"Don't tell them that I call them that," Yunia casually adds and sips her tea.
Hana and Roxanne just stare at her with slightly smug smiles on their faces, pressuring her with their unwavering gazes, while the rest of the girls and I wait in silence, not explicitly participating but not giving her an easy way out. The Officers smell the shenanigans in the air, so they quickly follow our lead and also remain silent.
"I'm pretty sure they intentionally play up their foolishness, like a real clown would," Yunia comes up with an excuse.
But the pair of wives don't even flinch, demanding more.
And Yunia becomes slightly disconcerted. "They're my friends, okay?!" She exclaims and glares at them. "I truly care for them, and some amount of banter is expected."
The pair is finally satisfied and nod, allowing Yunia to leave the grilling seat.
Oritiki chuckles at our antics and remarks, "I applaud you two for making Lord Yulania confess all that without saying a single word."
"She knows that no slip up will be left unteased, so she had to keep talking. Otherwise, it'd only make things worse for her if we were allowed to speak freely," Roxanne puts it succinctly.
Yunia glares at her and immediately retorts, "Indeed, you opening your mouth only makes things worse, so be quiet!" Then she waves her hand snobbishly and casts [Silence] on her.
"She says that she could interrupt this spell at any time, but she'd rather not wound your fragile elven ego," Lina quietly announces.
Yunia stares at the little girl thoughtfully, determining whether or not she should be silenced too.
"Honestly, Lord Roxanne isn't wrong, we elves do have fragile egos," Silvano comments wryly, then Yunia waves her hand and silences him without even giving him a look, making him silently laugh out loud.
Lina frowns worriedly and matches Yunia's gaze with her gloomy eyes.
The innocent little girl pleads silently, then shrinks her pose cutely, feeling the pressure of the older woman's pensive gaze.
Lina tucks her silky hair behind her ears, revealing more of her face and making her lovely features more prominent, but Yunia narrows her eyes sternly, struggling to focus.
The petite angel parts her red lips, wanting to speak, but her shyness gets the better of her, and she blushes, not used to being the center of attention, but also because she's reading my thoughts, and she just loves when I fawn over her cuteness.
She smiles adorably and looks away as she rubs her hands embarrassedly, and that finally melts Yunia's heart. The elven ice queen undoes the [Silence] and does her best to ignore Roxanne's smug grin.
Lina's eyes meet Paraaone's, who's silently chuckling at her, and now she becomes quite flustered, ashamed of showing this side of herself to the Officers.
"Only someone like our Lords could play around like this inside a dungeon," Alcander casually remarks and takes another brownie.
Count yourself lucky that playing around is all that we're doing this time.
I send a reply back to the castle with orders for Osaria to speak with Ereia. We have enough elven nobles that are (supposedly) favorable to us that it won't be extremely painful to hold a feast, so we have to do it as soon as possible to begin building relationships with the rest of them.
The sexually harassing imp should have some good ideas on how to hold an appropriate feast, so Osaria will have a talk with her where they're both explicitly prohibited from fucking. My milf carries her pet summoned bird almost everywhere, so I'll know if she keeps her word or not.
Osaria nestles it between her breasts, then both she and Ereia take off their clothes. "If we aren't allowed to have fun, then you should at least suffer along with us," Osaria cheekily states, then they both spread their legs and start gently rubbing their pussy lips.
You slut… you've earned yourself a Ravaging for tonight.
I don't dare cut the sense sharing with the bird, so I require a few minutes to keep the dragon contained, then we finally move on.
I store the Trog's corpse in my "Items," because why not, and Alcander just stares at me wide-eyed, then he shakes his head and focuses back on keeping a steady jogging pace.
The monsters' slaughtering of each other is still ongoing when our bulldozer breaks through them, but the monsters mostly ignore us once we're past them.
It seems the Trog kept the carnivorous predators as minions, leaving it as the sole eater of the vegetation, which it promptly ate until there was barely anything left.
