"Hngahhh...!"
Margaret let out a long, drawn-out moan, her waist arching sharply, the toes wrapped in her reinforced stockings snapping rigid as her whole body trembled uncontrollably.
Looking down at that flushed, beautiful face, her vivid flame-red hair spilled in disarray, faint traces of wetness lingering at the corner of her lips, her eyes rolling wildly. Wave after wave of violent mental shock left her mind a complete blank, and she had already fainted dead away.
Feeling the taut, lovely body in his arms gradually go limp, Leon's lips curved into a smile.
He gently pried apart those silk-clad legs still clamped tightly around him, and glanced to the side as if sensing something. There he saw Iri, her chest rising and falling more evenly now, having caught her breath at last, gazing at him with moist eyes brimming with unspent longing.
"Darling, I want more!"
Leon shot a look at the Demon Lord's Crest still flickering, and the corners of his mouth couldn't stop curling up like a madman's.
It's just a third round, isn't it? I could go solo with you like this all day long!
He roughly hoisted up Iri's legs, wrapped in torn black stockings, and answered with elegant composure from above.
"As you wish, my lady!"
Before the words had even finished, the unconscious Margaret's body twitched faintly, as if some memory had been stirred awake.
Clearly, her body had already been trained into an instinctive response.
...
While Leon was lost in his little paradise, Jeanne, dressed in an adorable onesie and fuzzy slippers, her blonde hair a tangled mess, was carving her way down to the seventh floor at lightning speed, Banner Lance in hand, slicing through everything like cutting melons and vegetables, as though no monster could stand in her path.
For Miss Holy Maiden, who had already reached Lv.3 and in her normal state could draw out the strength of a peak Lv.4, the seventh floor was nothing. Even the seventeenth floor would have made no difference to her.
If you really had to find a distinction, it might be this... in her current irritable mood, the monsters of the seventeenth floor could let her vent more of that irritation. To put it plainly, it would be more of a stress reliever.
Beyond that, it could also contribute a few trivial points of Excelia to the utterly clueless Leon, as well as... a certain hard-to-describe emotional value.
Squelch.
She punched a hole clean through a Killer Ant's skull, then drew the Banner Lance back with a blank expression and spoke coldly, in a clear, frosty voice, without even turning her head.
"No need to keep hiding. Come out."
"..."
"..."
The few guys crouched at the bend of the passage exchanged glances.
Spotted? They couldn't make sense of it.
With their skill at stealth and tracking, they truly couldn't fathom how this woman, who clearly didn't belong in the underworld whether by looks or bearing, had managed to find them.
They were professionals, after all!
"Heh heh, little lady. Since you've found us, there's no point staying hidden."
"Heh heh heh heh..."
The men toyed with their shortswords in a slovenly, careless manner, swaggering forward with utter shamelessness, gradually surrounding Jeanne from front and back.
The leader jerked his chin at his underling, who took the hint and raised his lantern a little higher. Then, by the light of the magic stone lamp, they finally got a clear look at Jeanne's stunning face.
A sharp intake of breath hissed between someone's teeth.
"Now that I look closely... this face, this bearing, this figure... she's a whole lot better than the usual goods!"
"Forget ordinary people, even the daughters of a typical noble house don't come close to her bearing!"
"Drag her back and sell her to a noble and we'll make a fortune!"
"That's right, I heard through the grapevine... lately there's some king from a remote little country who came to Orario to stock up!"
"Word is he loves playing with princesses!"
"He even treats it like a game, calls it 'The Princess's Downfall'!"
"Heh heh, this top-grade piece looks like she'll fetch even more than that Princess Lydia!"
These men actually spouted such arrogant nonsense right to her face.
They even sized her up out loud, getting right in her face, openly discussing selling her into slavery?
Jeanne slowly raised her eyes, her pale violet pupils sweeping across them.
One, two, three... seven in total.
Apart from the leader, who was Lv.3, the rest were all Lv.2. The makeup of this group gave Jeanne a slight pause.
A Lv.3, of all things? And from outside Orario? An assassin of the underworld? No, more likely the sort who handles certain unsavory jobs for hire. And what's more... to hire someone of this level, whoever's behind them must have paid a steep price!
At that thought, a cold light flashed through Jeanne's eyes.
No more words. She just moved.
Squelch!
Revelation, activate!
God's Resolution, activate!
Against scum like this, Jeanne showed no mercy. The moment she struck, it was with everything she had!
With strength rivaling a peak Lv.4, even the Lv.3 leader couldn't last a single exchange in her hands!
"Aaaaaaahhh...!"
The wild, jeering laughter turned in an instant into a shrill scream! As the cold gleam of the lance tip flashed and vanished, the bone-chilling wail cut off abruptly...
"Gah...?"
Watching the boss, who a second ago had been full of grand ambition, holding forth about ideals and the future, die at the speed of light, his five subordinates froze stiff as wooden chickens.
Only the one standing at the very back, after getting a careful look at Jeanne's face, shifted from flippant to grave, then suddenly understood, and finally dissolved into pure terror!
"Huh?"
"Boss?"
"B-boss... he's dead!"
"She... she she she she she..."
"She... she's the Holy Maiden, Jeanne d'Arc!!!!"
"?"
"I don't care what Holy Maiden or saint she is, this bitch killed the boss, didn't you all see it!"
"Everyone, attack, avenge the boss!"
Seeing the others hesitate, the ambitious second-in-command, his appetite swelling, immediately dangled a rich temptation:
"Use your heads! Now that the boss is dead, all we have to do is catch her and sell her to those great nobles, and the boss's fifty percent cut is all ours!"
"Pull off this one job and we're set for life!"
Under this slightly cleverer fellow's greedy goading, the men cast Jeanne's identity entirely out of their minds.
"So what if you're from Loki Familia or Freya Familia?"
"This is the Dungeon!"
"Even if we grab you, they'll never find us!"
"We're people of the underworld!"
"Once we're out of Orario, it's a wide-open sky for the birds to fly!"
"And besides..."
"It's six on one now, the advantage is mine!!!"
Jeanne's expression went cold.
"Interesting."
...
...
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