Izuku only learned how exactly it happened afterwards, once he interrogated Ochako about it and she described the start of the fight in detail to him. But it went something like this.

Their entire party was heading back to the Dungeon, walking alongside the river. That was pretty much a necessity for traveling in a large group, the area surrounding the river was the closest thing they had to an easily navigable route through the area.

Flat ground, with some actually decent line of sight. Very good.

Until you realized that ‘decent line of sight’ worked both ways. Their group realized it the moment Mr. Compress suddenly yelled at them all to duck, and so they did, with even the lampades leaping behind some conveniently placed boulders, the gravehounds following them.

They managed to do it right before the arrows began to fly past them.

Uraraka glances over the rock that she dove behind, looking in the direction of the other side of the river. From where the arrows were coming.

Rose Guard. The gleaming armors were unmistakable. Ten of them, scattered around the other side of the river, three of them carrying longbows. A strange pick of weapons for someone wearing light plate armor, but…

So much about their hopes of the Ecstasy forces not starting to investigate the surface. There really was going to be a battle in the valley sooner or later.

The remaining seven, each of them carrying shields and spears, with some swords visible in their sheaths, were clearly advancing towards them, most of them in the water already. That meant…

“KAMINARI, BLAST THEM!” Uraraka yells. Kaminari rolls closer towards the water’s edge, Tokage reacting immediately, her shield covering him from two arrows fired by the rose archers.

And then he unleashes the full scope of his electric sorceries straight into the water, against enemies wearing a lot of steel.

If it was his old quirk, they would all die. But for now, he was weaker than he was in the past. And for as much as the Rose Guard warriors were extremely kinky, they were also fairly professional and their equipment was decent.

In other words, they had some leather under the chainmails and armor plates, to withstand impacts and to ward them against the cold and heat. Steel was very thermal conductive, after all.

As a result, only the two warriors that managed to get the closest to them are killed instantly, their bodies jerking up in the water for a while before they begin to drift alongside the river’s current.

The rest are only briefly paralyzed or slightly electrocuted. Not enough to knock them out from a fight.

“GET OUT OF THE WATER, NOW!” One of them yells from the back. They didn’t get into the water, and not only do they lack the gag, their armor also has some golden details to it. A commanding officer? “Archers, kill the sorcerer!”

Of course. It couldn’t be that easy, right?

Kaminary yelps while curling up behind Tokage’s shield that gets repeatedly struck by arrows. Tokage herself was crouching to make sure that they couldn’t fire at her legs underneath it. Enemy melee fighters that survived the initial burst of electricity were leaving the water and gathering up around the officer, only slightly dazed.

Lovely.

“Can you do anything to them?” Uraraka says loudly towards the lampades.

“At such a distance?” Lanna - the oldest one among the lampades, or at least giving Uraraka such a vibe with how calm and collected she was - replies. “Hardly. Our lanterns work the best in the dark. And our hounds will be decimated with their arrows before they’ll manage to cross the river.”

Makes sense. It’s annoying, but it makes sense.

Uraraka was about to ask Yaoyorozu and Monoma for their ideas on how to disengage before they are interrupted by a horrid, terrifying scream followed by a similarly terrifying, fleshy crunching sound.

She looks over from behind her cover just to see the Rose Guard officer levitating around a meter above the ground… and then her spine breaking, her entire body bending 180 degrees backward with enough strength to crush both the armor and the bones underneath it, the malformed leftovers of the officer then collapsing onto the rocky ground.

What the fuck?

It took her a second to notice a figure charging at the Rose Guard squad from the side. Grimdark-looking plate armor, exposed face with some black tattoos and the most bloodthirsty expression that she had ever seen on anyone, cat ears and…

The Purifier?!

Despite something killing their officer in one of the most grizzly ways imaginable before they could even acknowledge the new threat, the squad reacted quickly. The archers stayed focused on the enemies on the other side of the river, keeping them pinned down, and the remaining six warriors faced the charging knight.

What followed was an absolute massacre.

