I opened my eyes to the sound of shouting accompanied by Allurie’s giggling. I sat up naked from the spot I logged out on the floor, and I realized that I had forgotten to tell Zarra that they needed to fix the login sequence so that I would come into the game with my clothes on.
The silver-haired elf woman still sat on top of the boxes, but she clutched onto my clothes as if they were a stuffed animal. There was a banging noise, and the stacks of crates she sat on vibrated a bit. The girl laughed as soon as the crates shook, and the voices on the other side of the door shouted again.
Artus was leaning against the crates as if he was holding them up, and his cat eyes opened as soon as he saw me.
“Leo!” he gasped.
“Leo! Yay! You are naked!” Allurie was suddenly crawling all over me, and I felt one of her hands slide down my stomach toward my penis.
“No! Stop!” I said as I smacked her hand away before she could touch my dick.
“They found us! Where did you go?” Artus pulled my attention back to the crates as another bang sounded through the room.
“How did they find you?” I asked my friend as I tried to peel the elf woman off of me. She had made another two attempts to touch my penis, and I managed to restrain both of her wrists with my left hand. She had wrapped her legs around my left thigh, though, and I was having a hard time prying her off with my right hand. She was crazy strong for how thin she looked.
“I’d give you three guesses, but you’ll probably only need one,” the cat-man sighed, but then he growled when the door past the crates made a breaking sound.
“Allurie? Damn it,” I said, and Artus nodded.
“Huh?” She seemed confused.
“Did you alert the guards?” I asked as I managed to finally pry her legs loose. She didn’t really weigh that much, and I was able to keep her away from me by holding her wrists above her head with my longer arm.
“I got so bored. Artus wouldn’t even talk to me, or mate with me. I cleaned up the whole room also. When I heard the guards try the door, I asked them if they wanted to come in and mate with me.”
“And then they shouted through the door to ask if you were alone,” the fenia growled.
“And I just had to tell them about how mean Artus was to me. I think they agree!”
There was another smashing sound behind the crates, and I guessed that the door had finally given up its struggle. I looked around to see what our options were; the room actually did look as it is had been dusted, and the crates had a nice polish to them.
“But now you are here, Leo! I don’t think I need the guards anymore. I’ll tell them you are going to mate with me, so they can leave.”
“No!” Both Artus and I yelled as the girl opened her mouth to shout toward the door. I moved my right hand to cover her lips, and she started licking the palm of my hand.
“I need to get my clothes on and then we have to get out of here,” I told Artus, and the fenia nodded. I noticed that his health bar was a little closer to halfway full, and his face wasn’t as beat up as it had looked a few hours ago.
It sounded like the guards were tearing into the first of the crates. I guessed that they had axes, or maybe mallets.
“Awww,” Allurie pouted as I pulled my wet palm away from her mouth.
“Can you stop thinking about sex for a few minutes and help?” I wanted to throttle the pretty girl.
“Oh, I can do that,” she nodded with a smile. “I love helping! What should I do?”
“I need my clothe--” A piece of the crate shot across the room, and I saw the edge of an axe blade emerge from the side of the wood box.
“They are coming! Get behind me,” I gestured to the door, and Artus scampered to the other side of the room.
“Help me by staying out of the way.” I gave Allurie a glare as I let go of her wrists. She frowned a little, and then jumped back to stand by the fenia as soon as the rest of the crate broke.
Then the first guard stuck his torso through the crate hole.
Allurie had left my weapon belt up on the top of the crates, but I couldn’t risk grabbing them at the moment. Instead, I sprinted the few steps toward the guard. The man saw me run toward him, but he looked down at my body with obvious confusion.
I guess being naked was going to give me a tiny bit of an edge.
The guard had a single-bladed axe in his hand, and he tried to free it from the side of the wood so that he could strike me with it. It was kind of a laughable attempt because I was only a few feet away from him when he poked his head through, and I had my arm pulled back to punch him when he got distracted by my nakedness.
