"Hera, calm down. Let me explain," Adriel tried to speak, but he didn't make any sudden movements. Nimbus and Lurize were by his side, holding his arms, and he was even scared to look at them.

"Don't tell me to be calm, you son of a bitch," Hera pulled Fang and pressed against the elf's neck, "What did you do?" she put some pressure on the blade, which ended up drawing a drop of blood.

'Mum. Calm down. This isn't all you,' Daskka kept looking at Adriel, not to undermine the Empress' authority at the moment, but she could tell that the anger wasn't entirely her fault.

'What do you mean it's not mine? I want to rip his fucking head off,' Hera growled. Armory, Scythe, and Core's voices followed the Empress, saying the same exact thing. That's what she needed to understand what was going on. Yes, she was angry, but not to the point of murder. Not yet, at least. What was happening was that her emotions were influencing her older blades, and because that was happening with three of them at once, their anger would leak back to Hera, and in turn, that would make them even angrier. It was a vicious cycle that had never happened before and only was triggered because of her intense emotion in the first place. The Empress took a deep breath and pulled Fang back. She was still extremely angry but trying not to be swayed by her blades.

Nimbus and Lurize noticed that there was something wrong, and the Royal Tutor spoke up in her mind, 'Empress, are you ok?'

'No. Lurize, Nimbus, please stop me if I'm about to do something I'll regret. I don't want to kill him just because I can't control my emotions.'

'But you are open to the idea?' Nimbus asked with some worry in his voice.

'I honestly don't know. Maybe. Depends on what he has to say.'

Nimbus, Hera, Lurize, and Daskka, who kept following the conversation with her eyes, turned back to Adriel.

"Can I speak now? I'm not interrupting you guys?" the elf asked.

"How do you know we were talking?" Lurize asked with an angry voice.

"C'mon, we've been together for months already. I can tell when you guys are having a serious discussion, at least when the two of you are involved. When Hera is talking with the flying weapons, it gets hard, at least when she is not following them with her eyes," Adriel explained.

Hera's eyes were getting more and more bloodshot as her anger increased now that the elf started to talk about something else, "Adriel. I'm trying really hard to give you a chance here, but if you don't start talking soon, I'm going to snap."

"Ok, ok. Sorry. Look, it's not bad. I wasn't spying to treat them badly. The… organization, let's say, that I work for is a group that looks out for the other sentient species in the MAZE. We try to make sure that the guild, and more importantly, the Humans, are not exploiting our people. I can't say this works 100% of the time, but we try our best. Depending on the location of the new civilization, we send either some ambassadors to help them, or, when they are located in a place with a lot of human organizations around, we send a spy. Me, in this case. My job was simple, figure out if the guild was doing something sketchy with Boothudurn and its people and if they were starting to be oppressed by humans. If that was the case, I was supposed to make contact with the king or the people in charge and then help them get their footing in the MAZE. Helping with supplies, making laws, getting more guards, and in the worst case scenario, helping them relocate if the pressure was too much," Adriel explained quickly.

"So… you are not actually spying on Boothudurn, but spying on the guild and what the humans are doing in there?" Hera rubbed her temple.

"Oh… yeah, that is a much better way to put it," Adriel nodded.

Hera stared the elf down for a moment before letting out a long sigh, "Armory, Scythe, Core. Go back to the legacy. We'll talk later."

'Empress… I'm sorry,' Core said.

'Hera… I didn't mean to…." Armory added.

"Don't worry about it. Everything is fine. We can talk later," Hera replied. When the court members were gone, she felt her anger slowly vanishing, "Dude… if you are a spy, how the fuck do you talk like that? I mean, seriously, aren't you supposed to be good at talking with people if that's the case?"

"We are trained to convince people about our mission, not to reveal ourselves. This is the first time I have to admit to someone that I'm a spy without the benefit of exposing what is going on," Adriel shrugged and looked to the sides, "Are we ok now? I mean, can you let me go?"

"Yeah, yeah. Let him go," Hera told her titled blades before going back to the elf, "Tell me, why the fuck are you telling me this? What's the point?"

"So… I'm saying this because of the whole ascension thing. You mentioned that more people would be able to go through with that, and if you are making a new civilization, as weird as that sounds, I can help. Well… we can help, my group. I mean," Adriel stepped away from Nimbus and Lurize and sat by the fountain.

"Right… ok, I have questions then. Can I?" Hera asked.

"Yeah, sure. I'll do my best to answer them."

"Why are you telling me this? Just because I might become part of a new species?"

"Basically. I'm telling you that you won't have to deal with this alone. I have people that can help. Especially since I've seen small tribes getting exploited to hell by the guild."

"Really? I mean, the guild does some questionable things, but I never heard about them being that aggressive."

"It's been a long time, but yeah, that happened in the past. The last one happened some 30-odd years ago. At the time, when people figured out what was happening, the guild said that it was the fault of a couple of bad actors, but when we look into my people's records, those bad actors appear more frequently than we find acceptable," Adriel continued.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Are you telling me that there is no corruption in the elven society?" Hera crossed her arms.

"Oh no. By all means, we can be just as bad as anyone. But at some point, we realized that the guild was essentially bullying the new civilizations they found into being assimilated into them, again, not all of them, but more. One was already too many, and they didn't stop there. They would force them to abide by their laws and wouldn't care much about the culture of that new group of people. Then they would kind of intercept any attempts of others of the same species to get them to join them. Sometimes they did that with lies, saying the other species were weaker or couldn't help them. Others, the guild used debt to control them, and there was even one occasion where they used force to keep them in check."

"But why? Why did the guild gain by doing that?"

