Can’t play it risky, you decide as you walk down the stairway to the level below. I might not reach the catacombs before my summons disappear. Not to mention this is your first time going through these stone corridors, most of which look the same, so who knows how long it would take you to reach the lowest levels anyway. Not to mention that you still don’t know in how many different ways this maze could be interconnected. Another ambush could be right around the corner.

With all of that in mind, you place your prisoners in the first two rooms you find.

“Do you know who has the keys?” you ask your new meat shield.

“Elza should have a set,” Hercule answers.

“Who?”

With one arm Hercule lifts up the wounded purple-haired young woman that he carried at his side all the way here.

“Oh,” you let out that sound and wonder where you’ve heard this name before. Unfortunately, the woman is unconscious, which makes it easier to sift through her robes until you find a set of keys.

“Leave her outside,” you say to Hercule when he puts the other unconscious body he carried into the room. You close the door and see your spider disintegrate. Which means the imps will follow. You walk to the other room and look inside. Both the battle bunnies are inside, along with eight men and one completely naked woman, who is on all fours—Dear God is she still at it? You recognize the woman who acted as a table for the psychotic bunny man.

“Alpha, Gamma, come here!” you command the bunny girls. “And bring the naked woman with you before she’s violated.”

Gamma picks up the voluptuous woman like a rag doll and carries her outside. With all three females out of the room, you lock up the sausage-fest.

Where’s their leader? Where’s my sister? How many of them are left? Where? Are more coming? When? So many questions rush through your head as you return back to Hercule and Elza, sitting with her back against the stone wall. Sigh, are all of these dungeons the same? Maybe I should go find some wood elves for a change of scenery.

“Are there any wood elves around here?” you think out loud, not directing your question to anyone in particular.

“Unless as spies or slaves, you won’t find one for thousands of miles,” Hercule says.

Figures, you think and summon your status bar, bringing up the skill tab which you left with an unlocated Skill Point. Though you are physically weak as a kitten and your offensive spells have proven barely useful against second-rate opponents, your summons have been doing major work for you, so you decide to increase your arsenal by adding a spell called [Summon Lesser Shadow Demons].

However, summons cost energy and while they can be re-summoned they also have a rather harsh time limitation. So, before proceeding with clearing out the remaining bandits you decide to bolster your minion arsenal with permanent humans. Until they die that is. And with more than enough time to spare while waiting for your energy to recharge to have enough to cast Submission on… eleven people, you decide to gather some much-needed information.

“Please tell me you’re not completely brain-dead,” you say to the naked woman who is again on all fours, imitating a table. Perhaps that was not the nicest thing to say to someone you just rescued. Well, you technically captured her, but you can make a safe assumption about the kind of treatment she’s been getting with her former master, so you might as well call it a rescue. At least you haven’t used anyone as furniture. Yet.

“Either way this is getting old,” you finish your thoughts aloud, crouch next to her and cast [Submission].

“Xi is gone. From now on you will obey me. And I have no interest in your performance as a piece of furniture. You can act like a human now. That is an order!”

The very next moment you hear an ear-piercing scream coming from the woman. She grabs her head, rolling up in fetal position, crying and screaming like a banshee.

“Enough! Stop screaming!”

The woman covers her mouth and continues her cries into the palm of her hand as tears put down her face.

You sigh, look up at your two bunny girls and say, “Alpha go back to the staircase, Gamma—to the intersection up ahead. Be on guard! Who knows how many people heard that!”

As the bunny girls split up you ask Hercule, “How many healers did you have in this place?”

“Two,” the big man’s answer is short and blunt.

“And where are they now?” you ask snarkily since this follow up question should’ve been obvious.

“One of them, Lucas, was the first to be butchered by the psychotic little girls you command. The other went down to the lower levels to have some fun. Theodora Thunder Thighs we called her. She might still be down there, I suppose. Those types of parties usually last a while.”

“Oh, she’s down there,” you recall one bandit fitting that description. “Gigantic tits, likes to suffocate men by pressing their face into her crotch with her thighs?”

“Erm, I…” Hercule stumbles on his words and blushes.

“Speak you dolt! I don’t care how many times you’ve fucked her, the captives or whoever else!”

“Yeah, that’s her!”

“That’s better. Oh, and she’s dead,” you say in the same tone of voice one would use to say it’s cloudy outside.

“No…” Hercule utters as a single tear rolls down his cheek.

“Now, your leader Xi said that he’s taking a subordinate of mine to the same place where you took a certain corpse,” you say in a loud clear voice so that all three—Hercule, Elza, and the sobbing naked woman—can hear you. “Last time I checked he had a large gaping wound in his back. Can anyone of you hazard a guess where he might have teleported to heal himself?”

“The capital,” Elza barely whispers. “He had a lot of contacts there. It was also where the creeps he sold the body to came from.”

Capital? What capital? Where the fuck is that? You wonder whether to reveal your complete lack of knowledge about this world, but considering these three are barely a step above being your slaves you ask Elza, “And how far away from that capital are we?”

“If you went on foot? The journey would probably take around two months,” Elza says and adjusts her posture, wincing from the pain.

“Which is why you use teleportation magic, right?”

“Yes, but the summoner Erik was boiled alive yesterday for incompetence. And apart from Xi, the only other one who had such skill was Greenbark. It was probably the only reason Xi tolerated his presence.”

“Don’t tell me…” you can already guess by the name who she speaks of.

“The dryad that I saw that girl with the big axe fighting. He’s dead, right?”

Shit! You curse but then realize an even bigger problem.

“The ruins to the north that the summoner Erik attacked, how far away are those?”

“Eh… About thirty miles probably.”

Alright, not catastrophic. But I need to get there as soon as possible!

You sit down and wait for your energy to restore. You don’t fancy opening even the door with the four captives—however wounded they may be—before you can also summon some minions for back up. These three seem loyal for now, but you need to test them properly. And that takes time. And more energy. Neither of which you have in the middle of enemy territory. You starting to feel the loss of a loyal ally.

You'll probably need to go down below and regroup with the prisoners if you plan to increase your forces further, though it might take even more time to make sure they're all usable also. Or just leave them down there and don't waste time on them? They won't be much worse off than they were before. And there was some food down there. But what after that? You have a long journey ahead of you back to your own base so is there a point in staying here a single moment longer than needed? Holding two strongholds at once seems unreasonable at the moment.