War God. There had once been heroes called by that name.
Bai Qi of the Qin state slaughtered over one and a half million enemy soldiers over the course of his lifetime. Han Xin annihilated armies of over a hundred thousand with a ragtag force of twenty thousand, toppling enemy nations in the process. A War God was one who waged wars so absurd they defied all common sense.
" A goblin scout has spotted enemies."
Laura rose to her feet. The girl born to become this world's War God was none other than the young woman before us.
Laura de Farnese. Born into a ducal house of the Kingdom of Sardinia, she was reduced to nothing more than a bed slave, yet after roughly ten years of biding her time in silent fury, she personally executed her master.
She was subsequently noticed by Queen Henrietta, whose eye for talent was second to none. Laura entered into a secret romantic relationship with the queen and began her meteoric rise through the ranks of the military high command.
On the surface it was clearly a case of nepotism, so the queen's courtiers looked down on Laura. Yet in her very first battle, Laura de Farnese crushed sixty thousand Habsburg troops with a force of just twenty thousand. From that point on, she began winning overwhelming victories even when outnumbered by the enemy.
If only the Hero hadn't existed, Laura would have remained an undefeated general.
A Hero who shattered strategy with tactics, who shattered tactics with duels. Only that nightmarish human weapon could stand against Laura de Farnese.
And though no one knew it yet, that very Hero was now under Dantalion's care.
"From this point on, I will dismantle the adventuring parties one by one."
There was no one left who could stand in Laura de Farnese's way.
She wore a garment of cloth so thin it might as well have been sleepwear — or rather, draped would have been the more accurate word. Of the snow-white fabric covering her body, far more was left exposed than concealed. The body of a girl on the cusp of turning eighteen was radiant as a white blossom just beginning to bloom.
Even during the months of Dantalion's absence, adventurers had occasionally invaded. Each time, Laura marshalled the goblins that had begun settling in the dungeon and repelled the intruders with ease. Roughly forty adventurers now lay dead along the cavern floor.
Those forty skulls had been kept separately by Laura and were stacked in a corner of the Demon Lord's chamber. It was a gruesome hobby far too dark for a girl her age, yet Laura would leisurely polish the bleached bones with a rag whenever she had free time.
The adventurers had been ignorant of two truths.
First, the classification of this place as a bottom-tier Demon Lord's Castle was long out of date. Second, every single adventurer who had infiltrated over the years had died without exception, which meant no one could report that the Dantalion Demon Lord's Castle had been upgraded in rank.
As the price of their ignorance, Laura's personal collection was about to gain a staggering one hundred and fifty new skulls.
"Blinga. I'm counting on you again today."
*Grrrk.*
Dantalion's first monster, a lower-rank Goblin, nodded. This Goblin served as a messenger between Laura and the monster soldiers.
Laura spoke.
"First, we repel the adventurers who entered Alpha Sector 31. Block them with Goblin Third Platoon. After that, retreat to Alpha Sector 11 and launch a surprise attack with the ambush squad."
*Grrk.*
Blinga snapped to attention and gave a military salute.
Blinga immediately relayed the orders through the Magic Crystal Orbs. Eighteen of them were lined up in a row on the table. Reports flowed in ceaselessly from the orbs, and Laura sat in silence, mapping out the grand strategy in her mind.
This was Laura's command center. She sat at the entrance to the Demon Lord's room, commanding the entire dungeon's forces.
The disadvantage of not seeing the battlefield firsthand. The disadvantage of real-time communication being impossible due to the language gap between humans and monsters. Despite these two enormous drawbacks, Laura de Farnese gave her orders without hesitation.
"The adventurers in Alpha Sector 23 should be dealt with by now. Second Platoon, move to Alpha Sector 12 immediately."
"The adventurers in Gamma Sector 13 aren't moving. They seem to be planning for a drawn-out fight, but ambush them from both corridors and annihilate them."
