The Fourth day of competition for the school festival is a dungeon diving competition, with rewards provided for depth reached and items brought back. Raw Material Drops are each worth one point, Low tier armaments are worth fifty points, high end drops are worth 100 points each. Whoever returns to the surface having accumulated the most points wins the competition.
In years past contestants were left to their own devices inside of the dungeon, this year though the use of the newly discovered Lost Items by the royal family events inside of the dungeon can be broadcast to the public, and in the event the individuals in question have bitten off more than they can chew professional adventurers are on standby to rescue them at the cost of their items being forfeit. Likewise stealing loot items from other competitors is also strictly prohibited.
Of course should another competing adventurer be the one to rescue them instead then the rescued individual's loot is added to the rescuer's haul. Anyone who hasn't left the dungeon after one full day of delving will be automatically disqualified from the competition proper and teams will be sent down to retrieve them.
Excerpt from The Holfort School Festival Pamphlet
The entrance of the dungeon was a flurry of activity as the various students were gathered around the entrance leading into the dungeon proper.
There was a notable shift within the contents of the students who were going into the dungeon, the usual poor barons were now accompanied by their lovers, many of whom consisted of the various 'ladies' of the Blackmore territory, and Leon was still looking forward to when that surprise was tripped. Perhaps the girls will reveal their true demonic nature within the dungeon itself, not that he planned on interfering with their hunt for orbs.
No the more pleasing sight was the various girls of the academy out here in cheap adventurer armour alongside their exclusive servants desperate for the funds needed to maintain their grip on their sex-toys. Even if he doesn't win the competition itself that didn't mean that Leon wasn't going to enjoy their suffering for all it's worth.
Another familiar face was here too, Marie wearing the colours of the Winchesters and her little toady elf following her along. Sure, that'll end well.
"Your attention please students!" Another familiar face, though the sight of the Adventuring class teacher was no surprise. "You've all already read the rules for this event and signed the appropriate wavers. Part of being adventurers is knowing your limits and acting appropriately, even though measures have been taken to ensure that you all get out alive at the very least we still encourage you all to take the utmost caution. Lost of limb is a career ender for adventurers." The Students nodded their heads as the teacher stepped to the side and looked at the clocktower in the middle of Holfort. True to her predictions nine tolls of the bell soon echoed out. "It is exactly nine o'clock!" The Teacher was yelling to be heard over the bells. "You have until exactly nine o'clock tomorrow morning to exit the dungeon before we come in after you!"
The Teacher used an air horn to indicate the start of of the 'adventure.' The various students rushed forward, many of them having succumbed to the lure of treasure and the promises of riches there-in. Joke was on them, from what he heard Angie's followers already cleared the first five floors a few days ago in order to desperately acquire funds to pelt Julius with balls at the dunk tanks. It was for much the same reason that Leon wasn't in much of a hurry to join them in desperately scrambling for materials.
"The first five floors have already been cleared!" Olivia was nervously thinking through what she already knew about the dungeon and the conclusion she reached was 'not good.' "Sloths are supposed to start to appear on the fifth floor! Are we going to have to fight demons like that!?"
"Don't worry Olivia, we aren't going down that deep."
The school was being cheap, not letting him use space manipulating magic to stash his loot away, so all those guys are going to be weighed down having to haul vast amounts of loot back to the surface, with the ongoing threat of monsters that moved in behind them in their wake ambushing them. The smart ones will make out like literal bandits, rescuing returning groups from the depths of the dungeon in exchange for their hauls of goods. Leon however was lazy, and had no intention of walking for hours and hours to get what he could get by staying put instead.
The chamber was familiar, the same one that Leon had brought down on the heads of the angels the one time that he went delving with Marie, it would make a suitable zone to begin the slaughter.
"We are going to bring the monsters to us!"
