Frenzy in the Royal Capital

Tap, tap.

A pebble kicked aside by a leather boot rolled away, the sound echoing off the narrow walls of the abandoned mine… before vanishing into the darkness.

The dust-laden air inside the abandoned mine made breathing slightly difficult, and visibility was poor as well.

Even illuminated by a light source conjured from mana, one could see only a short distance ahead.

A dark, dark abandoned mine. The surrounding area had once prospered as a place where mithril was dug up in great quantities and sold off as material for weapons and armor, but with the end of the war against the [Demon King] and the dwindling of the mithril yield, it had been abandoned, and was now caked in cobwebs and dust.

Through that darkness, a group of figures walked slowly, keeping watch on their surroundings.

They were the same group mentioned earlier, the one whose mana had given rise to the light source.

By the light alone, finer details of color were hard to make out — but most of that group, men and women alike, possessed beautiful features, and with a single exception, their ears were long and pointed.

Elves.

People of the forest. Guardians of the green. Those who heard the voices of spirits.

They went by many names, but above all else they were the race most adept at magic in this world.

Mixed in among those elves was a single human.

Walking at the head of the group were an elven woman knight and a human woman knight.

Fiana and Alfira.

Behind them followed ten male knights. The men were all elves.

Each of them was tense to some small degree, yet a measure of composure could be sensed in their expressions. By contrast, the two women's faces were stiff. Their pace was slow, and the hands resting on the swords at their hips were clenched with more force than necessary.

They were obviously tense. And more so than they needed to be.

"Just a little further."

The elven woman knight, Fiana, opened her mouth.

Several hours had passed since they had entered the abandoned mine. The air was stagnant and the sun could not be seen inside, so the precise passage of time was unclear, but from her degree of fatigue and the number of steps taken, she had a rough grasp of how long and how far they had advanced.

A little further on was the place where Fiana had been attacked by the slime that had been born and taken root in this abandoned mine — the Black Ooze.

Remembering what had happened then, Fiana and Alfira had grown quiet.

Of how, guided through the abandoned mine on the way here by Frederica and Satia, adventurers who had been listed as missing, they had been betrayed and defeated by those two, who had been won over by the Black Ooze.

But though tense, they were not afraid.

This time was different from then.

Sensing the presence of elven knights beside her, not just herself this time, Fiana drew in a small breath, then let it out softly so as to make no sound.

This time, they had brought along elven knights who excelled at magic, and above all else, they knew of the existence of the [Black Ooze].

That it used magic, that its mucus carried paralytic poison, that it could camouflage itself against the stone walls of the abandoned mine.

"It's here."

When Fiana spoke, every one of them came to a halt, forming a kind of ring on the spot. This was the place where Fiana and Alfira had been attacked.

The place was just as it had been.

The marks left by the magic Fiana had unleashed remained, and the equipment the soldiers had dropped still lay there.

There were no bodies.

… She didn't want to think about it, but she understood that the corpses must have been eaten by that Black Ooze.

An ordinary slime would draw prey into its body and digest it slowly over time. However, its digestive fluid was not particularly strong, to the point where digesting iron armor, or even cloth garments, was no easy task.

That was precisely why slimes expelled armor and clothing back out of their bodies and digested only the human corpse.

Drawing prey into their bodies in this way, slimes ate to gain nourishment… but the slime they had encountered in this abandoned mine was different, Fiana explained.

Just why that was, she didn't understand… if anything, she could only explain it by saying that this was a freak mutant individual: the Black Ooze seemed to absorb the entire mass of whoever it ambushed, as-is, swelling without limit.

She hadn't realized it when they had first encountered it here, but at the deepest part of this abandoned mine… in the room whose walls had been completely covered in mucus. The room in which Fiana, Alfira, and the previously-captured Frederica and Satia had been raped.

The mass of slime that had blanketed every surface of that room. Its sheer presence.

That thing was not normal. It was not ordinary.

"And yet, in the end, it is only a slime."

One of the knights — a man in light armor wearing a circlet instead of a helm, spoke up. He was the knight commander, the man who led the knights accompanying Fiana and the rest.

Even among the elves, who were all handsome men and beautiful women, his striking features stood out, and he might almost have passed for a woman, but his voice was unmistakably that of a man.

At his voice, Fiana found herself slightly irritated.

"If you take slimes lightly, they'll sweep your feet out from under you, you know?"

"Isn't that exactly what happened to you?"

It was not said in a mocking tone. The look he directed at Fiana was not so much condescending as flat, as if to ask why they did not move on faster. He was merely stating a fact.

Yet even though he meant no ill by it, Fiana's gaze, and Alfira's, became sharp.

But…

"In any case, please lead us to that innermost chamber."

She could say no more than that.

Because to say more would mean explaining what kind of being this slime was, a being that raped women and made them bear its children, and while she might tell a fellow woman, there was no way she could explain such a thing to a man.

In the end, with nothing further she could say, Fiana decided to push on ahead.

Alfira walked beside her, and the knights followed behind the two of them.

They did not gather the belongings of their fallen comrades.

It would only get in the way.

The knights understood this well enough. Their opponent was a slime.

The weakest of monsters.

Even so, they would not willingly weigh themselves down with unnecessary baggage.

Elves were a long-lived race.

Every knight present had felt firsthand the threat of the [Demon King] in the past, and had experience fighting monsters. That was precisely why they would never let their guard down, no matter how weak the opponent.

Whatever they might say aloud, in their hearts they understood more than well enough the threat that monsters posed.

They pressed on through the gloom of the abandoned mine, further into its depths.

Then, suddenly, Fiana and Alfira noticed something. Those countless slimes that the Black Ooze had presumably birthed.

Of those slimes that had been camouflaged among the surrounding rocks, not a single one was there.

It wasn't that they were still in disguise. Knowing that the slimes could camouflage themselves, Fiana and the other knights were on alert, reading the flow of mana to detect their presence.

But not a single one of those slimes was tripping their senses. Which meant that no camouflaged slime was here at all.

To test it, Fiana gave a likely-looking rock a tap with her still-sheathed sword. But it was a real rock, and only a dry, hollow sound echoed through the abandoned mine.

Pressing along the path of the abandoned mine in that manner — following the route she had memorized while fleeing from the Black Ooze, before long they reached the innermost chamber that was their destination.

They had traveled through twisting passages in the dark and so had not really covered a great distance, and yet sweat had broken out on Fiana's and the others' brows, and their breathing had grown slightly ragged.

But it wasn't to the point that they couldn't fight.

Pressing on still further, a sticky, viscous sound reached her ears — one she had heard before and had thought she never wanted to hear again.

At that sound, Alfira drew her sword and watched the way ahead, and Fiana shot a wary look back at the knights walking behind them.

At Fiana's gaze, and at the strange sound that reached their ears, the knights too drew their weapons, swords or staves alike, and began watching their surroundings.

"—"

One of the knights gave a hand signal, and they split into two groups, one with Fiana and one with the male knight who had been speaking with her earlier.

Fiana's group pushed on ahead, concealing themselves against the rocks, to confirm the deepest part of the abandoned mine. Alfira and the male knight stayed put to secure the line of retreat.

There at the end of Fiana's line of sight was the same scene as before: the Black Ooze blanketing every surface of the walls.

Illuminated by the shaft of sunlight pouring in through the crack in the ceiling, its imposing form was best summed up in a single word: revolting.

The murky mucus undulated, viscous slime dripped from the ceiling in long stringy threads, and a stench that, until now, had been masked by dust now wafted out.

Worst of all was that this mucus was, at this very moment, still alive.

Alive, and devouring its prey.

Its prey… in the very center of that filthy, dim sea of mucus, illuminated by the sunlight pouring down from the ceiling: two women being raped.

Frederica and Satia.

"—"

The knights who, with Fiana, had been confirming the innermost chamber drew in a breath.

Not because the women at the center of the chamber were naked. Well, perhaps that was part of it… but mostly because the two of them, being violated by the slime, looked as if they were enjoying it.

