Crimson Dungeon (Part 4: Entering the Dungeon)

When I got back down to the main space, the final words were being said by the chief. There were about fifteen females in a row, all the Crimson Demons who hadn’t given up at the sight of the male’s attempts. Most of them looked like members of Megumin’s school that she introduced in our previous visit, including the two that were apparently part of Kazuma’s cock’s fanclub. Either way, I made it just in time, with all of us standing behind Yunyun in the lineup of applicants as we were part of her ‘team’.

“Kazuma!” I whispered, “They let you enter in the girl’s group?”

He turned to me yet still looked quite sheepish, “Yeah… I yelled at the guy in charge accusing him of being worried I’d upstage the Crimson Demons and got heavily laughed at by a lot of people. I think they let me in out of pity more than anything.”

That’s a relief. Not the laughter, just that I always feel better having him around when things go awry.

I was surprised to see that Megumin had decided to join us in the dungeon, though with the way she was marvelling at the enemies the men faced I can already guess as to why. I’ll just have to make it normal that the dungeon can survive at least one of her explosions…

The real kicker was who was in front of Aqua in the lineup. “Kazuma? Why is Musume joining…?”

“She got laughed at too, now she refuses to back down.”

“Ah.”

I could now hear the mutters of rage emitting from the Demon King’s Daughter, not helped that it was Bukkororii who won the last round. I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked, but I’ll have to remind her to avoid using her magic as much as possible. She at least kept her size down, so she was still only a little bit taller than me, but still it was a worry. At least she won’t get hurt down there…

In the front of the group of us was Yunyun with Megumin, the latter of which had overheard Aqua and Kazuma talking.

"Kazuma, Kazuma! Do you think these Crimson Demon girls are pretty?"

"This isn't a girlfriend trap is i-?"

"I think we should ask some of them to join the harem!" Aqua quickly interrupted, "I'd love to have some of them in between my legs!"

Kazuma was close to crying, "Thank you God, for letting me have such cool and slutty girlfriends!"

As Aqua whined about him not praising the Goddess in front of him, Megumin was getting annoyed. Tapping Yunyun on the back to whipser. “Psst, Yunyun,” The taller, bustier demon shuffled quickly over to her rival. Never having been whispered to before, she was excited to see if it was a friendly secret being shared by Megumin, “I think these idiots want to envelop some of the village into their dumb harem. Now, you’re pretty plain and normal, right?”

“P-plain?!”

“Yeah, plain, boring, uninspired. We all assumed that’s your whole Crimson Demon thing since you don’t like making grand dramatic speeches.” Megumin casually tore into her associate’s feelings like they were vines by a temple entrance. “So you’d never do anything as bold as joining a harem, right? You don’t really wanna have sex with Kazuma, riiight?”

The ‘boring’ girl that wanted to spit out some defence had a fairly average reaction of going very red faced at the notion of sex. Her words stumbled on themselves until all the babble just poured out of her mouth unformed.

Megumin was happy with this result, “There ya go. Neither of us will be joining Darkness’ harem. I think I can trust you here.”

That actually did strike a chord with Yunyun.

Trust? A shared goal? Perhaps friendship could even blossom in the rival battlefield! Though the elated Yunyun now had some confirmed friends in the village, she hadn’t been able to get Megumin to admit as much herself, always managing to avoid answering somehow… which was something that the greedy Yunyun definitely wanted. A no or preferable yes answer to their friendship. But with this, there would be no way Megumin could reject her question! She’d prove her loyalty to Megumin, and all she had to do was avoid joining a harem!

As the chief finished his speech we all began marching towards the single door in the arena, walking down the set of stairs inside to the dungeon below.

I also got to jump ahead in front of Musume to ask Yunyun something I'd been meaning to ask.

“Oh yeah, Yunyun!” I said while we entered the main doorway, “I’ve been meaning to ask if you wanted to join our harem.”

They looked at each other intensely, daggers being thrown at the awkward one, an attempted psychic conversation taking place so loudly that bothered the nearby Svobena. With a shuffle and pulling of her skirt, Yunyun defiantly stood her ground with a smile, “D-Darkness! My answer is n-!”

“Sorry to interrupt, I just wanted to add that your position would be ‘Official Friend’ of the harem, as a way of saying thanks to you. Basically guaranteeing that the hundred plus women we’ve added will all be your friends. If that appe-”

“YES! MY ANSWER IS YES! YES I’LL JOIN ANYTHING YES!”

Her eyes were shining so brightly that I had to wince a little. Gently petting the shorter happy girl’s head as she leapt into my arms, “That’s good to hear. I’m sure everyone will be thrilled to have you as a friend… man, Vanir’s probably gonna kick me so hard for not thinking about this earlier… Nn…”

Yunyun stayed close to me after that, looking repeatedly in my direction, though specifically towards my chest. I couldn't really say I wasn't doing something similar with her wizard melons, and it was nice to see my normalities still effect the relatively average girl. Weirdly, Megumin had started walking quite a bit ahead of us after that and we were struggling to keep up with her down into the dungeon.

The walkway leading down looked much more like the lab of Saikomiko than the stony dungeon door that had let us in. Walls of pale grey metal, separated into a series of perfect squares with a blue light occasionally illuminating the cracks between. The light danced around the black lines, as if a very quick glow-worm was darting all around us. Even just walking on the metallic stairs was strange, loud clacks of the large group echoing around the tight corridor downwards gave a very eerie vibe with every step.

