Ayano took a bit longer than I had been expecting to return, but I didn’t mind. I still had some tea to enjoy, after all, and when that was done I wandered over to my patch of the garden to check on the flowers. Since I had over-watered the lilies over the course of last week and destroyed them, new seeds had been planted yesterday. Now that Ayano and I had… Confirmed our love… I wanted to do my absolute best to ensure these lilies were treated with love and care. I wanted my lilies to be planted at the front of the manor. Along the path, all around the fountain, and I wanted a lily in every flower pot in every room of the manor. If I had my way, so many lilies would be covering this estate that people would forget what a rose or an orchid even was.
So I gave them a quick watering, taking Lizzy’s advice to heart this time and doing it properly, and returned to where I should have been waiting for Ayano.
She was standing there in her training gear, sword sheathed at her hip, watching me as I approached.
“S-Sorry, I was just watering the plants. Should I change into my training gear too?”
The princess shook her head.
“That won’t be necessary. Alright, follow me, we’re heading into the forest.”
Our first date! Yay! But even though I was grinning, I didn’t say as much. After all, giddy as I was, I could tell Ayano was prepared for something important, and that this wasn’t really a date. Sadly. She had managed to calm down after all the fawning over each other we had been engaging in earlier, and obviously wanted to take this seriously. Now that I was secure in her feelings towards me, I was happy to take a break to do some work… Not that I wouldn’t tease her or throw her a sudden compliment if the opportunity came up, if I wanted to see her blush!
“Aye aye ma'am!” I replied, following it up with a silly salute.
“I’m not a sea captain…”
“You’re the captain of the vessel that sails the oceans of my heart, Aya~”
“... Alright, enough of that.”
I giggled as I followed her into the woods. We headed along a path leading through the garden and out a set of gates at the back of the manor grounds, me trailing about a step or two behind her the entire time. I suppose this was my first real chance to explore the Belfonse estate beyond the manor itself! Well, I say explore, but Ayano was obviously leading me in a clear direction.
That didn’t make the land any less pretty, however. Beautiful trees of a variety of types lined the side of the path, and their leaves were lush and green as a result of the season being mid spring. We often passed through clearings that gave us a gorgeous view of the rolling green hills and the lake that I still wanted to visit, although I suspected that we weren’t heading towards the lake today.
It was a good quarter hour before either of us spoke. While I was taking in the scenery, Ayano seemed to be in deep thought. Maybe she still had to process her feelings from last night, or she was thinking about how she was going to explain to me whatever it was she needed to show me. I didn’t mind. I was comfortable with silence between us now. She was still there, after all, beautiful as ever. I was just thinking about how nice it would be to have sex out here under the moonlight when she broke the silence.
“A week ago… On the day you first arrived. Right after you broke the slave contract, and you sat on my desk… You said something that I didn’t think about at the time, but I’ve been mulling over it lately… You said that the Monstras were a ‘hive mind’.”
“Um…” I muttered, glancing upwards at the sky, “Yeah, I guess I did say that. I said a lot of things.”
“How did you know that?”
“I dunno… People say a lot of things about the Monstras. I probably had someone explain it to me, or I overheard a conversation. I tend to block out memories of my past life as much as I can…”
“Nobody would have said that, unless they were speculating. The nature of how a Monstra’s mind works has never been proven. And we don’t have any evidence, either dubious or solid, that they are a hive mind. I don’t think it’s ever even been submitted as a formal hypothesis.”
“Oh… I see… Well then…” I sighed, piecing this sort of thing together was difficult for me, but I didn’t want to come across as suspicious, “To be honest, then, I don’t know where I got that notion from. But even now, saying that feels… Correct, I guess. Like um… Oh! Do you remember those cute little Monstras that broke away from me when I was frenzied? The ones that ate the plants?”
“I wouldn’t call them cute, but go on…”
“But Ayano! All of me is cute! I bet if you saw them now, you wouldn’t say that!” I protested, puffing out my cheeks.”
“Alright alright Lilly… Sure. There are worse things out there. More importantly, though, what about them?”
“Well… Even though they’re not a part of my body, they still acted according to my will. I thought the lilies were… Look, I love them now, but at the time I thought they were a bit patronising. Um… On the nose I guess. That’s why they destroyed them.”
“Well, we can’t plant anything there now, thanks to you. Nothing will grow in that soil. We’re honestly worried that the toxins will spread.”
