It takes surprisingly little time to clear a cavern of all life. While that wasn’t strictly our purpose down in dark fog cavern, when monsters only use their intelligence to try to kill you better, then they deserve the bottom of the shoe.

The cavern, once cleared of life, is secured by various teams of builders who gate off all the entrances, and then people come to see what can be done with the massive dreary stone room. At least there’s a sense of privacy, I guess. The dark fog still hovers over everything so if you don’t want to know your neighbours it’s a great place to live.

Still, life goes on, and we slowly kill our way through every ecosystem that wants to eat us. It’s depressing how few life forms are open to peaceful conversation, some because of lacking intelligence, some because of hunger and greed.

I have to be careful not to find myself on the second list sometimes. It’s too easy to think that a weird slug-like thing is just another dumb beast, only to hear it screaming for me to stop murdering its family.

I wasn’t actually killing his family, or I was, but I stopped in time to save them. He was just barely fast enough to save his family from the big mean monster, but the next ugly family I cross might not be so quick on the screaming.

I need to remember that just because it’s ugly and looks dumb, doesn’t mean it’s not a fully realized person deserving respect.

“If you understand me, back off and get on the ground. If you want to be dinner, then keep attacking me you dumb lobster!” I shout, trying to be as fair as possible to the massive crustacean.

We take his next swing as an answer, and Eshya swoops down from above to do the deed. Her blade shines bright as she cuts right through to the brain and pops it with a small explosion at the tip of her sword.

The beast was at crystal stage, but she made it look simple without even damaging any of the good meat.

She’s gotten dangerously good at that.

“That’s enough, break time,” I declare, sitting on one of its fallen claws.

A rust-red landscape of mud, accented with the grey of shattered rock, extends out beyond my fingertips. In the distance I can see the deep purple leaves of a tree that defies gravity, reaching up through the dense cloud cover above. This is not the tree to which we’ve allied ourselves.

It is the enemy; or one of them.

Though, for once, we’re not here to start a new war. At least not today. For the last month, we’ve been scouting the world around our cavern, from the reef that lies just beyond the shoreline, to the stone mountains where ferrets rule in massive colonies.

We’ve seen only a small fraction of this world, and even with all that we’ve killed, there are still countless more violent beasts out here to fill the waiting bellies at home. There is enough iron and steel here to make whatever we so desire, and wood is becoming more and more of a precious commodity just because of the metal flooded markets.

“Do you see something?” Eshya asks, standing beside me with her new sword. It’s forged from the finest steel my craftsmen and scientists know how to produce, then with Vii’s help speeding up the process, Eshya has managed to store her mana inside it just like I do with my plate armour.

“Just a beautiful young elf,” I say, flirting lightly. “In desperate need of some cleansing magic.”

“It’s not that bad,” she rolls her eyes and shakes her head at me. Her smirk is a little more familiar than it was a month ago. Fighting together has helped to fix what was broken, even if we’re still working to bridge the new rifts that have formed between us.

“I was just considering how big this planet is,” I say. “It’s taken us a month to just get this far, but there’s so much more of the world we’re yet to see.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of how this works,” She rolls her eyes again before leaning on my shoulder. “How quickly were you planning to take over this world?”

“Ah… I was kind of hoping we’d be done before our kids pop out.”

“Pop out?” Eshya asks, raising a brow. “They’re not monsters that are going to burst out of Nel’s chest like out of that horrible movie you made us watch. Shen was hiding from us for a whole week!”

“It’s not a horrible movie! It’s a classic!” I shout. “And I only meant it as a figure of speech, birth just kind of weirds me out a bit. Like, a kid is just meant to crawl out of my… guh!”

“Now they’re crawling?!” Eshya asks, bursting with laughter. “Kyra, are you sure you know how this works?”

“No, and I don’t want to know!” I shout. “It’s gross, and weird, and why can’t we just lay eggs?!”

“I mean that was always an option,” Eshya says, still giggling. “It would take a little more work to make it happen, but I mean we’re using magical devices. It’s the whole reason we can have kids together in the first place, remember?”

