"Really... today's been a very bad day for me..."

I stretched my arms upwards, and looked up at the newly put-up paintings on the transparent glass walls of my bathhouse. It's an open-air bath installed on top of the cottage with a breathtaking vantage point, but I could no longer relax as well as before.

"Menial tasks like apprehending a rogue around our village should just be left to the underlings, that lass should have understood this fact... The fact that she brought it up in front of the guards... Aahhh, she's really looking to be replaced huhhh...should I put her in place with a round of punishment when she comes back...? It's been a long time after all, the room's been unused for awhile now... I'll have to check on it later to familiarize with the tools again..."

Muttering to myself filled with these cloudy thoughts, I got out of the bath and grabbed a towel from a nearby rack. I cleanly wiped myself off the water droplets sticking to my clean and porcelain-white skin.

While I would usually admire myself in front of the mirror beside the towel rack after a bath, I did not feel like it this time. My mood was down in the dumps right now.

Thinking that I wouldn't notice, that lass's previous act of display in the underground cells just showed how daring she was becoming just after I've recommended her for a more important position.

A group leader of the Advance Squad was no one special as compared to me and the other grannies, but it still annoyed me to no end.

...Even killing off her own kind without hesitation at all, seems like the power is really getting to her head...

As expected, homunculi are all damned defects...!!!

I bit my thumb forcefully in a fit of rage.

"How dare... she put me in a spot in front of the rest...!!! You knew I didn't like to handle these kinds of things!!! I even had to lie about leaving due to a stomachache...!!! KNOW YOUR PLACE! You're just! A mere! Homoculusss!!!"

I yelled out, and kicked away a few buckets on the floor which were in my way. But it ended up making my feet a little sore and itching in pain; My toes were pinkish red.

"...Tch..." I clicked my tongue in distaste.

Had homonculi not heed the orders of normal elves as intended and did all the breeding with the filthy males for us, I would have never given my approval during that diet meeting.

...Males of our species are seriously so ugly, I might puke if we had to continue copulating with them... Our ancestors must have been blind to keep them within our village...! I'm glad we sent them all down there...

...Compared to human males though~

...My mood was lifted a little as my thoughts went off at a tangent. I got aroused slightly at the thought of taking away the virginities of the new batch of men captured around the outskirts of the barrier.

After interrogating them for a day or two, they eventually gave away their identities as adventurers sent by the Luna Empire to investigate the culprit behind the disappearance of men in this forest.

They are still fresh for the picking, and I get to choose, hee hee~ Members of the Martriach Diet get first dibs after all~ The old grannies are not very sexually active as well, what a waste~ Oh well, not that I'm complaining...

I suddenly recalled the mentally unstable boy who called himself White, and my mood turned sour again.

Ugh, gross... ...Really, ever since becoming a member of the Martriach Diet, I haven't been getting the normal ones... Always defective... always so impure... aaahhh thinking about it just makes me mad...!!!

... I had invited him nicely because I felt like he was going to be an excellent pet in the near future...

To even waste my time setting up a Mind Collar on that piece of filth... what a waste...

Mind Collars were harder-to-notice derivatives of Slave Collars and required the Master to learn at least Enslavery LV1 and Mind Control LV1. I was the only one to learn these skills secretly after torturing a slave merchant we've caught a few years ago.

When using the Mind Collars, the user had to designate a word as the trigger to complete the Master-Slave Contract.

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Of course, I devised the setting about true names and that thing fell for it like a fish caught up in a bait... it seems that these dumb humans are really still listening to the lies of our forefathers~ True names? What a joke...

I had set the command "Tasha" on them, so when someone I really took interest in appeared once in a blue moon, I would use one of them to complete my capture with mental enslavery...

Of course, I had to request for them to keep it a secret as well, as it might get a little suspicious for the other elves who called me Tricia or Mistress with a respectful tone normally.

So I can keep all the nice guys to myself~ Huhuhuhuhuhuhu~

Slave Collars were taboo within our village after all, and we had destroyed the various pieces that the slave merchant had brought along with him in his cargo.

But Elf men were not considered as proper sentient beings, so it was an exception to enslave them down to the Labour Section in the mines.

This law was passed within our village a few years ago, and it was me that coerced everyone to approve it.

