Rupegia

Chapter 86: Death – Part 1

I feel like my entire body just went through a meat grinder. The deafening silence inside my mind leaves me confused, and I struggle to get off the shore.

I search for the string to summon the girls, but it's nowhere to be found, and my inner "hand" just grabs the nothingness inside my soul space instead. It's like trying to find a pocket on the inside of a jacket, I know where it should be, but I just can't find it.

I cough up some water and groan in pain, then I manage to crawl off the shore and onto the dry green sand, which quickly sticks to my wet armor.

I hate sand. It's coarse and gets everywhere.

I laugh at my own hilarious memes, then I sigh tiredly as I lay on my back.

"Alissa…?" I call her name repeatedly inside my mind, praying that she'll answer, but she doesn't.

Oh, fuck…

I grit my teeth angrily. Of course, Arreira would try to separate us and give each of us a test. He just can't hold himself back from fucking with us.

What now, you pretentious fuck? What sort of arbitrary test of "worth" will you force on me? Will you tell me some poetry before we start so that I can get "inspired" by your oh-so-great intellect and artistic capability?

I stop reflexively and wait for a mirthful chirp that never comes.

Oh no… Gify?!

I remember that her presence faded from my mind when the [Disruption Field] activated. I have no idea what could've happened to her, but she can't be dead, can she? That'd be way too cruel of Arreira to just kill her like that.

The adorable teasing imp inside my head. My companion. My friend…

Why don't you just go fuck yourself with a rake, Arreira?! Why do you have to fuck with everything I love with your rotten elven dick?!

My angry grumbling is sharply interrupted by a pounding headache flaring up, so I cast [Heal], and the pain all throughout my body starts to fade away.

Wasn't my mana organ strained…?

Then I cast [Spirit Light] without suffering any painful feedback, so I guess it isn't anymore.

What even happened to us…?

After encountering the fake imperial army, the tunnel started closing in on us, so we flew away on the ship. A [Disruption Field] was activated around us, making us fall, then we crashed onto… something? I don't know what it was since it was completely dark-…

I start taking off my armor since the soaked padding is heavy and very uncomfortable to keep on, not to mention that it's unhealthy to wear wet clothes.

How did I even survive the rapids like this? I can't swim in full armor.

I cough some more, and the remaining water in my lungs tells me that I got very lucky.

My memories of the rapids are so blurry…

I summon a Holy and a Shad, then I dry my clothes while they scout around.

Wait… wait, wait, wait, WAIT, WAIT! WHERE ARE MY SUMMONS?!

Not only is the earth elemental that I left behind to protect the [Gate] coordinate gone, but so are the summons I left with Klein and Osaria.

What the fuck happened to them? Before the crash, they were all safe and perfectly fine. What the fuck did this dungeon do to me and the girls…?

I start checking through all of my other powers. I can still instant-cast spells, so my fighting style isn't fucked. My "Items" is unchanged, so I have everything I need to survive on my own…

The girls have small [Item Box]es, though, so they won't have the same comfort as I do.

Their names are still in my "Companions" and "Affiliations," so I'm certain that they're still alive. My [Gate] is still blocked, so there's no easy way out of here. My skills are all there, so…

Wait… I can't remove or add skill points.

My Gift of freely arranging my points is gone.

How the fuck are you even DOING this?!

What-…

I look towards the path of glowing crystals before me while I dry my armor. It feels like it'll lead me into a trap, but there's no other path in this small green cave besides going back up the rapids, and I'm certain that Arreira won't let me do that anyway.

I can't switch my points into [Sense Presence], so I need to establish a safe perimeter around myself.

I summon earth, fire, wind, water, and light elementals. I could summon a nature one too, but I think this is a good balance between MP use and versatility.

The wind and light elementals suddenly hug me, and I feel my tension washing away as their softness wraps around my face.

"Thank you…" I weakly mutter.

I was supposed to be getting better at this, but being disconnected from the girls is making me more nervous than I'd like to admit.

The other elementals join the cuddle puddle, and for a moment, I feel like we're all back together again.

