A Feast of Black Filth and Honeyed Flesh

The report arrived while the sun was still at its zenith—just a little past midday.

Beyond the slime problem, a queen's work was plentiful. While Leticia was caught up in that work, a violent knock came, and then the door of her private chambers was thrown open.

The door was wrenched open without so much as a beat between her reply and its opening, and the one who appeared was a knight with white hair and a beard.

The commander who led Fonteau's Knight Order.

She faced him every day in the throne room, so there was no chance of mistaking him. She knew well this man who had lived longer than herself, this aged Knight Commander who always carried a composed air about him.

But at that moment, his expression was so flustered that even Leticia was taken aback at the sight. She had never witnessed such an expression on him even before her coronation, and it was more than enough to make her sense how dire the matter he was about to speak of must be.

"My Queen, the slimes!"

"… Have they appeared in the castle town?"

Leticia set down the quill pen she had been using and asked. At that, the Knight Commander took several deep breaths as if to steady himself.

(How strange.)

Normally, reports were left to the maids. Failing that, to someone from the Knight Order… a fine-grained report like this should be the work of those lower down the chain, not the Knight Commander himself.

At least that had been the way of it until now—and considering that, she reconsidered just how grave a matter must be for him to call it "dire."

Straightening her posture in her chair, Leticia turned a firm gaze upon the Knight Commander.

The soft sunlight pouring through the glass-paned window leading out to the terrace made her silver hair stand out, as though a halo were shining behind her.

Her dress, too, was pure white, so she looked almost luminous.

Inside the room, there was no one but Leticia.

Part of it was that she had wanted to think about the slime while she worked. By nature, she preferred solitude when she had something to mull over.

Long ago, her husband had teased her for being "the type to bear things alone," and the memory drew a soft smile to her lips.

"Please calm yourself. What has happened?"

Slowly, in a quiet voice.

She knew that speaking loudly or sharply to someone already flustered would only fluster them further. Even if the man was older than her and had lived longer, the essence of people did not change.

And so, for a little while, in the room with only Leticia and the Knight Commander, only the sound of his ragged breathing echoed.

"My, my apologies."

"It's quite all right."

After a moment, the Knight Commander, his breathing collected, pressed a hand to the breast of his full plate and bowed. Flustered as he was, he seemed to have remembered that he had not even greeted her.

"Now then, what is it?"

"Slimes."

Well, of course it would be, Leticia thought.

At present, the only matter in Fonteau or its neighboring countries that might warrant such alarm was, more or less, that. She had also considered that perhaps some calamity she had not even imagined had occurred, but it seemed it was the former.

"A great swarm of slimes has appeared in the Royal Capital."

"… A swarm?"

But the situation was far more precarious than Leticia had imagined.

She turned and looked out the window at the streets of the Royal Capital. Yet the view was peace itself. It was the usual, tranquil scene of Fonteau's castle town.

"Not that way. Please step out of the room and look outside!"

Sensing the urgency in his desperate voice, Leticia rose forcefully from her chair.

Heedless of the hem of her dress, she passed through the door the Knight Commander had opened for her, stepped out into the corridor, and looked at the castle town from the corridor window.

She had no need to approach the window at all.

The instant she passed through the door, what filled her field of view was a town in flames.

And advancing through the beautiful streets, destroying the houses, were the figures of massive, black, turbid slimes.

They were huge. So very huge.

Among them were slimes large enough to swallow even a two-story house whole. Whether the fires had been started by residents who failed to flee in time or by mages casting spells to burn the slimes to death was unclear, but they had spread to the destroyed houses and were consuming that corner of town.

Against the blue sky, black smoke rose.

They were too far away to hear, but the screams of the townspeople seemed to reach her ears regardless… a sight that wrung the heart, that made one want to cover one's eyes, lay spread out beyond the window.

Leticia felt dizzy and took a step back, but did not fall. She put strength into her legs and held her ground.

"And the Knight Order?"

"My apologies, but before asking for the Queen's instructions, I have sent them to the town's aid."

"No, that was good judgment. Thank you."

She was the queen.

No matter what scene was thrust before her eyes, she was in a position where she had to put her people first, her country first.

So she hid the urge to weep, and without letting her voice tremble, stood tall.

"Do you know the exact number of slimes?"

"My apologies, but I do not. They simply appeared all of a sudden, and even now their numbers continue to grow…"

"From where are they appearing? If from outside the town, the watch should have noticed beforehand."

"From underground. They appear to be coming through the sewer system built by the [Hero]…"

Those words made her breath catch.

The sewer system.

That was the waste-disposal facility devised by the king of this country, the otherworld [Hero] who was her husband. By magic, holes had been dug beneath the Royal Capital, and the river's water was made to flow through them, carrying the refuse from each household downstream. At that, Leticia understood, and pressed a slender finger to her shapely chin.

"Then, the refuse that flows into the sewers, our leftovers… you mean the slime has been absorbing those?"

"—I see. If so, then that mass, that number…"

At Leticia's words, the Knight Commander nodded, and his words trailed off into quieter and quieter syllables.

He had realized. He had been forced to realize.

"… For how long, exactly?"

"I do not know."

Answering at once, Leticia turned her gaze back to the castle town from which black smoke rose. She took a deep breath at that heart-wrenching sight, where the screams of the people seemed audible despite the distance.

"But at that size… far earlier than we noticed, it may have been making its dwelling there."

She was disgusted with herself. With them, lulled into peace.

To think they had been raising a monster right beneath their feet… she could not face her predecessors, her predecessors' predecessors, or the founder of the Kingdom of Fonteau.

Above all, the reality that the town her husband had built up was being destroyed in such a manner was something she herself could not forgive.

"I shall go forth as well."

"The Queen herself!?"

"Morale will surely rise that way."

She had no leisure to worry about position.

Leticia understood well enough that if she, who had the achievement of slaying the [Demon King], stood at the front and fought, that alone could inspire the knights.

Her own role. The way she should use the title of queen.

For the one who normally gave orders from the throne to stand at the front would encourage her subordinates more than anything else. And all the more so if she was someone they admired and trusted.

The will to protect that person, she knew, could rouse a spirit in battle beyond any other thing.

So Leticia turned on her heel to return to her chamber to ready the equipment she had worn long ago when subjugating the [Demon King]—

With a high-pitched sound, the window in the very spot where Leticia had been watching the town shattered.

It was an impact from outside. Shards of broken glass scattered across the corridor.

At the suddenness of it, the Knight Commander drew the sword at his hip, and Leticia whirled around.

What she saw beyond the shattered window was a black maw. No, it was a slime spread wide. A black slime so eerie it could swallow even the glittering sunlight.

The instant she recognized it, Leticia released mana, not for attack but for defense.

A pale-blue membrane formed before her face.

Almost simultaneously, countless tentacles lashed out. More than half flew at Leticia, the rest at the elderly Knight Commander. His skill in striking every one of them down was as sharp as if his age were no factor at all, and as for Leticia's defensive magic, unnerving as the slime might be, it was hardly so brittle as to be pierced by something at a slime's level.

Having repelled the surprise attack, the Knight Commander stepped forward as if to say it was their turn now.

With a stride forceful enough to crack the stone floor, he loosed a slash clad in mana that severed the slime in two.

Slimes might be soft-bodied beings, but a sword attack that converted mana into heat evaporated their moisture and killed them dead in a single blow.

"It has already reached the castle—coming from the town, that's too soon."

"The castle is connected to the sewer system too—it's already impossible to predict where they'll appear from."

Saying so, she sighed.

The fact that she still maintained the defensive magic she had thrown up to fend off the surprise attack proved her words. There was no longer any place within the castle that could be called completely safe—

"Oh no."

She came to that thought at once. Was it because she was a mother?

"What is it?"

"—I shall head to the castle town to sweep up the slimes there. Can you send several knights to my daughters?"

"That will be fine. Several knights have already been sent to Maria-sama and the others."

"Good."

But if they were ambushed as just now… she nearly let her thoughts spiral toward the worst, then shook her head lightly.

In situations like this, dwelling on the worst would drag her mood into an unending plunge.

To rally her spirit, which felt as though it were sinking endlessly, Leticia returned to her private chamber and lifted her face—

"Eh?"

For an instant, she thought night had fallen.

The cause was behind her. The window in Leticia's private chamber—the window facing the direction the sun's light should enter the room at this time of day… a slime clung across the whole of it.

It was not merely the eerie black mucilage. The clutter it had taken in on the way here, from weeds and small stones to livestock and the rubble of broken houses—even, in places, the half-digested forms of humans, all seemed for one instant to be plastered against the window.

For that instant, Leticia's thoughts were thrown into disarray, and the defensive magic she had set against ambush vanished.

It had not merely crawled up from the inner courtyard to the floor where Leticia's private chamber lay. This was a great mass that had absorbed everything in its path while trampling the castle town…

"Aaah!?"

"Leticia-sama!?"

The window-glass was broken. The stone wall crumbled.

Unable to bear the slime's weight, one section of Fonteau's royal castle collapsed.

It was not a blow of attack. The slime, merely leaning against the wall, swallowed Leticia's private chamber.

Had the Knight Commander not yanked Leticia's arm in time, she too would have been swallowed along with the room.

—Before her eyes, the blue sky. Beneath her feet, the ground, far below.

Her private chamber had been destroyed without a trace.

"Wha…"

Words would not come.

She knew slimes as monsters. Among the weakest, one might say, all but harmless. They preyed on humans and livestock, yet their digestive ability was low, and they were monsters that could even lose to livestock.

Possessing a core within their bodies, they could not be killed unless that core was destroyed, but a slime not particularly large would, when stepped on, scatter most of its bodily fluid and shrink down, and that alone was usually enough to crush the core along with it.

Ah, but.

Once more, night came. The sun was hidden. The light was swallowed.

A slime large enough to swallow Leticia along with the castle reared up its head.

"—Do not underestimate me."

But she was the woman who had defeated the [Demon King]. A mage on par with the [Demon King] himself.

Her power, even after long years, had not declined in the slightest, and it now revealed itself before that monster.

The skirt of her dress fluttered though there was no wind, so violently that not only her white stockings but the garter belt that held them up came into view.

Her long hair fanned out, and the wreckage of her destroyed room blew upward, so strong was the surge of her mana.

"Hmph."

What was woven before her was not defensive magic.

This time, red—a red-hot magic circle was woven before her, and at the same time mana converged in front of Leticia. Mana too powerful gave off a scarlet glow and radiated heat.

Heat. Flame. A sphere of fire cast without incantation was amplified by the magic circle woven before her, and in an instant became a colossal fire bolt large enough to easily swallow Leticia herself.

The slime's head, or what passed for one—it was even now trying to swallow Leticia and the Knight Commander. That oncoming head collided with the fire bolt.

In an instant, the slime's mucus evaporated, and white steam blocked Leticia's vision for a moment.