But after a while, the crystal infection comes to an end, and the flora returns to being "pure" because there's something else "protecting" it, something that required an army of predators to keep it at bay.
We encounter a tribe of hobgoblins, the evolved, more magical version of goblins (and with a striking resemblance to elves).
I glance at Yunia, and she doesn't even notice my stare, too focused on the enemies that we'll be fighting soon, so I breathe out in relief.
"The only danger should be the mages, so we should ensure that we kill every single one that we encounter," Oritiki soberly proposes.
"We might as well wipe out their village when we get there," I add.
"Burn everything? Without mages, they won't be able to control the flames," Roxanne innocently suggests. "I can even just collapse part of the cave on top of them."
"No, let's end it all quickly, and I also really don't like the 'collapsing' part," I retort with a frown.
Where did her recently acquired kindness go?
"It's reserved for those who aren't my enemies," she categorically replies through [Bind].
"Let's not use too much fire inside a cave," Lina concernedly requests, and Roxanne shrugs.
"I'll just choose one of the old, reliable monsters to summon," I assert, then I turn to Silvano. "You're not allowed to move away from the Companions unless it's to protect them from something."
His beautiful face is hidden behind his helmet, but I can see that he's grinning through the slit that reveals his pretty eyes, and my still horny mind fills in the rest of the image as he nods, making my boner a bit confused. Even though he did nothing bad, he still found a way to annoy me.
As we begin to fight the Hobgoblins, the Horns take flight, but Oritiki takes a seat on the elemental quadruped so that she can focus on managing them. Since we're moving at a hurried pace, she wants to make sure that no one gets left behind, so she'll keep a constant eye on their fellowship bond in case one of them is incapacitated by a stray attack.
We don't kill every single hobgoblin that we meet, so they manage to warn the main village, which quickly mounts a response to fight against us, but the bulldozer is unstoppable.
The village is surrounded by a square of rather short stone walls, and the small Hobgoblin army takes their positions along the side facing us. Most of them are archers, but there's a good amount of mages mixed in, though the seemingly stronger ones are concentrated at the center, above the flimsy-looking gate.
They have enough mages to carve fortifications in the stone floor of the dungeon, but it's all useless since most of us can fly while the rest of us can use a [Gate]. Up ahead, there's a field of pitfall traps, stake walls to funnel us through kill zones, and moats, while their stone walls even have crenelations to cover their ranged units, but it's all useless.
I cast [Dust Storm] on the center of the wall, and though the spell is instantly interrupted, it still blinds most of their ranged units for a few seconds, then the Horns take flight and charge the unaffected units at both ends of the wall.
Hana leads the charge towards the center, her shield up and Ciel's [Holy Spirit] inside her armor. I stick to her back, hiding with the help of [Ignorance].
We fly past the ambushers on the ground, who are lurking all throughout the field of traps, and we hear the plinking of their arrows and javelins hitting Hana's wings and our armor, but they're so flimsy that our [Wind Armor] is already enough to make them basically harmless to us.
Once we get close to the wall, I cast [Dust Storm] again, but the mana that I release reveals our position, and our [Rainbow Shield] flares as spells graze us, though we receive no damage.
Then large boulders are diverted by her [Wind Shield], and one hits her flank, making her veer off course.
I decide that it's a bad idea to land in the middle of them, so I order Hana to land us past their defenses, inside the village proper.
Their houses are mostly holes dug in the ground, but there are few that are made of cobble or have been magically raised from the ground with the monster version of [Earth Wall], so we have enough cover to not be instantly turned into a paste by their spells.
Once on the ground, I summon eight Zinotues, large, muscular, Bengal tigers with spikes where their stripes would be. They're adept at using magical electricity to attack, and they're also brutally fast.
The Zinotues charge out of cover, and they're immediately pelted by spells, but they survive and quickly reach the lines of Hobgoblins scrambling to protect their mages.
That's enough of a distraction, so I open a [Gate], and our men pour through.