And also, did we even torture that slave merchant though? He just gave in the moment we brought him into the room... Really... humans are so weak-willed...

Wrapped nicely with the towel around my waist, I stepped out of the bathhouse slowly down the stairs and back in the cottage interior; my feet still hurting from the results of my aggression earlier.

"Did you have a nice bath, Mistress?"

A lifeless voice greeted me from my right as I reached the foot of the marble stairs. I turned to look at the person and responded with a light hand gesture.

It was another servant by the name of Urha; the newly assigned homonculus as a replacement for Syviel.

Since finding the corpse of Syviel which have been decaying for a week now right beside the underground stairs, Syriel has since come clean of her deed.

It didn't feel like she held any emotions at all when she apologised for it, rather I noticed that she was feeling delighted about it, which made my skin crawl. We didn't bother to bury it, since it was so disgusting to look at, let alone touch it.

But I did not mind too much about this incident, since that lass was the first product created by that monster in the Stalite Caves underneath the World Tree.

She held more alchemic condensity than the others which were mass-produced after her, which meant that she had a longer lifespan and could live as long as 20 years as compared to her short-lived defects.

Replacing homunculi monthly gets very annoying after all... I don't like to come down that filthy place where the men are...

Finishing my train of thoughts, I questioned Urha.

"What's wrong? Why aren't you guarding the doorstep?"

It was strange for any of my servants to come up here after all. I had specifically ordered them not to come to the third level unless they had something important to tell me.

Unless...

"Yes. Mistress, there is a message I have to convey to you from the elders."

Hmm...? Elders...? This is pretty uncommon, for the elders to call me out specifically like this...?

I swept my damp hair to the side and replied her.

"...Relay it to me."

"Yes. The elders have sent a messenger owl to inform you that the northern village border is currently being attacked."

"...A-Attack...?! Who is it?"

"It appears to be a woman with an ominous-looking sword. The situation currently is not looking very good, they said."

Urha replied in a deadpan tone.

Silence fell upon the room for a moment.

My expression instantly became extremely bitter, as if I had just swallowed a bug.

"THAT LASS!!! SHE CAN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT, CAN SHE?!" I stomped the ground angrily.

Why isn't anything going according to plan?! This is unacceptable!!!

"... What do we do now, Mistress?"

Leaning my arm against the wall, I tried to catch my agitated breathing.

"Haahhh... haaahhh... haahhh... What's... the emergency level...?"

"Caution A, Mistress. We are advised to evacuate immediately and fall back underground to the Stalite Caves with the male elves as our line of defense if she gets too close. If the meatshields aren't enough, we can also deploy the Amalgamate as a last measure."

Urha replied without batting an eyelid. Homunculi were programmed to think like us after all.

"...Alright... I'll do so. You, go and tell that little brat Karna and assist the Advance Squad. She should be helping out at times like these!"

"I hear and obey."

Finishing up the conversation, Urha quickly left the cottage to complete my orders.

I dressed myself up nicely in my formal dressing and entered the kitchen in the guestroom slowly.

I suddenly realized that I had made a simple mistake.

! I should have told Urha to open this rusty trapdoor before she left...

But I quickly rescinded that line of thought.

It was clearly her fault, not mine.

...Why... WHY didn't she open it for me?! Isn't a clear course of action?! This stupid homunculus... she'll get it when she returns...

I steadied my erratic breathing again and pushed away the table, and then opening the trapdoor itself with much difficulty.

My body is sweaty again, even after having taken a bath!!! Arghhh...!!! Really... everyone is getting on my nerves...

Those lot of guard elves stationed there are probably useless if the Advance Squad cannot handle that single woman.

...At least the traps we've devised in that place will isolate off most people... It has done in the heroes and various powerful knights as well after all~ If we can't kill them off ourselves, we just have to make them succumb to their own physical limitations in them. 

But...If... If the situation turns for the worse, I'm going to look for her...

In the same place where she's always been in...

"My safety seems to be insured in that case... Alright let's go then."

Muttering to myself with a wide grin on my face, I quickly went down the flight of stairs to meet up with the others who were taking shelter underground.

I headed down filled with confidence.

Since I don't have anything to fear, if she is around to protect me~ Huhuhuhuhu~