Lewd Dungeon, Chapter 198 (Patreon)

Chapter 198 – The Slime Pools

They were three, now.

That truth hurt more than Nudara Belkis cared to admit. Fighting their way through the Black Temple had been harder than she could have possibly dreamed. The ‘Penance by Corruption’ at each shrine was draining. The four women had gone in turns, sharing the load, but going through it still left her feeling as though she were a common whore, rather than a champion of the Goddess of Freedom.

Then there were the shrine challenges themselves. The first was the tamest one, where they had to kill some undead, but were only allowed to move a certain number of spaces on the grid-shaped field before getting held in place to simply accept whatever attacks came their way. Those trials had swiftly descended into worse and worse degeneracy, including some things that would haunt her soul.

And finally, the ‘reward’ and ‘progress’ challenges. The Demon was truly sick and twisted to come up with something like that. She had never felt so… used. The degradations that those rooms forced friends and comrades to do to each other were things that she would execute her own men for, if she found them doing such acts to even their sworn enemies. And they had simply been forced to endure it.

Grimtooth had had the worst of it, however. A Tier 2 warrior class was gifted with boundless stamina and endurance, but he was trained to endure in combat, not to hold up over hours in practicing the carnal pleasures. The fact that each room required a certain number of ‘fillings’, in each of them, only made it worse. Even a Tier 2 man was just a man, after all, and they were forced to rely on potions to keep him… producing.

When they’d finally managed to get to the final floor, and beheld the forces arrayed there, for a moment she had known despair. Before they could even begin fighting, they had to pleasure everyone on the floor. She’d known this, but she hadn’t even begun to imagine that there would be so many!

There were the two Succubi and their hellhound, of course, as the Guild had told them. And there were the prisoners chained to the pillars, creatures of the dungeon all, but still counting as creatures that would have to be serviced before the fight could begin. But there were more demons, of all the types they’d fought as they went through the Temple, thirty or forty of them in all. And they had to satisfy them all.

Grimtooth, bastion of the faith that he was, still was no match for a pair of succubi when it came to the carnal arts. He had managed to survive, if only barely, as the two monsters had their way with him, but then another, lesser succubus set her sights on him, and then another. She tried to aid him, but could not move, speared through on either end by one of the warrior demons’ rods.

At least he was still alive. He would be tormented for a year and a day, according to the dungeon’s message, held in the Breeding Halls to be used as experimental breeding stock, but he would be alive. And where there was life, there was hope, and room for the Goddess’s grace.

Yathrena had not been so lucky. The great hellhound, Bitchtaker, had claimed her towards the end of the prefight orgy, and had nearly broken her in two in taking her. When the actual fight started, the demonic canine had made short work of her, ending the priestess’s life in the matter of a couple bites, but not before she unleashed a dying blast of magic into him, taking the dog down with her.

Somehow, the remaining crusaders had managed to overcome the horde of demons, but their troubles did not end there. Sure, they had been given the ability to use magical items again, temporarily, but the moment they had stepped onto the next floor, they had been stripped naked by the floor’s dungeon laws. They were forced to run in the nude to three different shrines, in order to recover their gear.

All the while, they’d been hunted by plant creatures she recognized as being from the Atlantean worlds, all of them in Tier 2. That meant that the monsters, from here on out, would be far more dangerous to fight. Worse, it confirmed an old legend about dungeons, that there was some way for them to trade and share creatures between them.

It was the only idea that made any sense. Before the wave of ships her fleet had been a part of, there had only been two ships to visit Earth: the Ambassadorial Ship and a small scout vessel belonging to some bounty hunters. The Ambassadors, for all their faults in not hampering their holy mission, would never simply bring a bunch of non-native monsters to seed into dungeons. And the bounty hunters’ ship was too small for the task. That meant trade, of some kind, from dungeon to dungeon, through the System.

Fortunately, plant creatures are relatively slow, if not immobile, as a general rule. Once they knew what to look for, it was relatively easy for her experienced crusaders to make their way through the jungle. Fighting the gigantic plant-dragon creature was difficult, but they were able to handle it. After all, it wasn’t a REAL dragon.

That was where their luck had ended, unfortunately. When they had stepped through the portal from the jungle after killing the boss, they then found themselves in some kind of strange underground ruins comprised of stone chambers with watery pools in them, connected by tunnels. The architecture was Atlantean, according to Holad, who had spent some time on one of the Atlantean worlds, but there were clearly elements of the Demon’s hand in its design. The statue of an Atlantean woman wearing nothing but a collar with a chain running from it being choked as she was raped from behind by the Demon was evidence enough of that.

The stones in this ruin were rubbed smooth in places, as though something had worn them down over many years. Following one of these trails led them to the first of the monsters of the floor, a slime. Tier 2 slimes were almost unheard of, since few Tier 1 slimes ever survived long enough to evolve into the second tier, and higher-level slimes only spawned in places of intense magic, such as rifts into planes of pure energy. But such places were more likely to spawn elementals, rather than slimes.

These slimes were dangerous in their own right. Their acidic bodies were able of dissolving steel in moments. Their attacks were simplistic, but they possessed an almost animal-level intelligence, allowing them to respond to attacks with actual tactics. And they were fast, faster than one might expect from such simple creatures.

But they were manageable, with skill, tactics, and no small degree of raw power. The slimes were all in the lower-end of Tier 2. That was powerful, by the standards of Earth, which had only recently joined the System. Even on more established planets, it was a respectable level of power depending on the area.