Their faces were slack with rapture, their hips swaying as tentacles from the surrounding mucus walls pierced their secret places, and hoarse moans of pleasure rose from their throats.

From the sound of their voices, one could tell that the two were close to their physical limit.

Exhaustion, malnutrition, the psychological burden of being held captive in an enclosed space.

For any number of reasons, the complexion of the two women under the sunlight looked poor even from afar, and their bodies' reactions seemed weaker compared to when they had first been raped by the Black Ooze.

"I'm going in."

"Yes."

At Fiana's words, the knight beside her nodded. The other knights, too, nodded silently in agreement.

She looked over at Alfira and the others securing the line of retreat.

They too nodded wordlessly that they were ready at any moment.

What followed could only be described as godspeed.

The moment Fiana sprang from behind the rock, mucus tentacles lashed out from the walls all around as though they had sensed her presence. Their number passed ten in an instant, then twenty, until they filled her entire field of view. And this when Fiana had taken only three steps into the innermost chamber.

But before any of those tentacles could reach Fiana, a pale-blue membrane formed before her eyes. Illuminated by the sunlight leaking down from the ceiling, white vapor rose from the frozen membrane — cold enough that frost-air bled from the pale-blue surface.

The countless tentacles froze on contact with the membrane and snapped under their own weight, falling to the ground. The ground itself was covered in mucus too, so just how meaningful that was — the other knights did not stop to question.

Fiana froze every last tentacle that came at her. When attacks from the front were stopped, the slime switched to her flanks and rear, but she raised sheets of ice in those directions too and neutralized them.

Meanwhile, the tentacles that reached out for the other knights were also frozen by their magic, and gradually even the pool of mucus blanketing the ground began to ice over.

At first it was the entrance to the innermost chamber, and from there the range gradually expanded. By the time Fiana had frozen over a hundred mucus tentacles, the entrance and a portion of the ceiling above it had iced over as well.

This was the plan Fiana had thought up before entering this abandoned mine.

The standard approach to killing slimes was to burn them, but the mass of this slime was abnormal. So freeze every last bit of it without leaving any behind, and then burn the entire abandoned mine afterwards.

It was a crude plan, scarcely even a strategy, and the other knights, Alfira aside, had questioned whether it was really necessary to go that far against a mere slime.

But once they actually saw the innermost chamber, they could understand Fiana's tension, and her worry.

To think there was this much. A slime so vast it covered a space wider than even the throne room — the largest hall in the royal castle of the elven kingdom of Fonteau. Against such a thing, this was the only way.

That, they understood.

Five elven knights poured all their strength into dropping the temperature of the innermost chamber. Outside the abandoned mine, this would have chilled the air, turned every breath white, and frozen the moisture in the air into frost.

That was how far they dropped the temperature of the room, freezing the Black Ooze in one stroke.

Only then were Frederica and Satia, who had been raped in the center of the chamber, finally set down on the ground — on the floor of mucus that the cold had hardened.

The motion was gentle, as though to avoid harming their wombs, but Fiana did not notice.

Still cloaked carefully in her chill membrane, she walked over to the pair.

Whether it was right to call these two the Black Ooze's "comrades," she did not yet know, but she did know that they had hindered her and Alfira.

She only checked that the two collapsed women were alive, and then, as the small kindness she could afford, she took off her overcoat and draped it over the two naked women.

Then she scooped the two up in her slender arms and withdrew from the spot for the time being.

It froze. The turbid black turned white.

The tentacles extending from the walls dwindled in number and tried to flee through the gap in the ceiling, only to seal off their own escape with their own mucus.

The instant they moved, they froze. The sunlight was cut off, and the chamber was plunged into darkness. The moment a new light source was created with mana, an instant later, mucus tentacles darker than the darkness itself came reaching out.

Even that surprise attack froze before it could reach anyone.

It was not only Fiana, who had fought and struggled against it before. There were five other knights here who matched her in capability.

And on top of that, they had not let their guard down. The current Black Ooze had no chance of victory. More than that, it could not even put up anything resembling resistance.

In the blink of an eye, it froze, until at last the entire innermost chamber was completely frozen. The abandoned mine, lit only by the faint glow of mana, was wrapped in silence.

… How anticlimactic.

Still holding Frederica and Satia, Fiana thought.

Was it really this weak?

A mere slime. That raped women, drained mana, used magic.

But in the end, was it really just a slime?… Caught off guard, defeated, captured, raped… perhaps that experience had sown some unconscious aversion in her.

Enough so that she felt the matter had been settled too easily. That it was over.

Someone tapped Fiana's shoulder as she stood dazed.

She turned around to find one of the knights standing there. The male knight who, earlier, had told Fiana and Alfira they were being overly cautious.

"Slimes are only so much."

"… …"

That, she supposed, was the truth.

But it was too anticlimactic. Far too anticlimactic… She couldn't help but think so.

She glanced at Alfira, who was likewise staring vacantly, struck by how thoroughly anticlimactic it had been.

"Let me take her. Even with mana strengthening your arms, they must be heavy, no?"

At his words, she handed over Frederica, who was wrapped in her overcoat, to the male knight. She borrowed a cloak, hid Satia's naked body beneath it, and handed Satia to a different male knight.

They had lost consciousness, but they were still breathing. Still alive.

They had simply passed out from extreme fatigue… Or perhaps, from repeated climax, they had lost their senses.

That, and whether they were with child, could only be confirmed once the two awakened.

There was also the matter of confirming whether any other slimes remained, Fiana thought, glancing once more toward the innermost chamber.

"Now then, as planned, I will seal this chamber off completely."

As she spoke, the ground trembled slightly.

It was not an earthquake. It was Fiana, collapsing the chamber with magic. With the frozen Black Ooze supporting the structure there was no visible change, but its surroundings collapsed, completely cutting off any avenue of escape.

The only path untouched was the one Fiana and the others had come through.

The mithril abandoned mine collapsed utterly, never to be used again. Yet even so, this slime had to be purified completely.

"And now, we burn it."

"Yes."

The knights carrying Frederica and Satia drew back. At the same time, the chamber, which had been cooled enough that the slime's body had frozen, was now wrapped in heat hot enough to draw sweat.

In an instant the ice melted, and the Black Ooze resumed its activity.

Countless mucus tentacles formed — but this time, before they could reach Fiana and the others, they evaporated.

The stench grew worse. Not merely the kind to make one's nose wrinkle, but one dizzying enough to bring on vertigo, because the originally foul-smelling Black Ooze was being burned by the heat and was evaporating.

In the center of the chamber, a dazzling mass of flame was born, and the heat filled the chamber until the mucus evaporated — and that was the end of it.

"—"

Fiana glanced once at the only exit, and then collapsed the ceiling above where she now stood.

Within the now-sealed chamber, the Black Ooze and a fireball as bright as the sun were left behind.

"Now then, let's return."

Swiftly Fiana and the others left the mithril abandoned mine behind.

And shortly after Fiana and the others emerged from the abandoned mine — an explosion large enough to alter the very shape of the mountain. Black smoke climbed toward the heavens, warping the white clouds and obscuring the blue sky.

 

*

 

Clatter-clatter went the wheels of the carriage with a dry sound as it advanced. Now and then the bed of the carriage jolted heavily as the wheels ran over a pebble.

The sky visible through the carriage window was overcast. A cloudy sky.

But though the sky was blanketed by gray clouds, the air carried no damp scent.

In this world, a cloudy sky without any sign of rain coming was weather that foretold ill fortune, and it was not regarded as a good thing.

Fiana, the elven woman knight who sat in the bed of the carriage, swaying as she looked up at the sky, also sighed at this weather that the common sense of this world deemed an ill omen.

Originally an elf who had made her living hunting in the forest, she had keen eyes, and could see farther into the distance than any human — and in that view she could already make out where she was heading back to. The outer walls of the elven kingdom of "Fonteau" were already visible.

At last we're back, she thought.