“I’ll take a look at them, Ayano… I might be able to do something about it. Maybe. Because I’d love to have lilies growing there again!”
“Hmm. I don’t think you deserve it. I’ll place Roses there instead. We have a maid called Rose… Might make her my handmaiden, too.”
“I’m sorry Ayano! Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry! Please don’t do that! I've learned my lesson, I want lilies there!”
“You goofball…” Ayano giggled, “I was just teasing you… If you can fix the soil, I would be more than happy to plant some of your lilies out front. Although I wish you would have offered to do that earlier…”
“I was still mad at them.”
“Such a petty girl,” She sighed, “Now come on, back on track. Finish what you were saying.”
“About what?”
“About the Monstras that separated from your main body.”
“... Oh, them! Right. Well, that’s always how it works for me. Parts of me that break off from me when I frenzy react to what I wanna do. They’re like extra limbs for me. When I stopped frenzying, I broke off from them. After that they didn’t really know what to do, making them easy for your guards to kill.”
“That… Makes it sound more like you’re their master. I mean, they are a part of you… No more their ‘master’ than I am a ‘master’ of my own limbs.”
I thought about it for a few moments. I understand why she would see it that way, but even though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, that didn’t sound quite right. I knew my own body and my emotions quite well, but considering that I’m quite the anomaly, I didn’t really know if my own experiences really related to the Monstras as well as I thought they did. Other than myself, I had never seen a Monstra before, and I wasn’t well educated.
“Welp, there’s a lot about how Monstras work that neither of us understand I guess. Not much we can do about that. But yeah, uh, I dunno, I just have that gut feeling that that’s how they… How we work.”
“Can’t argue with that, I suppose. Anyway, we’re nearly there.”
It was only a few more minutes before we arrived at our destination. We entered a thick, dense area of the forest, where the trees overhead practically blocked out the sunlight. I had a strange feeling as we passed through into a dark clearing. And in that clearing? A large crater, probably just slightly deeper and wider than a normal two storey house. It was a perfect circle, as though it had been very carefully created by a specialised tool, and the soil in the crater looked completely smooth.
I began to take a few steps towards it out of curiosity, but Ayano reached out and firmly grabbed me by the arm.
“Don’t go near it. It’s incredibly dangerous.”
“What is it?” I asked, looking back and forth between her and the crater.
“It’s the impact site of an annihilation sphere. Within that localised space, no matter can exist. If you think about how dangerous the vacuum of space is, that thing is much more dangerous. Go anywhere near it and you face being eradicated from existence in an instant.”
“I… Think I’ve heard of the Ars Nihil Saphera ritual before. Countries use it to uh… Defend themselves or something?”
“It’s a matter of ensuring mutually assured destruction. Nobody likes to use them… But they serve as a deterrent against war. 50 years ago, the first and last ritual was cast. That was here. Originally, this site was used to study the effects of the sphere… But now we just try to keep it a secret. We were originally designing the spell to get rid of the Monstra, but… When the Zeers stole our research materials and learned how to cast the ritual, they began to threaten us with it. We also discovered… That when it comes to Monstra, they can break some of the rules of how this thing is supposed to work.”
“How so?”
“They… Don’t exactly get annihilated when passing through the radius of the sphere, although they do have difficulties. That made the spell a total failure, but luckily, it did teach us some of what we know about them. We suspect that the Monstra may not be made up of matter as we traditionally know it to be. Possibly because of the way they corrupt the mana in the air around them.”
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“So… You or… Whoever was studying this before you… Brought Monstra here to test it on them?”
“Well, not exactly. Not at all the case, actually. And this is where you come in. For you see… Well, how do I explain this… There are things called Mana leaks in this world. They’re naturally occurring phenomena that we’ve known about for millennia. They pop in and out of existence in set patterns that we’ve just barely begun to understand and map out. They occur in places without much life around, usually, and… They create an effect very similar to that of an annihilation sphere. Only, usually, instead of a crater like this, it will only be about the size of a single particle of air, or a similarly small size. The largest size recorded was about the size of an eyeball. And because of this sphere… We know that Monstra have the capability of… *Squeezing* through these mana leaks. They make their bodies the size of a needle and push themselves through. And when they do, they will end up wherever else in the world another mana leak is occurring. As we found out the hard way… This annihilation sphere counts as a mana leak. And since it’s the largest, that makes it a good place for them to emerge.”
“So you have Monstra coming through here all the time!?”
