Paul

"Hmm. By now, their window of activity should be just about over."

Perched on the cathedral roof, Paul gazed endlessly up at the sky and muttered to himself. Some people found the combination of a lich and a cathedral so contradictory that it somehow worked — Paul was not one of them. He had reduced the cathedral to a burned-out skeleton, leaving only the section he sat on intact.

And watching that scenery were two cardboard boxes.

"Serena, I know we purchased these items through me as an intermediary, but I have serious doubts about this box's effectiveness."

"Don't say that. These cost three thousand points apiece."

The boxes creaked in complaint. It was neither a loud nor a soft sound, yet the butterflies just above them settled peacefully on top of the cardboard as if they had never heard a human voice at all.

In other words, it was an object with the absolute worst camouflage color possible for a grassy environment — and yet the power dwelling in the box made the concealment hold.

There was just one problem.

"It was added to the shop after we visited the Forbidden Area, so I remain deeply suspicious."

"If we can use it, we use it. The fact that we made it this far without getting caught is entirely thanks to these boxes, isn't it?"

Faced with Serena's logic, Marie shut her mouth.

With Marie's skill, the detection magic blanketing the village ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠could have been dispelled — but it would have taken far too long.

And so Serena's duo found themselves facing yet another problem.

They had borrowed the shop's power to get this close, and yet…

"Marie, does that look doable?"

"Even with eightfold Bless, it looks difficult. The issue isn't the quantity of mana — it's the quality."

Marie ran a combat simulation in her head. Result: an eighty percent chance of defeat.

If the opponent had been pure brute force, maybe. But this was a mage. A lich, no less.

The number of available options ran into the dozens, and even if you killed him on the spot, he wouldn't simply die.

"The most viable approach is to find even one of the lich's life vessels and drive the Heavenly Law Sword into it. That would trigger a chain reaction and destroy the remaining divided vessels as well."

"…Which means we'd be letting this opportunity slip, doesn't it? When are we ever going to get a chance like this again?"

"Opportunity and ability must both be present. What we lack right now is ability."

Marie's words were sound. When opportunity came, ability was absent; when ability arrived, opportunity was gone. A common enough pattern in human life, and this was no different.

Even with the power of apostasy at their disposal, Serena and Marie were still fledglings. The job was beyond them.

"But that doesn't mean there's no way."

"You have a plan!?"

Marie startled and shot the question back at Serena. A path her own full computational power couldn't produce — and Serena had one? It was nothing short of a blow to her pride.

"I'm going to use an absolute higher concept of this world. And we're going to get a little help, too. So be extremely careful… and handle it with caution. Got it?"

"Success rate?"

"Zero or a hundred percent."

A gamble. But there was no falsehood in that confidence. Marie decided to place her bet on the hero who would save this world, just this once.

"So first, let's pray. If they don't lend us a hand from over there, the whole thing's a bust."

"Pardon?"

And so, from inside the box, Serena looked up at the sky and offered a prayer.

"Are even these familiars too much?"

Having no tongue, Paul clicked the tongue of his mind. The undead army he had sent out first had gone silent. The connection to the undead had been severed long ago, and even the familiars dispatched to confirm the situation had lost their link.

The first mission entrusted to him by the Demon God was in jeopardy — but he also understood the limits of such a mission all too well, and there was no further way to reach into the Forbidden Area.

At this point, I'll just monitor the entire perimeter of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Forbidden Area, and the moment anything is detected, concentrate fire—

Splat.

"Hm?"

Paul suddenly registered that something making a sticky sound had settled onto his shoulder.

Squrlk?

"A tentacle?"

He confirmed that what sat on his shoulder was a small pink tentacle.

Why is there a tentacle on my shoulder?

And having confirmed it was a tentacle, the emotion that rose in Paul first was not revulsion but puzzlement and strangeness. This was not a place where tentacles would inhabit. Moreover, in this village, his magic had turned every human into an undead and caused every other living thing to burst apart entirely.

Paul plucked the tentacle from his shoulder and brought it up before his eye sockets, which held only points of light.

Killing it would be simple. But he had grown interested in this tentacle.

Tentacles are fundamentally monsters… and yet this is holy power? No — something different.

Paul studied the tentacle carefully. He couldn't identify it for the moment, but it was clearly an anomalous specimen, so he decided to keep it for now.

Splat!

In an instant, a pink fluid — similar to the tentacle's body but brighter — shot from its tip and splattered across Paul's skull.

"…You insolent little thing. I'll make you regret becoming my research material."

Irritation flared hot in Paul. That some unidentified fluid had dared to spray one of the Four Heavenly Kings was deeply unpleasant.

"On my bones, which I bathe in milk every day and condition with aromatic oil containing anchovy powder!"

