A Bright and Wholesome Tentacle Dungeon Expedition (4)
Tch. What the hell is this?
The moment I saw the linked quest pop up out of nowhere, I unloaded every curse I knew in my head at whatever cosmic bullshit had just decided to screw me over—and at the same time…
"Jessica! Tell Ignis, Partia, and Belial to head for the asteroid base right now!"
"Yes, Commander!"
Of the Supers still on standby, I decided to throw everyone in except Pashtura, who was poorly suited for interior combat.
But the moment I tried to deploy them, Partia hesitated, looking thoughtful.
"Commander, would it not be better to send Pashtura in my place this time?"
"Huh?"
"Excuse me?"
Out of nowhere, she was asking me to put in the very person I'd just ruled out as unsuitable—in place of herself.
Of course, the party in question had something to say about that.
"Senior, are you trying to interfere with the Commander's private time alone with me?"
Pashtura declared, with absolute confidence, that Partia was the better choice for the mission. However—
"If you were left behind alone, it is certain you would commit a grave discourtesy toward the Savior and the Adjutant, Pashtura."
"Oh, come on♡"
"Then was the large quantity of condoms you purchased from the base market recently merely for the purpose of balloon play?"
"I'm sorry. I'll go right away."
The moment Partia's confession-booth interrogation kicked into gear, Pashtura immediately volunteered herself for the rescue unit.
And of course, the first three I'd sent in had only been tasked with interior reconnaissance and investigation. That meant they'd been wandering a mapless interior, hunting for a "research lab" whose location they didn't even know.
The newly assembled trio, by temperament, had zero interest in surveying a research facility overgrown with infected, mutated flesh to begin with…
"Truly a grotesque place. I feel a strong urge to simply burn it all down."
"Isn't the Commander's order the priority right now, Belial♡"
"The advance team already swept everything clean, so there's nothing in the way. Let's just reach the destination first."
Griyanaar, Oxianor, and Smeragi—the advance team—had smashed every living thing that could be called an enemy and every obstacle clogging the corridors on their way through. So when I deployed the three and got word that the research facility wing had been found, they arrived at the destination far, far faster than expected.
…No, they simply punched a straight line from the entrance to the research facility wing, reaching the objective at nearly ten times the previous speed.
But the moment they arrived at the research facility wing, all three of them came to a dead stop.
"Commander, can you see this?"
"Yeah. Crystal clear."
The reason: starting roughly halfway through the research facility wing, an extremely thick-looking wall of flesh had sealed the passage completely shut, without a single gap.
On top of that, the entire surface was packed solid with razor-sharp spines that looked like they'd shred an ordinary person's flesh on the lightest touch. And the structure was designed so that the moment it took damage above a certain threshold, it would detonate like reactive armor and deal damage right back to the attacker.
Naturally, any section of reactive armor that blew open would regenerate on its own, sealing the gap in an instant.
I was just starting to wonder how the hell we were supposed to deal with that when—
"This is exactly my specialty, Commander♡"
"Ah. Right."
Pashtura, our last-minute substitute, dialed her beam cannons down to a moderate output and blasted them like shotgun pellets. Reactive auto-regenerating barrier or not, it crumbled under her firepower like nothing.
Even so, with the barrier dismantled more easily than expected, I still didn't let go of the tension.
"Belial. Just in case—stay at full readiness."
"Understood, Commander."
Jessica tilted her head at me, looking puzzled.
"Commander, why are you so tense?"
"Is that so… you dunno, huh…"
"…"
Faced with Jessica's complete cliché illiteracy, I shook my head and answered quickly.
"Think about it, Jessica. Our allies' communications suddenly cut out, and we went in to check on them, right?"
"That's right."
"If this plays out by the cliché, the first three might've gotten hypnotized or brainwashed and could start fighting the follow-up team."
"Oh."
"Of course, that's just my imagination. Odds are it won't happen."
"…Excuse me?"
I said all that while doing my best to reassure Jessica—but inwardly, the thought kept bubbling up: Wait, what if it actually does happen?
What if it really went that way, something went wrong, and one of them died? Then I'd be the scrub who walked into a supposed freebie event and managed to throw away a Super.
So I kept fretting, quietly, and ordered the three to stay sharp as they entered the interior.
Following my command, Ignis took point with Belial and Pashtura right behind her. And at last, I got to meet the culprit behind this whole mess—Researcher Rain.
Whether to call it a silver lining or a disappointment, I still wasn't sure.
Instead of the cool entrance scene I'd been half-expecting—some mastermind laughing in our faces while our brainwashed Supers stood at her side—Rain was…
"Nngoooooh… Nngiiih!"
"There, there, just hang on a little longer… Oh my, Ignis and Belial, and even Pashtura? What brings you here?"
"…?"
Whether she'd gotten a collective beatdown for backstabbing the first three or not, she was on her knees on the floor with Griyanaar straddling her, syringe-like tentacles jammed into her ears and various other places, while she howled out brain-damaged gibberish.
Belial, who'd come on my orders to "rescue" them, looked thoroughly bewildered—but still answered with perfect composure.
"No, we… we rushed here on the Commander's orders that your position was in danger."
"Ah. It was dangerous, I'll give you that."
"Wasn't wrong, nya. If we'd let our guard down, we'd have taken serious damage, nya."
Ignis and Pashtura nodded along beside Belial. And so, while Griyanaar was too busy fondling the traitorous researcher's brain to talk, Oxianor and Smeragi stepped in to give us a brief rundown of what had actually happened.
"To put it simply… our compatibility with her was so catastrophically bad it was practically a hard counter."
"Hmm?"
"Hmm."
A Bright and Wholesome Tentacle Dungeon Expedition (4)
According to Smeragi and Oxianor, Rain's backstab had genuinely been a threat. That said, when you stripped it bare—the "threat level" in question was only threatening relative to her own grade.
"Wellll… for someone weaker than us, it was a pretty threatening attack, nya."
"Certainly weaker than us, but…"
Something about their reactions felt off, so I pulled up the status window of Rain—who was already more or less fully subdued.
And the second I confirmed she was a textbook "brains-over-brawn support" character, a new thought started bubbling up: what on earth was a scrub who wasn't even level 40, with zero personal combat ability, thinking when she decided to pull a backstab?
Of course, in the end it was probably the system railroading her into it. But still.
Beyond the raw power gap, the type matchup had been terrible for her too…
"Commander Icarus, just so we're clear… that woman did not charge us barehanded."
"Well, yeah, I'd figure."
"She integrated with a giant beast she'd heavily modified and fused with part of the facility, then came at us as one."
"Oh?"
"She also made use of the research facility's chemicals and so on… one could see she'd prepared a fairly diverse repertoire for the fight."
The moment I heard that, I looked over the advance team's condition again—and finally understood exactly how the situation had played out.