Earth's SSS Pornstar to SSS Combat God in Another World-Chapter 28: Discovery of a Demonic Ritual

Kobto kept six pairs of rats in his pockets, each pair a male and a female. He had brought them on purpose.

In Kobto’s mind, a rat sent alone into silence could panic and bolt. A pair would not.

A male and female together would treat it like a couple’s excursion, brave enough to keep going.

He gave a piece of bread to each pair, a promise of safety and a meal afterward.

Two pairs ran back to the entrance, another pair stayed a good distance behind, watching for anything that moved in the rear.

The bravest pair went ahead, tails brushing together as they slipped into the dark like lovers on an adventure.

"Look at those rats, Alaric," Joji said, index finger pointing ahead. "They have a better love life than you."

Alaric squinted at him, then snorted and looked away.

Joking aside, Joji followed the blood trail. Small drips. It had to be from the dark mage that Alaric hit.

The rats followed it like a trail of crumbs, and the dungeon tried to punish them for it.

A small arrow trap snapped, aimed for a headshot. The rats were too low to matter, but the darts hissed past with honest intent.

Farther in, a pitfall waited with makeshift spikes below.

The rats hit soft soil below the spikes’ reach, and the pit yawned uselessly beneath them.

Kobto lowered a rope, retrieved them gently, then set them down again and let them lead the way once more.

The worst trap came next. A winding corner slick with oil, and above it a faint poison that waited to be breathed.

The rats skittered through fast enough to escape the worst of it.

A man would have slid, fought for footing, and filled his lungs while he flailed.

Then the corridor opened into a hall.

Alaric saw it and heaved. He turned and vomited the meal he had eaten earlier, bile and sausage spilling onto ancient stone.

He had killed before, in bandit nests and ugly little missions, but this was not that.

This was work. This was leisure made out of suffering.

Bodies and heads lay piled and arranged like inventory. Skin had been peeled away in places, and organs were spread out in wet heaps as if someone had been sorting meat for a market.

The air was thick with rot and iron and that sweet stench that clung to the back of the throat.

Joji did not flinch. Medical school had shown him horror in clean rooms with bright lights.

Still, this was worse in a different way. These people had not chosen any of it.

They had been taken, used, and discarded.

He patted Alaric’s back once, steady and quiet, then pushed them onward before the hall could root itself in their minds.

Walter was calmer than Joji expected. Disturbed, yes, but not panicking.

Joji caught the sadness in him, the same heavy look he felt, only carried in a merchant’s body that had not learned to hide it behind duty.

They reached a door. Blood drops still marked the floor here, smaller and fresher. Joji shoved the door open hard.

No one was inside. Mana stones lit the ceiling, cold light revealing a room crammed with paper.

Notes. Diagrams. Stacks of research, edges curled, ink dark with obsession.

Joji clutched Walter’s arm.

"Don’t be clumsy," Joji said. "Don’t touch anything suspicious."

Walter nodded and began collecting with careful hands.

Joji picked up a tome and started to read.

It claimed demons were the true rulers of Primeria, that they had enslaved all races tens of thousands of years ago.

Then it spoke of the Pinnaclers, paragons across the eighty one orthodox jobs, humans and elves and beastmen and dwarfs and others, all burning their souls to fuel an artifact that transcended everything.

The machine gathered demons and trapped them inside its own world.

On the page, it sounded like madness written by a drunk prophet.

Yet Joji had heard enough to hesitate. Demonic ruins existed. People fought over them like starving dogs.

Ruins with bodies, strange tools, progress that did not fit the current age.

Joji lowered the book and looked at the table.

A small demon lay there, no bigger than Lilina. Mummified. Shrunken and leathery, parchment skin stretched over bone. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Brittle wings folded tight. Eye sockets hollow and death dry.

Its chest had been pried open. A hole gaped where the heart should have been.

The dark mage had already harvested it.

"Sir, Engine. Can I eat this?"

{Certainly. However, it holds no value to you, eaten in such a fashion.}

"What? Should I cook it or something?"

{Nay. This creature had been dead these ten thousand years. Time has bled it of what strength it once possessed, and it could preserve none of its power.}

{Yet if you can rouse it back to life, and then take and eat its heart, that would be of benefit.}

"Lowkey kinda sus, bro, not gonna lie, being that particular and all," Joji said.

{...}

In the room, another diagram waited on the table, pinned flat with a stone as if the paper itself might try to crawl away.

A plan. Not for a normal chimera. For an ultimate one.

It showed the head of a man on a red orc’s body, with a demon’s heart drawn in the center like a star meant to be worshipped.

Along the back ran a dorsal fin labeled infant desert dragonfish, a land dragon that lived in the deserts, a creature Joji had only heard of in passing and now wished he had not.

Alaric stared at the page and his face tightened.

"What kind of monster is that madman creating? What do you think?"

Joji only shook his head, because there was nothing clean to say.

Alaric’s fist clenched and aura leaked into his knuckles by instinct. He punched the table. The wood cracked and the papers jumped.

"How could this happen?" he snapped. Then his eyes flicked, sharp and mistrustful. "Could it be that Mistress Lacrosse is involved?"

"Calm yourself. Think carefully." He lifted a hand and pointed toward the next door, the one they had not opened yet.

"Behind that door might be that monster."

He paused and addressed the room without raising his voice.

"Pack up everything except that small demon and anything liquid. Hurry."

He looked at Walter.

"Walter, ask them what we do next. We cannot stay here too long," Joji said, delegating while pointing at Kobto, Kobluk, and Lilina to help.

They had come to investigate. They had found the reason. That should have been enough.

But if the mage had finished his project, then leaving now would mean losing both the intelligence and the chance to stop it before it walked out into Lacrosse.

Joji edged up to the door and peeked through. What his eyes saw on the other side was nothing he had expected.