The fire bolt evaporated the slime's head, and then scattered through the air.

Toward Leticia, whose vision was obscured by white steam, the giant slime that had lost half its body stretched tentacles out from everywhere at once.

Tentacles too fast to see, but she set up a mana membrane in front of her body for defense. Thin blue membrane though it was, it caught the slime's tentacles head-on without even cracking.

Likewise, the Knight Commander, targeted by the slime's tentacles, was protected by her defensive magic, and then came her next move.

Once more, with an oversized fire bolt the same as before, this time she blew away the slime's torso in the inner courtyard.

This one had been loosed downward toward the ground, so it took out the flowerbed along with the lovely flowers blooming there.

That brought it down to a third of its size. The soft body, blown apart not by heat-evaporation but by the explosion's shock, tried to gather itself back together. Unable to see that through the white steam born of evaporation, Leticia stepped back one pace from where she stood, into the corridor.

"… It stinks."

Even defensive magic that blocked slime attacks could not block smells. Were it to do so, it would block oxygen too and cause suffocation. That was something she had learned the hard way on a past journey.

And the slime was a being that had absorbed a great mass of filth from the sewers.

The stench of that filth burning was the most offensive thing she had ever smelled, and Leticia's elegant features twisted.

"In any case."

She looked at the space where her private chamber had been.

There was nothing there. Magnificently nothing.

No, even now, in the castle town, this same sort of disaster was multiplying.

Bracing herself anew, she began to walk.

"Now then. First we annihilate the slimes—"

Klink, came a small, light sound. From behind.

She turned. What she saw was nothing like the previous slime… it was, in fact, about the size of the ordinary slimes Leticia knew well. Small enough to fit in the palm of one's hand, perhaps even smaller than that.

The slime that had broken the window had slipped inside the castle, but the difference in height between window and floor had sent it tumbling along the ground like a small pebble.

The little slime, having rolled across the floor in a manner unbecoming of any slime, righted itself and began to advance slowly toward the Knight Commander's feet.

"If only all the slimes outside were this small."

"Indeed."

The Knight Commander clad his sword in mana.

Carelessness—or rather, the conceit that came from having just seen a slime so massive.

An ordinary slime. A small slime.

But if it was a monster, there was no reason to leave it alive. He raised the mana-clad sword and brought it down to kill in a single stroke—but the blade swung with that intent never reached the small slime.

"Wha…"

What pierced his mithril armor with ease was a tentacle extending from that small slime.

The same as the giant slime from before—no, darker even than that, a tentacle of pure black pierced his armor, his chest, his heart.

From the gap in the armor, from the wound, no blood flowed.

"Aa—a, ah…"

Gogyun. A sound she had never heard before reached Leticia's ears.

She came back to herself and turned her palm toward the small slime, but the slime, deftly working the tentacle that had skewered his flesh, used the Knight Commander as a shield.

"Tsk."

Leticia bit her lip at having the Knight Commander used as a shield. As she did, that unfamiliar gogyun sounded again and again, intermittently, and each time he let out a groan.

Within moments, the cheeks that had been ruddy for one so old turned gaunt, cheekbones jutting out, and the skin—the flesh withered.

She stepped forward, trying to do something about this situation, but faster than that, just like that, the Knight Commander's neck snapped.

Bone and skin only… the flesh that ought to have been inside the skin was gone.

Though his neck had snapped, not a single drop of blood flowed; rather, the impact of his fall scattered hair across the floor.

The eyeballs that should have been there, that had to have been there, were crushed and no longer doing their work.

Drained from within of every drop of moisture and every scrap of flesh, he was what the [Hero] from the other world would have called a [mummy].

In contrast to the skin where moisture remained, the body within seemed as though it would weather away in an instant. Faced with a sight that would have wrung a scream even from a seasoned warrior, Leticia nonetheless choked back her scream and turned her palm toward the slime.

"Begone!"

The same as what had blown away the giant slime before—not on so grand a scale, but with mana equal to or greater than what she had loosed then, she fired a fire bolt at the slime.

He had been used as a shield, but he had long since been dead.

Defiling a corpse darkened her heart, but even so, Leticia's instincts told her that this small slime was dangerous.

The fire spell loosed on impulse.

It should have struck the slime square on—

"What?!"

Leticia's eyes flew wide. The fire bolt had veered off course… no, it had been turned aside.

"A slime, using magic!?"

Witnessing that phenomenon for the first time, the magus queen understood at once and was shocked. Then she recalled what she had heard from Fiana a few days earlier.

The talk of slimes that used magic.

But.

"Did you mean to compete with me, you mere slime?!"

Without letting her guard down, she fixed the small slime in her gaze, and three magic circles formed before her in an instant. One red, and two blue.

Blue deeper than the defensive magic that wrapped around her, like the blue of the sky.

At the same time, two ice spears bearing physical mass formed around her, as if to guard her. And one fire bolt, the same as before.

"Then how about this?!"

The two ice spears were loosed at once and accelerated as they passed through the magic circle. Released at a speed no ordinary person could follow with their eyes, the spears pierced the small slime cleanly and stopped its movement.

"And this!"

Last, the fire bolt loosed a beat later reached the slime that had been bound by the spears—but what exploded was the corridor wall.

The slime had deflected only the fire, its weakness, from striking it directly, and Leticia furrowed her brows.

Even granting that the slime had learned magic, surely it could not have built up much experience yet, she had reckoned. But the way it took the attack while still cleanly guarding its weakness was the fighting style of an expert.

Suspicious of that, she paused her attack for an instant, and the slime, as if disregarding the binding of the ice spears, used its soft body to slip free of them.

In passing, the ice spears had frozen a small portion of its outer surface as a side effect, but how much that mattered, Leticia could not say.

Visibly without so much as a scratch, the slime stopped its movement in the middle of the corridor. The motion was almost as if it were enthroning itself.

"In that case—"

With more powerful magic.

Just as she thought it, the slime exploded.

Its black soft body burst from within in an explosive multiplication, filling the castle corridor in an instant. It shattered windows; the far side of the corridor became invisible—yet not a single drop leaked outside.

"What…?"

Unable to read the meaning of that action, Leticia braced herself.

She reinforced the defensive magic she had thought was sufficient against any slime, and observed the slime's next move.

The slime that had covered the wall in its entirety only writhed faintly, with no apparent intent to do anything in particular.

Was it merely trying to keep me in place? Leticia considered for a moment, but she did not believe a slime would possess that level of intelligence.

Even so.

"It uses magic, and uses it well… is it intelligent, too?"

In any case, this was the slime that had reduced Fonteau to this state. There was no such thing as being too cautious.

"For now, let's blow it away."

Once more, a red magic circle manifested before her. This time it spread across the entire floor, so there was no way to deflect it. With that judgment, she loosed a fire bolt, but it stopped just before the slime and vanished.

"… What?"

At the same time, doku-n. As if pulsing, the entire slime trembled.

Up to now it had taken in and absorbed male mages, and had defiled women to steal their mana.

If so, then could it not also [convert the magic loosed at it into mana and take that in]? That was the result of its thinking.

It was a pinnacle the Black Ooze had reached after absorbing multiple mages, one no other mage could attain—not even Leticia herself.

But Leticia could not comprehend it.

Naturally so.

[Absorbing magic itself] was not something anyone considered. It was a magic that only someone like the otherworld [Hero], outside the natural law of this world, could even think to attempt, and even he had not reached it during his stay here.

The small slime—the Black Ooze decomposed the absorbed mana and took it in. Its soft body, made tougher by the mana it had gained, was strengthened further.

The wall that blocked the corridor thickened. Hardened. Gained resistance to magic.

"Then how about this?"

What she loosed next was an ice spear.

Thicker and longer than the ice spear that had bound the Black Ooze earlier, yet it did not pierce its target. As it neared the soft body's surface, just barely touching or not touching it, it decomposed.

The ice vanished, became mana, and was absorbed.

A portion of what had covered the corridor tore off and fell away.

"Did it work?"

Leticia judged so, but she was wrong.

The Black Ooze had separated off a part of itself and sent it out into the town. Other slimes that fused with this fragment gained that knowledge and mana, and began to fight and absorb the knights' magic in the town.

Elves, who were skilled in magic. A magic kingdom supported by such elves.

The Black Ooze, and the slimes born from it, had at last become the natural enemy of those elves.

And it understood that fact.

"—What?!"

Before the Black Ooze, the magic circle Leticia had manifested earlier to loose her own spell appeared.

The color, red. The color of flame. And the pattern drawn on the magic circle, the same as well.

That was what stunned Leticia. Her magic was hers alone—magic she had devised on her journey with the [Hero] to wield her powerful mana freely; her own personal magic.

And it had just been mimicked.

Letting out a cry of shock, Leticia, judging the slime before her to be a threat, threw up the hardest mana shield she was capable of forging.

The Black Ooze, which had taken in humans, gained intelligence, gained mana, and absorbed mages by the hundreds and thousands, versus one solitary queen who, for all her [Demon King]-equal mana, was nonetheless only one.

The gap in their mana was hopeless.

The fire bolt struck the blue shield head-on, and the impact sent Leticia's body flying.

She rolled across the stone-built corridor floor and stopped against the wall. Perhaps she had struck her head on the way, for she could not rise at once; she pressed a hand to her brow before rising with a hand against the wall.

Her expression—was twisted in shock.

Impossible, she thought.

It was not mana a slime ought to have. It was mana surpassing even the [Demon King] she had fought, had subjugated… the [Demon King] who had used that great mana to spawn his monsters.

It made sense, in a way.

Leticia and the [Demon King]. In this world they were both possessors of powerful mana, but in the end, they were the same.

However powerful, however immense, their mana was still that of one, a single person, a single entity.

Between a slime that simply stored up the mana it had absorbed from countless lives and a single, solitary mage, the foundation was different. The dimension was different. The very existence, the very meaning was different.

It was, precisely, one against many. A matter that simple. That simple a measure of strength.

Because she was a mage, she could understand. The absolute gap in mana.

Then why was the slime the weakest? If its base was weak but it had this property of storing up mana, surely over long years it might have reached the apex of strength—

No.

A slime could not reach the apex.

That was because this thing was a mutant (the Black Ooze) that absorbed everything it took in and inherited those properties.

It was because this thing was special, having absorbed humans and gained wisdom.

Because this thing had taken in hundreds, thousands of humans, harbored their wills, and continued to listen to the voices of thousands, it was no longer something to be called a "single self," but a [collective].

A monster that thought a thousand thoughts in the time Leticia thought one.

Something only that Black Ooze could do. Something only it could pull off.

The mucus wall that had covered the corridor shrank in. It returned to its original, small slime form.

"… … … …"

Leticia did not move. Could not move.

The damage from the magic had subsided. But her legs would not move. Her will would not move.

Like a small animal stared down by an enormous beast, her body would not move. Refused to move.