I quickly clear my mind of these distracting thoughts. I have a trial to pass, and it won't do if I'm moping around all the way through it.

I smile at myself as I imagine Gify's teasing, then I pray that she wasn't killed by the [Disruption Field].

I put my armor back on and look at the river that brought me here. There are a dozen planks scattered around me, and I recognize them from our ship.

Ah, fucking hell… I really liked that ship…

I frown and spend a moment in silence while I process this loss, then I turn back towards the path, and we move forward.

"I should've stored the golems in my [Item Box]. Trying to cobble together an emergency parachute just wasn't a good idea…" I mumble to wind-Alissa, and she wordlessly nods in agreement, then she lays her hand on my shoulder and gives me a reassuring squeeze. "Thanks."

I grab her "solid wind" hand and give it a kiss. I only feel a gentle breeze on my lips, but it's surprisingly pleasant.

I glance at fire-Hana and wonder if she'll want to have sex with me before I go to sleep. It's hard to believe, but I'm not in the mood for it, so I don't know how she'll react.

We reach the end of the glowing path in the sand, and it leads to the entrance of a green tunnel in the cave wall. The scouting Holly quickly discovers that it's a maze, so I summon three more, then I start drawing a map.

I spend the whole day simply mapping out the maze, and I have some trouble mapping the elevation changes. The maze is excessively chaotic, repeatedly looping back on itself. I also don't have a pencil that would let me erase my mistakes, so they rapidly pile up, leaving me with a messy and ugly drawing.

Calligraphy was never one of my strengths, anyway.

Night eventually comes, then I pull out the bath and get the wife-elementals to wash me. Without Alissa to watch us or their voices moaning my name, I just don't really feel like having sex.

I eat a guilty dinner of leftovers. It just doesn't feel right to eat all by myself.

The girls will only have chocolate and [Conjure Bland Meal] for themselves, and here I am, gorging on a feast…

I continue mapping the maze for a while longer until I tire myself out, then I unsummon the Hollys since I can't give them the command to stop.

I review the map one last time, then I pull out the tent and go to sleep.

I dream of the girls suffering. They're all entirely alone in the dungeon, and they regret ever coming here.

Today is the 27th.

I wake up to an absolute silence and feeling cold. Even with light-Ciel and fire-Hana squishing my head between their tits and wind-Alissa playing with my flaccid cock, I'm so unaroused that even my balls are retreating up inside my body.

I give them each a small kiss, even earth-Lina, and feed them some mana, then I tiredly get up and eat breakfast. I didn't sleep well, so it takes a while for me to feel energized again, even after drinking a whole cup of Tonique tea.

Water-Roxanne tries to cheer me up by performing tricks with her water, and it does warm me up a bit. It's incredible to see how much personality the summons are drawing from what I've learned about the girls through [Bind].

I continue mapping out the dungeon, but the Hollys start to get lost and fly in circles, slowing down my efforts.

"What the fuck is this fucking maze. Fucking fuckity fuck fucker!" I exclaim in frustration, and earth-Lina gently pats my shoulder.

She's the only one that's showing some interest in the maps, but she can't really help me much since she can't see through the Hollys.

The number of papers steadily increases, gradually becoming a haphazard map as its segments pile on top of each other. The greatest challenge of this map is the tendency for loops, which I often fail to recognize since this fucking maze has absolutely zero landmarks that would let me know when the Hollys are going in circles.

When I finally get up to stretch and prepare my lunch, I bump my foot against the leg of the table, and the sections of the map shuffle around, going out of order.

"Godsdamned motherfucker!" I swear and grumble.

Earth-Lina immediately starts picking up the scattered papers and puts them back in their proper places.

"Thank you…" I mutter and tap her broad back. Her inexpressive face nods, and her black bangs sway just like they would for the original.

I eat more leftovers while I help Earth-Lina, then I decide that it's time to glue all of these pages together.

I mix water and flour, then I boil the mixture until it thickens. Then I keep it hot with fire-Hana's help while I use it to glue the segments together. Once the mixture cools, it hardens, keeping the pieces stuck to each other.