Paul bellowed at the tentacle. Unless it was an acid that melted metal, no poison would work on him — so all that came out was pure annoyance.

"Whoa. That's fucking wild."

"Agreed. All I can see is him throwing a complete fit."

Two mysterious voices suddenly spoke from behind him. Paul spun around in haste — and what he saw was something lunging to engulf him.

Squelch!

It was like pink candy before it hardened, and in an instant it overran Paul's robe and his entire body.

"Wh-what is this! You two, what on earth— Aha! One of you is the Saintess!"

Paul raised his staff and leveled it at Serena and Marie. But almost immediately, he sensed that something about the two of them was wrong.

"What the— why do you two look like that?"

Paul stared at their condition and doubted the two eyes that no longer even had dust left in them. First of all, they were sticky. From the tops of their heads to the tips of their toes, they were coated in liquid identical — no, exactly the same — as what had just been dumped on Paul.

And their faces were overflowing with tears, snot, and drool, while below that, breast milk and pussy juices gushed out in thick surges.

No — that wasn't all that was pouring out.

Tentacles?

Tentacles were slowly dripping from both women's pussies.

Squrlk? Squrrlk!

And those tentacles discovered the one Paul was holding, along with the tentacles dangling from the fluid coating his entire body.

At this point, Paul began to grow uneasy. His body was trembling; the tip of his staff was visibly shaking of its own accord; and what little dark energy he had left wouldn't gather properly.

It was almost as if…

Like I've been poisoned. Me! Archlich Paul, who has nothing but bones for a body!

Symptoms he had frequently observed in test subjects he had deliberately poisoned with extreme toxins for his experiments were now appearing in Paul himself, and he could not contain his shock.

"What in the world… I've been poisoned? What kind of poison is this! Confess at once—"

"It's an aphrodisiac!"

Marie stepped in front of Serena and answered Paul's question at full volume.

"…What?"

For a moment, Paul's thoughts froze so hard he could have sworn he heard his life vessel cracking.

"Aphro… disiac? The kind that causes sexual arousal?"

"Yes, that's correct."

"Ha — but I'm undead. A skeleton. And a man, at that?"

"Looking at you now, you appear to have quite the aptitude for being a female."

Clatter.

Paul, pale with shock (though being a skeleton, it didn't show), dropped the staff he was holding. And as the tentacles across his whole body moved more vigorously and sprayed more of their secretion, the aphrodisiac's output only intensified further.

Paul's mind grew less and less able to hold on to sanity.

"Th-this— this is unacceptable! I am one of the Demon King's Four Heavenly Kings — Archlich Paul (poor)! At the very least, I will take you down with me and preserve my honor!"

Paul shot into the air, black dark energy radiating from both hands.

Even with most of his power exhausted and his mind clouded by the aphrodisiac, the position of Four Heavenly King had not been won by a game of slap-jack — and that power was more than enough to reduce the surrounding area to ash in a single blow.

And Marie knew that power all too well.

But Marie was not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠afraid. Because her Saintess was currently praying with everything she had to obtain the power to oppose that black, foul darkness.

"…It's here."

Serena, who had been secretly praying while hidden behind Marie, opened her eyes.

And in the hands she had been clasping in prayer, there was now a darkness that held a vivid pink within it.

"DIE!!!!"

A mass of dark energy the size of a house was already falling toward Serena and Marie.

A moment of absolute crisis. But Serena moved her hand slowly, and at her fingertips she received the power of prayer.

The small sphere gathered at her fingertips looked infinitely frail next to the house-sized dark energy. But it was both magic and miracle at once — a force that held the power to change an individual, or, on a larger scale, the world itself.

And that power originated from a selfish, willful god who bestowed strength upon the mortal world purely for the sake of entertainment.

But one way or another, in this moment, that miracle manifested at Serena's fingertips.

Pitch black collided with pitch black. Everything went dark — a darkness so complete you could not perceive even your own existence, let alone an inch in front of you.

Within it, there was only the will to hate and harm others, and a pink light so sticky it defied description.

Malice and pink collided. No — they overlapped. No — the pink surpassed the malice and stretched beyond it to the other side.

And the world was consumed by pink light.

"Cough, cough — what happened… wait. Coughing? I'm breathing— wait, my voice sounds weird?"

Paul was considerably flustered. He was already dead, reduced to nothing but bones — he had neither the need nor the ability to breathe. And yet here he was breathing, and his hands were not the bones he had always seen but clean, soft-looking hands.

"Ohh, success. Pretty cute, huh?"

Paul suddenly confirmed that one of the women he had seen earlier was looking down at him. Cute?

A dizzying sensation hit him as he looked down at his own body. And there…

"Uwah? Uwaaaaaaaaah!"

Two massive mounds of flesh were covering his lower half.