“Not all the time. About five have been recorded throughout this thing’s 50 year history. We suspect that not enough discoverable mana leaks occur in Grisia for them to show up here that often… And I would imagine that it’s not exactly easy for them to pass through in the first place. Still, Lilly, I brought you here because I would like for you to keep this place in mind. You never know when-”
Suddenly, Ayano fell deathly quiet. I could tell that she was on high alert, the way she stayed still, hand on her sword, eyes darting around the landscape.
“When… What?” I asked nervously.
She stared at me intensely and put a finger to her lips.
That was when I remembered the strange feeling I had had. The feeling I had begun to attribute to the annihilation sphere when I was having it explained to me, but now, it was a feeling that was getting stronger and clearer.
Danger.
A slight shift in the air was all it took for me to know where it was. I spun around 180 degrees and launched myself into the trees, biting my thumb as I flew through the air. My arm was already a writing mass of sharp, screaming tentacles by the time I landed myself on top of the enemy that had been creeping up on us.
I got brief confirmation of something fluffy looking and very, very big, before I got launched back into the clearing. I had to twist my body in the air and reach out a tentacle several feet to latch onto a tree branch in order to avoid being slung straight into the annihilation sphere. Even if my Monstra self would apparently be fine, I didn’t want to know what would happen to the human part of my body were I to step foot in there.
I reoriented myself, perching on a branch just above Ayano as I watched it emerge.
A bear, standing on its hind legs, about twice the size a bear normally should be. Plants withered wherever it stepped, its huge, purple eyes looked utterly crazed. Its fur shifted colour from grey to brown to purple to black and back again, changing constantly. Its claws were huge and I could hear the cries of baby Monstras crawling around inside and around its body.
But my instincts told me something important. It was less of a Monstra than I am. My stomach began to rumble in a way that it never had before. I had battled powerful animals before. Lions and bulls, crocodiles the size of cars, Gloria had even given me Chimeras and griffins to fight before. But… Well, I had just been thinking about how I had never seen a Monstra before, and now I had.
I had always wondered. Would I be afraid? Excited? Infatuated? I never really knew how I would react. One thing I had never predicted was that I would feel… *hungry*. Yes yes, this Monstra belonged to *me*. How dare it disobey me! I would take great pleasure in consuming it… Showing it its place… Making it a *part of me*. I licked my lips as I delighted in the thought of making this parasite, small enough to only be able to take over a measly bear, a part of me. I wanted it to submit to me in its entirety.
“Lilly, are you okay? We should retreat and-”
But I wasn’t listening to Ayano before. My love, you can just watch. I’ll show you just how amazing I am! I let my entire body transform, but before I attacked, I had tentacles all across my body strip me of all my clothing. I may be frenzying, but I didn’t want to destroy this precious maid dress that Ayano had given me.
Of course, by the time I had launched myself back at the bear, I wasn’t exactly a pretty human girl anymore. I was a writing mass of sheer, violent power. My tentacles enveloped it and teeth appeared all across my body, and I sunk each of those thousands of sharp fangs into its body all at once. Raw animal blood mixed with that purple deliciousness that tasted just like my own… Hugo could never cook up something as delectable as this.
I thought it was my prey. I thought I would take it out with one strike, but to my surprise, I felt a sudden force throw me away once again, and I latched onto a different nearby tree. This time, I could see that it had punched me away. Only this time, it was much worse for wear. I had eaten away at most of its mortal flesh. It looked like a rotten corpse animated only by the screaming, blackish purple ooze inside of it. Many eyes inside of it opened up and scowled at me. Mouths opened up and roared at me, as if daring me to try again.
Naturally, I was about to when it suddenly did something I wasn’t expecting.
It walked into the annihilation sphere.
I watched in awe as tiny slivers of Monstra suddenly appeared all around it, the ooze appearing out of thin air and flying towards the bear. It grew in size, soon expanding outside the reach of the sphere’s radius, becoming as tall as the trees, then taller. I glanced at Ayano. I could tell that her blood had run cold, she was frozen in place.
Me, however? Yeah. I was only getting more excited.
“Bring it, bitch! BRING IT!” I roared, yes, yes! A challenge like this was exactly what I was craving! But I wanted to make it more fun! Yes I was magnanimous and kind and thoughtful and just the best maid girlfriend and soulmate and future wife and queen and sex slave and whatever else ever, I was going to make this *Ayano’s* victory too, as a devilish thought popped into my head!
