Chapter 105

 

 

We kept moving and shooting for the next hour. It’s turned into a pretty good contest. Our sharpshooters against theirs and I’ve been shielding ours, so there isn’t much that they can do.

But we’re lucky!

We had a few close calls, but with my magic skills we got through unscathed!

According to the dwarven information source, this town hadn’t always had a stone wall like it does now. They completed it about ten years ago. But without it, we’d have probably had the town fallen already. A wooden wall would fall to fire magic from goblin shamans in probably only one volley and a little time to spread out.

And for dwarves ten years goes by quickly. Their strategists also ironically believe the plan to siege this town might have been created before the wall was completed based on the enemy positions seemingly looking like they would match up with how the wall looked before the stone wall was in place.

But I can see signs of the old wooden palisade still which aren’t entirely obvious. There are a few places inside where they had left a few remnants of the huge pike like stakes tied together, though they are hard to spot since they’d mostly been cleared away.

But at that time I’m shocked.

Finally someone got a critical hit that punctured one of my shields on my sharpshooter.

Aernvein, the dwarven sniper, was wounded terribly in the shoulder after a massive ballista hit ricocheted off the wall and causing partial collapse of my shielding and knocking his full out in return. It’s an amazing coincidence that doesn’t work in our favor. I tried to get rid of the poison and even used some healing but he has to go to the dwarven shrine to rest. He’s old enough that he probably shouldn’t have been fighting anyway and that’s the main problem. It’s a new discovery. It seems that old age doesn’t always work well and has it’s own type of lingering pain factor when healing wounds on someone past certain ages. I’m quite surprised by it. He still needs rest and a break even though technically the wound should be about eighty percent healed. I later discovered he has to have two good naps anyway during the day and on top of a normal sleep despite his injuries.

So I still have just one sharpshooter left. That’s going to hurt morale because he was the lead shooter. With the two of them we’ve killed about 59 goblins so far, not counting the maimed.

But where did that ballistae come from?

We check again…still no catapults. It takes several minutes of return fire for us to put out the enemy single ballistae from the field.

It’s then though, that something weird happens.

I recognize it. It’s the feeling of something out of place. I’ve felt it before, and recently with the imp magic user battle when I was with Fox.

“Asakura look out!” I warned her.

“Eh? What is it?” she looked about. She’s not seeing it but trusts that we’re in some kind of new danger. She’s instinctively holding the shield tighter thinking it must be more goblin arrows.

It’s like the walls have suddenly started bleeding and seeping out black blood and a hundred arms made of black ink that resemble tentacles and are stretching out towards us. Before we can stop them or get away the hands have latched onto me and pull me under into the middle of the strange supernatural tarry ethereal slime.

Asakura refuses to let go off me and is pulling at me so tightly that my wrist is hurt and very sore and even after I’m inside she’s still holding onto me. In the end she’s pulled into the inky cold darkness with me while I have the feeling of being smothered. I recognize the feeling of a gravity pull dimension shift much like how we’d switched doors in the dream state. We’ve been pulled into some … other place. It’s clearly the work of magic.

This...what is this?

“Where are we?” I wondered.

“I’m not sure. But this doesn’t look like where we were, not exactly,” she said.

We find ourselves in a strange area that looks just like the dwarven keep, except it’s totally empty. We’re in the courtyard. And the colors are all wrong, instead of being underground it’s like there’s a red glassy broken hellish sky, and we can see. Also the walls aren’t the polished stone and marble that the dwarves have but are instead some kind of black brimstone. It’s clear this isn’t the normal area of the dwarven town we were in before but most of the building and layout do look like its evil twin. Somehow things are different. But I could use a few clues before getting a clear hypothesis.

It feels like a different dimension!

I also can see Asakura pointing at the walls. “What are those?”

She’s pointing at the walls and ramparts of the keep. It takes me a minute to realize that in this dream realm the tops of the walls have dwarven skulls on pikes decorating the full perimeter of the keep and walls.

“Skulls?” she finally guessed right after squinting a bit more.

“Dwarven skulls. They aren’t the same shape as a human skull,” she corrected herself right away.

Ah, it makes sense now! This confirmed it!

We’re in a dimensional rift based on the reality we’d come from or an alternate reality. In this reality everything already belongs to the demons. An alternate reality where they have already had their way with anything good in this world…

“What’s going on? Shun?” Asakura calls out.

I help her to her feet.

“HuMaN ScUm!” a goblin calls out to us with a wrathful shout from the opposite side of the plaza of the dream version dwarven keep. He looks like he’s got some kind of goblin version of tourette’s syndrome going on with abnormal mannerisms that seem violent and rageful.