The purifier charged in before her enemies could form a proper defense line, pushing one of their spears to the side with her shield all while colliding with the warrior that was holding it with enough momentum to topple her backward and break the line before it could even be formed.

She turns around instantly, doing a quick swirl around and somehow managing to turn her sword around in the process, delivering a skull-breaking hit with the hilt of her sword to the back of the head of the second Rose Guard warrior, the woman(?) collapsing into her knees and then promptly burying her face into the ground, completely unmoving.

It was about that time when Izuku decided to check up on Uraraka and ended up witnessing the massacre that followed.

Purifier was fast. Faster than the Rose Guards, although not by far. What really changed the fight into a massacre was that the khardic warrior didn’t give a shit about her own survival, fighting in a way that surpassed ferocity and went all the way into resembling a feral, rabies-driven dog. Or, in this case, a cat.

Second Rose Guard died when the purifier grabbed her sword partially by the hilt and partially by the blade, before using some forward acceleration martial arts to rush towards her opponent and guide the tip of the sword directly in between armor plates, instantly piercing through it and through the flesh underneath it.

Third Rose Guard died when they made a mistake of freezing in befuddlement when their sword bounce off the exposed head of the purifier harmlessly, the slight glow of the tattoos proving to them that she wasn’t wearing a helmet for a reason, the purifier instantly slicing through the woman’s throat.

Fourth Rose Guard died after the purifier jumped back and briefly pointed towards her with her sword, her arm glowing and a cluster of tentacles (fleshier yet just as dark as Blackwhip was) erupting out of it with speed that was hard for their eyes to follow, the target collapsing onto the ground while completely missing her head.

That left just the three archers behind, and their death was just as gory as that of the other ones. One of them had their throat torn apart by Purifier’s teeth, the supposed paladin spitting what looked like the woman’s trachea right into her face as she was collapsing onto the floor, unable to breath.

The second one ended up being toppled over and had their own face impaled onto the sword, the Purifier at this point having clearly won the fight (despite the bruises that she had to suffer from the blows that the Rose Guards managed to make connect with her) and having time to enjoy in some pointless brutality.

The third one was disarmed, strangled into unconsciousness and then dragged away by the Purifier. Who, before doing so, approached the broken corpse of the officer and…

Izuku can practically feel Uraraka gulping loudly as she observes the Purifier helping herself to what looked like the woman’s liver, torn straight out of her completely ruined body. Did that count as cannibalism? Was there some religious significance to it, or was the Purifier just this fucked in the head?

Half a minute later, the Purifier disappears in the forest, still dragging the unconscious Rose Guard behind her with one hand, while using the other to hold the liver that they were eating bit by bit. Completely ignoring the fact that she was practically covered in gore.

And with all that he knows about the Rose Guards, Izuku can’t help but wonder if she was going to enjoy what was going to happen to her.

He is also completely unsurprised when he can hear vomiting in the background. Both Yaoyorozu and Ashido clearly had enough of what they’ve just seen, although it was clear that Kaminari and Tokage have almost joined them.

Kirishima immediately rushed to check on Ashido. Monoma - despite how often they seemed to bicker - did the same thing to Yaoyorozu. How nice of him.

Izuku can also hear Uraraka mumble to herself how she won’t be in a mood to eat anything today. And he immediately makes a mental note to find a way to lift her mood. Maybe a date? He had an idea about it for a while now, and he had enough time before they’d come back to the Dungeon to set it up.

Anyway. He has to focus on the practicals for now.

Look I know that you’re all shaken a lot, but I think you should pick up the corpses and carry them back to the Dungeon, and two of them are currently busy drifting towards the sea.

So if one of you could pick them up before they leave the area, that would be great.

“Su-sure thing!” Tetsutetsu does his best to yell, but it’s clear that witnessing the gorefest on the other side of the river took his toll on him too. He then quickly begins to run after the corpses of the Rose Guards that Kaminari killed, before wading through the water, grabbing them and pulling them back to the shore.

