This Isn’t an E*otic Game?

Two massive dragons collided midair, momentarily entangled in a furious struggle before breaking apart.
This was not a shock a human could possibly endure.
Old man Ban was still clinging tightly to Alcassas’s torso, but it wasn’t thanks to his own strength.

[Goddamn!! That impact was insane!!]
The psychic voice throbbed in Ban’s skull, making him grimace.
Corn.

If it weren’t for Corn’s telekinesis, Ban would’ve been flung off long ago.
Ban’s gaze dropped to the ground—toward the fallen Berserker Flame Dragon, Dalloran.
The body slam had hit hard. Dalloran was still groggy, flailing for a moment before it finally managed to push itself up.

Thick, dark-red fluid streaked across the red-scaled dragon’s torso, darker than its natural scales.
Human blood.
Several black mages stationed atop the Flame Dragon, casting reinforcement spells over its barrier, hadn’t been able to withstand the impact and were thrown off, their bodies ground into the dirt.
But that was just a few. A considerable number of black mages were still firmly attached to Dalloran’s body.

Ban’s eyes narrowed, locking onto one of them.
White hair.
A young face in contrast to it.

Handsome, but in a way that felt twisted—unnaturally so.
Ban’s fist clenched tight.
“Balam.”

The High Priest of the Cult of Arrogance.
Lucifer’s firstborn son.
Known as the strongest black mage in history.

And to the Hunters of the Labyrinth, a son of a bitch worse than any demon beast they’d ever faced.
Balam noticed Ban’s glare and offered him a slow, mocking smile.
The moment Ban saw that smile, he felt his blood boil.

“Do you remember my son and daughter-in-law? Do you remember the family you slaughtered?!”
With a roar, Ban yanked Alcassas into motion.
The white dragon rose to its full height.

Both dragons now stood on all fours, stalking each other across the ground.
The horns of both beasts sparked with power, a flash of light dancing between them—
And then, an explosion of magic.
From their Dragon Hearts—massive cores of mana beyond any ordinary mana stone.

And, aided by the horns that countered the Labyrinth’s magic-dampening effects, the dragons’ spells were just as potent as those of high mages on the surface.
Lightning rained down on both barriers. Flame and frost howled through the air.
After a flurry of ranged blasts, the two dragons charged headlong at one another.

Their foreclaws crashed into the other’s body, slamming with raw force.
The shock of it not only pierced through their barriers but violently shook their enormous bodies.
[If we keep going like this, we’re at a disadvantage!!]

Corn’s warning rang in Ban’s head.
[They’re reinforcing their barrier with black magic!! If we keep trading blows like this, our barrier’s gonna break first! If we fight them head-on, we lose!]
Magic spilled from the dragons’ horns, obliterating the surrounding terrain.

Every claw strike against the barrier rang out like an artillery blast.
Both dragons’ barriers were beginning to crack.
But as Corn had warned, Alcassas’s barrier was in far worse shape.

Dalloran’s shield had fractures, yes—but Alcassas’s was on the verge of collapse.
At this ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) rate, they would lose.
Ban’s mind raced.

His eyes flicked sideways.
Not far off, a horde of beast-riding cultists was rapidly approaching the expeditionary camp.
The sight made Ban’s lips twitch into a fleeting grin.

“Hey, Pendant! Cast an illusion!”
[Illusion? What are you—...?]
“Alcassas’s specialty is illusion magic, right?! Cast it on the beast horde! Make them see the Flame Dragon as the enemy!”

Corn was silent for a moment… then let out a laugh before immediately issuing a psychic command to Alcassas.
The two dragons broke apart briefly, entering a short lull.
With the distance between them reopened, the Flame Dragon began inhaling again, preparing its breath attack—daring Alcassas to try and stop it.

But Alcassas didn’t ready a breath in return.
Instead—
It began channeling mana into its horn, preparing to cast illusion magic.