This must be one of the twisted and scary looking goblin shamans. I’m sure of it. He has some pretty good skills to pull us in here so quickly. It must have been some kind of grabbing type of enchant mixed with whatever his version of a pocket realm dimension door.

Despite their size these guys give you a weird feeling like the boogey man squared would on a small child. I think its because they are emitting fear spells from their sorcery around them constantly.

He’s wearing a skull mask resembling a demon or cow with long horns. His chest plate is made out of bones and covers him effectively, though in a gross manner. He even has shoulder pads and shin guards also made from bone stitched skirting.

All symbols of death, I noticed.

“Bone armor? Wow,” I mused aloud.

“Ewww yuck,” Asakura said. “He looks…gross.”

She’s still got her shield up and braced for expecting an attack. She’s right to be this on guard, since we couldn’t have been pulled into a trap like this just to talk.

“…cHaLlEnge yOU!” the goblin said after a tirade of goblin profanity mixed in, which I’d partially mixed. He’s still raging about, probably has some kind of madness itch going on.

“Shun, we can’t leave…” Asakura said in half panic. She’d been looking for some kind of door or place to escape from on the wall that was next to us where we’d just been sucked in. Despite the ghoul DNA balancing her emotionally, she hates the idea that we don’t have somewhere to flee too. Her hands were now roaming the wall looking for anything desperately while we were checking the area around us.

I notice she’s right.

Unlike the real dwarven keep this one is also modified to only have ruins of houses that are collapsed piles of rubble. The buildup of building sprawl ruins also makes it harder to tell the shape of whatever giant cage we’re in. The entrance and gates of the keep are sealed off with some kind of hellish flames burning to cover the entrance.

There’s no way we can possibly get through that.

“….mAge DUeLlll…interfered…wICkEd…” I hear the goblin screech. He then screamed something about Asakura cheating by following us in here. Good he thinks that’s by accident and not intentional. He hasn’t figured out that she’s my familiar.

He’s not really good at our language…but that means maybe he’s got an imperfect language enchant that is maybe like half or three quarters finished but not complete.

Before I can react he’s already chanting.

Since Asakura and I already have runic shielding up, I then add the movement speed buff, combat stats increase, and resistance buffs to both of us. We waste no time in preparing before he’s ready to start.

But then the goblin shaman’s spell finishes its long cast. I’m surprised. He needed a long cast time…because of summoning…imps?! Why imps? I hate imps…did I mention their tails resemble rat tails for some reason, but perhaps that’s my being bias against them.

Damn…he’s also a summoner?!

Oh shit!

My jaw drops.

Somehow that makes me worried. You would have to have a lot of mana in your mana core to be a summoner job. I didn’t think a summoner was a common branch of mage work that others would do. I hadn’t expected that goblins would have enough magic power or magic pool for a summon spell either…

A goblin summoner? I can’t believe I’m even considering this…how?!

But sure enough, the goblin has summoned two imp soldiers to guard him. They look pretty solid and I can see muscular postures that are toned well and with exaggerated tendon features, showing they aren’t going to be a push over to fight but are still smaller than he is and the right size an imp would be. He then screams at them to attack us. These are much like the others, being about three feet tall, with draconic wings, and gray skin and sharp teeth and claws. They streak through the air with wicked fast speed to try to jump the gun on us.

A small imp!

But more specifically, an interesting looking type of combat imp!

Are imps a common mage servant?

I’d running been running into them often despite these not exactly looking weaker. They aren’t too dissimilar to the ones I’d recently fought in the tunnels when Sunghee and Fox were with me. But unlike before I don’t have them with me to help out.

The first of them is bashed flat onto the ground by Asakura’s heavy shield while she roundhouse kicks the other one with wicked force, while still stomping the other one into the ground. While the second imp is flying backwards from her powerful kick she again crushes the first imp into the ground with the edge of her shield crushing its trachea while it dies crying out pathetically. It sort of makes a choked out squeal that was supposed to be a scream but that was pathetically muffled. She’s then smacking it down again and again in the same manner after that to ‘make sure’.

Wow…I can’t believe she did that! This is fiercer than Sunghee and Fox with their melee skills in some ways… I’m sure she could give either of them a run for their money, which is strange considering she’d been the most peaceful and innocent before the change.

The other surviving imp streaks back at her and again is smacked back with her shield after the first one is dead. Then she follows up with smacking it with a dwarven warhammer, while I sneak from behind with a fatal blow to chop the back of its neck with my own hammer.

