Chapter 423: Ghouls of Our Own Making
Clang, clang!
Sword clashed against sword. Blades forged by the same smith swung at each other to take one another’s lives.
Shhk!
A soldier’s head was lopped clean off. The one who severed it was none other than a knight of House Sagittarius.
"I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!"
The knight cut the soldier down with tears in his voice. The soldier’s head parted from his body wearing an expression that suggested he had no idea why he was being beheaded.
Humans cutting down humans. It was a scene of horrific slaughter, yet technically the Sagittarius subjugation force was only exterminating "ghouls."
The fact that these ghouls had been comrades who marched into the dungeon with them mere moments ago was what drove them out of their minds.
Shriiiek.
A ghoul swung a wooden club with no strength behind it. The soldier raising his steel shield could have caved the ghoul’s skull in with a swing of his hammer, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
"Snap out of it, Adolf!!"
The soldier ached at the sight of a close friend reduced to a corpse trying to kill him. If he didn’t harden his heart, he would be the one to die; but killing those who had turned into ghouls was easier said than done.
"This man is already a ghoul."
Squelch.
The Count adjusted his blood-spattered glasses and withdrew his rapier. The soldier-turned-ghoul had no armor, so the rapier punched through his throat with ease.
"Kill or be killed."
"C-Count! But!"
"Fall back. I take it the chaos made it hard to hear me."
The Count seized the young man by the scruff of his neck and hauled him backward. Behind them, soldiers were already retreating step by step toward the dungeon exit.
"Kyahahaha!!"
The enormous winged monsters circling overhead swooped near the entrance, trying to snatch soldiers away. The men swung their weapons or raised their shields to fend off the Harpy Aellos’ attacks.
Crack!
The Harpy Aellos ripped their weapons and shields away and flew off. Left utterly defenseless in an instant, the men bolted straight out of the dungeon.
"I’ll say it once more! Fall back! We’ll regroup at the fortress!!"
The Count’s shout rang through the dungeon. But the Harpy Aellos burst into mad laughter as if deliberately trying to drown out his orders, and the vanguard of the subjugation force couldn’t get away cleanly.
"Princess!! Let’s retreat!!"
The Count’s call reached even the small dwarf swinging her axe at the front. But Rhodopelli heard his retreat order and ignored it.
Slash, slash.
Rhodopelli hacked at the ghouls relentlessly. She moved with such violence that it seemed her axe blade might chip, and as a result every soldier-turned-ghoul died with their neck or torso severed.
"...Retreat?"
Rhodopelli scraped her axe against a Harpy Aello’s talons as they grazed overhead, and muttered bitterly to herself.
"If we retreat. If we retreat from here, do we even have a plan?"
"We need divine power. With help from the Holy Knights, we can win."
"Those elf rapists? Ha. How am I supposed to fight with them at my back? They went after elves; you think they’d stop at dwarves?"
Clang. A feather shot toward Rhodopelli, only to be deflected by the Count’s rapier.
"If we turn our backs now, those things are going to come pouring out after us."
"Most likely. But we need to run right now. And..."
The Count swept the dungeon with an icy gaze.
"I’ll see about calling in the Holy Sword’s Hero."
"...I can live with that. Whew."
Rhodopelli wiped away blood and sweat and glared at the orc in the black robe. He had deliberately avoided her and thrown everything into abducting soldiers instead, and the count he’d taken already exceeded twenty.
"Legion of Pride... I’m going to smash you to pieces."
Rhodopelli ground her teeth and pulled her soldiers back.
The Sagittarius subjugation force.
Roughly a hundred and fifty casualties sustained.
Their entire accomplishment amounted to killing a little over a hundred and fifty ghouls.
***
I had said I would use the power of capital, culture, and religion, but military force mattered too.
What mattered was making sure the Leo Marquisate never felt physically threatened enough by us to mobilize troops.
Making them believe that even if we went to war with some other human faction, that dungeon belonged to an entirely different power than the one occupying the barony.
