You know after 600 years of these so called heroes and reincarnations coming after me, it’s gotten rather old. Not saying I’m old...well maybe I am ok? But I haven’t aged a bit in the 1000 years I’ve been in this world so it’s not like I look my age.

Anyways, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands over the past millennium: I’ve killed countless heroes, destroyed entire nations, stolen rare artifacts and weapons, and a whole host of other things that people have gotten mad at me for. I even created my very own dungeon to store all of the stuff I’ve accumulated over the years. It’s not too complicated to do as long as you have enough mana to do it. And I picked a great spot in the forest, near some mountains range; not in a volcano or in the snow like some other beings do...until the humans built a freaking city close by! Boy was I pissed when I found out.

Could I have destroyed it? Yea no problem. I’ve done it plenty of times before but maybe I’ve gone soft over the years or I don’t know, a lazy period. Even a high powered demon like me goes through those from time to time. Or boredom. There’s been a lot of that lately. Even now with the current Hero’s party going through my dungeon.

My dungeon didn’t have anything too fancy: the usual undead, monsters, and traps that would be befitting a demon like myself. Over the years, I learned that I hated taking care of things but the mana I put into the dungeon lets it take care of itself for the most part. With the number of people that try to come through, I wouldn’t want to be stuck manually resetting things. Besides, this place is my home.

Yea you heard me. The dungeon is my home but specifically the top floor near the summit of the mountain; all other floors are just nonsense to screw with humans, elves, dwarves, or whatever other so called intelligent being that wanders in. I even have floors that go underground about 200 levels that end with a nice enchanted sword or something else semi-special as a consolation prize for going the wrong way. Then they get teleported right back where they started. Aren’t I thoughtful? Tee-hee.

Not this time though.

“I am genuinely impressed. Well...as much as I can be anyway.”

The 10 members of the current Hero’s party keep their weapons at the ready as they think of their strategy. The party has a good balance of offensive and defensive capabilities with a couple of excellent mages in the mix as well. Perfectly balanced as all things should be. Why do I give them the time to think? It’d be boring otherwise. I wanna see what they can do...not that I have my hopes up.

“Honoka, Kazushi prepare to cast your barrier spells. Mayumi call in your undead. Everyone else summon your familiars that way we can weaken her before we commence our attack” The one with the Hero title says.

“Ooooooh reincarnations are always fun. You know even after all this time, I don’t know if you guys get reincarnated again or if you get tossed away like trash after they’ve used you...but thanks for coming to play with me.”

Right after I say those words, my feathery wings unfurl and I extend my claws but I don’t give them any time to attack. To them, it looks like I teleported as a second later their barrier shatters and I drive my right claw through the Hero’s body. Guess they haven’t made armor stronger lately.

“B-But that’s adamantite armor…”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaah”

“What the hell!”

I raise the impaled Hero up in the air and with my fangs bared I ask,

“So what happens to the Hero party now?”

It’s been a few years since anyones managed to reach the top floor of my dungeon. Most of the adventurers and treasure hunters get diverted to the bottom floors and what few that find the upper floors usually don’t make it all the way. Needless to say, just cause you’ve cleared the upper floor doesn’t mean you’re prepared for the dungeon’s master. Not that running the dungeon is my full time job or anything.

I needed a place to store all of the stuff I’ve gathered over the years and I thought that making that place into a dungeon would help keep me entertained.

Munching on some raw monster meat, I gather the belongings of the now departed Hero and his party and place them into my storage area for weapons and armor. For a demon, I like to keep myself pretty organized: all of my low grade weapons and armor in one room, the middle tier items in another, and any higher quality items such as named items, I keep on display . Even though I don’t have any use for any of this stuff, it helps to remind me of everything I’ve done over the years. Any other belongings such as random clothes or bags, I just incinerate with my fire magic, unless of course they are of really high quality or uniqueness. Not too much of that though.

Beyond their weapons, the Hero party did have a surprising amount of coin on them for whatever reason. One of the female party members in particular had a fair bit on her. I wondered why? Did she think I could be bribed? Or did she think I ran some kind of store up here?

Heh. A powerful demon owning and operating a store. What would I even sell?

I went to the room where I store all of the currency I’ve accumulated and place all of the coinage in their respective areas. Over time, I had used my earth magic to create separate bins for the coins sorted by type. Copper, iron, silver, and gold for the most part. Don’t ask me why I keep all of this though. I never use any of it; pretty sure most of it is from countries that are long gone.

