[Character Sheet]

[Class: //Error//*Redacted*]

[Title List]

[Title: Nine Realm Ambassador]

[Title: Village Ass-Hat]

[Title: Lily boy]

[Title: Dishwasher of the Month Award Winner]

[Title: Silent Wind Lobbyist]

[Title: Genocide Enthusiast]

...

The female system's voice was chipper despite the ridiculous nature of her words. There were some titles in there he'd rather not have. Luckily no one else had access. Only someone with an enhanced identity trait could sneak a peek. Those were rare, and they had to be near his level or higher, which frankly was never going to happen.

Reiss sighed. Scrolling through the accumulated titles made him nostalgic, giddy, and depressed all at the same time.

[Title: One-Eye Wrangler]

[Title: Timekeeper]

[Title: Westward Traveler that Touched the East.]

[Title: Puppy Kicker]

[Title: Puppy Lover]

"That was one time and it was a gnoll chieftess. Calling them puppies is insulting."

[Title: Puppy Lover is evolving]

[Puppy Lover has evolved into The Puppy Mate]

"Your Australian accent is horrendous."

[Title: System Hater is evolving]

[System Hater has evolved into System Antagonist]

[Congratulations! New Skill Unlocked]

[Skill: Just Die Already]

"Ouch. That stings, love. Not how I imagined getting my first skill in at least twenty iterations."

"Who are you talking to, master?"

Reiss looked down from where he was splayed across Queen Eli's thicket throne, several thorny branches poking him in the back. A familiar buzzcut of mossy green greeted him.

"Not your master."

"Yes, master."

Reiss clicked his tongue and waved his arms mystically.

"These are not the droids you are looking for."

"You are talking to droids? What are they like? I am eager to learn."

Weyn put her fists together and bowed hopefully. Normally an Elden princess that was forced to shave her head eighteen times would take a hint and grow some shame. But not Weyn. She was the type of straight-A-student that Reiss really didn't need. He was planning multiple world dominations and really needed to get in the zone.

"Are you finished talking to the lawyers?"

"Yes. They are suing you for copyright infringement."

Reiss pulled out a dark blue square and opened it. A title screen displayed Ruby Red.

"Well, they won't get much. It really isn't worth the fuss. Whatever. How goes the Queendom running?"

"You mean the enormous undertaking of running a country that is the antagonist of mine while drowning the urge to drive it into the ground so that master doesn't destroy everything I hold dear? Excellent, master."

"I did say that, didn't I?"

Reiss was moving through the tall grass when a familiar sound rang. The endorphins secreted made him smirk.

"That would have been tedious. Hey... Why is my starter a Shuckle?"

Mood diving, he mumbled something into his device that sounded like "cheap-college garage-sale knockoff."

Weyn waited while Reiss rotated his arms every which way as he furiously mashed the sticky buttons. Eventually, he got tired of getting no input and threw the device over his shoulder. An exotic bird squawked.

"Right. That happened. Sorry to leave you with all that. I was swamped."

Reiss hopped off the throne, pulling a thorn out of his rear. That throne was pointy. Is it ever groomed?

"Honestly, trying to plan the subjugation of entire worlds without killing everybody under the pretense of extraplanar peace was a headscratcher. Luckily, I think I have it all down now. I just need to interrogate a few Haitian pears, scaramble a phoenix egg, liberate an ancient Etruscan toboggan, and we're all good."

"...I see."

"No worries. I already have an inkling as to where to get started. It will take some clever maneuvering and some elbow grease; luckily I specialize in knocking heads around."

His feet danced as he threw a few quick jabs followed by an uppercut. Weyn mirrored his actions, much to his annoyance. He tripped her. She front flipped and landed on her feet. She acted as if nothing happened.

Like a badass.

"Does this mean you're returning to your duties?"

"Yeah. I can get back to kingdom running now. Queendom running? Queendom run by a de-facto-king... Duel substitute... running. Ahem. Should I mention the fact I'm practically an alien?"

"I don't understand what an alien is, master, but I'd be glad to hand the reins back. The remaining work is still piled up in the Queen's office. I definitely didn't sabotage anything as my mother taught me."

Reiss laughed wholeheartedly and threw an arm around Weyn's shoulder.

"Of course you didn't. That would have been a poor choice. I'll suppose I can teach you something special for your diligence and loyalty."

Weyn perked up considerably. Her master was, after all, the strongest being to ever exist. She'd tried looking at his aura, but that caused her to dry heave for nearly an hour. Just that fact alone caused her to keep her word. She would serve her master until the end of time, even if he did threaten to kill her entire family. It was a moot point since she would never betray him.

"Truly, master?"

"Yup. I'll teach you how to dice your enemies and grind them into paste."

"A cutting technique? Or is it a bludgeoning one?"