Toying with a strand of silver hair that wavered with the carriage's swaying, she thought it. Without realizing, she let out another breath.

She had let her guard down.

At last the troublesome business had been settled, and they could return. She breathed a sigh of relief at that, and then sighed at herself for being so unguarded.

"Any problems?"

"No, all clear."

When she called out to the knight in the driver's seat, a brisk, clear voice came back. The voice of a young man.

The knight, who was an elf like Fiana, must have been able to see the outer wall of the Royal Capital of Fonteau already as well. He's in much higher spirits than he had been the previous few days, Fiana thought.

No wonder.

It was only a slime subjugation.

Though it possessed the trait of assaulting women and impregnating them, it was still the lowest, weakest of monsters. And yet to slay that monster, they had been away from the Royal Capital for more than ten days.

On the road, one couldn't bathe, and food and water were limited.

Even though it was better than going on foot, those who actively chose to leave on a journey… to leave the Royal Capital, were few in number.

Thinking of that, she glanced toward the others sitting in the bed of the carriage.

Two were in the driver's seat she had just looked over at, and six were in the bed. Of Fiana's own generation… she, as an elf, had lived nearly a hundred years, but in appearance she was a woman in her mid-twenties — her short stature and youthful features made her look even younger at times, and two women who appeared much the same age as the mid-twenties Fiana sat there. One was a violet-haired woman clad in knight's armor, Alfira.

The other was a former adventurer with dingy, tarnished golden hair, Frederica.

And finally, the most petite figure here, with silver hair and tan skin, Satia.

Besides them, there were two male knights clad in the same knight's armor as Fiana and Alfira.

Iron shackles were fastened on Frederica's and Satia's hands, and weights to prevent escape were fitted on one of each of their legs. The clothing they wore was simple but tidy, and even that was only an overcoat, one of Fiana's own personal belongings.

With the shackles as well, the two looked like criminals, but they had not actually committed any sort of crime.

This was Fiana and the others' mission this time. The freak mutant slime that had appeared in the innermost depths of the abandoned mine — the Black Ooze. Frederica and Satia were the women they had rescued during its subjugation, the ones who had been held captive by the slime.

Though "held captive" was the term, the truth was that they had likely had chances to escape, and Fiana and Alfira, who had once been captured by the Black Ooze themselves, knew what had been done to them.

And they had experienced that act firsthand. Above all, these two had once betrayed them. Deceived them.

Given that fact, Fiana thought their current state was self-inflicted… but as a woman herself, she could not say she felt nothing.

"Frederica-san?"

She called the name.

Since they had left that abandoned mine, how many times had she called it now?

A state of vacancy from exhaustion, perhaps. Her color was poor, and no light of will could be felt in her eyes.

Even when called by name, there was hardly any reaction beyond an occasional turn of the head. Even leaving her alone with Satia, whom they had also rescued, produced no conversation; she didn't even show signs of trying to escape.

Completely different from when she had first met them, the two were husks.

As for Satia in particular, Fiana remembered that she had called that Black Ooze "Goshujin-sama" and "Alfred-sama."

A man's name. The address "Goshujin-sama," combined with Satia's skin color… her tan skin was a rare hue in the elven kingdom… it was a color often seen among slaves.

Alfred was probably the name of the adventurer who had bought Satia, Fiana thought. And that man had been devoured by that Black Ooze.

Perhaps that was when Satia broke. Perhaps she had come to think of the Black Ooze, who had eaten her master, as her new master, and tried to devote herself to it.

Thinking that, she turned her gaze away from Satia, who was still silent in the bed of the carriage.

Still, that thing was a monster. They could not let it live, and they could not let Satia stay near that monster either.

There was no other way, she murmured in her heart, as the carriage advanced along the highway, overtaking several travelers.

As they neared the Royal Capital of Fonteau, the number of travelers seemed to have grown.

The largest, most prosperous city of the elven kingdom. The Royal Capital.

There were many things to think about, but the problem had been solved, she told herself. Thinking that, she forced her mind to brighten up. Even if she thought about it in depth, there was nothing she could do right now.

At most, she could see to the day-to-day care of the listless Frederica and Satia. That, at any rate, was something she could not leave to the male knights.

On the way back to the Royal Capital, they had stopped at a river where she had bathed them, seen to their meals, and stayed by their sides until they fell asleep.

And so, at last, they had returned to the Royal Capital. They hadn't safely arrived inside it just yet, but even so her heart had already eased.

Alfira was the same.

Her expression was still drawn taut, but there were moments when, like Fiana, her face slackened a little.

The other knights, the same.

A triumphant return after subjugating a monster. The citizens of the Royal Capital had not been told the details, so no one would praise them, but even so, they were returning with the medal-in-their-hearts of having dispatched yet another threat to the world.

They had not become knights to be praised, or to be respected.

They had become knights to defeat the threat of the [Demon King], the threats of the world, the monsters.

And so, in silence, the carriage advanced.

The sound of the carriage wheels rolling, the sound of small stones flicking aside, the chatter of people walking along the highway, the faint breaths of those in the bed of the carriage.

Time passed as she felt those things, and they arrived at the Royal Capital.

Outer walls so high she had to look up at them, built out of wariness against monsters, and thick iron gates.

Originally, the elven royal capital of Fonteau had been a simple structure surrounded only by a wooden fence.

The one who had changed that was the husband of the current queen of Fonteau, Leticia. The savior summoned from another world, the [Hero].

Having defeated monsters, he had voiced his concerns about Fonteau's construction, and making full use of Queen Leticia's backing, he had persuaded the ministers and remade this Royal Capital.

This was a country that had originally suffered a decline in population, listlessness, and difficulty finding work because of the influence of the [Demon King] and monsters.

They had found hope in the great undertaking of rebuilding the Royal Capital, obtained work, and thrown themselves with vigor into building a "new country" with their own hands.

The people of this country, who had been listless, regained their vitality, and partway through the rebuilding of the Royal Capital had begun to think and act on their own.

They tilled fields that had been ravaged by monsters, built villages in places far from the Royal Capital, started families, and bore children.

And then the [Hero] married the queen, and in both name and substance, Fonteau changed into a new country.

No longer a country of elves alone.

A country of elves and humans. The country of the savior. The country of the [Hero].

At its very foundation lay the effort of every single person who lived in this country. Though it had begun with the [Hero]'s words, it was through the efforts of the elves and humans living here that the Royal Capital had been rebuilt.

—Had the [Hero] foreseen even that?

When they thought about it, the ministers of this country sometimes felt something close to awe-tinged dread.

Perhaps the [Hero] was a genius at making use of people.

Perhaps even that stubborn pride of theirs, that they would not rely on humans, had been used to build a country where humans and elves lived together.

That was the kind of confession one could sometimes hear in the temple within the royal castle.

Such was the Royal Capital. The Royal Capital the [Hero] had made.

The thick iron gates at its entrance opened in the daytime and closed at night.

Though the [Demon King] was gone and the numbers of monsters had decreased, they had not yet been completely wiped out, after all.

Now, during the daytime, the gates stood open, and travelers who had come along the highway, as well as merchants traveling by carriage like Fiana's group, were advancing into the Royal Capital with smiles on their faces.

Passing through required a permit authorizing entry — a travel permit issued by the Royal Capital's administration, but obtaining one was not so difficult.

So long as one's identity could be verified, they were issued not only at the Royal Capital but also at the adventurers' guilds in remote villages and by nobles.

Some abused that and bought a permit with money, but in this world where the number of monsters was steadily decreasing, cracking down on that had become a new task for the knights.

Apprehending wrongdoers.

The world was slowly changing.

A world that had been afraid of the [Demon King] and monsters was changing next into a world where humans judged humans for their wrongdoings.

They passed through the gate, and the carriage advanced into the Royal Capital.

After a while, the horse pulling the carriage came to a halt.

To check the cargo, the gate guard had stopped the horse. His voice could be heard inside the bed of the carriage.

