Double Play
“All of you! Fortify your defenses and wait for the right moment!”
“Ugh! Sally, Rose. Do as the Hunter says. If they're casting large-scale debuff magic at this intensity, they'll collapse soon enough. The moment the magic ends, pour on the attacks!”
Gritting their teeth against the space crushing down on their entire bodies, the Hunter and Betty barked orders at their party members. Following those commands, the others poured every ability they possessed into hardening their defenses, bracing for an assault that could come at any second.
Excellent choice.
Jun gave them genuine credit for it. They were enemies, yet their response was textbook—model and effective, even by his standards.
If their opponent weren't me, it might even have worked.
Still, a quiet laugh stirred in one corner of his mind. They had completely failed to grasp what their opponent was actually capable of.
The premise itself is wrong.
Because the pressure was hitting everyone at once, they had mistaken it for large-scale magic. In reality, Heavenly Demon Descent Step was being applied to each individual in the absolute minimum range possible. Almost no waste. The mana cost stayed modest. The trade-off was a monstrous spike in the mental strain required for control—enough to drop an ordinary mage on the spot. But Jun had the trait Endless Mental Power. No matter how much mental energy the technique burned, it never became a problem. Exaggerating only a little, he could keep it up all day.
Can't they see their surroundings?
If they had spared even a moment of calm observation, they would have noticed at once that the range of Heavenly Demon Descent Step was limited strictly to them. The fact that they still hadn't realized it was excellent news for Jun. It meant they had no room left to breathe. To strip that much composure from Green-rank fighters… the modification to the magic had been a complete success. He had wanted to keep it as a mainstay technique if possible, so this was a genuine relief.
Come to think of it, he really liked the name he had given the skill. Should he name the next one in a similar style? Maybe even rebrand Railgun while he was at it—Heavenly Demon Death Beam?
Tempting, but I'll think about it later.
Right now it was time to take responsibility for the spark he had provided. Compensation would be simple: the punishment of the sinners standing right in front of him.
“Dohwa, Rebecca. Can the two of you handle them? Just hold them off—and the debuff will keep going the whole time.”
He would have preferred to punish the sinners himself, but unfortunately that no longer looked possible.
“Grrrr!”
“Mooooo!”
The black-robed figures had finished their transformations. They had completely shed human form and become pure monsters.
“Of course, my lord. Easier than lying down and eating rice cakes.”
“Darling, you seem to be underestimating me. We may be outnumbered, but I am not so weak that I would lose to people who only just reached Green rank.”
Dohwa nodded with a faint smile. Rebecca grumbled as if her pride had been pricked.
“Then I'll leave them to you.”
Jun immediately entrusted the sinners' punishment to the two of them. He was not entirely free of worry, yet as their husband he had no other choice. Objectively speaking, there was no need to worry at all. Dohwa's true nature was that of a divine beast—the mother of the world itself—charged with nurturing and protecting it, and divine beasts possessed power to match. That power scaled with their master's strength, of course, but at the very least she could casually ignore a full rank of difference. Rebecca lacked Dohwa's racial advantage, yet the long lifespan of a dark elf, her own passion (or rather, madness), and the performance of her dual cores had forged a strength no one could dismiss. Her rank was still only Green, but she stood at the very tip of that tier, ready to break through at any moment. The combination of her bombs and the traits attached to her psychic power was strong enough to make even Fortuna blanch. There was no way women like that would lose to people who had clawed their way to Green rank through nothing but filthy shortcuts.
Shing—
After repeating those objective facts to himself, Jun drew Firmus and put distance between himself and the two women, drawing the monsters' attention away from them. Fortunately the creatures did exactly as he intended: their gazes left the women and swung toward him instead.
“Jun, what are we going to do? Want to fuse for the first time in a while? Hmm?”
Having received no mention of herself, Fortuna had naturally followed him. Now she flushed, eyes darting, hands clasped behind her back as she swayed and asked the question. Embarrassed, yet clearly wanting it. He knew this was no time for such things, yet the gesture was so adorable that for a moment he simply stared, lost.
“Jun?”
“Ah—yeah. Do you want to, Fortuna? Fuse?”
“Uuu… being naked is embarrassing, but the feeling of becoming one with you is so good… yes. I want to do it again.”