When the small slime before her felt like some monumentally vast something, once more it exploded from within.

"Tsk?!"

That she could spread a wall of mana around herself in the nick of time was thanks to long years of instinct, and her experience of fighting the [Demon King].

She would block the slime's self-detonation with a wall of mana—so Leticia intended, but in the next instant, just as her own magic earlier had been absorbed, the wall of mana too was absorbed, and she was swept away.

The Black Ooze had compressed enough mass to cover the corridor. Showing itself small was a way to make the opponent imagine it was weak.

It was the inverse of the animal's logic of making oneself look large to threaten an opponent.

Yet animals and humans were different.

Animals moved by instinct, but humans moved by thought.

If an opponent looked weak, one let down one's guard; if strong, one became wary. The Knight Commander earlier had been a textbook example. He had lost his life in an instant for that lapse, that conceit.

His thoughts, too, lived inside the Black Ooze. As one thought among many, they had informed it of Leticia's moves, her habits, and such things.

"Gh, gabo—th, this is!?"

Leticia could not grasp what was happening to her. Not only had her wall of mana vanished, now she was being swept along inside the corridor.

From a slime that could fit in the palm of a hand, an unbelievable mass of mucus had welled up, sweeping her along.

Even if she tried to hold out, she could find no footing, and the current was too strong to grab the walls.

Swept along by black sludge as if she were a small boat caught in a wild surf, Leticia slammed back-first into the stone wall at the corridor's end.

"Kah!"

The breath was driven from her lungs, and she coughed at the searing pain.

Desperately holding onto her fading consciousness, she glared at the black sludge that pinned her to the wall.

But that was all.

Her muddled mind could not work magic, and her hands and feet refused to obey as though she had been crucified.

In fact, while the corridor was now blanketed in black sludge she could not see through, Leticia's wrists and ankles had been pinned to the wall with slime manacles and shackles.

After a while, once the waves of black sludge had drained her strength and reduced her to breathless gasping, the wave that had ravaged the corridor finally subsided.

After some time, it returned to the form of the original small slime.

Leticia did not know it, but that was the size the Black Ooze had been when it first absorbed livestock. The size when, just before taking in a human, it had still been a pure monster.

Whether the Black Ooze, as an individual, had any particular feelings about that, no human could know.

But, as a monster, the Black Ooze laid itself bare before Leticia and, with a slow motion, moved to her feet.

"Wh-what—"

Even speaking grew burdensome, but Leticia looked down at the slime.

The black sludge that had blanketed the corridor was gone, but the shackles binding her hands and feet remained.

She was a mage, and shackles of that level should have meant nothing.

Though her stamina was this depleted, her mana still had a margin.

But the scene from earlier—her own magic being nullified by a method she could not understand.

Leticia the mage feared that, and could not bring herself to use magic.

(I have to read its actions and finish it for certain—)

Even Leticia's mana was finite.

So, observe the opponent's capabilities, and when she could be sure of finishing it, strike with everything. Thinking so, she tried to steady her ragged breathing.

As she did, the Black Ooze arrived at the feet of the wall-pinned Leticia.

The white dress she wore, soaked by the black sludge that had swept her along, clung to her body, emphasizing her full bosom, narrow waist, and elegant legs.

Because the dress was white, the wet fabric thinly revealed the color of the skin beneath, and the pure-white underwear the dress had hidden could now be seen through it.

Her breasts rose and fell with disordered breaths, her beautiful silver hair clung wet against her cheeks, and her long legs moved faintly in attempts to slip free of the bindings.

The Black Ooze, as though watching her from its position at her feet, observing her, did not move on to its next action.

It was more lewd than any clumsy nudity, a sight to gladden any man's eyes.

For the Black Ooze, in which dozens, hundreds of male wills were gathered, perhaps such a sight stirred something.

"It's… not doing anything…?"

Whispering so, Leticia first tried to freeze the mucus shackle binding her right hand.

It was the method Fiana had used to escape when she had been captured at the abandoned mithril mine.

Freeze the mucus shackle at the wrist, and shatter it.

But the slime had seen that method once. It knew it. It had been escaped from before.

So this time, the moment the shackle shattered, a tentacle that stretched like rubber caught the wrist again and pulled it back to the wall. The frozen sections were temporarily incapacitated as the mucus solidified, but the unfrozen parts stretched out to seize the prey and not release it.

It was a restraint that simply applied the slime's own ability to compress mass and adjust the length of its body and tentacles to the shackles, but it was strikingly effective.

Leticia tried that method several times, but it was the same with every limb, for both hands and both feet.

Even when she froze them, the parts that remained intact stretched out to bind her once more.

Then I shall risk burns and evaporate them— just as she thought that, the Black Ooze moved. It had read the flow of mana gathering around Leticia, judged that she was about to use fire magic, and acted accordingly.

Reading the flow of mana was something any mage could do as a matter of course.

That a monster, one alien to magic, had done it, that the Black Ooze had done it, made Leticia furrow her brows.

But that was as far as it went.

The Black Ooze, which had paused, began to move again, and from its small body extended a single tentacle of length disproportionate to it.

A thin tentacle—no thicker than a woman's pinky finger.

What is it going to do with that? Leticia frowned, and then, understanding where the tentacle was headed, her eyes flew wide.

"Wha, sto—stop it!"

The slowly moving tentacle slipped under the wet dress clinging to her skin—under the lower half of the dress, the part pressed tight against her legs.

At the sensation of the tentacle climbing along her right leg, she shouted out and desperately thrashed her bound limbs.

Even in such a moment she diligently tried to freeze the shackles and free herself, but that too would not come to pass.

"Tsk, this is what Fiana spoke of, isn't it!?"

She had understood. She had known.

But when it came to its happening to herself—to a slime's tentacle reaching for her, Leticia had not imagined it.

After all, she was the queen, one of the heroes who had defeated the [Demon King].

No matter how troublesome or special a slime might be, no matter how acutely she told herself to be cautious, in a corner of her heart the thought of [just a slime] had not faded.

That was the reason for this situation. That was the reason for this disaster.

The royal castle's corridor was defiled by slime mucus, and the town, in this very moment, was being destroyed.

All of it because Leticia had been complacent. Because she had underestimated the slime.

Had she recognized it as a [threat], had she felt, as in days past, that a monster was a [threat], surely she would not have left it to anyone else; she would have dealt with it herself.

She would have investigated, cornered it, and subjugated it.

When the slime was first born from Fiana, when Tiana the castle maid vanished, she should have been at maximum caution then.

She had neglected to be. She had taken the slime lightly.

And no one understood that better than the Black Ooze. It was a monster without thought, but even so, it understood that the woman before it was the kingdom's greatest threat.

The Black Ooze, having gained mana and become able to see the flow of mana, had also become able to size up a mage's caliber.

Because this was a country of elves.

Because nearly everyone here possessed mana.

It could tell who was a powerful mage and who was a weak one. The Knight Order and Mages' Order deployed throughout the castle town had not realized it, but the slimes attacking the town were preying on the weak first.

Using the weak as shields, they drew the knights' attention away, then struck with surprise attacks of paralytic poison and incapacitated their enemies.

Men they absorbed; women they raped to bear children.

Enemies dwindled, and their own kind multiplied without end.

Already, the balance of power in the castle town had inverted. The numbers of knights and mages had fallen below those of the slimes, and the most they could do was flee into intact houses and hold out.

Even that was overrun by slimes infiltrating through the houses' drainage pipes.

Screams rose up from the castle town.

Black smoke from houses set ablaze to facilitate escape soiled the blue sky.

Husbands struggling to save wives carried off by slimes.

Men confronting massive slimes to save their beloved lovers.

An older brother running, pulling his little sister by the hand.

A male knight who lost his life shielding a female knight.

In all manner of ways, all manner of men scattered their lives.

And, in all manner of ways, women were caught in slime tentacles and violated where they fell.

To the soft-bodied slime, clothing meant nothing. Using its freely-shaped tentacles, it slipped under skirts or into knight uniforms, pushed shorts aside, and entered the vagina.

The moist tentacle reached as far as the womb, stimulating the woman until she felt pleasure and her love juices spilled, then ejaculated directly inside her womb.

Until the woman was pregnant, that work would continue.

Slimes did not possess thought aimed at obtaining pleasure. They merely followed the instinct of increasing their kind, and acted on it.

Increase their kind. Increase their young. Have young born.

Action for that purpose alone.

For that alone, they attacked a country, and brought a country to ruin.

And those tentacles were now reaching for the queen of this country, Leticia, as well.

"Hiih, stop it!"

Her tone was strong, but the Black Ooze did not understand words. As Leticia's tense, high-pitched voice rang out, the tentacle climbed up her right leg.

The wet white dress was no longer serving its function, and she could see the black tentacle climbing along the inside of it with her own eyes.

From ankle to calf, to knee, to thigh. Past the parts protected by the stocking held up by the garter belt, the tentacle crawled along bare skin.

At the sensation, Leticia let out a small hii scream, and her body stiffened.

Up bare thigh, then through the groin, the tentacle reached the pubic region protected by the pure-white underwear.

Beneath the white dress, the tentacle, which appeared closer to gray in color, plastered itself against her crotch. The pure-white underwear was thin enough that, between the soaked dress and the underwear itself, her pubic hair could faintly be glimpsed through.

The two sides were strings; the cloth's role was solely to hide the crotch.

That had been a consideration so that the underwear's line would not show through her thin dress, but having it laid bare in broad daylight, and then having a tentacle touching it, made shame and fear well up in her heart.

Her chest was the same.

Though not so much as the panties, the underwear that hid her breasts was also a small thing, just enough to keep what was too full for an elf's chest from sagging and to keep her nipples from showing through the fabric.

Even so, however small the area of cloth, this was underwear worn by the queen.

The detailing was fine, and the silk was of the very best quality. It was underwear Leticia was fond of. And now, it was smeared with slime mucus, and the faint pink protrusions beneath were rising into view.

Her only experience with a man had been her husband, the [Hero].

But Leticia had borne children, and the nipples she had used to nurse two daughters were dark in pigment, so much so that, even through the wet white dress and underwear, their color faintly showed.

Leticia had chosen to be a queen before a woman, but her sense of modesty was as ordinary as anyone's.

Whatever changes motherhood had brought, having her nipples, whose color had changed from her younger days, be seen was embarrassing.

When she shook her hips to try to fling off the tentacle invading her pubic region, those breasts swayed greatly.

A full bosom alone was a delight to a man's eyes, but those nipples, despite being under dress and underwear, only stood out all the more.

As if striking empty air with her hips, she rocked back and forth, then, with both feet bound, swung her hips left and right to whatever extent she could.

However many times she repeated it, she could not shake the tentacle coiled around her right leg; instead, the breathing she had been bringing back under control was thrown into disorder again by the overexertion.

