Chapter 141: Ecological Limit

"...Urgh...I-I’m nauseous...w-wait a moment..." Nio covers her mouth to keep from vomiting while holding onto Nioh’s shoulder, who is also looking around with an expression of disgust.

"This is the fourth floor...just as disgusting as I remember..." Nioh mutters as she snaps her fingers, creating a barrier around the two of them.

"C-Could you explain why the hell it’s this...disgusting?" Nio asks, not wanting to look up.

"Alright, I think Typhon was explaining what each floor was like to you. I know a little about them too because she taught me...the fourth floor is what is known as the Boundary of Hell."

"It works like a line. After the fourth floor, no one is weak. Any being that reaches the fifth floor is powerful, and the fourth floor is what makes sure no one who is weak can pass...however, the way the fourth floor deals with living beings that reach it is...disgusting." Nioh looks up.

The fourth floor is an enormous forest, filled with trees with extremely thick, long trunks. The trunks of the trees are a very strange dark green, while the foliage is black instead of green.

However, the disgusting part isn’t the environment itself, but what the environment was created to do. Every tree, every blade of grass on the ground, every flower in the bushes was made to hunt down every living being that steps onto the fourth floor.

The entire forest is one enormous predator. On the ground, everything looks like an ordinary forest, but when Nio looked up, what she saw were hundreds of people trapped.

In both girls and men, vines entered every opening in their bodies, filling them with sap and seeds that would grow into more trees and plants.

Just from looking up for one second, Nio saw girls with enormous breasts and swollen stomachs from all the sap and seeds inside their bodies. The trees don’t care about the pleasure of their hosts, so they use any hole they can find to fill them with seeds.

They even enter their skulls or the inside of their breasts. Anyone who gets captured becomes so weakened by this disgusting strategy of the plants that they can never escape again, remaining forever suspended at the tops of the trees and dropping seeds and sap onto the ground.

Although the plants’ strategy sounds disgusting, it works. Every captured prey allows more trees to grow.

"S-Seriously, this is way too fucking disgusting...why is Hell so fucking vile?" Nio mutters as she notices drops of something golden falling from above. She already knows it’s sap, and she doesn’t look up because she knows she might actually throw up.

"Hell was created to keep people from trying to leave it, so things get worse with every floor. It’s a way of punishing those who want to climb higher. After all, the first floor is safe and peaceful, so why would anyone trade a peaceful place for horrible ones? Understand? Every floor is worse than the last, and it’s punishing you for climbing." Nioh speaks with disinterest, but she also finds this floor disgusting, especially because she’s a girl.

"I think I’m going to have nightmares about this...those girls...urgh..." Nio’s entire body shudders.

"Just don’t look up. There will be plenty of people in that situation. Most of the trees are more than 80 meters above the ground, so you’ll only see them if you actually look up." Nioh explains as she looks around.

"Fortunately, we landed in a relatively good spot. There aren’t that many plants on the ground. We just need to be careful of the vines from the trees. If they catch us, we’re finished."

"D-Damn...I feel like I’m in some disgusting hentai now."

"...What’s that?" Nioh asks in confusion, having no idea what Nio is talking about.

"Just ignore it. Let’s get out of this place as fast as possible. This place reeks and disgusts me. I’d rather see pure violence than this fucking nightmare, and as a woman, I feel much more unsafe than I expected."

"...Yeah, let’s go...but we have to be careful. Typhon already told me there are very powerful plant creatures on this floor. It was designed to stop as many people as possible, so it won’t be easy for even the two of us to get out of here. We’ll need a lot of luck...and flying is also a bad idea."

"If we try to climb above the trees, the vines will capture us even if we use a barrier. As you can see, we can’t even see the sky because the trees cover everything, so there’s no way to get above them." Nioh tries to explain it as clearly as possible so Nio doesn’t get any crazy ideas that could leave the two of them trapped.

"Can’t we just burn everything? Honestly, I really want to blow this entire place to hell!!" Nio never expected to feel this way about any specific place.

"...Haaa...of course you’d come up with the simplest ideas. Tell me, Nio, do you see any holes here? Do you see any fallen trees? If it were that easy to destroy, then no one would have been captured. Did you forget that everyone who reached this floor had to pass through that terrible third floor full of ice?"

"...I don’t get it! Why can’t we just destroy everything? I think we have enough magic to obliterate a chunk of the forest." Nio really wants to blow everything up.

"...The idea makes sense at first, but first there’s the fact that the forest is infinite, just like all the previous floors were, and second, destroying the trees on a large scale is the stupidest idea anyone could possibly try." Nioh moves behind Nio and wraps her arms around her waist.

"I’ll give you a really disgusting description of what will happen if you try to destroy the trees. I’m doing this because I don’t trust you not to try...so if you use Nightmare Flames or any large-area magic focused on destroying as much of the forest as possible, what will happen is simple."

"Spore and seeds from the trees will spread through the air. When they enter your nose and reach your lungs, they’ll grow into vines. Those vines will search for three warm areas that can expand easily."

"Then they’ll tear through a little of your flesh and enter your stomach, your breasts, and your uterus. Once inside, they’ll start growing, painfully swelling those areas while producing more seeds."

"And in about three days, you’ll have seeds coming out of your private parts, mouth, and nipples—"

"OKAY, FUCK, YOU DIDN’T NEED TO DESCRIBE IT!!" Nio pushes Nioh away in disgust just from imagining the description, but for Nioh, the result is exactly what she wanted. Nio is now so disgusted that she won’t try to blow everything up.

"Great, then don’t destroy the trees. I don’t want to get infected by spores or seeds from those things. Don’t forget that those things are inside the tree bark. As long as the bark isn’t destroyed, the plants can only spread spores and seeds through the vines." Despite Nioh’s tone, her explanation was effective, completely destroying Nio’s desire to attack the trees.

"For now, we’ll have to be careful about where we sleep...we need to find a safe place, which will be very difficult...if we sleep anywhere, there’s a good chance a vine could enter through our ears and crush our brains to destroy our ability to move, then trap us in them."

"We can’t sleep underground either because it’s full of roots..." Nioh quickly thinks about the biggest weakness the two of them share as she tries to come up with a solution. Both of them need to sleep, and they need to find a way to do it safely, and fast.

"Let’s start moving, Nio. It’s dangerous to stay in one place." Nioh takes the lead, being less psychologically affected by the floor.