Rupegia

Chapter 174: Portal – Part 3

Even monsters shit and piss themselves after death, so we move out of the room and into the corridor to tend to our wounds. Hana doesn't care about her wings, so it falls to Roxanne and Caterina to keep her still so that they can apply [Regeneration] to them.

"I'll be fine. I'm more interested in the portal!" the excitable dragonkin exclaims. Because I've allowed her to use [Pain Conversion], she's happily orgasming from her broken and tattered wings, making her harder to handle than usual.

"Have pity on us, Hana! Let us heal you, or no Cock for you!" Roxanne expertly wrangles her sex-addicted wife.

"Okay, I'd stop with just the first part," Hana agrees and sits down with a frown.

"But the second part made you stop faster," Caterina soberly adds, making the fiery woman pout in embarrassment.

I take off my helmet and gauntlets, and Gify pops back onto my shoulder, though she hates having to rest on the cold, hard metal of my armor. Well, my shoulder is still bony and hard; it's just that she prefers to be closer to my skin.

Anyway, I make my way to the wounded Companion, who's sitting on the floor by the wall, holding against her eye a wet bandage that's been doused in a healing and regeneration potion to hasten her recovery. Ciel has already stopped the bleeding, but there was too much damage to her eyeball, so [Heal] isn't enough to repair it all.

The "grenade" launched nails at all of us, but while our armor was merely scratched, which is already fucking huge, she almost got a nail through the skull while a dozen got stuck to her shield. The unlucky part was that a nail entered through her eye slit, but lucky for her, it hit the edge and spun, so instead of penetrating her skull and brain, it 'just' got lodged in her eye socket.

You could say she didn't duck fast enough, but Rupegians have no concept of fragmentation grenades yet, even though the Field Guns used exactly that to massacre the swarm. Well, we also got caught off-guard by the grenade, given the state of Hana's wings, so it's too much to expect every Companion to come out unscathed by that.

"How are you feeling?" I kindly ask the pretty imperial catgirl. Even wounded and tired, my girls still like to look well-groomed, so she's like a model posing for army propaganda.

She suddenly opens her good eye wide in surprise, then makes to stand when she spots me, but I grab her shoulder and keep her sitting.

"No need to stand; just rest," I huskily state and flash a smile.

Her pointy black ears fold back, and she inhales deeply, clearly affected and aroused by my "Charisma," but then she gets a hold of her thirst for the draconic Cock and soberly asks, "Well… permission to be frank?"

I nod. "Sure."

"Feeling like shit because I lost my chance to fight alongside everyone," she admits frustratedly, and her cute fangs peek out from behind her lips in anger.

And I chuckle softly. "That… isn't what I meant when I asked how you're feeling."

"Apologies, Your Highness," she shyly mumbles and looks away for a moment, not really that sorry since she just wanted to vent. But her commanding officer is nearby, so she "womans up" and gives it to me before she can get reprimanded, "I don't feel any pain, thanks to the healing and the potion Your Highnesses gave to me, and I appreciate that very much. Aside from that, only some discomfort because my eye is clearly destroyed."

I already knew everything because of [Bind], but it makes the soldiers happy to know that their Lord cares, so I had to ask.

So now I give her the comforting speech that she needs, "It's good to hear that you're doing fine, but don't worry about your eye as we'll make sure you regenerate it fully. It was unfortunate that you got hit, but you're also very lucky that you survived it."

"That much I understand," she accepts with a small nod and then a wince, completely unconcerned with the part about her eye.

And I give her another handsome smile. "Now rest so you can heal faster."

Which hits her right in the heart. "Y-yes, Your Highness."

Maybe we should've tried harder with the sarin gas plan, but we really didn't feel like relying on Samkelo that much. Since his way didn't work, we just wanted to do it our way, and our way is to instantaneously apply a massive amount of force to the heads of our enemies.

Anyway, I've done my part here, so I leave the Companion, and Alissa follows me into the portal room. Lily and Samkelo are inspecting the heraldry on a shield, far away from the corpses, and I predict that my favorite non-lover loli will say something along the lines of "are these fuckers Christian now?"

"Does Jesus exist in this world?" she asks thoughtfully, staring intently at the shield.

Close enough.

"Nope," I casually hum as I approach.

Then she turns to me and continues, "So why do they care about crosses, or, better yet, nailing themselves to them?"

I glance at Alissa, but she shrugs, and so does Ciel through [Bind], so my little fox extracts the meaning of crosses from my mind.