Her breath grew ragged as she rocked her hips, and sweat ran from her brow.

A new tentacle extended from the Black Ooze's body, as if to lick up that sweat and absorb it.

"Mn, gh—stop!?"

She turned her face away from the tentacle that tried to invade her mouth, and gave her senseless cry to stop once more.

Of course the Black Ooze would not obey such words. Using the tentacle adeptly, it chased Leticia's lips. As she grimaced and shook her head from side to side, it pursued without any apparent effort. With a slime, whose very concept of stamina was uncertain, sealing her lips and breathing only through her nose soon left Leticia winded, and her movements visibly slowed.

Lips faintly tinted with pink were as glossy and beautiful as if she were not a mother of two. Yet to those beautiful lips, a black tentacle touched.

"Mn, no—nnh."

The instant she tried to voice a denial, the tentacle pressed in to enter her mouth.

She sealed her lips at once, and somehow managed to prevent the tentacle's incursion.

Meanwhile, the tentacle at her groin pushed the pure-white panties aside, exposing her pubic region, still through the dress.

Silver pubic hair the same color as the hair on her head was hard to make out, but beneath it, the entrance to her vagina, which like her nipples had darkened slightly, faintly showed through.

Leticia, like a child afraid of the doctor, shook her head, no, no.

Her lips, given to the [Hero], were being defiled. The womb that had borne the [Hero]'s children was being defiled.

That, only that, she could not abide.

In her mind's eye rose the faces of her beloved man and her two precious daughters. To imagine them being defiled—at the thought, the back of her head boiled.

Not from shame or oxygen deprivation, but from anger, her cheeks reddened and her eyes flew wide.

"—Hh!!"

What she loosed was unadorned mana. Mana that did not bear any attribute like fire or ice was hard to perceive visually, and for a mage of Leticia's caliber, that alone could be a finishing blow.

In fact, the loosed mana struck the Black Ooze that had been trying to defile her and shattered it.

The Black Ooze's remains scattered across the defiled corridor.

"—Fwoo, fwoo…"

She let out a ragged breath. Having loosed powerful mana right after holding her breath, she felt a faint dizziness.

At the same time, the mucus shackles binding Leticia dissolved into liquid, and her hands and feet were freed.

"Hup…"

Suddenly released, Leticia nearly toppled, but staggered a few steps before righting her posture.

"Hmph—what a troublesome slime indeed."

By what principle she did not understand, but this monster nullified magic. For elves, a race largely composed of mages, that was something one might well call a natural predator.

Just as Leticia thought, Things have grown bothersome, the Black Ooze fragments scattered in the corridor pulsed.

"It's still alive—"

Determined this time to finish it for good, Leticia deployed four crimson magic circles before her.

Every one of them was a finishing blow, and the heat they could put forth would fill the corridor; there could be no escape.

While the magic was being prepared, the Black Ooze fragments gathered at a single point.

Leticia did not miss it.

"The core is there."

Amorphous monsters like slimes had a core too small to see within their bodies, and could not be killed unless the core was destroyed.

Most cores were of low durability, and once the location was known, it was easy enough to dispatch them. The Black Ooze's remains gathered around its core.

Aiming there, Leticia loosed three fire bolts.

The aftershock of the magic punched through the corridor floor, but the Black Ooze's mucus evaporated. Not a drop of slime mucus clung to the rubble of the collapsing floor.

The last bolt she loosed to purify the corridor defiled by the Black Ooze's mucus wave.

The fire bolt's heat evaporated all the mucus that had soiled the corridor, then went on to destroy the wall opposite.

It was not desirable to use magic inside the castle, but the situation was the situation.

Making that excuse inwardly, Leticia at last let out a breath.

A loathsome slime, but at last she had been able to exterminate one. The instant she felt that relief, mucus dripped onto her shoulder.

She hurriedly looked up just as the Black Ooze, which had been clinging to the ceiling, came falling down.

It had manipulated its own mucus to make it look as though the core were there, while its true body waited overhead until the prey was utterly off-guard.

Magic could not work on a Black Ooze that could decompose magic into mana and absorb that mana.

From the moment she had failed to understand that principle, Leticia's chances of victory had ceased to exist. Were she not a woman, she would have been finished off as simply, as plainly, as the Knight Commander earlier had been.

Because she had just been on the verge of being defiled and had thought she had finished the slime off, Leticia's opening was large, and her whole body was crushed under the Black Ooze's bulk in an instant.

Unable even to scream, Leticia fell to the floor, and in her confusion, unable to grasp what was happening, struck her head hard and lost consciousness.

This was not combat. It was capture, carried out by the Black Ooze… by the slimes.

Action solely to acquire males (food) and to capture females (nursery beds).

The slimes had no hostile will. They had only the recovery of nursery beds in which to bear their own children.

Even if the opponent was a comrade of the [Hero] who had killed the [Demon King], it meant nothing to the Black Ooze.

It lacked the intelligence to think of such a thing.

Having defeated the killer of the [Demon King], there was no will within it to feel anything in particular about it.

There was only primal desire. A single one.

Make this woman bear children. Increase its kind.

That alone.

So the Black Ooze, learning from a fragment of another slime that the slimes had been gathering all the women inside and outside the castle into one place, decided to carry Leticia to the same location.

It lifted up the unconscious queen, whom it had crushed under its own mass.

She was a precious mother body.

It would carry her with care, gently, slowly.

For the Black Ooze, women were more precious than anything else.

 

*

 

"Meltia-sama, Maria-sama. Please flee!"

It was just after Leticia's defeat.

The castle wall that the giant slime had destroyed. Through the hole in that wall came a slime, the very one that, twice over, had been burned by the oversized fire bolts Leticia had loosed.

Once large enough to swallow even a section of the castle, its form had shrunk to less than half its previous size, but even so, it was the size of a large beast.

Inside its body floated undigested weeds and the precious metals it had taken in when destroying Leticia's room, and they only heightened its eeriness.

Meltia, who had been in her own chamber with her sister Maria, nearly let out a scream at the sight, but remembering her sister trembling in her arms, she fixed her gaze sternly on the monster.

That would not give the monster pause, but it steeled her own heart.

By the time the three knights standing guard outside the room kicked down the door and urged them to flee, the two had already risen and were on the point of running for the corridor.

Meltia had once been attacked by a slime while changing in her own room. Understanding its dreadfulness, feeling visceral disgust, she hid behind the knights.

Maria, pulled by Meltia's hand, also moved behind the knights, and the slime stretched a tentacle out toward the two girls.

A black, eerie tentacle.

"Aaah!?"

Maria screamed. Normally the quiet sort, the girl now thrashed the black hair inherited from her father as she cried out and squeezed her eyes shut.

Between Maria and the tentacle, the knight who had kicked open the room's door stepped in.

With his sword already drawn, he sliced the tentacle away, but in the next instant, he dropped to his knees. Without even a moment's pause, he pitched forward.

The paralytic poison passed down from the Black Ooze was healthy and active, and when the tentacle had been struck away, droplets had touched his skin through a gap in his helmet.

Just one drop. That alone rendered a trained knight combat-incapable.

In particular, the other knights, who did not know the cause, hesitated, unable to tell whether it was some special magic, some kind of poison, or, if poison, how he could have been afflicted by it.

"Maria!?"

The tentacle was still extended, and from its severed end new tentacles sprouted.

They went straight for the younger princess again, but this time her elder sister Meltia interposed herself. The girl, wearing a pale cherry-blossom-pink dress, spread her arms wide and squeezed her eyes shut.

But the tentacle did not reach her.

A wall of mana that Maria had thrown up at the last moment blocked the attack.

This slime had absorbed Black Ooze cell-fragments and acquired the technique of decomposing magic into mana, yet curiously it could not negate this wall of mana.

Was it because Maria's mana was that of one who had strongly inherited the [Hero]'s blood? Or was there some other factor?

Neither Maria herself nor the slime could grasp it, but that wall of mana became an absolute barrier, preventing the slime from advancing from Meltia's private chamber into the corridor side.

"Thank you, Maria!"

"Mn…"

Startled at being thanked so loudly, Maria nodded haltingly.

Meltia, pulling Maria's hand, started to step out into the corridor, but Maria, faster than that, took the arm of the knight who had just been brought down by the paralytic poison.

"Hh, he's heavy…"

A grown man, even one of average size, was beyond the small Maria's ability to drag, let alone one weighed down with steel armor, sword, and cape. She could not even lift his arm with ease.

Seeing that, the knights, whose confusion had finally subsided, took over the duty of lifting their colleague from Maria.

With Meltia at the head, they exited into the corridor together with the knights.

"And Mother!?"

"The Knight Commander is at her side. Most likely, she is directing the slime-subjugation operation."

"I see."

"Meltia-sama and Maria-sama, please escape from the castle for now."

"Wha—"

Surprised by his words, Meltia turned wide eyes on the knight who had spoken.

"In truth, it would be best to bring you to the Queen, but…"

Saying so, the knight averted his gaze. Looking that way, she saw that the passage leading to the stairs up to the higher floors was crushed by rubble.

The corridor in the opposite direction connected to the entrance hall.

"I will guide you to the soldiers' garrison in the castle's inner courtyard. It is cramped, but there are personnel there…"

Before he could finish, a window pane was shattered from outside.

What invaded was a slime as large as a sizable head of livestock.

"Hiih!?"

At the sight, Meltia and Maria screamed.

Three slimes had invaded. And every one of them contained a human inside its body.

They had only just been seized, it seemed, for the humans inside the slimes were still cleanly preserved, their faces twisted in agony, dead.

To princesses unaccustomed to the sight of human death, it was too strong a stimulus, and Meltia staggered back several steps, while Maria, her legs giving way, collapsed onto her bottom on the spot.

"Tsk, even here—! You there, take the princesses and fall back!"

One of the unharmed knights raised his voice, drawing his sword from his hip.

"Princess, forgive me!"

Another knight, apologizing aloud, roughly lifted up the strength-drained Maria with his right arm alone. With his other hand, he pressed against Meltia's waist to urge her to run.

"Go on ahead! I'll catch up!"

"Yes!"

Left behind were one unharmed knight, and one knight who could not move due to the poison.

There, the three slimes that had invaded through the window attacked—and so did the slime that had been in Meltia's room. Now that Maria had left the place, the wall of mana had vanished.

"Backed into a corner, am I!?"

Though he did not understand the paralytic poison's nature, the knight, thinking he would be paralyzed if he touched a slime, cut down tentacles while taking care not to touch the mucus.

In an instant, his armor and helmet were soiled with mucus, yet still none had touched his skin.

Poisonous and magic-using they might be, but in the end they were soft-bodied monsters. They had only enough durability that a swing of a sword could rip them apart.

But that itself was troublesome. The very act of slicing them sent mucus flying, and he had to be wary of that.

In just a few exchanges, his concentration was disrupted.