Should I open a currency museum? Too boring.

After sorting through the spoils, I confirm that there is currently no one else in my dungeon. I go into the room which I consider my bedroom... even though it doesn’t have a bed. Don’t judge me. The rock slab is just as a comfy too ya know?

I examine myself in a somewhat broken mirror I managed to pick up at some point. My long white hair is somewhat unkempt but not terrible looking. Two curved and clean black horns protrude from my head. Sometimes I use them to stab monsters or people in fights but I don’t like using my head like that. My amethyst colored skin is something I am proud of; demons come in all sorts of colors but as far as I can tell, I’m the only one with that particular color. Sure there’s other purple colored demons but not like my elegant amethyst. And to top everything off, I’ve got two wings that match the color of my hair.

I’m really glad I’m not grotesque looking...some of the other demons give me the creeps. I’d rather not think about them right now...or ever for that matter.

Oh one other thing. I’ve never worn clothes either. You see, I don’t get hot or cold to the point of wearing clothes. Well except for something that covers my lower body. Even I put a little bit of thought into that.

The top of the mountain has two openings that I specifically made so that I could see the sun set and rise. Personally I prefer the morning sun as I am a morning person but I liked seeing the sun go down too so I didn’t want to discriminate. As I got lost in thought for a moment, I saw a large black silhouette flying towards me with the sun at its back. It’s a black dragon but it’s not here to fight or anything. It’s just my long time friend Ziden.

Switching to his fully clothed human form, Ziden walks over to me and gives me a hug.

“Queen, it’s good to see you again. Anything new happen?”

“Nothing noteworthy”

Ziden and I have been friends for a very long time. Ever since I saved him from death as a hatchling. Dragons don’t tend to take care of their young, letting them fend for themselves even when they have just hatched. For some reason, Ziden had some high ranking adventurers trying to kill him right off the bat; they were rather close to doing so too. Normally I would have let the young dragon perish as dragons and I don’t get along as a rule. However...ummmmm...I was feeling really pissed off that day and the adventurers let me blow off steam in a way nothing else could. But would you believe I forgot about the dragon as soon as I was done fighting? Just cause I’m really powerful doesn’t mean I have a perfect memory. Many centuries of memories really add up, you know.

It was rather funny actually that about 30 years after that incident, a fully grown black dragon came flying into my dungeon and immediately went into a submissive pose. In all of my life, I have never seen a dragon do that. Probably one of the strangest things I’ve seen. I was about to send it back to its maker when it begged me to listen for a moment. He introduced himself as Ziden, a black dragon that was saved from some adventurers after hatching. At that point, I put my hand on my cheek and was like “Oh yea...that did happen. So what do you want now?” Apparently, he just wanted to be friends with the being that had saved him.

And so it came to be that a powerful black dragon became friends with a powerful demon. We did work together one time to put two warring countries in their place...but that was too much of a disaster for the common races. Even for us, it went just a little....just a bit too far. I believe after two centuries, they’ve probably recovered by now. I think.

Well it’s not my job to check on them.

Also, Ziden calls me Queen for whatever reason. I don’t technically have a name. It’s not like I had a mother or father that gave me a name. The common races have a name for me as well but I never bothered to memorize it. Besides it’s not like having a name makes you more powerful or anything; that would be pure fantasy right there.

“That can’t be right Queen, didn’t you tell me a little while ago that you had a group going up through your dungeon. Did they make it through?”

“It was the Hero party to be exact. And they made it through to meet me”

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“They give you any trouble?”

“Not really. This group gave me less trouble than the last one not too long ago... I feel like those reincarnations are getting weaker overtime. I wonder if they come from the same place and whatever world they come from is just devolving or something?”

“Well, I’ve never had the chance to really sit down and talk with them or anything. As soon as they see the dragon that’s been terrorizing some local townsfolk, they come at you and won’t stop till somebody’s dead.”

“Idiots” I mutter under my breath.

“Well not everyone can be graced with the wisdom that immortality brings.”

“Ziden...are you trying to call me old?”

Ziden just smiles and I give him a delicate punch to the shoulder.

“Ow.”

“Come on, that couldn’t have hurt a dragon.”

“Well even when you hold back, it still hurts me a little”, he said looking a little sheepish.

