"You're a sore loser, you know that?"
Li Ke couldn't help but voice his complaint as he glared at Tsunade.
The reason was simple. In their previous battle, he was on the very brink of victory!
But then, Tsunade had gone ahead and activated the Yin Seal.
The massive reserve of chakra she had stored up instantly replenished her physical stamina. Furthermore, because chakra is a combination of physical and spiritual energy, it completely refreshed her mental state as well.
What followed was a frustrating display of her having terrible technique but an absurdly high health pool.
The most ridiculous part, however, was how her body reacted whenever she drew chakra from the Yin Seal. Her torn boundaries would instantly mend themselves. The pathways Li Ke had painstakingly cleared would revert to their original, pristine state. This forced him to expend a massive amount of physical and mental energy all over again, ultimately leading to his utter defeat.
After all, as an ordinary human from Earth, his stamina had its limits. He couldn't just eat food infinitely to recover, so it was only natural that he ended up losing.
There was simply nothing he could have done about it.
"That's your own fault for being so weak!" Tsunade countered.
She was absolutely never going to admit that she had activated the Strength of a Hundred Seal in a fit of pique just because she didn't want him to look down on her.
"You just hated the idea of losing, didn't you?" Li Ke snorted, calling her out again.
"Shut up! (Urusai!)"
Frustrated and feeling guilty, Tsunade shouted defensively. She snapped her head away, refusing to look at him, and aggressively went back to digging the ground. She was clearing the terrain just so they could last a little longer next time.
Li Ke dropped the subject. He actually had a specific reason for bringing it up in the first place.
My Energy Points went up...
Looking at his system interface, Li Ke fell into a silent contemplation.
While they were at it earlier, he had noticed a shift. The Energy Points he gained per session were no longer capped at 25—it had increased to 30.
They had just gone at it ten times, netting him a grand total of 300 points. At this rate, even if he had to pace himself for the sake of his lower back and overall health, he would have enough to send Tsunade back home in just a few days.
To be precise, it was the unique sensation of taking her "first time" that yielded so much.
Even though this physical restoration was purely a passive byproduct of her medical ninjutsu, there was no denying that Tsunade had begun to develop some complicated feelings toward Li Ke. After all, being sent to cloud nine by him that many times was bound to stir up some complex emotions.
On top of that, she was fundamentally a traditional woman at heart, making her inner conflict even more delicate.
If Li Ke were currently in the world of Naruto as a powerful shinobi or a wealthy landlord of the Land of Fire, he could probably find a way to marry her.
Unfortunately, this was a bizarre situation born from a highly specific environment. Even if Li Ke entertained the thought, Tsunade wouldn't.
"So, should I tell her the truth?"
Li Ke swung his iron pickaxe, weighing the options in his mind.
While Tsunade's body was incredibly pleasurable and highly practical for survival, and Li Ke was genuinely addicted to it, keeping her trapped in this desolate world forever would be a massive cruelty.
Pausing to catch his breath, Li Ke felt a wave of hunger wash over him from the massive drain on his body's nutrients. He looked up at the sky and let out a helpless sigh.
"I really hope the next batch of girls are a bit more... easygoing," he muttered.
Rias Gremory might seem easygoing on the surface, but she only reserved that side of herself for people she deemed valuable. And Lux went without saying—she was a pure, innocent little princess. If something like that happened between them... she would probably find it impossible to accept.
"It feels a bit scummy to admit, but I really need a few girls from everyday, slice-of-life worlds to show up. That way, I can finally level up my skills safely."
Li Ke scratched his head and sighed. But then, a thought suddenly struck him.
"Come to think of it... where did those two actually go?"
He couldn't help but wonder where the newcomers had run off to.
And right as he was bringing them up, the two newcomers were busy cursing his name.
…..
"Damn it... This is nothing like what that guy said! It's not that simple at all..."
Rias glared at the dense horde pooling before her. Her beautiful eyes narrowed as she stared at the zombies. They were radiating an ominous green energy, their eyes glowing with a sinister yellow light.
She was heavily out of breath and utterly at a loss. After leaving Li Ke's camp, her initial plan had been to use flight magic to take Lux on a scouting trip around the area.
But it didn't take long for everything to go sideways.
First, the mana consumption for her flight magic was abnormally high. To make matters worse, the moment she took to the skies, swarms of zombie birds materialized out of thin air.