Even so, he would not retreat from this place, because his comrade had fallen.

There was no sign of recovery in the man afflicted by the paralytic poison. Confirming that out of the corner of his eye, the man cut down a tentacle that lashed out at him again.

There was no force behind it. There were not many of them.

It was as though the slimes were testing how much they could move, and they did not launch a fierce attack on the knight.

On one reading, it almost looked as if they were playing with him.

But the knight felt this was an opportunity, and gripping his sword in one hand, began to retreat, dragging the paralyzed man with him.

Inside his helmet he sweated, and it grew hot and stuffy. His breathing grew ragged.

Even so, he pulled his comrade back, and for every step he retreated, the four slimes closed the distance by one.

He heard no other sounds of fighting.

The only one safe in this castle might be me—just as he was about to make that mistaken thought, just as the four slimes lumped together to advance down the corridor, the wall to the side exploded.

The shock blew out the outer wall as well, and the slimes were tossed outside all together.

"Are you all right!?"

Through the blown-out wall came one of the mages employed at the castle.

A wide-brimmed conical hat and a black robe that wrapped her entire body. Her build was hard to make out under the clothing, but beneath the robe she wore a skirt, marking her as a woman.

The knight recognized her face.

"Behind you!"

But he had no leisure to recall her name.

Perhaps it was a weakness peculiar to the stone-built castle. A slime that had infiltrated through what could hardly be called a gap, a join between stone and stone in the ceiling, dripped down and dropped behind the mage girl.

She whirled around at once and, with the same wind magic that had just blown away the four slimes, blew this one away too. The place behind her had apparently been a mage's laboratory, and equipment whose use the knight did not recognize was swept up and blown away along with the slime.

"Oh nooo…"

Pressing a hand to her head at the disaster, she sighed.

What had blown the slime away was wind—not shaped sharp like a blade, but a soft, broad wind that lifted up the mucus.

It might be more accurate to say it had lifted them and thrown them than blown them away.

Slimes were certainly best evaporated or frozen as the most reliable approach, but for emergency action, this was a textbook example of using wind magic safely.

"Aah, geez. I was in the middle of an experiment, too."

"More importantly, we're evacuating!"

"Y-yes, that's right."

It seemed the only one in the laboratory had been this lone mage girl.

The knight, supporting his poisoned comrade by the shoulder as if dragging him, began to walk down the corridor.

The mage girl, with only her staff, followed after. She had said her experiment was in progress, but she had clearly prioritized her own life and safety over it. Cumbersome tools that would only get in the way in such chaos would have to be discarded soon enough anyway.

"Still, what is this all about, exactly…"

"I don't know. I've heard that slimes appeared everywhere all of a sudden—"

As they headed toward the entrance hall that served as their exit, at the bend in the passage ahead, slimes appeared.

Seeing that, the mage girl sighed.

"And they're roving the castle interior like it's nothing…"

"More importantly, can you cast that magic again?"

"Yes."

She raised her staff, carved from oak, before her. The wind shock she loosed without incantation blew away the slimes at the corner of the corridor.

It would strike the wall, splatter, and in the meantime they would pass by on the side… that should have been the plan.

"Wha?!"

The scattered slime fragments. From pieces no larger than small pebbles, tentacles stretched out and wrapped around the foot armor of the poison-stilled knight.

With strength impossible to credit to tentacles that thin, they yanked him away from the astonished knight.

"Hey, let go!?"

He drew his sword instantly and cut at the tentacles wrapping around his comrade, but tentacles stretched out from every one of the scattered fragments, multiplying their numbers in a flash, and in an instant the knight was swallowed up.

Last, just once, the knight inside the slime's tentacles convulsed greatly.

Having his face taken in had cut off his breath.

The unharmed knight reached out by reflex—but remembering that touching the mucus would render him unable to move, drew his outstretched arm back.

"H-hey now!?"

That scream came from right behind him.

Turning, he saw black mucus—slimes crawling out from windows and gaps in the walls.

"We're running!"

"To where!?"

It happened in an instant. Window, wall, floor—all of them turned a single shade of black. The surroundings were so completely covered in slime that one would almost think they had been swallowed into its body.

They looked around.

The corridor was covered in mucus far into the distance, and even trying to escape through a window was blocked by thick walls of mucus.

In a hopeless situation, the conical-hatted mage gripped the staff in her hand tightly.

"F-for now, I'll blow them away and make a hole—"

But the wind magic that had blown away slimes, on touching the slime mucus, scattered and vanished.

"How can it?!"

She loosed it again and again, but it could not even put a hole in the wall, let alone scatter the mucus.

Magic absorption.

At last, that information had been transmitted to all the slimes destroying this Royal Capital.

"Tsk!? Th—run—"

The mage who had been watching the wall that absorbed magic gasped at the voice.

Turning around, she saw that the knight who had fled this far with them had had both arms restrained by tentacles extending from the wall.

"Th-this is bad… I'll pry them off!"

"Don't touch! If you touch this mucus, you'll be unable to move!"

Even as he held her back with his words, tentacles wrapped around both his legs as well, and at last around his waist over the armor. They pulled with a force unbelievable for mucus, and though he braced with both legs, he was dragged inch by inch toward the wall.

"Th-that's right. If I freeze them—"

Thinking so, she loosed magic, but it too was absorbed.

"Why!?"

"That's enough, run! At least you alone!"

"But where!?"

There was no place to run. Nowhere—

Walls, windows, and at last the corridor itself filled with slime walls, and their escape routes were sealed off. Complete isolation.

Sunlight no longer entered through the windows. The two had not realized it, but at that very moment the royal castle of Fonteau was being swallowed by a colossal slime.

The great white palace was being swallowed by an even more colossal turbid black slime, its interior defiled.

"N-n-numb—"

And then, the knight lost the strength in his planted feet and was taken into the wall. Within the thin translucent mucus his form was visible, but he made only one moment of an agonized expression before going still.

He had died.

Made to witness it before her eyes, the mage woman staggered back several steps.

Pressing a hand to her mouth, she dropped the staff she had been holding. Hurriedly going to pick it up, she remembered the knight's words from earlier.

Touch the mucus, and you cannot move.

The staff was already half-submerged in mucus. If his words were true, she could not pick it up.

Her feet, too. She was wearing boots, but there was no telling when a tentacle like before would extend toward her. If that happened, her lower half, clad in nothing but a short-hemmed skirt, would have no means of protection.

"I-I have to escape…"

She looked around, searching for any place she could move to, but there was nowhere.

All four sides were covered in mucus. Above and below, smeared in mucus.

"Ah…"

"Aaaaaah!?"

Nearby, a scream.

It was from beyond the wall of mucus.

"Th-there's someone over there…"

"No, no!? Like this, like th—stop, stop!?"

That voice gradually grew smaller. Grew distant.

More than anything, the tearful shriek, unseen though it was, exerted enough psychological pressure on the mage. She did not know what had happened, but there was a possibility she would meet the same fate.

She had to escape somehow.

Heart pounding faster, she set out walking.

Her boots splashed firmly through the mucus. She moved carefully so that it did not touch her skin, but quickly.

Even so, it was a narrow space. There were not many places she could search.

And once she had finished searching, the realization that there was nowhere to escape stole all hope, and stopped her feet.

"Ah."

Even in such a situation, an empty, foolish sound slipped out of her.

Before the mage's eyes, a single tentacle had appeared.

It swayed gently as if showing itself off, drawing in little by little.

"Tsk."

At the same moment she turned her back to flee, the tentacle whipped.

The instant she took her first step, she was struck a hard blow across the back and toppled forward.

She fell face-first onto the mucus-coated floor, and her beautiful face was defiled by black mucus. With no leisure to mind it, she tried to rise—

"Eh, what…?"

Once more, she fell face-first onto the floor.

Strength would not enter her arms. Nor her legs.

Moving only her neck, she managed to look at her lower body, but she was not bound by a tentacle.

"N-numb…"

Her skin's sensation grew sharper. Strength would not enter. The sensation was like the faint numbness one felt on standing up after sitting in a chair for a long time, only multiplied many times over.

From the skirt that had ridden up when she fell, the pink panties decorated with cute lace trim were exposed.

She tried to put the skirt right, but her arms would not move.

Worse yet, in the view past her shoulder, the tentacle that had struck her back was advancing on her. She turned her face forward and tried somehow to escape it.

Desperately willing her arms to move would not help, and even if she tried to drag herself with her chin, there was no way she could move her body with such a thing.

Her heart hammered as if breaking.

The scene of the knight earlier being taken into the wall surfaced in her mind.

Teeth chattering, she let tears overflow from fear and stain her cheeks.

But—

"Hiih."

The tentacle did not coil around her waist to carry the mage off. It wrapped around her legs, the slender legs that her short skirt had shown off.

She screamed from visceral disgust.

The tentacle came climbing up her legs, and unable to grasp what that meant, she fell into confusion.

She remembered the scream from earlier.

The tearful voice begging for help. The desperate voice.

Tears streamed down at the fear of not knowing what was being done.

Her hands and feet would not move. Her addled head could not even bring up the option of using magic.

As she struggled, the tentacle that had climbed her legs reached… her groin.

It will climb even higher—just as the woman mage was thinking that, in the next instant, her whole numb body shuddered.

The tentacle had clung to her pink panties. Sliding the crotch sideways, it exposed her pubic region.

"Eh, eh…?"

The scream from earlier echoed in her head.

That was—

"Eh, no, no—wait, lies, you must be lying—"

Her whole body was numb and would not move. She could no longer turn her neck back, and could only feel by sensation what was being done.

Because the numbness made her more sensitive—

"N-no… no—I, my first…"

There was no pain. Only with that dulled sensation… she understood that a foreign object had entered her womb.

"Nooooooooo!?"

A scream rose.

The same as the voice she had heard through the wall of mucus, a tearful scream.

From all over the castle—from every woman who had failed to flee, screams rose.

 

*

 

It was a scene like hell.

Fonteau's royal castle. The throne room, adorned by beautiful stained glass and glittering ornaments. The place where Queen Leticia held audiences.

Where many knights, mages, and nobles had once gathered, there were now only the figures of women.

The maids who had attended to Leticia's daily needs.

The noblewomen who had worked at the castle.

The female mages who had raised barriers to hold back the slime invasion.

The female knights who had fought in the town.

They were on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling. In every place imaginable, they were bound and their bodies defiled.

The maids had had their thick apron dresses torn open and their skin laid bare; like Leticia earlier, they were pinned to the walls and roughly thrust into.

The female mages had tentacles invading inside their thick robes, every part of their bodies caressed; forced into orgasm, they were having their mana absorbed at the same time.

Mages whose mana had been depleted and who had become powerless were, like the maids, pinned to the walls and began to be raped.

The most wretched were the knights.