“Well whatever, I’m sure you can take it. Did you just come over to make fun of me or did you have something in mind?”

“Oh yea, I almost forgot, I got some news that a Talzan military convoy with some new equipment is heading out to sea tomorrow. It’s been awhile since we’ve done anything together. Did you want to do anything about it?”

“Talza...is that a new country?”

“They’ve been around for more than a century now Queen. You should be able to remember this kind of stuff.”

“Maybe I’m just forgetful in my old age mmmmm? But in all seriousness, empires, kingdoms, city-states none of that matters to me. They’re all the same. Just slap a new name and change a few faces and suddenly a kingdom turns into an empire.”

“Well there’s a bit more to it than that...but regardless, care to join me out at sea tomorrow?”

“It has been a few decades since I’ve done anything at the ocean. Yea why not?”

The clanging of bells signaled that the convoy was under attack. I could hear some excited and fearful shouts as a demon and a dragon descended upon the 7 ship convoy. Technology seems to have changed a bit though. The ships were no longer wooden and powered by the wind; they were made of some type of metal and were propelled differently. It seems like I’ve been out of touch but I never took notice as what technology had changed in the past impacted me very slightly, if at all.

The anti-air defenses were new too. Explosives that burst in the air were launched at us but they were easy to track with my eyes and avoid. Normally, I would let myself get hit once or twice just to see what it was capable of but Ziden and I had a friendly competition going this round: the fewer times one of us was hit gets whatever goodies this convoy had. Seeing how well-guarded this convoy was, it excited me to see what they were protecting.

Of the seven ships, 5 of them appeared to be military vessels of differing sizes while the last two were just transports of some type. Zipping through the air and weaving through the flak, I yell to Ziden.

“Let’s take out the escort vessels and then we can take our time with the transports!”

“Sounds good to me.”

We separate mid-air as a volley of lightning magic zooms past us. Interesting. I’ve never seen this combo of magic and projectile fire before. No matter.

I dive towards the largest vessel of the group, while flak continues to explode behind me. Too slow. Punching right through the ship’s superstructure, I break through each of the decks and plunge into the ocean beneath it. I’m slightly disappointed as breaking through wood is more enjoyable but I grin as I loop around in the water to punch through again.

As I go through each deck again and pop back out into the open air, I hear a massive explosion behind me. Did I do that? I didn’t use any explosion magic or anything. Looking back the already sinking ship is engulfed in flames as it takes on more water. What the heck were they storing in there?

Two of the smaller ships are also ablaze with Ziden’s characteristic black fire. Not too shabby. While he deals with the last of the small ships, I’ll just take care of this big one myself.

Turning my attention back to the fight, I decide to use my feathers to bombard the remaining military vessel. It’s been awhile since I’ve had this much enjoyment from a battle. While in mid-air, I spread my wings to the fullest and unleash a storm of feathers upon the ship.

Unfortunately, I miscalculated the strength of the metal that the ship was made from. Normally, a wooden ship would just be torn to pieces but my feathers are only able to pierce a few inches of the top of the ship. As I pouted for a moment, the ship explodes similarly to the last one. Seriously what are they carrying that is so volatile? Whatever, I enjoy a good fireworks display like any girl.

Ziden’s hovering in the air as I link back up with him.

“Having fun?”

“Wish the ships were made of wood. Much more fun to poke holes through them but the fireworks are nice too. Do you know what causes them?”

“I believe it’s the explosive shells that they were storing on the ships to use against aerial combatants. The smaller ones exploded as well but with less vigor than the ships you took down.”

“Good to know. Any hits?”

“Ah. I took one hit while my attention was diverted.”

“Hehe. It’s still zero for me. Guess I win.”

“Our competition is not over yet. Do you want to check one transport while I check the other?”

“Yup.”

We landed on our respective ships, with Ziden switching to his human form. It really must suck to be that large. Though I guess there’s some uses to being that size…

Ripping off the door into the ship’s interior, I noticed that there are no defenders or crew. The ship must have been enabled to follow the others somehow especially as it remained motionless with the destruction of the others.

Mmmmmmmm....some weird weapons...storage for some armor...some foodstuffs...meh nothing interesting. Continuing on. Some barrels with a fishy smell? Yuck. Hold on. What’s this?

