Inside the Cave of Obscenity

Chapter Volume 1 27: Queen

The report arrived when the sun was in the middle of the sky, a little past noon.

Leticia had a lot of work to do as a queen in addition to the slime problem, and it was while she was occupied with that work that the door to her private chambers was opened with a violent push.

The door was violently opened without even waiting for Leticia to answer, and a male knight with white hair and a beard appeared.

He was the leader of the Knights of Fonteau.

She always saw him every day in the throne room, so there was no way she could mistake him for someone else. She had known him for a long time, and he's always had a calm and collected air about him.

But at that moment, he had a look of urgency on his face that surprised Leticia, who was watching. This was the first time She have ever seen such an expression on his face, whom she have known since before she ascended to the throne, and it was enough to make her feel that the "problem" he spoke of was that urgent.

"Queen, slimes!"

"...Did they appear in the castle town?"

Leticia put the quill she was using on the desk and asked. The knight then took a few deep breaths to regulate his breathing.

(Strange)

Normally, reports were left to the maids. Even if it was not, someone from the knights would do it... Little details like these reports should be the job of the lower-ranked people, not the job of the commander.

At least until now, as she was thinking that, she was wondering what the report was that the commander had to go all the way here.

Correcting his posture on the chair, Leticia turned his gaze toward the knight commander.

The sunlight streaming in through the glass windows leading to the terrace highlighted her silver hair, making it look as though she was wearing a halo.

The dress she was wearing was also pure white, so it even looked like it was shining.

There was no one in the room except Leticia.

She wanted to think about the slime while she worked. She had a personality that preferred to be alone when she was thinking.

She remembered that her husband used to tease her about her personality and a soft smile appeared on her lips.

"Please calm down. What's going on?"

She said slowly and quietly.

She knew that a loud voice and a strong tone of voice could make a person who was in a panic even more troubled. Even though it was an older person who had lived longer than her, the nature of people did not change.

Then for a while.

The only sound in the room, where only Leticia and the Knight Commander were present, was the sound of rough breathing.

"I-i'm sorry."

"Don't be"

After a while, the Knight Commander, who had regained his breathing, bowed with his hand on the chest of his full body armor. Although he was in a hurry, he seemed to remember that he hadn't even said hello.

"So, what is it?"

"Slime"

Well, she guessed so. Leticia thought.

At the moment, that was the only thing that could cause panic in Fonteau and the surrounding countries. Or maybe there was a catastrophe that Leticia hadn't even expected, but apparently, it was the former.

"A horde of slime has appeared in the capital."

"...Horde?"

But it was a much more dangerous situation than Leticia had thought.

She turned around and looked out the window at the streets of the royal capital. But it was peaceful. It was the usual scene of the peaceful castle town of Fonteau.

"It's not that direction. Please get out of the room and look outside."

Sensing the danger in his urgent voice, Leticia stood up from her chair.

With the hem of her dress in disarray, she walked out through the door that the Knight Commander had opened for her and into the hallway, looking out the window at the castle town.

She didn't even need to go near the window.

The moment she walked through the door, she saw the burning city.

And the beautiful cityscape―― a huge black stagnant slime that was destroying the houses.

It was very, very huge.

Some of the slimes were huge that they could swallow even a two-story house. She didn't know if the fire was caused by the people who failed to escape, or by the magic that the magician released to burn the slime, but it was spreading to the destroyed houses and burning their path.

Black smoke was rising in the blue sky.

She could not hear it from a distance, but she could almost hear the screams of the people in the town....... The scene outside the window was so heart-wrenching that she wanted to cover her eyes.

Leticia felt dizzy and took a step backward, but she didn't fall down, she put all her strength into her legs and stopped.

"Where are the Knights?"

"I'm sorry, but I sent them to the city's rescue before I could ask for the Queen's orders."

"No, it's a good decision. Thank you."

She was the queen.

No matter what kind of scene she was presented with, she was in a position to think about her people and her country first.

So, she hid her desire to cry and put up her chest without letting her voice tremble.

"Do you know the exact number of slimes?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know. All I know is that they appeared out of nowhere and are still increasing."