"Drive the fleeing adventurers in Beta Sector 12 further in, but don't wipe them out—just pursue. Make them run into the adventurers in Beta Sector 24. That will cause chaos."
The orders came so fast that Blinga struggled to keep up with relaying them.
A dungeon map was laid out in front of Laura, but she didn't even glance at it. The state of the battle was clearly imprinted in her mind. And in the corner of her thoughts, not just the map but numbers were written as well.
They were the approximate count of surviving adventurers.
Every time Laura issued another order, the numbers dropped by tens. Starting at 150, they slowly decreased—140, 130, 110. With her eyes closed, Laura subtracted the numbers with utter indifference.
Imprinted on those cold, clinical numbers were, of course, the desperate screams and blood of the adventurers.
At first, the adventuring party had been confident. They had superior numbers, after all.
It was more than enough force to clear what had been classified as a bottom-tier dungeon. They cut down the Goblins clustered in groups of three or four along the way and laughed, "This is nothing!"
When they passed through a narrow corridor and emerged into a wide clearing, the party thought, "Now we can finally have a real fight." About a dozen Goblins had gathered in the clearing. As long as they didn't let their guard down, they could repel them without taking any casualties.
Sure enough, after pushing forward for only about five minutes, the Goblin pack turned tail and fled.
"They're running! After them!"
"Today's the day we hit the jackpot!"
The ten-member adventuring party gave chase with excitement. Monsters instinctively flee toward a dungeon's core. If they followed these guys, they could reach the Demon Lord's chamber without worry of getting lost, all in one go. After a few minutes of pursuit, the party entered another clearing.
They thought they just needed to corner them a little more, and that's when it happened. Goblins poured out from another tunnel in the clearing. Caught off guard by the sudden ambush, the adventurers panicked. A few humans who couldn't react in time were struck down in an instant.
"Don't run! They're just Goblins!"
The party's leader shouted. They were a bit clumsy, but managed to form a defensive formation.
For Goblins, who were much smaller than humans, breaking through such a formation would be difficult. However, when fireballs came soaring from beyond the Goblins, the adventurers fell into utter chaos.
"M-Magic?"
"Goblins are using magic!"
Under the heavy guard of the Goblins, a monster was holding a staff. It was a <Goblin Shaman>, a monster that could be hired from Demon Lord Rank D and above. It cost a whopping 1,000 gold per unit, but Dantalion had spent the money generously.
"No way... You said this was a bottom-tier Demon Lord's Castle!"
"What were the scouts doing?!"
The investment paid off immediately. Upon learning the monsters had a mage, the adventurers' morale plummeted. In this era, ordinary people deeply feared beings who could wield magic freely.
Though the Goblin Shaman could only use fireballs, when an unlucky human was hit directly by one and caught fire all over, the adventurers' will to fight shattered. Most of them were rookie adventurers with little camaraderie anyway. They fled without hesitation.
"You idiots! If you retreat now, we're all dead! Dead!"
The party leader screamed hoarsely. He was already exhausted from chasing the Goblins. In this state, how much further could he even run!
Moreover, Goblins made up for their small size with superior endurance. If they kept running around like that, they'd be caught by the scruff of their necks and slaughtered! It was better to charge in desperately and kill the Shaman as quickly as possible.
"——Graaaagh!"
The party leader opened his mouth to convey that, but what came out was a scream. A fireball had engulfed him. He immediately rolled across the cave floor, but the flames didn't die down; instead, they blazed even fiercer.
"H-help me! I don't want to die!"
The leader reached out toward his companions. His hands were burning too. The adventurers paled at the ghastly sight, and even those who had been maintaining a defensive formation fled. They dashed back through the passage they had come from. The leader let out a horrifying scream.
"You bastards — I'll get you for this! I'll —"
Soon his mouth and throat caught fire, and his screams dissolved into unintelligible gurgling. Moments later, all that echoed through the cave was the sound of flesh burning.
Kerack! Keraack!