“Why is one of them here?” Lanna damn near hisses the words to Uraraka, who turns to face her with a questioning look on her face. “Why is one of the khardics in this valley?”

“We have no idea.” Uraraka replies honestly. “She stormed into our Dungeon all of a sudden, cast some sort of spell at our Dungeon Lord but had it backfire on her, then he told her about the Ecstasy and Bloom forces in the area, and that was the last time we’ve seen her. She just ran out of the Dungeon and that was all. Until, errr, today.”

Lanna doesn’t seem happy about it. The other two lampades didn’t seem happy either. Uraraka decided to ask before Izuku requested her to.

“How much of a problem do you have with the khardics?” She asks, glancing at Lanna. “We get it that she seems to have a murderboner for the bad guys, but lampades are the good guys, right? Making sure that no one can desecrate a graveyard shouldn’t be a problem to her. If anything, that’s admirable.”

“They’re not militantly against us.” Lanna replies. She doesn’t vocally acknowledge the compliment, though Izuku is pretty sure that Uraraka earned herself some brownie points with that. “They just do not acknowledge the godhood of the High Gods, or any other god that isn’t their beloved Overtyrant. To them, everyone else is just his wayward servant. Destroyed if they’re evil, ignored but still treated as a lesser entity otherwise.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

It’s clear from the tone of her voice that the very concept of treating Mors as a lesser entity made khardic presence insufferable to Lanna. Then again, Izuku was ready to guess that most of the daemons would react similarly to their gods being belittled.

Maybe aside from some creatures of the Breathless Tide, their approach to their own god was a bit weird to Izuku and he wasn’t sure if he fully understood them as a phenomenon yet.

“You seem to be very knowledgeable about them.” Uraraka replies. The other two lampades looked clearly surprised with her words, that’s for sure.

“This tomb isn’t my first post in this world.” Lanna replies. “I joined it only about sixty years ago. A few centuries ago I guarded a cemetery in the Verkvenan Confederation, on the northern coast of Telya. We had some khardic visitors there.”

A few… centuries? And only about sixty years ago? Izuku can’t help but wonder about the daemonic perception of the passage of time. That had to be a fascinating subject. Especially as Lanna spent those sixty years in a tomb, doing next to nothing aside from some cleaning of the place, and it was still ‘only’ about sixty years.

Izuku would have gone insane out of boredom a hundred times over in the meantime. Every mortal would have gone insane in the meantime, in fact.

Then again, it was a problem for mortals because they were still beings of flesh. Daemons were pretty much eternal, right? Sixty years when compared to, say, a hundred years of a (sufficiently lucky) human being’s lifespan was a lot. But how much was sixty years when compared to eternity?

The lampades were alright with leaving their tomb and their friends(?) for a decade to serve the Dungeon, because to them it was probably an equivalent of having an eight hour shift. You usually didn’t bring your friends with you to work, but it’s not like this was a problem for anyone.

Which, naturally, opened up some slightly worrying yet fascinating questions about how long Izuku and the others were going to be alive. Perhaps the ability of their servants to eventually disconnect from the Dungeon and leave to have their own life elsewhere was so that they’d be able to have their own lives once they’d grow tired of eternity.

He hopes that Ochako and Himiko won’t get tired of it anytime soon. Izuku doesn’t want to be left alone with Tomura Shigaraki.

***

The brief skirmish with the Rose Guard has led to them earning nine [Rose Guard Warriors] with ETL of 25. In short, they’ve just got themselves an equivalent of several deathblades. That they could actually use outside of their Domain.

Oddly enough, they didn’t unlock their weapons and armors. Which seemed to imply that weapons and armors of daemons were a part of their very being. As yes, when they checked it out, they could spawn Rose Guards with the weapons that they’ve unlocked for them specifically, namely the spear & shield or longbow, with swords as side weapons in both cases.

They did unlock [Rose Steel IV], though. How did it work, exactly? Not the metal itself, but the whole daemon looting?