I summon nature-Yunia, then I use her to pull planks from the river and cut them into small sticks for me. I glue them to the back of the map so that I can raise some sections, creating a three-dimensional rendition of the maze.

Even with the help of the elementals, it's still meticulous and delicate work that takes up the rest of my day.

I get the elementals to wash me, then I go to sleep for the night while hugging light-Ciel. She can't keep her mind-healing ultra-softness active all the time since it consumes mana, but I can still use her cow tits as pillows while I sleep, which is much better than nothing.

I dream of how Osaria and Klein would react when they notice that my summons have simply disappeared. Without any way to contact me, and knowing that I'm somewhere that I can't use [Gate], it'd be difficult for them to trust that the worst hasn't happened.

Today is the 28th.

Water-Roxanne's slick tongue wraps around my flaccid head, but the stimulation of it feels like sandpaper against my skin, so I stop her before I become even more irritated.

I skip breakfast since I don't feel hungry, then I continue with the mapping. I can give the Hollys better guidance so that they won't get stuck in loops or waste too much time on already-explored areas.

My rendition of the maze threatens to collapse, so I reinforce it with bigger sticks. I don't have to spend that much time working on it myself since I can get the elemental-wives to help, but I still have to keep an eye on the Hollys while I draw the map, so I don't really have a lot of free time.

I eat some chocolate for lunch, but it makes me feel guilty, so I also put together a simple salad that I quickly force myself to eat.

Wind-Alissa sits beside me and holds my hand while we both stare at fire-Alissa and water-Roxanne playing around to entertain us. The elementals are trying to make me happy, but even the golems are better at that since they understand my emotions on a deeper level.

"Thank you," I whisper as I smile at them, and they smile back, but I'm not sure if it's genuine or something that was programmed into them like with the golems.

I try to absentmindedly practice some [Soul Manipulation] while keeping an eye on the Hollys, but it isn't nearly as efficient as fully-focused practice.

I try to do other things while I work, but I don't come up with anything interesting to spend my energy on. Because of this, I end up going to sleep later than usual since I barely exercised my body today, and I still have lots of energy to spend.

I have a nightmare about the Innocent Nymph: I'm forced to watch as the [Meteor] destroys it repeatedly while I can't move, paralyzed by fear.

It's not really a nightmare, though, just a repeated remembrance.

Today is the 29th.

"And so it begins…" I murmur as I wake up in a cold sweat.

Light-Ciel notices my distress and heals my mind, washing away my dizziness and unease.

I refill her with my MP, and she smiles warmly at me, then pats my head.

The sprawling construction only grows larger, then it starts to become cumbersome. While I think about how to improve it, I remember how the Ant Hill back in the Shore of Leaves was mapped out: they carved signs into the wall at every intersection.

OH, FUCK!

I rush up to the corridor and smash the green stone with a spare war hammer, then I watch and watch, but the wall never repairs itself.

I go back to mapping and try to keep my mind off it for a while, but I keep on glancing back at the cracks every minute or so until the anxiety wears me down, and I finally go to sleep.

Tonight, my nightmare is about the heretics finding us and executing us in our sleep. The Hollys and Shads have already failed us once, so it could happen again.

Today is the 30th.

I rush up to the crack I made in the corridor and confirm that it didn't change a single bit from yesterday.

A seething rage builds up inside me, and I pull on my hair. "FUCKING STUPID!" I scream at myself, then I march towards the map.

Light-Ciel stands in my way, but I dispel her, then I cast an [Earth Bullet] at the map, breaking it into pieces.

Earth-Lina hugs me from behind, and I almost dispel her, too, but her effort to comfort me makes me stop in confusion.

I look around and realize that all the elemental-wives have crowded around me, trying to prevent me from lashing out.

"What the fuck are you all doing?" I annoyedly question them. I feel like they're somehow defying me, but my anger quickly cools down, and I lose the motivation to investigate their behavior any further.

They smother me in their breasts until all my anger is gone, then I summon light-Ciel again and start rebuilding the map from scratch.