That was the basic framework of the two-track strategy: waging the campaign against the Marquisate as a war of capital and culture, while crushing the County under brute force.
"Heh heh heh, running with their tails between their legs."
The subjugation force sprinted out of the dungeon. The Count and Rhodopelli stayed to the very end with their knights, shielding the soldiers, and I deliberately let them go.
"Yes, run. Come back with fresh equipment and offer it up to us. The ghouls will welcome you anytime."
Grrr.
The soldiers we had just kidnapped and turned into ghouls waved at the fleeing subjugation force.
The Count and Rhodopelli shot me looks brimming with murderous intent, but I simply waved and saw them off.
"We won."
Silence settled over the dungeon once the subjugation force had cleared out. We had driven a thousand soldiers from our territory and claimed victory in the repulsion battle.
"Hey, we’re not chasing? Feels like we could run them down right now if we mobilized the Worwolves and Harpy Aellos."
"No pursuit. Cleaning up these bodies takes priority over chasing the enemy."
Not a single human survived. Every one we caught had their neck snapped or sliced, so there was no chance any of them lived.
"Feed the humans who haven’t been turned into ghouls yet to the Worwolves. Orcs, sort the weapons and armor properly and ship them to the main base through the portal."
"And what should we do?"
Halphas and the Harpy Aellos were itching to fly out and abduct more enemies right that second.
"You lot head back to the nest. Good work today. The market side is getting sorted out, so I’ll send the minotaurs back to your dungeon."
"Mm... what a shame. I was just getting into snapping human necks."
Halphas licked the blood off her lips and smiled crookedly. Still drunk on the high of battle; she was a demon through and through.
"Hold back and rest for now. Starting tomorrow, going out every night to abduct humans will be your assignment."
"Then we won’t get any equipment out of it."
"The enemy subjugation force will bring the equipment to us on their own. The humans you capture will go through ideological screening at Gremory’s ranch."
Those who Ras shall become citizens of our Legion.
Those who do not Ras shall become ghoul shields and swing their claws at the next subjugation force.
"Rastujad and the twelve disciples will be transferred to Allocen’s Dungeon. Support Percival and keep the front line stable."
[As my master wills it.]
"Now then... hm? Halphas. You look like you’ve got a complaint."
"...Hmph. It’s nothing."
Halphas was pouting with a sulky expression anyone could read. Showing discontent over an order to stand down after a battle wasn’t like her at all.
"I’m finally giving you an order to rest, so why are you so determined to keep working? Sniff, sniff. ...Hmm."
I smelled something. I stepped toward Halphas and pulled off her penguin hood.
"What, you figure if you work hard enough, I’ll give you a good pounding?"
"Th-that’s not it at all! Even if you’re my master, don’t get the wrong idea! I just didn’t like the look in those bastards’ eyes when they ran off, that’s all!"
"Is that so? Then work hard starting tomorrow. Because right now, you and I are going somewhere. Gremory! Handle the cleanup for me."
"Sure, sure. Have fun."
I grabbed Halphas, penguin robe and all, and leapt through the portal. From Allocen’s Dungeon, through Gremory’s Dungeon, and back to my own; Halphas didn’t say a single word the entire way.
"Halphas, I intend to reward you for your hard work on my behalf. Consider this a gift."
I tossed Halphas onto the bed. When I shoved up the black-and-white penguin robe, her pale, slender legs came into view.
"W-wait a second! Master, this is too sudden, hyauk?!"
Lick. I buried my head under the robe and gave the mound between her legs a light bite.
"Heh heh, already wet."
"Master, I’m not mentally prepared right now...!"
"What are you talking about? Your body’s plenty prepared."
I forced my face against Halphas’s groin as she tried to close her legs, and thrust my tongue inside her. It had been a while since I’d tasted her, and she was already leaking.
"Heh heh, no matter how I think about it, this is a hell of a turn-on. Not a single thread on underneath that robe. You mean to tell me you were fighting like this the whole time?"
"Th-that’s only because you told me to wear it this way...!"