My palm strike hit him right in the nose, and I felt the cartilage break easily. His head snapped back, and he fell away from the hole to crash into the group of guards behind him. There were five more of them, and they all let out a surprised shout, either from the impact of their friend falling into them, or because I was fighting them while naked.
I thought about climbing through the hole to beat on them while they were confused, but the other four men carried short swords, and I didn’t like the odds of fighting them in the hallway with no weapon and no armor. If I made a single mistake, I could get cut, or even be forced to respawn in twenty-four hours if I died. Then it would definitely be the end for Artus.
I took a step back from the hole and made a jump toward my sword belt on top of the stack of crates. I had to push off with my bare foot on the part of the wood so that I could get more distance, but I managed to snag the leather belt before I landed back on the stone floor.
“Wow! Leo, you are so strong! You jump so high! You are wonderful!” Allurie cheered from her spot in the corner.
The axe took a bigger piece out of the crate as I yanked one of my short swords free of the belt. They were trying to make it so that they could just charge into the room instead of having to step through the hole. It was a good idea, and I had to give it to the AI for being so quick to think of a tactical solution. There had been way too many cases of poor monster pathing in Astafar Unlimited that created a situation where players could kind of exploit the system and do damage to monsters without them counter attacking. I almost thought I would have run into the same situation here, where the guards would just keep sticking their heads through the hole like a bunch of idiots, and I could defeat them all easily by using my whack-a-mole skills.
I moved toward the destroyed crate side, and shoved my sword at the guard wielding the axe. The man had been prepared for my attack, and he kind of blocked my thrust with the haft of his weapon. He wasn’t prepared for my skill, though, and as he pushed my sword away, I slid the blade downward. The edge connected with his hand, and I sliced off all four of the man’s gloved fingers.
“Ahhhhh!” he screeched as he dropped the axe. The other guards dashed toward the hole through the door and crate so that they could protect him, but the space was too small for them all to fit, and they kind of got tangled up with each other. I saw an opportunity to strike again, so I leaned into the hole a bit and shoved the short sword I had just used to cut his fingers off into his unarmored throat.
Blood sprayed from the man’s wound, but I managed to dodge back into the room before any of it got on me, or before the other guards could cut me with their swords. These men hadn’t expected any resistance, and I guessed that they were either newly trained guards, or just the unskilled ones who didn’t have patrolling duty outside of the city.
“Yay, Leo! You are so wonderful! I love you!” Allurie cheered from the other corner of the room, and I noticed her jumping up and down as if she was at her favorite music concert.
“Go get help!” one of the guards in the hallway yelled, and I sighed to myself. I didn’t think I could take out four guards at once, but the doorway and crate combination were giving me a tight bottleneck to control. I couldn’t continue to hold against twice as many warriors.
I shot a glance over at the door with the ancient words on it. What kind of monsters could the writing mea
n? Are they talking about level one goblin style monsters? Or armies of death knights controlled by a godlike dracolich? Would we be able to find another path out of the castle if we went through the door? Would it eventually lead us out of the city? How long would we be gone? Did Allurie or Artus need food?
Would the guards follow us through the door?
“Artus, unlock that door. It is the only way for us to get out of here,” I said to my friend in an urgent whisper.
“Grrr. This is a bad idea,” he said as he grabbed the keys that hung on the wall.
“A worse idea is dying here,” I said to him. “Allurie, get those three emberbrands off of the wall.”
“Yes, Leo!” the elf girl shouted and then ran to the wall where the nearest magic torch was kept.
I peered around the side of the crate, and saw that the group of guards had taken a step back from the doorway. One of them jumped at me with a sword thrust, but I knocked the weapon aside with the flat part of my own blade and then carved a piece out of his forearm through his armor. He screamed, and dropped his weapon, but fell back into the hallway before I could kill him.
I heard shouting down the distant hallway and kind of crouched down a bit so that I could see farther past the guards.