Not a quickfire spell—it required charge time. But illusion magic, compared to a breath, took far less time to cast.
[It’s done!!]
Just before Dalloran could unleash its breath, Alcassas’s horn lit up with a brilliant flash, triggering the spell.

Protected by black mages and Balam himself, Dalloran was unaffected by the illusion.
But the rest of the beasts weren’t so lucky.
The front lines of the beast horde, who had been charging toward the expedition, suddenly howled and swerved—diving straight at the Flame Dragon instead.

“What the hell?! What’s going on?!”
The Lucifer cultists riding atop the beasts, firing rifles at the expedition, shouted in panic.
They barked out frantic orders, trying to redirect their beasts back toward the humans.

But the monsters didn’t change course.
To them, the Flame Dragon looked like the enemy.
The wyverns were no different.

As if possessed—
They turned as one, roaring with fury as they dove toward Dalloran.
“L-Lord Balam! I can’t control—ahhhgh!!”

They didn’t care if their tamers lived or died.
The monsters and wyverns crashed into Dalloran’s barrier in a frenzy of suicidal assault.
Hundreds of beasts, uncaring for their own lives, slammed into the Flame Dragon’s body with deadly momentum. Its colossal frame shuddered violently.

The breath it had just been about to unleash collapsed with its focus shattered.
The sound of its cracking barrier could be heard even from afar.
“BREATH!!”

In that brief moment, as the Flame Dragon was completely surrounded by its own allies—
Alcassas inhaled deeply.
The Flame Dragon, scrambling to shake off its attackers, had no way to counter.

An arctic blast of ultra-low temperature shot from Alcassas’s maw, washing over the Flame Dragon.
And over the beasts gnawing on its barrier.
And the cultists riding atop them.

And the wyverns circling nearby.
In a single instant, they were encased in frost.
No screams.

Just the final expressions of their lives, frozen in place.
[Direct hit! Nailed it!]
“We’re not done yet! Pendant! It’s not dead!”

Ban had barely shouted the warning before Dalloran burst forth—shattering the frozen corpses that clung to its body.
It wasn’t unscathed.
The breath attack and the suicidal assault had left its barrier in tatters.

Ban grinned.
“Now we’re finally on even ground.”
The Flame Dragon roared.

A large number of beasts still charged toward the expedition.
Dalloran, trying to prevent another illusion from dragging in the rest of its forces, was barreling toward Alcassas at full speed.
It seemed to have abandoned its breath attack—easily interrupted—and opted for close combat and quickfire spells instead.

No more chances for illusion magic.
The Flame Dragon hammered Alcassas’s shredded barrier.
But this time, things were different.

“Your barrier’s in shreds too, bastard!”
Alcassas’s counterstrike crashed into Dalloran’s shield, making it screech and crack.
Both dragons now had barriers hanging by a thread.

Dalloran, hellbent on preventing another illusion, pressed the attack without pause. Alcassas, knowing that dodging now would let that fury hit the expedition instead, held its ground and fought back.
And as a result—
The full-body barriers of the two dragons shattered nearly at the same time—it was inevitable.

And the moment those barriers broke…
Even the most basic spells became deadly.
The Berserker Flame Dragon and Alcassas rained spells at each other.

Their scales blackened by lightning, their bodies scorched by extreme heat.
After a barrage of magic, the battle shifted into brutal close combat.
Razor-sharp claws slashed long wounds into flesh.

Blood sprayed. Screams echoed. Dragonfear burst forth from both sides as the two beasts tore into each other with savage fury.
Meanwhile, the remaining beast horde and wyverns had nearly reached the expeditionary camp.
The sharp bark of shotguns—meant for close-quarters, not mounted guns—began to echo, and the sound only made Ban feel more and more anxious.

If they could just manage one more breath attack to wipe out the rest of the beast horde.
If only they had time for one more illusion spell—it would completely turn the tide.
But neither the Flame Dragon nor Balam was going to allow that.

Illusion magic wasn’t instantaneous.
It required time to cast.
So did a breath attack.

