I had to make a trail leading back to the capital. Instead of going there via trees, I went for the fastest means of transportation possible. I bought a mount. One of our village's exports were mastiffs. I visited the kennel before, trying to get a service dog to help me but there wasn't any that could do the job. They were used by our hunters and scouts as mounts and combat partners. The dogs weighed four to five times as much as us. Keeping them fed used a lot of meat which limited the production.

After talking to the kennel master, I bought two fast mastiffs, paying half with money and half in monster meat. A diet of monster meat made the dog grow stronger. Because fantasy, magic, I had no idea. Just that it did. They were trained to accept new riders but only time would make them bond with me as their master. I had a little shortcut, though. Since I could shift into one of them, I could imprint myself faster. My dogs were called Valiant, level twenty-one, and Spirit, level twenty-three.

I collected my house and set on the road. I left the village riding Spirit. Valiant had luggage on his saddlebags. In case I met someone on the road, it was better to have some luggage otherwise I'd raise suspicion.

The trip back was uneventful. The crater I created became a small pond and they were building a second gatehouse on the side to move traffic there. It was a defensive upgrade as the road now had to swerve around the pond, giving the archers a clear line of sight to shoot at invaders.

I spent an afternoon doing another round of shopping around town. Prices went up a bit but I bought a lot of fresh herbs, grain, flour, and spices. The next morning the dogs and I were on the road again. The road to the capital was mostly deserted. With that many armies moving and fighting around, not many merchants were willing to risk having their merchandise "requisitioned".

I slowed down at the site of the Royal knight massacre. A group of people was there, scavenging the field. They saw me. A group of three came my way. One of the dogs growled. A sign they had weapons. I raised a porous force barrier in front of us. It had lots of small holes for airflow and sound, but not even an arrow would get through.

"Hail the road!" I shouted at them. I dismounted and rubbed the dogs' muzzles, soothing them. I gave the command to lie down.

"Hey, halfling! This is our territory. You have to pay a toll--"

Bandits.

"{Forked Chain Lightning}!"

I fried the first group and then had the electricity jump onto the others further away. I kept feeding MP to the spell and it arced several times between them. Once the last ping vanished from my detection, I turned it off.

They were levels thirty-three through thirty-eight. The last levels before a rank up are the hardest. I walked next to the bodies and checked for any official badge. None. Bandits indeed.

I mounted Valiant and went on my way. Five days later, I was nearing the city.

The capital had several armies camped outside. One would even be led to believe it was under siege. A mounted patrol approached. I once again put my dogs at ease surrounded by a force barrier.

"Hail, [Mage]. What business brings you here?" A man's voice.

"I'm going back home. Is there a problem?"

"Level sixty-three... Are you the blind halfling mage? Archmagister Baldric's apprentice?"

I lifted my head, "And might be you the rude dead knight? The one soon to become part of a dead army because nobody taught you manners?"

"Watch your tongue, halfling! He's Timmus, the third son of Count Maltboar," another one a bit behind the first speaker said.

Hum, malt boar. Delicious when roasted.

"Well, I can't exactly see your heraldry, can I? And the big dumb oaf never introduced himself. To a lady, mind you."

"We seek news of your master. The King and he vanished one day. Where were you?"

"South on official orders from His Majesty himself. I was wounded in combat and spent the last few months recovering from my injuries. If they vanished, I don't know where in this world they are."

"Wait for a second," Timmus said. "How do you know we have an army?"

"I can hear the poor discipline of your soldiers and smell badly dug latrines from here. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going home."

Another group was approaching. The first one noticed and was clearly annoyed. They were clicking their tongues.

"Hail the road! Lady Honorcoin!" A well-modulated voice from the newcomers. At the distance they are, he's using a Skill to project his voice.

"Hail the riders!" I shouted back using a similar trick.

"Lady Honorcoin, Duke Vanderburg send his regards. How was your mission?" The newcomer asked. I was 90% sure he knew.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"Monsters ambushed us on the road. The knight captain sent two of his men to escort me out while they held the line. I'm afraid none of them escaped. We barely reached the next town alive. The monsters that followed us forced the battle at the city gates. We prevailed but at a high cost."

Timmus barked at the Duke's envoy, "Go back to the hole that spawned you, sir Bradon! We are escorting her to our camp to talk to my father!"

"As he is His Highness' uncle and rightful steward, she's seeing the Duke now!" Bradon said with his velvety voice.

Yeah. Nope. I wasn't going with neither. I wove wind magic along with my [Bard] Skills. "Gentlemen! I'm tired of a week on the road and I'm going home. I'll count to ten and start moving to the gate. Whoever attempts to block my path is dead meat. Was I clear?"

"MIlady, I beg you to reconsider," Bradon asked.

"One, two..."

Wait. Didn't Baldric use {Royal Order} on me?

"Okay. Change of plans. Baldric and Timmus. You two and your men are going to escort me to my house. Where I'm going to rest far away from your bickering. That's a {Royal Order}!"

I paid a few hundred SP for each of the six in front of me. They understood exactly what that meant. That I had some sort of authority invested by the King. It showed a bit of my hand and would shape events going forward, but I wasn't lying when I said I was tired. I still regretted using my metabolic Skills as sacrifices to mix on the fusion perk.