The hallway was filled with armored figures, and I saw a few polearms in the mix.
“How is that door looking?” I whisper-shouted to Artus.
“On the third lock. Sorry. It isn’t clear which key goes in which hole.”
“Ohh! I can help putting stuff in ho--”
“Shut up!” Artus and I yelled at Allurie.
Our shouting seemed to have aggravated the guards in the hallway, and one of them jumped into the crate bottleneck so that he could make a chop at the wooden sides. He cleaved a giant section away from the wood, and there was now little beyond the doorway jamb that was keeping us protected. The guards were still in the hallway, and I shot them all a glare as I took a squared position in front of the entrance.
“Bring it, motherfuckers,” I growled at them as I readied my fighting stance. The remaining guards looked at my weapon, and then down at my naked body, and then at each other.
Then they looked down the hallway at the approaching horde of their friends before they glared back at me.
“It is open, Leo!” Artus shouted.
The guards seemed to realize we were going to try running through the door, but they also couldn’t seem to agree on who was going to jump into the room and fight me first. I took a step back toward the door Artus had just opened, and then one of the braver guards kind of inched out of the hallway toward me. Then I stepped forward toward them, and the same man danced backward with terror.
“Leo! It locks on the inside!” Artus shouted, and I glanced over my shoulder at the opened door. It looked as if my friend was prepared to slam it shut as soon as I ran through.
I sprinted toward the door as the rest of the guards arrived.
My left hand scooped my sword belt as I ran, and I heard a bunch of boots follow me into the room. Artus’ feline eyes grew wide, and he opened his mouth to shout, but I jumped through the doorway before he could get his warning out. Allurie stepped in my way as soon as I leapt through, and I had to fling my short sword out of my hand so that it didn’t accidentally impale her. We both tumbled together, and I twisted her around me so that I wouldn’t fall on top of her slender body. It meant that my bare ass took most of the impact of the stone floor, and I let out a yelp of pain when the shock resonated through my tail bone.
I heard a twisting of keys in locks and then a pounding on the door as the guards screamed for our heads.
“Oh, Leo. Finally…” Allurie sighed as she squirmed on top of me. I didn’t know how it was possible, but the elf girl was naked, and she had been wearing her clothes not even half a second ago when I had accidentally tackled her.
“Ack! Get off of me.” I grabbed her by the shoulders and twisted my hips to the side so that my penis wouldn’t accidently touch her where she wanted.
“But don’t you like me? You promised that--”
“Stop! We have more important things to do.” I managed to free one of my legs from under her, and I used a combination of ju-jitsu and groin protecting movements to escape from under her mounted position.
“This door is really thick, but it won’t last long against an axe,” Artus said as he finished locking the fourth deadbolt on the door.
“Okay, we need to figure out where we are and then get back to Jerjay’s place.” I looked around the room we had escaped into. It was about the same width as the room before, but it was fifty feet long. The end of the room had a thick metal gate over a stairway leading downward. This looked like a classic video game dungeon dive, and I wished I would have had time to prepare some equipment before I did my first quest in one.
“Stop,” I said to Allurie as I smacked her hand away from my crotch. She was kneeling naked on the tile at my feet and was reaching for my penis while she licked her lips. “Can you put your clothes on?”
“Awww, why?” she asked with a pout.
“Because of all those assholes trying to kill us, and the dungeon filled with monsters we are about to fight through so that we can escape?” I tried not to look at her while I talked. The game had done a really damn good job at designing her body, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Zarra’s VRIU gave my erection feedback into the game. The last thing I needed was for Allurie to see me get a boner. I didn’t have time for that shit.
“Awww. Well, if you say so, but it does seem like the perfect time for us to ma--”
“Where are my clothes?” I asked as I smacked her hand away from touching my penis again.
“Oh. They are in that room on top of the crate where I left them.” Allurie pointed at the door with a big smile. “I can go get them for--”
“No!” Artus stood in front of the door and held his arms out.