Those whose trade was fighting had taken up swords and resisted the slimes—and as a result, as if punished for that resistance, they had been fixed in place with elbows and knees on the floor, in the posture of a four-legged beast running along the ground.

Their appearance was like that of criminals bound to a guillotine. Hands and necks were bound with mucus shackles, and in the bestial posture of having their lower halves thrust out, they were being pierced in the groin by tentacles.

That their trousers had been torn only at the crotch, while their armor, gauntlets, and greaves remained on, only stoked their shame.

They wept, saying this was no posture for a proud knight, but gradually, from their voices, it was no longer resentment but sweet moans that began to leak out.

Those with strong wills bit their lips until they bled; those with weak wills let drool drip from their open mouths.

That drool was absorbed by the slime, the tears of regret were licked away, and however much they resisted, once the weak spots of their vaginas were found, they were made to gush and reach their finish.

For these slimes, which on this day alone had violated hundreds of women, and which by taking in the mucus of other slimes shared their experiences, finding the weak points of knights who tried to keep their wills strong was simple in the extreme.

"S-stah—stahp—!?"

One of the knights, a long-blonde-haired woman clad in armor more lavish than the others, made a stain on her thick trousers and shook the rear she had been forced to thrust outward.

When she let tears of humiliation flow, a tentacle came as if seeking them, licking her cheek.

It was not only the love juice spilling from her vagina.

When the slimes learned that intestinal juices spilled from the opening behind it, the constricted entrance, they violated not only the vagina but the anus as well.

Since it was not a hole for bearing children, they did not ejaculate, but intestinal juice too was a precious feed.

Sweat, and tears. Not the slightest amount remained; all of it was licked away.

Caressed all over as if she were being licked tenderly, vagina and anus thrust into, clitoris rolled, the mucus that had crept into her armor kneaded her breasts and nipples. Even though she still wore her clothes and armor, every part of her body was being caressed, and her thoughts could not keep up.

What situation she was in now, why this had come about. Even such things grew vague.

The blonde knight, who had been glaring fiercely at the mucus, parted her lips slightly.

"No, stahp—!"

Her words of denial, however, did not come out clearly.

The paralytic poison had only been used at the very beginning of her resistance. The poison, weakened so as not to kill the woman, had already worn off; without the bindings, she could have gripped a sword again.

So far had this blonde female knight come to accept the situation that she did not even realize that. Her will showed resistance, but her body had despaired, resigning itself to the fact that there was nothing to be done.

Even when she cursed with her mouth, her body, just from having the tentacle strike its deepest part, her womb, swung its hips on its own.

It was precisely because the shackles kept her from seeing her own body that her resistance came across to a third party as ridiculous.

Even though she meant to convey strength of will with her gaze, she did not realize that her eyes had grown hot and moist, her breathing rough like a beast in heat.

"Fwah—no, that's no good there… not there!?"

Beside the blonde knight, another knight bound in the same way, with blue hair, opened her eyes wide and shook her head violently.

From her eyes tears, from her nose snot, from her mouth drool. Spilling everything as she convulsed, again and again.

She had climaxed. From anyone's perspective it was clear, and what was more—

"S-stop please!? I'm coming, I'm coming already!?"

Even if she had come, it did not end.

She knew, because she had been watching the mages pinned to the wall. They, having climaxed and had their mana drained, were pinned in convulsions and continued to be violated without rest.

Their vaginas, sensitive from climaxing, were pierced roughly by thick tentacles, and seed was disgorged inside their wombs.

However strong one's will. However much one feigned insensitivity. However much one resisted.

To climax, have seed disgorged, and climax again.

It would continue until she lost consciousness. The blue-haired knight beside her too—and so would she herself.

Knowing as much, she bit her lips in resistance. With the pride of a proud knight not being made to moan by a monster.

"Iy, guuh—ah, ah… uah—higu, st, stahp—"

"Hold on! Endure, endure…!"

Even without leisure herself, the blonde knight tried to encourage the female knight beside her.

"S-someone—anyone, anyone, please help me!?"

At last, the knight whose station was to help others began to plead for someone to help her. Once that began, it was over. Forgetting the pride of a knight, she began to beg to be saved herself.

"Someone, someone, someone! Help, help me—help meeee!"

For now they were words, but who knew how long they would remain so.

The mage, in a small amount of time, had forgotten words, and at the end fainted while letting out beast-like screams.

Recalling that, the knight saw a new slime form enter her view.

It was carrying women—several women.

The first slime carried a silver-haired and a violet-haired figure, along with several other knights—faces she recognized.

The famous elf knight Fiana, known throughout the castle, and the woman knight Alfira who had gone with her on monster subjugation.

Brought along with them were her comrades who had been separated from her in the castle town.

"Ah, aah…"

That comrades she had thought might have escaped had appeared in this place dyed her heart with a deep color of despair.

Even so, the movement of the tentacle thrusting into her vagina did not stop, and she bit her lips to suppress the sob that nearly spilled out. She could no longer even tell why she was bothering to endure.

Following them, what next appeared in this place was a Black Ooze, slightly darker in color than the other slimes.

When she saw who it carried, the knight heard the distinct sound of something snapping inside her.

"L-Leticia-sama…"

The Black Ooze gently held the unconscious Leticia in its tentacles, and moved slowly.

In this place filled with the women's lewd stench and moans, as if understanding that this queen ought to be here, it sat her down on the throne.

Consciousness had not returned.

Leticia's head jerked up and down once at the impact of being set on the throne, but that was all.

Large tears welled up in the female knight's eyes.

Not from pleasure or shame.

From sadness, tears overflowed, and would not stop.

"No, no—Leti—Leticia-sama, Leticia-sama!?"

Not she alone; every woman whose consciousness was clear called the queen's name. The greatest mage of this country. One of the heroes who had subjugated the [Demon King].

That she could lose to a slime was unbelievable.

Calling and calling, those numbers gradually thinned. In their place, moans increased.

"Stop, stop—stop iiiit!?"

Swaying her waist, her rear, greatly, the female knight howled.

Her heart was broken. Her spirit submitted.

Yet still the will to resist remained healthy, and so she felt shame at this situation. She could not understand that her own pride was strangling her.

Desperately raising her voice, she tried to wake Leticia.

… Even though there was no one left but herself calling the queen's name.

Until her voice gave out, until she lost consciousness, she continued to call it.

Refusing to understand that when next she awoke, this kingdom would already be over.

 

*

 

She felt as though someone had called her name.

"Mn…"

Something was touching her body all over. Trying to twist away from the ticklishness, she realized her hands and feet would not move.

Only then did the queen's consciousness at last surface, and her eyes flew wide.

"Wh-what is this!?"

Looking around, she realized she was seated on something like a chair, and her hands were bound.

"Where am I—"

And then, looking around, she was struck speechless.

Before Queen Leticia's eyes, several dozen women were being violated by the mucus tentacles that covered the room from end to end.

Moans echoed, and an odd fragrance of slime stench mingled with the women's lewd musk reached her nose.

Moving the neck that she could still move freely, she realized what she was sitting on, and where she was.

"S-such—in such a place, what are—why!?"

Realizing she had been bound to the throne, she let out a confused cry.

The last thing she remembered was incinerating the Black Ooze—at least, that was Leticia's belief. In truth, the result of having failed to kill it was this.

"Eh!?"

She felt as though something had moved at her feet. Hurriedly turning her gaze downward, she saw tentacles wound around both her legs. The black tentacles were climbing the slender, long legs of Leticia, who was seated on the throne.

And yet, the sensation was dulled.

"Wh-what. What is this!?"

Tentacles sticky with thick mucus enveloped her shapely, stocking-sheathed legs and climbed up little by little.

She raised her voice at the unpleasantness of it, but there was no one around to help her.

Every woman there alike had been caught in the mucus and was being violated.

And thinking that she too would be made the same, a fear she had not even felt when facing the [Demon King] shook her body to its core.

"H-hate?! No, stop! Like this, like this!"

Up the calves and onto the thighs of one who, despite being a mother of two, retained the supple, well-padded flesh of youth. The way it slowly climbed up was somehow like a snake.

Without regard for Leticia's revulsion, the Black Ooze's tentacle climbed up, smearing mucus across the soft yet firm flesh.

Stockings thoroughly soaked with slime mucus darkened in color, and the skin tone beneath rose into view. The sensation of the wet fabric clinging tight to her legs was strangely vivid, all the more so for Leticia's focus being directed to the state of her legs.

Just like that, the tentacle slithered around her legs, smearing mucus until it formed strings.

"Gh, like this—like this!?"

Then the tentacle, having wound around her thighs and climbed up, began to spread her legs apart little by little. Even though her legs were hidden by the mucus-soiled, once-pure-white dress, the shame of having them forced open by another being, especially a slime, brought heat to her cheeks.

She desperately poured strength into her legs, but the paralytic poison she had received while unconscious meant her resistance amounted only to a faint outline of tension in her thigh muscles.

Her legs were spread with no effort at all, and now a tentacle that grew from elsewhere seized the hem of her dress.

"N-no, sto—"

Leticia, understanding what was about to happen, raised her voice, but the Black Ooze ignored her and lifted her skirt up to around her belly.

Because the skirt was in the way, Leticia could not see, but she understood that her underwear had been exposed.

The pure-white panties with their fine detailing had not entirely dried from the mucus they had received during the battle in the corridor, and her pubic region faintly showed through. The skin beneath, and the neatly trimmed pubic hair, could not quite be hidden.

The garter belt that set off that underwear, the small navel, and the firm belly that remained taut despite her no longer exercising as in the past.

With her lower body free of any unnecessary fat now laid bare, this time at last Leticia's anger ignited.

In a flash she tried to loose magic—

"What?!"

But the instant she let her mana flow out, it was absorbed. She could feel by sense alone that it was flowing from herself into the slime.

"What in—w-wait, stop, stop it!?"

But there was no leisure for confusion.

When tentacles also wound around her upper arms and dripped mucus, new tentacles set to motion as if kneading her arms in their entirety.

From elbows to upper arms, then to underarms.

"Hiih, hya—n-not there—"

When her underarms were kneaded, before the ticklishness she felt an odd sensation run down her spine. She tried to lift her hips, but the bindings on her arms prevented it.

Unconsciously, Leticia tried to press her bottom against the throne to weather the sensation.

But once the tentacles understood that was a weak point, they began to focus their attack there.

Underarms, and now her nape.

Just as her legs were spread wider, her pubic region was stimulated through her underwear, ground right against her clitoris.

"Gh, gh—this, you—"

Meanwhile, she tried again and again to loose magic, but again her mana was stolen.

Though she was a hero of the [Demon King] subjugation, Leticia was a mage. If she could not use magic, she could not display her ability.

In that sense, this slime was the worst possible opponent for her.

"To do this, to me—I shall, shall not forgive—never!"

Her words were still defiant, but hot pants began to mix in at the edges.