But surprisingly the other goblin shaman isn’t upset. Instead he’s laughing at us.

Weird…

I turn just in time to see he’s now summoned three more imps while we’d been dispatching the first two from afar. Already their bodies are turning into inky black inky particles which are floating away in the wind like windblown ash.

“How long will he be able to keep this up Shun?” Asakura asked me.

“I’m not sure…” I said under my breath.

Yep, they are from the demon realm.

So goblins can summon stuff like this huh?

This is going to take awhile. Each of the imps after the first set also look as strong as the ones before and there doesn’t seem to be any other deviations in their quality either.

The next set of imps we take on greedily. Actually it’s good practice and not something to fear as we start to psych ourselves up. We could do this all day without using much mana. Like before Asakura is angry with glowing red eyes and slams one of them with such force from her shield that it dissolves into ash from the first blow. There’s also a terrific amount of blood spray from the full frontal solid steel smacking his skull into the air.

Nice hit.

Holy cow…she can do that? How strong is she?!

She isn’t as fast or as coordinated and polished as Sunghee but it’s clear that the strength effect is much higher even taking into account all the buffs that are in place.

Asakura’s style with her morphed racial status feels more raw and feral than Sunghee; this is how she fights! And its effective!

It’s very cool and I’m thankful that the blood spatter will dissolve with the bodies; else we’d always be covered in it when we entered the demon realm or dream state pocket realms. We still have to not let the junk hit us in the eyes or face however, and who knows what kinds of diseases exist in this world.

We then are paired off on the other two imps while I can see the goblin shaman is summoning more of them again. Luckily it takes time for a spell like that to finish or we’d be in trouble.

“More incoming,” Asakura warns me in a lilting monotone sounding strong and aware, with no fear. Her warning wasn’t necessary however.

While facing the third imp, the second imp is being fought by Asakura. I got two slashes on my runic shielding while trying to parry. Then I sneak in a blow to its left wing from the left followed by the imp landing three more slashes in my shielding. It still crashed to the ground but can hop high in the air while striking. The imps are pretty agile and I barely finish it off before the next set of them comes at us. I also don’t have to worry about Asakura anymore since she’s fighting better than I am at the moment.

I have to also be careful of not revealing all my moves to the shaman. If he knows I have a stun ray then it’ll be impossible to fight him one on one later when his minions are dead.

True to form, he is still laughing harshly with black sharp teeth. Are all their teeth naturally sharp or did he file them down like that on purpose? It could be a blend of both actually? If goblins are carnivores they would have more canine teeth than humans do, but he could still also trying to look fiercer even beyond that.

They streak towards us while Asakura screeches back at them with some kind of weird ghoul war cry. Then she kicks over a long dwarven street sign that falls and lands on two of them, knocking one over and crushing another. Then she smashes her shield face down against another killing it instantly.

Wow how did she do the timing on that so perfectly? That would require crazy timing, agility, and a good brain to pull off. What have I done? I’ve got a monster for a familiar…there’s no way I can control her if she’s this violent. The other two imps now look scared, with their little mouths wide open like monkey faces of surprise and despair.

I almost pitied them…

But the goblin shaman is still summoning more imps…so we can’t afford to play nice. Every round we have to go as fast as we can. What the hell is he smoking to be able to do that many summons? Does that mean I also can summon a lot if I gain more power?

I let loose a starry missile barrage into one of the imps and he dies. The other one is killed by being pummeled by Asakura, by sheer force of strength in her fists. Then she kicked the other one so hard it’s neck broke. It falls to the ground with its head hanging crookedly off to one side.

“These things really do have faces like monkeys,” I said frowning.

When the next group of imps comes at us, it’s also five…

“Hey this is a good way to get monster cores,” I said aloud.

“What? Monster cores?” Asakura is understanding me but I guess I haven’t been able to explain that part yet…

“Ah, I’ll explain later,” I said puzzled at her asking about it.

She’s still on a rampage, but can still listen to me with careful attention to detail…something’s off? I think even Akira would be afraid of her right now. But what just happened was sort of confusing. Why did she ask about monster cores?

She still killed two of the imps right away, while I’d let loose another starry missile barrage of three shining darts of sparkling light which killed a third. Then after that we’d dueled the last two. We fought for a good two minutes on these while I got used to their attacks.

I wasn’t perfect at stopping their attacks, but I’d learned to watch for the tell tale side arm pull of their arm signaling that they were going to swipe and rake at us. They were pretty fast with their claws, like before.

“Why imps? Why do you think that’s his summon creature? Is there something special about them?” Asakura asked me pointedly with her nose scrunched up on her porcelain perfect face.