The soldier who tried to inspect the cargo in the carriage bed saw the faces of Fiana and the other knights, and a look of surprise crossed his face. Then, in a flustered motion, he saluted.

"Welcome back, you've done well in your duties."

Even among the rank-and-file soldiers, Fiana's face, and that of some of the other knights, was famous.

Fiana in particular, with her beauty and the bountiful chest that did not match her stature, often inspired something close to worship among the soldiers.

This soldier was one such man; it seemed Fiana was someone he knew of. The hand he raised in salute was trembling with tension. His expression too was stiff, and the corner of his mouth was twitching.

To ease the soldier's tension, Fiana directed a smile at him.

But it seemed to have had the opposite effect. The soldier, made all the more tense, walked off with the twitch at the corner of his mouth grown more pronounced.

Another soldier with him said, "No problem," and waved them through.

The carriage bed swayed slightly, and the carriage began moving again.

Without any particular intent, Fiana looked at Frederica and Satia. Alfira, who had stepped down from the driver's seat, sat down beside Fiana… a slight distance away from her, and looked at the two as well.

Take them to the royal castle, examine them in the infirmary, and consider what to do next.

Two women attacked by monsters… and likely carrying the children of monsters.

What would happen to those two going forward… not even Fiana knew. Would it end with purifying their wombs? Or would they be thrown into a cell?

Whatever the process, Frederica and Satia had once deceived Fiana and Alfira… and had killed the knights who went with them to the abandoned mine.

That had been by their own will.

"At last it's over."

"Yes."

Monster subjugation. She had killed countless monsters by now, more than she could count, yet Fiana thought this time had been the hardest.

Monsters that raped women. That impregnated them.

This must be a new species born precisely because the [Demon King] was gone, she thought.

A new species mutated so that monsters would not be exterminated. A new breed. A new existence.

Similar monsters might be born from here on out. At that thought, a chill ran through her, both as a knight who protected the country and as a woman.

Even as she thought that, the carriage had reached about the middle of the main thoroughfare — somewhere around halfway between the Royal Capital's gate and Fonteau's royal castle.

Many stalls lined the main thoroughfare, and inns, weapon shops, eateries, and other stores stood side by side. Overflowing with the people of the Royal Capital, the thoroughfare was hard for a carriage to advance along during the daytime.

Naturally the horse drawing the carriage slowed its pace, gradually shifting to a leisurely speed… and at that moment, Satia, who had not responded no matter how many times she had been spoken to, gave a small shudder.

Her shoulders trembled, and her gaze turned out the window.

"What's wrong?"

Alfira drew near and called out to Satia.

Fiana glanced once at Frederica to check for a reaction, but she showed no visible change.

Next, like Satia, she turned her gaze out the carriage window.

The main thoroughfare of the Royal Capital, bustling with people. It was a familiar sight, but —

(… Are there a lot of knights?)

Mixed in with the soldiers who normally patrolled for crime prevention, the figures of knights were conspicuous today.

With Satia's reaction added in, Fiana sensed an uneasy air in the atmosphere, and called out to the male knight in the driver's seat to stop the carriage.

The horse stopped.

Following that, Frederica too gave a small twitch of her slender shoulders. Not from the carriage stopping.

"Satia-san!?"

Alfira's voice.

The knights' gazes turned that way.

Satia — pressing her hand to her abdomen in apparent pain, her breathing ragged, was sweating profusely. Fiana hurried over and placed her hand on Satia's forehead.

"No fever…"

This didn't seem to be mere physical illness. Leaving Satia to Alfira, Fiana moved over to Frederica.

Before long, Frederica too began to suffer in the same way as Satia. She pressed her hands to her abdomen in pain, sweating and panting.

Looking at her abdomen, Fiana let out a small "Hii" of horror.

This morning — no, until just now, Frederica's abdomen had been slender, but now it was faintly swollen… and to her misfortune, she saw the swollen abdomen ripple.

"No —"

Child slime — before she could speak the words, a scream rose outside the carriage.

"Alfira, don't take your eyes off them!"

Sword in hand, Fiana sprang from the carriage.

From one corner of the main thoroughfare, which had been bustling just moments earlier, another woman screamed. It was some distance away — in the direction of an eatery famous in the Royal Capital.

"What happened!?"

A moment after Fiana, several male knights also leapt from the carriage.

"We don't know, the scream came from…"

Speaking as they moved, they broke into a run toward the source of the scream.

They did not know what was happening. But startled by the sudden scream, the crowd was dashing away from the direction it had come from.

Their numbers were many — but not enough to fill the main thoroughfare.

The fleeing people ran past, avoiding Fiana's group and the carriage. Fiana followed them with her eyes for a moment, and then several male knights left her behind, pushing forward against the flow of those fleeing.

Fiana followed suit, shoving through the crowd, and — one of the stalls had been swallowed up.

It must have been a stall selling accessories. Finely-worked silver ornaments lay scattered across the stone-paved main thoroughfare.

And in contrast to the beautiful gleam of silver — a massive, befouled mass of mucus, dark enough to swallow even the brilliance of the sun.

A slime.

Where had it come from?… A slime boasting a frame so giant it had room to spare even after swallowing a grown man whole was devouring the man from the stall.

"What!?"

Reflexively, the knights drew the swords or staves at their hips and took stance.

"Why is a slime here!?"

Fiana too drew her sword, leveling its point at the slime. She would invoke magic and freeze it in a single stroke, but she hesitated, seeing that a citizen of the Royal Capital was inside the slime's body.

The man captured inside the slime was still alive, struggling to escape.

"Tch."

One of the knights clicked his tongue, and the group, which had stood frozen in place, all leapt apart in different directions.

At the same moment, a mucus tentacle from the slime slammed into the spot where they had been standing. With the impact against the stone pavement, the tentacle shattered, and mucus splashed in all directions.

The knights, who had been told by Fiana that the mucus carried paralytic poison, blocked the splatter with shields and swords as they put distance between themselves and the slime.

"Help me!"

The scream came from a man whose face had been brought to the surface of the slime.

It was deliberate.

The slime, having learned that as long as the man lived they could not attack it, was keeping the man breathing so he would not die.

"This is…"

Citizens who were unlucky enough not to flee in time touched the scattered slime mucus, and collapsed to the ground.

Their number, more than ten people.

With a single blow, that many people had been afflicted by paralytic poison.

Fiana rushed over to the fallen people at once. She checked their condition, but because the splatter that had touched them was very slight, the paralysis was not strong enough to be lethal.

But before she could check more thoroughly, the slime once again grew a tentacle from its giant frame and struck a second blow.

The tentacle smashed against the paving with force enough to crack the stone, and poison-laced mucus scattered.

Only Fiana and the other knights remained on the main thoroughfare. But in this peaceful world where the [Demon King] had been subjugated, those starved for entertainment and stimulation were not few in number.

Onlookers peering from the shadows of buildings out of mere curiosity at what was happening were splashed by the splatter, and screams rose. Most of the people now lying collapsed on the main thoroughfare had been those who had stopped out of curiosity at what was happening.

Each time, the number of injured grew — and so did the number of bodies getting in the way of combat.

There was no way to fight while protecting every one of them, and Fiana and the others could do nothing but fall onto the defensive.

At best, they could freeze the tentacle-whips being swung to keep injuries from worsening, solidify them, and limit the damage.

"This is… Fiana-dono!!"

Meanwhile, the knights they had spotted patrolling the main thoroughfare from the carriage came rushing in. Fiana and the others did not know it, but they were a unit Queen Leticia had set to searching for slimes that had infiltrated the Royal Capital.

Their numbers had been gathered together; they were close to twenty strong.

But —

"Whoa!?"

A scream rose from among those knights.

An eatery facing the main thoroughfare — a new slime had appeared, smashing apart the building. This one too was giant, almost reaching the ceiling of the shop.

It made one want to shout, where had something so huge been hidden? That was how massive it was.

Further still, smashing through the building on the opposite side of the main thoroughfare, another slime emerged.

"After all our searching just now, we couldn't find any!?"

