Sara awoke the same way that she did every day—with two fluffy creatures pouncing on her face, heckling her until she gave them attention. They were leetas (creatures similar to cats with bunny ears), and their names were Tilly and Reck. Sara had her servant Tamon buy them both one on the second day of her summoning four years ago to make him happy—but now she wished that she bought five and left him out of the loop. She was that lady—an unmarried magical cat woman at 32, barely coping because she went back in time and was technically a decade younger. But she didn’t deny her place in the world and always gave the leetas love. “Okay, okay,” Sara grumbled, rolling onto her back to give them hugs. Reck—her leeta—pounced on her chest, and she snatched him up in her arms like a bear trap. “Got you.” She rolled over, pinning him to the bed with a grin as he reeahed, clawing at her iron skin for purchase as Tilly hopped around with her half-bunny ears, giggling (in a way only leetas could) as her fellow leeta suffered. Suddenly, Sara released Reck and thrust her arms toward Tilly. Tilly panicked and jumped, but Sara was the Hero—the strongest human in Reemada—so she effortlessly caught the bounding Leeta in mid-air and continued the cuddle assault.

Observers would never guess how many humans this tyrant had killed or what her single year as queen had been like. But now those days were over.

The leetas hissed, reeahed, and moaned about her aggressive cuddling, but they repeated it every morning almost without variation because they—like her—were creatures that loved to be loved but didn’t know how to receive it. So they continued their charade—but they were all getting better at communicating their feelings—even if it required violence.

Sara ended her cuddle session by getting up and taking a bath. She soaked and worked on her mana manipulation exercises, then got dressed in leather armor before visiting King Alecov’s audience chamber.

Alecov’s eyes perked up when he saw her. “Thank Emanasa you’re here,” he said. “We need your input.”

Sara’s face twitched. “Regarding…?” her voice trailed off.

The sixteen-year-old king nodded and looked at Tropan, the elderly man who was old when they met and even older these days. Though if the future foretold in her past life taught Sara anything, it was that this man would work past one hundred, spurred by a magical body constitution that was once at peak form so many decades ago. “My Lady…” he said. “We… are seeing guidance… regarding military spending.”

“Max it out,” Sara said bruskly.

“Ah, yes… but… we need… more funds… should we wish… to meet your… deadline.” Tropan paused considerably after saying your, indicating his incessant reminders that two more years of preparation before challenging Agronus was an impossible task—especially after killing tens of thousands of Lemings, Quell, and Markon troops during the Three-Front Siege. Killing them was good at the time (as they all attacked Lemora), but now that all three kingdoms were tribune states required to fight with Sara during the Thousand-Year War, it was inconvenient that they lost so many troops. Now, she needed more allies, soldiers, and equipment, and time for the artifices (magical blacksmiths like Will who inscribed weapons and equipment with arrays) to prepare equipment for elites. War took time, money, effort, prowess, and countless economic factors. Even looking back, she should’ve taken that reality to heart because it took a decade in her last life to fight Agronus—and they weren’t prepared. That was just another example of her impatience, a serious problem she had faced to the point Raul had to tell her off.

You’re trying to get everything you lost back, but you’re destroying it instead, Raul had warned. It’s not because you’re not capable—God knows you are. But it’s because you’re impatient.

That was true, but Sara was no longer the same person he warned that day. She genuinely cared about the people around her—now, not in the future. She was building a relationship with Kyritus and Tiber, and things were going well. It was a new life—so she considered things more carefully and patiently than she used to. “I’ll find the money,” she said, “and try to build some allies, too.” She had an idea of how to do it.

“Thank you… My Lady,” Tropan said.

Alecov nodded and then looked at her. “Also, I was hoping—“

“No,” Sara rejected coldly.

“You didn’t even hear what I had to say,” he said.

“You’re the king, Alecov,” she said. “You need to make the decisions and stand behind them.”

“Yeah, I am the ‘king’—that’s why you should follow my orders for council,” he grumbled.

Sara looked away as if he hadn’t said anything, stopping just shy of whistling.

“See?” Alecov said. “I’m not the king. You’re the queen—the monarch. And when people come to me, they’re looking for you. And when I do something that you don’t like, I need to break my infallibility to say I had a vision or a recollection or… that I got new information. Lady Reece—“

“You can call me Sara.”

“Removing your title doesn’t change your role! Look. I’m running out of things to say. They’re calling me the Fickle King, whose word means nothing. People can’t rely upon the things I say, so they don’t act. They wait for you.”

Sara paused and considered his words. “I’ll… write you a list of principles. An outline… a… vision statement or something.”

“Vision statement?”

“Road map, take your pick.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“What’s a—“

“Fuck, Alecov….” Sara rubbed her eyes. “My veto extends to the war. That’s it. So you need to rule. At the same time, I get what you’re saying. So I’ll write down things you can judge with certainty. I’ll make it clear… look. I’ll make it happen. Now is this… whatever really important?”

Alecov paused and looked at the ground. Then he shook his head.

“Okay. Take care of it. I’ll get you something in a few days. Okay?”

“Okay,” Alecov said.

“Good kid.” Sara ruffled his hair as if he weren’t an absolute ruler, annoying him and proving his point simultaneously before leaving for her next appointment.