The Companions immediately move out, a wall of [Wind Shield]s makes them immune to projectiles, and our court mages know how to lob spells over it with enough accuracy to hit the enemies in front of them. Alcander, specifically, lobs ballista bolts with his [Telekinesis], which isn't as destructive as the spells that mages of other magic schools at his level can cast, but its utility is undeniable.
The hobgoblins open the gates, and the ambushing soldiers outside the walls abandon their positions to reinforce the warriors inside. In total, they might have a few hundred combatants, and though we're severely outnumbered, they're still a thousand short of being a challenge for us.
The melee Hobgoblins shriek as they rush the Companions, who [Equip] javelins that they immediately throw to blunt their charge, then my girls leave their hiding spot and bolt forward, flying past the traps and hitting the back of the retreating Hobgoblins before they even notice their presence.
The golems open up a path as they wield huge boulders with [Telekinesis], then Aoi tramples through everything, right through the middle until she's facing the Companions again.
Before the Hobgoblins can spread out, the Horns finish off the ranged units on the walls and attack the main force, completing the encirclement.
There's a variety of Hobgoblin types mixed into their army. Simple Hobgoblin Mages, Earthshapers, Flameshooters, and Witch Doctors; specialized Swamp Ambushers and Shadow Tricksters; and even the tough Cursed Warriors along with a Chief. But none of them make a difference.
The air is filled with the scent of Hobgoblin blood, shit, and piss as they're crushed like ants. Their death screams are the only sound that can rise above the cacophony created by our combined attacks. As the battle continues, a river of blood forms under our feet as they're slaughtered to the last.
"You are now level fifty-nine."
But that isn't enough. Though this doesn't seem to be a Breeder-type village since they lack poorly-imitated humanoid technology, they must not be allowed to leave the dungeon and start anew.
After the combatants are dead, we turn our weapons on the village itself and continue the massacre.
I don't feel like bathing in blood, so I just summon a few more orcs with the rest of my MP and let them loose while I rest. I also don't care about soaking up Experience, so I move away from the village, and the girls follow me to keep me company.
After my weapons and armor are clean, I seek out Alissa to recharge my batteries.
I take my gauntlets off and interlace my claws with her fingers, then I rest my head on her shoulder, taking care to not hit her with my horns.
"How are you feeling?" She gently asks.
I wrinkle my nose as I answer, "The dragon is sleeping, so I feel a bit tired, but at least I can't smell the stench of the battlefield anymore." Then I kiss her neck and softly ask, "How about you?"
"I'm not proud of this, but I think I'm getting used to this sort of smell." She chuckles and sighs tiredly.
I give her a sympathetic look and kiss her neck again, then her waist twitches as her wagging tail pleads to be freed from her armor.
I'm not the only one suffering right now, so I turn to the other girls and let my eyes repeat my question.
"Fine, and a bit hungry," Aoi answers first.
I resummon an orc and task it with finding the Hobgoblin's Chief's body and a few of the more rare mage sub-types.
"Thank you, husband," she says with a sultry, low tone that, combined with her phrasing, sends shivers down my spine. "The human thought you'd like it if I used that word."
Unlike me, whose dragon and human are two sides of the same coin, it seems like Aoi has "grown" a human inside her, which might be why she hasn't become a weredragon, too.
"The human was right," I coo in return, then I turn to the other girls.
They're all okay, but they're also feeling a bit tired. Today was just easy battles for us, so our nerves aren't particularly frayed.
Then I extend my claws towards Lina, giving her an invitation that she immediately takes, and gently caress her head. "But you did so well today that you need a reward."
She lifts her gloomy eyes up to me, then immediately lowers them again once she sees my dazzling grin, her chest bursting with happiness (her thoughts).
"The 'flying dwarf' spectacle was amazing, indeed," Roxanne casually teases.
"But I don't know what to ask for," Lina quietly replies, completely ignoring Roxanne, then she leans her head against my chest.
I start to think of things she might like, and then a very selfish idea comes to me.