"Right. You followed orders perfectly. That’s exactly why you’re getting a reward."
I sucked and lapped eagerly at her mound. Her flesh, firm and springy like chicken breast, twitched every time my tongue touched it.
"I’d say that’s wet enough."
I pulled my head out from between her legs. Halphas’s face was already flushed and she was panting hard.
The lips that had been pouting moments ago now hung slack and open, and even the venomous slant of her eyes had drooped downward.
"Come to think of it, Halphas, you inherited the power of the Dragonians too, didn’t you?"
"Y-yes...?"
"Ugh, it’s a shame I made you a dungeon master. Otherwise I could’ve had you laying eggs like Levis Ann... oh ho. Wait right there."
I rolled up her robe. The penguin robe bunched up around her solar plexus, exposing everything from her abdomen down to her toes, her bare skin lightly slick with sweat.
"I’ll at least give you the sensation of laying eggs. Ta-da. What do you suppose this is?"
I lifted a basket I’d stockpiled in the storeroom. Inside, spherical objects about the size of baseballs were piled high.
"They’re sort of reddish... is that congealed slime mucus...?"
"Correct! A new batch of mucus spheres I made recently. I’ll give you one as your prize."
I pulled one sphere from the basket and pushed it into Halphas.
"Hiiik?!"
"A bird’s a bird after all. Even with a human pelvis, look how easily the egg slides in!"
Part of it was that the sphere was relatively soft and yielding, but the mucus sphere slipped inside her with almost no resistance.
"So this is what you meant... by making me lay eggs?"
"Of course. But it’d be a letdown if it ended here."
I spread her legs apart and pushed my flushed, aching cock inside. Her passage, stretched wide by the sphere, clamped down eagerly to grip me, and I kept driving the head deeper through her folds.
"Haah?!"
Press, press.
I kept nudging the sphere forward with the tip. Halphas covered her mouth with one hand while the other clenched the bedsheets in a white-knuckled grip.
"Halphas. This is an order."
I leaned over her and lifted her robe slightly.
"Open your womb."
"That’s not something I can just open on command, kyaa?!"
Halphas arched her back, her body bowing like a drawn bow. I lightly sucked at her chest, which rose like a pitcher’s mound at a baseball stadium. Her breasts were as small and as devoid of sensitivity as ever.
Lick, lick.
I tormented her nipples with the same tongue work I used when suckling at Luna, like a child at its mother’s breast. Halphas let out pained moans but obeyed my order faithfully.
Glurk, glurk.
My cock began pushing deeper. The head started shoving the sphere ahead of it.
The space that had been blocked opened up, the sphere occupying that space moved inward, and naturally my cock went that much deeper.
"Bwahaha! Halphas, do you see that? Your belly’s bulging a little."
I ran a finger along her lower abdomen. There, the swell of her stomach matched the swell of her chest.
"M-master...!"
Halphas covered her eyes with her hands and turned her head away.
"P-please stop talking into my chest...!"
"Nope. Blehblehblehbleh."
I flicked my tongue back and forth, tormenting her nipples mercilessly. She shuddered harder than when I’d been eating her out, and I could feel her heartbeat quickening against my tongue.
"Halphas. How many humans did you and your dungeon’s subordinates kill today?"
"I-I’m not answering! You’re just going to do something weird with the number! You think I’d answer that?!"
"Heh heh, playing hard to get. Fine. Then I’ll do as I please."
Schlick.
I lifted my upper body and pulled out along with it. Halphas caught on to something and hooked her legs around my waist, trying to pull me back in, but I pinched her nipple.
"Nnngh, haang, n-not there, please...!"
"You’ve got the mental bandwidth to worry about your chest right now? Impressive."
I scooped up a handful of spheres from the basket and set them on her stomach.
"Open your womb again. I may not be able to make eggs, but I can make you lay as many as you want."
The ultimate joy of any species descended from harpies: laying eggs.
For Halphas’s sake, I pushed the spheres back inside her and drove my cock in after them.