2

A half mile to the north of Lemora was a beautiful lake with crystal clear water—that was pitch black. Not exactly. There was a fifty meter crater lined with obsidian glass from where Sara’s meteor (which ended the Three-Front Siege the year before) hit farmland and erupted in a glorious fire that scorched the nearby area. The vast majority of the lake was human made (technically making it a reservoir) with clear and blue water, leading all the way to the “The Cut” that Sara left in the ground when she struck the battlefield with Qualth, cutting a trench in the ground for two football fields in length. Lemora had filled both with water, creating beautiful landmarks called Lake Obsidian (due to the volcanic glass in the crater) and the “Glass River'' as the cut Sara left had turned sand underneath the ground into clear glass. Both were now free tourist attractions, but it was Reemada’s equivalent of Sunday, where there were five hours in the morning that nobles paid a gold each to sit near tables around the lake, holding banquets without commoners corrupting the tranquil environment. It was during those hours, and there was a group of nobles who should’ve been speaking and networking but were instead staring at seventeen cloaked figures sitting on the water (or at least it looked that way; they were actually sitting on thin barriers) as nobles threw rocks at them.

“Sir, you cannot insult them!” a worker said, standing before a sign written in Trellen that read: “Fearless Focus: Help increase our mage’s mental stamina by trying to break their concentration.

“Price: 5 silvers per throw.”

If there was anything nobles enjoyed, it was people dancing for their entertainment, so they had piled up gold to throw stones at the cloaked figures, but the event quickly left them visibly flustered. Whenever the nobles hit a cloaked mage, a small barrier activated on the area of the body that the stone hit, blocking it.

“I didn’t insult them,” a noblewoman said to the worker. “I said it’s a sham! There’s a barrier around them.”

“That’s not true, My Lady,” the worker said nervously. “The exercise is to circulate mana to the point the stone hits to block the attack. They’ve gotten very good with daily training.”

“Bullshit,” another noble said, cocking back his arm and throwing a baseball-sized stone at the cloaked mages. It hit a redhead but instead of bouncing off, it rocketed outward, flying across the lake and hitting a planted tree on the other side. “W-What the fuck was that? Mana manipulation, my ass!”

Sara walked up to the nobles, wearing a cloak—of course—because why announce you’re the acting queen when you can strike fear into the hearts of unreasonable people with a grand reveal? It was a joke, but the worker didn’t feel that way. Her face paled when she saw Sara’s face, but Sara put up her index in a hush signal, then paid five silvers for a stone.

“T-Thank you, My Lady,” the worker said, handing her a stone.

“Who are you?” the noblewoman asked. “This is a private banquet.”

“I’m with the kingdom,” Sara said, wrapping the stone with aura. The mages on the water started panicking as Sara cocked her arm back. Just the fear of the strike forced many to lose focus and crash into the lake. Of those meditating when she threw it, only four remained after she launched the aura-wrapped stone over their heads. Two of the four were shitting bricks, leaving just the redhead and a giant sitting still.

“See?” Sara asked the noblewoman. “It’s not rigged. They’re just really good.”

The nobles looked at her in awe, forearms freckled with goosebumps from the chilling aura Sara had just used.

“Who are you?” the noblewoman asked again, this time with a different inflection.

“I’m the one that created this lake.” Sara unhooded, and the nobles from Lemora dropped like flies while the visiting nobles looked at them with panicked faces, trying to figure out what was wrong.

“L-Lady Reece! My deepest apologies!” One hit the ground and started begging and then the noblewoman dropped to the ground, groveling and asking forgiveness.

This is the only good part of being queen, Sara thought with minor sadistic pleasure. Of course, she didn’t consider it sadistic. She liked to think of herself as something closer to Batman, role-playing as billionaire Bruce Wayne during the day and destroying the same unreasonable nobles she was networking with by night. Then again, she liked to think whatever was most convenient for her.

“Sara!” Darius said from the water, glaring at her. He was one of the four people that remained sitting (the rest were swimming toward shore). “You can’t teach us how to block attacks and avoid stronger enemies at the same time.”

“Learn to anticipate your enemy’s trajectory,” Sara said dryly. “They got it.”

Raul and Emma were still on the water, calm as Hindu cows. Andy was also there, but he was trembling, and the water was rippling around him.

“They don’t count!” Darius complained.

Sara scoffed and picked up a handful of pebbles. “Then just block!” She threw the handful like a shotgun blast. Darius closed his eyes and his mana moved around his body rapidly, blocking a dozen pebbles before five hit his face and he broke focus, dropping into the water.

Sara chuckled, not feeling sadistic but just playful. Then she looked at the nobles. “If you tell anyone that the heroes practice here, they’ll stop helping them practice. Do you understand?”

They gave their approval in various flavors of sycophantic gestures before Sara helped the heroes out of the water, greeting them with slight smiles. She had grown close to them over the last winter, teaching them mana manipulation in a frozen room like the first year but with structured teaching. They had improved by leaps and bounds.

Once Sara finished, she looked at Emma, still meditating on the water. “You ready, Emma?” she asked, picking up a large stone.

“Yeah,” Emma replied, turning to Raul and Andy beside her. “They’re under the rebound barrier, so don’t hold back.” Raul and Andy were still on the lake, but they were underneath Emma’s ring barrier, providing a second layer of defense against attacks.

Sara nodded, and under the watchful gaze of the nearby nobles and excited heroes, she wrapped the stone with intense aura. The nobles gasped under the intense pressure, which felt like a black hole as the stone glowed with bright white light. At the same time, Emma released an incredibly dense green barrier that wrapped a third of the obsidian portion of the lake with an opaque barrier. It was called the Sayon’s Wall, a malleable barrier that could change shape and increase size.

“Hoh? You’re that confident, huh?” Sara taunted when she saw the barrier’s size.

“A barrier’s worthless if it only protects one person,” Emma said, defiantly increasing the size of the barrier to encompass half the lake. As it grew, it became more transparent, making it obvious that it was weaker.

“Okay….” Sara shrugged and increased the aura on her stone, making the heroes whisper excitedly. “I’m not holding back.” She was being honest.

“Bring your worst,” Emma declared.

Sara cranked back her arm and threw the stone as hard as she could.