Leon twirled around as he walked, dark power coming off of his body as familiar birds came into being, the Sai-Fung, and with that Leon sent the birds off. The Sai-Fung were among the fastest creatures in Inferno, and the smallest, distances that would take Leon and Olivia days to travel on foot could instead be covered in mere hours, on top of that they were tiny, too hard to catch, and not enough meat on them to be worth the effort for the demons whose territory they were travelling through. However it became a different story after crossing over into the Angel's territory, here was their most hated enemy a demon mocking them, they were few and they were weak. Of course there isn't any Angel with free time on their hands that wouldn't chase them. Leon had of course memorised the maps of the dungeon, so he could offer them some guidance back to where he was at. It wasn't like Olivia was idle during this time either, she had learned from the Gilgamesh how to transform stone and flesh into metal, and used that to line the entire floor of the chamber with demonic metal. Of course since this was angel territory this was even more infuriating for them. The various Angels ran into the chamber chasing after the birds and were soon met with an even more infuriating enemy: the Umbran Clan.
"Good afternoon Hierarchy of Laguna!" Leon shouted while floating in mid air sitting on a magic barrier, even as the various Angels ran towards him. "We of the Umbra thank you for your generous donation!" Leon pressed the sheathed sword he brought with him into the metal ground, Alastor. The entire room sparked, the angels jolted around with pain as their bodies burst with Halo's their weapons dropping to the ground.
"Are they finished?" Olivia asked from the safety of the hallway that led back to the entrance.
"Ag!" Ignoring the electricity going through their bodies two massive Angels stepped into the room, one carrying a massive sword with a face on it, the other a massive shield with a face on it. To Olivia's further surprise both weapons, not the headless giants wielding them but the weapons, were talking in a strange language that Olivia did not know.
Artefact Spirits: Not to be confused with the various weapon drops that come from Demons and Angels alike, in some cases the damned or ascended soul in question was an object to begin with.
Objects that, be they through their creation, their use, or their eventual destruction acquires a soul of it's own, these become known as artefact spirits or in the language of a ancient culture Tsukumogami. Like any other soul bearing being these objects can, upon their demise, be transported to Inferno or Paradiso where they are transformed into formidable Demons and Angels.
A Well used torture wheel will become a Pain, a Sword of a Valiant Warrior will become a Valiance.
In many cases, it's not uncommon for such tools to be unable to move under their own power in which case it is not uncommon for them to construct a body for themselves out of magical energy in the likeness of their former wielders, this though is merely a temporary measure. What these weapons ultimately desire is not to fight by themselves but to meet those who can use them as well as if not better than their former masters.
Excerpt from Anatomy of a Soul by Rosa of the Umbra
"Ds gnay ah pash aziazor g gil kures?" The Sword-wielding angel brandished its weapon to face Leon directly.
"I came here to kill you ugly bastards." Leon pulled Alastor out of his sheath, now freed from the pin that was the devil arm the sheath suddenly turned into a shield of Gilgamesh. With no more words that need to be said between them the two angels unleashed their attacks.
The sword Angel, Valiance, lowered his blade and charged, the weapon, a massive golden blade with a split down the middle, extended forward to accompany the charge as Leon blocked and knocked aside the attack with his shield, the blade instead stabbing into the stone wall that was behind Leon. In the mean time the Shield Angel, a Valour, hopped onto his weapon like a platform and rode it forward at Leon while the Valiance tore a grove through the wall as he slammed the blade down on Leon again, the weapon tearing through solid rock like it was melting butter. The entire Cavern would be torn down at this rate.
"Hang on I got it!"
Olivia scattered barriers into the cavern holding up the ceiling but not currently able to do much else. While the cavern wasn't falling apart anymore a psychotic beyblade and the mutant potato peeler was still cutting off Leon's escape. It didn't help matters that thus far he had only managed to eliminate the first wave of Angels, if things had gone according to plan then there would be more of these ugly bastards on their way over. For now the young Umbran Mage played to his strengths, he was a fly with a magical shield that actively pushes away anything that gets close to him and the ability to slow time to a crawl and these two were trying to swat him with a great sword and a giant bouncy top.
Then the opening came, caught between a sword swing and a rampaging top Leon acted. Ducking underneath the giant blade Leon punched it with his Gilgamesh sending it upwards directly into the path of the headless angel riding around on the top chopping it in half at the waist. Unfortunately the top didn't lose any of its momentum and slammed into Leon sending him flying away with his entire side of his body in absolute agony.