Ever since giving birth to Maria, she had been distant from this kind of sexual stimulation. Long-lived as elves were, the beautiful body of a woman in her prime responded to that long-absent stimulation, and she felt heat gathering in the depths of her hips.

When her arms were stroked up and twisted hard, it felt almost as though sweat were springing from her pores.

(This is bad—this sensation.)

In her sense of crisis, she tried to thrash free of the bindings on her hands and feet, even her fingers, somehow.

But she could not slip free of the tentacle stimulating her clitoris, nor even the one licking her underarms.

The tentacles were tracking the movement of Leticia's flailing body.

That thrashing, if anything, looked rather like her bound body was rocking on its own to thrust out her hips, but Leticia did not realize that.

Even now, desperately trying to escape from the tentacles, kicking but unable to free herself, she was made to be aware of the heat gathering in the depths of her hips.

(Bad, bad, bad!?)

She knew it. She was a woman too. In the past, she had pleasured herself alone. And when she had been embraced by the [Hero] as well—

(Ah…)

She remembered.

Memories with the [Hero]. Precious memories.

Above all, remembering their lovemaking, her hips quaked.

"I'm, coming—"

With a great spasm, her hips convulsed. The tremor too great to be suppressed even by the Black Ooze's bindings announced her climax, and her full bosom shaking, she tried to steady her ragged breathing—

"Wait, hold on…!?"

But the tentacle licking her underarms would not stop. Nor the one stimulating her clitoris.

Worse, now a new tentacle wound around her overly full chest, immodest for an elf, and reshaped it lewdly.

"Wai, wait—"

Unable even to finish a "wait," Leticia threw her head back. Exposing her beautiful nape, she shook her hips greatly again.

Just from having her chest squeezed hard, she was pushed up to a light climax, and a love juice different from the Black Ooze's mucus made her pure-white panties even more transparent.

"—Hh."

She bit her lips hard, deepening the red of her shame-flushed cheeks. She had stifled her voice at the second climax. Her sole act of resistance was not letting it be perceived, but only to that extent.

"Higu!?"

(Still!?)

The tentacles' movements did not cease. The trembling of her body grew larger, and her head shook from side to side again and again in refusal. Disheveled hair clung to her cheek, and a single tear spilled from her tightly closed eyelid.

She had raced through countless battlefields, piled up many victories. And in the end, alongside the [Hero], had subjugated the [Demon King]. That she, of all people, should lose to mere pleasure—that image came and went in her head with growing reality.

To deny it, she put strength into her whole body, and on her bared belly, where her dress had ridden up, thin lines of muscle showed.

Stopping her breath, putting strength into her abdomen, she tried to push back against the sensation.

Such resistance did not register at all, and the tentacles kept moving. Licking her flanks, kneading her chest, stimulating her clitoris.

Only that, repeated.

Again and again.

Whether Leticia climaxed or resisted, it did not matter.

The memories of the men within the Black Ooze taught it how a woman could be made to bear children. It only faithfully repeated those teachings.

"Nuuuhhh!?"

Stifling her voice, Leticia shook her hips on the throne.

The third time.

"Nh, mn—guuhhh!"

To keep from letting an ecstatic cry slip, she clamped her lips tightly shut, leaving her face red and on the brink of oxygen deprivation; her face shook wildly. As if she were suffering some kind of illness, her whole body trembled.

Sweat that was not Black Ooze mucus glittered as it sprang from her whole body.

The fourth time.

"Hate, stop—please just stop, like this!?"

Unable to endure any longer, tears spilled from her widened eyes, and drool she could not swallow ran down from the corner of her mouth, soiling her chest.

The tentacle that moved to lick up that drool became new stimulation, and this time she climaxed from her chest being stimulated.

The fifth time.

"Hii, hiiih!?"

Forgetting even how to scream, she breathed in ragged, harsh gasps.

Her heart aching at this continuous climaxing she had never felt even in lovemaking with the [Hero], the momentum of her body's convulsions still did not abate.

The sixth time.

"Hh, stop—"

There were no more words of refusal. Just her whole body trembling in time with the tentacles' movement.

Her eyes were clouded black, seeing nothing. Unable to see.

Continuous climax disordered her breath, and mild oxygen deprivation prevented her thoughts from cohering. In her head, memories of the [Hero], her daughters, this country spun in circles, but she could no longer tell what situation she was in.

When her count of climaxes passed ten, at last, the tentacles binding her four limbs moved. They released her hands and feet.

Body fluids streamed from every hole in her face, and her lower half lay fully bared. Despite not being penetrated, her pubic region twitched on its own, and her pure-white panties, drenched in love juice they could not hope to contain, had lost half their function as cloth. With not only her pubic region but her anus exposed, the posture looked as though she had been subjected to some terrible violence.

Her legs, having forgotten how to close, remained spread wide in the slime's binding posture, glistening with sweat, twitching convulsively now and then.

The throne caught the spilling love juice, and the spurted ejaculate had pooled like piss. Whether the thick lewd stench came from the women still being violated in the throne room or from Leticia herself was unclear.

Despite her hands being freed, Leticia forgot even to put right the dress that had been pulled up, and unconsciously tried to steady her breath.

Her pure-white dress was wet through everywhere, and like her panties, had ceased to perform its role.

If anything, it only adorned the queen's elegant form all the more obscenely.

"Haah, hah—"

(It's… over.)

She had at last been released from the hell of climax. Thinking so, Leticia leaned her weight against the backrest and tried to close her eyelids to rest.

Her stamina had bottomed out, and her consciousness now felt as though it could sink into darkness at any moment.

I want to sleep and forget everything. The will to resist, the love of country, they tried to stir her heart. But everything was sinking—so she thought.

"… Eh?"

Something brushed against the groin of Leticia, who, seated on the throne, had let the strength leave her whole body.

She turned her eyes, which she had been about to close, in that direction.

A shudder ran through her, raising gooseflesh. Sweat ran down her spine. She had been made to understand what it meant for one's liver to chill.

"S-stop…"

It was thick beyond anything she had ever seen, and yet it was certainly aiming. At Leticia's pubic region.

Moving slowly but with certainty toward the place covered by her pure-white panties. Forgetting herself for an instant at that slow motion, Leticia put strength into both hands as if frightened and tried to back away.

But the backrest was in the way, and she could not back any farther.

The thought of withdrawing from the throne did not even rise in her mind.

Thick—maybe even as thick as a child's arm, a thick tentacle. And imagining the action it was about to perform, the sole knowledge in her memory—no other man's had she ever seen. The penis of the [Hero], the man who had first pierced her, rose involuntarily.

This was thicker. Of course. Her opponent was a slime, a soft-bodied monster.

The size of the phallus could be changed at will.

There was no particular intent behind what was now about to pierce Leticia.

It had merely prepared something for reproductive activity. But unwillingly comparing it to the [Hero]'s, Leticia twisted the corners of her mouth in fear, even as her body, hot and feverish from countless climaxes, throbbed greedily in the depths of her belly.

The fatigue of more than ten climaxes. And yet, the womb that had taken nothing in still ached, as if to say it was not satisfied, and inflamed Leticia's spirit.

The queen. The hero who had killed the [Demon King]. She stared at that thick tentacle, not at the Black Ooze, as if afraid of it, and shook her head.

"N-no…"

A feeble word of resistance slipped from her mouth.

But her eyes did not turn away from the tentacle, and trying to steady her breath, she swallowed.

Slowly, the tentacle approached.

Her lower body, weakened of strength, was still left wide open in an unsightly manner, with nothing to refuse it. Pressing her back desperately to the backrest, biting at the tips of her beautiful silver hair with her lips, she repeated "no, no" again and again.

Repeated it—but it changed nothing.

There was no place to flee.

Lewd cries echoed from everywhere.

In this place… while there were those who sought help from Leticia, there was no one who would help Leticia.

Because she, Leticia, was the strongest mage in this country.

"Ah, aah!?"

Aside from the thick tentacle, thin tentacles bound Leticia's hands to the throne as before. With her attention stolen by the thick one, Leticia could do nothing to prevent it, and was bound again, and this time, she could no longer escape.

And now her waist was bound to the backrest as well, so that she could no longer move even her hips.

"Ah, ah… n-no. Stop… stop, please."

At last, Leticia spoke words almost of entreaty to the slime, and the thick tentacle touched her pubic region through her panties.

The intense sensation of having her clitoris stimulated through her underwear flared up again, and her bound waist tried to give a great shudder of its own.

Squelch. The love-juice-soaked dress made a sound beneath her bottom.

"Mn—mnh."

Slowly, with what was probably no teasing intent, the thick tentacle moved up and down over her pubic region through her panties.

At the maddening sensation, Leticia tried to move her hips, but could not.

Powerless, she was forced to focus on the tentacle's gentle motion. Before she knew it, her eyelids had closed, her breath was disordered, and in place of her immobilized lower body, her upper body had begun to sway.

Her shoulders and head rocked, and in time with that her mucus-soaked dress shook against her clinging chest.

Her full bosom shook to where it seemed it might make a sound, and the dulled sensation of it was maddening too.

(N-no—no, no…)

Even thinking so, behind her closed eyelids, the lovemaking with the man she had loved long ago, the man she had loved and who had loved her, rose to her mind. It had been nothing like this; for both of them, it had been their first time, their first love, their first affection.

That time had therefore been more intense; they had longed for each other, loved each other.

But, even so.

Precisely because it had been their first time, both of them had been unpracticed. With the passing years, having come to understand what intercourse was, knowledge she had decided she no longer needed surfaced now.

Aah, aah.

"Mn, no, just a little…"

Her voice slipped out unconsciously.

Restlessly licking her lips with her small tongue, Leticia put strength into her waist to try to break the tentacle's binding. Beneath her wet panties, her labia were already twitching lewdly on their own.

Not realizing it, Leticia rocked her body.

In time with that, the thick tentacle stimulated her labia and clitoris through her panties.

What had begun as a slow motion had, before she knew it, grown more intense. The sticky gucha-gucha sound was not from the frenzy taking place in the throne room.

It came from below Leticia's hips.

The lewd cries reaching her long elven ears were not from the women; they were what she herself was letting out.

Leticia had not yet realized that.

Only, ragged of breath, she desperately shook her body to do something about the maddening stimulation.

Well-formed features. A full chest. A narrow waist, and a well-fleshed lower body.

Despite having such a woman's body, the only man she had known was the [Hero]. And from that [Hero], too, she had parted ways after Maria was born.

That she had still loved the [Hero] all this time might be lovely as a love story, but as a woman with a ripened body left unused, what then?

The thick tentacle's motion stopped.

"Ah."

Leticia—could not deliver words of refusal.

She only released a hot breath, hot enough to nearly catch flame.

The panties, their fine detailing now turned into a sodden mess, were pushed to one side. Bared, her pubic region had a tentacle laid against it. From there it was swift.

"Nh—uuuuuuh!!"