"How about a date?" I suggest, but her first reaction is just to blink blankly at me, so I hurriedly add, "An afternoon with just me and you, doing whatever you want."
Her first thought is lewd stuff, which makes me a bit proud of her, but then she blushes and starts thinking about it seriously.
"We've had our own 'dates,' too, but you rarely have an opportunity to spend time with just you and Wolfy," Ciel encourages her.
Lina nods in understanding, then looks up to me and softly asks, "When?"
"Tomorrow afternoon," I happily answer.
"We have a summit with the Crown Lords tomorrow afternoon," Yunia interjects.
"It starts near dusk, so we can just have our date right before lunch." I'll be throwing all the responsibility on Yunia's shoulders, but Lina deserves her date.
"I want a date, too!" Roxanne suddenly chimes in once she realizes that we've also never had one.
I'm caught off-guard and awkwardly suggest, "How about a day after Lina's?"
The intense happiness that Roxanne feels draws out a dazzling smile to grace her gorgeous face, but it also makes me feel a bit guilty about how we hadn't arranged this for so long.
After everything is dead, and Aoi's gotten to eat a few monster bodies whole, we continue our dive towards the (hopefully) last section.
The divine mana coming from the core quickly becomes noticeable to me, and its incredibly alluring "flavor" is almost intoxicating. Ciel is also a bit affected by it, but she just feels something very muted that calms her instead of stimulating her like it does with me.
The monsters here quickly grow in size and become heavily magical, then we find the monster that the Crystal Trog started as. The average Trog is a brown, fat turtle and frog mix that grows rocks and mushrooms on its back as a form of protection and spits corrosive poison at anything that gets too close.
It's quite agile considering its body size and generally keeps its distance from us unless it's enraged or too old (which makes them become permanently enraged once they meet a humanoid).
The flora also grows in size along with the monsters, becoming a forest of mushrooms and weird, glowing, dangerous-looking plants. It's possible that this is where the Hobgoblins got the small amount of flimsy "wood" that they had.
But just as the "power level" of the monsters grows to an interesting level for us, we reach the end of the dungeon. We see a wall of raw stone being slowly dissolved by an uncountable number of black, twitching tentacles, which are all directly connected to the dungeon's core. Since this dungeon isn't a pocket dimension, it has to physically bore through the earth to expand.
"Hey, that's kind of sexy," Roxanne remarks absentmindedly while staring at the tentacles, making Ciel blush.
Because it's forbidden for the servants of Lords to be present for the destruction of a core so that they don't accidentally receive the "True Noble" title, only the girls, the golems, and I continue on.
The weird forest suddenly ends, allowing us to see the bottom of the wall. Ahead of us, there's a three-meter tall, naked, ugly, ogre-like, gray monster that doesn't have genitals. It wields a simple club of stone as tall as Hana and stands as still as a statue, its beady little eyes the only things that tell us that it's alive from how they're following our every move.
This is the dungeon's Guardian, a type of monster that's common in most dungeons, and its only purpose is to guard the core. Its main characteristic is that it's a mana solidification, and it's fed directly with the core's mana, so if we destroy the core, the Guardian will die instantly.
The Holly above us gives us sight of the core, which is hidden behind the Guardian, though it's partially obscured by the mass of tentacles connected to it. The pure black orb is quite beautiful, as it has no reflection, but I have no patience to admire it further.
Roxanne simply casts [Explosion] on it, and it shatters like glass, then the tendrils and the Guardian explode in a shower of fake flesh and blood.
I raise a cover for us with [Earth Wall], but the fake matter quickly dissipates into smoke, disappearing without leaving a single trace behind.
We get a burst of Experience, but this dungeon was so young that we don't even level up from it.
I sigh and stretch as I relax, then we start to notice the light from the glowing plants gradually dimming. Without the core feeding this ecosystem, everything will soon die from starvation. Before we leave, we take a [Gate] to the surface, where Alcander and the mages collapse the entrance of the dungeon so that nothing will get out.
"Alright, let's go back home," I order tiredly.