"Sheba." As Leon pulled himself to his feet he saw something that made him growl like a wild animal. With a foot stomp the Valiance kicked the shield into the air like it was a skate board and caught it forming a sword and board combination. "Huu." Leon would say 'someone up there hates me' but he was pretty certain that he was Paradiso enemy number, well maybe not one but he bet he was at least in the single digits.
Marie was having a good day. The Dungeon was swarmed by the mob of students the whole competition, on the first day Angelica's followers trying to raise the capital to buy their way into her good graces, on the second and third days the low ranking barons took their new commoner girlfriends through the dungeon hoping to impress them, now half the school was crammed into this little place trying to kill every monster in sight as part of the dungeon diving competition, and various girls like her who had taken their exclusive servants delving with them to earn capital. Course unlike them Marie had a network of short cuts through the dungeon, a series of broken paths, traps and coincidences that Olivia had stumbled through during the original game. It was ten Years for Marie, but luckily she had a cheat item.
"This way." Luxion observed as another group of angels chasing a demonic bird throughout the dungeon, this time they managed to snag the ninth floor dual boss Valiance and Valor. Considering that demons shouldn't be in this part of the dungeon a certain Umbran Warlock seemed like the most likely candidate to be the one responsible. Marie would have to thank the bastard later, she had no intention of facing off against the spinning top of doom today with only a glorified camera and a butler sex toy to protect her. "This way, hurry please."
Luxion has combed every inch of the bottom floor since his captain dragged him out of that long dead facility, with a dedicated factory he could mass produce enough invisible floating camera's to examine every inch of this blasted place, Luxion had Miles of detailed digital landscape excruciatingly assembled together from individual pictures Google Earth style. At this point in time he was sincerely doubting that the damned bra-
"Found it!" Luxion swung around. Directly in the little Gremlin's hand was the accursed Bracelet that the AI has spent over three years looking for!
"Where did you find that!" Luxion growled with a deep digital base.
"It was directly in that wall where I find it during my play through." Marie smirked knowingly at her accomplishment.
"Perhaps we should've snatched up the staff in the first place." Both of the so-called Key items were shining brightly, reacting to one another by the looks of things. Luckily Luxion brought along a dedicated drone to observe the artefacts, he would pry loose their secrets, their construction, and the methods to duplicate them and he would apply them to whoever necessary to get that damned ship operational again.
The three Key items get their name from the fact that they are necessary in game to unlock Olivia's full power of the Saintess, though we aren't told exactly how they work. We presume that they were manufactured using Old Human technology as they were starting to understand magic but we cannot confirm this. What is known is that with each new Artefact Olivia is able to cast more and more powerful magic spells until she eventually reaches the point where she's able to brainwash an entire enemy fleet into submission with the aide of the Weiss ship.
Excerpt From Diary 1
Having had the chance to study the Staff Item I can safely say it is not made using any Old Human technology that I am aware of. The relationship between magic and magnetic fields are already well established, Mana is magnetic so a strong magnetic field will draw more of it in, but the staff contains no materials with a strong magnetic field. Diamonds are Natural quantum computers, their use can unlock the potential to control large quantities of magical energy, but the jewels in the staff lack the necessary Qubits for that function. Hopefully the name Three Key Items is not just for show and I will be able to figure out what function they fulfil as we get more of them.
Excerpt from Luxion's Research Notes
Leon was not having a good day. Fighting these bastards was hard enough when they were operating separately, but they were much worse when they were together as one unit. Right now the Valiance was riding around on the Valor shield spinning around it's giant blade like a deranged Spinning Top of Doom that he could only narrowly dodge even with Witch Time or block by digging in his heels and raising the Gilgamesh Shield to block at an angle. Bastard didn't even have the common decency to be dizzy after spinning around like that. The other favourite 'Screw you' attack from the Angel was when it mounted the shield on the edge of the shrinking and growing blade turning the entire thing into a demented buzz-saw axe with with a telescopic blade. The damage to the cavern was getting worse and worse and Livia was struggling to hold the roof up, which meant that Leon's window of opportunity was rapidly approaching.