Pushing open the labia clamped shut against the invader, the tentacle entered. The entrance of her pubic region, long unused, clenched on the invader like a virgin's, but as one who had given birth, the inside, made yielding and soft by climaxes nearly enough to take her senses, gently wrapped around the thick tentacle and guided it onward, deeper.

There was a great deal of love juice.

Even the tentacle's intrusion could not displace it all, and what spilled formed a puddle on the throne; the hem of her dress, absorbing the moisture, made a lewd sound.

"Fuah!? Fuaaah!?"

With just that, Leticia's consciousness soared. Reaching climax, her upper body convulsed wildly.

Her chest shook up, down, and side to side, and drool ran from her mouth.

Her wide eyes looked at the ceiling, but saw nothing.

Though the country the [Hero] had founded, the castle she had tried to defend, was being attacked by slimes, even that thought vanished from her mind.

She felt as though light were bursting and flashing before her eyes.

Her breath stopped. She could not breathe properly. An impact strong enough to make her forget for an instant how she had been breathing.

"Kufu—fwah, haaaahhh nnnh!?"

Without restraint, at last an ecstatic cry slipped from her lips. The great cry echoed throughout the throne room, but it did not register in the consciousness of the other women being raped by slime tentacles.

Each one was already at the limit handling the lust focused on themselves—the pleasure being delivered by the slime tentacles. There was no woman in this place with the leisure to think of others.

"Fuhii, sudd-suddenly to the very back!?"

The tentacle reached, slowly but all at once, the deepest part of her vagina. The firmly-closed cervix. But she had borne two children, and that place was looser than the other women's, no obstacle whatsoever to the Black Ooze.

Piercing through to the cervix in one stroke, the tentacle entered her womb.

Leticia could not even raise a sound, only opening and closing her mouth like a fish while letting tears, drool, and snot stream out.

(I, I don't—don't know, I don't know anything like this!?)

Soundless thoughts surfaced in her head.

An intense sensation she had never gotten from intercourse with the [Hero]. She could not even tell whether this was pleasure or pain.

Only, it was incredible.

That alone came up in her head. Awe at the unfamiliar sensation, and at the same time a small expectation of what would come next.

Her head, which had been thrown back at the ceiling, dropped down with a jolt.

Breathing like a beast, she turned her gaze to her bared belly, just below the navel—to the place she knew, by knowledge, the womb was.

"Hiih, hiiih!?"

Her eyes flew open. The tentacle was moving inside her womb violently enough to make her lower belly faintly move.

"Stah, stahp iiit!?"

Her waist would not move. Could not be moved.

Realizing there was no way to release this intense sensation, despair filled Leticia's eyes, and to somehow escape this pleasure she thrashed her upper body. Yet that only made her all the more conscious of her bound waist, sharpening her perception of the pleasure delivered while her vagina's deepest part was being roughly treated.

Tears would not stop from her wide-open eyes, and a broken smile played at her lips.

Confused by an unfamiliar pleasure, she no longer knew what to do.

Sweetened so much that even she could not tell whether what was spilling from her mouth was a scream or an ecstatic cry, inside the pure-white boots that matched her dress, the toes of her feet curled tightly.

"Ah, aaaaaaaah—!?"

She turned her gaze toward the ceiling. She arched her chin. Strain showed in the tendons of her thin neck, and her hands desperately grasped at the throne. The will to bear the pleasure was already gone; she was merely clinging on for dear life so as not to be swept away by these waves.

"Haah, haah—st, stop—please just stop iiit!?"

Made to faint and wake to immediate violation.

Before her eyes, many women being raped by slimes as she was.

Asking herself if this was a nightmare, her thoughts grew hazy, and she only desperately wished for this nightmare to end.

She did not know what she should do.

The supernatural power of magic, the position of queen, all of it was pushed out of her memory.

The confused woman, not knowing the reason, turned her gaze to her hotly-aching lower belly.

She had climaxed. Without realizing it, she had even gushed and sent love juices flying to the floor.

And yet, the tentacle did not stop. The tip that had invaded inside her womb was gently kneading the wall of her womb, and the part of the tentacle inside her vagina produced protrusions independently of the rest, stimulating every part of the vaginal wall.

Leticia did not know.

She had not yet realized.

That the other women, too, had been made to climax this way, and that once the weak points of vaginal wall and womb were found, they were attacked focally there.

And that more than half the women still moaning in this throne room had already lost consciousness and were nevertheless still being violated.

She did not know that the same fate awaited her too.

Only, gazing through tear-glazed eyes filled with despair at the tentacles that did not stop even after climax, did she keep praying that she might quickly lose consciousness.

"Just stahp, stahp iiit!?"

Her once-beautiful silver hair was defiled by mucus, clinging to her cheeks, her nape, any bared skin. Now in her there was nothing of the queen's beauty, the queen's pride.

She was only one of countless women in this kingdom of Fonteau, raped by monsters.

Her womb shuddered, weeping love juice in time with the pleasure.

The tentacle absorbed the love juice thoroughly steeped in mana, and its power grew.

Already possessing mana enough to overwhelm Leticia, the most powerful mage in this country and this world, it greedily continued to absorb not only Leticia's mana but the mana of everyone remaining in this country.

Out of pure instinct.

Not to grow stronger. Not to live.

Only, it was the instinct of slimes, the instinct of monsters, that made it so.

Steal mana. Increase its kind.

Beyond that, nothing mattered. To the Black Ooze… to the slimes that had attacked this country, the kingdom of Fonteau and the mage Leticia were not enemies. They were not even enemies.

Humans were food, mages were nutrition, women were no more than catalysts for bearing children.

Without love or sentiment, sparing not even a glance at Leticia, who moaned with tears and snot overflowing, the Black Ooze ejaculated inside her womb.

"Uuyaaah—ah, aah—what is this, what is this!?"

She had been told, she had known. But it had vanished from her pleasure-hazed head.

Now she was made to remember. To understand what that was.

"Lies, lies, lies, lies—no, stop… stop iiit!?"

Had the Black Ooze possessed thought even on par with a human, what would it have thought? It might have thought that no matter how powerful a mage, no matter the queen-elf's standing, a woman ejaculated into directly inside the womb would all alike cry the same thing.

Letting tears flow, shaking her head, she cried in a high voice, "stop," "let it out."

No matter how hazy her thoughts were with pleasure, that did not change.

At first she would absolutely reject. After a few times of that, her spirit eroded, she would begin to honestly voice the pleasure. In the end, she would degrade into a being that could only let out lewd moans.

Whether adventurer, knight, castle maid, or queen, that did not change.

"Take it out, take it out! Slime, monster, a monster's child—!?"

Raising her voice in protest at the sensation of being ejaculated inside her, Leticia arched her still-free upper body again.

Her hips moved faintly, and the dress that, having absorbed love juice, no longer functioned as clothing made a sticky guchu-guchu sound between her bottom and the throne.

Even while ejaculating, the tentacle continued to move.

And not merely in the back-and-forth of ordinary lovemaking between man and woman. In motions like those of a boneless insect, motions a human could never perform.

When the deepest part of her womb, and slightly off from that, the part along the top of it, was stimulated, that alone made Leticia's upper body shudder greatly.

Her brain commanded her body to move, desperately trying to disperse the pleasure.

"Stahp, stahp iiit! Not there, not theeere!?"

She raised her voice desperately. Thrashed her body desperately.

Perhaps finding her noisy, thin tentacles extended and bound Leticia's wrists, elbows, shoulders, and nape.

They bound every part she had been thrashing and reduced her to perfect stillness. With Leticia now bound wholly to the throne, this time at last there was nothing she could do.

"Stahp, stahp iiit! Nyaaahhh!?"

She struck the back of her head against the throne's backrest. The cushion that was normally soft now, having absorbed Leticia's sweat and the Black Ooze's mucus, made a sticky guchu sound.

Even so, devotedly, Leticia kept striking the back of her head against the backrest.

It was an instinctual act, seeking out any sensation other than pleasure.

Into the view of such a Leticia, a tentacle entered.

"No, don't—don't iiit!?"

That tentacle wound around the back of the throne and Leticia's head, fixing them together.

Her gaze was forced forward, and there she was made to see other women being raped by slime mucus tentacles just like herself.

All of them, faces she knew.

The maids who had attended to her daily needs.

The nobles who had worried over this country.

The knights who had taken up swords for the sake of the people.

Every one of them, still wearing the clothes, the dresses, the armor they had worn, without their clothes being torn, without their underwear being removed, in their usual clothes, in the postures they wore as they did their daily work, was being violated.

It was a sight unreal beyond unreality, and Leticia thought this had to be a nightmare.

She could think of it as nothing else.

"Forgi, forgive me, forgive meee…"

That was an apology directed not only at the women being violated before her eyes, but at every person who had ever lived in this country, or still lived in it.

Lost. Defeated.

The hero who had subjugated the [Demon King], defeated by a mere slime, offering her apology.

But, even so—

"No more, stop, stop, stop iiit—not there, that's a place only for him!?"

She felt that something other than the tentacle was being disgorged inside her vagina… inside her womb.

It was semen. The semen of a slime, of a monster.

In the place where she had received the [Hero]'s seed, where she had nurtured Meltia and Maria, monster semen was being disgorged.

Bound from head to toe so that even shifting her position was difficult, Leticia let tears flow at the sensation.

"Eh, ehah—aah…"

Body fluids streamed from every conceivable hole in her face, and her body shook on as if it had broken.

She no longer knew how many times she had climaxed. She could no longer count.

Only, having her womb stimulated, she climaxed; having her vagina stimulated, she climaxed; made aware of her own shameless woman's body, she climaxed.

The castle interior, dimmed by the slime that covered it, grew dimmer still.

The sun set. A day ended.

Yet this hell of lewdness did not end.

Even when Leticia lost consciousness, it would go on forever. The only escape was the dreams she could see while unconscious.

In reality, her elegant body would continue to be defiled by filthy tentacles. Outside, and inside.

Made to repeat that many times, for many days.

Gradually, the moans echoing in the throne room thinned. Dwindled.

In the kingdom of Fonteau, many elves lived, but humans lived too.

And humans, who did not possess strong mana or near-eternal lives, were treated preciously, like treasures.

Because they broke. Easily, and at once.

Conversely, the torment given to elves with strong mana and near-eternal lives was severe.

Even after days on end of being violated, they would only faint; liquefied wild herbs and livestock were forced into them as nutrition to maintain their stamina.

Elves had their wills silenced, were violated, and were treated as things to bear children.

That would continue. On, and on.

… The light of will faded from Leticia's eyes.

She did not yet know despair.

What she felt was not yet despair.

She would be made to know it.

Regaining consciousness, made to witness this hell of lewdness without end—she, of the elven race, the long-lived race, would be made, for days, for tens of days, for years, until rescue came… no, until she was rescued, made to see it.