Then she hums thoughtfully, deliberately puckering her lips in a cute way (which mildly annoys Lily), and starts to remark, "Hm… crosses just aren't a symbol we use, let alone something that represents, uh… what does a cross represent, exactly?" And again, she acts cute by tilting her head, making her ears and hair bob.

I get the golems to formulate the answer for me as I stare at her absentmindedly, fantasizing about destroying her pussy. Then I let them speak for me, "It was a method of punishment, torture, and execution, which became a symbol of the Christian religion after their prophet was executed in that manner."

The grim topic makes her feel a bit awkward, but she still calmly continues with a shrug, "Well, you've seen how we execute people: a nail to the back of the head, while punishment takes many forms."

The demon race does have a magical school called [Martyrism], but their thing is kinks and fetishes disguised as virtues or something… Not even Roxanne understands them very well, but she knows that her race also doesn't use crosses.

Ciel gives me a little bit of information on this topic, so I mix it with my opinion and then share my thoughts, "The Wicked are just executed because they go to Hell, so it's… 'not good' to punish them before the Gods do it. Jailing or slavery is considered a 'less brutal' punishment for criminals, though I know that in some places, they also 'offer' the choice of lashings or other corporal punishment, depending on the crime."

"And that's not considered the Sin of Torture?" Lily skeptically asks.

"Isn't any form of punishment torture?" I cheekily reply.

She sighs tiredly as she puts down the shield, then promptly gives up, "Good point… Answer: I have no idea, and I'm tired of being forced to question morals all the time around you."

It's hard not to grandstand in front of her, so I settle with merely stating the truth, "My morality was tested harder than yours, and I also have a personal priestess on speed dial inside my head, so maybe you should trust me more?"

But it isn't easy to catch her off-guard, which is made evident by her confident reply, "I'd rather not let my morality hinge on someone else not being a cunt. Even your Lily would agree with me, I'm sure."

"She would, but it didn't hurt to try," I casually agree.

Then Alissa interlaces her fingers with my clawed ones, giving her the confidence to playfully remark to Lily, "Your self-confidence is likely to endear you to the God of the Sun, and though I believe receiving his Blessing would just annoy you, it'd also be very funny."

This gets a snort out of the gnome, and since Lily isn't used to bantering with Rupegians, it takes her a moment to think of a reply.

"Are we going to explore the portal?" a beary woman grunts impatiently from behind us with perfect timing.

We turn around and see the Princess and her two silent bodyguards staring at us. I wonder why the duo is so quiet. Urmeie doesn't seem to be the kind to order them to be like that, so there must be another reason.

"You could explore it yourself, Princess Urmeie," I calmly reply, adding her Title to not sound rude.

"You're the summoner. I want to know if it's safe before I explore it," she grumbles back and crosses her arms, but she's armored, so no furry puppies are squeezed today. But then she immediately adds the moment I open my mouth, "I like fighting, but I don't like getting killed by a dangerous dungeon that I've underestimated."

Well, she's being just a bit reasonable, so I decide it's easier to give in, "Right, right. I was merely concerned about our men and had to check up on them before moving on."

"And also more concerned with philosophical talk," she adds as she narrows her eyes in annoyance.

"It's never a bad thing to talk about philosophy," I defend myself.

So she amps up the unreasonableness, "But I'm impatient, and you're making me talk too much lately."

The gnome snorts again as Alissa and I chuckle politely. Then I gently hum, "Fine, fine. Let's see what this portal has in store for us."

So I summon a full set of elementals, a Shad, and also a Holly, the one-eyed, winged, invisible little bat-scout that I love to use. Also, I make sure that the spirit elemental has Kaatohe's naked form this time so that the Companions standing guard by the wall can see it.

The summons know their orders, and they promptly step into the floating gray sphere with distorted reflections. Now that I look at it again, it seems like the sphere is reflecting a wall (or maybe a floor) made of square gray stones. It's just warped so that it fits in a spherical projection, as if it's just a texture applied to the sphere.

Anyway, the summons feel like they're crossing through a thin wall of water as they enter the sphere, and then they find themselves in a room made of… square gray stone. It's fairly tall and wide, similar in size to the room that we're in, but there are no visible exits, and it's certainly not big enough to fit the massive swarm that we fought.

So the summons spread out and inspect the room. The only illumination is the faint glow that the sphere exudes, so the light-Ciel glows brighter to help them see better. My level in [Summoning Magic] is very high, so they're all intelligent enough to work together to fulfill their orders.

"Do you all have a TV inside your minds, too?" Lily questions Alissa, noticing that she has the same absent expression as I do since she's also paying close attention to the summons' vision like I am.