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"Don't tell them that I call them that," Yunia casually adds and sips her tea.
Hana and Roxanne just stare at her with slightly smug smiles on their faces, pressuring her with their unwavering gazes, while the rest of the girls and I wait in silence, not explicitly participating but not giving her an easy way out. The Officers smell the shenanigans in the air, so they quickly follow our lead and also remain silent.
"I'm pretty sure they intentionally play up their foolishness, like a real clown would," Yunia comes up with an excuse.
But the pair of wives don't even flinch, demanding more.
And Yunia becomes slightly disconcerted. "They're my friends, okay?!" She exclaims and glares at them. "I truly care for them, and some amount of banter is expected."
The pair is finally satisfied and nod, allowing Yunia to leave the grilling seat.
Oritiki chuckles at our antics and remarks, "I applaud you two for making Lord Yulania confess all that without saying a single word."
"She knows that no slip up will be left unteased, so she had to keep talking. Otherwise, it'd only make things worse for her if we were allowed to speak freely," Roxanne puts it succinctly.
Yunia glares at her and immediately retorts, "Indeed, you opening your mouth only makes things worse, so be quiet!" Then she waves her hand snobbishly and casts [Silence] on her.
"She says that she could interrupt this spell at any time, but she'd rather not wound your fragile elven ego," Lina quietly announces.
Yunia stares at the little girl thoughtfully, determining whether or not she should be silenced too.
"Honestly, Lord Roxanne isn't wrong, we elves do have fragile egos," Silvano comments wryly, then Yunia waves her hand and silences him without even giving him a look, making him silently laugh out loud.
Lina frowns worriedly and matches Yunia's gaze with her gloomy eyes.
The innocent little girl pleads silently, then shrinks her pose cutely, feeling the pressure of the older woman's pensive gaze.
Lina tucks her silky hair behind her ears, revealing more of her face and making her lovely features more prominent, but Yunia narrows her eyes sternly, struggling to focus.
The petite angel parts her red lips, wanting to speak, but her shyness gets the better of her, and she blushes, not used to being the center of attention, but also because she's reading my thoughts, and she just loves when I fawn over her cuteness.
She smiles adorably and looks away as she rubs her hands embarrassedly, and that finally melts Yunia's heart. The elven ice queen undoes the [Silence] and does her best to ignore Roxanne's smug grin.
Lina's eyes meet Paraaone's, who's silently chuckling at her, and now she becomes quite flustered, ashamed of showing this side of herself to the Officers.
"Only someone like our Lords could play around like this inside a dungeon," Alcander casually remarks and takes another brownie.
Count yourself lucky that playing around is all that we're doing this time.
I send a reply back to the castle with orders for Osaria to speak with Ereia. We have enough elven nobles that are (supposedly) favorable to us that it won't be extremely painful to hold a feast, so we have to do it as soon as possible to begin building relationships with the rest of them.
The sexually harassing imp should have some good ideas on how to hold an appropriate feast, so Osaria will have a talk with her where they're both explicitly prohibited from fucking. My milf carries her pet summoned bird almost everywhere, so I'll know if she keeps her word or not.
Osaria nestles it between her breasts, then both she and Ereia take off their clothes. "If we aren't allowed to have fun, then you should at least suffer along with us," Osaria cheekily states, then they both spread their legs and start gently rubbing their pussy lips.
You slut… you've earned yourself a Ravaging for tonight.
I don't dare cut the sense sharing with the bird, so I require a few minutes to keep the dragon contained, then we finally move on.
I store the Trog's corpse in my "Items," because why not, and Alcander just stares at me wide-eyed, then he shakes his head and focuses back on keeping a steady jogging pace.
The monsters' slaughtering of each other is still ongoing when our bulldozer breaks through them, but the monsters mostly ignore us once we're past them.
It seems the Trog kept the carnivorous predators as minions, leaving it as the sole eater of the vegetation, which it promptly ate until there was barely anything left.