“Ah, yes different species…”

“Aaand we’re both girls,” Eshya reminds me. “I mean, we could’ve modified that part to have kids too, but…”

“Stop!” I cover her mouth. “Stop, I’m grossed out enough for one day, let’s leave the pregnancies and lab-grown penises behind us, yes?”

“I mean, sure, but generally the penises hang from the front, not the behind,” Eshya adds one last remark while I glare at her. Was she always like this? Or did Arduelle put her together wrong?

“Maybe I should get someone to go inside that head and scrub a few things…”

“Is that what happened to you?” Eshya asks, playing at compassion. “Is that why you’re picture of pregnancy is so… unusual?”

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“Eshya…” I lower my voice in warning.

“Fine, fine,” Eshya says, rolling her eyes with one last laugh. “With how you are in the bedroom I never really figured you would blush that bright from a little something like this.”

“Yes, yes, it’s fun to make me embarrassed. I get it,” I say, glaring at her.

I’m not sure what I can do to get back at her, but I’m certainly not leaving it here. I’m an Empress, I have a certain dignity to uphold.

“What do you want it to look like when we’re done?” she asks, growing serious. “When we’ve killed everything that needs killing, claimed everything worth taking, and made it into our home?”

“To be honest, I’m not too sure,” I admit. “I just want everyone to be happy, and to have a chance to seek out their own future. No matter what we do, I don’t want to take that from everyone.”

“Just the people we kill to get there?” Eshya asks. “The dumb ones, the mean ones, and the creatures that can’t handle company?”

“We have to eat something, so someone has to get the short end of the stick,” I say.

“Not it,” Eshya snorts a laugh and ribs me in the side. She’s back to her horny self at least.

“I guess, I just want a world where we can all find our own happiness. I’ll have to compromise for a world where the people most important to me get that.”

“Until you become a god above all gods and recreate the universe into a new shape?” Eshya asks, raising a brow. “I’ll make sure to brag to everyone that my wife is better than their gods.”

“Well, I mean if I’m that powerful and totally omniscient, then maybe I’ll just be everyone’s wife,” I say, ribbing her side. “And all life forms will take the shape of beautiful women, and they will all love me.

“All who are ugly will be made beautiful, all the men will be remade into women, and see that pile of rocks over there, I’ll make her into wife number 3892.”

“Ah, yeah… let’s cancel the whole god plan. I think I might have to get the other girls together for an intervention. I didn’t think you were this far gone.”

“Sorry, sorry,” I hold up my hands. “I just feel like being a little silly today. Something in the air.”

“Rust particles?” Eshya asks.

“Maybe,” I laugh, grabbing her side and walking back to camp. There’s still more scouting to get to tomorrow, and the day after.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“So, you’re a roaming trader?” I ask the winged man, another of the blue-skinned angels. He wears riches and jewels like no one else on this planet so far.

His caravan is made up of all sorts of strange things, mostly metalwork of one sort or another, and a good collection of weapons at that. Though there are quite a few monster parts too.

It’s nothing that would actually interest me, but I’m sure he’d be happy with a stall in the markets of my empire, and I’m quite interested in his contacts. If we can locate another friendly colony of either flyers or ferrets we’ll have a roof over our heads tonight.

“I trade in all the best wares, when you carry all your wares with you, you don’t take the cheap stuff,” he heaves a gloating laugh as he looks over us, his eyes shining as he takes in the quality of our equipment.

“Well, I’m going to have to trust you on that,” I say. “Unfortunately, I can’t really carry all that much myself, but if you want to visit me back at my home I’m sure we can do some business.

“My merchants have been on my back lately, apparently they’re not able to get their wares out to all of our neighbours. Too many monsters for them to do easy business.”

“Oh, terrible, terrible.” He shakes his head. “Well, not so terrible for those of us with wings, all the flying beasts were hunted into extinction generations ago.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I say. “So, are you safe to travel in the lands of Blue-Crown?”