"I'd rather not reveal too much about our special connection," my orange fox warily states and glances at the roasted cinnamon loli.

"It's telling that you didn't ask what 'TV' means," Lily adds rather smugly, feeling like she caught the fox in a small verbal trap.

And Alissa pouts annoyedly but decides not to fight the loli on her turf.

Anyway, my Holly has sharp senses, and it hears a faint, muffled whistling, which sounds like there's a storm going on outside. Then the spirit-Kaatohe phases through the wall, and the whistling of the wind becomes unbearably loud, but it takes us a moment to understand what we're seeing.

The darkness is almost absolute except for the innumerable little green lights that flicker on and off at random. Then we realize that they're very far away, which means that they're very big. Then the elemental focuses harder on the lights, allowing us to realize that they're merely swimming in the stormy surface of a sea of dark clouds… a cylindrical sea of stormy clouds, i.e., a tornado, but one of massive proportions, going up and down as far as the eye can see because nothing in this dungeon can be small.

These green lights are actually crystals from floating islands, and they occasionally shine light upon a piece of ruins. A Gothic tower, a Gothic house, a Gothic courtyard, a Gothic wall…

There used to be a whole damn town here, but the storm destroyed it all, and we're sure the monsters did it on purpose.

We use [Earth Wall] to "dissolve" the ceiling and walls of the gray portal room, revealing the huge tornado outside, and everyone stares wide-eyed at the massive tornado that surrounds our tiny island, their mumbles of awe drowned out by the loud whistling of the wind. They already knew what to expect, but even Urmeie wasn't ready for it.

Lily then asks a question with a wry smile, but we can't hear shit because of the wind, so I just shrug with a cheeky grin. She realizes her mistake and rolls her eyes in annoyance, then points to the portal back to the fortress.

"Is it safe to assume that tornado is impassible?" she immediately asks the moment we finish crossing through the sphere.

"No," I answer tersely and keep a straight face.

And the short-fused loli just gives me a displeased glare, not willing to even ask me to clarify my answer.

My hand starts to itch for Alissa's fluffy tail, making me wish we could take off this armor already, so I settle for playing with her ears. She promptly leans towards me and closes her eyes in happiness, both because she loves my touch and also because she loves making Lily feel jelly.

"A tornado doesn't stop spirits," I finally explain after a short moment of bliss.

"How do we cross it, then?" Lily insists as her frown deepens.

But this time, she's let her impatience get the best of her, so I mockingly reply with a shrug, "We haven't tried anything yet, so how would I know?"

Her face twitches as she tries to hold back her anger, but she still has one good point to make, "This tornado obviously can wreck islands, so how do you enter it without getting wrecked yourself?"

"Wings," Hana suddenly blurts out as she enters the room, her own wings mostly healed, though the fleshy webbing hasn't been fully regenerated just yet. Even I don't know what she's getting at, so I just wait for her to add, "The Celestial Horns have wings that directly control the wind, so they might be able to get through."

"And [Fly] creates a bubble that protects you from wind, too," Alissa wisely adds.

"And there's Chesa…" I finish and give Lily a pointed look.

This seems to satisfy the little bundle of anger and endless moral questioning, so she hums thoughtfully, then unashamedly requests, "Talking about her, send me back if we're done here."

"The fortress still isn't clear, so we could go help the squads deal with that," I suggest, though even I'm not sure if I want to.

"I'm getting sick of the sight and smell of blood," she states, letting a bit of tiredness creep into her voice.

And Alissa internally agrees; she just doesn't want to publicly agree with Lily.

Then I turn to Hana and probe the girls' minds. They don't really want to fight anymore, but if there's still some danger for our men, they'd rather help.

So I let Lily go and inform the Comms officer that we'll stay on standby in case the assault squads find anything dangerous.

Oritiki soon appears with her Horns, and they're all very eager to test out their wings against the storm, so I allow her to coordinate with the rest of the Lordsguard on how to safely do that. They receive Emergency Rings in case they get hurt, and Alcander gives them boards with [Gate] coordinates on them that will be activated if they require immediate evacuation. You never know with an unexplored dungeon, so this much is the minimum level of safety expected when you're delving into unknown territory.

Ten minutes later, Hihiriwa reports that the sky around the fortress is clear and that all enemy cannons have been fully suppressed, so the sweep is carried out in full swing. There's no point in us staying by the portal room, so we pick a few bodies for inspection (including the mage's) and return to the Carrier, allowing us to finally remove our stuffy but still very comfortable armor and release the girls' glorious hair.

