Meanwhile, on the surface.

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A clearing in a forest far from civilization. The end of Winter was close but the evergreens gave the people there a lot of privacy.

City Lord Tobias was having a clandestine meeting in the dead of the night. Only Yolanthe was a witness in the sky. Not even the Goddess Ring or the Red Moon were in the sky. It would be a contradiction because how could the man who unilaterally dictated the laws do anything clandestine? The answer was obvious to anyone who was following recent events. Even if he had supreme executive power, he was still beholden to powers he had no control over. Such powers viewed each of their actions as a cost-benefit analysis. The Elf Archmage would lose a lot of reputation and would even be sanctioned by the Guild and lose her cozy retirement but she would kill him if he became a nuisance higher than the one of losing her social standing.

So he made sure that nobody would know he was the one who hired a hit on the Guild Scout while he was busy inside the Dungeon. He met with the mercenaries two hundred miles outside his city, away from his fief and the eyes and ears of the Guild Master. Negotiations went okay and he paid in advance for a team of level one hundred and fifty Assassins. Once the gold was in their hands, they were bound by their organization's reputation to carry out the job.

Tobias huffed in relief. It would be easier if they worked through a proxy but these Assassins only negotiated with the real client. Now, his son's murderer would be avenged. Tobias was sure the Guild Scout used a loophole in their original raid contract. They even hinted at that during their debriefing meeting.

He would also have to raise taxes to replenish the treasury. His recent expenses impoverished his fief to a point where he would need to cut many costs. His first act was to disband the Guild District Guard garrison. Let the Adventurers deal with their own security.

The Assassins counted the gold and then nodded. No words were exchanged, to keep the risk of some clairvoyant picking up the sounds when scrying into their meeting. Only a nod from their leader let Tobias know they accepted the job. Now, unless they.

BOOOM.

The ground shook as if a massively heavy creature had just taken a step. Then another and another. The frequency increased until Tobias felt the ground shake like it was an earthquake.

From between two trees, a creature more than twenty feet tall, shaped like... a cottage with duck legs and feet appeared. In the darkness, they only heard the rustling of leaves before the momentum of the monster caused it to trample over a couple of assassins. It was a blur and Tobias felt the wind rush past him as the monster vanished on the other side of the clearing.

By its speed, it should have thousands of points in Dexterity. A high-level monster, but why did the monster look like a house on legs? High-level combat usually took seconds, but this was ridiculous.

Before anyone could react, a green flash of light erupted from the way the monster came and then another three Assassins started to choke. Smoke rose from their dark clothes. They fell on their knees and fell down, dead. Tobias couldn't hear their breaths anymore. He heard the thuds as some objects fell on the clearing floor but he didn't see what they were or where they fell.

"Gentlemen," a woman's voice came from where the green flash appeared.

Two Assassins darted toward the voice, weapons drawn, their high Dexterity making them vanish from where they stood. Tobias too drew his sword and activated the enchantments. Next, the sound of blades slicing through bone and flesh sizzling came in that direction. Tobias saw these two Assassins fall down in two pieces, the sliced skeletons falling to the sides along the pieces of their equipment.

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"Why do these idiots always think they can fight whatever comes their way?" The woman asked herself.

The other Assassins were gone. Tobias found himself alone in the clearing with the mysterious woman.

"Identify yourself!" Tobias shouted.

"Sure, sweetheart. Here, let me make it easy for you."

An orb of light shot up into the sky, its luminosity increasing until the clearing became as lit as during daytime. Tobias looked at the woman. She was a stunning redhead, wearing tight travelers' clothes and high-heeled boots. She had a fur cloak with gold trim and a purple wide-brimmed pointy hat full of decorations and dangling beads and semiprecious gem cords. She had a domineering gaze that was hard to avoid. Tobias felt drawn to her, a sign of an extremely high Charisma. The last thing he noticed was that she had a bulging belly but a slim waist, a clear sign that the woman was pregnant.

"So, you know who I am?" She asked.

Tobias couldn't breathe. Yes, he knew who she was. He also knew he had no chance of escaping her. One of the ten highest-leveled individuals in the whole continent. Instead of struggling, he closed his eyes.

"What did I do to draw your wrath, my lady?" Tobias asked. He wanted to laugh at himself.

"You hired these Assassins," she answered. "To kill someone I need alive."

Tobias snapped his eyes open and stared at the Time Witch. "The Guild boy? Aren't you one of Alice's enemies?"

Lilliane Fade shrugged. "Maybe. We were friends once. Family even. We didn't fight the last time we met. But our relationship is... estranged now. We both did bad things. Maybe I did more of those bad things than her. But one thing you should've learned at your level, Tobias, was that some things are beneath us. We don't go around crushing bugs on a whim. You understand that, don't you? We also don't do vengeance. Retribution, yes. This is neither of them. This is me making sure the most beneficial timeline for me comes into reality. That kid you wanted dead? He'll be a real asset to the city. More than your son would ever be if he broke the Dungeon Core. There are some timelines where he comes out victorious."

Tobias chortled in derision. "You manipulated to see him defeated."

The woman smirked. "Maybe. Wouldn't you be dying to know the truth?"

Tobias exploded as he used his Lightning Charge Perk to attack the Witch. In less than a second, he crossed the clearing, and then... he sensed as if he was falling backward. He saw the sky, then the ground, the sky again, the ground, and then he kissed the forest loam. His body fell to the side a second before he lost consciousness.

*

*

> For Killing level 227 Aristocrat Warlord, you gained 0 Experience points.

Lilliane Fade didn't think she deserved the kill credit. Though she did stretch the strand of Vorpal Spider silk where the man would rush through, Tobias killed himself. If only he devoted enough points to Intelligence to notice the thread...

> Seriously, Lilliane. Take your walking house to that scenic mountain retreat and rest there until you deliver your child.

She laughed and looked up at the sky. Neither of the "gods" space stations were in sight but she knew the System would hear her. Holding her bulging belly, she retorted. "I told you. If you can keep her safe from the demons, I'll go. How about that for a bargain, Skip?"

No answer came. She knew the delicate balance of power in this star system wouldn't let the System interfere. Because her daughter wasn't the chosen one. That honor belonged to someone dead for almost half a million years. Give or take a couple hundred thousand years.

Lilliane Fade used her Sight to peek into the future. None of the surviving Assassins came even closer to Tobias' city. They would report that the meeting was fouled by a third party and with most of their team dead, the payment missing, and the client dead, their organization would void the contract. She took her hat off and waved it over the dead City Lord's corpse. His gear vanished, leaving a naked headless corpse in the clearing. Starving Wargs she bewitched into obeying her orders would soon come and clear the bodies. After she collected all of their nice magical items and the bag of platinum.

Now, it was smooth sailing until her daughter was born. The only thing Lilliane feared was that the day of the birth was one of the few she couldn't look into. She always hated it when one of these days came around the corner. Her Sight got muddled for weeks as she could only get blurry visions for these weeks. One of these would be the day she died.

Nothing in this whole world was more important than keeping her unborn daughter safe. If the Demon King got his hands on the child, millions would die. The catastrophe leading to these deaths was blurry to her Sight because it would only happen decades in the future but for the Time Witch, that mattered little. These kinds of pivotal moments had so much metaphysical weight that they were almost impossible to avoid.

If she couldn't twist Fate to avoid the catastrophe, she only had to find a way to make sure her daughter would profit from it.