Chapter 453: Escape Was a Trap

With everything below the thighs torn away, Asmodine looked like a plaster torso. Unlike a torso, her head and arms were attached normally, but there was no response from her, nothing that felt alive.

'Is she dead?'

If the source of her life was actually in the part below the thighs, the part I assumed was root, then I'd basically killed Asmodine. But I didn't have the luxury of worrying about that right now.

'Shaitan and Lucifer will know what to do!'

Thud!

I hit the floor back first. I fell too fast to even take a breakfall, and the impact hammered up through my whole body.

"Guuugh... the things I do to get a piece of this."

I may be a corpse-humper who's been intimate with dullahans, but sticking it in an actual dead body is something I'll pass on. At the very least the Seal of Lust was still on Asmodine's lower belly, so all I had to do was get this body back to our base somehow.

"So how about you just leave me alone?"

Kiyaaaaak!!

The tree monster that had lost its pistil started shrieking. Fitting for a creature that was the entire Lust Legion fused into one, losing its only pistil sent its whole body into a raging fit. Swinging the mace-shattered roots around in every direction was the least of it; the faces oozing dark red fluid all started spitting bodily fluids too.

Fshhhhhh

"That's obviously deadly poison."

The dark red venom corroded the ground the instant it landed at my feet. The hard dungeon floor melted like a sponge doused in hydrochloric acid. I barely managed to get myself upright.

"...Whew. I'm not a corpse-humper. I'm not a corpse-humper."

Asmodine is alive. She's just unconscious. I couldn't feel much of a heartbeat, but the Seal was still flickering, so she was as good as alive.

"Gotta admit, with no legs she's easy to stick it in and carry. Insane."

I wedged Asmodine in front of me. Just like when I'd conquered basement 2 with Asmodeus impaled on me, this time I fixed Asmodine in front and scooped her up.

'This is really driving me crazy.'

Even with my cock inside her, there was no sensation of tightening at all. It felt like a well-made biological onahole, and my heart sank. Asmodine gave no reaction whatsoever, and she didn't wrap her legs around me and cling the way Asmodeus had.

"Damn it, their names are practically the same and they're this different!!"

Astaroth was trash-tier, so I at least had to salvage Asmodine. Fortunately, my escape route was open.

The maze. The place Asmodeus had kindly explained to us, layout, escape route and all. With the seax destroyed, the first thing I needed was a new weapon.

"...Guess I'm not even getting that much time."

Rumble rumble.

The thing that had been Asmodine, the bark of the giant tree monster, began to churn. It rippled like water, and its trunk started to grow slimmer.

Gurgle, gurk.

The stamens beneath the petals began twisting around one another in a spiral. The stamen tentacles formed something like a dog's head, its tip splitting open a full 360 degrees and smacking wetly. The pulped roots were cut away, and the four relatively intact ones took on shape, as if bones and joints were forming inside them.

"...This is hell."

New faces began sprouting on the petals near the neck. Three of them I recognized. Caim, Focalor, Orias. The officers of the Lust Legion who had stood in my way were grinning at me like vengeful demons from inside the slime-slick petals.

"We are... a legion...."

"Hey, your boss ditched you and ran, you know."

She said a legion was nothing, and she ran off alone. Why would they fuse into a single thing to save a master who had dumped everything on her subordinates and fled?

"This is unbelievable. Did Astaroth put out for you or something?"

"..."

Every petal shut its mouth. I got such a bad case of chills at having guessed right that I ended up finishing inside Asmodine.

"...If she was putting out, then fair enough."

If she'd been maintaining her subordinates' loyalty with her body, I could understand that well enough. Especially for a female dungeon master, no matter how capable and disloyal a subordinate might be, one night invited into her bed would keep their loyalty from slipping for at least a month.

"The more I think about it, the angrier I get. I was going to just run, but not anymore."

I thought of that silver hairtail I'd love to chew up and spit out. I couldn't let a synthetic monster that dared to remind me of Forneus go unpunished.

Fortunately, with the pistil, the Seal, pulled out of it, the creature's power had dropped somewhat.

[Lustrilis:, ★★★★★, Lv.92.]

Removing Asmodine had dropped its level by a full three. That's a matchup I can work with. I never want to grind against those stamen tentacles again, but with fists there was a real chance.