"Kyaa!?"

A knight screamed. The voice was female.

Apparently it was not just men but female knights as well taking part in the search. From the unit numbering close to twenty, one knight had been seized by the ankle by a slime tentacle and hoisted into the air as though she were being fished out of water.

She wore robe-like garb with a front-drape, like Fiana's, and lifted by her foot, she dangled upside down, her lower body fully exposed.

Her slender elven legs and the pale-purple panties guarding her private parts were laid bare in the light of day, and her porcelain-white skin flushed peach.

"Hey, you pervert!?"

Focusing immediately on the tentacle gripping her ankle, she scorched it through in a single burst.

The stench was enough to make one's nose curl, and the heat caused the air around her to waver like a heat haze. The slime's mucus tentacle was burned through in an instant, and the woman knight, whose purple panties had been on display, was pulled back down to the ground by gravity.

A male knight who tried to support her was struck broadside by another tentacle. Less a whip than a colossally thick log, the blow was more than he could withstand, and he was sent flying sideways.

Carried by that momentum, he smashed through the wall of a building, broke through it, and vanished from sight of everyone present.

It was the doing of a newly-appeared fourth slime — and from the building the male knight had been sent flying into, a new fifth giant slime emerged.

The female knight, having righted her posture in midair, landed on the stone pavement with her knees touching down.

At the same time, spears of ice manifested around her.

Magic — the ice spears, hurled without hesitation, however, shattered in midair as if striking an invisible wall, and their fragments came flying back toward the knights instead.

Wind magic — the kind of magic the Black Ooze had specialized in at the abandoned mine.

Fiana, who recognized that magic, immediately invoked wind magic of her own and blew away the ice fragments that came at them like hail.

"No way, this thing —!?"

As for slimes that used magic, she could think of none besides the Black Ooze that had made the mithril mine its lair.

If so, then were these giant slimes beings born from that abandoned mine slime? That thought flickered through Fiana's mind, but there was no room to dwell on it.

The slime that had first captured the man from the stall in its body grew new tentacles. Their number, five.

Up, down, left, right. The tentacle-whips lashing out irregularly from every direction were blocked when a male knight beside Fiana raised a frozen membrane.

The magic Fiana had used to block the Black Ooze's tentacles at the abandoned mine.

Just as before, when the mucus tentacles touched the membrane, they froze and snapped under their own weight, shattering.

So the tentacles could be neutralized this way — just as Fiana and the others thought that, a new sixth one formed… this one more than twice as thick as those before.

"Hmph, just more of the same."

The male knight spoke.

They had been surprised that it used magic, but as expected, monsters were dumb — his voice almost carried that mockery aloud.

In truth, no matter how thick the tentacle, freezing it would render the paralytic poison meaningless, but the slime raised the thick tentacle high, as though raising a sword overhead.

"Wha —"

It kept getting thicker. A tentacle so massive it cast a shadow over the sun was forming.

Looking up at it, the man reflexively leapt aside. Fiana and the others likewise leapt aside.

A tentacle of overwhelming mass slammed into the ground. The stone paving shattered, and along with the splatter of slime, fragments of stone flew as well.

Unlike splatter, the stones already had a certain mass to them, and they came in varying sizes — some large enough to inflict serious injury on a direct hit, some with sharp, jagged edges.

The frozen membrane could not block those, and the knights had no choice but to shield their faces with their gauntleted hands.

In that moment. The moment when the slime was out of their field of view.

Again, the giant tentacle — this time, a horizontal sweep.

"Kyaa!?"

"Whoa!?"

A blow that took out a nearby building along with them sent Fiana and the others flying. An unblockable strike of enormous mass.

Thanks to the frozen membrane they had raised, they were not coated in mucus, but in exchange, the attack, now transformed into a strike with the mass of ice, twisted the knights' armor out of shape, with some pieces even cracked through.

"Ga, hah."

Several knights spat blood.

Even protected by armor, the armor itself had been bent out of shape by the blow. The flesh inside could not withstand it.

Their bones, their organs had been damaged, causing them to cough up blood.

"A-Are you all right?"

Whether by luck, or because the slime had deliberately spared her, Fiana, who had taken comparatively shallow wounds, called out to the knight coughing up blood beside her.

There was no way he was all right.

There was no way he could continue to fight.

Thinking that, she raised her head. It seemed they had been sent flying into the interior of a building. Through a large hole gouged into the stone wall by their impact, she could see the outside.

Giant slimes — their number growing greater as time passed.

Their number had already passed ten. And even as she thought that, slimes seemed to be gathering from every corner of the Royal Capital.

"Ngh."

Pressing the wounded part of her body with one hand, Fiana stood.

Worrying for the fallen male knights, she headed for the roof of the house. Luckily, the house was two stories, and after climbing the stairs to the second floor and going out through the window, she was able to move easily onto the roof.

"Why is this…"

There, an impossible sight… one she did not want to acknowledge spread out before her.

Surrounding the house Fiana was currently on, more than ten giant slimes — they had appeared all over the Royal Capital.

Black smoke rising up was probably because fire magic was being unleashed to burn the slimes.

It was not only the knights.

Adventurers working in the Royal Capital, mages, everyone might be heading toward the subjugation — but even so, it would not be enough.

The number of slimes was uncountable.

Not ten or twenty, nor a hundred. More than that — giants huge enough to swallow up not just a person but an entire house in a single gulp were overflowing.

"—gh."

Despair threatened to crush her thoughts. She did not know what to do. Her mind refused to work. On the roof of the dwelling, Fiana let the sword in her hand drop.

The strength had drained from her hand.

Fiana did not know it, but the Royal Capital housed tens of thousands of people, and the slimes were the end result of feeding day after day on the refuse and food scraps flowing through the Royal Capital's sewer.

The food waste alone of tens of thousands of people each day amounted to a considerable mass, and excrement was no less a fine meal to a slime.

Their mass had grown and grown, until they were already large enough to swallow up the entire Royal Capital.

Furthermore, the slimes had divided, multiplied through female bodies, and their numbers had reached a count rivaling the population of the people living in the Royal Capital.

Even without knowing that, anyone looking at this sight would despair.

The country the [Hero] had lent his strength to, the country that had been about to enjoy great prosperity. The beautiful country, overflowing with smiles, warm.

The elven kingdom of Fonteau.

That was being trampled by foul, turbid, hideous slimes.

Before Fiana's eyes, buildings were being smashed apart, screams were rising, and people were running for their lives. It was the very scene she had once experienced — from the time the [Demon King] had existed.

The end of a country attacked by monsters. The sight of a country destroyed by monsters.

… She bit her lip.

At the same time, she belatedly noticed that screams were rising from every corner of the Royal Capital. Most of them were female, and Fiana knew what that meant.

Just as she was about to spring toward the source of those screams, a scream rose downstairs… from the knights who had been sent flying along with her.

Those nearby first.

Thinking that, she descended to the first floor of the house.

"Wha…"

There, the wounded knights who had been unable to move were already enveloped in a turbid black mucus… a liquid identical to that of the Black Ooze.

Their heads, too, were enveloped in mucus, and they would soon die unable to breathe — but to kill a slime, one had to either burn it through with flame or freeze it temporarily to immobilize it.

Once captured inside a slime's body, there was no longer any helping them.

At that despair, the strength almost drained from Fiana's whole body. She could not understand how it had come to this.

Meanwhile, from the kitchen of the dwelling — from the drainage pipes connecting to the sewer, slimes began to spill forth one after another.

"The sewers!"

Only then did Fiana finally understand that the slimes had been entrenched in the sewer.

But it was already too late.

Against slimes that had grown and swollen this much, there were almost no means of resistance left. All that remained was a super-massive spell — having the elven queen Leticia, who carried mana enough to slay the [Demon King], blow the entire Royal Capital away.

No, even that might or might not be possible.

Thinking so, Fiana smashed through the window glass and went outside.