"A bit of both. But I'll be wrapping it all up into one for you. Now. Where's this pile of paperwork you mentioned?"

Reiss swung the office door open to reveal a wall of stacked paper. It sloshed out of the room like packed snow. Adjusting his feet, careful not to step on tumbling scroll, he dead-panned to Weyn.

Weyn grinned back.

She most definitely wasn't grinning because she'd stuck Reiss with all the work after stacking the files precariously against the door and neglected actually doing any of it.

Definitely not.

=

"You lied to me."

Reiss chopped the onions and threw them into the pot.

"I did no such thing. These are great skills for anyone to have."

"This is just cooking."

Reiss scoffed.

"Just cooking? Young lady, this is art. Knead that dough as I showed you. No magic."

Weyn refrained when she was scolded. In a recent bout, when she refused to accept her loss and admit defeat, Reiss cut off her mana flow entirely for an entire minute as punishment. Needless to say, she didn't act out anymore.

"Yes, master."

Still the dilligent student, she beat the dough, exactly as Reiss demonstrated.

"What is this meal called again?"

Reiss scooped some bubbling sauce with a ladle, stirring.

"Spaghetti."

=

As Reiss made spaghetti, another event was taking place near the Mystol Quagmire.

Down the road from a secret hideout, a pair of Elden women watched dust dissipate in the distance. Lizzy replayed the recent events in her mind.

After having a relatively fruitful meeting with a group of children, they were rudely evicted from the premises when the teenagers in charge returned. Rushed away, they didn't even have time to say proper goodbyes. As they traveled down the road, the situation got worse.

With the dilapidated stables almost out of sight, Eli couldn't contain her worry any longer, using a covert spell to whisper urgently.

"Did you isolate it? Can you remove it?"

Lizzy grunted. Seated in a lotus position, sweat trickling down her forehead as she strained her focus.

"That girl is a decent weaver. She made her own locking system."

"How long?"

"Thirty seconds until it explodes. That is if she doesn't trigger it remotely."

They'd been wondering why more fuss wasn't kicked up. Their keen eyes noticed the troublesome teens were rigging their cart to self-destruct but stopping it meant outing themselves. That vine magic that Rez used to fix their cart? Yeah, that doubled as a locking system for Keel's explosive magic. The contradictory nature of both spells sped up the degredation.

Effectively... It is a bomb with a countdown.

"Permission to quench it?"

"No. They'll know. We will have to ditch the cart."

"And if they come looking for our bodies?"

"Enhance the spell. We'll make them overestimate the destruction."

And that was what Lizzy did. She connected a channel to the fueling portion of the spell matrix before sprinting away at top speed. The two women flew across the wet ground like star streaks. Twenty seconds later, they drifted to a stop a few kilometers away. Switching gears, Lizzy flushed her mana back down the tube like a sapper pressing down on a detonator. The cart exploded like a barrel of tightly packed dynamite. The sound procrastinated a tense moment before reaching them.

Eli managed their active camouflage while Lizzy watched the carnage with mixed feelings.

"I feel bad for the Lorga. It didn't deserve that."

The poor animal was doomed the moment those brats walked through the door.

"The boy will see the body parts and make assumptions. The other one, Rez, might figure it out. There is nothing we can do if it comes to that. We'll have to change our appearances again."

"I hate this."

"I know."

Lizzy balled her palms and turned around before her thoughts spiraled. Those kids had tried to kill them as some sort of power trip.

"Do you think the others will understand what happened?"

Eli walked alongside Lizzy, keeping them hidden from view. She was more skilled at illusions, though only by a small margin. She kept them relatively invisible while she worked on layering more complete disguises. They would need to change their hair to more middling levels. Brown had been a bad choice.

"Agatha is smart, and so is Ji. They're all old enough to come to their own conclusions. If they can't infer what happened, their leader will probably explain it to them."

"That kid is a bad influence on them."

"Maybe we'll come back and set things right when our mission is over, but for now, we can't get involved."

Lizzy mulled that over. That actually sounded like a good idea. The scornful sneer that she hadn't noticed she wore relaxed into a more subdued expression of determination.

"It's a plan. I'll personally smack some manners into them."

Lizzy paused, feeling herself worriedly as the illusion magic started taking hold. Her eyes narrowed.

"What exactly will our disguises be?

=

Lizzy grumbled, scratching her chest again. The illusion was strong enough to fool her sense of touch.

"I feel flat."

Eli chuckled.

"That's because you're a man, dear."

"Why are there bags under my eyes?"

"Always working yourself to the bone. You never listen to me, running off to help the Leary's when you have your own farm to tend. No more, I say. We'll find you a job in this nice town where you aren't on your feet day and night."

Lizzy felt the urge to make a lewd joke involving getting Eli off her feet. Instead, she got into character. Neither of them was great at it.

"You can't stop me, woman. I'll do what I like. I'll take on the entire town's worth of physical labor. Just watch me."

