Late that night, Crimson Demon Village's peace was broken by a lifeless announcement over the broadcast system.
"Attention, all villagers. Ahem, the Demon King's Army has come to feed us kills again. I repeat, the Demon King's Army is attacking again. Anyone who wants to farm experience, please gather at the village entrance. Anyone who doesn't, please roll over and keep sleeping. You still have laundry to hang tomorrow morning, after all."
Kōichi rubbed his bleary eyes and pushed open the door, only to find Kazuma Satou, Aqua, Megumin, and Darkness already gathered in scattered clumps in Yunyun's yard.
The occasional explosion sounded from far away. That was the Crimson Demon Clan villagers using high-level magic as bedtime fireworks.
"Yaaawn… The Demon King's Army again?" Kazuma let out a long yawn, with a bit of sleep still crusted at the corner of his eye. "Hey, Kōichi, should we go help? Though I feel like even if we do, we'll just end up as random background characters who can't even get a hit in."
Kōichi watched a few Crimson Demon Clan aunties in pajamas stroll leisurely toward the village entrance, staffs in hand, and waved helplessly.
"Forget it, Kazuma. With these villagers' combat power, if the Demon King's Army gets in, they'll probably just become someone's midnight snack or experimental materials. Let's go back to sleep."
"I agree." Megumin hugged her staff and headed back into the house without even turning around. "A minor incident like this would not even trouble my fated rival Yunyun. Right, Yunyun?"
"I'd love to say, 'Leave it to me,' but… yes, everyone does seem pretty used to it."
Yunyun smiled awkwardly.
Just as everyone turned to split up and go back to their rooms, something changed.
A thick red mist, carrying a sickeningly sweet smell, instantly swallowed the courtyard.
Kōichi felt the ground beneath his feet suddenly turn soft as a swamp. The next moment, countless dark red, slick, sucker-covered tentacle-like things burst wildly out of the shadows.
"What the hell?! Tentacles?! Could this be what I've always dreamed of… No, wait! Let me go!"
Before Kazuma Satou could even put on that perverted look of anticipation, his whole body was tightly wrapped in an indescribable mass of red flesh and yanked violently into the air.
Kōichi did not escape either.
He felt an incredibly strange sensation. The thing felt like warm skin and cold rubber at the same time, tightening around his waist and arms before forcibly lifting him into the air, leaving him hanging side by side with Kazuma.
"Heh heh heh… I've finally caught you two, you vile otherworlders who defiled my purity!"
The red mist scattered, and a figure slowly appeared. It was a fusion of many monster traits, with an outrageously voluptuous body and a terrifying pressure radiating from it.
Sylvia had completely broken free of her restraints. She spread her arms wide, staring at Kōichi and Kazuma with a gaze that was both deranged and fanatical.
"Sylvia?! You actually snuck in?!"
Sylvia laughed coldly, her seductive lips curling slightly. She stretched out that indescribably long tongue and flicked it past Kōichi and Kazuma's cheeks.
"Did you think hiding in Crimson Demon Village would make you safe? Now… both of you are my trophies! I'll take you back to the Demon King's Castle and turn you into the finest specimens. I'll keep you by my bedside every day, so you can spend eternity repenting for what you did to me!"
"Wait! Sylvia-san!" Kazuma Satou struggled desperately against the sticky bindings, his face flushing red. "If we have to repent, could we maybe do it in a gentler way? Like… Huh? Wait, Kōichi, do you feel that? This thing wrapped around us… doesn't it feel a little… too hard?"
Kōichi was being choked by one of Sylvia's tentacles, and with great difficulty, he turned his head to look at Kazuma. Then he looked at Sylvia's bizarre half-male, half-female body structure, and his mind suffered a massive blow.
"Kazuma… if you mean that extra part… I feel it. This isn't indescribable anymore. This is a major crisis in the most physical sense!"
A twisted look of pleasure spread across Sylvia's alluring face. She could feel the two men caught in her tentacles trembling slightly, though it was more from mental shock than fear.
She suddenly tightened that shockingly rigid tentacle and let out a shrill scream.
"All of you, step back! Especially you, the little brat with the staff! And you, the sniveling Arch Priest! If any of you move, or even try to chant half a syllable, I'll grind these two into meat paste! Oh, no. First, I'll use this perfect body of mine to show them true bliss before they breathe their last!"
Megumin, who had been ready to fight with everything she had, and Aqua, who was about to cast purification, instantly froze in place.
Darkness, her face flushed and her breathing heavy, took a small step forward.
"Th-that kind of bliss… Please, allow me to take their place…"
"Shut up! Don't get horny at a time like this!" Kazuma Satou roared tearfully, his body pressed tight against Sylvia's bizarre torso. "Kōichi! Help! Something keeps poking my lower back! It's moving! It's really moving!"
Kōichi closed his eyes and forced himself not to think about what it was.
Sylvia burst into wild laughter. Her serpentine lower body suddenly pushed off with force, carrying the two captives as a red blur straight toward the ruin gate on the back mountain.
In the blink of an eye, they were back before the metal gate engraved with Magic Killer runes.
Sylvia slammed Kōichi and Kazuma heavily onto the ground, but her tentacles still locked tightly around their necks.
She turned toward the shut gate, frowning in frustration.
Embedded in the center of the gate was a faintly glowing stone slab. Instead of some complex magic circle, it had a neat row of rectangular buttons with a strangely industrial design.
Above the buttons was a line of ancient text that looked completely incomprehensible to people from this world.
"Damn it… Is this the legendary seal code?" Sylvia gritted her teeth, her finger hesitating above the buttons. "Those Crimson Demon Clan lunatics actually made something this important into a physical lock. What does this ancient incantation say? My true name? The prelude to destruction?"
Kōichi and Kazuma Satou lay side by side on the ground, and both of their gazes landed on the stone slab at the same time.
For a moment, the air seemed to freeze.
Kōichi rubbed his eyes, making sure he was not hallucinating from lack of oxygen.
What was engraved there was not an incantation at all. It was perfectly standard Japanese katakana.
The prompt above read: [Please enter the administrator command to disable safe mode.]
And the characters on the row of buttons were: [↑] [↑] [↓] [↓] [←] [→] [←] [→] [B] [A].
"Hey, Kōichi." Kazuma's previously pale face suddenly turned extremely strange. He lowered his voice, his tone carrying an absurdity that transcended time and space. "Do you see that? That… ancient incantation."
"Yeah, I see it." Kōichi nodded with lifeless eyes. "And unless I'm mistaken, the guy who created this ultimate weapon was definitely a hopeless hardcore gamer. This isn't some world-ending password. It's the damn Contra thirty-lives cheat code!"
"I'm not even surprised something like this showed up here." Kazuma sighed, then a sharp glint flashed in his eyes. "But… since we're the only ones who understand the code, does that mean we have control of this weapon now? Kōichi, should we tell this busty chick with the extra equipment?"
Sylvia was still there tearing at her hair in frustration. She even tried brute-forcing it, only for the gate to bounce back a flash of electricity that numbed her arm.
Furious and embarrassed, she turned and shouted at the two of them.
"You two! Since you're Reincarnators, you must know what this says! Translate it for me right now! Otherwise, I'll shove this tentacle into your mouths!"