This time, I ignore everything other than the forks because those are the only things that actually matter. I instruct each Holly to leave a unique mark at the center of the fork whenever they reach one and squeak while drawing so that I'll pay attention to them.

The map is now far easier to draw and much, much more compact. It also doesn't need a complex setup to portray elevation anymore, reducing the workload even further.

I try to dig a tunnel with the elementals, but the rock is so resistant to magic that it'd be faster to just use pickaxes. The maze sprawls so wildly that it doesn't matter where I dig to, anyways, so I decide to continue exploring with the Hollys.

I have a nightmare about monsters hunting me down, but I'm too weak to defeat them on my own, so all I can do is run away.

Today is the 31st.

My watch stops working. The gears inside it are so delicate that not even earth-Lina can fix them. This is a big problem since I won't be able to keep track of time anymore.

I work until I'm tired, and I wake up whenever I feel like it.

Even with my more compact map, the maze is still so absurdly huge that it feels like it goes on forever.

Just to make sure, I periodically send more Hollys into the already explored forks to deepen the carvings. This is to check that they aren't being repaired by the dungeon while I'm not looking.

The nightmares worsen, and I begin to dread going to sleep.

No matter how much I force myself, I can't muster the energy to exercise because of the lack of good sleep, so I end up eating less and less.

My muscles become thin, my belly fattens, and my body weakens.

"Marking five thousand and four…" I mumble to myself.

"What kind of symbol are you going to use this time?" Wind-Alissa asks me without moving her mouth.

"Uh…" I scan over my book of symbols. There are so many now that I don't feel like creating any unique ones anymore. "I'll just use numbers…" I shrug.

The Hollys explore too far, so I enter the maze to cut down on their travel time.

"You burned the meat!" I yell at fire-Hana, and she hangs her head low in guilt.

I cast [Torrent] at her, then I regret it because I have to feed her my MP to heal her.

"Shouldn't we cut your hair?" Wind-Alissa gently suggests.

"Hair gets in my eyes, so just cut it all off!" I bark at her.

I yawn and fall asleep, even with the Holly squeaking to keep me awake, so I miss the window to register her marking.

"FUCK!" I scream, hurting my throat.

I throw my magic pen away, then I resummon the Holly and start over for that path.

Earth-Lina takes her sweet time picking up my pen for me.

"You're an elemental, so why are you so slow?!" I snap at her.

Why do the nightmares never end? What did I ever do to deserve this?

"We've reached sector two-hundred two," light-Ciel announces, and I jolt awake.

Earth-Lina lowers my cradle, then light-Ciel starts the brain massage, which eases my pain.

"You need a bath," Wind-Alissa firmly states.

"Don't wanna," I mumble.

"We've gone through this…" She pleads.

"Fuck it… just do it quickly."

They strip me down, and water-Roxanne envelops my body with hers, then she scrubs off all the grime.

The maze has… a pattern.

It's a die. The sectors are all connected like a die.

Square, square, square. Triangle, square, triangle. And repeat.

Roll the paper up like a die.

Multi-sided. One to twenty-six.

Throw it.

It's a seven! Jackpot! HAHAHAHA!

Rinse, and repeat!

There is no meaning to the nightmares. There is no meaning to the nightmares. There is no meaning to the nightmares. There is no meaning to the nightmares…

"The sector turns blue! The sector turns blue!" I yell and clap my hands excitedly, then a coughing fit ruins my excitement.

Light-Ciel heals my lungs, then we pack up camp and head towards the exit.

That horrifying, nauseating, and disgusting green color finally changes to blue, but nothing else changes.

There are no more forks, so we can only keep moving forward through this endless corridor. And it truly feels endless…

My excitement quickly fades away and gets replaced with boredom, well, more boredom than I've felt in Gods know how long I've been here.

The ground suddenly starts to rumble, which sends me into a panic while the elemental-wives get ready for battle.

The floor ahead of us starts to rise up, revealing a new corridor.

It completely blocks off the old one, so I resummon the scouting Holly.

There's a fork directly ahead, and I can see a light coming from around the corner, so I suck in a sharp breath in surprise.

