This Isn’t an E*otic Game?

Ban the old man felt… different.

A brilliant blue radiance flared from his body without restraint, and he wielded the massive greatsword—something that looked impossible to even carry—with flawless ease.
“[Damn it!]”
“Ponehmkin?!”

In the brief instant when Valram and Lucifer flinched, scattering to avoid the greatsword—
Ban dashed toward me at a terrifying speed and slung me over his shoulder in one motion.
“Ban! What the hell happened—?!”

“[Later. You are Lilia’s Chosen. For now, we focus on escape.]”
That strange vibration—a mix of divine speech and human language—reverberated from his voice.
My eyes widened.

“…Are you Ponehmkin? Did Ban find you? How? How did he—?!”
“[Later!! There’s no time to explain now!!]”
Ponehmkin shouted and raised the greatsword like a shield.
A few spells slammed into it and bounced off with a clang.

Ban’s face twisted with rage.
“You son of a bitch! You think you can take someone from me?! Kardak!!”
The Bicorn must’ve activated his psychokinesis.

Suddenly, the gravity around me began pressing down hard on my body—
[Like hell you will!]
—but just as quickly, it was lifted.

“[We move!]”
Ponehmkin charged forward, greatsword in one hand—
and an Auto-Shotgun gripped in the other.
The shotgun roared.

Steel pellets, brimming with blue divine power, screamed through the air toward Valram and Lucifer.
“Shit—!”
Valram scrambled to dodge.

Lucifer, too, barely escaped the shotgun’s trajectory via short-range teleportation.
Ten-gauge shotgun.
I wasn’t some military nut, so I didn’t know exactly how powerful that was, but even I could tell it wasn’t something you were supposed to fire one-handed.

But Ponehmkin made the impossible look routine.
He unloaded shot after shot with inhuman accuracy, cutting a path forward at lightning speed. As soon as the shells ran out, he slung the shotgun down and gripped the greatsword with both hands, then bolted ahead.
Right away—
“[No!! Bring that back! That’s mine!!]”

“Goddamn it—Kardak!!”
Two figures were hot on our tail.
Valram leapt onto Kardak’s back and began charging at us with frightening speed, and from Lucifer’s back sprouted massive wings.

[How fantastic.]
At Corn’s remark, Ponehmkin tossed the shotgun to me while still running.
“[Reload!]”

[I’ll do it!]
Shells from the ammo pouch at Ban’s waist floated up and slammed themselves into the shotgun’s chamber, drawn in by psychokinesis.
[Done!]

At Corn’s shout, Ponehmkin infused the shotgun with divine power again and handed it back to me.
“[Fire it! Saint! Pull the trigger!!]”
“I—I don’t know how to shoot this!!”

If I’d served in the military, maybe I would.
But I’d died in a fire before I ever had the chance to enlist.
Guns?
My entire experience amounted to a cheap plastic BB gun I’d bought for ten bucks at a stationary store as a kid.

[I’ll handle aim correction! Just pull the damn trigger!!]
Fortunately, I had Corn—the ultimate support.
Even in this awkward position, slung across Ponehmkin’s shoulder, I was able to shoulder the shotgun steadily thanks to his psychokinesis.

Silently.
I took aim.
“[Hold your breath before the shot. Line up your sights slowly. Rest your finger on the trigger—then pull in one clean motion.]”

Whether it was Ponehmkin or Ban, I followed the voice’s instruction exactly.
The first target: Valram, since he was closer.
Even enhanced with divine power, not even Ban could easily outrun a four-legged beast.

“Kardak! Restrain those bastards with psychokinesis!”
“That goddamn pony keeps getting in the—what the f—!!”
I pulled the trigger.

The muzzle erupted in fire.
Steel pellets soaked in divine power screamed through the air.
Too fast. Almost absurdly so.

A magic and psychokinetic barrier hastily wrapped around the two enemies—but the bullets tore straight through.
“AAAGH!”
Kardak’s white body was punctured, blood gushing from the wound.

Valram clutched his face and collapsed—one of the shells must’ve embedded into it.
“Ggghhh… AAAAAGH!!”
As Valram let out a shrill, pained wail, Ban the old man grinned.

“[Valram the traitor! You think I’d forget how you betrayed Karim?!]”
“He… he was part of Karim’s expedition team?”
“[He infiltrated from the beginning with betrayal in mind! If not for him, I wouldn’t have been trapped underground for 300 years! Lucifer! He’s coming!!]”

From above, Lucifer’s hulking mass dropped like a meteor.
His bulging eyes gleamed with obsession and madness.
Seeing a goat-headed man wear that expression made my skin crawl.

