Double Play
Her reason teetered on the brink of snapping. Her body twitched and shuddered with barely contained impatience.
Breathing out hot, ragged breaths that rose of their own accord, Rebecca asked,
"M-my love… are you truly, truly saying I may do whatever I desire?"
"Yeah. Do whatever you want, Rebecca."
"…Haha."
The invisible leash that had been holding her back came undone.
The desire and heat she had been barely suppressing were set free.
"Hahaha!"
Truly, for the first time in so long, Rebecca roared with laughter at the sheer sense of liberation.
At the same time her ears pricked up as she hunted for a target that could soothe the overflowing desire and heat now surging through her.
A suitable partner stood right in front of her, yet the desire and heat she would pour onto him had to be something different from what was rising now.
Clatter-clatter
Heeheehee!
Fortunately, suitable targets were already approaching of their own accord.
Rebecca pulled the hood of her cloak down low and melted into the darkness that blanketed the surroundings.
A short while later—
BOOM! THOOM!
CRACK! CRUNCH! Kyaaaaaah!
The bomber's explosions and the screams of the undead began to echo through the labyrinth.
At the endless string of blasts, Fortuna—who had been lying atop Jun's head—hid herself among his hair as if concealing herself in undergrowth and spoke.
"Jun-jun. The youngest seems reeeally excited."
"Of course she does. She's finally getting to vent more than ten years of pent-up frustration."
Ever since coming to Lemumni, Rebecca had never once been able to set off bombs to her heart's content. For someone so devoted to explosives that she was called the Bomber, it must have been pure torture.
"Even so, this is excessive. What does she plan to do when she runs out of bombs?"
"Then she'll just make more in the workshop."
"…"
"Still not happy about it?"
"…No, my lord. I have no complaints."
She clearly did. The way Dohwa sat on his shoulder, thoroughly sulking, made the thought rise unbidden.
Well, of course she wouldn't feel at ease. She's just been forced to keep a time bomb that could go off at any moment inside her own home.
On one of those cozy family days, Jun and his wives had held a family meeting to prepare for the future. Among the various agenda items had been the proposal to install a bomb workshop inside Dowonhyang for when labyrinth conquests dragged on.
Dohwa had vehemently opposed it.
Thanks to Fortuna's luck blessings and Rebecca's innate fortune, the chance of an accidental detonation during bomb-making was less than one in ten thousand—yet it was still not zero. For Dohwa, who had to raise Dowonhyang into a proper world of its own, that figure was utterly unacceptable.
Nevertheless, the meeting settled on installing the bomb workshop. Jun, Fortuna, and Rebecca had all raised their hands in favor.
Dohwa had looked thoroughly displeased with the decision, yet in the end she accepted it. As long as Jun—the true master of Dowonhyang—had agreed, she, who was merely the administrator, could only follow that decision.
"So when do you intend to install that monstrosity?"
"Right after this expedition ends. By then Uncle Lawrence should have secured a sturdy building we can use as a workshop."
It was currently the day after the uproar at the guild, and Jun and his wives were clearing the fifth floor of the labyrinth.
They had originally planned to wait a little longer before beginning the expedition, but—
"This big sister will handle all the cleanup, but having a proper justification makes my life a whole lot easier. So roll around a bit yourself, kid."
—the guildmaster's order that wasn't quite an order had forced them to hurry.
They had rushed so much that they hadn't even recruited companions to go with them, yet—
BOOM! KRA-KRA-BOOM!
"Hahaha! My love! More! Send me more!"
—it didn't seem like it would be a problem.
Jun watched Rebecca rampaging like a madwoman, snorted a quiet laugh, and dropped the soundproof barrier he had wrapped around them. Then, once a sufficient number of monsters had gathered after hearing the explosions Rebecca deliberately spread, he raised the barrier again.
"Rebecca, hold off on attacking for a bit."
"Hmm? Ah, planning to test that new magic you learned?"
"Yeah, that's right."
Rebecca, who had been frowning like an artist interrupted mid-performance, smoothed her brow at his agreement and put on an intrigued expression. Fortuna on his head and Dohwa on his shoulder likewise sparkled with curiosity.
With his wives' full expectations resting on him, Jun closed his eyes.
The contents of the magic book the guildmaster had given him flashed through his mind. When the final period that marked the end of the text passed, he stretched one hand forward and quietly intoned the title written on the book's cover.
Magic — Compression
The magic activated.
Yet it was quiet. It seemed as though nothing at all had happened.
Clatter-clatter
Heeheehee!
Only the clacking of undead bones and ghostly wails reached them, sounding almost like mockery.
"…"
Even so, Fortuna, Dohwa, and Rebecca simply watched Jun in silence. Not for a moment did they believe their beloved husband had failed the spell.
Then Jun clenched the hand he had stretched forward as if seizing something.
Once again, nothing appeared to happen.
No—it only looked that way.
Hummm!
Accompanied by a faint vibration, empty air in the middle of the battlefield began to swirl. The pressure of the vortex was so weak that no one except the caster could notice it, yet as it devoured the surrounding space and grew larger, the pressure steadily intensified.
Whoooosh!!!
"Uwaaah. Fo-Fortuna, save me!"
"Sister! Hold onto our husband tightly!"
Space compressed and compressed until the vortex finally transformed into a black hole. Everything nearby began to be sucked toward its center.