"Drop it!" Leon shamelessly ran out of the cavern, passing Livia and grabbing her to carry along the way. Without Livia's magic to support the roof anymore the entire thing, along with several trees from the capital's forest above, collapsed on top of the demon along with all the loot that had built up in the cavern. Leon didn't catch any souls in the rubble, none human or demi-human anyway, so they didn't just accidentally kill anyone with their latest stunt.
"Is it dead?" Olivia asked visibly concerned as Leon put her back down.
"No, which is why I have to get ready to go on the offensive again." Reluctantly, Leon brought out the Tartarus again as much of what he needed in order beat the Angel flooded the cavern.
Sunlight.
Waving his arm around Leon summoned the Umbran armour and climbed in, sunlight beat down on the crescent of moon stone that lined the cockpit as magical power flooded through Leon's body and into his armour.
In the mean time the Valiance/Valor combo chewed their way through the rock, their body and weapon forms having had the white porcelain skin chipped away, well time to add to their ongoing feelings of disappointment. Leon whipped forward both arms and opened fire on the two angels until such time that they stayed down. Of course they attempted to fight back with that buzz axe combination, it's just that Leon had brute strength on his side. As the spinning wheel of death was flying at Leon he dodged out of the way and punched the blade hard enough that the body the two angels had been puppeting about was catapulted into the air at which point in time Leon abruptly swapped out the weapon he had been using for the Alastor.
"Let's see how you like it!" Alastor was shoved into the unfolded shield before Leon took the combined weapon by the sword handle and with a flick of his wrist the entire thing turned into a high frequency battle axe not unlike the one that was being used by the angel duo. With a single swing of the new weapon Leon tore through the entire Angel from it's headless neck to it's ass splitting it in two.
"Jubileous oecrimi g!" Shouting that the two angels folded up into compact form and attempted to flee.
"Like I'd let you!" Leon chucked his devil arm down at the fleeing angels like a javelin and nailed them both to the ground. A blood Red portal opened beneath the duo, several arms sparking with electricity grabbed hold of the screaming pair and dragged them through leaving behind only Alastor behind. Leon could feel the pocket watch he constantly wore on his hip windup by itself, well not quite by itself either. "Fantastic, another few years." Leon gave a snort of derision. "Stingy bastard." Leon flew back to the hole he left Olivia in to pick her up.
"We aren't going back into the dungeon?" Olivia asked sounding confused by the turn of events.
"We will but first we have a few more angels to kill." Olivia noted that the Armour was both cramped and spacious, it was wide enough that three people could fit inside but the trade off was that she was basically laying on her belly, which may have been part of the idea as it wasn't too different from how Leon was seated. "There's a giant hole here leading out of the dungeon, we need to deal with all the angels from the lower floors that are trying to use it and then we'll deal with sealing this area up so that they can't use it anymore."
Indeed, the other angels had been allies to the Valiance and Valor duo, and with their constant use of unpredictable wide angle attacks they couldn't get close enough to participate in the battle without getting killed themselves. Now the boss of the Angels was dead, and they had a problem with that, charging out of their hole and over the rubble as Leon continued to rain down a hailstorm of weapons fire on top of their heads to obliterate them. Most of them could fly, as one would expect from the winged bastards, but others were too big and lacked wings.
For now Olivia just sealed the hole with barriers while Leon rained down infinite bullets into it with the gatling guns of his armour. Of course Olivia hadn't mastered the art of creating convenient one way barriers that let's projectiles through only one side, she has however created multiple barriers with plenty of gaps between them that let Leon shoot between them at the larger angels below, even as they tried to force their way through the barriers.
In the meantime Luxion was watching. A subjugation request was already sent out to the hole Leon created, though formidable there weren't many angels that could survive a direct shot from a air ship cannon, and the few that could wouldn't survive multiple, which would give the earth mages the time needed to seal up the hole.