"Where are they coming from? If it's coming from outside the city, they should have been spotted and will not end up like this."

"It's underground. It seems that they are appearing through the sewerage system that the hero built."

She gasped at his words.

Sewers.

It was the king of this country and Leticia's husband, the hero from another world, who devised a facility to dispose of unnecessary things. A hole was magically dug underneath the royal capital, and water from the river was poured into the hole to push the garbage from each household downstream. Leticia thought and put her thin finger on her well-shaped chin.

"Then, the garbage that flows into the sewage―― does that slime absorb our wastes?"

"――I see. Then that giant, that number..."

The Knight Commander nodded in response to Leticia's words, and then his words gradually became smaller and smaller.

He realized it. He noticed it.

"...How long has this been going on?"

"I don't know."

Immediately, Leticia turned her gaze again to the castle town where black smoke rose.

She took a deep breath once at the heart-wrenching sight of the people's screams, which she could almost hear even from a distance.

"But it's so huge. It may have been living there long before we realized it."

She was dismayed. To themselves who were thinking that it was already a peaceful world.

She could not face the founder of the Kingdom of Fonteau, the generation before her, who was raising monsters under her feet.

Most of all, she couldn't forgive herself for the fact that the city that her husband helped grow was being destroyed in this way.

"I will go out too."

"The Queen herself!?"

"It would improve morale."

She couldn't afford to worry about the system.

Leticia fully understood that if she, who had defeated the demon king, took the lead in the fight, that alone would be enough to inspire the knights.

Her role. How to use the position of the Queen.

The fact that the person who gave orders from the throne was standing in the front line was more encouraging to the subordinates than anything else. This was especially true if it was someone they respected and trust.

She knew that the desire to protect that person was the most inspiring thing to do.

So, Leticia turned around to return to her room to prepare the equipment she wore when she defeated the Demon King long ago.

With a high-pitched sound, the window where Leticia had been looking at the town broke.

It was an impact from the outside. The broken glass was scattered in the hallway.

Immediately, the Knight Commander drew the sword that hung at his waist, and Leticia turned around.

What she saw behind the broken window glass was a black mouth. No, it was the figure of a slime that had spread wide.

The black slime was so eerie that it covered up the brilliant sunlight. The moment she recognized the figure, Leticia released her mana not to attack but to defend.

A thin blue barrier was stretched in front of her face.

Countless tentacles were released almost simultaneously. More than half of them were heading towards Leticia and the rest towards the knight commander. The skill to slash all of them was so sharp, and Leticia's defensive magic isn't as fragile as the slime.

After preventing the surprise attack, the Knight Commander took a step forward as though to say it was his turn.

The flash of the sword that was released after stepping into the stone floor as it cracked was wrapped with mana and cut the slime in two.

The slime was a soft-bodied monster, but the sword's attack, which converted mana into heat, vaporized the slime's mucus and killed it with just one blow.

"They were already at the royal castle―― it's too early if they had come from the city."

"The royal castle is also connected to the sewer―― there's no way to predict where they'll come from."

She said then sighed.

The defensive magic that was put up to prevent surprise attacks was still intact. But due to the sewer, now there was no place in the royal castle where anyone could be completely safe――.

"Shit!"

As she thought that, she suddenly realized something.

"What can I do for you?"

"――I'm going to clean up the slime that has sprung up in the castle. Is it possible to send a few knights to my daughters?"

"That's okay. I've already sent a few knights to Maria."

"I see"

However, if they were taken by surprise like before―― she almost thought something bad, and Leticia shook her head lightly.

In this kind of situation, thinking about bad things could make her feel endlessly depressed.

Letitia went back to her room and looked up, trying to cheer up her sinking mood.

"Eh?"

For a moment. She thought it was nighttime.

The cause was behind her. The window in Leticia's private room―― a window that was located in a direction that allowed the sunlight to enter the room at this time of day...... had slime all over it.

But.

"Its using magic and It was good at using it...... Is it also smart?"

Anyway, it was a slime that had ravaged Fonteau so badly. She was being vigilant.

"Let's just blow it up, shall we?"

