It didn’t take long for her to be done with it. Instead of running back and forth, she made a sleigh out of thick sticks and fastened them with vines. Poking it with her hand, she knew that it was bad, but she believed that it would be enough to do her bidding. Placing the logs on it, she ran back and forth between their place. After six turns, she managed to carry over every log.

Crossing her arms in front of her chest, she looked at the plain on the right side of the lake, looked at from the cave’s side. “How should I do it? I’ve never built a house before… I guess I should make some kind of foundation at first,” she mumbled. Stomping on the ground, a three square meters thick block of earth raised out of the ground. Hot flames shot out of her palms and turned the ground into a block of lava.

Seeing that it was about to fall apart, she poured cold water on it. But she was still too late. The result of her work was a wide, flat, and black patch of rock Thick mist covered the area, thanks to the sudden evaporation of a high amount of water. “Great, now I can’t see anything from this place,” she grumbled, waving her hand. A strong gust of wind blew the mist away, still making her hair and leather armor wet on the outside. “You condensed at the wrong place!” she waved her hand, using Water Magic to control the water drops and remove them from her hair.

Stretching her arms, she talked to herself in the silent forest, “Hmmh~ Let’s try it again. I won’t clear what I screwed up. I’ll just reuse it!” she waved her hand, shooting numerous fireballs at the black rock. After a repeating her movements ten times, the surface broke and the hot lava flooded out. “Awawaawaaa! What am I doing?! I’ll burn down the forest this way!” she shouted, seeing a blob of lava shoot out of the mass, landing on a tree.

It started sizzling and caught fire in the blink of an eye, covering her mouth, her face white, she quickly shot a huge ball of water towards the tree. Although the fire was extinguished, other trees got on fire, along with the bushes nearby. Smelling burnt tree and leaves, she sighed as she closed her eyes. Clearing her mind, she clapped her hands and summoned a small rain cloud, right above the area that got on fire.

The heavy downpour cancelled out the fire in a few seconds since it just barely started. Dred, Jake, and Audrey jumped out from behind a bush at the same time and looked around with worry in their eyes.

“What happened? Were you attacked?!” Audrey asked, looking for wounds on Elena’s body, touching her body all over the place.

“...”

Damn it, I wanted to lie, but I can’t do it after seeing her being so worried. But… nooo! Everyone will think of me as an idiot! How the hell did I think of using lava in the middle of a forest? I’m so stupid! She thought, staying silent as she kept looking back and forth between her friends and the burnt trees.

Raising her hands, Elena started tapping her index fingers against each other, turning her head away. “You see… I was stupid enough to use lava and... “ coughing once, she continued, “this is the result,” she pointed at the blackened tree trunks, with only a few leaves left on them. “I’m sorry!”

“Hahaha, you are ridiculous,” Audrey laughed at her. Waving her hand, new leaves grew on the trees and their barks returned to their original colors.

“Nature Magic is amazing, after all,” Elena praised her.

“And why were you trying to use lava?” she asked, throwing her red hair over her shoulders.

“A foundation of our cabin.”

“That doesn’t need that kind of big foundation… not to mention that we don’t plan to stay here for that long, do we?” Audrey inquired, furrowing her brows.

“We don’t.”

“Then compressed earth is more than enough,” Audrey replied, pushing the black rock to the side with an earth wall and made a four square meters block rise out of the ground.

It took only a few hours of work with their combined efforts to build a simple cabin with two rooms. Placing a few logs beside each other, Elena fastened them with a few vines to make a door. After fixing a wooden handle to it, she put the door in a polished wooden rail. It required a lot of strength to move the three hundred kilograms heavy door she made, but considering their lack of materials, like iron, they couldn’t afford to be picky. Not to mention, that with their strengths, the weight of the door wasn’t all that heavy.

“Do we even need two rooms? I mean, we don’t have another door and we ran out of logs,” Jake pointed at the doorway, connecting two rooms, which were separated by a wall, made up of logs. There were only two rooms in the cabin and both of them intended to serve as a place for their beds. They could bath in the lake and cook outside, so everything was simple.

Sighing loudly, shaking her head, Elena replied, “Fine. We won’t put a door, but you will sleep in a different bed!”

“I couldn’t ask for more,” he jumped in happiness.

After Audrey created a Gravity Field around everyone, they started to train their bodies. While they ran in circles around the big lake, Elena started cooking the meat Dred brought. With the help of a few spices they’ve got in the city, she was able to make everything more delicious.

When Dred smelled the meat in the air, he couldn’t help but stop running. Coiling his right arm around Elena’s neck, he looked into the pot. “How is it going? What will you cook?” he asked, licking his lips subconsciously.

“The food will be nothing else than the snake meat you brought back, obviously. I also made some side dish to it from this tasty grass, Pastion, we found in the city. It’s really great with meat. I never thought that this green grass could have such a good taste,” Elena replied, stirring the contents of the pot. “You smell bad,” she complained as her nose caught the smell of his sweat covered body.

“Oh, sorry. But I won’t leave before tasting it!” Dred moved his finger towards the pot.

Elena used the polished staff in her hand to hit Dred’s hand. “Don’t touch it. We will eat when it is done. Now go and train.”

“Ah, fine… but you’ve got to cook delicious food in that case!” he whispered into her left ear before stepping back. Turning into his panther form, he started running.

