The tsundere mistress and her fox-eared servant on a yuri journey to defeat demons - Volume 1 Chapter 4.2

“Shen Hu?” She thought she would be watching her from below, but she didn’t see her right under the ladder. The semicircular underground channel, made of bricks, smelled awful, probably a mix of rainwater and domestic wastewater.

“So, this place fills up during the rainy season…” She covered her nose and mouth with her palm and waited for her eyes to adapt.

The light entering through the vertical hole was too dim to illuminate the underground channel.

“We’re running out of time. Come on, Shen Hu.” She couldn’t see Shen Hu, but she was probably close. Lisa called her, sensing her presence, and started walking through the narrow passage of the underground channel. Gradually, as her eyes adapted, she began to realize that the underground channels were deeper than she imagined.

The stagnant water flowing through the channels extended through passageways that could barely be walked. Lisa’s face twisted, and she coughed a bit at the strong stench of the mud that had accumulated at the bottom of the channel.

“We have a long way to go. It’s impossible to walk in the darkness, mistress.” Shen Hu’s voice descended from above, and at the same time, countless foxfire flames danced in the air.

Purple fox-shaped fireballs moved around Lisa as if playing with her, illuminating the underground channel.

“Where have you been? What will you do when the enemy appears?”

“Kakaka, so you believed me?”

“Because I thought for sure you were at the bottom of the ladder, but… that’s why…”

“Oohhh!” Before Lisa could finish, Shen Hu let out a cry and grabbed her head in agony.

“Eh…”

“What a colossal mistake to miss the biggest stroke of pervert luck!”

Lisa felt like a fool for worrying even for a moment.

“I shouldn’t have said anything at all.” Looking at the frustrated Shen Hu with cold eyes and sighing, Lisa crossed her arms and asked again. “So, why did you rush ahead?”

“Oh, right, right.” Shen Hu, perhaps recovering, lightly clenched her fist in her palm and made a tapping gesture. “Hey, I was wondering how the magical shotgun affected things.”

“Affect what?”

“If this is a demon’s lair, do you think they would allow intruders like us to enter?”

It wasn’t until she said it that Lisa realized how careless her actions had been. There was a possibility that their haste to reach the underground channel as soon as possible could backfire.

“Certainly. I was very careless. It was thoughtless. This place might be more dangerous than I thought…”

It was hard to describe, but besides the smell, she still felt a strange presence.

The warm and uncomfortable air that filled the underground channel seemed to amplify Lisa’s ominous premonition.

“Well, there doesn’t seem to be an immediate danger of that, but there’s another more serious problem.”

“…Indeed.”

Shen Hu, covering her nose, gestured for Lisa to guess.

“Are you okay?”

If the smell was so bad that even Lisa wrinkled her brow, it was impossible for Shen Hu, who had a keen sense of smell, to be fine.

“I think my nose is going to fall off from the smell…”

Shen Hu, covering her nose, looked ahead with Lisa. Beyond the stagnant air, there was an even thicker stench of decay.

“Can’t you do something with, you know, magic or something?”

“I could, but I need your help…”  Shen Hu gave Lisa a worried smile in response to her question.

“I’ll do it. Whatever it takes.”

Shen Hu chuckled as if she had been waiting for her words.

“Then, what we need to do…”

Then Shen Hu brought her face close to Lisa’s and pressed her lips against the tip of her nose.

“Hey…”

Before she could finish, she noticed that the rotten smell had diminished. Shen Hu lowered her eyebrows, smiled, and pointed to her nose with the tip of her finger.

“Can I ask you to do the same?”

“Uh…” She doubted it was really necessary, but it must be true since Shen Hu seemed to be suffering. “Keep your eyes closed, okay?”

“Of course.”

With trepidation, she put her mouth on the tip of Shen Hu’s nose, and a sigh of ecstasy escaped from the fox spirit’s mouth.

“Hou, I’m sure a kiss from a beautiful girl could even bring me back to life.”

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

While scolding Shen Hu, she sincerely felt glad to see the shadow of pain disappearing from her face, knowing that she had been able to help.

Lisa tensed her cheeks again, which had almost relaxed with relief, and prepared her magical shotgun for the approaching presence from the depths of the underground channel.

“That rotten smell… are those Lesser Demons…?”

The eerie sound of something being dragged echoed through the underground channel.

When she thought she heard a “keta, keta”; a shrill, almost crazed laughter, a shadow resembling a quadrupedal beast leaped and closed the distance immediately.

“Mistress!”

“I know!”

Lisa’s magical shotgun shots precisely pierced through the body of the Lesser Demon. Arms and legs that were blown off by the shots fell into the channel and bounced violently.

The Lesser Demon frantically moved its huge eyeballs on the sides of its body, emitting a screeching sound resembling laughter, as if it couldn’t understand what had happened to it.

“Are those eyes…?”

Lisa’s gaze didn’t shift from the Lesser Demon as the cylinder rotated laterally out of the frame of the magical shotgun. Her gaze seemed to be evaluating which of the strange, moist, eyelid-less eyeballs or remaining limbs to aim at.

“I don’t recommend shooting at the eyes. It’s a mass of toxins.”

“Right.”

Lisa nodded and finished loading all the bullets, then aimed at the hind limbs of the Lesser Demon.

The Lesser Demon, having lost its hind limbs, opened its wide mouth, grinding its teeth and curling its exposed spine. However, perhaps sensing the change in its own body, it began to charge forward only with its front limbs.