This Isn’t an E*otic Game?

Captain Jerome yanked the bolt of his rifle with manic speed.
Gunfire rang in his ears.

Far ahead, he saw a black mage charging forward on a beast—just as the mana stone hanging from the mage’s neck shattered.
The moment it broke, the taming magic vanished. The beast beneath the cultist suddenly went berserk and tore into the Lucifer follower sitting on its back.
Just as Jerome pulled the bolt back again to chamber the next round—

He realized his magazine was empty. No more brass casings. Nothing left.
“Ammo box!”
He frantically grabbed fresh rounds from the box at his feet and jammed them into the internal magazine.

Slotting the clip in, he rammed the rounds down with his thumb and forced the bolt forward to reload the chamber—just as he looked up.
“Ah…”
The defensive line was collapsing before his eyes.
Grenades and all manner of booby-trapped explosives had been triggered by the charging beast horde, erupting in a storm of fire—but even that wasn’t enough to stop all of them.

Jerome clenched his teeth, drawing the longsword at his waist and fixing it to the end of his rifle.
“Soldiers!! It’s been an honor to fight alongside you!! Fix bayonets!! We die fighting!! FOR HIS MAJESTY, THE EMPEROR!!”
“For the Empire!!”

With furious war cries, every member of the Golden Company fixed their bayonets.
The Hunters, seeing the line broken and the enemy closing into melee range, drew their shotguns.
And so, with a chorus of rage and desperation, the battle devolved into brutal close-quarters combat between man and beast.

The fighting was savage.
The Hunters activated magic phenomena pulled from the mana stones on their belts and necks, harnessing them for battle.
Short-range teleportation.

Superhuman strength.
Hardened skin—abilities once used by the beasts were now turned against them.
They fired their auto-shotguns like madmen, the barrels pumping rhythmically, reloading round after round.

Slugs and double-aught buckshot tore into the Lucifer cultists.
The beasts’ barriers shattered; their hides were punctured; and the shells tore through flesh.
With every scream, entrails exploded into the air. Blood rained like a summer storm.

The Hunters and the Golden Company fought valiantly.
They were the elite—chosen from both the Labyrinth and the Empire.
But the followers of Lucifer were no pushovers.

“Kill them all!! Leave no one alive!!”
Black magic screamed through the air.
The beast horde slammed into the Hunters with ferocity, throwing bodies aside.
The expedition, which had reached the sixth floor without losing a single life, began to bleed.

Death came.
A beast ripped into a Hunter, savaging his torso like wet paper.
Another was hit by black magic—his body rotting, disintegrating on the spot.

Screams.
The [N O V E L I G H T] stench of blood stinging the nose.
Gunpowder and steel.

The thunder of explosions.
The expedition’s defensive line turned into hell itself.
“You filthy bastards!!”

Captain Jerome fought with everything he had.
Each time his rifle flared, a black mage’s mana stone—or skull—exploded.
He screamed with rage, pulling the trigger again and again.

But even that resistance couldn’t stop the inevitable. A beast surged right into his face.
With a howl, Jerome lunged with his bayoneted rifle at the beast that had lost its barrier and had already taken heavy machine gun fire to the legs.
He rammed the blade deep into its neck.

As the beast shrieked and collapsed, the black mage riding atop it leapt down and fired black magic directly at Jerome.
Thank the gods—it hit the rifle instead.
The wood and steel corroded instantly, withering into something brittle and useless.

Jerome hurled the ruined weapon at the mage, then snatched a heavy rock from the ground and charged.
Drained from the battle, the black mage couldn’t react in time.
Jerome brought the stone down.

And down again.
Until the man’s face was nothing but a ruined mass of meat.
Breathing raggedly, Jerome wiped the blood and flesh off his face and looked around.

The line was completely overrun.
All across the defense line, chaos reigned.
The soldiers he had trained were doing their duty to the very end.

But they were dying, one by one.
And every time one of them fell—
Jerome felt like he was going insane.

“Please. Please!!”
Screaming, he picked up a dropped rifle from a dead cultist and opened fire.
“God, please!!”

A black mage charging one of his men had his skull blasted apart.
A bullet pierced a beast’s eye, twisted through its brain, and dropped it in its tracks before it could sink its teeth into another soldier.
Jerome’s aim was flawless. One after another, the cultists and beasts fell to his shots.

And because of that…
All eyes turned to him.
“I’ll take that one!!”

A wyvern—its barrier already in shreds from shotgun blasts and machine gun fire—broke through the hail of bullets and dive-bombed straight at Jerome.
He snapped the rifle to his shoulder and took aim.
The shot was fast—nearly blind—but his accuracy was terrifying.

The 7.92mm round ripped through the weakest point in the wyvern’s barrier and punched straight through its eye, into its brain.
The beast didn’t even have time to scream before it crashed to the ground.
Its rider kicked off the dying beast mid-air and dove toward Jerome.

The sudden strike was too fast. Jerome didn’t have time to react.
He hit the ground hard, grappling with the Lucifer cultist.
“You son of a bitch…”

A black aura gathered in the mage’s hand.
“Captain!!”
Several of Jerome’s soldiers—still holding the line—rushed to his side.

Seeing rifles aimed at him, the mage panicked and flung his gathered magic at the soldiers instead.
Two of them exploded before they could even scream.
“Alka!! Jirma!!”

Jerome screamed the names of the two dead soldiers.
The cultist giggled.
“Your fault. Your leadership killed them. You’re the reason your men are dying!”

“You fucking—!! …Ghhk!!”
Telekinetic force gripped Jerome’s neck.
He was lifted slowly into the air, pressure crushing down on every inch of his body.