The Goblins cheered as they chased down the fleeing remnants. In the clearing, only charred corpses remained, quietly burning for some time.
This same scenario played out throughout the dungeon.
Laura de Farnese had carefully lured the adventurers deep into the dungeon and then struck using every terrain advantage. Ambushed and beset by one Goblin shaman after another, the adventuring parties crumbled and fled in disarray.
Laura issued commands to her monster squads with impeccable timing. Across all thirteen ambushes, she never once mistimed a single order.
The Goblins felt as though they were hands and feet acting under the direction of a single body, slaughtering the adventurers with virtually no casualties of their own. Given that normally two or three Goblins would die for every adventurer killed, this was a staggering result.
After about an hour had passed.
"Fifty, then."
The number that surfaced in Laura's mind had reached fifty. Over a little more than an hour, she had slain one hundred adventurers. Meanwhile, out of two hundred and sixteen Goblins, only about twenty had fallen.
A kill ratio of one to five.
The eighteen-year-old girl who had so efficiently driven the invaders into hell simply stretched out with a satisfied yawn.
"Mmmhh—"
Right on cue, the crystal orb delivered a report that another thirty adventurers had been slaughtered.
"That leaves only the adventuring party where my lord is. Good work."
Laura reached over and stroked Blingi's head. Blingi was completely exhausted from relaying Laura's orders over and over. When the girl gently petted him, Blingi forgot his fatigue and let out a purring meow, like a cat.
"Really, my lord is so strange. He could have left everything to a young girl like me, but no — he insisted on seeing it all with his own eyes and jumped right into the midst of those adventurers."
— Kerur, ruruk.
"So you're saying it's because my lord is diligent? Hmm. Blingi, you've really got blinders on, haven't you."
Laura replied nonchalantly. Blingi, irritated, hopped up in a fury.
— Karurruk!
"Ah, I see. I see. My lord is a diligent person. This girl misspoke. I apologize."
— Kirurru.
Blingi nodded, seemingly satisfied.
Laura had grown somewhat accustomed to the Goblin language. While she couldn't speak it fluently yet, she could generally understand what the other party was saying.
She hadn't specifically studied Goblin. She had simply picked it up naturally from spending time together. She was becoming one of the exceedingly rare humans who understood Goblin — a human who knew the Goblin tongue. Given a little more time, she would probably start commanding monsters in Goblin, saying "Kerur" and "Kera."
"Then I shall issue my final orders. All squads in Zone Alpha, move to Alpha-4. If any adventurers who have managed to escape are spotted, eliminate them on sight. All units in Beta, move to Beta-0. And all units in Gamma, set up ambushes in Gamma-11 and Gamma-12."
Immediately, eighteen crystal orbs responded in unison with a "Kerurk!" The Goblin sorcerers led their respective squads according to the orders they had received through the crystal orbs.
Laura smiled with satisfaction.
"Mmm, this kind of work suits this girl far more than laws or whatever else. No matter how much Big Sister Lapis looks down on this girl, a servant has their own use, don't they? Big Sister Lapis handles domestic affairs. This girl handles military affairs. A fine division of roles."
She murmured to herself, nodding her chin.
"This girl is not stupid. Yes, this girl is not stupid."
Laura de Farnese — who would come to be called the military commander, or humanity's nightmare. To her, a single half-blood Succubus was far more terrifying than a hundred and fifty rugged adventurers……
============================ Author's Notes ============================
In Dungeon Attack, the player character has a parameter called "Lust." This value increases over time, and if you don't relieve it adequately, you'll suffer debuff effects in combat. The chance of being afflicted with status ailments like "Charm" or "Arousal" also increases.
It's already a high-difficulty game, so getting hit with these debuffs leaves you with no dreams or hope. The player must find some way to lower their Lust meter. The problem is that, except for the very endgame, no heroines have been fully conquered. In other words, the player has no choice but to press the "Go to the Brothel" command…….