These mutated birds launched themselves at them in relentless, suicidal waves. Even when she threw up a magical shield to protect them, the creature birds kept ramming it without a care for their own lives, continuously draining her mana with their sheer numbers.
Though her mana recovery rate wasn't slow, it couldn't keep pace with this ceaseless attrition. After flying for a mere five or six kilometers, she had no choice but to make an emergency landing at a factory below.
There were just too many zombie birds! The longer she stayed airborne, the larger the flock grew. She hadn't thought much of it at first, but by the time she realized something was wrong, the sky was practically black with them.
Her descent was a forced landing; she desperately needed a solid roof over their heads to wipe out the winged pests.
While up in the air, she had noticed that this particular canning factory still seemed operational. Believing she had successfully exposed Li Ke's lies about the world being entirely dead, she had immediately guided Lux down to the facility.
And that was when... everything went completely downhill.
Zombies! A never-ending sea of zombies!
The moment she used a fireball to blast open the locked main doors, the factory started vomiting out the exact same undead monsters Li Ke had warned them about. Not only that, but these creatures were in a state of absolute, hyper-aggressive feral rage. They surged forward in a dense, suffocating wall of flesh, leaving absolutely no room to breathe.
"Damn it! What the hell is wrong with this Shamway Foods factory?!"
Rias unleashed another fireball. The explosive blast sent a massive cluster of zombies flying, carving out a deep crater in the concrete floor.
Her ears weren't deceiving her—the machinery inside this factory was definitely still humming!
This meant that if there were actually living people running this place, those people were actively trying to get them killed by steering the horde right at them!
However, Rias was now running dangerously low on mana. Taking off and sustaining another flight like before was out of the question; doing so would completely drain her last remaining reserves. She was physically strong, but without her magic...
Beside her, Lux was leaning heavily against her staff, panting for breath. A flicker of fear crossed her face as she watched the monsters blindly trample over the corpses of their own kind, their frantic sprint toward them never slowing down for a second.
Taking a deep, stabilizing breath, Lux looked over at her companion. "Miss Rias, I can manage one more shot."
She had already unleashed several high-powered bursts of light magic. But even though each blast vaporized scores of undead, it was just as Rias feared—the zombies spilling out from the depths of this Shamway factory were practically infinite. The moment she cleared out a corridor, a fresh wave of monsters would instantly come sprinting out to fill the void.
Rias nodded, gritting her teeth as she watched the dense horde begin to pile on top of one another, forming a grotesque human pyramid. She made a tough executive call: they had to retreat to Li Ke's camp.
It was a massive blow to her pride, but looking foolish was infinitely better than letting her mana bottom out entirely in this hellhole.
"Get ready then," Rias commanded. "We're going to fly for a short burst to break out of here. If that man wasn't lying, these zombies should give up the chase once we put enough distance between us! Wait for my signal before you fire your light!"
She extended both hands, channeling her barrier and flight magic simultaneously. Lux immediately felt her body grow weightless again, but she didn't miss how Rias's complexion grew a shade paler from the strain.
Steeling her resolve, Rias swung her arms forward and hurled a massive fireball straight at the facility's exit. The blast tore open a temporary gap in the wall of flesh. Seizing the split-second opening, she shot through the clearing and surged into the sky, slamming right into the suffocating cloud of zombie birds waiting for them.
Abandoning any attempt to fight the winged creatures, Rias focused entirely on maximizing her speed, darting back in the direction of Li Ke's camp. But as she broke through the flock and glanced down at the landscape below, both she and Lux could only stare in wide-eyed horror.
Zombies. A sea of suffocating, swarming zombies. Countless undead were literally vomiting out from the depths of the Shamway Foods factory.
They shrieked and howled maniacally up at the sky, chasing the pair's shadows. Fortunately, unlike the airborne zombie birds, these ground-dwellers seemed to lose their aggro once Rias flew past a certain radius. After wandering aimlessly for a few moments, they turned around and shuffled back inside the factory complex.
"Thank goodness... otherwise, I really would have brought a disaster back with us," Rias breathed a sigh of relief. She looked back at the massive, sky-blotting swarm of zombie birds still tailing them, then flashed a reassuring smile at the young mage.
"Miss Lux, it's all on you now."
"Right!"
Lux, still completely oblivious to Rias's true identity as a devil, nodded eagerly. She raised her staff high into the air as volatile, radiant light energy instantly condensed before her chest.
In the next heartbeat, a torrential beam of pure illumination tore through the sky, obliterating the relentless flock of mutated birds.
"Final Spark!"