Earth's SSS Pornstar to SSS Combat God in Another World-Chapter 27: Encountering the Rank Four Dark Mage

They walked the snaking passage for a good half hour, slow and careful, boots soft on damp stone.

No enemy came. No skittering. No breath in the dark. A dungeon could be any size, any shape.

Some were small enough to map in a few hours. Some swallowed months. This one felt larger than its entrance had promised.

Joji kept his voice low.

"Yo, stay sharp, everybody. Don’t let your guard down. If somebody cleared it out like this, they’re strong."

The first corpse changed the air.

It hung on the wall like a warning nailed up for display. A stitched mishmash that matched the sketches in the booklet.

A head from a small goblin. Arms that belonged on a war sloth. A lizardman’s torso and tail hacked and sewn to make the rest.

The smell was old blood, brine, and something rotten that did not belong to any proper body.

Joji stepped close and touched the claws. They were long and sharp.

The same shape he had seen on the destroyed door, the same bite in wood.

Even the splinters were there, caught under the nail edges.

"This is the monster," Joji said. "This is why people are missing."

Walter swallowed and whispered,

"Should we collect it?"

"Leave it," Alaric said. "But record it. Draw it if you can."

They moved on, and the corridor widened. More carcasses lay along the floor and against the walls, some half rotted, some dried like meat left too long.

Walter kept writing, sketching through his notebook while Joji and Kobluk were out investigating, eyes bright with dread and excitement.

It was his first real adventure, and it showed in how fast his hand moved.

For Joji and Alaric, it was not their first dungeon, but it was the first time they had walked in front rather than running supplies behind better men.

For Kobluk, Kobto, and Lilina, the quiet felt wrong. They had expected action. The silence made them suspicious.

Then they saw a stone table sat in the center of a wider chamber. A large magic circle was carved around it.

A ritual mandala of black suns, runes, and orbiting sigils lies on the blood-smeared stone, too precise to be madness.

It looks like a diagram used to forcefully fuse the bodies.

"Sketch this, Walter. This one’s important," Joji said.

Chains lay scattered, some still attached to iron cuffs. Walter took one step too far and his boot caught a chain.

The chain slid. A cuff clanged hard against marble.

The sound bounced down the hall, loud enough to feel.

A hoarse voice answered from the dark.

"Who goes there?"

A black orb shot out of the shadows like a thrown fist. There was no time to dodge.

Joji raised his hand and snapped out Protectorate Wind Barrier Arts.

The impact hit like a ram. The barrier held for a breath, then shattered.

The force still threw Joji backward, boots skidding, body tumbling a dozen strides before he caught himself on one knee.

"Alaric," Joji shouted. "Fire back. Bald mage. Far end."

Alaric’s concern for Joji lasted only a blink. Training replaced it. He loosed an arrow at the voice.

Clang. The arrow flew off course like it hit solid metal.

"Mana barrier," Alaric said.

Joji ripped a bone javelin from his back, packed it with aura.

"Useless knights," the hoarse voice spat. "You dare."

Another dark missile came.

Joji threw. The javelin cut the dark with a hiss. Aura kissed mana, then the hall burst with a sharp explosion that slapped dust off the walls.

The mage began to chant, words dragged up like stones from a well. A smoke ball rolled into the corridor.

Thick gray swallowed the far end and ate the mage’s outline.

Alaric tilted his head, listening. He fired toward the scrape of a footstep. A grunt answered, then nothing.

Then the other sound arrived.

Not human. Fast. Many feet. Claws on stone.

Three chimeras rushed out of the smoke.

They were bog lizardmen. Deep green scales. Three meters high. But the number of their appendages was wrong.

Six arms on each, stitched on with shoulders taken from other lizardmen.

Spider eyes were sewn into their faces in clusters, blinking out of rhythm.

Joji stepped forward and met them.

The lizardman met him with a tail swing, aura flaring along the scales.

Joji ducked low, hands reaching for its jaws, aiming to control the head and steal its balance.

An extra arm snapped out and caught his wrist.

Joji tore free and retreated five steps, boots scraping stone. He ripped a small javelin from his back, packed it with aura, and threw.

The lizardman barely reacted. One of its many arms flashed with aura, muscle bulging hard. It tanked the hit like it was swallowing a nail.

Joji felt the problem immediately. Tough hide. Aura reinforced limbs. Too many hands.

"Alaric," Joji yelled. "Think of something, man."

Alaric drew in a deep breath and poured everything into one shot. The arrow screamed. Wind rode it.

It hit dead center and nailed one lizardman to the wall, pinning it by the chest with a crack that made the stones shudder.

The lizardman was still alive. It thrashed and clawed at the shaft, trying to rip itself free.

Joji did not waste the opening. He sprinted to the pinned chimera and drove a charged javelin through its skull.

Brain and black fluid splattered the wall. The spider eyes rolled free and bounced across the floor like dropped beads.

"How many times can you do that?"

"Six more," Alaric said. "After that I am out."

"Damn it," Joji muttered.

He knew the cost. Knights burned aura the way mages burned mana.

Until you formed a knight core at Elite Knight, you ran on what you had and what you could recover by rest.

The mage in the dark felt like a fourth rank arcanist at least. That meant he could keep flinging death while they bled their reserves dry.

"Alaric," Joji called. "Follow up."

He grabbed the second chimera as it lunged, locked an arm around its torso, and triggered Protectorate Wind Barrier Arts again.

The wind shell snapped into place and slammed outward. The force stunned the creature for a heartbeat.

Alaric dove in from behind. Aura ran along his dagger. He drove it into the back of the chimera’s skull and twisted.

The creature jerked, then sagged. The third chimera tried to circle.

Kobluk did not have the aura to trade blows, not yet. He did something else.

He pulled a small bomb from his bag, thumbed it, and waited until the chimera committed to Joji’s blind side.

He threw.

Boom.

The blast slapped the chimera’s head sideways, scales cracking, spider eyes blinking wildly.

It had shifted its stance toward Kobluk, hungry for the easier kill.

Joji released the dead weight in his arms and turned on the last one.

"Look here, ugly," Joji shouted.

He clasped both hands, pulled up Emerald Blade Wind Art, and drove the strike straight down on top of its head.

Wind and force hit together. The chimera’s head burst like a smashed melon.

The body took two more steps on borrowed momentum, then folded to the floor.

"Let’s give chase. I’ll take point." Joji looked back. "Alaric, Kobluk, check for traps as we move."

"Kobto, ready something that can scout ahead and keep an eye out for the exit."