I returned to my human form and draped myself around my lover’s form, naked breasts pushing up against her back, my lips against her ear.
“Hey Aya. Let’s have some fun… Impale me with that sword of yours. I wanna feel your technique… I wanna feel your technique destroy that pathetic thing, who calls in its mates the moment it starts to lose a fight! Let’s duel it to the death! Ayano Ayano Ayano, you’re stronger than that thing! I am too! Let’s demolish it and prove to ourselves and the world that *nothing* can stand in our way AYANO STAB ME RAM YOUR HOT THING INTO ME LET’S DO IT LET’S FIGHT AND INDULGE AND-”
Without a word, her sword was drawn, and she had stabbed it straight through my chest. Through my heart, in fact. You romantic, you! My pupils literally became heart shaped as whatever coherent form my body might have had melted in an instant. God, having Ayano penetrate me felt so goood!
All of my power was at her command as my body fused to her sword, and instinctively, she knew exactly what to do with it, as though she had impaled a Monstra on her sword countless times already. She ran a few hundred feet back and slashed away at the trees. They began to topple, which would certainly give us room for the fight to come, but that wasn’t all it achieved. I opened my many mouths and spread out, chewing away at the wood and leaves. It wasn’t exactly tasty, but when I was frenzied, I could pretty much eat anything, it gave me extra mass and partially satiated my hunger, which led to more power for me. Power and wood, which I was able to combine with my bone to harden my body.
The gigantic bear was already charging at us by the time we had regained our bearings. I was still chewing away at the wood, but when she swung her sword, all of me followed. My love for her meant that she could happily direct me anywhere she pleased, and my body would obey as though I were one of her limbs. The bear blocked our attack with its claws. I tried to wrap around its arm and bite at it, and I got a few bites in, but its raw strength was able to push me away quite quickly. It was much like me, in the sense that no matter how much it bled, that only seemed to motivate it further.
Unlike me, however, it was alone, and that was why it was going to lose!
Another few blows, all deflected, and the bear began to laugh. So much in fact that from the bleeding wounds I had given it, it created its own sword, as large as a tree. It was an exact replica of Ayano’s sword, even though Ayano’s was buried under my formless mass.
“Lilly.”
Whoops! It was difficult to hear her when I was so high up, so I created an ear right next to her mouth so that I could listen to her.
“What’s up? Having fun? I’m having fun!” One of my disembodied mouths asked.
“Can you do what it just did? I… Find you too heavy to wield. You latch onto it, which throws me off. And… this situation terrifies me. Can you make yourself look like my sword?”
“Mmm… I can do you one better. Wanna be eye level with it, too?”
“Only if I can control my legs.”
“Coming right up!”
Whilst fighting off its blows, I transformed myself into Ayano’s sword, using my bone, the wood, and trace metals from the soil to recreate its appearance. It sort of looked ridiculous, seeing two identical, tree sized ornate swords battling it out, but that was just the kind of fun we were having! I wrapped my goo around Ayano’s legs and raised her up into the air. Connecting my nerve endings to her legs and feet meant that whenever she tried to move, I would follow. She was a tiny woman wielding a huge sword and she had inky black tree-trunk legs. It was hilarious!
Funny but effective. Being eye level with the beast, being able to employ her proper footwork and techniques, quickly turned the tide of the fight. As a trained swordsman, Ayano was able to gracefully outmaneuver its attacks. It sort of reminded me of the duel me and her had had- Just like me, the bear was only able to attack with raw power, without any real technique. It felt good to be on Ayano’s side this time. I got to mock the bear’s clumsy movements, even knowing that I couldn’t do any better myself. Its weight was used against it as Ayano deftly parried its blows, moving just as swiftly as she would if she were fighting at a normal scale. I focused on making myself as good a substitute for her sword as I could. I was able to feel the weight of her real sword in her hands, and I tried to replicate it at this scale as much as possible. I trusted her movements and tried to minimise the extent to which I did my own thing. This was much more fun than fighting the thing by myself… Plus, I would have likely caused a lot more damage to the forest if I had decided to run wild.
I opened eyes at the tip of the sword and let the sunlight reflect off of them, creating a purple light that illuminated the bear’s interior.
“See that glowing purple part, the one that’s *really* glowing brightly? That should be the heart. Get a clean stab through that, and I should be able to finish it off!”
“Gotcha.”