No what had Mylene both more interested and concerned was the individual fighting the Angels.
A first year facing off against the ninth floor angelic dual boss Valiance and Valor is hard enough to believe by itself, but the way he fought was more concerning. Leon was moving at speeds that should not be possible and pulling weapons out of thin air up to and including the Knight armour he used in the duel with Julius's friends. How Luxion thought he was doing this was the most concerning aspect.
"A chronometer?" Mylene asked as her features scrunched in confusion.
"You can think of it as a pocket watch attached to my drones." Luxion produced another projection to go with the one showing Leon's fight against the angels, that of the very room they were in. "Normally." Luxion zoomed in on the bottom right corner of each of the pieces of footage showing the time in blocky numbers. "I keep my Drones Chronometers synchronised exactly to my main body. As you can see the one that is following Blackmore around keeps falling further and further behind."
"And this hasn't been happening in the dungeon before, or elsewhere now to the other drones?" Mylene remembered that Luxion reported that high concentrations of magical energy interfered with the functions of his drones.
"Correct. I have taken extreme measures to block the effects of magi-electromagnetism on my drones. I assure you this is not a technical malfunction."
"Then Blackmore is messing with time?" Mylene slumped into her love seat with a sigh, a time manipulating warlock with a grudge against the royal family. Lovely.
"There are limits to his power I believe. Blackmore only moves at abnormal speeds when he is dodging a attack, and there has been at least one instance where a solid hit has been landed on him doing severe damage, which makes me believe he isn't going back in time either. There are clearly limitations of his magic, or failing that he can only use it a limited amount." Small Miracles. "Should I delay the arrival of the subjugation team so that we can continue to collect data on him?"
"No. I'd rather not have any blind accusations of incompetence thrown around, or else he might get ideas." Mylene stated as she nonetheless started debating future laws about keeping the dungeons themselves intact. "Send the subjugation force at once."
"About time." Leon was wondering how long he would be here dealing with these angels until someone showed up to relieve him after the competition was over, now the airships were here in force, which meant that Leon had a limited amount of time to make himself scarce. "Olivia, we're going back into the hole." Leon stated without a shred of hyperbole.
"Eh?" Olivia didn't look quite as sure.
The two of them flew back to the hole into the dungeon that the pair of angels attempted to carve out, where Olivia broke her barriers and the two flew back down into the tunnels, blasting all the way. The first of the shots wiped out a group of angels, then the Earth mages started using the rubble to patch the hole while Leon and the airships continued to wail away on the angels until eventually the dungeon was patched up and the Angels had depleted their numbers. Mind you this particular victory hadn't been for free, the various dungeon items that had been in the rubble were little more than broken scrap metal at this point. Scrap that they still had to transport out of the dungeon, luckily Leon had come prepared.
Since he knew that the judging committee wasn't going to let him stuff things into the safety and convenience of his dimensional magic he instead prepared a sled to load all of the materials onto that was pulled by the Hounds of Baskerville, even then Olivia ended up carrying off the vast majority of hers and Leon's points with one of her barriers. In the end, Leon and Olivia had only come in second place. Marie, little Gremlin that she was, apparently went straight to the bottom and ended up rescuing a huge number of students on her way back up, her physical stats were flatly incredible, that was on top of the excess of ammunition that she had brought with her.
However the real reason why she was in first place was because she had found something that was literally priceless, the Saintess's bracelet. Even better, it was showing a positive reaction.
For Mylene this carried the significance of 'her son found the saintess' instead of 'her son had gotten duped by a con artist.'
For Angie on the other hand...
"So the whore found the Saint's bracelet." Angie dropped the Daily Adventurer article onto her desk as she turned her attention to the room, a group of her new followers from Leon's Coffee House were all around her.
Angie would have to plan her next move carefully and take everything into consideration. She fundamentally hates Julius and wants him to suffer, which means doing everything in her power to drag his name through the mud.
Unfortunately she lives in this country, and more important than that loves it and wants it to thrive, which means taking steps to actively ensure that it remains stable not only for herself but also for the common people and lower ranking nobility that was under her, at the same time she also needed to do all of this while maintaining the prestige and influence as the Duke's daughter. With that in mind...