“Good question. Probably they are just the low end of the food chain in the demon realm,” I said.

“Tell me more about the demon realm later, Shun. I can tell you know something,” she said.

Huh? What did she just say?

Somehow she read that I didn’t feel surprised about the existence of imps!

“Eh? Asakura…you are interested in the demon realm?” I stared in shock. It’s such outstandingly good news I almost fumbled my weapon while I’ve got a big cheesy smile plastered all over my face. I want to give her a hug right now too, but it would be quite hazardous at the moment to try something like that. This is the final nail in the coffin proving that she’s fully awake.

“Of course! What are you asking me something like that for?” she countered. But still…even though she’s woken up she still has a strange almost predator like stance that she’s in. Does she know her own brain patterns are probably re-written?

But then a little while later she said while seemingly puzzled and confused again, “actually I think I just woke up a few minutes ago? I was in this haze before and I think I was pulling out by degrees. It was like I woke up mad from coming out like I was a car and someone was driving my body and I couldn’t stop myself…umm…some of the stuff I did the last couple of days was really embarrassing. That autopilot thing that was going on was…wow what a ride!” Her cheeks were crimson red in embarrassment.

She probably meant all the sex…

“Oh…” I blushed too.

“I…we’re together,” she said to me seriously. But she said it funny like she was telling me that and wanted acknowledgement that I thought that way too. She didn’t say it like a question.

“Are you worried about that?” I asked between strikes.

“It…wasn’t bad though. I mean…that’s what…married couples do right?” she blushed again.

“We can talk about that later. I need to concentrate,” I said.

But then I added, “so you think it’s like we’re married?” I gulped.

“Well of course don’t you think like that? I mean you can’t say that we are doing all those things together by chance,” she said. She raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah true.”

“It’s all fine…but we’re together. I want you to accept it. I don’t accept temporary relationships,” she reinforced.

Wow…a bit clingy? It’s kind of hot in a way because she’s already very sexy. Clingy is hot if she’s hot too.

It was so surprising to have her finally come out of crazy mode that I was caught off guard and an imp caught me in the runic shielding in front of my face. Three new slashes appeared in the transparent glass like shield. While the shield held I was starting to realize the transparent shield actually looked more like glass than clear plastic now.

Did that mean it was stronger than it used to be or part of the recent upgrade I’d acquired?

Still even though Asakura had woken up, her battle form was probably still on autopilot sometimes. She still was using one imp as a baseball bat against the others, even while it was trying to scratch up her shield. When using it as a bat its skull was crushed while it knocked back two other imps in a series of slashes. The imp being used as a bat had already been knocked prone several head blows earlier.

I finally dispatched my imp, but not until it had put three gaping holes in the runic shielding. I had to recast it at that point since each of the holes was about a foot or more in diameter.

“So you know we’re like…married right?” Asakura confirmed to me in a question form.

“Unn…” I sort of was caught off guard and my heart skipped a beat.

Is she trying to tell me something…? Why is she hitting this point so hard?

Its hot having a sexy woman like her saying it. But now isn’t the time to be distracted.

“Right?” she asked again. Her eyes are twitching excitedly.

“I guess that’s so…” I admitted. What is the proper response here? It’s not like I’ve got a mind reading spell yet…although that should be on my list of things to acquire. I am not sure what she wants me to tell her and I’m trying to be honest too. It could be useful in all kinds of ways.

“What? You aren’t going to take responsibility?” she asked. She looks …upset.

“I didn’t say that I wouldn’t. It’s just it’s the first time this is came up and there’s imps and I am not sure what you want me to say,” I replied quickly. I am fingering my weapon nervously.

“But I’ve…gone all the way with you…like several times a day. And we haven’t even talked about our …f-f-f-future yet. My family would be like really upset with me right now if they knew I’d gone this far without a commitment of some kind…” she seems a bit teary eyed. She’s getting emotionally riled up, but at least she’s not angry at me?

“We already agreed we’re together before you …hit your head,” I countered. Yeah telling her she hit her head sounds way better than telling her she lost her mind after we had non-stop sex.

“Yeah that’s true,…but…a lot is still unsaid,” she is very anxious.

“Well if we just stay together always it’ll be good right?” I asked.

“Good…I-I was just making sure nothing had changed,” she stammered killing another imp.

I thought the conversation was over. It’s pretty dangerous trying to talk while killing imps and I wanted to concentrate on our work. So I was a bit shocked at her next reply.

“A-am I pregnant?” she asked suddenly.

I almost dropped my weapon.