I hear a scramble of footsteps rapidly approaching, so I pull out my sword from my "Items" and try to calm myself.

Alissa, Roxanne, Hana, Ciel, Lina, and Yunia all come through the fork, and they nearly stumble when they notice me.

"WOLFY!" Alissa shrieks and rushes towards me.

Earth-Lina lowers my cradle, then I weakly climb out of it. My body shamefully trembles from both excitement and weakness as I try to stand.

She hugs me tight, her delicious mounds pressing against my naked chest, and the smell of her sweat fills my nostrils. I'm speechless, and my body refuses to respond, but I notice that they're all unarmed and in varying states of undress. Their clothes are almost falling apart, mostly just being used to cover their sensitive bits rather than actually offering them any degree of protection.

"There's no time! We need to run!" Lina yells anxiously.

"It's coming!" Roxanne shrieks and hides behind Hana.

"What's coming?" I ask, and my croaky voice surprises me.

"An unkillable monster, let's go!" Yunia's stern voice sobers us up.

I sit down in my cradle, then earth-Lina lifts it up, and we all continue forward through the other corridor.

"What happened to you?! Why are you so thin?!" Alissa shrieks, holding back tears of horror.

"I couldn't sleep…" I croak and cough.

"Keep Wolfy safe! He's too weak to fight!" Ciel declares, and the other girls agree.

I hear a loud wet sloshing behind us, so I turn around and see a huge, transparent slime chasing after us. It's moving as if it were a rubbery wave, and it seems to be steadily gaining on us.

Holy shit.

I start pulling out our old equipment, and while the girls can't fully armor themselves while running, they can at least put on some scaled jackets and get their old weapons back.

I get wind-Alissa to help me put on my armor, then we reach a dead end just after I’m fully equipped.

FUCK!

"Stand and fight!" Ciel orders, then they all stop running and put on their scaled pants, except for Lina, who starts feeling around on the wall, searching for something.

I jump out of the cradle and use [Telekinesis] to carefully land on the floor.

"Wolfy, don't!" Alissa warns me.

I grit my teeth and growl, "I can do this!" Then I cough.

There's no time to argue. The slime reaches us and blocks off the corridor, then a dozen tentacles shoot out from its body.

One comes towards me, and I slash through it, splitting it open, then an extremely pungent liquid gushes out. When it contacts the floor, it immediately starts to sizzle, and I can clearly see the smooth stone melting away.

I cast [Clean] on my sword before the liquid has a chance to ruin it.

Fuck me!

Earth-Lina immediately loses an arm to it, so she retreats while the other elemental-wives protect her.

A slime tentacle sneaks closer to me from my left flank, but I react too slowly to it, so it hits me on the side, then it spreads over my entire chest and both of my legs in just a split second. Fox-Alissa suddenly appears and bites onto the tentacle, then she rips it off, freeing me.

Wind-Alissa immediately comes over to me and starts cutting off the straps of my wooden armor before it can melt and fuse with my skin. She throws away the pieces, and they all rapidly melt away into nothing.

Fox-Alissa's mouth melts apart horrifically, but then she uses her mana to regrow her fox body.

"[FIRE WALL]!" Roxanne casts, and the entire corridor is filled with flames, forcing the slime to retreat.

Hana rips off her melting scale shirt, and Ciel starts casting [Holy Spirit].

"I can only last for a minute!" Roxanne yells, sounding desperate. She leans on her staff, looking like she's almost as weak as I am.

"Everyone! Help Lina!" Ciel orders, which I relay to the elemental-wives, then we all start searching the walls for… something. "Wolfy, Hana, you need armor!" Ciel warns us, so I pull out our old emerald scale armor, then Alissa helps me put it on.

"You shouldn't fight," Alissa tells me sternly.

"I can use [Telekinesis] to move," I insist.

"Please…" She whispers.

"I still have a lot of MP!" I force out in a shout, and she anxiously bites her lip, but I've made my decision.