It clearly didn’t. They didn’t obtain any armors and weapons from the deathblades either. Which, again, made some amount of sense. Even physically manifested daemons seemed to bind with their weapons and armors, which were…

Well, now that Izuku thinks about it, those weapons and armors were literally physical manifestations of their spiritual weapons and armors. To use them against someone in combat was the equivalent of wearing someone’s skin and hitting someone else with a severed arm.

There could also be some deeper conceptual meaning in the whole thing. As in, in order to be able to use that for anything without any problems, you had to first stop those weapons and armors from being weapons and armors. Make them into something without direct conceptual connection with the daemon - so, for example, melt them into base materials.

Like, [Rose Steel IV]. Which was likely just steel but with some better attunement for the type of magic that Procacitas’ servants usually employed.

They also got themselves the [Rose Guard Barracks]. And oh, boy. They’ve actually put it somewhere for a quick test. Unlike the [Lairs] for less developed daemons, here they had to manually furnish the place from a series of unlocks that came tied to it.

Those unlocks weren’t available on their own. Which for once wasn’t something new. It was also a case with a number of other things, [Rooms] and [Lairs] alike.

For example, the same thing happened with the [Necromancer’s Laboratory], and in a smaller case, with places like the [Hamadryad’s Grove] where they could set up exactly how the tree would look like.

It could be set to furnish itself, but it clearly wasn’t a case for the Rose Guard. And probably for other creatures of this degree of intellect.

Unfortunately.

I

I’m never going to unsee any of this, right?

Yes.

And neither will I.

How the fuck did they manage to make fucking doors look suggestive

I think it’s the doorknob.

And the carving in the door itself.

Have you seen the beds

I decided not to look at the beds.

Good.

…?

I decided not to look too close at them but I’m fairly sure that some of the carvings include animals

…

Rapturous Ecstasy really is something else.

Yes.

The worst part was that most of the furniture looked absolutely beautiful. Works of art, almost. Except, they were a work of an incredibly perverse and downright obscene art. It was the equivalent of seeing a detailed painting of an obscene sexual act in the Louvre, drawn by Leonardo da Vinci.

Even if they could move stuff outside of the [Rose Guard Barracks] (and they were yet to find out if that was possible), Izuku can’t imagine anyone ready to furnish your room with this sort of furniture.

…

Aside from Mineta. And probably Toga.

Yeah, no.

***

They ended up placing [Gore Munchers] next. Their fighters were finally back after all. If something bad happened, they had a way to repel the Gore Munchers before they could cause significant damage to anything.

It didn’t turn out to be a problem.

They could pick up the [Gore Munchers] equipment, the situation operating just like the [Rose Guard]. They spawned a whole one as a test, with the default melee weapon in the form of the two-handed meat tenderizer hammer.

“Ghrrr!” The Gore Muncher tries to raise his hammer at Uraraka, but isn’t allowed to.

“Stop!” She yells, and the Muncher obediently freezes, the man (creature?) staring at its own arms that just refused to budge, clearly angry. “You have been captured by a Dungeon. You will serve it. Anything to say about it?”

He growls some more before speaking, clearly coming to terms with what he was just told.

“Feed me.” He says in a deep and somewhat gutullar way. “Feed me and I will serve.”

“That can be arranged.” Uraraka replies. “When we’ll be satisfied with your performance. What’s your name?”

“Ghh’yrak.” The creature says. It’s… it’s a really weird word. Then again, they’re a daemon from another world, right?

“From now on and until you’re ordered otherwise, you’re in charge of the Gore Munchers we place here.” Uraraka replies. “You will fight to defend the Dungeon, or outside it when we order you to. Even if it will be against others of your kind.”

“I will obey.” Ghh’yrak growls. He doesn’t seem to be awfully concerned by being told that they’ll end up fighting others of their kind. Everything as they expected.

Alright then, one problem dealt with. They can now spawn more of the Gore Munchers and have Ghh’yrak explain their situation to them.

Are we placing the Rose Guard somewhere?

… I thought that you didn’t want to see them?

I didn’t want to see what their dwelling looks like, nor do I want to know what they’re doing off-work

But it’s a firepower that we’ll definitely need sooner or later

I’m not very into it.