“N-no? I mean…No! I’m sure you aren’t,” I managed to say. A question like that can scare the crap out of anyone even if they knew the pheromones had birth control in them. I almost dropped my weapon. What a terrible time to ask that.

“Oh…” Asakura almost sounds disappointed.

Why is she disappointed?!

That would be terrifying! You can’t mess around with having kids in the middle of a demon apocalypse?!

“Keep your head in the game,” I warned.

The imp in front of me almost ripped my weapon out of my hands trying to seize the opportunity to turn the tables. So I kicked him in the teeth, and he bounced off the ground before I ended up smacking him to the side of the head. He died instantly.

“Imps are allergic to head shots by the way,” Asakura said, cheering me on. She’d already done well on hers.

“You aren’t pregnant,” I said reinforcing the previous comment.

“But I’m leaking breast milk like crazy,” she protested wildly killing another imp. “How can I not be pregnant with this much milk lactating? Every time I move I can also hear it sloshing around.”

“Th-that’s true,” I said. How was I supposed to explain that. Uh hello, I can’t eat normal food anymore and can only drink your breast milk, so you’re my milk cow and that I prefer drinking straight from the tap? It’s even hotter because her hip and waist have remained very slim while the upper chest ballooned out.

Apparently, she was afraid she was pregnant and that I was going to run off was my next thought. For women to have to deal with that fear must be pretty awful. They have to trust the other person implicitly.

“You aren’t pregnant…just trust me on this. I’ll explain the other details after we’re done with this guy.” It would be difficult to tell her about the pheromone abilities. But it makes sense that she’d notice that first.

She seemed unhappy with that answer but the timing was bad. “Oh good, I was…kind of …embarrassed at some of the things I’d done,” she admitted.

“It’s only normal for lovers to do stuff like that together all the time. It’s not something to be embarrassed about,” I replied logically.

“So we’re lovers? I mean of course we are lovers. I knew that. I wanted to make sure you knew that.” She sounded happier and said it stiffly trying to make sure I was on the same page again, even while still fighting.

“Yeah of course we are. But you were the one to want to suggest it first weren’t you? Now you are asking me? Relationships are only healthy when they are permanent and stable,” I said.

“And you are sure, absolutely sure that I’m not pregnant?” she said. She is nervous again, but still fighting.

“I’m sure.”

“How do YOU KNOW that?!” she contested. “My shirt is like…all wet from milk leaking out.” It’s like see through from all the milk leakage.

I try to not glance at it. Its too seductive to see a ‘milk shirt’ contest, even if she’s the only contestant.

“I’ll show you later. Part of that is from jerking around with unnecessary movement while fighting,” I said back. “Don’t worry, I’ve got proof. It’s going to be OK. The, uh…milk has an explanation.”

Another few imps die. There’s still seemingly no end to the entire series of imp summonings.

“How many has this been now?” Asakura asked, losing count.

“Uh, you mean times we had sex or imps killed? I’m not sure which you are asking about,” I said.

“Focus!” she said trying to change the subject and trying to dodge the question.

“I haven’t been keeping track,” I batted the dwarven warhammer into an imps mid section so hard it puked blue and black blood. “Gross, it got guts on my shirt,” I complained. I almost had green guts spray my eyes, which would have been the worst possible outcome.

There was another period of silence while we kept fighting.

“Actually I really like this new body. Whatever you did to me I’m like…super strong now,” she said, cackling while she kept bashing her shield into imps one after another, swatting them like flies with a fly swatter. She killed three of them just like that.

Wow, that’s hot.

“Actually you are …sort of…my familiar now and not just a lover,” I said.

“What?!” she’s in shock. The other two imps die instantly while the imp shaman has to speed up his summons now that Asakura is angry…

“What’s a familiar?” she asked.

“Being a lover isn’t bad though. The familiar thing just adds a special connection to it,” I said trying to calm her down.

“What do you mean I’m a familiar?! What do you mean by special?! What’s a familiar anyway?!”

Yep, Asakura is definitely back. She’s normally a bit calmer, but I guess that can’t be helped since she’s been on autopilot and follow mode for so long. It had to have some kind of rebound effect with it when it was going to catch up.

I suppose it’s understandable that she’s suddenly freaking out. I mean a lot’s happened so far. Even without the going into zombie mode for so long she might have done that just from all the events of being in this world…

It makes sense that there would be a conversation like this pop up sometime after she had woken up. But does it also mean she’s more resistant to the pheromones or just totally dependent on them? It could be both ways. What if she’d also woken up but her body was so used to them that she couldn’t live without them now?