"Access to rare resources or a cheap workforce to make them whatever they want from what we know, or at least those were the reports and investigations that the guild released. In all those cases, it was the fault of a branch manager or one person in the upper echelon of the guild who used that to become rich. But, it's hard to believe in those reports since the guild is the one doing the investigation."

Hera nodded, "Yeah, it's hard to believe the reports didn't have any bias if things are like that."

"Exactly. That's why this organization started. We wanted to make sure that no one was getting exploited like that."

"Right, and how can you help? If I decide to go through with that?"

"Like I said, we can help you find a place to build your society. A room that is either low-level enough to hold any civilization or one that doesn't have any monsters. We can help you get some infrastructure and connect to the internet. Or we can just help you with the paperwork to become an officially recognized civilization in the MAZE. We already did that with the Children of the Sky," Adriel explained.

"Ok… and does Alex has anything to do with this? Did you start dating her to get closer to us or something?"

"No, of course not. Look, I might be a spy, but I don't toy with people's feelings like that. At most, I scare them a bit when I'm showing what the guild did to them."

"And does she know? About your job," Hera pressed.

"No, she doesn't. No one does. You are the only person I told about this, and I hope you can keep this a secret."

"As long as you are not hurting Alex, I'll keep quiet. If that lie starts hurting her and she asks me about it, I'll tell her."

Adriel stared at Hera for a moment, "Well... I suppose that's the best I can ask for."

"Yep," There was a pause before the Empress spoke up again, "I think I only have one more question. For now, at least."

Adriel nodded, "Go for it."

"Were you supposed to do anything with the people of Boothudurn aside from making sure the guild wasn't going to treat them poorly?"

"No, my organization only asked me to help them with the guild," Adriel replied without missing a beat. That almost seemed rehearsed.

"Your organization? So you had some personal motive?"

"No… Well… ok to be fully transparent. I had plans to overcharge deliveries that the king asked of me. I know that Boothudurn is very rich, and I wanted to take a little bit of advantage of that. I wasn't going to do that with the regular population, though, only with the things asked by the city," Adrield confessed.

Hera listened closely, but she couldn't believe him completely. Despite his words, it still felt like there was something more that he wasn't telling. She wanted to continue asking. However, a thought came to her mind. What if this wasn't just Adriel? What if the curse was trying to force her hand into kicking him out of the group, so even if they tried to get rid of it, there would be a part of it out there somewhere?

"Let me ask you again. Why are you telling me this? And really think about it first. I just got the ascension option. What, two days ago? And you are already revealing this spy job to me just because I might one day become a new species? So why are you telling me this?" Hera pressed.

Adriel stopped and looked down for a moment. A few minutes passed while he seemed to be struggling with something, "I… don't know. Now that you mention it, it doesn't make that much sense. I should have waited and then talked with the people in my organization first. Or with you before talking with them. I mean, this is a big deal. Knowing that changing species is a possibility is not something that should be taken lightly. So I would probably talk to you first, but there was no need to do that now…."

"So it might have been the curse?" Hera asked.

"He wass lyiiing to youuu. I juusst made himm honest," a shrill and gargled voice echoed in Hera's mind, making the Empress jump.

"Fuck me, this is terrifying," Hera gasped and looked at Nimbus and Lurize, "Did you hear that?"

"Yeah…. That wasn't pleasant," Nimbus nodded.

"Oh? Did you start hearing the voice? Yeah, it starts weird, but it gets better with time," Adriel nodded.

"I don't know how I feel about that…." Hera replied.

"Fair enough, but you were right. I don't think this was all me."

"Right. Let's make a deal. Don't mention this to anyone else before we get rid of the curse. Also, if you are doing anything that might seem suspicious, or if I'm looking at you weirdly, just tell me what is going on. If not, I'm afraid the curse will start making me even more suspicious, and if my court is out, things might go south really quickly," Hera rubbed her neck.

"Yeah, I'll do that. What is going on with that, by the way?"

"It's part of the deal with the legacy. When I level up, my court members stay the same. The problem is that the bigger the difference between the attributes I had when I got them and the attributes I have now, the more my emotions can affect them. This was the first time almost half of them got angry at the same time, and I think that that made them so overwhelmed that their anger started to affect me."

"Crap… that is rough. You need to get new ones, then, right?" Adriel asked.

"Basically, yeah. In theory, I could just make the same weapon several times and replace them all with that, but then I would lose a lot of coverage. Not to mention I don't even know if I can have two court members that use the same type of element," Hera looked at Daskka, who nodded in response.

"You can't, mum. Each blade has to have its own element. But you can use the Royal Seal to give them different elements, so that's a way to go around that if things get too hectic."

"I have a couple of weapon blueprints if you want. They are nothing special, but I'm sure you can make something good out of them. The only issue is that we have to actually make the item first before getting the blueprint," Adriel suggested.

"I would appreciate that. But I don't know when I will have a chance to make some stuff. Besides, all of the blades that I would have to change have some skills that I really wanted to keep, and I don't have a skill for that yet," If Hera was being completely honest, Core wouldn't be a part of that, but she didn't want to say it out loud.

"Ah. got it," Adriel nodded, and the two of them stayed in silence for a while, digesting everything that happened. It didn't take long, however, for the elf to stand up, "Well… No reason to just be here doing nothing. Shall we keep going?"

Hera looked at him and chuckled, "Yeah. Might as well. Let's get rid of this curse, and then we can deal with everything else. We also need to figure out a way to get back home."

"Oh shit… I completely forgot about that. Yeah, after the curse, we still need to go back. I need a vacation," Adriel sighed.

"You and me both. When we get back, I just want to do nothing for a month or two," Hera chuckled. Not knowing that it was going to take a long time for her to take a vacation.