"Hey, Lustrilis. Let's change your name. To Horny Mutt."

I gave Asmodine's rear a light smack. The instant I toyed with its pistil, the Horny Mutt opened its maw and sprayed slime everywhere.

"You said you were a legion? Heh. Well, so am I."

KABOOOM!!

The wall beside the maze exit collapsed. Lime and the Slamias came tumbling forward out of it in drill mode.

"Master!!"

"...I told you to pass through the maze and you drilled straight through it instead. Heh heh, good work!"

Lune sprang off Lime's back and landed beside me with her bow up. Halphas came bursting out through the hole in the ceiling.

Orcs, cookie elves, Andras, minotaurs. More of our legion's proud soldiers than I could list poured out of the passage. The moment they saw me facing off with the rutting hound, they surrounded it.

"Legion, listen up! The enemy is level 92! A large monster slightly stronger than Luna!"

Kiyaaak!!

"This creature calls itself a legion, but it is a pretender. We bring [Lust] down and we become the true [Lust]!!"

"""Raaaas!!"""

"Let's go."

I held Asmodine tight. I didn't have a decent weapon at the moment, but Asmodine, with my cock buried in her, was the finest shield I could ask for.

"I'll pull the aggro! While I do, you cut off every last cock on that horny mutt!"

Kyaaaaak!!

The petals began to quiver violently. The incubus officers who had become petals started pushing new branches out of the barklike trunk.

"The neutering surgery starts now!!"

I cradled my Seal shield, Asmodine, in my arms and charged forward.

***

Thump, thump.

Astaroth passed through the center of the first floor in the arms of a human man whose name she didn't know. Thanks to having synthesized herself with dark elves until every trace of demon was gone, she'd been able to walk out as a "dark elf held captive in Astaroth's dungeon" without drawing a single suspicious glance.

'Look at him blushing, completely clueless.'

The man carrying her was flushed and bashful, like some green virgin. He seemed to have some idea what she'd suffered inside the dungeon as a dark elf, yet with her eyes closed and pretending to be unconscious, she could feel exactly how his fingers tightened where they gripped her thigh and the side of her chest.

'All I have to do is get out of the dungeon.'

A dungeon master stepping outside for a while under enemy attack doesn't count as defeat. As long as Asmodine, the Seal she had synthesized, didn't leave the dungeon, the legion hadn't lost yet.

'There's no way she loses. She's a 5-star monster at level 95.'

She had fused every soldier in the legion into one. She had crammed in every magic stone the legion had. She'd added the Seal of Lust, and she'd used the one Reincarnation Crystal she had left to shorten the synthesis time and crank the thing out fast.

Because so many souls had been mixed together, it couldn't make intelligent decisions. Its intelligence had dropped to where it only knew who its master was and could understand simple orders.

"Kill everything except me."

The order Astaroth had given was as simple as that.

Kill every being other than herself. It didn't matter how long it took, and it didn't matter if it spread roots through the entire dungeon and drained every enemy dry. Even if it devoured the enemy commander, a dungeon portal, once opened, doesn't disappear until one side's dungeon is destroyed.

From basement 1, Asmodine would spread her roots up to the first floor, down to basement 2, and all the way into the Halphas dungeon, absorbing every enemy along the way. Astaroth laughed inwardly and slowly opened her eyes.

"Ah..."

"Are you awake?"

"Where is..."

"Be at ease. We're still inside the dungeon, but this sector has been cleared by us."

"...Hic!"

Astaroth buried her face in the man's chest and wept. The man, Andaihal, patted her gently and carried her toward the dungeon exit. It couldn't be helped, but having a human's hands on her body made the nausea nearly impossible to keep down.

"What... happens to me now?"

"While we humans clear out the dungeon, you and the others will be cared for safely outside it."

"Outside the dungeon..."

If she went outside the dungeon in the middle of a war, she'd have no way to use the system. The Seal, her workaround for checking it, was currently rampaging out of its mind. And throwing a fit about wanting to stay inside would invite suspicion.

'Should I have just hidden somewhere?'

Fear that the orc might come looking for her had driven her to flee into human arms, and that was proving to be the mistake.

"The dark elves rescued before you all wanted to leave the dungeon as fast as possible."

"Is that... so."

There was no pretext. Astaroth closed her eyes and tapped at the system window. To anyone but a dungeon master, it would look like she was staring at nothing and had lost her mind.