But we’ll probably end up having to do that, yes. Just… not now.

I have a date.

Normie

Yes, and I refuse to be ashamed of that.

***

Uraraka ended up stopping there on her way to the living quarters in order to help them spawn the Gore Munchers. Toga, naturally, hung around her the whole time. This means that they’ve reached their house on the Seventh Level after everyone else did.

This gave Izuku the time he needed to spawn there before they arrived and wait for them inside.

His reward was Uraraka staring at him wide-eyed and gasping loudly. It took Toga a second or two more to realize what she was looking at, and follow her eyes to find Izuku - and she, too, went wide-eyed, just staring at him in shock for a few seconds.

“E-err.” Izuku scratches the side of his head. “Uhm, I’m suddenly not sure if that was a good idea.” He says right before chuckling nervously, the scratching growing in intensity.

His clothes didn’t change. His looks didn’t change either. So what brought that reaction from them?

His ears.

His rabbit ears. He decided to experiment a little and manifest as a Dungeon Lord of another species.

And Ochako did tell him once that the top of his hood made him look like a green rabbit (worst of all, All Might did realize what it was supposed to be immediately, and guess what, that was embarrassing as hell).

It just made sense to do that, at least to him.

“Izuku, you’re sooo cute!” Himiko lets out, recovering from her shock first and running towards before grabbing him in a hug. “And you even have a pompon tail!”

“Eeep!” Izuku lets out as she grabs his tail all of a sudden. “Y-yeah, I do. I f-fifugre…”

It was supposed to be ‘figured out’ and then go to explain the logic behind his decision, but he failed to get to that before Uraraka hugged him too. And he failed to notice her thanks to Himiko occupying his attention for a moment.

“Mmmm…” She mumbles to herself quietly while burying her face into the side of his head. “I was exhausted after all that walking, and absolutely lost my appetite after seeing the purifier at work, but would you look at that? I’ve been instantly rejuvenated.”

“M-mission accomplished then.” Izuku stutters. Seriously, why was he losing his ability to speak to this degree in moments like this? “E-especially as Himiko l-looks happy as well.”

“I am!” Himiko replies cheerfully, burying her own head into him from the other side while hugging him. “Mmm, so soft.”

“And I… errr… prepared something of a… d-date for us.” Izuku says. “For me and you, O-Ochako, but H-Himiko is i-invited too, if you want her to be.”

Uraraka glances at Himiko, who gives her back some very convincing puppy eyes, making it clear that she wants to be there very, very much.

“Alright.” Ochako decides. “She’s invited. But that’s for later. For now, there’s something else for us to do. You know, this is surprisingly bold for you, Izuku.”

“I-it is?” Izukus stutters out.

“Mm-hmmm.” Uraraka hums while leaning forward and blowing him a kiss on the cheek before whispering into his ear. “You’ve come as a rabbit for a date with a wolf, here. And I guess that it makes me very… hungry.”

It’s absolutely adorable just how incredibly red this makes him go!

“And the other girl in the room is a cat.” Himiko says before blowing him a kiss on the other cheek. “A very big one. I guess that it’s all carnivores versus you for the evening, mrrrr.”

Somehow this makes Izuku go even more red. Oh, yes, Uraraka is feeling more and more lively by the second, and it’s all thanks to him.

***

“So I can do that?” Shigaraki asks just in case. It’s best to have that clarified before doing that, alright? It’s just being reasonable.

“Well… yes.” Lanna appears vaguely confused by the entire situation. Shigaraki was definitely not acting like she expected a Dungeon Lord to. It was bad enough that she just heard that the Dungeon has two Dungeon Lords, and was clearly confused about it. “Yes, you can do that.”

Less than a minute later, Shigaraki has his face licked by a gravehound, just as he is busy laughing cheerfully and ‘wrestling’ with the dog on the floor.

The dog who is clearly a good boi, even if only when you’re not a graverobber. Yes. This is happiness. Not some normie bullshit dates.