[Tower of Lust, 41st Floor] My Friend's Mom Is a Villainous Executive
Still trailing the afterglow of sex and its leftover fatigue, I arrived at my destination. The moment the light delivered me, acrid smoke and a sickly pale dust-wind rose up to greet me.
This is insane. That floor two back was the same story—why does this tower swing between extremes so damn hard?
A sight you'd almost never expect from a 'tower' spread out before me: trenches stretched in long lines across a vast, desolate plain, where helmeted succubi poked their heads out and raked 'us' with beams.
"Attack! Attack!"
"They're not invincible over there either!"
"Aphrodisiac mortars, fire!"
"Watch the top of the wall closely! Wait for them to rotate out!"
"Their aura's spent—concentrate fire on the ones swapping out!"
"Brainwashing beam, fire!"
"Bring up the taaaanks!!!!!"
KABOOOOOOOM!!!!!
A tank roared and spat fire, staining a section of the wall someone had raised with pink slime. The toy guns they wielded spewed pink beams, hunting the hunters tucked away along the top of the wall.
Whatever the story was here, everyone had abandoned tower conquest altogether—this was a siege in full swing.
"What in the world is this situation...?"
Of course, there I was atop the wall, no wiser than anyone else. I'd transferred from the 1st floor straight to the 41st, and this was my landing zone.
"Oh! Changki!"
"Huh?"
Someone was walking up, calling out to me in that state. Black hair in a ponytail; on the back of her black robe, a single map emblem marking the Cartographer guild. She stood the same height as Suni, and the bag-and-robe look gave off a similar impression, but the character wearing it was a different person entirely. Her figure, for what it mattered... was hidden by the black robe.
"Yeonyeong?"
"Yep~! Yeonyeong, vice-guild master of the [Cartographer] guild, at your service~!"
A bright, cheerful beauty came closer, swishing her robe with a giggle.
"Wow, it hasn't even been that long since you cleared floor 40, and you're already setting foot back in the tower~! That is SO like you~!"
"Everyone says the exact same thing the moment they see me."
"Ahaha~! From the outside, you look like a total workaholic. If someone who just cleared the tower three days ago walks right back in, people staring at you funny is the normal reaction~!"
"...Even by my own reckoning, the situation is pretty abnormal."
Well, seeing as I'd already run into Yeonyeong, we slipped into easy conversation, and I explained why I'd come: that Ian had abruptly fired off a rescue request, and that Madam had asked me to find Suni. At that, Yeonyeong's mouth popped open with a little "ah."
"What? Something come to mind?"
"Of course I do. Ian was here just a little while ago. Could you take a look over there, at the front line?"
Poking her face out just past the wall, she jabbed a finger; I followed it with my eyes. Dead center of the succubi front, where trenches and wrecked tanks lined the ground, a lane had been blasted wide open, as if a missile strike had plowed straight through.
"Ian did that before she left. Talk about a human bomber—she blew them to absolute hell~?"
"What did she even come here for?"
"I heard it was to thin out the ranks and blow off some steam. She said more of them must've piled up on the upper floors, so she'd go on ahead and clean house first..."
So that's how the girl who'd swaggered off all gung-ho suddenly ended up slapping me with a rescue request.
"Could Ian have been taken down by the succubi~?"
"She called me up perfectly fine and said I could take until tomorrow, so I don't think that's it."
"Really~?"
The 'trail' Yeonyeong showed me looked, true to her word, like a bomber had passed through. Never mind the trenches and tanks—even the succubi over there wouldn't go near anywhere Ian had passed, as if spooked something might happen to them. Map or no map, following that scar alone would carry me straight to her.
"Are you heading out right away?"
"Whatever's going on over there, dawdling won't do me any good. And if there's even a nonzero chance Ian's been taken down, like you said, all the more reason."
When I said I had to go take stock of things immediately, Yeonyeong visibly deflated.
"Why?"
"I was hoping you'd lend us a hand while you were here~!"
A back-and-forth battle was raging around a colossal wall—most likely raised by the Mechanic guild. Most of the defenders were running aura, so they weren't getting brainwashed, but as long as the enemy kept attacking, accidents were bound to happen.
Pew! A pink beam came flying, timed for the exact instant a hunter's aura lapsed, and swallowed a woman whole.
"Eh... uek! Bebebebebebebebehh~~!?!?!!"
"Huh?"
"Whoopsie. Another accident."
She was making idiotic sounds and trembling like she'd taken a stun gun to the spine. And that wasn't all. Her whole body washed over with pink light, and with a poof!, her appearance changed.
"...Uwoeng?"
The changed woman now had the exact same 'face' and 'outfit' as the succubi pressing their assault from outside. A black V-slingshot, a combat helmet on her head—a horned, tailed succubus with a brainwashing gun in hand.
"Haah-!"
The nameless woman hunter lifted her chin. She wore the look of someone announcing, 'I have just attained enlightenment!' Raising her right hand high and tucking her left behind her back in some kind of pose, she bellowed:
"I am a rank-and-file combatant of the [Brainwashing Pussy Legion]! Slingshot Unit 73630! From this moment on, I shall subdue the enemies of the [Brainwashing Pussy Empire]! Huaaap!!!"
