adventurers in combined warfare and to build relationships with them, but bringing fellowships down here would be too risky due to the disease theme of the dungeon, so we'll have to kill this Aberrant ourselves.
I relay the monster's description to our group, and we begin to formulate a plan. Since it's quite an unusual monster, we decide to be cautious and test the Aberrant's power first.
A goblin charges at the Crystal Trog, screaming his lungs out as he grips his tiny, flimsy spear as hard as he can.
The Trog's eyes cautiously follow the little green squirt, then the pink crystals on its body glow slightly stronger, and the goblin suddenly chokes.
Now completely out of breath, the stupid summoned monster tumbles and rolls, but when he comes to a stop, he gasps for air repeatedly, seemingly unable to breathe.
The air is thick with spores and the smell of mold, but a faint metallic scent appears, coinciding with the brightening glow of the Trog's crystals.
The goblin starts to convulse, then he begins to bleed from all over his skin without any visible wounds, and he madly starts scratching himself because his entire body has begun to itch like crazy.
The Trog's glow dims back down to normal, and the goblin stops convulsing, then the blood stops flowing, revealing little pink crystals the width of toothpicks poking out of his skin.
After taking a moment to catch his breath, the goblin stands up and starts to shamble past the hulking mass, ignoring his previous order to attack it.
Holy fuck, that was fucking freaky.
The Trog's gaze turns to a set of elementals charging towards it, and it quickly turns its humongous body to face them. The mansion-sized quadruped makes the earth rumble with each of its heavy steps, but it still seems awfully agile despite its apparent mass.
We feel a burst of mana leaving the Trog, then earth-Lina is skewered by a crystal spike that bursts out of the ground, instantly killing her.
Fire-Hana and wind-Alissa launch their ranged attacks, but the Trog simply ignores them since all they can do is give it some small cracks on its shell.
The crystals glow brighter again, and nature-Yunia collapses as the crystals try to take control of her, but her biology is too different from a typical monster, so all they can do is destroy her from the inside.
The globe of plasma reaches the Trog first and unleashes all of its electric power on the foot of the monster, making it wince and growl so loudly that its echo resounds through the entire dungeon. But the electric elemental still isn't enough to do significant damage to the monster, so it gets squashed by the Trog's foot a second later, though it gives the Aberrant a parting shock before it dissipates.
Water-Roxanne reaches the briefly paralyzed monster next and unleashes a water blade on its flabby neck, inflicting the first actual wound and drawing blood since the monster's underside has only a few crystals protecting it.
But with another swift step, she gets squashed too.
Then the Trog's angry eyes turn to light-Ciel, who's almost within attack range, and the pink crystals on its back glow again, but instead of attacking her, spiky balls of crystals grow out of thin air and launch towards the elemental.
Light-Ciel isn't exactly solid, but physical attacks still disrupt the integrity of her body, and the crystal balls also hold hostile magic, which is purified whenever they touch the elemental, making the balls crumble to dust, but it also forces the elemental to waste mana.
The Trog warily takes a step back as the elemental approaches it, but she quickly runs out of mana, and her body dissipates before she can attack, then the Trog turns to the last two elementals annoying it.
With frightening speed, it charges forward, then opens its large mouth and gobbles both of them up. Fire-Hana burns its tongue, and wind-Alissa gives it a nasty cut, but they're still destroyed in just a split second.
"Weepers' dream, what an annoying fuck," I grumble.
"That crystal armor doesn't seem to be, like, too hard," Hana deliberates with a faint grin, then she looks at Lina.
"What…?" My little dwarf reflexively mumbles, sounding a bit wary.
"I can fly, and you can hit hard," Hana replies, and her grin widens.
Lina jerks her head towards Roxanne. "Can't you just [Explode] its head?"
"Highly magical monsters make it hard to aim that spell, as if they had an innate [Dead Zone]," Roxanne kindly explains, but she's enjoying Lina's desperation too.
"Flying dwarf it is," Yunia states amusedly, and Lina lowers her head in defeat.
Then I smile excitedly since I finally have an opportunity to use [Godly Language] without restrictions, so I test something out, "The battle is at hand! May our strength never falter and our weapons strike true!"
The Horns spread out in the tunnel, staying high and close to the ceiling, then the Trog turns towards them and starts slowly walking backward, wary of their holy glow.
They carefully measure their distance from the Trog, staying close enough for their [Beam]s to be effective, but not so close that they'd be affected by the glowing pink crystals.
Once they're in position, Oritiki gives the order, and the harassment begins. They fire their weapons, aiming for the few patches of skin that aren't protected by the crystals, but the Trog immediately wrinkles its skin, pressing the crystals together and blocking the openings, though there are enough Horns to completely encircle the Trog, and they do just that.
The monster starts to growl as its skin burns under their assault, then it tries to hit them with the bursting crystal spikes, but the attack can only come from the floor, and the Horns are so high up that they easily see it coming.
