Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1018: Speed Blitzing Dungeons

Kaiden Grey finally put Bastet down when the lunch car arrived at Hozumi’s cordon, and the felinid immediately slid a chair against his.

”I can sit on my own, Master.”

”Apparently very close to me.”

”Yes.”

She accepted a meal box from Alexandra and began eating with her shoulder pressed to his arm.

Across the folding table, Luna was making enthusiastic noises over a fried cutlet. Nyx slid the box beneath her chin before the crumbs could reach her lap.

”You’re feeding your pants.”

”They’re hungry too.”

Alexandra covered a giggle with her hand, then sat down with her own lunch. Kaiden watched her take the first bite and helped himself to the food at last.

The girl had spent the morning keeping everyone alive, then tried to serve them all before feeding herself. His protector could be exhausting to look after.

”Our next group is ready, my lord,” Sonoda said as she joined them. ”There is a quarry dungeon nearby, then another beyond a freight depot farther down the river. Both garrisons have cleared their approach roads.”

...

The quarry’s gate took them into a cavern full of blade-winged moths. Their first swarm descended on Calypso, filling the air with a shriek of scraping metal.

”Darling, they want to eat me!”

”Terrible taste,” Bastet said, and raised her palm.

”I taste delicious, Kitty. Just ask Darling.”

”...” The tanned felinid did not find the response funny.

Nyx folded the descending swarm into a narrow column, and the felinid sent solar fire through it. Burning wings rained over Calypso’s shoulders, breaking against the barrier Alexandra curved above her head.

Kaiden grinned and opened Lust, sending its warmth into Bastet. The next swarm burned before it could reach them.

They advanced through the cavern with Luna killing anything that escaped the fire. At the core, the moth queen unfolded wings that spanned the chamber. Blue light gathered in the veins beneath their membranes.

Alice’s golden beams burned through the wing joints. The gathering light struck the ceiling as Aria pierced the creature’s breast with moonlight, pinning it against the wall.

”Kai, it’s open!”

He dropped Lust for Wrath and drove his blood greatsword through its skull. The detonation splashed the wall with brain matter, and Kaiden tore his blade free to smash the core behind it.

”Aw,” Calypso sighed. ”I barely got to touch anything.”

”You were excellent bait,” Bastet assured her.

Outside the gate, Sonoda was on the phone with the freight depot’s garrison when the family emerged. She watched violet light collapse behind Kaiden and stopped halfway through her sentence.

”My lord?”

”We’re ready for the next one.”

Behind him, the soldiers who had accompanied Eclipse were coming out, all of them carrying their own weapons and wearing their own limbs.

She resumed the call in considerably faster Japanese.

It took longer to turn the convoy around on the quarry road than it had taken Eclipse to kill the boss.

...

At the freight depot, relief workers were still unloading supplies when Kaiden got out of the car. Sonoda spoke to the waiting lieutenant, and he led the family along the cleared approach between abandoned sheds.

Violet roots had broken through the loading yards and climbed the buildings, dragging their roofs down around rusted machinery. The gate burned at the far end of the depot, where the river bent around a low industrial district.

Inside the dungeon, the roots belonged to a forest. Red-scaled burrowers hunted beneath it, breaking through the ground to snap at the family’s legs.

Kaiden switched from Wrath to Lust as they advanced, strengthening his girls while he cut through the creatures surfacing beside Calypso.

”Oh, I hate these types,” Luna cursed when a mouth opened beneath her boot.

Nyx lifted her clear. Bastet thrust a pillar of molten earth through the creature as it surfaced, and Luna landed on the cooling ridge with her sword already in another burrower’s neck.

At the core, the family burned through the last root knots closing around their path. The boss erupted beneath Calypso, a swollen burrower trailing roots that ran back to the crystal.

Calypso caught its upper teeth on her axe haft while Alexandra braced a barrier beneath its chin.

”There you are!” The demoness beamed into the open mouth. ”Keep this one open for me, Lexi?”

”I have it!”

Kaiden drove his greatsword through the tongue and into the palate. Bastet’s fire followed through the wound, burning up into its head while Luna cut its roots away from the core.

The boss was still collapsing when Kaiden wrenched his blade free and shattered the crystal behind it.

On the way back, Aria helped Alexandra pick root fibers out of the frills on her sleeve.

”How did it even get in there?” Alexandra wondered.

”It wanted to leave with you, Lexi~”

”Well, it can’t.”

They came back through the gate as the violet roots hanging over the loading yards dried and broke apart. A relief worker stood beside a supply truck with a stack of stretchers in his arms, staring at the dungeon’s empty doorway.

He still had most of the truck to unload.

Kaiden let Lust go and dissolved his greatsword as the last roots crumbled across the loading yard. Beyond the freight sheds, narrow streets led into a neighborhood of workshops and apartment buildings.

Soldiers were already gathering at the road with stretchers. Their lieutenant approached Eclipse, bowed to Kaiden and his family, and spoke urgently to Sonoda.

”He would like to begin searching the district, my lord. Some of the workers and residents were trapped when the monsters overran it. They’re hoping to find survivors.”

Kaiden looked toward the shuttered windows. They had cleared a path through the dungeon in minutes, but the people outside it had been living with those things on their doorsteps.

There could be families hiding in those buildings right now, waiting for the noise to stop.

”We’ll help. Can your people show us where to look?”

The lieutenant bowed to Kaiden in thanks, then sent his soldiers down the newly cleared streets. Relief crews followed from the cordon. Eclipse stayed together, searching the freight sheds nearest the gate while Sonoda accompanied them.

The joint broadcast remained live as Kaiden peered through a warehouse doorway and called into the dark. Behind him, Aria was helping Nyx clear a fallen roof beam from the ambulance route.

”People!” a soldier shouted from between the sheds. ”Over here!”

Kaiden turned toward the call. A group was coming out of a side passage beside the warehouse, blinking painfully in the daylight.

They wore work clothes and coats that hung loose on their bodies. One man had wrapped packing fabric around his bare feet. Beside him, an elderly woman struggled to keep her head up as a younger woman in a gray raincoat supported her.

”Oh, dear...” Alexandra hurried forward. ”Aria, could you help me?”

The Moon Valkyrie joined her, and together they eased the elderly woman onto the low loading ramp. The other survivors sank down beside her as relief workers brought water.

Up close, Kaiden could see how badly they needed it. Their lips had split, and the man with the wrapped feet shook so much that a soldier had to hold his bottle for him.

The woman in the raincoat remained standing beside the patients. She smoothed a loose strand back into her pinned hair before addressing Kaiden.