Outside, the other knights had formed a ring in the center of the main thoroughfare, guarding each other's backs as they were surrounded by giant slimes.

Fiana, the only one outside the encirclement, considered swiftly.

How could this situation be broken?

It was a desperate situation, but there were still close to twenty knights here. From what she had seen on the roof, the slimes had not yet reached the royal castle.

Which meant that this country's greatest fighting force, the Demon-King-slaying queen, was safe.

So long as Queen Leticia was safe, the tide could be turned. However thin that possibility might be, so long as it was not zero, hope remained.

First she would link up with the other knights, she thought, and took a step forward.

"Fiana, behind you!!"

One of the male knights raised his voice.

Without even time to look back, she rolled across the stone paving. Her armor struck the ground, and her skin smarted from the impact.

Before she could even part her lips at the pain, as she tried to right herself from her tumbled posture, her left leg was yanked.

Looking, she saw that a turbid mucus, a slime tentacle, was coiled above her foot-guard. Further, through the gap she herself had broken when she leapt out, new slime came crawling forth.

"Ngh!?"

With no time to resist, just like the female knight before her, Fiana was hoisted upside down in the air.

The robe-like garment with the front-drape that resembled what a priestess might wear was pulled by gravity over her face, and her lower body, fleshier than that of most elves, was laid bare.

Slender legs and white underwear were laid bare. Adorning her supple, firm thighs and calves were a white garter belt matching her panties, and her unadorned foot-guards. And beneath the suggestive shadows at the joining of her legs, the white panties wrapped the mound of her sex. The thin, sumptuously embroidered fabric showed off a sensual swell brimming with allure.

It was only that her clothing was sticking to her with sweat, and yet at having her underwear so brazenly exposed, Fiana flushed even the very tips of her elven ears red, and reflexively used her hands to try to pull the front-drape down to hide her lower body.

It was a feminine reaction of shame, unbecoming of a knight.

That was a mistake, and both her arms, through her gauntlets, were caught next by slime mucus.

Suspended upside down, with one leg and both hands captured, she was forced to expose her shameful posture in front of her comrades.

With her one free leg she struggled somehow to hide her lower body, but there was no way she could manage that with such a thing.

"No way!?"

Next the tentacle, moving deftly, began to strip the armor protecting Fiana's upper body. Not forcefully, not by sheer strength.

It properly undid the fastenings and peeled Fiana's armor away. At this, Fiana let out a cry of astonishment, and in the meantime, the armor was finally removed.

Pulled by gravity, the armor fell onto the stone paving with a high, ringing sound.

Her bountiful chest was laid bare.

Her ample breasts, drawn by gravity toward her neck, swayed up and down and left and right, loudly enough they almost made a sound, in time with the motion of her leg trying to hide her lower body.

"Brace for the fall!!"

A man's voice. At the same moment, the mucus tentacle holding Fiana's leg froze, and she shattered it easily with the slightest force of her leg. The tentacles on both her arms she froze herself, and as she was freed in midair, she righted herself before hitting the ground and landed.

Leaving her stripped-off armor behind, she rolled and linked up with the group of knights. Along the way, she crossed paths with a knight readying a staff who tossed her a spare sword, and she stood up while drawing it from the sheath.

"You saved me."

"Yeah!"

She looked around.

Even now, the swarm of darkly turbid Black Ooze-like slimes, the kind familiar from the mithril mine, was only growing larger. Massive enough to destroy the dwellings of the Royal Capital, and yet just how many of them there were was hard even to count.

"Our carriage is over there!"

"Understood!"

That was the voice of one of the Black Ooze subjugation party who had rushed here together with Fiana.

To withdraw by carriage for now, and to seek Leticia's judgment at the royal castle. They decided this, still in formation.

"We'll evacuate the civilians…"

"No, these slimes are special — the women head for the royal castle."

When the female knight whose leg had been seized by the slime from the dwelling earlier raised her voice to say that, Fiana stopped her.

Hearing Fiana's words, the female knight looked puzzled. Her sword, sheathed in frigid air, froze and shattered the mucus tentacles in the same motion.

Marveling at the sharpness of her sword-work even as she spoke, Fiana hesitated over whether to explain the reason.

Even now, telling them "the slime impregnates women to multiply" was probably hard to believe, and might only cause more confusion, she thought.

Besides, judging from the reaction just now, she understood that these knights had not been informed about the slimes.

In that case, for now it would be wiser not to say anything extraneous and have them focus on the fight.

"The women come this way! Everyone, don't push yourselves. Prioritize stalling the slimes and evacuating the civilians!"

The number of female knights, including Fiana, was four.

The moment they broke into a run, slimes seized the gap in the collapsing formation and lashed out countless tentacles.

Each one of these slimes boasted a body big enough to match a single-story dwelling, and there were easily more than ten of them, each lashing out from its surface with nearly ten tentacles.

Several male knights raised frozen membranes, and the other knights cut down and shattered the frozen tentacles that got past them.

Several of those headed toward Fiana and the others, but those too were neutralized by the female knights.

Escaping the slime encirclement, they arrived at the carriage where Alfira was waiting.

The horse was unharmed, and the driver's seat was empty. Likely the knight who had been in it had gone either to guide the citizens or to subjugate the slimes.

Seeing that, Fiana sat down in the driver's seat of the carriage without hesitation, and the other knights leapt into the carriage bed.

There was no time to wait, to search. Right now, instinct was telling them to put as much distance between themselves and this place as fast as possible.

"Moving out!"

Setting the bared sword in the driver's seat, Fiana grabbed the reins without waiting for a reply, and snapped them strongly to set the horse running.

The horse, undaunted by the slimes' appearance, accelerated all at once. The ground had been paved, but even so, slight irregularities sent the carriage bolting forward at terrific speed.

Rattling and rocking, the wooden carriage shook, and Fiana, seated in the driver's seat, was nearly thrown off.

Lowering her head and steadying her posture, she put all her strength into bracing herself against being thrown.

Her ample breasts, supported now by only clothing and underwear after her armor had been stripped away, swung violently up and down and left and right with each jolt.

She grimaced at the dull pain of her chest being shaken, and then her eyes went wide.

In the direction the carriage was heading, cracks were running through the stone wall of a dwelling lining the main thoroughfare. Spilling from those cracks was a black liquid — the sticky body-fluid of slime.

"Hold on so you're not thrown!!"

Without looking back at the carriage bed, Fiana shouted, and yanked the reins hard to the left.

Her sudden action drew a whinny of protest from the horse, but it shifted course to the left. With the recoil, the sword she had placed on the driver's seat fell into the main thoroughfare, and for an instant a sharp clang of metal could be heard.

Right after that, slime mucus came pouring out into the spot the carriage had been about to pass through, and the dwelling collapsed. The pillars supporting the building, and fragments of stone wall, blocked the road.

As the carriage passed right beside it, a slime that had reacted to the motion lashed out a tentacle. The roof of the carriage bed was blown away in a single sweep.

Even so, somehow they managed to escape, and Fiana gripped the reins again.

From every corner of the Royal Capital, screams arose.

Most of them were the voices of women.

Some women tried to run toward the carriage, only to be caught by slime tentacles along the way.

Fiana wanted to help those women and tried to pull on the reins, but stopping the carriage now would do no good.

Each time a fleeing person came into view, they were captured by slime tentacles without exception.

And then the men were drawn into the slime's body, and the women were paralyzed by the poison, robbed of bodily freedom. What would be done to them after that, no one needed to imagine.

Fiana, and Alfira in the bed of the carriage, knew it firsthand.

Right now, they had to convey the situation to Queen Leticia as fast as possible, request her instructions, and consider a way to eradicate the slimes.

Elves were a race adept at magic, but the slimes trampling the Royal Capital, where thousands upon thousands of people lived, had a mass no amount of mana could possibly burn or freeze through. Even if every elf in the Royal Capital combined their mana, it would be impossible.

Even Leticia could likely, at the very most, burn the Royal Capital and the slimes alike to ash, Fiana thought.