The shotgun roared once again.
Lucifer teleported short-range again to dodge.
“[Got y—!]”

His hand reached for me with a triumphant grin—
But then he noticed the massive greatsword flying toward him and frantically tried to veer away.

Too late.
The greatsword tore clean through Lucifer’s right wing with a shriek of slicing flesh.

“[Sorry, Demon King of Pride. I haven’t sharpened this blade in 300 years—it’s rather blunt.]”
While Lucifer rolled on the ground, writhing in agony, Ponehmkin delivered the line in a mocking tone before bolting forward again.
Valram and Lucifer both seemed desperate now.

The aftereffects of their previous skirmish still lingered.
Thanks to that, we were able to land clean hits and escape without much trouble—but that luck wouldn’t last forever.
“We won’t be able to keep dodging like this!!”

I yelled.
Valram and Kardak were now yanking out the embedded pellets and resuming pursuit with terrifying killing intent.
Lucifer as well.

His severed wing had already regenerated, and he was flying toward us with even greater speed.
“[I know. We can’t °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° keep this up much longer.]”
“Then what do we—?!”

Before I could even finish—
Something flew in from above.
An explosion—
And then the stench hit.

Rot.
Filth.
Something like a blend of shit and spoiled food poured over the area in a massive cloud of smoke.
Valram, Lucifer, and Kardak—all charging at me—were now hidden behind that foul haze.
“You really think this kind of smoke can stop me—?!”

Valram’s shout cut off.
Ponehmkin—no, Ban the old man—grinned.
“[A dung bomb made from Popo’s feces! Guess you were too fixated on chasing the Saint to realize where you were, huh?]”

I looked around.
The sixth floor.
One of the places the expedition had gone out of its way to avoid when heading down to the seventh.

Outwardly, it looked like an ordinary grassland.
But I remembered.
“This place has the nastiest monsters on the sixth floor. Dragons, at least, you can dodge. The beasts here will chase you past the seventh floor—all the way to the surface. You’re not supposed to enter this place. Ever.”

The Bleached Bone Prairie.
A place where they say if you go in unaware, all that’ll be left is your bones.
And I quickly understood why.

The moment the stench of the dung bomb spread—
Something rose from the ground.
A monster, about the size of a grown man’s head.

A boxy, beetle-like creature—ugly and square.
So unimpressive, even an untrained civilian with a bat could probably smack it down.
The problem was—

“…How many of them?!”
They were crawling up from beneath the soil in numbers that defied reason.
The grass wasn’t grass.

It was fur sprouting from the creatures’ shells.
Thousands.
Maybe hundreds of thousands.
All flapping their wings at once, producing an ear-splitting roar.

“[Play with them for a while, Lucifer! Valram!]”
At Ponehmkin’s mocking shout, the swarm launched into the air.
In the blink of an eye, Valram and Lucifer were buried under the swarm.

Screams.
Howls.
Exploding spells.
Even now, more bugs were erupting from the earth and hurling themselves toward them. It made my skin crawl.
“They’ll definitely hold them back.”

“[Don’t get complacent yet, Saint. If I know Valram and Lucifer, they’ll claw their way out soon enough.]”
Something was happening in the swarm.
A wave of heat blasted across my face, and suddenly tens of thousands of bugs exploded into shreds at once.

“Ponehmkin!! Give him back!! Give me my Saint!!”
Valram’s roar—
Then Lucifer’s.
The ground shook like an earthquake.

And Lucifer, whose body had been about 3 meters tall before, suddenly swelled to nearly 30 meters.
With just a single stomp, he crushed another huge wave of the bug swarm.
“You sons of bitches!!”

The insects were still holding them up—but barely.
Lucifer and Valram were monsters in every sense. Far beyond human limits.
I turned to Ponehmkin.

“Please tell me there’s another plan—!”
“Saint!!”
There was.

There was a plan.
With thundering hooves and low, rumbling whinnies, a wagon pulled by Varg burst toward us.
One of the expedition’s wagons.

Ponehmkin laughed and leapt inside.
“Everyone! You’re still alive?!”
Mayor Lagote.

The guildmasters of various Hunter guilds.
And even Priest Mathieu and Captain Jerome.
Familiar faces were smiling as they waited for me inside the wagon.

“We charged in too fast and missed the portal! Same for these Vargs here! Thanks to that, we wound up like this! Hahaha!!”
“Let’s move quickly! The entrance to the fifth floor isn’t far from here!!”

Their voices made me choke up for a moment.

“...Please. I’m in your hands.”
My body was far from normal.
I needed their help.

As I lay down on the familiar floor of the wagon, I was finally able to release a little tension.
But the very next moment—
The relief that had just barely begun to settle shattered in an instant.