Once again, a red magic circle appeared in front of her. This time, it was spreading all over the floor, so there was no way it would be deflected. The flaming bullet that she fired, however, disappeared when it passed in front of the slime.

"......What?"

At the same time, there was a thudding sound. The spread-out slime trembled as though it was pulsating.

Until now, it absorbed the male magicians and had violated the women to steal their mana.

If so, it was the result of "thinking" that "is it possible to convert the released magic into mana and absorb it".

The strongest Black Ooze that had absorbed "multiple magicians" that no other mage could reach―― not even Leticia could reach that level.

However, Leticia could not understand that.

Naturally.

No one thought of "absorbing magic". That was the magic that only the hero from another world who was already not in this world thought, and even he could not use that magic.

A small slime - Black Ooze - decomposed the mana it absorbed and took it in. The soft body that was already strong with the mana was further strengthened.

The wall that blocked the hallway became thicker. It became harder. It became resistant to magic.

"How about this?"

The next magic that was released was a spear of ice.

The spear, which was thicker and longer than the ice spear that restrained the Black Ooze earlier, did not pierce the Black Ooze but disintegrated when it got close enough to touch the surface of the soft body.

The ice disappeared and was absorbed as mana.

The part of the wall that had covered the hallway fell apart and blew outside.

"Did it work?"

Leticia judged, but no.

The Black Ooze detached a part of itself and released it into the city. The other slimes that had merged with a small part of the Black Ooze began to absorb the magic of the knights still fighting in the city, gaining its knowledge and mana.

Elves were good at magic. A land of magic where elves lived.

The Black Ooze, the slimes born from it, have finally become their natural enemies.

And it understood that.

"――Wha"

In front of the Black Ooze, the magic circle that Leticia constructed when she cast magic appeared.

The color was red, the color of fire. And the pattern on the magic circle was the same.

Leticia was surprised by that. Her magic―― her own magic that she had created on her journey with the hero in order to use her high quantity of mana freely.

It was imitated.

With a cry of astonishment, Leticia judged the slime in front of her as a threat and put up the hardest magic shield she could make in front of her.

Black Ooze, who had absorbed humans, gained wisdom, gained mana, and absorbed hundreds of thousands of magicians, and a queen who had the same magical power as the Demon King.

The difference in magical power was hopeless.

The flaming bullet that was released hit the blue shield―― the impact blew away Leticia's body.

She rolled down the stone ground and stopped when she hit the wall. She must have hit her head in the process because she could not stand up right away, she held her forehead and stood up with her hand on the wall.

Her expression was twisted in astonishment.

Impossible.

It was not the magical power of the slime possessed. She defended it but was defeated... The amount of mana was more than the demon king who was using a large amount of mana to create monsters.

That was right.

Leticia and the Demon King. The two people who possessed powerful mana in this world had the same amount.

No matter how powerful and mighty an individual was, it was only one person, one individual have a limit or a fixed amount of mana.

There was a fundamental difference between a slime that stored mana taken from many lives and a magician who was only one person. Their dimensions were different. Their existence was different.

It was truly one versus many. It was as simple as that. It was simple knowledge.

She understood because she was a magician. The absolute difference in magic power.

Then why were slimes the weakest? Even if the slime was weak, it had the ability to store so much mana that it could have become the strongest over the years.

It was wrong.

A slime could not reach the strongest.

This was because it was a mutant black ooze that could take in anything and "absorb" its properties.

It was a special one because it had absorbed humans and gained knowledge from them.

Thousands of people. It had taken in thousands of people, inhabiting their will, and continued to listen to thousands of voices―― it was a "collective" that could not be called an individual.

It was a monster who thought thousands while Leticia was thinking as an individual.

That was what the Black Ooze could do.

The wall of mucus that had covered the hallway shrunk. It returned to its original, small slime shape.

“............”

Leticia didn't move. She could not move.

The damage from the magic was gone. But she could not move her legs. Her mind was stunned.

Like a small animal being stared at by a huge beast, her body didn't move. It refused to move.

Just when she thought that the small slime in front of her was an incredibly huge creature, the small slime exploded again from the inside.

"Kuh!?"