The first thing we do is strip the pseudo-orcs naked. The second thing we do is cover their huge cocks with blankets as they all eerily seem to be showers rather than growers. And then we notice that they're all rather similar-looking.

"Oh, hey, this one is a woman," Hana remarks as the golems cut the dead monster's shirt off, and we all (except for the usual suspects) ogle her bulging muscles and juicy cow tits (though they're still a far cry from Ciel's). "Damn, she's almost as hot as Caterina."

"I really don't know how to take that 'compliment,'" the stoic Punisher states, her tone tinged by the subtlest amount of offense, an elven staple.

"Hana, my love, you just claimed that an orc-like monster is close in attractiveness to an elf," Roxanne very kindly states with a worried look behind her bespectacled eyes.

But Hana won't back down, so she leans into her puppy-like excitement and endearing bluntness, "I can't lie; this orc is fucking hot. I mean, she's almost unbelievably hot, which is close to the actually unbelievably hot elf right here." Then she lands a hand on Caterina's shoulder.

"I dislike the comparison on principle, but you do know how to use your 'Charisma' to salvage things," the mature elf in question dryly states, not fully appeased, but it's clear the crisis has been averted.

"Thanks, love," Hana telepathically thanks her succubus wingwoman.

"I'm also doing this because I want to fuck her with you," she happily replies and pats our fiery wife internally.

"Don't we all?" I ask rhetorically, as the answer is obvious no matter how much some of the girls might deny it.

Anyway…

"These monsters might just have the 'elven curse' that makes them all rather similar-looking," I explain, mostly to the bored three Earthlings in the audience of our rom-com bit (Chesa is still indisposed).

"'Curse,' Your Highness?" Caterina politely asks, and I can't discern her true intentions, though she might be secretly regretting even asking, considering it came from me.

"Elves aren't allowed to be ugly, so you all tend to have less variety in faces and bodies," I answer in the most neutral way I can after a moment of thought.

"It's concerning that for a second time now, I'm feeling ambivalent about these 'compliments,'" she impassively states. I don't think she's trying to be polite; she's just confused.

"Don't think too deeply of it. We're still the superior race everyone fawns over," Yunia haughtily states with a warm but lofty gaze.

"Yeah, forgive our lack of tact. We have a thing about intentionally humiliating Yunia because it's her fetish, so we say a lot of outrageous stuff to get her wet," Roxanne adds with an impish smile.

"Too much information," Samkelo dryly groans as Lily rolls her eyes and Thant remains awkwardly silent.

"Really? You're complaining about hearing intimate details of a gorgeous woman's fetishes?" I question skeptically.

"Because they involve you, and you make me feel weird," he immediately replies with a disgusted frown.

"Weird? Does your little cock get hard? Do you think you might be attracted to him?" Yunia huskily asks like a depraved older sister.

He blinks blankly, then gets a chill and stares at her blue jewels like a hungry child does with a jar of cookies. But it turns into a sleazy grin as he blurts out like the creepy uncle he actually is, "Holy shit… no, but that made me hard."

"Not even phased by the 'little' part," she replies with a faint, smug smile.

But he just shrugs nonchalantly. "Yeah, I'm a fucking gnome; I already got over 'being small.' But you know what? My cock actually didn't get smaller, and you know what people say about African men." Then he smirks suggestively.

"No, I don't," Yunia dryly replies, staring back intensely with a solemn gaze, daring him to utter such filth in the presence of a Queen.

"T-they're fucking huge…" his resolve falters.

And her victorious smugness becomes twice as clear. "You stuttered; you've failed."

"Goddamn, are you all fucking swingers?" he deflects and looks at me as he's caught off-guard. It does amuse me that he doesn't have the balls to look at the other wives anymore.

And I decide to make the truth clear before he gets any ideas, "We are, but just with women, though the girls do enjoy sexually torturing men without touching them."

He frowns as he needs a moment to process my statement, but then Thant boldly interjects, "I kind of get why Lily is disgusted with you."

"Exactly," the uptight loli in question dryly hums.

I also like sexually torturing men a bit without touching them (the emphasis is for the girls), so I huskily brag, "You only say that because you haven't seen my wives naked yet. Stick around long enough, and you might get a glimpse of paradise."

"And also your cock, so no thanks," Samkelo immediately rejects it.

So Yunia graciously gives him a bit of "encouragement" to further seduce the disgusting bastard, "That's a shame. You'll also get the chance to show your little cock to us if you decide to become more 'uninhibited.'"

And the gnome can't help but grin like a lecherous uncle. "I'll definitely think about that."

The lewd mood then starts to die down, so now we give the bodies a proper inspection.