Even so, the only one who could do anything about this situation was the elven queen Leticia. The slayer of the [Demon King], one of the [Hero]'s companions… surely she could do something. Fiana held that hope in her chest as she looked forward.

That was why she drove the carriage toward the royal castle… but then she suddenly noticed that no voices were coming from the bed of the carriage.

The sound of the carriage running was loud, but even so, given the situation, it was strange that they were not uttering a word, and a bad feeling came over her. With one hand still on the reins, Fiana looked back over her shoulder.

The roof had been blown away by the slime they had passed earlier, and the carriage bed was half-destroyed. But she knew it still held its shape, because the sound of the wheels rolling over the stone paving of the main thoroughfare could be heard.

It wasn't that the knights riding in the bed had been thrown out.

The reason the knights, including Alfira who had been in the bed from the start, were not making a sound was… Frederica and Satia. From the lower bodies of those two former adventurers who had been continuously raped by the Black Ooze, from their genital regions, tentacles had emerged and were holding the knights captive.

"—"

The sight was so utterly bizarre that Fiana lost her words.

Even though she was driving the carriage, her face stayed turned backward and her body froze, her small face bobbing up and down with the swaying of the carriage.

"Fi, a… hel, p…"

Not that the voice reached her ears. But she could tell from the movement of the lips that those words had been spoken.

The female knights, paralyzed by the poison and stripped of bodily freedom, lay sprawled on the floor of the carriage bed. The reason the tentacles growing from the genitalia of the two adventurers were pinning their bodies down was to keep them from falling out of the carriage.

And the condition of Alfira, who had been in the carriage bed from the start, could only be described as wretched.

Her clothes had been torn, and what remained was only a tattered scrap covering her arms from the shoulders down and her legs from the knees down. Her armor was nowhere to be seen in the carriage bed; it had probably fallen off when Fiana set the carriage running.

So that she could not scream, a tentacle as thick as a grown man's arm had been forced into her mouth, and into her secret place and her anus, though not as thick as the one stopping up her mouth, tentacles larger than any man's flesh-rod Fiana had known had been driven in as well.

Alfira, lifted slightly off the floor of the carriage bed, was being shaken violently by the up-and-down motion of the tentacles, separate from the carriage's swaying, her exposed breasts swinging up and down and left and right.

Tears were streaming from her eyes, and from the corner of her mouth dripped a liquid so viscous it stretched in strings, indistinguishable from saliva or slime mucus, while from her violated secret place and anus, the slime's seed was already overflowing.

Although they had only been away from the carriage for the briefest of moments, Alfira's state was that of someone who had been violated for hours.

At that state, Fiana grew dizzy and was on the verge of losing consciousness. But she bit her lip and tethered her consciousness with the pain.

Holding the reins in her right hand, Fiana directed her left toward the carriage bed — toward the mucus tentacle holding Alfira.

Focusing. Carried by emotion, she tried to freeze a portion of the mucus tentacle, but from a blind spot in her view, bursting up through the floor of the carriage bed, a new tentacle wound around her white, slender arm.

Filthy black mucus coiled around her arm, white as porcelain, and defiled it. At that sensation of defilement, her skin crawled, and Fiana hastily pulled her arm back.

The mucus tentacle tore off easily, but the severed piece crept up to her upper arm as though it had a will of its own. At that revolting sensation, Fiana reflexively swung her arm wildly to try to peel it off.

But after waving her arm several times, the strength drained from her whole body… she went limp all at once, and slumped back against the rear of the driver's seat.

Her breath grew ragged for a reason different from tension, her heart pounded, and at the suffocation she gave a panting sigh. There was not enough oxygen. No matter how desperately she worked her throat to breathe, the breathing that had been effortless until then was now difficult.

It was the paralytic poison she had been forced to know all too well within the abandoned mine.

No strength would enter her body; she couldn't move a single finger, and she could not even raise her voice.

The carriage that had slipped from Fiana's hands kept up its speed, racing along the main thoroughfare.

Civilians who came to seek help, unable to approach because of its momentum, came to a halt, and were caught by slime tentacles just like that, in plain sight.

"Ngh… gh…"

At this rate, the carriage would run people over.

Her body was paralyzed, but one of her hands was still gripping the reins. She tried to pull on them to slow the horse, but no strength would come to her arms. She could only manage a slight tightening of her grip.

Meanwhile the horse was still accelerating, and at how no strength would enter her body, Fiana felt fear and curled in on herself.

"Ngh—!?"

Around Fiana's slender neck, a new tentacle coiled.

Not for paralysis. To restrain her, tentacles wrapped around her neck, her shoulders, her elbows.

She wanted to scream at the disgust of having mucus tentacles touch her skin directly, but paralyzed as she was, she could not even speak.

In the meantime, just like Alfira in the bed, Fiana was scooped up by tentacles aboard the running carriage.

Carried into the bed, the other female knights too were in a sorry state.

Their cumbersome armor had been peeled off, their clothing loosened, and skin peeked from the chests of their tunics and from the upturned hems. The knights wearing skirts had their legs spread wide open, exposing their underwear, and the knights wearing pants had had them pulled down around their knees.

Fiana, who wore a robe-like garment with a front-drape similar to a sister's habit, had her front-drape boldly flipped up from the front, like flipping up a skirt.

Her fine silk panties laid bare, she flushed her cheeks red with shame while her body remained paralyzed.

The female knights too, their underwear of various colors laid bare, let out muffled screams. Because of the paralytic poison, their voices were too thin and weak to be made out clearly.

And drowned out by the sound of the running carriage, they could not reach anyone outside of those present.

Fiana turned what little of her neck still moved freely, and directed her gaze at Frederica and the others.

The two female adventurers from whose genital regions slime tentacles were growing did not look as though they had any consciousness left. They had been horribly exhausted even when rescued at the abandoned mine, and whatever this was, whether one could rightly call it slime childbirth or not, the current state of affairs had drained the last of their strength. Their eyes were focused on nothing, and they looked as if they had fainted.

As she thought that, the tentacles holding Fiana branched off into several smaller tentacles.

As Fiana wondered what was about to be done to her, the newly formed tentacles smashed the driver's seat to pieces before her eyes.

With a single blow, the driver's seat, wooden but soundly built, was shattered, and the horse was freed.

The horse, freed from the carriage, ran on as it was, and was devoured by a different slime at the edge of Fiana's field of view.

The carriage, having lost its horse, gradually slowed and at last came to a halt without ever reaching the royal castle.

(N-No way…)

Despair welled up in Fiana's chest.

Her body would not move, but her consciousness was clear. What her eyes saw was real, and she understood that there was no helping this situation.

If her body had been free, she would have trembled, not in resistance to this slime, but from the very core of her being.

It was that kind of hellish sight.

That townscape she had thought so beautiful was being trampled by giant slimes… by the very things everyone had until now derided as the weakest of monsters.

Buildings smashed apart, men absorbed into bodies, women violated.

Such a despairing sight filled her entire field of view.

"Ah, ah…"

It was not humiliation, shame, or rage. Purely… from the depths of her heart, she was sad, and tears spilled.

"Aaah…"

The slime slowly, gently set the tearful Fiana down in the carriage bed.

Her front-drape flipped up, her legs spread, in a posture as if to emphasize her pure-white panties, yet not even a shred of shame welled up in her.

Beside Fiana, the already-defiled Alfira was laid out. Just like Fiana, her legs were spread in a posture that emphasized her secret place.

Beside her was a female knight sobbing and desperately trying to move her unresponsive body to escape the slime tentacles.

Chestnut hair, features that still bore a hint of childishness. Her body, too, had the elven trait of slender build, with little flesh. Like Alfira, her clothes had been roughly torn away, and the sight was just like that of a woman attacked by a thug in a back alley, on the verge of being violated.

Trembling at the violence, shaking, weeping, begging for help, her body shuddered just as such a woman's would.

So as not to hurt this knight, and so as not to let her escape, mucus tentacles bound both her arms and both her legs. Her body's freedom robbed by paralytic poison and further restrained by tentacles.

