The Demon Lord’s Successor - 97

You decide that the best way to face a problem is to avoid it entirely. Why wreck your brain thinking up plausible excuses when you can simply pretend that nothing happened in the first place? How did the saying go? Mendacity is the best policy?

Everything’s fine, you think. Nothing to see here.

“Hm?” You glance back at shocked Rosetta, and raise an eyebrow, barely acknowledging her questions.

“What do you mean ‘hm’?” Rosetta raises her voice. “I just saw some bunny man—who wished death upon you, by the way—get on all fours and let you tie a whip around your neck?”

“So? That’s his thing,” you shrug. “Isn’t that right, Xi?”

“Yes, that’s my thing,” Xi monotones.

“I just saw you instruct him to become your slave!” Rosetta yelled.

“I just reminded him of his rightful place on his knees,” you say.

“You cast a spell on him!”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You all saw it, right!?” Rosetta turns to the others.

“I… I’m… I don’t…” Elza struggles with what she saw as if her brain didn’t properly register what has transpired.

“You! Bunny girl!” Rosetta calls out to Epsilon. “You were right next to me! You saw him cast some kind of mind restructuring spell, didn’t you?”

“Are you feeling alright?” the big-tittied bunny girl asks Rosetta in response. “Nothing like that happened. Look at that poor boy—he was clearly driven insane during his time here.”

“But he was completely lucid!” Rosetta still tries to argue. Desperation forms more and more on the adventurer’s face.

“Oh, dear,” Epsilon comes closer and places the palm of her hand on Rosetta’s forehead. “I think you have a fever. You’re burning up! Maybe whatever magic has taken hold of this place is starting to affect you too.”

“I—I don’t have a fever!” Rosetta shouts and knocks Epsilon’s hand away from her face. “I don’t!”

“You need to lie down,” Epsilon softly says to Rosetta and gently holds her by the side of her arms. For a brief moment, you notice Epsilon’s sincere expression crack into a barely contained grin, but she quickly regains herself.

“I’m not lying down in this shit! Let me go!” Rosetta struggles to break free from Epsilon’s grasp, but her attempts grow feeble. “I’m fine! I’m…”

“It’s alright,” Epsilon whispers to Rosette. “Everything is going to be fine.”

Epsilon hugs Rosetta, wrapping her arms around the blue-haired girl. The adventurer gives in to the bunny girl’s gentle embrace and rests her head on Epsilon’s soft, malleable, barely covered tits.

With the incredibly smooth resolution of the situation, you proceed further, through the tunnels. Since the main fortress is located at the center—and thus—at the highest point of the city, you simply follow the upward slopes of the tunnel floor.

You make good progress. The reeking stench of all the waste of the capital city is not quite as revolting as it used to be. Oh, God, I’m getting used to it, you despair, realizing that you’re all drenched through and through.

The only one who seems to be having any fun is Epsilon. The bunny girl found new entertainment in torturing Xi, though she avoids doing too much bodily harm to her former superior.

“If I tell him to lick my feet, he’ll do that, right?” Epsilon asks you with a wide grin.

“Yes, but… Maybe don’t do that for now,” you say. “I wouldn’t want to keep wasting my energy on hellfruits to heal him from diseases… I wonder if those fruits can do that. They were able to heal a pierced heart—”

You pause when you see an opening in the brick tunnel wall. Deep within you see the flickering of torchlight. Even at the very entrance inside, the air is fresh. A morning breeze in the spring fields. At least, by comparison to the cesspool that you’ve spent the last hours in.

Rosetta puts her hand on the walls of the opening and says, “the foundations of the fortress. Likely one of the escape routes in case the capital falls.”

After what feels like forever, you’ve finally reached your goal. And although you can only guess if your sister will be inside, at least your journey through the Highwer’s sewage systems is over.

Leave the sewage and venture into the new path. It is carved through some sort of hard, brown, and black stone. Granite, maybe? You’re no expert. All you care about is that this should lead to the main fortress of the city.

As you go higher through the winding tunnels, the surroundings dampen. Often the walls have marks of additional manual reinforcements and repairs with stone, metal, and wood. You feel a sense of déjà vu. An eerie similarity to Graf’s former stronghold’s lower levels, in which you’ve spent quite some time with your captives—No! Keep your mind here and now, where it belongs!

The path widens and you find yourself approaching an entrance to a larger room. A hall? An underground prison? A mausoleum?

“After you,” Epsilon smiles to Rosetta and gestures the adventurer to go first inside.

It looks like the journey took its toll on the female adventurer. She’s not nearly as lively as she was when you met her. Nonetheless, Rosetta takes a deep breath and takes a step forward.

You wonder for a second. Rosetta is supposedly strong. At least, she should be one of the strongest adventurers in Ranville. But if there’s trouble, Gorrazsh should be able to take more of a beating. It’s one of the reasons you kept the orc around. Either way, you’re in the middle of enemy territory, so you should at least re-summon your loyal minions.

“Wait a second,” you call out to Rosetta—who took no more than a step or two inside—to re-arrange your party formation. That’s when you see straight blue bangs fly through the air.

Rosetta’s headless body falls on the ground, her head lands at your feet.

The hall before you lights ablaze in a hellish inferno. In the middle stands a single figure—seven-feet-tall figure in black plated armor. With no apparent weapons, the knight stands prepared to face the intruders. Through the eye-slits of the knight’s angular closed helmet, you see molten, burning circles. They’re pure white at the very center, emanating such heat, that you feel it on your face.

The knight raises his hand and clenches his fist. The ground trembles, as if struck by an earthquake. Everything around you rumbles and shakes, you try to hold your balance. A single pebble falls on Rosetta’s decapitated head. You realize that the tunnel you just came through is about to collapse.