Author’s Corner:Still looking for someone to help me come up with a song for later in this story! Help author-sama!

I glanced over to Sharon as she stood up, still in her previous form. “What… was that?”

“Huh? Ah, I combined with a siege tortoise. They gather water in a special organ in their shell, and fire it off through natural cannons. Was a pretty neat evolution when I saw it. Though, an actual siege tortoise is a lot bigger.” She explained with a slight smile as we looked through the room to see if there was anything we could pick up before moving out.

Turns out, there was. Though, I would not suggest anyone actually use this item. As a way to practice my skill, I was the one that identified the thin chain bracelet that was hiding in the corner of the room.

Bracelet of Envy

This charm bracelet is able to seal enemies within it in order to steal their identity and power. In order to seal someone within the bracelet, you have to be in physical contact with them, and spend more mana than their current health and mana combined.

I… did not like that item. I mean yes, it is really powerful, but it’s dangerous. Using it to steal someone’s identity? I didn’t want to risk this item falling into the wrong hands, and really there were no right hands for it. As such, I immediately melted it down on the spot.

“The next floor is Pride, right?” I asked, looking to Celeste. Please let the next floor be pride.

“Aww, now that wouldn’t be any fun, would it? Why don’t you crank those ears up and answer your own question?” She had a wicked grin on her face as she looked back at me.

I didn’t want to… I really didn’t want to. But my curiosity got the better of me. Turning the volume on my ears up, I was able to hear the sounds from down the tunnel to the next floor… And judging by the panting, screaming, and moaning noises coming from beyond.... The next floor wasn’t pride…

Sharon looked at her hands, and seemed to be counting off the sins to figure out which the next one would be, if not pride. When she figured it out, her face reddened slightly, and she sent a glare at me. It’s not my fault, you know!?

“What is it?” Yin asked us, completely unaware about the concept of the seven deadly sins. Naturally, she wouldn’t know that the only ones left were pride… and lust.

Celeste, being the playful Deus Ex that she was, leaned in and whispered to Yin. The latter simply blinked in mild surprise, before nodding her head. “That could be dangerous… Is it safe to take Yo?” When she asked that, she turned to look at the slime girl, who had at last finished recovering to her normal state.

“Hmm? What’s the matter, mom?” Yo tilted her head cutely as she asked. “Can’t I come too? I’ll be good and protect you!”

“She’s got to learn sometime.” Celeste tilted her head back and laughed, walking towards the next floor. “I shouldn’t be affected by charms, I think. So, I’ll take the lead. Try not to get caught up in the effects when you head in.” And like that, Celeste summoned four of the mechanical cats and walked down the tunnel.

The rest of us could simply look at each other and shrug helplessly. However, there was one thing I could do to increase our odds. Pulling on my knowledge of runes, I cast a spell by combining the ‘Reinforce’ and ‘Mind’ runes on the group. With this, we should be able to resist any mind altering effects for a while, though I wasn’t sure when I would have to recast it.

“Well, let’s get going. Hopefully, she hasn’t gotten too far ahead yet.” I said to them, and we moved on to the dreaded lust floor. Thankfully, we still had plenty of the sensor spikes to place down, so that wasn’t an issue.

...What was an issue, was when we found Celeste. I don’t want to go into too much detail… but she wasn’t as immune as she expected. On the bright side, she really seemed to be enjoying herself with the impossibly endowed man and a swarm of black tentacles that were rising around her feet.

Yo simply looked on in confusion, while I pulled out my plasma pistol and shot the incubus in the head while it was ‘distracted’. And then again… and again… until it stopped twitching. When the incubus died, the tentacles molesting the perverted Deus Ex vanished, dropping her to the floor in a squirming mess.

“Immune, huh?” I asked helplessly, as I cast the same mental reinforcement on her that I did the rest of us.

“Huh?” Celeste suddenly sat up, looking around in confusion. Then, she looked down to her own bare body, and seemed to remember what had happened. “This never happened…” She glared up at us, trying to look intimidating while covering her body with her arms.

We continued through this floor in a relatively safe manner thanks to the early buff, though I ended up having to refresh it every five minutes. Even then, judging by the looks of Sharon and Yin, the spell was not entirely effective… I was starting to get concerned they might try to push me down in the middle of the dungeon.

As for Yo… she was surprisingly calm about the whole thing, even when she had half a dozen tentacles swimming around in her body. It was like she couldn’t even feel them, and just fought as if they weren’t there. And she was the one we had been most worried about, originally..

Now, the demons here all had varying body types. The males tended towards athletic builds of various heights, with red skin and forked tails. Meanwhile, the women had a much wider array of appearances, from tall and busty to a small, flat-chested girl with horns. However, none of them displayed the intelligence shown by the lesser devils, and were driven solely by instinct. If we found two or more of them together in a room, they would already be going at each other just as hard as if they were going for us.

While the sex demons did not display the intelligence of the lesser devils, the lesser devils themselves were there. Several of the female demons had black collars around their necks, with chains leading back towards a lesser devil that they were currently serving. Sometimes, there would be several succubi for a single lesser devil, and others there would be multiple lesser devils going at a single succubus.