But the Skill took hold. Pitting my Charisma against their own might be a close call but the Skill was slanted in favor of the one using it. The six escorted me home. I had no issues getting my dogs inside the gates and closing them with the knights outside. If they were going to camp my gate or not, that wasn't my problem.

----------------------------------------

Kazuyran debriefed me on what happened while I was out. I talked to him weekly, but I didn't know the results of the assassination contracts he took. The dark elf was successful on all of them but he was trained by Gloria. I expected no less from him.

"Our best bet for stability is Duke Vanderburg. Although it will solidify his chances to the throne in case some accident happens to the prince or the princess. Or if the prince dies and he marries the princess, as he's her cousin twice removed," the dark elf [Assassin] explained.

"And if the Duke doesn't become regent?"

"It means that he, his knights, and his army seventy-five hundred strong are all dead or disbanded. The duke has close trade relations with the dwarves to the east and his troops have dwarven steel. They also have high loyalty, discipline, and morale. If the Duke loses this dispute, the losses of the other faction will be enormous. The Kingdom will be up for grabs. Already the neighbors prepare to strike.

"Then we should help the Duke become regent and knock him a peg or two to balance out things."

"For what the lady wants, that's the best bet. A strong Duke will have the power to force you into service."

"Yes. We should kill the Duke's closest supporters and plant some evidence on both sides. This will cause the two armies camping outside to fight. The Duke's forces will still prevail but will be much weaker."

"Good. I'll be working on a personal project during the next week. You prepare a list of targets for me. I'll leave you to plant the evidence."

"As you wish, Death Princess," He said and left the room.

I couldn't change centuries of admiration. He basically grew up hearing legends about me. And it got worse when he learned I was both the silkie that forged the were-kin kingdom and queen Alloralla. But it was good to know someone would live on knowing my story. I would make sure to get him the best equipment.

----------------------------------------

I kept butchering monsters and retrieving cores. The number of intact cores from my kills was absurd. There was only one explanation. My Luck score. I gathered the cores from the lower level and going up until I had more than five hundred levels worth of energy. I could hire a small army with that many cores. The month it took me to harvest these many cores made my MP soar. I had thirty-seven million MP stored. My MP generation was one-twentieth of the normal regeneration rate. Leeching MP from the urban population was the right choice.

I activated {Curse Breaker} in a night when the three moons were in the sky. Only Sylvis the Green Moon was full. That gave me a thirty-five percent reduction on the MP costs. I selected {Slow Learner III} as the one to break. I felt the magic drain from me as I started to pay the cost. It was as if the heat from my body was suddenly sucked out. I focused my mind. Thirty-five million MP leaked out and the Perk demanded more. Breaking one of Loki's curses would be hard.

Since I was below my maximum MP, I started to drain the cores. The crystallized magic jewels shattered one by one as the power that gave them physical form vanished, sent to fuel the perk. These cores were worth seventy-seven million more MP. They all went away. My SP soon followed and I was left empty. The perk finally asked me to sacrifice another positive perk to break the curse. More than a hundred and ten million MP wasn't enough.

I selected {Cursed Blood Resistance V}. It would knock down that perk to the next lower on the series instead of vanishing. Unless I went around drinking demon blood, that did nothing. And I wasn't as frail as Apricot when I killed the first Demon Lord.

The perk was downgraded and it requested another. I downgraded it again. 87.5% of resistance was still good.

It finally worked. The curse broke.

> Your Slow Learner III curse was downgraded to Slow Learner II (ultra rare): Your Experience gains are divided by 100.

I felt the taste of blood on my lips. I was bleeding from my nose and eyes. I shifted and let my regeneration recover me.

----------------------------------------

Assassinating the key figures Kazuyran picked for me were trivial. Unfortunately, they included Sir Bradon. I made sure to add Timmus to the bunch too. I didn't use {Vorpal Bite} on them. I killed them with blade and poison. The armies accused each other of killing their key figures and soon there was blood being spilled on the trampled grass outside the city. Inside too. Several opportunists used the chaos to settle this or that score.

For two weeks the combats erupted then died down. Nobles that were supporting the Duke changed sides once again thanks to Kazuyran and me sowing dissent. A botched attempt by an independent assassin on the royal siblings - I say independent because I had nothing to do with it. I'd never order children assassinated - forced the Duke to concede. He finally decided to split the cake.

As the ghost of Emperor Izaro would say at his labyrinth of trials, "The essence of an empire must be shared equally amongst all of its citizens."

In a ceremony overseen by the high priest of Bundeus, the prince was crowned King and the Duke appointed regent until the King came of age. I wasn't invited.

With the regent determined and the nobles appeased, the armies retreated. Border skirmished demanded bodies and souls.

I kept butchering monsters and harvesting cores. I wouldn't attempt to break a curse again. The fact it demanded that many MP and still demanded two Very Rare resistances was too much. Winter came and passed. It seemed I was forgotten. Or the regent was too busy defending the Realm.

Spring came and I finally finished dismantling all the monsters I'd gathered. Except for the dragon but that wasn't a monster.

I went to the guild. Time to get some quests, visit some friends, and maybe delve.