Scarlet followed Elisae into the palace, the human queen insisting to her guards that she did not need any protection. Or, to put it another way, that if Scarlet truly sought to do her harm, there would be no number of knights protecting her that would be able to stop her. All the while, Scarlet was examining this new queen with both her normal and supernatural senses.
It had to be said that Elisae bore little resemblance to the late queen Saruko, but such things were common in this day and age. When anyone can adjust their body with a simple trick of ki, let alone those with an energy form, who knows what they truly look like when they rely only on their genetics? At the same time though, she could sense that Elisae was not altering her appearance with ki at all.
Or rather… it should be said that Elisae was unable to do so. From what Scarlet could sense, Elisae did not even have a standard ki path flowing through her body. This allowed the energy to flow in such a primitive manner that Scarlet hadn’t seen anything similar from an adult in roughly a thousand years. Even children were taught in school how to construct a ki path, and typically have the locally accepted standard granted to them through the guidance of their teacher.
For someone like Elisae to not even have that… Scarlet could not help but question her origins. It was highly unlikely that Saruko would have overlooked such an important detail when raising her own daughter, after all.
Still, she kept her suspicions to herself until Elisae had led her into a private meeting room. The human queen inspected the room briefly, moving over to sit at one end of the table. As she did, she seemed to deflate, collapsing against the tabletop in a manner that was very reminiscent of her mother. “Finally… really, you gave me a scare there.” She muttered, puffing her cheeks out.
Scarlet blinked, taking a moment to catch up with the sudden change of pace. She didn’t immediately give away her doubts, and instead chose another seat to place herself in. “I apologize, I had only just learned of your ascension, and wanted to come meet you for myself. After all, I was acquainted with your mother, and our two nations are allied.”
Elisae gave a knowing grin as she listened to Scarlet’s explanation. “You wanted to know who the father is, or if I was even mom’s daughter, right?” She asked, propping her chin up on one hand. “Mom said that you’d probably come by once you learned about me. She was never really known for her relationship skills, right?”
“You’re not a… child of force, are you?” Scarlet asked, not sure how she could word that to be any more sensitive. Elisae looked at her in confusion, processing the request before gasping in surprise.
“No! Gods, no! Nothing like that, I swear!” She shook her head vehemently, doing her best to dispel that thought. “No, I was adopted. My birth parents couldn’t exactly raise me, so my dad sent me to mom, since they were friends. I’ve been down here for the last nine years.”
This time, it was Scarlet’s turn to have to process what she had heard. “I was told that you were nearly twenty years old? You… certainly don’t look like a nine-year-old.”
Elisae gave a small grin at that, nodding her head. “Well, yes and no! I was kind of born in the body of a ten-year-old girl. So after I came here, mom just decided she’d add ten years to my age. I gotta tell you, it’s not easy having to go through school at double speed.”
“Uh huh… and how exactly were you born in the body of an already maturing girl?” Scarlet asked skeptically, raising an eyebrow.
“Magic.” Elisae answered with a completely straight face, causing Scarlet’s eye to twitch.
“Magic?”
“Yup!” Elisae nodded at Scarlet’s question again, an enthusiastic smile growing over her lips. “Well, really it’s just because of how I was born. Dad said that you’d understand it better. He talks to me sometimes, when I’m alone at night, or when I’m sad. Mom, my real mom, can’t because of what she is, but he’s always done his best to be there for me.”
“Okay… and who are these real parents of yours?” Scarlet could feel a headache coming on, the first one she had felt in a very long time.
“Dad knew you’d ask that!” Elisae giggled, propping her chin up with her arm again. “My mom just goes by Julian lately, but my dad’s name is Thane Lorien--” Elisae was cut off as Scarlet abruptly jumped to her feet, eyes wide and hands clenching at the edge of the table hard enough to crack it.
“I killed Thane with my own hands.” Scarlet said, eyes shaking as she looked at Elisae. “Where he was going, it isn’t possible to have children.”
Elisae’s lips curved back up into an almost childish grin. “He told me you’d say that, and to tell you ‘that’s what they said about your people’. Also, he said thanks for the whole killing him thing. He was really agonizing over how to get himself killed without negatively impacting his karma.”
Scarlet collapsed back in her seat, leaning back in it and staring up at the marble ceiling. “How… how did he manage to do it?” While there were many people that knew it was Thane that had helped her people with their fertility problem, there were far fewer that knew he was doing it as a method of increasing his karma.
“Well, the long and short of it is that he twisted the rules a little to make it work. As long as it wasn’t for something that would hurt other people on ‘that side’, they could get him whatever materials he wanted. So, he was studying how to make something like what he did for your people, but applying it to the special brand of karmic spirit he and mom were.”
“Said it took him a while, too. Never said how long, but the fact I was only born nine years ago? Guessing about that long. Turns out, when one of your parents is an embodiment of karmic virtue, the little crotch spawn basically has her body suffused with positive karma. Except that my body was made of flesh and blood, which doesn’t really go well with the whole ‘afterlife’ setting.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Once they found out that the very fabric of reality was trying to expel me from that realm, they decided to send me here, where I met my other mom. Dad came down to explain the situation to her, and mom adopted me. Fast forward eight years while I get the mother of all cram schools, and mom decides that I have learned enough to become her heir.”
After saying that, Elisae had a rather sad look on her face. “She had been waiting for me to ‘catch up’ to my biological age, and then planned on trying to ascend. If she succeeded, she would be able to rule Hanbei as a new God-Queen. If she failed, she would at least have an heir that she could trust.”