But after a while, the crystal infection comes to an end, and the flora returns to being "pure" because there's something else "protecting" it, something that required an army of predators to keep it at bay.
We encounter a tribe of hobgoblins, the evolved, more magical version of goblins (and with a striking resemblance to elves).
I glance at Yunia, and she doesn't even notice my stare, too focused on the enemies that we'll be fighting soon, so I breathe out in relief.
"The only danger should be the mages, so we should ensure that we kill every single one that we encounter," Oritiki soberly proposes.
"We might as well wipe out their village when we get there," I add.
"Burn everything? Without mages, they won't be able to control the flames," Roxanne innocently suggests. "I can even just collapse part of the cave on top of them."
"No, let's end it all quickly, and I also really don't like the 'collapsing' part," I retort with a frown.
Where did her recently acquired kindness go?
"It's reserved for those who aren't my enemies," she categorically replies through [Bind].
"Let's not use too much fire inside a cave," Lina concernedly requests, and Roxanne shrugs.
"I'll just choose one of the old, reliable monsters to summon," I assert, then I turn to Silvano. "You're not allowed to move away from the Companions unless it's to protect them from something."
His beautiful face is hidden behind his helmet, but I can see that he's grinning through the slit that reveals his pretty eyes, and my still horny mind fills in the rest of the image as he nods, making my boner a bit confused. Even though he did nothing bad, he still found a way to annoy me.
As we begin to fight the Hobgoblins, the Horns take flight, but Oritiki takes a seat on the elemental quadruped so that she can focus on managing them. Since we're moving at a hurried pace, she wants to make sure that no one gets left behind, so she'll keep a constant eye on their fellowship bond in case one of them is incapacitated by a stray attack.
We don't kill every single hobgoblin that we meet, so they manage to warn the main village, which quickly mounts a response to fight against us, but the bulldozer is unstoppable.
The village is surrounded by a square of rather short stone walls, and the small Hobgoblin army takes their positions along the side facing us. Most of them are archers, but there's a good amount of mages mixed in, though the seemingly stronger ones are concentrated at the center, above the flimsy-looking gate.
They have enough mages to carve fortifications in the stone floor of the dungeon, but it's all useless since most of us can fly while the rest of us can use a [Gate]. Up ahead, there's a field of pitfall traps, stake walls to funnel us through kill zones, and moats, while their stone walls even have crenelations to cover their ranged units, but it's all useless.
I cast [Dust Storm] on the center of the wall, and though the spell is instantly interrupted, it still blinds most of their ranged units for a few seconds, then the Horns take flight and charge the unaffected units at both ends of the wall.
Hana leads the charge towards the center, her shield up and Ciel's [Holy Spirit] inside her armor. I stick to her back, hiding with the help of [Ignorance].
We fly past the ambushers on the ground, who are lurking all throughout the field of traps, and we hear the plinking of their arrows and javelins hitting Hana's wings and our armor, but they're so flimsy that our [Wind Armor] is already enough to make them basically harmless to us.
Once we get close to the wall, I cast [Dust Storm] again, but the mana that I release reveals our position, and our [Rainbow Shield] flares as spells graze us, though we receive no damage.
Then large boulders are diverted by her [Wind Shield], and one hits her flank, making her veer off course.
I decide that it's a bad idea to land in the middle of them, so I order Hana to land us past their defenses, inside the village proper.
Their houses are mostly holes dug in the ground, but there are few that are made of cobble or have been magically raised from the ground with the monster version of [Earth Wall], so we have enough cover to not be instantly turned into a paste by their spells.
Once on the ground, I summon eight Zinotues, large, muscular, Bengal tigers with spikes where their stripes would be. They're adept at using magical electricity to attack, and they're also brutally fast.
The Zinotues charge out of cover, and they're immediately pelted by spells, but they survive and quickly reach the lines of Hobgoblins scrambling to protect their mages.
That's enough of a distraction, so I open a [Gate], and our men pour through.