“Haah- and here I thought that I should stop for a moment and have a taste of it!” Jake panted as he ran past Elena.

“Hungry men,” she chuckled. A few minutes later, she extinguished the fire under the pot and called for the others. Dred used his demon form to taste Elena’s cooking. Gulping down a mouthful of it, he said with a nod of his head, “It was worth waiting for.”

A smile formed on Elena’s face without her notice. After the others tasted it, they too agreed with Dred, much to Elena’s happiness. Noticing her innocent happiness, Audrey said with a chuckle, “Aren’t you a cute little girl? The person who is supposed to destroy the universe is feeling happy after her friends praised her cooking. Who would believe that?”

“Why the long face?” she asked, noticing Elena’s change of expression.

Sighing loudly, she replied, “I know that you didn’t mean it in a bad way, but just because that is the reason of my and Dred’s birth, it doesn’t mean that we are just mindless murderers. I always find it strange how people call many other races monsters, but I have another theory. Everyone is selfish. I’m no different. I have a different text written beside my race, and even though I look the same as humans from the outside, I’m a monster.”

“What makes us monsters? In my opinion, every intelligent creature is a monster, and every unintelligent creature is an animal. So just like other monsters, I too can feel happy when I see or hear good things and I too can be sad when I see someone close to me die or when I fail at something.”

“And I forgot to tell you one thing. When I talked with Dred, I decided something important. I won’t destroy every city and universe. Since I’m a selfish monster, I’ll relate people with my own personality. Anybody who is worse than me is a monster that should be eradicated. Who decides it? Me. I made a selfish decision.”

“An if there are people who betray others to get higher, I’ll kill those people too. If there are more unreliable people in a city than trustworthy, I’ll destroy that city, kingdom, empire, or whatever it is. If it’s the other way around, I’ll leave that place intact.”

Audrey was left with open mouth upon hearing her sudden outburst. “O-Okay. So, you are saying that you are going to base the life of the universe on the people you meet?” she asked for confirmation.

Nodding her head, Elena replied with a yes.

“Won’t it be a problem that you aren’t doing what you were born for?” Jake asked, raising a brow.

“I don’t know. It shouldn’t be since the Ancestor hasn't appeared yet. Do you mind it? It could endanger your life too,” Elena asked, circling her finger on the edge of her wooden plate, looking into Jake’s eyes.

“When I drank your blood, I became your blood servant. Just because you are calling us ‘familiars’ and ‘friends’, that won’t change. But to clarify my meaning, both Audrey and I understand that you know this. And you have to live with the fact that we are ‘yours’. We will always have the same goal as you and Dred.”

“You know, it’s strange to say this, but I understand how bad this feels. You are no different than the other ‘monsters’, yet you are still bound to stay alone with Dred, metaphorically. As a normal human, I’d definitely call you evil. Maybe I’d call you a hypocrite too. I mean, you have friends and all the stuff. You are beautiful, you are talented, then why being so ‘lonely’?”

“It’s is always strange to see how wretched your beautiful looking life is, isn’t it?” he asked with a smirk, swallowing the last spoonful of food from his plate.

“Haha, is that what you think?” Elena asked with a chuckle.

“It is.”

“Well, my life is nothing bad, as you said, but it’s still a bit wretched. It will be fun to be the most wanted group in the universe, so enjoy your time,” she chuckled.

“You turned my small joke into a big talk, huh… I didn’t expect that, but whatever. Let’s wash the dishes,” Audrey said with a blank face.

“Is there a problem with it? You know that I like it better when you are honest with me,” Elena asked as she stood up from the wooden table they made before.

“No,” Audrey smiled back. “However childish Jake might be from time to time, he isn’t an idiot, which I’m happy to see. I agree with him. I also agree with you. Talking things over is better than leaving them piling up. That might be the case why I can trust all of you without any problem. We are a small group, so trust is key. Go and train. I’ll do the dishes. I can slack off a bit.”

A smile formed on Elena’s face upon hearing Audrey’s words. “Haha, okay.”

While Dred and Elena were jogging, Jake and Audrey washed four plates with the help of water Magic. Cleaning the last one, Audrey talked, “What do you think about her change of plan? We became her blood servants when she still had her original plans. Now I feel a little confused since I don’t know what to believe. My mind tells me to listen to her, while my blood tells me to just destroy everything.”

“I know what you are talking about. It’s like our bodies and minds want two different things. But I find her current plan much better, as a human in the past. She surely has the same problem. Since we are ‘hers’ anyway, let’s help her as much as we can,” he replied, drying the last plate with a gust of hot wind.

Chuckling, Audrey smiled as she said, “You are right. We’ve got to gather more information to help her if we don’t want to see her killing innocent people. I mean, the guards in the gates didn’t do anything bad either, but it was a must to kill them. If she wants to find out something, she will kill good people too. If we can gather information instead, then she won’t have to do it.”

“Geh, you are caring so much about her. What will happen to my little heart? What about me?” Jake elbowed her.

“This,” Audrey kissed his face before making her way towards the lake to join Elena and Dred.

Touching his face with a blank face, Jake asked, “Why did I get this? Did I do something good?”

“It’s a secret~” Audrey whispered as she turned around for a moment. Looking at Audrey’s swaying hips, Jake grumbled, “Ugh… hot.”

"Hahaha~"

Hearing Audrey’s laughter, he realized that she heard him. “You red haired succubus! You demon!”

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