I came upon some holding cells that were empty. All except for one. As soon as I broke open the door, I heard the crying of an infant. Why put a baby in a jail cell?

Getting closer, it became clear to me that this was no ordinary child. Two small curved golden horns protruded from the top of the child’s head. But that wasn’t the only unique feature. The child had the two pointed ears of an elf.

In all of my years, I’ve never seen a half devil half elf before. Sure I’ve seen half elf half human before or half human half devil but never this combination. Devils and elves got along just as well as elves and dwarves. Sure sometimes you say friendly interactions between the two but not friendly enough to have a kid.

As soon as the baby sees me though, it stops crying and looks at me with an inquisitive look. Then it raised both of its arms wanting for me to pick it up.

Ummmmm...what do I do? It’s not like I kill babies for fun.

I picked up the child and I looked down into its clear blue eyes. Kind of cute I guess.

“Bwah!”

It started to suck on my right breast. And continued to suck. And it kept going.

I was more bewildered than anything else. Bewildered enough for me not to pull away.

First off, most living things stayed clear of me. Secondly, I knew that mothers of most living things were able to feed their offspring in some way but I’ve never had any. It never crossed my mind nor did I think I could have any children. But somehow I was carrying sustenance in my breasts?

“Queen? Would you like to explain what’s going on?”

I turned around quickly to find Ziden grinning ear to ear as the little being continued to suck on my breast.

“Ziden, what’s up with that smug grin on your face?”

“Oh nothing...just never thought I would ever see this happening.”

“Shut up.”

We had arrived back at my place and the child was currently sleeping peacefully in my arms. Hadn’t cried once since I picked it up. Kind of hurt my feelings a little; I’m losing my touch apparently.

That’s besides the point.

What. The. Heck. Do. I. Do. Now?

I would have left the child on the ship to perish but I was curious. Then when I picked it up it decided to suck on my breast. Oddly enough, it felt kind of pleasant...never mind, forget I even thought that.

“But in all seriousness, what do you plan on doing with it? I assume you have something in mind if you brought it back with you?”

“I don’t know and I don’t have anything in mind. Just give me a moment.”

Killing or eating the child was always an option...but there was an opportunity to experience something that I’ve never had the chance to do. I could raise it and be its mother? Well adoptive mother anyway; pretending to be its biological parent would be a gigantic pain in the butt. Have you seen me?

But I did have a form that I could take on to make things easier. Just like how Ziden could assume the form of a human, I could assume the form of a devil; a humanoid common race with horns, long life spans, and stronger affinity for magic being their distinguishing characteristics. It's just...I’ve never had the reason to use it before. I doubted even Ziden knew that I had the ability.

Because there was no way in hell, even with my particular mindset, that I would consider raising a child in this setting. Well maybe...but just imagining a little being running out in the middle of a fight with adventurers sounded too comedic. It would ruin the atmosphere and reputation I was trying to maintain. No one’s seen my devil form before so guess that shouldn’t matter.

Money. Time. Commitment. Maybe I’ll get some sense of fulfilment. Alright decision made.

“Ziden, I’m gonna raise it.”

“...”

“Quit looking at me like that. I’m serious.”

“...”

“I’m gonna throw something at you.”

“I hope it's not the child.”

“Don’t tempt me. If I throw it hard enough at you, I would have two less problems to deal with.”

“First you talk about raising it and now you’re talking about throwing it. I’m honestly not sure which you’re serious about” Ziden said as he dodged the dagger I threw at him.

“I’m serious about raising it, Ziden. I figured after all of this time, I’d get something out of it. Whether that’s learning something new or just the fun of doing something I’ve never done before.”

“I won’t argue with you there but how exactly do you plan on raising it? It's not like a dungeon is the ideal place to do that and I highly doubt any of the common races are gonna let you into their towns.”

Guess now was the perfect time to do it. I went in front of the mirror to watch the process; it was as simple as willing it to happen. My amethyst skin started to change into a porcelain color. The wings on my back folded in and disappeared from view. My eyes shifted in color from silver to blue while my hair color changed from white to a pleasant light blond while the rest of my body stayed the same. While I preferred my natural form, I decided I liked my devil form too.

I turned to look at Ziden who had an admiring look on his face.

“Well?”

“Very nice. Now we just need to throw the proper clothes on you cause you can’t go around looking like that.”

“This is starting to get annoying” I retorted.