“Am I?” He asks, feigning offence. “No one rejects my presence or wares, no one makes an enemy of me, and I make no enemies!”

“Glad to hear it, if you go to the town up in Blue-Crown’s branches, you should be able to get some directions from them. Ask about the Black Tree Empire.”

“Black Tree?”

“It’s what they’ve been calling me,” I shrug. Some variations of the same circulate and I’ve yet to determine one name for us to stick to. It doesn’t bother me, to be honest.

“I’ll be sure to visit,” he says with a smile just a little too wide. “Do you have more weapons like what you carry with you?”

“That and more,” I say, leaving him to fly away after he points us to a few nearby settlements he does business with.

“Is it a smart idea to be giving out our address to everyone we meet?” Eshya asks. “What if he’s a creep? Or wants to kill us and take all our stuff?”

“Ah, then we kill him,” I say. “I have enough annihilation stored in my throne to melt most threats at least.”

“I guess,” Eshya scratches at her cheek, not quite confident in that answer.

“I trust Red to finish anything I can’t kill,” I say.

I have much the same worry as her, something could go wrong at any moment, but I can’t let it paralyse me. We need to keep moving, keep growing, and keep fighting.

“You know this would be quicker with a larger army,” Eshya says, leaning against me. “If you personally try to kill every threat, they’re just going to breed too fast for you to deal with.”

“Ugh,” I grimace, realizing not just that she’s right, but that I’ll need a truly immense army to fully subdue this world and claim it from the monsters.

“Let’s just hurry back home,” I say. “Nothing out here seems too dangerous from what I’ve seen so far.” I’ve stolen enough eyes to see a sizeable chunk of the planet, too.

“Except for the trees,” Eshya notes, pointing at the purple leaves on the horizon.

“Yeah, except for the trees,” I admit.

“And the swarms of ocean monsters that wash in every few weeks,” she continues.

“And them.”

“There’s probably some other monsters out there, too,” Eshya notes.

“Ugh!” I grunt.

“We’ll deal with them together,” Eshya says. Smiling bright enough to make all my earlier frustration disappear.

“Together,” I accept, looking into the red horizon that we’re going to make into a new home.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stats and Skills

~Mana Form:

Current mana crystallisation:

-0.4% at 78,231 (Stage 2)

-99.6% at 60,892 (Stage 1)

Current mana volume: 30,304 / 30,304 shards

Mana volume at Stage 1 crystallisation (Max. mana volume):

Kyra: 30,271 shards

Kyra’s armour: 20,777 shards

Kyra’s throne: 1,109,298 shards

~Forms

Mana Canon

-Annihilation Heart (Adapted)

-Blood Fuel (Adapted)

-Bone Magic Storage (Adapted)

-Nail Shifters (Adapted)

Dancer

-Flash Nerves (Adapted)

-Quick Perception Mind (Adapted)

-Burst Reflex Muscles (Adapted)

-Layered Space Muscles (Adapted)

Turtle

-Rebinding Tissue (Adapted)

-Catalyst Sweat Glands (Adapted)

-Repulsive Skin (Adapted)

-Prehensile hair (Adapted)

-Fatty Tissue Blood Storage (Adapted)

Investigator

-Wide eyes (Adapted)

-Wide ears (Adapted)

-Sharp nose (Adapted)

Misc.

-Clean bowels (Adapted)

-Mana Drive (Adapted)

~Favourited Skills:

Magic:

-Annihilation Magic (Customised)

-Fire Magic (Functional)

-Space magic (Broken)

-Force magic (Functional)

-Ice magic (Broken)

-Wind magic (Broken)

Movement:

-Hand-to-hand casting (Mastered)

-Mana surge movement (Customised)

-Stealth (Functional)

Senses:

-Eyes of an Empire (Customised)

-Combat Awareness (Mastered)

-Watchmen (Functional)

-Hidden bug (Mastered)

-De-tagging (Mastered)

-Anti-stealth sight (Mastered)

Special:

-Spirit Transformation (Broken)

-Conformity (Broken)

-Training mana form (Functional)