“Why did you leave my clothes there?” I moaned as I covered my face with my hand. How did this girl even remember to breathe?
“Well I could only carry these three emberbrands, and you look really good fighting naked. I thought you’d rather stay that way. You didn’t tell me you wanted your clothes.” She smiled, and then licked her lips as she reached for me again.
“Fucking shit fuck.” I smacked her hand away. She was right. I’d been about to ask her, but then the guards had broken through. “Get your damn clothes on! Stop trying to touch me. We are not having sex right now! Do you understand?”
“Ohhh. I’m sorry, Leo. I don’t want to make you mad. I love you.” Allurie’s turquoise eyes filled with tears, and her lower lip started to quiver a bit.
“Ack. Damn. Don’t cry. Just stop. Ahh, shit. I’m sorry. It was my fault.” Tears streamed down the pretty elf’s cheeks, and she hugged her arms over her pert breasts.
“Grrrr. This is the problem with elves, Leo.” Artus shook his head sadly.
“Just… go put your clothes on, please. You did a good job getting those emberbrands. We are going to need them.” Allurie nodded at me and then reached for the neatly folded garments she had stacked next to us.
I turned away from the silver haired elf and pointed at the keys in Artus’ hands.
“I am praying that one of those keys opens that gate.”
“There are five keys on here, and four locks on the door. You’ve been lucky so far.”
“I can’t help but feel like my luck is about to run out,” I sighed to my friend as I looked at the dark stairway.
Chapter 19
The key did work in the gate lock, and I led the way down the staircase with one of the emberbrands in my left hand and my broadsword in my right. Allurie walked behind me with a torch in each hand, and then Artus brought up the rear. When we first started walking, I had given each of my two companions one of the emberbrands, but Allurie kept pinching my naked ass when I walked. So, I made Allurie carry both torches, that way she wouldn’t have a free hand to harass me wit
h. The fenia was still weak from his earlier beating, and he sometimes had to use a free hand to support himself against the wall.
There was another thick metal gate at the bottom of the stairs, but we opened it with the key and then locked it behind us.
“They are going to have a hard time getting through these gates without a locksmith,” I said as I eyed the lock on the gate. Just like the gate above, these bars were way too thick to break, and the only way I guessed they could get to us is by picking the lock.
I hoped none of the guards could pick the lock.
“Which way?” Artus asked as the three of us turned from the gate. The square stone room we were in had a crumbled wall opposite the gate, an alcove in the corner to the left closest to the stairs, and two doors on the far right wall.
I shivered and looked down at my naked body. Well, I wasn’t quite naked, I did have my sword belt on, but it was a bit cooler down here than it was on the floor above, and I guessed that some of the heat from the bathhouse waters had raised the temperature a bit there. I really needed some damn clothes, and we also needed to get out of here. Searching for treasure wasn’t much of a priority.
“Let’s look here first,” I said as I sheathed my sword and walked to the alcove to our left. It looked as if there had once been a door there, but it had gotten smashed to pieces. The room beyond the hole was tiny, maybe only a five foot wide by six feet deep, and a skeleton lay in the room. It was kind of propped up against the far wall, and its bony fingers wrapped around a rusted short sword. It looked as if it had once worn armor and clothes, but all of the cloth and leather material had kind of disintegrated into tatters. I guessed this might have once been an adventurer, but I couldn’t guess at the age of the ancient corpse.
There was a ring on the skeleton’s finger, and I reached down to pull it off. A quick examination of the thing told me that it was non-magical, and I went to put it in my pocket, then I remembered that I was naked and I slid it on one of my fingers next to the magical ring I had found off of the dungeon guards. The Gold Ring that gave me a +1 to Luck wasn’t actually on my finger, and I cursed. It must have fallen off when I logged out.
Lion's Quest: Undefeated: A LitRPG Saga Page 27