Then she started popping away with a brainwashing gun conjured from who knows where—looking for all the world like a children's toy—picking fights with everyone in reach. Worse, the brainwashed hunter could apparently still use aura, because she went flitting all over the battlefield raising absolute hell.
"Somebody stop her!"
"Anyone got a binding skill!?"
"That's why I said fall back the second your aura runs out!!"
"Oh, for fuck's sake!"
"Someone restrain her!!"
"No aura, stay back! You'll get brainwashed too!"
"This place is seriously gonna drive me insane!"
"Aaagh! Quit taking pictures!"
"You here to gawk?!"
"Quit laughing at someone else's mess and stop that bitch!!"
"Obediently join our Brainwashing Pussy Legion!! Ahahahahaha!!!"
Pew! Pew! Pew!
She kept hosing brainwashing beams every which way, but nobody got caught—everyone had been through this at least once or twice. We could only watch her with something like pity: a perverted exhibitionist in a slingshot bikini, blazing away with a children's toy gun.
"We can't just leave her like that, right?"
"That little menace? If the brainwashing gun doesn't work on her, she starts throwing around aura and skills~! And worse, if we let her slip away, she'll go rejoin the main force—that so-called 'Pussy Corps'?—and that's a whole other problem~!"
"What happens if she joins them?"
"Look! That woman—her face got 'plastic-surgered' in an instant, right~? A former hunter with a face like that is wedged in among the succubi! That's exactly why we can't push an offensive!!"
In other words, one careless attack could turn into murder. Hunters killing and getting killed in the tower happened all the time, but that didn't mean you volunteered for it. What's more, the brainwashed hunters might well include members of the major guilds.
Careless, and this could blow up into a nasty guild feud.
A boneheaded gimmick—and a massive pain in the ass to boot.
"You must have rounded up the ones who got changed. What did you do with them?"
"We restrained them and locked them in a makeshift underground bunker~!"
"That's a status ailment, right?"
"Yes."
No wonder Ian had told me to pack plenty of potions. Thankfully, since the raw ingredient was my own semen, I had enough potions on hand to let them rot.
"Here, take these."
"Ah. The semen potion you fed Natalia las—"
"Shhhhh!!"
After shushing her—seriously, do not say that kind of thing out loud—I handed over ten large-capacity potions.
"...This much should be more than you'll ever use, so take these and push the front line."
Convinced my potions could cure that status ailment—Brainwashing—I casually pulled out the dildo.
"Wh-what are you suddenly pulling out~!?"
"Just watch."
I smeared semen potion along the tip of the dildo—Natalia's Personality. Wielding the black personality dildo, now slick as though slathered in gel, I shouted:
[Heavenly Ground Sword (Dildo)]-!!
"Bwuh-kehat~!?"
Just like when I'd pounded the Gumiho into dough, the dildo stretched out like a staff and walloped the cheeks of the woman hunter careening every which way through the air. You know that feeling of swatting a mosquito with a flyswatter? Not the sort of thing to say after beating a woman with a dildo, but the swing felt damn good.
"U-uegh! Nheeehk?? E-eek~!? AAAAAAAAGH!!!!!"
Struck by my dildo, the brainwashed hunter billowed white smoke and popped back to normal with another cute little poof! Thankfully, she came to her senses right away. Whether she remembered what happened right after the brainwashing, she shrieked in mortification—but neither her body nor her mind took any real damage.
"Aha! It triggers just from touching the potion~!?"
Only then did Yeonyeong catch on to what I'd been verifying.
"That's so true~! We saw it together back then and it still slipped my mind~!"
Yeonyeong gaped in genuine admiration, then hugged the ten bottles I'd passed her tight against her chest and dipped her head.
"I'll vaporize this and shower it over the enemy lines! Changki, once we come out on the offensive, you can just bolt straight down the trail Ian left behind!"
"So the plan is to flip everyone who got brainwashed earlier back to normal, then scoop the whole lot up in one fell swoop?"
"Most of them are idiots who ignored the 6 Great Guilds' control of the 41st floor and charged in to make a quick score, but they're still our colleagues, you know? If we cut them down thinking they were succubi, watched them bleed out everywhere, and it turned out they were human, I feel like they'd come haunting my dreams afterward. So I'd rather show some restraint~!"
So most of the ones catching beams were outsiders. Fair enough—the 6 Great Guilds would never botch it against riffraff like that.
Amid all the mutual 'hang in there' consoling, a mortar shell came sailing down toward us inside the wall.
"Cough, cough!"
"Those guys are seriously next-level. I thought the kids at the camp were putting on some modern siege warfare, but these people went and built an honest-to-god warzone."
"Ugh, real missiles would be an upgrade! They mix in stuff like aphrodisiacs to scramble our heads and spray it everywhere~!?"
Sure enough, the shell produced not a single shard of shrapnel—just a cloud of pink smoke. One faint whiff and my lust came boiling up, so I hastily retreated.
No wonder even pro hunters climbing toward the 41st floor were getting taken down. So this is another way they attack.
Get the target worked up so they can't use their aura, then finish them off with the brainwashing gun. ...Ridiculous as it was, it was a systematic assault.
"Changki, rest inside the wall! I'll round up the Mechanic guild folks, mix the potion, and come right back!"
"How long will that take?"
"I'll be done within the hour at the latest~!"
I had nothing better to do until then anyway, so I told her fine and went to claim a spot of rest in the nearest barracks.