I sheathe my emerald sword and pull out a dozen of the assorted spare weapons I have for everyone, then I switch out the Holly and Shad for four fire-Hanas since the slime seems to be weak to them.

"I'm… passing out…!" Roxanne exclaims, then she crumples onto the floor, and the [Fire Wall] snuffs out.

Tentacles shoot towards us again, but this time, I use [Discharge] to keep them at bay while the girls cast spells.

The monster is cautious, trying its very best to sneak around us while avoiding the fire, but we simply ignore its tentacles until they get too close. It's impossible for us to miss its massive main body, so we focus on inflicting as many wounds as possible.

The slime starts to get agitated, then it lifts itself up off the floor and backs away, becoming a sort of squishy large quadruped.

It starts to attack us more frequently, trying to wear us down, and the fire-Hanas respond by continuously launching spells, quickly burning through their own mana reserves.

"I'm out of MP!" Hana exclaims and leans against the wall to catch her breath.

"Where's the ambient mana?!" I shout in confusion, finally noticing this oddity.

"These blue corridors are all like this!" Ciel yells back, then she throws another [Spirit Light] at the slime. After the glowing ball enters the slime, it bursts in a flash of light, dazing it.

My MP steadily drains away, then the fire-Hanas suicide into the slime, forcing it back for a moment.

I use [Redirect Mana] to refill my MP with whatever ambient mana I can grasp, but it's just not enough.

Nature-Yunia suicides next, then water-Roxanne, then light-Ciel, then wind-Alissa. However, we need earth-Lina to carry Roxanne, so I won't let her join in.

"Found it!" Lina yells and presses a hidden button in the wall.

The wall quickly splits open, revealing a large room with a circular, gray platform in the middle. It's made of smooth stone, and there's a crystal in the center of it.

We all retreat to the platform, then Hana collapses onto it.

"Feed mana to the crystal…!" She shakily yells and gives it her last, then she passes out, too.

Lina feeds it, too, then she groans in pain, "I can't… stop…! Ah! It's full!"

The slime doesn't immediately attack, giving us a few seconds to prepare.

"Why isn't it activating?!" Alissa shrieks in desperation.

"It is, look!" Yunia exclaims and points at the crystal. It's steadily starting to glow brighter. She drops over it and tries to feed it more mana. "Go faster!"

The tentacles strike at us.

I pull out rocks, barriers, barricades, furniture, and whatever the fuck else I can use to keep the slime away, but it all gets quickly melted down into nothing. Even the wounds we manage to inflict on it are rapidly healing, though its overall size seems to be shrinking due to the repeated spilling of its fluids.

Earth-Lina suicides, which buys us another few seconds.

"I'm running low on mana!" I yell and cough.

Ciel casts [Fly], then she darts towards the slime.

"CIEL?!" I croak.

She casts a few small [Wind Blades] at the slime, grabbing its attention.

"I CAN KEEP IT BUSY!" She yells back.

She flies out of the room, and the slime follows her, giving us a breather.

What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?

Alissa looks spent; Roxanne can't even sit upright; Hana is out of the fight; Lina is struggling to stay standing; Yunia is covered with burns; and I only have a few basic spells left in me.

This is the end.

The crystal begins to glow so brightly now that Light mana even starts to leak from it.

"COME BACK!" I scream for Ciel and fall to my knees.

She darts back into the room, but a tentacle stops her in the air. It wraps tightly around her waist, quickly melting through her scale armor.

"NOOOO!" I yell as I burn through the last of my MP, throwing out all of my remaining spells in a panic.

"[Explosion]!" Roxanne makes one last effort, and the tentacle is blown away, releasing Ciel.

But then, another tentacle grabs her, then another, and another, and another.

She rapidly becomes completely enveloped by the slime, and now, not even our spells can free her from it.

I hear her muffled shrieks as the skin on her face melts away, then her eyes pop, and the slime flushes red with her blood.

I try to take a step towards her, but my legs give out as I try to stand up, then Alissa holds me in place.

The blood quickly clears away, revealing her half-consumed body, her skull partially visible from underneath her melting flesh, then the platform flashes, and my consciousness is cut off.