She whimpered in embarrassment, then, apparently afraid he would refuse if she stayed silent, finally spilled her true feelings. Both the soft sounds and the confession itself were unbearably cute. He wanted to drop to his knees right then and thank her father in heaven for giving him such a daughter.
“Jun, what's wrong with you? You've been weird since earlier. We're in the middle of a fight—get your head on straight.”
“...It's your fault.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Anyway, I'm planning to save fusion as much as possible.”
“Uuuu. Whyyy∼”
“Because I think we can handle them without it.”
The monsters' eyes burned a vicious yellow—one full rank above Jun. On top of that, monsters possessed physiques superior to humans, so in theory winning a straight fight was a distant prospect. And yet… for some reason Jun simply did not feel like he would lose. He decided to trust that instinct and throw himself at them, come what may.
“Wouldn't it still be better to just fuse?”
“Fortuna, don't forget—these aren't the only ones coming after us.”
Were the creatures in front of them the cult's absolute strongest? The marks they bore were something ordinary Demonic Humans lacked, so they were elites at least—but not the top. If he burned fusion on them now and the true apex forces arrived later, what then? If luck held and they waited the full thirty-day cooldown, he could fuse again and meet them head-on. If they came sooner…
I wouldn't die, at least.
Even so, he would be reduced to running with his tail between his legs or cowering inside Dowonhyang. And once that pattern started, he had a feeling it would keep repeating.
I refuse that.
He had entered this labyrinth to gain power that would never be swept along by anyone. Once or twice might be tolerable, but if his plan had been to keep running and hiding forever, he never would have come here in the first place.
“Haaah∼ Fine. We'll do it your way. But if it gets dangerous, we fuse for sure. Promise.”
“Yeah. Promise.”
Fortuna held out her pinky. Jun met it with his own. Still in fairy form, she could not actually hook fingers—only press them together—but the vow was sealed all the same.
“Kyaaaaah!!!”
“Mooooooouuugh!!!”
At that moment the monsters, as if they could no longer stand to watch, unleashed roaring howls and charged like madmen. Heavenly Demon Descent Step was still in full effect; their bodies had to feel crushingly heavy, yet they ignored it completely.
“Hmm? It would be smarter to come slowly and conserve strength. Why push themselves that hard?”
“...Yeah.”
Jun already had a good idea of the real reason, but saying it aloud might only drag more power out of them, so he simply nodded in agreement with Fortuna. Then he cooled the excitement she had stirred in him and studied the enemies with a clear head.
Hellhound and Minotaur, huh.
The black-robed figures had not transformed into the same monster. One had become a massive Doberman-shaped quadruped; the other a bipedal brute with a human body and an enormous bull's head. Both were notoriously troublesome mid-to-upper labyrinth regulars.
They definitely still have their reason.
Even under spatial pressure, a Hellhound—built for four-legged speed and agility—should already have closed the distance. Instead it clung tightly behind the Minotaur and refused to emerge. Its constantly shifting eyes were clearly hunting for an opening. The Minotaur, for its part, let out a thunderous roar the instant Jun's gaze drifted toward the Hellhound, deliberately drawing attention—an act almost unbelievable even for a high-intelligence Minotaur. Its arms stayed locked tight against its torso the whole time; it intended to focus purely on defense.
“Looks like they've cleanly split offense and defense. Jun, what do we do?”
“Why ask the obvious? We make them regret picking a fight with the best duo around.”
Without a second thought Jun decided to meet them with coordinated teamwork. He and Fortuna had never specifically practiced combos, yet he was confident they would win. No matter how perfectly someone followed a manual or compressed their movements, nothing could match the speed of thoughts transmitted directly through a soul bond. And the time needed to process those thoughts? Normally a slight lag existed, but the moment Jun activated Activation, that lag shrank to a true instant. Because they were linked by the soul bond, when he accelerated his own thinking his wives' minds accelerated right along with him. The acceleration burned considerable mental power, yet for reasons he still did not fully understand, their mental drain was also shouldered by him—making the efficiency truly staggering.
“All right! Fortuna takes front!”
As if refusing any argument, Fortuna stepped forward and planted herself with her back to Jun. In the same breath she was enveloped in radiant light and, in the blink of an eye, became a divine warrior clad in sacred armor, shield and hammer in hand. Her eyes turned ice-cold as she fixed them on the apostates.
Flinch.
The karma she had amassed as a slaughterer pressed down on both monsters. Their instincts screamed.
Run for it—now!