And it was clear the Flame Dragon wasn’t going to give them even a second of that time.
The two dragons continued firing spells and swinging their foreclaws, locked in combat.
The vicious battle didn’t last long.

It ended.
With a roar, the Flame Dragon sank its teeth into Alcassas’s long neck.
Blood burst out as the neck was nearly half-torn apart.

Alcassas shrieked, slashing wildly with its foreclaws.
The massive claws dug deep into the wound on Dalloran’s chest—straight toward its heart.
One dragon clamped down on its foe’s neck.

The other gripped its enemy’s heart.
And nearly simultaneously—
The heart and the throat both ruptured.

A sickening crack—and the light vanished from Alcassas’s eyes.
The Flame Dragon, too, didn’t even have time to roar in victory. It staggered once, then collapsed heavily to the ground.
The Eastern King and the Western King fell at the same moment.

[Danger!!]
But though the dragons were dead, the battle wasn’t over.
The fighting between the expedition and the remaining beast horde was intensifying.

Gunfire rang out, followed by the thunder of booby-trapped explosives detonating.
And Ban had no time to rest, either.
A black magic bolt grazed his head just as Corn’s psychic scream tore through his mind.

If Corn hadn’t redirected it with telekinesis at the last second, his skull would’ve exploded.
Ban immediately leapt down from Alcassas’s corpse and grabbed his auto-shotgun.
“How many black mages left?”

[Five. Including Balam.]
“Five against one old man with a shotgun. Not exactly a fair fight.”
He was going to die.

Chances were overwhelmingly high.
But Ban grinned.
“Hey, Pendant!”

[A-Are we fighting?!]
“I’m not trying to die. I’m going back to the expedition camp. The problem is, this shotgun probably won’t work on those bastards.”
He gave the charging handle a quick pull to check that a shell was properly loaded into the chamber. Then he took a deep breath.

“You. You can use telekinesis, right? Can you accelerate the shotgun slugs enough to punch through their barrier spells?”
[I think I can.]
“Good. That’s all I need.”

Ban braced the shotgun to his shoulder and moved around Alcassas’s body.
When he reached the tail, he flexed and clenched his sweat-slicked hands several times, gauging the distance between himself and the expedition’s defensive line.
“Bentley. Ash. If I die… come greet me, alright?”

[Don’t say stuff like that, old man! Just live!! Please don’t let me fall into the hands of a black mage!!]
“I’ll do my best. Now… here I go!!”
Ban broke into a full sprint, launching from the tail of Alcassas.

Expecting black magic to come flying at any second, he pointed his shotgun toward the Flame Dragon’s corpse and ran for his life.
Corn was on edge, fully focused, ready to telekinetically accelerate the shot at any moment.
But—

No matter how far or fast Ban ran…
No black magic came.
[What…? What are they doing? Why…?]

Balam and the remaining black mages were moving rapidly—approaching the corpses of both Dalloran and Alcassas.
They didn’t even spare Ban a glance.
As if he wasn’t even on their radar.

Balam briefly turned to glance at Ban as he sprinted for the expedition’s line.
He offered a strange little smile—and waved.
Ban didn’t look back long enough to see what it meant.

[The expedition!!]
Corn’s scream pulled Ban’s attention to the camp.
An enormous number of beast corpses littered the outskirts—they hadn’t even reached the wall.

A slaughter. The kind of massacre one might call miraculous.
But it hadn’t been for nothing.
The outer wall of the camp had collapsed.

Shotgun blasts, black magic eruptions, and beast roars created a chaotic cacophony.
Ban gritted his teeth.
“Please… Please!!”

Let even one more survive.
It was a vain hope, but he still prayed no one else had died.
Ban ran like a madman.

With endurance that didn’t belong to an old man, he charged all the way to the expedition’s battered defense line.
“Pendant! Accelerate!!”
[On it!!]

Ban opened fire with the auto-shotgun built by his grandson.
The 10-gauge slugs tore through the beast shields—and the flesh behind them—in a single, deafening roar.