“[You bastard!! Ponehmkin!! I won’t hand him over!! That’s the one thing I’ll never give up!!]”
Magic came flying.
Divine power immediately flared from Ban and Priest Mathieu’s bodies, enveloping the wagon in a barrier.

Mayor Lagote, who was driving the wagon, quickly swerved to avoid the spell—but he couldn’t stop the entire wagon from bouncing violently off the ground and slamming back down.
Even though the defense magic blocked most of it and Lagote had dodged, the impact was so intense it still left a meaningful dent in the wagon.
“That crazy son of a bitch!!”

Captain Jerome screamed in shock.
Lucifer was letting the swarm of insect beasts tear into his own body.
Abandoning even defense to cast spells and stop our escape—his actions looked outright insane.

Another spell came flying.
Lagote evaded again, and Ponehmkin and Priest Mathieu’s defensive magic blocked most of the blast, but the backlash made the wagon wheels creak ominously.
“Do whatever it takes to hold them off! If we can’t and the wagon breaks, it’s all over!!”

At Lagote’s words, bright blue divine power surged even more densely from Ban and Priest Mathieu, strengthening the protective barrier around the wagon.
“Fire!!”
“Keep them from launching another attack!!”

The remaining expedition members fired like mad, trying to obstruct Lucifer’s magical assaults.
Another spell flew.
Lagote once again executed evasive maneuvers.

It looked like we’d dodge cleanly—
“Shit!! On the right—!!”
Captain Jerome’s scream rang out as something struck the wagon violently.

A massive lump accelerated by telekinesis and black magic collided with the barrier.
Looking closer, it was the corpse of an insect beast—balled up like a giant clump of flesh.
It had been hurled with precision, as if our evasion path had been perfectly predicted.

Valram and the Bicorn’s doing.
The barrier clashed with the monstrous projectile made of beast blood and bone.
And the instant it hit—

It exploded.
“[Khhk!]”
Screams tore from both Priest Mathieu and Ban.

The shield held. The explosion didn’t kill anyone.
But the wagon… wasn’t so lucky.
The blast sent the wagon soaring into the air before it crashed violently down.

A sharp cracking sound came from the already groaning wheels, and the entire wagon began rolling roughly across the ground.
Everyone inside was thrown together and tumbled about in chaos.
When the wagon finally skidded to a stop—

It was clear it could no longer move.
“Goddamn it!! Goddamn it all!!”
Captain Jerome and Mayor Lagote rushed to assess the damage to the wagon and the Vargs, but it was grim.

One Varg had died instantly, its neck broken. The wagon, too, was completely wrecked beyond repair.
In that moment—
“[Amayel!!]”

Lucifer called out my name as he began charging toward us.
Still letting the swarm devour his body.
His eyes had rolled back as he sprinted toward me in a frenzy—it was practically madness.

“The Saint belongs to me! Father!!”
Valram and the Bicorn were charging in, too.
It was the worst possible scenario.

“Saint! Run!!”
Captain Jerome and the other Hunter guildmasters raised their rifles once again, aiming at the approaching enemies.
This time—for sure—they would die.

And all I could do… was watch helplessly.
Then—
“[Lord Ponehmkin.]”

Ban murmured softly.
“[Just as the Saint once did… can you open a portal from here to the surface? With your Authority, it should be possible.]”
From the same mouth, Ponehmkin’s panicked voice followed immediately.

“[You’ll die. The strain on your body will be too great. It’s not as bad as the seventh floor, but making a passage from the sixth floor straight to the surface is no easy feat.]”
“[That doesn’t matter.]”
“[Even Karim’s own body couldn’t withstand that level of overload!! You’ll die!! Ban! You’ll die, damn it!!]”

Ban looked at me.
He smiled.
“[I’ve already fulfilled my wish. I wanted to be a Hero. So… I want to die like one.]”

Mayor Lagote and the guildmasters went pale.
“No!! Ban!! You crazy old bastard!! Don’t do it! I said DON’T!!”
Lucifer and Valram were rushing toward us.

The insect beasts were slowing them down, but that was it.
They couldn’t break free of the fate chasing us.
Ban smiled.

“[Use my life to save the Saint and the remaining expedition members. Lord Ponehmkin. Please.]”
“[…You won’t regret it?]”
“[I won’t.]”

A cool and confident smile.
Without even a shred of hesitation.
“[Because that’s what Hero Karim would’ve done.]”

No more words were needed.
A blinding blue divine light burst out.
“BAN!! BAN!! NO!! You crazy old man, don’t you dare—!!”

With a final scream—
A portal opened behind Ban’s back.