'Let's see how well she's doing...'

[Lustrilis:. Lv.92]. [Asmodine], the only living subordinate left in the dungeon, was gone. Astaroth's mind raced as she pieced the situation together.

Lustrilis. That was the synthetic beast at the stage just before Asmodine had been added. Which meant Asmodine had been removed from Lustrilis.

"Ah, aaah!!"

Astaroth started to leap out of the man's arms. But the knights on either side of Andaihal quickly grabbed her by the arms.

"Please calm yourself. Tch, the mental shock must be..."

"...My friends, there are still friends of mine trapped in there!!"

Astaroth was impressed with her own improvisation. She thrashed, stretching a hand back toward the very direction she'd fled from.

"Inside, my friends are still inside!!"

"...I give you my word. We will save them without fail. So please, trust us."

Astaroth wanted to bury a fist in Andaihal's face as he made that solemn vow. But that would only send the knights after her, so, with no other option, she decided to play along for now.

"Aah..."

Her head was a mess. Had the Seal been taken from her? Or had Asmodine come to her senses and betrayed her? Or was this Solomon's punishment for using a Seal as synthesis material? All the answers were buried on basement 1, right beneath her feet, and confirming any of it meant going back down.

A dark elf who'd been raped by the dungeon's incubi had no excuse to head underground. Carried out of the dungeon in Andaihal's arms, Astaroth saw the camp set up in the forest and steeled herself.

"Here we are. Lady Nifela, another one we recovered."

"Thank you, Lord Andaihal...?"

The rather mature-looking elf, Nifela, narrowed her eyes for a moment as she looked at Astaroth. Astaroth, meanwhile, was dumbfounded by the sight of the dark elves lying on sickbeds arranged in one corner of the forest.

'This is insane.'

Elves and orcs were clustered around the dark elves, nursing them with the utmost devotion. The display was so transparently fake that Astaroth wanted to blurt out everything she'd seen up to now.

'This is a full-on orgy breeding village.'

To her demonic eye, the power that let her see who had coupled with whom, dozens of red threads running between the orcs and the elves were visible at a glance.

"Lord Andaihal, please set her down. I'll get her into a shroud."

"Ah, of course."

Nifela brought out a white shroud and unfolded it. White-clad elves came over and put up a curtain around Astaroth, and Nifela personally stripped off her rags and dressed her in the shroud, whose fabric felt as soft as silk.

"...Haah."

Nifela looked at Astaroth for a moment and let out a sigh, and then:

Smooch.

She covered Astaroth's lips with her own. Astaroth was sincerely startled by the sudden kiss from an elf who looked prim by anyone's standards.

Glug, glug.

Something poured into her mouth. When the sticky, slimy substance reached the back of her throat, she swallowed it before she could stop herself. She raised a hand to overpower Nifela, but Nifela's hands, and the other elves', were faster.

Shuuunk!

Her lower belly throbbed. The foreign objects entering her front and back at the same time knocked the breath out of her. Something thick as a phallus pushed into her vagina, feeling ready to tear it. It went deep enough to jab the mouth of her womb, intense enough that her consciousness flickered for a second.

"Ngh, kkh!"

But she could endure that much. She simply wasn't used to it after reworking her body; a fake phallus like this she could take all day.

What even Astaroth couldn't stand was the sensation of the worm that entered her from behind and started crawling up inside her. The feeling of the ridge of its head scraping her intestinal walls as it swam through her gut made her legs give out.

"Lady Nifela?!"

"It's all right. The tension just left her and she collapsed."

Nifela patted Astaroth's ear and helped her back up. Having barely regained the use of her mouth, Astaroth pulled up the mana left inside her and tried to cast a spell.

"Annihila... gkh?!"

Before she could even finish the word, Nifela's fist slammed into her lower abdomen. The impact of a mana-charged punch rocked Astaroth's womb.

"Kuh, haaagh..."

"Your ears are perfectly intact, aren't they? Every single one of our girls had hers chewed off..."

The look in Nifela's eyes as she stared down at Astaroth was ice cold.

"So what exactly are you, bitch?"

"I, I'm..."

Chomp.

Inside her belly, something bit down. At the sensation of her rectum being bitten, something she had never experienced in her life, Astaroth's consciousness blew out entirely.