“She’s also the one that suggested I not make a big deal about the transition. I’ve never really fought much before, so she was worried that people might come by and fight me for the crown. I mean… they still did, but I found a way to deal with that, thanks to my dad’s deal with Lady Irena.”
“Turns out, trying to hurt someone with good karma makes your own karma go bad. So with my karma, if someone is trying to hurt me… I keep a Priest of Irena handy. If someone tries to come for my head, I ask them to invoke the black chains. I got really nervous about that the first few times, but thankfully nobody has shown up that can stop them, so far.”
Scarlet gave a small nod at that. She knew all too well about the way that karma transferred from person to person. Those who selflessly helped someone with such a strong virtue as Elisae would no doubt find themselves deeply rewarded, while those who tried to hurt her would have their karma plunged directly into the black.
“Did Saruko not teach you how to fight?” Scarlet asked, still finding that hard to believe. Elisae simply gave a bitter smile, shaking her head.
“Anything I fight, and that tries to fight back, gets the same kind of karmic influence as someone trying to hurt me. How am I going to spar with someone if I know that getting an accidental injury could forever condemn the other party to an eternity in the black chains?”
Scarlet hesitated, having not considered that detail. “What about a simple ki path, that way you could at least defend yourself against monsters?”
Elisae tilted her head slightly, as if in confusion. “I’ve never fought a monster before. They always seem to avoid me when I’m traveling between cities, unless a group of bandits target me, then they show up to kill the bandits and leave.”
Scarlet was immediately confused by that statement, before piecing something together. “Out of curiosity… what are your Charm and Luck stats?”
“Huh? Oh, Charm is… about five hundred? And Luck is a little over a thousand.” Elisae answered as she glanced off to the side, reading her own status screen. “Mom said those values were really high, so I shouldn’t brag about them to people.”
...I doubt even dad has luck that high. Scarlet muttered internally, before shaking her head. “Those should be the blessings of your karmic virtue. Still, if you are truly the child of Thane, I would like to offer a small measure of assistance. It isn’t much, but I can bestow you with an advanced ki path that will help you to grow stronger over time.”
“Huh?! You can do something like that, really?!” Elisae hopped up in excitement, eyes practically growing. “Well, I know you’re the Goddess of Ki, obviously. But giving someone else a ki path? Wouldn’t that take a lot of diligent guidance?”
Scarlet shook her head, a brief golden light surfacing in her eyes. “No. In fact, it’s already done.” As she said that, Elisae could already feel her ki starting to follow an invisible path. Where once it had been a stagnant lake, it was now being guided through carved trenches.
The human queen let out a quiet sigh of contentment when she felt her ki cycling through her body. With every pass, the impurities of stagnation began to work themselves out, and her body adapted to the new flow. “Wow… it’s really that easy? Does that mean that I can start learning some of those other energies that have been talked about lately? Like that electric field one?”
Scarlet gave a small nod. “It should be possible. I left six secondary energy pools for you in the ki path, to harness those types of energy. If those aren’t enough, you can let me know later on, and I’ll adjust the path for you.”
Elisae ran over, excitedly picking up the small empress and giving her a big hug. “Oh, thank you!” She said, surprising Scarlet into not being able to properly react.
Scarlet cleared her throat, eventually getting Elisae to set her down while she evened out her dress. “It’s not a problem. By the way… do you have any guesses as to what interfered with the shipment from last week? I only just found out about that today, as well. I need to hire some more thorough officials to report matters to me…”
Scarlet was asking this question after taking into consideration Elisae’s stats. With a luck value that high, her subconscious would often glimpse information her mind did not recognize, or even information that was wholly unavailable to her.
Elisae thought it over for a moment. “Those portals are designed to be able to go between worlds, right? That means that they have to go through the void, at least somewhat. Wouldn’t something from the void be able to interfere, if it passed by right as the transport was crossing its path? It was probably just some kind of void monster that eats ‘concealed items’.”
After saying that, Elisae playfully stuck out her tongue. “You should ask if any of the delivery workers lost their underwear when they took the portal. I bet that’s the kind of thing they don’t advertise in their report.”
Scarlet’s eye twitched slightly when she heard that. She was already about seventy-five percent certain that Elisae’s guess was accurate, and decided that she should indeed find an individual to ask that. It was just… that is a rather awkward question for someone in her position to make.
“Oh, also…” Seeing that Scarlet was getting ready to leave, Elisae blinked, her eyes getting a bit hazy. “You don’t like games, do you? Like, virtual reality games?”
“Not particularly, why?” Scarlet raised an eyebrow when she heard Elisae’s question. In truth, she had played her share of such games in the past, but had long grown bored of them. It would take something rather innovative for her to get back into the gaming scene.
“I was just thinking… There's this new game coming out soon. It seems like a lot of fun, but gives me a really bad feeling. The designer’s a god, and he came by a few weeks ago to try and work out a deal to get me to help advertise in my territory. He seemed like a creep, so I turned him down. His name was… Julius Kyles? I just thought that I should warn you, in case he came to bother you, too.”
Scarlet’s eyes went wide in alarm at the unexpected warning. For the very same reason she asked about the shipment, she believed Elisae’s intuition about this game. Someone with stats like hers would naturally be turned away from anything that could prove harmful to herself or those she cared about. And for her to bring it up so suddenly, it made Scarlet think that this person would truly be on his way to Bloodhaven soon. Or at least, the game itself might have been something that would attract Scarlet’s attention.
“Thank you for the warning, I’ll keep it in mind.” Scarlet promised. “And… I’ll be sure to come by to visit now and then.” After she said that, she saw Elisae beam a happy smile while she turned to exit the room, lost in her new expectations.