The reason she was able to quickly create a barrier of mana around her despite her body could not move was due to her intuition and experience fighting the Demon King.

In the next moment, Leticia had intended to use the barrier to prevent the impact from the slime's explosion but the barrier was absorbed, just as it had absorbed the magic she had released earlier and was swept away.

The Black Ooze had decompressed its mass to the point where it covered the hallway. The reason why it made itself look small was to deceive anyone who encountered it that it was just a small slime.

Now it decompressed just like a beast to intimidate its opponent by making itself look bigger.

However, beasts and people were different.

Beasts were driven by instinct, while people were driven by thought.

If the opponent looked weak, they let their guard down, and if the opponent looked strong, they were cautious. As an example, the knight commander earlier. He lost his life in an instant because he was careless and arrogant.

The thoughts of that knight commander also existed inside the Black Ooze. As one thought, It was informed of Leticia's behavior, habits, and such.

"Guh, ghh, boh――khh, nhh!?"

Leticia couldn't understand what was happening. Not only had the barrier disappeared, but now she was being 'pushed' down the hallway.

An incredible amount of mucus overflowed from the slime, which was only a size that could fit in the palm of a hand, washed away Leticia.

She tried to think of a way to endure it, but she could not hold on, and the momentum was too strong for her to grab the wall.

The black sludge took her just like a small boat in a stormy sea, and with her momentum, she crashed with her back into the stone wall at the end of the hallway.

"Kaha"

She coughed out the oxygen from her lungs due to intense pain.

She stared at the black sludge pressing her against the wall as she struggled to keep her dwindling consciousness together.

But that was all.

She could not use magic with her wavering consciousness, and her arms and legs weren't listening to her.

The entire hallway was swallowed up in black sludge, but Leticia's arms and legs were attached to the wall by the slime's shackles.

After a while, Leticia was out of breath from the rough black waves, the waves that had been flowing in the hallway finally stopped.

After a few moments, it returned to its original small slime form.

Leticia didn't know it, but that was the size of the Black Ooze when it first absorbed livestock. It was the size it had been when it was a pure monster, just before it absorbed humans.

It was uncertain that the Black Ooze as an individual had any thoughts or feelings about this.

However, the Black Ooze revealed itself in front of Leticia as a "monster" and moved to her feet with slow movements.

"What――"

Leticia looked down at the slime, could not even finish her words.

The black sludge that covered the hallway had disappeared, but the shackles that bound her hands and feet were still in place.

She was a magician, and that kind of restraint was too easy for her to break free.

Even though her energy was drained greatly, she still had plenty of mana left to fight back.

But―― the scene from earlier, her own magic being neutralized in a way she could not understand.

As a magician, Leticia was afraid of that and was unable to use her magic carelessly.

(I need to see what my opponent is up to and make sure I finish it quick.)

No matter how strong Leticia was, her mana was limited.

If that was the case, then she would observe its abilities first and hit it using all the mana she had left but making sure that she could kill it before firing it. With this in mind, she tried to regulate her disordered breathing.

Meanwhile, the Black Ooze arrived at Leticia's feet, who was stuck to the wall.

The white dress that she was wearing stuck to her body as it absorbed the liquid from the black mucus, emphasizing her ample breasts, curvy waist, and graceful legs.

The white dress was so wet that it revealed the color of the skin underneath, and the pure white underwear that the dress hid could be seen through it.

Her breasts moved up and down in time with her wild breathing, her beautiful silver hair was wet and was sticking to her cheeks, and her long legs were moving slightly in an attempt to escape her restraints.

The Black Ooze did not move, it was as though it was looking up at Leticia from her feet and observing her.

It was a sight that was more lewd and pleasing to the eyes of men than her being naked.

The Black Ooze, where dozens or hundreds of men's thoughts were gathered, must have had something in mind.

"Nothing is, coming...?"

Muttering so, Leticia first tried to freeze the mucus that was restraining her right hand.

This was the method that Fiana used to escape when she was caught in the abandoned mithril mine before.

Freezing and destroying the mucus on her wrists.

So this time, as soon as the shackles shattered, the tentacles restrained her wrist again and fixed her back to the wall agai