Once it had ensured that no one here could possibly escape, the slime that had crawled out of Frederica's secret place slowly began to rend the clothing of the other female knights.

"N-no…"

"Sto — stop iiit!"

A female knight with sky-clear blue hair, perhaps realizing resistance was useless, did not thrash and only wept, while a female knight with hair as fierce as burning flame, perhaps with weaker paralysis, struggled desperately.

Individual differences, perhaps, or maybe a slight resistance to the poison.

From beneath the clothes torn audibly away, the underwear that hid their breasts and secret places emerged. Strikingly, both had chosen underwear matching the color of their hair.

Demure, cute blue underwear, and lewd crimson-red adult underwear.

For both of them, the panties covering their secret places, their crotches, were faintly damp.

Not because they had felt pleasure. Not because they had been aroused by Alfira's spectacle. Out of fear, they had wet themselves slightly.

Perhaps embarrassed by it, the two female knights tried to rub their thighs together to hide their panties, but tentacles coiled around their ankles and knees, forcibly fixing them in a wide-spread posture.

The four female knights, Alfira excluded, were stripped to nothing but their underwear… and the scraps of torn clothing.

Some despairing, some afraid, some resigned, some still unbroken and trying to resist.

Four ways for four people.

Though the slime surely had no such intent, the result could perhaps be called an exquisite display.

… And so, having lined Fiana and the other female knights up, the slime fully extracted itself from the bodies of the unconscious Frederica and Satia, and turned its venomous fangs next on the knights.

"Hi-iiii…"

A hoarse sob could be heard. From the female knight who had been weeping with terror.

Toward the crotch of the woman who still held the will to resist, the slime that had emerged from Frederica's body slowly crawled close.

She shook her head back and forth, "no, no," but from the neck down, her body showed no sign of moving as she willed it.

Powerless, legs spread wide, she could only stare at the approaching slime with eyes filled with terror.

That helplessness was bitter, and the dread surpassing even that bitterness made the female knight shake her head desperately, weeping.

With that motion, tears flew from the corners of her eyes and fell onto the floor of the carriage bed. The slime extended a tentacle and lapped the tears up.

By a slight, almost imperceptible amount, the slime's volume increased.

To a slime, everything that a woman produced was food. Sweat, tears, drool, snot… love-juice. Any and all liquid, any excretion was a meal, and especially that of an elf, which contained mana, gave the slime the finest of nourishment.

Living in the sewer for nearly a month, absorbing the urine and excrement and food waste of the thousands upon tens of thousands living in the Royal Capital, the slime had grown to a mass beyond imagining, and even after absorbing all that, it still craved food greedily.

Not a drop of tears nor a drop of sweat would the slime allow to escape.

All of it because of what the [Black Ooze], that individual, had first acquired.

By absorbing a human male, it had awakened as male, and impregnating women, having them bear its children, had been carved into its instincts.

Now, there was nothing else left.

Whether this was the elven kingdom did not matter.

Where there was food, where there were women who could be made to bear its children.

That alone was enough. Nothing else was needed.

"Hi, ya… no, no…"

Her childish white panties with the ribbon decoration laid completely bare, the female knight uttered a soundless scream.

Not from the paralytic poison; a tremor born of terror ran through her whole body, and her foot-guards, still on her feet, clattered against the wooden floor of the carriage bed.

She did not think the slime possessed that much intelligence, but slowly, as though to stoke her terror, it crept toward the female knight's crotch.

When she looked around begging for help, her gaze found something even more wretched than her own state: Alfira.

"Fu— gguuah!!"

With her vagina and anus pierced by colossally thick tentacles, and her mouth made to hold another equally thick one, the bountiful breasts spilling out from her obscenely torn clothing wetly gleamed with slime mucus and Alfira's drool, and shook obscenely with the recoil of each thrust.

Skin struck against breasts, and a tap-tap sound rang out.

That sound rang through the bed of the broken carriage each time her huge breasts swung heavily, loud enough to drown out the screams from all around and the sounds of mucus gouging her twin holes.

Such breasts of Alfira's. Their summits.

At the center of an areola slightly larger than that of a normal woman, there was a dip. Inverted nipples — a secret Alfira had kept hidden from others was laid bare in the light of day.

The female knights present had to see it.

And they came to grasp that, in just the same way, their own shameful things would be laid bare and exposed.

"Mgh! Mguuugh!?"

Her tentacle-stuffed mouth made a wordless sound, as if appealing for something. As her bound upper body swayed left and right, her most-hidden inverted pink nipples swayed forcefully along with it.

She must surely want to hide them. Everyone there thought it.

She didn't want them seen. It was embarrassing.

But each time Alfira swayed her body in an attempt to hide her chest, her huge breasts swayed even more violently, and her inverted nipples inevitably became all the more conspicuous.

Alfira was cornered enough that she could not realize it, and the bed of the carriage echoed with screams from the surroundings, Alfira's muffled voice, and the viscous sounds the slime's tentacles made every time they moved.

Those sounds were gradually growing louder.

The force of the tentacles thrust into Alfira's vagina and anus was growing more violent.

"Mgh!? Gguh, ngggh!?"

The tentacles' restraints, like those of a veteran knight or adventurer binding their prey, had completely sealed Alfira's body away.

The slime, which absorbed even the memories of those it took in, was binding Alfira using the knowledge of the knights it had consumed in the abandoned mine.

The only part of her free was a portion of her upper body.

Both her arms, both her legs, and her lower body were completely restrained, and she could not even tremble to release the impact of the tentacles' thrusts.

Her vaginal walls, the entrance to her womb, her anus, her intestinal walls, and the winding intestinal cavity even further within.

The tentacles filled it all without leaving a gap, and rubbed without end with their up-and-down motion. Flowing, watery love-juice and intestinal fluid, different from the slime's mucus, spilled out and was absorbed by the tentacles.

"Mgggh!?"

Bound by such slime tentacles, her hips trembled once, hard.

She had climaxed.

It was obvious to anyone watching, and the stimulus of climax, however briefly, made her hips tremble past even the slime's binding.

Alfira's eyes opened wide and stared into space, but nothing was reflected in them. Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, and a copious amount of drool spilled from the corners of her mouth.

Even so —

"Mgh!? Gguh, gggnnh!?"

The tentacles' thrusts did not stop. Even as Alfira climaxed, they bored into her vagina, and bored into her anus.

Sometimes at once, sometimes alternately.

Variation added even amid the monotony, going not just into her cervix but into the womb itself, not just into her anal entrance but trampling the winding lengths of her large intestine.

At the stimulus of tentacles thrust so deep that Alfira's trained, tightened belly visibly bulged outward, she shook her head from side to side, tears overflowing.

Drip-drop, her love-juice splattered onto the floor of the carriage bed.

She had climaxed again. This time, more violently than before. So much that she was squirting.

"O-oh, ohnnh!?"

Breathing through her mouth had become impossible, so now she breathed through her nose. With that force, snot overflowed, and the fingers of her hands, still in gauntlets and restrained above her head, twitched in time with the tentacles' thrusts.

Hands that had gripped a sword. Fingers trained to cut down monsters were twitching in time to a monster's attack. Unconsciously, those fingers gripped the tentacles binding her to soften the impact even a little, and it almost looked as if Alfira was gently grasping the tentacles herself, stimulating them.

"—"

The slime was creeping up to her feet.

Even caught in such a critical moment, the elven female knight clad in white underwear was riveted on Alfira's lewd display.

No, she could not look away.

— I'm going to become that too.

It felt as if it was being shown to her.

That she too would be raped by a slime, by a monster, made to climax.

And then, like this, we'll defile you too.

It was being shown to her.

Screams rose.

The screams of women still safe, fleeing in panic, outside the carriage. And the screams of the female knights captured in the bed of the carriage.

Many, many screams rose.

A hell of screams and torment.

That was what could be glimpsed through the gaps in the bed of the broken carriage.