"I would like a way of making Julius's life as difficult as possible without negatively affecting the reputation of the royal family." Angelica had zero delusions about what kind of person Julius is and how ill suited he is to becoming King, his only positive trait was his singular devotion to one woman, coincidentally something his father could learn from, in her opinion. But that is that and this is this. "Ideas?"
"Clarice's followers seem to be doing a pretty good job of making their lives miserable already." Sarah stated amused, of course she was also having fun torturing Greg too but that would last only so long. There was an ongoing bet as to how long it would take the Five Fools to figure out who kept piling garbage and horse manure outside their door.
"How about a six AM wake up call?" Jillian was thinking about all the ways her father and his men enjoyed torturing the prince and his friends during the winter break. "I play a mean Bugle."
"That might actually raise his reputation if we get him into the habit of getting him up at the crack of dawn." Angelica looked like she was giving the matter some serious consideration anyway.
"Some of the girls came up with this." Clarice handed over a thickly packed notebook to Angelica who opened it and examined it, blushing visibly at the contents. "We didn't even have to bring up torturing the guys, they've been working on this since at least the school year started, from what I heard they're already working on the third volume." Angelica released the book and let it close by itself before pushing it away from herself as if thoroughly disgusted by the contents.
"It's perfect!" Angelica has an evil smirk on her features. "Get someone to clean up the pictures, I remember seeing some books in the Blackmore's library that should provide some invaluable insight on the matter. We'll begin publishing this time next week."
The Fujushi Boys is a so-called Graphic Novel, emphasis on the Graphic.
The story of five young men, Julian, Jack, Chandler, George and Brendan in a open sexual relationship with one another living under the domineering antics of a young lady known simply as 'the Bitch.' Plot is rather minimal, we see few details of the one dimensional boys day to day lives such as Julian's desires to become a master chef or Chandler's training to become the next sword saint, luckily no one whose seen the cover would read for the plot. The extremely detailed scenes between the five boys and their mistress gives knowledge of sexual techniques and devices that crosses into depths of depravity I know not even existed, and for that matter will be trying in due time, one has to imagine that the artist watched the five of them engaging in the depraved antics the work depicts to have obtained such detailed images. For now if any young ladies, and interested young men, looking for some blatant masturbation material, I suggest you look no further.
4/5 Stars
An Anonymous review of The Fujushi Boys for the Daily Adventurer.
Review Section:
KadoyaOkami: If you're volunteering to beta for me I'd happily oblige. For the one who supposedly went through the most character development of the Five Julius has to my knowledge done very little to acknowledge how much of his problems are entirely in his own head or how much his blatant resentment has hurt Angelica and his mother, and even then the one he admits this to isn't the two people in question but Leon. Before Leon can change them for the better he has to care enough to do so, and no the absurd amount of platinum he's getting isn't enough to make him do so.
RedRat8: Let's just say for now Angelica isn't going to have too much trouble raising loyal followers from now on, her willingness to blow torch people in public besides the point. Given what kind of person Stephanie is that's likely only further boosted her reputation. Luxion knows more than you think.
RonaldM40196867: Not the first thing that's supposed to come to mind from the monarch of a country. I would hope that you do so. I listen and Critique story requests, I'm not one to do them.
RED BELL: You're Welcome.
Guest09: I do enjoy when a story updates consistently. To me, the moment that Mylene figured out that her son is an idiot in otome games canon was when he sent her a budget request for cloaks and masks to sneak out of the palace with. And yes, the people running Holfort are incompetent by design: "We don't have the military power to ensure that our people don't break off from our hedgemony and form their own territories, so let's cripple our nation so badly that we can basically rebuild it from the ground up, it won't matter that we already have two incredibly hostile neighbours to begin with and just got a third." Angie's already taken plenty of shit from Julius, an entire life time work of F***'s to give have already been used up on his blatant abuse and idiocy and she's all out of mercy. They'll learn or one of Leon's demons will eat them, just the way that things are going right now.