The Priestess and the Hunter's Provocation (1)
The Priestess and the Hunter's Provocation (1)
#
"Alright. Shall we go have a look?"
The morning's little commotion was over, and now it was time to finish the dungeon exploration.
The smoke inside the cave had mostly cleared, but an acrid smell still filled the air. Yuri sniffed, wrinkled her nose, and grumbled.
"Did we really need to come all the way in here? Didn't you say you could tell if he was dead?"
"There's something I need to check."
I never wanted to come back to this horrible place, so I had to finish everything now.
Inside the dungeon, there was probably some kind of... apparatus for crossbreeding. Or a magical tool, maybe. Because simply having that Whitebeard screw them wouldn't have produced half-goblins.
Even if nothing like that existed, he was a monster capable of remarkable things. There had to be something worth taking. Magic stones, for example.
I'd explained it to the two of them in those terms.
But that wasn't my only reason for coming back. Something else had been bothering me.
The Golden Ticket still hadn't appeared.
Of course, turning this dungeon upside down didn't guarantee I'd get a Golden Ticket.
No one knew the conditions for obtaining one.
But considering the pattern at Riverbridge... there was more than enough reason to search the place.
#
"It's hot..."
Maybe because the heat hadn't fully dissipated, the dungeon's air was stifling and unpleasantly sticky.
"Phew... it certainly is..."
Reni fanned herself with her hand, pulling her robe's collar open.
Reni wasn't shrinking in on herself and stammering like before. She'd regained the steady composure she'd shown before meeting Yuri.
"Yoo-jin? Is something wrong...?"
"No, it's nothing."
Seeing her like that made nasty thoughts slither their way back up again.
I wanted to see Reni crying and clinging to me, begging me to stop. But I wouldn't stop...
Why did seeing her beam like that make me want to torment her? Well, she shouldn't have provoked me at dawn.
"Just a moment."
"Huh?"
"I'll use Purification."
A moment later, the unpleasantness in the air faded somewhat.
Reni... you were so good... and here I was only thinking about how to make you cry... why was I like this...
...
"W-We're here."
Yuri gulped repeatedly, visibly nervous.
"...Yeah."
Before I knew it, we had arrived in front of the mating room. Before entering, we put our heads together once more to review the plan.
"You remember. If it moves even a little."
"Shoot it on the spot. If that doesn't work, Reni..."
"Yes. Block its vision with Light, hinder it with Protection, and use Haste to flee."
"Right. Wilson will be our decoy."
-Grrk.
"Okay. Let's go in."
I cast Silence and peeked inside...
"...Looks like it's over?"
"So it seems."
"It's a little... horrifying..."
The goblins were all still bound, dead with their long tongues hanging out. In that case, where was Whitebeard?
"Yoo-jin. Isn't that it? But the way it looks..."
"Hmm..."
Whitebeard... could I even call that thing Whitebeard anymore?
In place of his muscular, powerful body was a frame shriveled like a mummy. If not for the beard, I could never have recognized it as the same creature.
He had to be dead, right? But would a corpse that had suffocated shrivel up like this?
No way. The goblin corpses were intact. So this bastard really had been hiding something.
Was it a trap?!
[Dungeon #1052]
[Type: Goblin (Humanoid)]
[Monster Status: ▼]
[Normal: 00]
[Rare: 00]
[Boss: 00]
[Special Notes: None]
[Until Respawn: 35:54:13]
No, it wasn't. Whether I checked the info window or the minimap, the dungeon was still empty. It didn't look like a body double, either. So I could consider the area safe.
"First, shall we start poking around here?"
"...Yeah...."
Leaving the two of them sighing behind me, I approached the goblin corpses. I took in the horrific sight.
Let's see....
...
...
...
Just as expected. My cock didn't twitch in the slightest. I wasn't some kind of goblin-fucker after all. Respect for All Tastes hadn't contaminated my mind. In that case, that incident had just been... a coincidence, right?
As I turned around with a sigh of relief, I saw Yuri staring fixedly at me, her eyes a mix of tension and curiosity. No—to be precise, she was staring at my lower half.
"...What're you looking at?"
"H-Huh? Nothing. I was just looking, okay?"