The Companions immediately move out, a wall of [Wind Shield]s makes them immune to projectiles, and our court mages know how to lob spells over it with enough accuracy to hit the enemies in front of them. Alcander, specifically, lobs ballista bolts with his [Telekinesis], which isn't as destructive as the spells that mages of other magic schools at his level can cast, but its utility is undeniable.
The hobgoblins open the gates, and the ambushing soldiers outside the walls abandon their positions to reinforce the warriors inside. In total, they might have a few hundred combatants, and though we're severely outnumbered, they're still a thousand short of being a challenge for us.
The melee Hobgoblins shriek as they rush the Companions, who [Equip] javelins that they immediately throw to blunt their charge, then my girls leave their hiding spot and bolt forward, flying past the traps and hitting the back of the retreating Hobgoblins before they even notice their presence.
The golems open up a path as they wield huge boulders with [Telekinesis], then Aoi tramples through everything, right through the middle until she's facing the Companions again.
Before the Hobgoblins can spread out, the Horns finish off the ranged units on the walls and attack the main force, completing the encirclement.
There's a variety of Hobgoblin types mixed into their army. Simple Hobgoblin Mages, Earthshapers, Flameshooters, and Witch Doctors; specialized Swamp Ambushers and Shadow Tricksters; and even the tough Cursed Warriors along with a Chief. But none of them make a difference.
The air is filled with the scent of Hobgoblin blood, shit, and piss as they're crushed like ants. Their death screams are the only sound that can rise above the cacophony created by our combined attacks. As the battle continues, a river of blood forms under our feet as they're slaughtered to the last.
"You are now level fifty-nine."
But that isn't enough. Though this doesn't seem to be a Breeder-type village since they lack poorly-imitated humanoid technology, they must not be allowed to leave the dungeon and start anew.
After the combatants are dead, we turn our weapons on the village itself and continue the massacre.
I don't feel like bathing in blood, so I just summon a few more orcs with the rest of my MP and let them loose while I rest. I also don't care about soaking up Experience, so I move away from the village, and the girls follow me to keep me company.
After my weapons and armor are clean, I seek out Alissa to recharge my batteries.
I take my gauntlets off and interlace my claws with her fingers, then I rest my head on her shoulder, taking care to not hit her with my horns.
"How are you feeling?" She gently asks.
I wrinkle my nose as I answer, "The dragon is sleeping, so I feel a bit tired, but at least I can't smell the stench of the battlefield anymore." Then I kiss her neck and softly ask, "How about you?"
"I'm not proud of this, but I think I'm getting used to this sort of smell." She chuckles and sighs tiredly.
I give her a sympathetic look and kiss her neck again, then her waist twitches as her wagging tail pleads to be freed from her armor.
I'm not the only one suffering right now, so I turn to the other girls and let my eyes repeat my question.
"Fine, and a bit hungry," Aoi answers first.
I resummon an orc and task it with finding the Hobgoblin's Chief's body and a few of the more rare mage sub-types.
"Thank you, husband," she says with a sultry, low tone that, combined with her phrasing, sends shivers down my spine. "The human thought you'd like it if I used that word."
Unlike me, whose dragon and human are two sides of the same coin, it seems like Aoi has "grown" a human inside her, which might be why she hasn't become a weredragon, too.
"The human was right," I coo in return, then I turn to the other girls.
They're all okay, but they're also feeling a bit tired. Today was just easy battles for us, so our nerves aren't particularly frayed.
Then I extend my claws towards Lina, giving her an invitation that she immediately takes, and gently caress her head. "But you did so well today that you need a reward."
She lifts her gloomy eyes up to me, then immediately lowers them again once she sees my dazzling grin, her chest bursting with happiness (her thoughts).
"The 'flying dwarf' spectacle was amazing, indeed," Roxanne casually teases.
"But I don't know what to ask for," Lina quietly replies, completely ignoring Roxanne, then she leans her head against my chest.
I start to think of things she might like, and then a very selfish idea comes to me.