Reaching the bottom, we were greeted with a strange sight. It was another empty room, roughly the size of my bedroom, with more metallic squares surrounding us at every angle… until the opposite wall. The science vibe that had brought us here ended right there, with a very classic looking dungeon entrance: moss covered stone, simple brown wooden door, it had it all. The video did seem to look more like a proper dungeon than the stairs indicated, but it still looked bizarre to have such an old and new looking dichotomy in one room.

“YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES TO PREPARE BEFORE YOU MUST ENTER THE DOOR.”

The groups of Crimson Demons all paired off, quickly talking about strategy and team ups while the six of us grouped up to do something similar.

“Look, no matter how big the enemy is, no matter how unbeatable, just remember to protect each other. That means the usual priorities, Aqua on healing, Darkness on defence, Megumin explodes anyone that looks like the final boss, and Yunyun is DPS, got it?”

Though everyone nodded, one was left out, “And me?”

“Right… the daughter of the Demon King is with us…” He mumbled, trying to think quickly, “Are you… good… at… anything?”

The white haired demon took rather a lot of offence at that, “Excuse you! My skills are as diverse as they are overpowered! I could easily sweep through this whole dungeon solo, yet you cannot find a place for me on this paltry excuse for a team?! What is YOUR role in all this?!”

“M-my role is to coordinate the team from behind!”

Musume clicked her tongue, “A placement for a coward. Surely as the royal member of this squad, the one that has led armies to battle and overthrown entire kingdoms, should take point, hm?!”

“Yeah! Let’s follow the huge cool looking demon into battle!” cheered Megumin a bit too enthusiastically, “Let’s have a leader that doesn’t die randomly to a kobold!”

“Oi… that was one time…”

Aqua latched her arms around him quickly, “Don’t worry, Kazuma! We’ll keep your squishy body safe and sound! Leave it to us!”

“As m-much as I like that…” He seemed to be growing more upset by the second, but less about being touched by Aqua’s gesture and more a fear on his face about the monsters we were about to fight, “You s-shouldn’t protect m-me-though I won’t stop you! But… you should all focus on getting Yunyun through this-but if you want to keep me alive, that’s fine too!”

There’s my man. Caught between selfless sacrifice and selfish fear.

“Kazuma! Everyone! Thank you!” said Yunyun, also latching onto us one by one very quickly for brief hugs, “I-I was really worried the whole world was out to get me when the whole village wanted to take my role away, it made me doubt if I should even be the chief… but you’re all here to support me! W-with that, I think I can beat any enemy we face!”

“Hear hear,” said Kazuma with a smile.

“We’ll win, I know we will.” I concurred.

“I just wanna blow something big up.”

“Wait, didn’t you get them to turn the difficulty down, Darkness?!” said Aqua, grabbing my face with a fearful intensity, “A-are we really going to be fighting those scary guys from before?! I don’t wanna die! I wanna go home!”

Ahh, she grabs my cheeks so tightly~ What a lovely girlfriend~

“It appears, the thirteenth hour draws near,” Came a new voice. A buxom brunette with an eyepatch and a quill laughing quietly under her breath while walking towards the centre of the room. “We all must face our ends this day! I, Arue, the Crimson Demon’s head writer, shall stand over a sea of corpses if it means I remain victorious!”

“Arue! Stop sounding so doom and gloom!” Whined another girl, far less busty than Arue and with longer, straighter hair down past her shoulders, “If we’re all going to die then Soketto would have told us, right Soketto?”

All eyes turned to the fortune teller. Just from one look I could see why Bukkororii was obsessed with her. The hourglass figure, the well kept yet delicate facial features, all while wearing a fairly revealing two piece sarong. Soketto also didn’t actually respond, she was too busy looking at Kazuma with half lidded eyes and biting her thumbnail. Was she seeing something in the future? I can only assume my Kazuma fucks her extra hard, with me riding her face and Aqua-

"MALE ANOMALY DETECTED."

The voice came from all around us, being loud enough to practically shake the room we stood in. Was this Saikomiko?! Why was it singling out Kazuma?!

“Eh?” he asked after quickly realising that it was referring to him, “I-it’s going to kill me for being a dude, isn’t it?!”

“Kazuma! You have to run!” Aqua yelled, “I think this is bad!”

He wanted to, he really did, but as soon as he turned he found himself falling.

"ACTIVATING HAREM PROTAGONIST DUNGEON."

“Oh.”

Then Kazuma was eaten by the ground.

“Kazuma!?” Me and Aqua quickly yelled together, leaping to the portion of metal floor that had closed behind his vanished body, “Kazuma! Can you hear me?!”

Aqua scratched at it, Megumin bashed it with her staff, and I slammed my sword into the ground, trying to slash open the black adamantine panel but to no effect. Even if I had the aim to attack the gap between, I don’t think that my strength would mean anything. He had been eaten by an unbreakable floor. Lucky…

And though we were the only ones trying to retrieve him, we weren’t the only ones concerned.

“What did it mean ‘harem protagonist dungeon’?” Asked Funifura to Dondoko, both a growing worry on their faces.

Suddenly more noises began emitting from beyond the dungeon entrance. The vibrations being easily felt in the room we stood in as things began shifting. Massive amounts of stone grinding noises, clanging chains, and draconic-like rumbling as I can only assume a new dungeon was rapidly constructed beyond that single wooden door.

Somehow, when the noises stopped was when that door looked the most ominous.

“Here we go~” I heard Soketto moan under her breath, confusing me even more. “Thank you for bringing Kazuma here, Mistress Darkness.” The fortune teller smiled before racing forwards away from the crowd of demons. Opening the wooden door and rushing into the dungeon with a surprising amount of determination.

And then she was gone. Only the quiet door remained.

There was a single beat as the rest of us looked at the empty space, then at each other, before rushing forwards to follow the Fortune Teller.