Yuri whipped her head away and acted as though she'd just happened to glance over. Suspicious. I didn't like that gleam in her eye.
"Yoo-jin. It doesn't look like there's anything special here."
The contents of the sack Reni pointed at were a little disgusting.
"...So that's what he'd been eating."
"Uegh."
The sack was stuffed full of things like rotten grain and chunks of meat I couldn't identify. Some of it was crawling with bugs.
"...Let's head out for now. I don't think there's anything more to see here."
"Is it... all right to just leave them like this?"
"Let's go all the way to the end first. We'll burn this place on our way back."
"Yeah. Let's get out of here fast. This place gives me the creeps. It won't be like this farther in too, will it?"
#
At the end of the dungeon was a cavern whose entrance alone was enormous. Then again, it had been the goblins' main lair, so it had to be at least this large.
"Reni, send the Light up."
"Yes."
Reni sent the sphere of light up toward the ceiling. Unlike the rest of the dungeon, this place had no lighting powered by magic stones.
"...I don't think there's much here?"
"It seems that way..."
The cavern was huge, but everything inside it must have burned, because only piles of ash remained.
That was strange. No matter how much firewood had been stacked, the flames shouldn't have reached this far. Had Whitebeard prepared something in advance? Some mechanism that automatically erased the evidence if anything happened?
The bastard had been meticulous. I really had been right not to face him head-on.
In the center, there was a rock that looked something like an altar, with a censer sitting on top of it.
"Can you two look around the perimeter for a moment? I need to examine that."
"Yes." "Got it."
I positioned Wilson at the entrance in standby mode.
When I went up to the altar and touched the censer, an item pop-up appeared, just like before.
[Sarmane's Censer]
[Effect: When activated, disperses a subtle fragrance that heightens emotion and sexual desire. Consumes a small magic stone.]
[Current: On / ▶Off]
[Details: Click to open ▶]
"..."
Had he used this to send the goblins into heat? That was a bit disgusting.
And it consumed magic stones? Ah, here it was. When I turned the censer over, there was a small slot into which a magic stone could be inserted.
But did I really... need something like this?
Honestly, a human sex machine probably didn't need something like this, but as the saying went, the more, the merrier. I'd better take it with me for now...
"Yoo-jin? What's that?"
"Hk!"
Yuri had approached at some point and was peering at the censer.
"M-Make some noise when you move around. You startled me."
"Did I? Heuh-heung..."
At my grumbling, Yuri broke into a grin. Why did she keep flashing me such ominous smiles?
"So what is this thing?"
"Hm? Oh, it looks like an item Whitebeard left behind. I was going to take it with us."
"Yeah? What's it do? Isn't it dangerous?"
"Well... I suppose in one sense you could consider it dangerous... but it probably wouldn't be a problem to use it."
Honestly, I was curious. What kind of effect would it have if I used it?
"Hmm... think this'll sell for a lot?"
Yuri took the censer and inspected it from every angle, fascinated.
...Come to think of it, she was supposed to be curious. Maybe I could gently coax her with this later...
"Yoo-jin. There's nothing special. Everything seems to have burned."
"Ah, r-right. Then shall we head back now?"
Reni chose that exact moment, while I was indulging in a lewd fantasy, to speak to me.
Anyway, if there really was nothing special here...
I made a circuit just in case, but there was nothing worth picking up. Broken glass bottles, things that looked like experimental equipment. And all kinds of animal bones were piled everywhere.
With everything burned up like this... I was lucky to have gotten the censer, at least.
Come to think of it, there were a lot of animal bones.
Probably the goblins' food. Just how much had they eaten? No wonder the local wildlife had been completely wiped out.
At any rate, everything had burned, so there was nothing left to salvage.
-Ping!
[The Holy Sword requests permission to use Holy Fire.]
[Now what.]
[The Holy Sword detects a pernicious aura.]
Still not over? As though impatient, the Holy Sword repeatedly spat short bursts of fire toward the altar. Was there something inside it?
"Everyone step back. There still seems to be something here."
After I sent the two of them to the rear and let the Holy Sword do its work, a fierce torrent of flame slammed into the altar.
[Hey, what's with you.]
[...]