"How about a date?" I suggest, but her first reaction is just to blink blankly at me, so I hurriedly add, "An afternoon with just me and you, doing whatever you want."
Her first thought is lewd stuff, which makes me a bit proud of her, but then she blushes and starts thinking about it seriously.
"We've had our own 'dates,' too, but you rarely have an opportunity to spend time with just you and Wolfy," Ciel encourages her.
Lina nods in understanding, then looks up to me and softly asks, "When?"
"Tomorrow afternoon," I happily answer.
"We have a summit with the Crown Lords tomorrow afternoon," Yunia interjects.
"It starts near dusk, so we can just have our date right before lunch." I'll be throwing all the responsibility on Yunia's shoulders, but Lina deserves her date.
"I want a date, too!" Roxanne suddenly chimes in once she realizes that we've also never had one.
I'm caught off-guard and awkwardly suggest, "How about a day after Lina's?"
The intense happiness that Roxanne feels draws out a dazzling smile to grace her gorgeous face, but it also makes me feel a bit guilty about how we hadn't arranged this for so long.
After everything is dead, and Aoi's gotten to eat a few monster bodies whole, we continue our dive towards the (hopefully) last section.
The divine mana coming from the core quickly becomes noticeable to me, and its incredibly alluring "flavor" is almost intoxicating. Ciel is also a bit affected by it, but she just feels something very muted that calms her instead of stimulating her like it does with me.
The monsters here quickly grow in size and become heavily magical, then we find the monster that the Crystal Trog started as. The average Trog is a brown, fat turtle and frog mix that grows rocks and mushrooms on its back as a form of protection and spits corrosive poison at anything that gets too close.
It's quite agile considering its body size and generally keeps its distance from us unless it's enraged or too old (which makes them become permanently enraged once they meet a humanoid).
The flora also grows in size along with the monsters, becoming a forest of mushrooms and weird, glowing, dangerous-looking plants. It's possible that this is where the Hobgoblins got the small amount of flimsy "wood" that they had.
But just as the "power level" of the monsters grows to an interesting level for us, we reach the end of the dungeon. We see a wall of raw stone being slowly dissolved by an uncountable number of black, twitching tentacles, which are all directly connected to the dungeon's core. Since this dungeon isn't a pocket dimension, it has to physically bore through the earth to expand.
"Hey, that's kind of sexy," Roxanne remarks absentmindedly while staring at the tentacles, making Ciel blush.
Because it's forbidden for the servants of Lords to be present for the destruction of a core so that they don't accidentally receive the "True Noble" title, only the girls, the golems, and I continue on.
The weird forest suddenly ends, allowing us to see the bottom of the wall. Ahead of us, there's a three-meter tall, naked, ugly, ogre-like, gray monster that doesn't have genitals. It wields a simple club of stone as tall as Hana and stands as still as a statue, its beady little eyes the only things that tell us that it's alive from how they're following our every move.
This is the dungeon's Guardian, a type of monster that's common in most dungeons, and its only purpose is to guard the core. Its main characteristic is that it's a mana solidification, and it's fed directly with the core's mana, so if we destroy the core, the Guardian will die instantly.
The Holly above us gives us sight of the core, which is hidden behind the Guardian, though it's partially obscured by the mass of tentacles connected to it. The pure black orb is quite beautiful, as it has no reflection, but I have no patience to admire it further.
Roxanne simply casts [Explosion] on it, and it shatters like glass, then the tendrils and the Guardian explode in a shower of fake flesh and blood.
I raise a cover for us with [Earth Wall], but the fake matter quickly dissipates into smoke, disappearing without leaving a single trace behind.
We get a burst of Experience, but this dungeon was so young that we don't even level up from it.
I sigh and stretch as I relax, then we start to notice the light from the glowing plants gradually dimming. Without the core feeding this ecosystem, everything will soon die from starvation. Before we leave, we take a [Gate] to the surface, where Alcander and the mages collapse the entrance of the dungeon so that nothing will get out.
"Alright, let's go back home," I order tiredly.
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