Seeing how ineffective its attack was, the Trog quickly switches to the spiky balls, but the Horns' aim is excellent, so they simply shoot down the balls before they can threaten them, though it's now become a battle of attrition, and the huge Aberrant definitely has the advantage there.
But that's enough of a distraction that it doesn't notice the approaching duo aiming at its head and carried by emerald wings.
Lina readies her hammer, then swings it as she casts [Telekinesis] on it, amplifying its weight tenfold.
They crash against the monster, but Hana doesn't release Lina, who in turn doesn't lose her grip on her hammer, and the whole crystal helmet protecting the Trog's head shatters like glass, though the pieces all remain stuck to its body.
As the monster staggers, the duo quickly make their retreat, and an arrow slides through the cracks and pierces one eye, making the monster furious.
"GOOOOOOOH…!" It lets out a low, rumbling roar, and the infected goblin suddenly stops in its tracks, then it jerks its body around and comes back towards us.
This makes me a bit concerned, so we make our way around the Trog to use it to block the path that the goblin is taking.
The Horns switch gears and start attacking the monster's partially exposed head like an angry swarm of bees, attacking it through the slits with their glaives or cracking the crystal helmet further.
The Trog's jaw and neck suddenly bulge, sending alarm bells ringing in all of our heads.
"[BACK]!" Oritiki orders in Reo, and they all disperse.
The Trog opens its mouth, and a thick cloud of pink mist billows out, quickly shrouding its body.
I summon five wind-Alissas, and Alcander links all the mages together with [Ritualism], then the elementals and the combined mages' will wrestle with the monster for control over the mist.
Though it might have incredible mana reserves, the Aberrant doesn't have that much "Magic Power" to compete with our numbers, so the mist is quickly dispersed, revealing that the crystal helmet has started to mend.
Alissa casts [Ignorance] on the duo, and they go in for another strike. The Horns provide cover by using their [Beam]s again to piss off the Trog, focusing on its blind side as it tries to stop them with the spiky balls.
The duo brace for impact and crash against the monster's crystal helmet, shattering it like glass again, and its skull starts to cave in.
"GUOOOOH…!" The monster cries out in pain as it releases wisps of pink mist.
It's fortunate that the cloud's aim isn't to attack because we now have to engage with the army of crystal-controlled monsters coming our way. However, we won't be able to repeat that helmet smashing maneuver so easily again, so I order Alcander to prepare a proper finisher.
The Horns dance around the Trog, boasting their coordination and speed by giving the now seemingly concussed monster nasty burn after nasty burn, but it now starts to desperately release the pink mist to heal its crystal helmet, ignoring the Horns completely.
Aoi flies like a rocket at it, a mask of stone fully protecting her face from the mist and a large chain in her hands, then she tackles its neck from behind as she quickly throws one end of the chain to its side, using magic to wrap it around its neck.
The monster tries to shake her off, but her footing remains steady, then she pulls on the chains, blocking its throat from releasing the mist and making the monster panic.
But Aoi isn't done. She takes a step back, which gives her the leverage to pull its head up, then her muscles bulge as she pulls on the chain as hard as she can and lets out a muffled roar of fury, "GROOOOOOOOH!"
The huge monster doesn't even have time to properly react because Alcander finishes the spell, and a long, thick, dragon-killer bolt shoots towards the exposed, flabby neck of the monster, striking right below its jaw, where its tongue should be.
The monster groans as it starts to stand up on its hind legs, regaining a bit of room to breathe as Aoi briefly loses her footing, but its body wasn't made for this kind of movement, so it goes down again a couple of seconds later.
And the duo comes in at the perfect time. As the monster falls, they strike right at the base of the bolt, driving it further in until the tip pokes through the top of its skull.
The monster convulses and collapses heavily on the floor, still not dead yet, but now Aoi can easily expose its neck again, and the Horns waste not a second as they split it open.
Blood flows like a river, and the will to fight gradually drains from the Crystal Trog. Then, as it enters its death throes, the onslaught of crystal-infected monsters finally comes to an end as their coordination collapses and they start to kill each other like mindless zombies.
I sigh and let the dragon return to its cage, then I clean my blood-soaked weapons and sheathe them.
As we start to relax, the effects of [Godly Language] suddenly end, and the usual dizziness of the feedback hits us, but it's considerably weaker than what we would normally expect. My little experiment of adding "conditions" to it seems to have worked, so I'll need to explore this further.
Subtly infusing [Godly Language] into my speech doesn't produce the same level of feedback, but it also doesn't have any reality-altering capabilities, so I might be able to find a good middle-ground between the two approaches.
We've earned ourselves a break, so we move far away from the slaughter and have some tea while I check for messages from the castle.
There's just news of a group of nobles that have arrived in town, and Yunia immediately recognizes their names.
"The Clown Troupe!" She suddenly exclaims, then immediately goes silent as we give her a weird look.
If that's how she calls her friends, then I wonder how she calls her enemies.