Regardless, we made our way through the dungeon floor carefully, making sure to keep our resistance spells up. This floor was fairly easy to break through, seeing as every encounter was more concerned with themselves than us. Though, as soon as we approached, they tried to ‘invite’ us to the party.

We did not bother looking for loot on this floor… because there was too much of a mess to have noticed anything if it was there in the first place. When we got to the boss room… we were surprised to find it entirely empty.

“...Maybe the lesser devils already took care of it, like they were doing for the envy floor?” I asked hopefully while we proceeded further in.

Celeste giggled lightly. “Oh, they probably took care of it alright. Probably have her down in the next floor.”

I tried really hard not to think about that, for one simple reason. If the demons from the pride floor were strong enough to take boss monsters as their pets, like they did for the cerberus on the first floor, then this was going to be trouble. Either way, we kept going, making our way to the final floor of the dungeon.

When we got there, what we saw were not lesser devils, but a taller, black skinned demon in full obsidian armor. This one was… troublesome. It’s hard to summarize, so I’ll go over the battle in detail for this one.

To start, Yo and Celeste’s four mechanical cats all charged up together, aiming to lock the demon down while the rest of us prepared ranged attacks. For me, I pulled out my plasma rifle, and took aim at the demon’s head with Celeste’s help. Sharon condensed a sphere of light in front of her, and fired off a laser while Celeste fired her mounted cannon. Meanwhile, Yin seemed to be focusing to use her telekinesis, since she didn’t have the need to use it on the lust floor.

Just after the five melee attackers were in his face, the ranged attacks were arriving as well. However, instead of being obediently hit by our attacks, the demon kicked up at the first mechanical cat, using it as a shield to block Sharon’s laser attack. Then he ducked down behind Yo in a quick, fluid movement, dodging the two plasma blasts that were heading towards his previous position.

The demon seemed to utter a word, and slammed its palm into Yo’s slime. A black spot appeared in her slime, and then exploded, scattering her body everywhere. Before any of us could react, he had appeared behind another of the mechanical cats, and kicked it at a certain part of slime on a nearby wall. I didn’t realize in time that that was where Yo’s slime core was, but even if I had there had been no time to act.

The next instant, the last two mechanical cats were kicked in our direction, as well as a lunging demon that had no business moving that fast while wearing a full suit of armor. In order to keep up, I had to pull in as much time mana as I could, while disabling the limiter for my perception. Even still, he was moving faster than I was. So, I had to cheat.

I urged my psychic power out, weaving it together to form a shield in front of the demon, hoping for him to collide against it and slow him down. But, at the last second, he ducked away from the invisible shield, moving for the closest target. Unfortunately, that target was Celeste.

I kept urging my body to move faster, wrapping Celeste in a layer of woven psychic shields. With that, no matter which direction he attacked from, he shouldn’t be able to take out the Deus Ex. Or at least, I had hoped not.

Just like he had with Yo, the demon slammed his palm against the psychic shields, and I felt an intense pain surging through my head. Before I could even cry out, I had been rendered unconscious. The last thing I saw was the demon shoving its hand through Celeste’s head.

You have died. Good going!

Soon, I heard new sounds, the sounds of people talking in the background. “Is he going to be wake up today?” The voice was familiar… Sharon?

“He will.” That was definitely Yin, the lovely taciturn. And her confidence was reassuring.

“I… will, huh?” I forced the words out, my throat feeling unusually dry. Looking down, my arm was hooked up to an IV, which was not filling me with any reassuring feelings.

“See?” Yin asked with a smile as she walked over next to me. Before I could force out any more words, I had the two beauties wrapped around me in a tight embrace.

“Good to see you awake, sleepyhead…” Sharon spoke with a small grin, apparently relieved to see me up. I must have suffered a backlash from my psychic power, if I had been out long enough for them to worry.

“How long?”

“A week.” Sharon shook her head as she answered. “And before you ask, no we didn’t win. Celeste’s new body is waiting for you to put a soul in, she started construction of it right after we got back. Thankfully, it seems like she uploaded a connection to the ship, so she hasn’t been idle.”

I cringed, remembering that Celeste’s death had been a true one. Or at least, it had destroyed her body and soul. There was no way to bring her back without starting over… and that likely went for her items as well. But then… “Don’t worry, I didn’t graft the intelligent items onto my soul.” I was both comforted and creeped out as usual when the AI spoke up in my mind. “The graft works for you guys, because your souls can come back after you die, thanks to the clones. Not so easy for me, though I’m working on a fix.”

I sighed, smiling slightly as I looked up to Sharon. “So.. we made it through six of the seven sins, and got wiped in the first room of the last floor, huh…? Guess conquering a dungeon is still too much at our level.”

Sharon giggled lightly. “We’ll get more chances. Celeste’s already planning on how to wipe out that entire floor from existence. For now, you rest up. Then you can give the tin man a heart again.”