“Look, all of you!! Watch your commander DIE!!”
The black mage howled with triumph.
The Golden Company turned their guns toward him and fired, but a powerful barrier spell shimmered around him, deflecting the bullets with ease.

He laughed maniacally as the pressure grew stronger.
Jerome’s body began to bend under the weight.
Soon, he’d be nothing more than crushed meat.

“Is this… the end?”
There was no regret.
The only thing that weighed on his heart… was that he hadn’t saved the men he might have been able to save.

In his final moment:
“Long live the Empire!!”
He left behind the words he’d spoken his whole life… as his last will.
And then—

The black mage’s body exploded.
The barrier spell that had shielded him shattered completely, blowing open a massive hole in his torso.
Without even a scream, the mage’s body crumpled to the ground, pulverized.

At the same moment, Jerome—who had been suspended in midair—was freed.
“You sons of bitches!!”
Someone burst into the trench, charging into the fray.

Even in this hell, Jerome laughed when he saw who it was.
“Ban!!”
“Grab your guns!! Fight!! Kill!! Let’s send these hellspawn back to hell where they belong!!”

Old man Ban, wearing the Saint’s pendant around his neck, charged into the defensive line, unloading the auto-shotgun his grandson had built for him.
His shotgun no longer resembled a shotgun.
It blasted straight through the beast horde’s barriers—through the black mages’ protection spells—in a single shot.

And it wasn’t just power—it was the rapid-fire capability, too.
The massacre began.
Ban’s return electrified the defenders.

It lit a fire in their souls.
“Get up!! Fight!! Let’s die on our feet!!”
Shouts in both Northern and Imperial tongue erupted like thunder.

The smell of gunpowder and blood.
The sound of steel screaming as it overheated echoed all around.
And before long—

“Retreat!! RETREAT!!”
Of the hundreds of Lucifer cultists who had charged in so confidently at the start, only a few dozen remained to flee for their lives.
Ban raised his steaming shotgun and let out a roar.

The Hunters.
The Golden Company.
All roared with him.

They had struck Lucifer’s cult with devastation so brutal, the word “victory” felt insufficient.
The expedition had won.
 

****
It was about two hours after the battle ended that the Saint, Amayel, returned to the expedition.
He had collapsed from divine shock, unconscious for nearly half a day due to his excessive use of power. His face was still pale and gaunt.

The wagon, pulled gently by a domesticated varg, rolled cautiously into the trench, and the moment it arrived, people began to gather.
“Saint!”
“There are wounded—please help us!”

Priest Mathieu shook his head quickly.
“He’s already experiencing divine backlash from overuse. He mustn’t invoke any more miracles—”
“It’s fine, Father. I’ll handle it.”

The Saint stepped down from the wagon and rushed to the makeshift medical tents.
He moved quickly, laying his hands on the injured.
A man’s severed leg grew back.

A soldier blinded by shrapnel could see again.
A Golden Company fighter whose belly had burst open, guts barely stitched back in place, was fully restored.
But—

“He’s already dead, Saint.”
Not even a Saint could bring the dead back to life.
Those who had died in front of him.

Those whose bodies now lay under sheets in the corner of the trench.
The Saint’s breathing grew ragged as he stared at the corpses.
“Asmodeus!!”

He shouted.
“There has to be a way to bring them back! With your power—there’s a chance, isn’t there?!”
He was speaking to the being within his soul—the Goddess.

And then, divine power began to spiral violently around him.
Father Mathieu’s voice rose in alarm.
“Saint!”

“Get out of my way. Don’t stop me.”
“It’s dangerous! You’re already suffering divine backlash! If you use any more power, your body will collapse! That kind of power is beyond what a human can endure!”
“Move!”

For the first time, the Saint raised his voice in anger.
He approached the pile of bodies, radiating holy power like a blazing sun.
“Please… please!!”

A radiant light engulfed the trench.
The Hunters.
The Golden Company.

No one could say a word against the Saint’s cries. They lowered their heads.
None of them could step forward. None of them could do anything.
They could only watch as the Saint fought desperately against reality itself.

And then Ban stepped forward.
He grabbed the Saint by the collar and pulled him upright.
A sharp sound rang out—flesh meeting flesh.

Ban had slapped him.
“Get ahold of yourself. The dead are dead.”
“......”

“You said it yourself—using power beyond what’s permitted leads to corruption. Bringing back the dead is not a power allowed to humankind. Even if you could… they wouldn’t be the same. They’d be drawn to your power. Twisted by it.”
“If I… if I just push a little more—”
“You’re human. No more than that. Don’t go any further. The expedition’s not over yet. If you collapse, everything ends with you. Saint… you’ve done enough.”

Ban gently unfastened the psychic amplifier from around his own neck and placed it around the Saint’s again.
“No one here blames you. Not a single one.”
There was only one person.

Just one.
Who couldn’t forgive the Saint.
Amayel began to cry.

Like a child, he collapsed to the ground, sobbing.
Ban sat silently beside him and lit a cigarette.
The other Hunters did the same.

They gathered quietly around the Saint, watching him weep.
“…Why is he…?”
Captain Jerome asked quietly.

Mayor Lagote, helping clean up nearby, replied:
“This is how we bury the dead in the Labyrinth. Their bodies were born through the Great Labyrinth—and now they return to it. We just stay close to those who mourn.”
Lagote offered Jerome a cigarette.

“Let’s have one. Then let’s move forward. The expedition’s not over yet.”
Smoke curled upward into the air, vanishing in silence.
For a long time…

No one in the expedition spoke a word.
Only the sound of the Saint’s sobs filled the trench.