The Holy Sword ignored my message and simply kept pouring Holy Fire onto the altar. Though it was only flame, I could somehow sense intense displeasure coming from the sword. It had said it detected a sinister aura. Was there something it didn't like?
Anyway, after it kept blasting out that intense stream of fire, the altar crumbled not long after. And inside it...
"Huh? What's that? It's sparkling?"
Yuri made a fuss while Reni's eyes lit up as though she knew what it was. When I examined the place where the altar had collapsed, I found an elaborate magic circle set with large magic stones.
A faint light emanated from the magic circle. Still, it wasn't a massive stone carving like the one at Riverbridge. Did its smaller, more intricate design require more magic stones?
The instant I pulled the magic stones out, the light disappeared. It wouldn't be doing anything weird anymore.
"Wait. Is that a magic stone? How is it so huge? Is it really a magic stone?"
Yuri had come up beside me before I knew it, her eyes gleaming brightly.
"Stop making such a noisy fuss."
That was what I said, but I couldn't stop grinning either. Each was a little smaller than the magic stone we'd gotten from the Bone Fucker, but there were so many of them.
"Wait, let me see one of those."
"Yeah, yeah."
When I handed one to Yuri, she rolled it around in her hand as though entranced. Reni was swallowing audibly too.
"Hoo-wah.... W-With this much...."
Yeah. With this much, we could establish ourselves faster than I thought.
That Whitebeard had been a lucky windfall. This place hadn't just been a regular goblin dungeon. It had been a golden goblin dungeon!
And the Holy Sword had found all this. I'd only thought of it as a decent flamethrower before.... How admirable. If it just spoke a little more nicely, I might even dote on it.
After putting all the magic stones in my inventory, all that was left was to finish cleaning up that mating room, and everything would be over. I was just about to leave the cavern that way when...
Giggling to herself, Yuri, who'd been walking out ahead of us with a light step, let out a shriek.
"Y-Yoo-jin!"
What?! I gripped the Holy Sword tight.
"W-Wilson..."
At Yuri's feet, Wilson had collapsed. When I checked the system, his life signs had disappeared.
Wilson... was dead...!
"Ah..."
Reni was wearing a look of regret. Why in the world... Had it happened because I dismantled the magic circle? As I thought, that thing hadn't been a normal creature.
Well. It had actually worked out for the best. We couldn't have taken him to the village anyway. This was better than killing him with my own hands.
Goodbye... Wilson...
"Y-Yoo-jin!"
"Hm?"
Wilson's corpse was rapidly crumbling away. It seemed some mechanism had been installed in the body itself. And inside it, a small magic stone...
"Yoo-jin... e-even that..."
"What? It's all money."
"S-Still..."
Reni was hesitating. What was the point of empathizing with a monster? I ignored Reni's hemming and hawing and extracted the magic stone.
"Wow..."
Yuri let out a sigh that sounded slightly appalled. Was what I was doing really that bad?
# # #
"Alright. Now, if we burn these corpses and head out, it's all over."
All we had to do was go back into the mating room, dispose of the bodies, and we'd never have to run into these wretched goblins again.
First, I incinerated the goblins. Then, at last, I aimed the Holy Sword at Whitebeard's corpse—
"?!"
A light flashed in the bastard's eyes. An ominous green light burrowed into my optic nerves, and a vision came flooding in.
* * *
『The night sky was so packed with stars that they seemed ready to spill down. It was so bright that finding the dark patches might have been faster. Was this what the center of the galaxy looked like? The sun was nowhere to be seen, yet clusters of light overlapped in every direction, making it bright enough to mistake for daytime.
But the most striking thing was the moon. The moon had shattered into dozens of fragments, scattered across the whole sky.
And a mountain range. An entire mountain range was blazing.
Hordes of goblins poured from the caves. A nauseating, ominous green tide rolled along the mountain range.
And so, the vast goblin army crossed the river, set fire to a village, and brought down its walls.
And the throne those creatures had built.
On the throne sat Yoo-jin.
All around him were scores of naked women. Their limbs were bound in iron chains, and at his command, goblins hauled on the chains and dragged them before Yoo-jin. And Yoo-jin rose and, to that woman... 』
[Burn it.]
[The Holy Sword unleashes Holy Fire.]