It was difficult, because the bear was smart enough to constantly shift the heart around its body, never keeping it in one place. In addition, even if Ayano was able to get a blow past its sword, the claw on its other hand or a tentacle would emerge to block the blow. I could use some teeth to bite through the tentacles without disrupting Ayano’s balance, at least, but more would always grow whenever I severed some.
“I’m going to trip it. Hang on, Lilly.”
“That’s my Aya! We’re gonna get it for sure!”
A few more blows exchanged, it getting ever more ferocious as time passed, it got angrier, it was growing in size.
It gripped its sword with both hands, and the bear lunged forward, fully intending to bring its full might down on us. Naturally, this was the opening we had been looking for. Ayano stepped gracefully out of the way, and slashed at its legs… It swung clean through the knees, severing its feet from the rest of it. As it tried to regain its balance and regrow its feet, Ayano used my big legs to kick it in the chin, causing it to fall over onto its back. Before it could get up or retaliate, I let Ayano jump off of my feet, my body combined with the sword as she dropped about 50 feet to plunge me straight into its heart, piercing through it with perfect accuracy. With me inside of its heart, I was able to devour it in seconds. When I did, the rest of the Monstra inside of it meekly, silently surrendered. I assimilated the entire creature into myself, devouring all of it. I couldn’t help it. It was too intoxicating a prospect to pass up! I wanted all of its power for myself!
~~~
It took me about fifteen minutes to both finish devouring and digesting the beast, and to calm down. Eventually, I was back to normal, my green eyes looking up at Ayano with admiration as my naked body lay against a tree, bathing in the now afternoon sun. We had moved a fair bit away from the annihilation sphere. I could always go for another fight, but… Even I had to admit, looking at my slightly extended belly, I had had far too much to eat. A ton of wood, an entire bear, and the Monstra inside it? Quite the feast! It was a lunch so large that I was worried I’d be spoiled for dinner.
Ayano had returned with my maid outfit, which was thankfully intact, but a little dirty from being on the forest floor. She brushed it off and placed it on me to cover me up.
“Oh I… Don’t really wanna put it on right now… It’s dirty and… It’s too hot and… I’m full… I’m fuuuuuuuull Ayanooooo!” I complained, although the cheeky look in my eye should hopefully communicate that I wasn’t being serious.
“Well, so long as you put it on before we return to the manor. Which we should do soon.”
“Nahh… I can’t move… You should get naked and hug me too Aya… Victory hug under the sun!”
She sighed. Without undressing, she sat down next to me and pulled me into an embrace, resting my head against her shoulder as she stroked my hair.”
“I know the fight exhilarated you, Lilly, but…”
“You’re worried that there just so happened to be a Monstra there? And that it used the sphere to get BIGGER?”
“That’s right. I don’t think anything like that has been recorded before… And so many toxins were spread across the forest…”
“Oh, no, I took care of those whilst I was eating it. We destroyed quite a few trees, but the forest won’t be poisoned or whatever.”
“That’s good… Why did you eat the bear, anyway?”
“... I… Have never seen another Monstra before. I wanted to make it a part of me. It *is* a part of me, now. I’m stronger because of it.”
“... You’re slightly more Monstra than human now, you mean.”
I could tell that this was concerning for her. But whatever, I was fine! Better than fine, even!
“Maybe! I dunno. The only difference I feel is that… I think I love you even more now… You were so cool out there…”
“You…” She sighed and patted my head, “You could have beaten it yourself.”
“It was better with you.”
“You just wanted me to feel powerful. You wanted me to feel stronger because I’m with you.”
“And I succeeded in that goal, didn’t I? What other human can say that they *wielded* an obedient Monstra in battle, huh? Doesn’t that make you feel like a badass?”
“... Yeah. I guess you did succeed. It was kinda cool.”
“Only kinda? Mmmmph! For that slight, I want my reward now…”
“We didn’t agree on a reward. Keeping an eye on this place.. Especially after that happened… Is just going to be one of your normal duties from now on. I have arcane circles that will sound alarms if anything dangerous emerges and-”
I leaned forward and met Ayano’s rambling lips with my own. Our tongues met, I tried to wrestle her out of her speech, and when I succeeded I thought I was going to have control this time, but then, Ayano crawled on top of me, and put me in my place. She did so oh, oh so wonderfully. It felt so good to belong to her. We lost track of time… Who knows how long we stayed there together, lips locked in that sensual dance. I didn’t care about time when I was with her.
My feelings grow ever deeper by the day.