Dead Man's Harem. Since I can't kill myself, I'll find other ways to be happy.

"They're setting up a blockade, madame!" shouted the carriage driver as he whipped the horses cantering in the front.

Devon looked out the carriage. He was right. Originally he thought that the fifth division from the royal army was clearing the road for them to get through, but now they were setting up spikes and lined up a spear and shield blockade. To the right of them was a precarious cliff, and to the left a steep fall into the jungles below. The road ahead was the only route forward, through the beautiful blonde haired Knight Aurora holding a spear, and the rest of the veterans of the fifth.

The blockade didn't deter the gorilla sized howler monkeys, though. Still dripping with blood with the remains of human soldiers and bits of armor in the gaps of their teeth, the frenzied howlers grunted and oohed while charging straight into the barricade. Devon noticed that one of the howler monkeys had a human woman in its mouth, but her torso was hanging separate from her legs in a gruesome display of intestines, blood, pus, and other bodily fluids mixed with the howler monkey's own saliva.

He thanked god that the female soldier's limp and lifeless face was on the opposite side of the howler monkey's jaw grip, out of his view– Devon was sure that not even soap could wash that traumatic sight from his eyes for the rest of his days. He already gagged when he noticed that her breasts were hanging out of her ripped leather chest armor, the left breast suffering a deep bloody scratch that revealed the subcutaneous fat underneath.

There was something particularly jarring about seeing a girl's beautiful slim body with smooth, blemish free skin gored to such an extent that really bothered Devon, to the core of his soul. How could something like that happen to a young girl? He knew that she was a soldier, and that howler monkeys were basically the same as feral animals, but there was a cold callousness to the consumptive nature of carnivores that he never thought would apply to the female body.

If she was killed by a sword or a spear, he'd feel terrible seeing it in person, but that would be the extent of his feelings. But to see her body ripped apart, carried in an oversized gorilla's jaw, with bits of flesh missing from her midsection...

The howler turned its head, and for a moment Devon saw the girl's lifeless head, eyes still open with tears staining her face, although one eye was flopped in one direction while the other was facing a completely different direction. She was pretty too, in her life… Devon groaned and looked away. Madame Elisa was busy shooting more fireballs, and for a brief moment Devon imagined her hanging lifelessly from the howler monkey's jaw as well…

At that moment, Devon resolved to become strong enough to defend his women from predators and ghouls and goblins and behemoths, whatever threat there was, he needed to be strong enough to deal with it. He decided to take the fiery sorceress madame's private lessons seriously in the future, and cultivate his skill with magic. And not just that, he needed to find a swordsmanship teacher as well. Devon now had a new goal in life. Apart from simply acquiring his sex slave harem, he needed the ability to defend it as well.

Meanwhile, the behemoth behind them veered to the left and the right, eventually stopping because the road ahead was narrowing and the bull horned calamity-level behemoth would crush the cliffside with its weight if it continued to walk forward.

So for now, he and the countess were safe from the behemoth's rampage, but the same could not be said for the royal army soldiers behind them, who were still getting trampled and chased down by the behemoth. The beast's behavior was aggressive and almost vengeful, crushing both humans and howlers underneath its hooved legs as if they had wronged it in a previous life or something.

"We have to slow down, madame!" shouted the driver. "At this rate the horses will get skewered on the spears!"

"Yes, stop before the blockade, we'll walk from there!" Madame Elisa replied back. She already burned a hole through the top of the carriage and was standing out the makeshift ceiling window, firing as many spells as she could.

The sight reminded Devon of a military Humvee with a turret affixed on the top.

"Nngg… ughh…" Countess Ilyana groaned, stirring from her unconscious state. She tossed in her unconsciousness, but then fell limp again.