Clack! Clack! Clack! Crunch! Crunch!
Kyaaak! Grind! Grind! Grind!
Skeletons and wraiths that had been charging to feast on flesh and blood were pulled one after another into the black hole. Soft yet distinct sounds of things shattering and being ground to pieces rang out.
A short while later the black hole's pressure gradually weakened, as if it had reached saturation. Jun opened the fist he had clenched and once more quietly intoned,
"Pop."
Rumble!
No explosion occurred the way his utterance suggested. Instead, the spaces that had been compressed inside the black hole were released, shoving everything around them outward. It was merely a push, yet the force was incomparably more powerful than any bomb Rebecca had detonated.
Only then did Jun open his eyes. Even though the ground had caved in as if a missile had struck and more than half the monsters had been utterly wrecked, he still frowned in dissatisfaction.
"Jun, what's wrong? You're getting ugly. Smooth that face out, okay?"
"My lord, what could possibly displease you so? This humble one cannot understand."
"Agreed. It looks like it would one-shot most boss mobs. What's there to complain about?"
Fortuna smoothed out Jun's furrowed brow with her fingers as she asked. Dohwa and Rebecca likewise looked puzzled and agreed with her.
Faced with his wives' questions, Jun let out a long sigh and answered.
"The efficiency is absolute garbage."
He checked the state of his cores. None of the three had entered overheat, yet all were considerably overheated—despite having been activated with the massive efficiency boost provided by his near-superpower spatial affinity, his skills (Activation, Realize), and the support of top-tier triple cores.
No wonder it basically went extinct.
Spatial-attribute movement and defensive magic continued to exist despite the attribute's difficulty because of their usefulness and effectiveness. Offensive magic, however, had not fared the same. A little fire or water was more than enough to kill something. Using space for that was like slaughtering a chicken with a butcher's cleaver meant for oxen.
Was it a mistake to ask for offensive magic?
As one of the privileges of Special Protection Status, Jun had been granted the right to borrow one secret-level book from the guild library. He had never exercised that right until now, simply because the library contained no spatial-attribute magic books. There had been a few, but only the ones he already knew—Blink, Teleport, and Distortion.
He could have chosen a martial arts secret manual, yet at the time he had been craving offensive magic, so his hand never quite reached for them. After Carol reported his situation, the guildmaster had mobilized every connection she possessed as a member of the imperial family, as a Ranker, and as guildmaster to search for a spatial-attribute magic book. The result was the Compression grimoire he had received only yesterday.
She hadn't said so, but obtaining that book must have cost her considerable effort and expense. And yet the actual performance was this pathetic; he felt terribly sorry toward her.
"Jun, don't be too disappointed, okay?"
"My lord, there is no need to use all things in the world only in the prescribed manner. Please consider other methods of use."
"It will be extremely difficult, yet I am certain you can do it."
Having shared his feelings through the soul bond, his wives offered sincere comfort, advice, and encouragement. When his wives spoke to him like that, a husband could not keep showing a defeated face forever.
Jun shook his head, scattering the negative thoughts that filled it.
"Yeah. Let's think about it."
Then he imagined.
Other ways to use the magic.
He was confident.
Imagination was, after all, his specialty.
Lemumni was divided into five districts—east, west, south, north, and center. Among them, the western district was where establishments belonging to the shadows—taverns, brothels, gambling dens—clustered densely. Even within that district, there was a tavern located in the very heart of the west, a place that thugs, vagrants, and beggars alike hesitated to enter.
Creak! Clunk
Three figures wrapped tightly from head to toe in robes stepped inside.
"Wheeeew!"
"What brings pretty things like you here?"
"Hungry for a man? Then take off those stuffy hoods!"
"If I like what I see, this big brother will take full responsibility and send you straight to heaven!"
Hahahahaha!
The feminine curves that even thick robes could not fully hide set every person killing time inside the tavern to spouting filthy remarks in unison.
Thud. Thud.
Even people whose faces could stop a crying child dead would normally wilt under such jeering, yet the three paid it no mind whatsoever and simply walked toward a certain spot.
"Tch. They already had owners."
"Thought I was finally gonna get some meat after so long."
The crowd obediently let the three pass. Whether that was because of the chilly aura radiating from the trio or because of the people waiting for them, only they themselves knew.
"You're here."
"Sisters, could you hurry it up a little?"
"Scared coming all the way here? You should've said so. I would've personally held your hands and guided you. Hahaha!"
The hunter, the dancer, and the barbarian warrior seated at the table raised their cups in greeting. Perhaps because they had been drinking, their cheeks looked especially flushed. The barbarian warrior's cheeks, uniquely, were both bright red like a monkey's backside.
"Hmph! You dare show me dissatisfaction? You must want to die."
"I refuse to remain even one more minute in a filthy place like this, so state your business at once."
"Is it true that there is a way to punish those filthy things who wagged their tails at him and bring him back to us?"
"Calm down and sit first."
After seating the impatient trio at the table, the hunter pointed to the people sitting at the next table over.
"These friends will help you. They're good friends, so introduce yourselves."
Keh-heh-heh
At the hunter's introduction, the "good friends" wrapped entirely in black robes all lifted the corners of their mouths and began to laugh. The eyes that could be glimpsed between the folds glittered with an extremely ominous black light.