The performance of the middle-aged Eldens with matching rust-red hair drew a few eyes but not all of them. Most were pleasantly minding their own business as the two spies walked down the center of the street. The roads weren't busy at all, and the air traffic was light in the sense that there was none.

The town, which should have been a quagmire, was completely hollowed out, an enormous pit in the ground. The ground was smooth, polished, worked stone all along the edges. There was no sign of the massive influx of recent rainfall that should have drowned this quarry and transformed it into a reservoir.

The oddities continued. All the structures ignored traditional tree-borne and wooden themes. Elders... they weren't even made of magically shaped stone.

Everything was carved.

The homes, buildings, community centers, everything was made from chipped stone blocks. Assumedly they were mined using physical labor. The amount of light grey stone was disconcerting, nearing ludicrous levels.

They have a literal rock garden.

Bug-eyed, Lizzy observed a wizened Elden combing a massive flatbed of finely compressed rubble. Gravel and sand.

"This place looks fun. Right, dear?"

Startled, Lizzy scratched the back of her head.

"Ah, yeah, right... fun. Just what I want from a date."

They continued a few paces further, reaching the opposite end of the quarry they entered from. Carved into the wall was an interior framed by twin ionic pillars supporting a temple-like archway. As they approached, the ground shook lightly enough to be considered not quite an earthquake. Pebbles bounced for but a second before calming. The peculiarity signaled the exiting of an Elden collective.

Twenty-one people walked down the steps silently. Seven went their own way, leaving the remaining group of fourteen to continue toward the two sore thumbs gawking unabashedly.

The one in the lead had lavishly styled bright blue hair and flawless skin. The leylines cupping her eyes gave her the appearance of an intellectual wearing bifocals. She seemed enthused as she greeted the pair.

"Welcome to Eben, home of the faithful, more commonly known as the Mystol Quagmire. I am the Speaker of this humble society. You may refer to me by my title since my birth name tends to draw inappropriate laughter."

Oh, come on. You can't say that and not tell.

Eli responded formerly while her partner ran through a shortlist in her head.

"I am Solei. This is my partner, Zed. Your welcome is appreciated. The Regent was unkind when our farm flooded. We're not sure how much use we'll be in a town made of stone, but we are eager for a fresh start."

Eli, acting as Solei, gestured around them to indicate her reluctance to be a burden. The Speaker, for her part, smiled graciously.

"It is through divine deliverance that you made it through the storm unaccosted. The Elder blessed you with safe passage. You are welcome here, and your assistance is a matter of course. We don't have much need for farmers since we gain plenty of sustenance from the rock around us. You'll come to find that the richness of the imbued essence is even greater than tree-borne abodes.

The Speaker saw the light dawning in their eyes. It was feigned, but it was what the Speaker was hoping for.

"In regards to motivation, I am sure you're curious seeing so many powerful peoples among us."

She gestured to the group of followers behind him. Each of them rested at the beginning of their second color phase. The Speaker was in the middle of the second phase. Her bright blue hair swished with oratory movements.

"Our proximity to the Elder grants us blessings. You, too, will gain the Elder's blessings in good time. For now, I can direct you to the quarry master. That is where most work resides."

The Speaker pointed them to the lowest section of the massive quarry. They were digging to the left and right of what Eli assumed was a temple.

"How long on average does it take to build a large enough shelter?"

"That depends. For you? It might take a month or two if you are diligent. In the meantime, you may stay at the pavilion. Or if you aren't afraid of tight spaces, you can request a room at our inn."

The Speaker glanced at the sun. It beat down on them with almost no treetop cover.

"I will leave you to explore and acclimate. We must be off. If you happen to see a group of children skulking about, please inform one of us."

Lizzy and Eli exchanged quick snippets of information using their eyes. As they finished, the Speaker and her group brushed past them. A few shoulder-checked them, but that was normal. When they were out of earshot, Lizzy sniped.

"Zed?"

"I thought you'd appreciate it."

"I don't want to be named after your father. Why do you get to be Solei? I want to be Solei."

Lizzy made a grab for Eli's still endowed chest. Eli swatted her away.

"Just bear with it. It sounds like the kids are more trouble than we thought if the Speaker is searching for them. That doesn't look like a group of concerned parents."

Lizzy drooped, chin tucked into her neck as she looked down.

"I miss my girls..."

"They're still there; you just can't feel them."

"But that's the whole point!"

"Stop being an idiot."

"Hey, what do you think the speaker's name is? I bet it's something lewd."

Eli made a give-me-strength gesture and walked off.

"I bet you a splinter of heartwood that it's something like Moonmee."

Eli quickened her pace. Not associating with the idiot.

"Ooh! Or, or Laffyur Titzof."

Lizzy waggled a finger and wheezed.

"Ikneeta Fart!"