The members of the Golden Host, however, were all in the higher reaches of Tier 2. The comparison between Level 1 of Tier 2 and Level 40 of Tier 2 was the same as comparing the two in Tier 1. These slimes were only a threat if they got careless.

The boss of the floor, however, was another matter entirely. It looked like the other slimes on the floor, but was far larger, being almost twenty feet wide, and just as tall. She did not doubt that its acid was just as strong as the originals, if not worse. What truly worried her, however, was the fact that she could clearly see that the creature was situated in a wide pool, and the only way to get down to it without flying was to pass through row after row of Cursed Slimes.

These Tier 2 slimes were formed from areas where negative psychic and magical energy pooled. The untold suffering of everyone who entered the dungeon and succumbed to the Demon’s twisted games no doubt provided an ample supply of the energies needed. The slimes behaved much like the breeder slimes like Captain Hentai on the first floor, seeking to penetrate and violate any creature that came too close. However, they did not breed with their victims.

No, instead of breeding, the Cursed Slimes absorbed thoughts of hope or other positive energies, and injected their victims with curses. These curses could be any number of maladies, making them run the gamut between annoying distractions, and deadly dangers, depending on how and when you got cursed. A curse of water breathing, for instance, would be very problematic considering that the only nearby pool of water currently had a massive slime moving slowly back and forth across it.

Thankfully, Cursed Slimes, once they had established themselves, were immobile, feeding on the energies that came to them, and not leaving their spot unless some power compelled them to. Scanning over the terraced rows leading down to the pool, she could see a few gaps, large enough for someone to, just barely, make it through without entering the reach of one of the Cursed Slimes. Turning back to her remaining crusaders, she asked, “Thoughts?”

Trueheart was the first to speak. “I believe we can wind our way through the gap. It looks to be wide enough to allow passage, single file, but even a step out of place would put us in reach of one of the slimes. I don’t know about you, but I’m still sore from all the poundings I took in the temple. I don’t need any more.”

Holad nodded slowly. “At least we got off luckier than Yathrena. Poor girl. The beast’s cock looked long enough to punch all the way through and come out her mouth. No wonder she couldn’t defend herself when the fighting started just after.”

Belkis cleared her throat, and just glared at Holad. The crusader had the decency to look sheepish, and turn her attention back to the task facing them. “The big slime, if it is anything like the others, will be weak to magic, but if it manages to envelop one of us, then I expect death to be almost instant. Best bet would be to attack at range, and hope it doesn’t have magic.”

Nodding to her subordinates, the Crusader-Champion said, “I agree. Thankfully, we can now use all the functions of our armor, and they’ve repaired themselves with the dungeon’s mana. We could fly over the Cursed Slimes, avoiding them entirely, if we wished.”

Trueheart shook her head. “The Demon is many things, but we can’t count on him being stupid, or ignorant, enough to leave a weakness like that.”

Holad looked around, and picked up a couple stones. “Let me try something.” She threw the first stone as hard as she could, just over the tops of the Cursed Slimes. It sailed forward until it hit one in the fourth rank, causing the creature to splatter with the impact.

Belkis laughed, and began grabbing for more stones. “Of course! Cursed Slimes are weak against bludgeoning and ranged weapons, but they usually have better natural cover than this ruin, so people never see them until it is too late! Clear a path, girls. We’ll walk down, and then deal with the big one!”

Five minutes later, they strode down the comfortable gap in the Cursed Slimes, until they were on the bottom level of the room. Each of them had traded their normal weapons for plasma repeaters. From the backs of their armor, golden metallic wings extended, making them look like the celestials the armor was patterned after. With their full power restored, they were far more confident in facing down this massive slime.

As one, they took to the air, and spread out, their weapons primed and ready. The slime stopped, as if sensing the magic used to allow them to fly. Belkis didn’t give it time, animal intelligence though it might have, to think of any tricks. With a yell, all three crusaders opened fire, sending balls of condensed plasma at the slime.

It should have been an easy victory.

Trueheart screamed a warning, as the black slime reacted. Massive tentacles lashed out, following the path of their shots. Belkis ducked, flying on instinct, as a tentacle speared through where she had been just a moment before. Holad, also, managed to evade the attack.

But Trueheart was just a breath too slow. By shouting her warning to her companions, she had delayed her own evasion by a fraction of a second. The tentacle wrapped about her ankle, and retracted quickly. The last Belkis saw of the Crusader was her screaming form being hauled into the black mass, and then she felt the party-bond break, signifying that she was, indeed, dead.

“NOOOO!”

Holad screamed, and began changing the settings on her repeater as she flew. The weapon began glowing a brilliant blue as it was overcharged. Then the blue was joined by gold, as Holad dumped her mana, touched by Pofmis’s grace and a desire for vengeance, into the weapon.

Belkis’s eyes went wide as she recognized what was about to happen. With all her remaining power, she threw up a shield of holy light around herself as she flew. The next instant, the pure light of a star descended upon the ruined chamber.

In the light’s wake, there was nothing. The entire room was scorched black with holy fire, the very dungeon stone melted and slagged in places by the ferocity of the attack. Belkis shuddered as her shield cracked, and then shattered, the area around the back wall that she had been thrown against the only area untouched by flames.

The boss, and the Cursed Slimes, were gone. In the middle of the place where the pool had been before it was boiled away was a large chest, black wood with golden trim, bearing the symbol of the Demon. Loot from the encounter, no doubt. Belkis didn’t care about any of that.

She was one, now.