"...But you're free now," Kaede said, surprised.
"I'll tell you everything I know, so please, could you give so employnt? I'll do anything you want, even dirty work," Glenda pleaded, looking up with desperation etched across her face.
"Employnt?" Kaede scratched her head with her left hand, where a scar ran down from her wrist to her elbow. "I don't know..."
Ari's eyes widened. "Mother, your... your arm!"
Kaede blinked, glancing down. "Oh, yeah. Millim and I didn’t exactly walk out of that last attack unscathed."
Glenda stared, awe-struck. 'That cataclysmic blast, short of an actual nuke, and all she got was a scratch? So cool. Screw you, Maribel! Screw you Rozzos! I’m working for soone way better now, and I might actually enjoy it.'
Ari quickly retrieved a blue, V-shaped bottle from her pouch. "Mother! How dare that little brat... put a mark on you!" she said, clearly distressed.
Kaede chuckled nervously. "Uhm, calm down, Ari. That’s not going to work."
Ari paused, watching as the scar refused to heal, even with the best potion Hachi had ever brewed, one boasting 99% healing efficiency. "It’s not healing..."
Lowering her head, Ari gently placed her glowing blue antennae on the scar, channeling her healing magic. But Kaede ruffled her hair with a warm smile.
"Enough, Ari. It was Millim’s idea."
Ari looked up sharply. "What do you an?"
"Well," Kaede began, sheepishly, "while you can’t heal , I could easily take care of this scar with [Endless Regeneration] or any of my other skills."
"Then why didn’t you?" Ari asked, confused.
"Because Millim was so ecstatic about hers. She said it looked cool and refused to heal it. Then she asked not to heal mine either." Kaede laughed lightly. "She called them ‘proofs of awesoness.’ Said we should show them off to her ‘bestie forestie.’"
"That whore!" Ari growled through gritted teeth. "Leaving a mark on Mother and calling it a good thing..."
Flick!
Ari winced, rubbing her head where Kaede had flicked her.
"Stop that, Ari," Kaede said firmly. "There’s nothing wrong with it. Honestly... I think it is kind of cool."
Ari pouted, her eyes misty with tears. "But Mother... you’re supposed to be perfect. And she marked you," she whined.
Kaede sighed softly. "No one is perfect, Ari. You're smart enough to understand that."
Ari still pouted, her antennae twitching in protest. "But you’re the exception, Mother. You're the Mother of Monsters."
Kaede blinked, clearly caught off guard. “The mother of…?” She shook her head with a groan. “Never mind that. And really, you should stop praising so much. It’s kind of embarrassing.”
“I think you’re really cool. The coolest, even. Boss,” Glenda chid in with a quick smile.
“B-Boss?” Kaede stamred. “Right, you wanted employnt, didn’t you?”
Glenda nodded eagerly.
“That would make you the fourth human in my kingdom,” Kaede said, placing a finger on her chin in thought.
Glenda tilted her head. “Oh?”
“Yeah. There’s , Edward, and Kirara, though she’s still in a coma from the spirit binding… thing,” Kaede explained with a tired sigh.
“Oh, i don't mind being the fourth human. There's lots of things I could teach the monsters. Hang on... Spirit binding? And a coma? Wait, she’s been in that state how long?” Glenda asked, frowning.
“Almost three years,” Kaede replied, her voice laced with concern.
“T-Three years!?” Glenda gasped. “From a spirit contract? How strong was the spirit?”
Kaede shrugged. “It was originally a superior earth spirit. But due to so special circumstances, it evolved... drastically. It went and got way stronger.”
Glenda nodded slowly, then straightened with determination and pride. “I think I might have a solution.”
A chill ran down her spine before she could finish the thought. She looked up and saw Ari staring at her, blue eyes glowing faintly, brimming with quiet nace. It was as if the girl could read her soul.
Kaede, anwhile, looked completely different, her eyes wide and hopeful, brimming with an emotion Glenda couldn't quite place. “You’re serious? You can help her, wake her up?”
Glenda swallowed hard and nodded. “Y-Yes, of course... Boss.”
“Yes, yes! If you can do this, I’ll hire you, hell, I’ll give you anything you want!” Kaede exclaid, grabbing Glenda’s hand and shaking it vigorously.
“Just the employnt is fine, Boss! I couldn’t ask for more!” Glenda said, smiling as she was jerked back and forth.
Kaede grinned brightly. The joy in her face made Glenda’s heart race, it was the kind of smile that could lift a battlefield.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Kaede said, summoning a swirling green portal beside them with a flick of her hand.
She stepped through it first, leaving Glenda and Ari alone in the clearing.
Ari approached her slowly. Shadows around them recoiled and twisted unnaturally with her every step. Her voice was ice.
“You better not be wrong,” she said. “If you fail... and Mother is heartbroken... I’ll feed you your own heart.”
Glenda nodded quickly, her throat dry. “Understood… Smaller Boss.”
Suddenly, the green portal flashed again and Kaede dashed back through.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” she cried. “I need to fix the ocean… and the sky!”
"Fix the sky..?" Glenda turned her gaze upward, and blanched. “Is that… is that a black hole?”
Kaede laughed nervously and waved a hand. “No, no. It’s just a sphere of obliterated matter where existence doesn’t exist. Nothing so grand as a black hole.”
Glenda stared at her with a deadpanned look. “That honestly sounds worse than a black hole…”
Kaede shrugged. “I don’t see it.”
With that, she shot into the sky like a cot, heading straight toward the enormous dark-purple void. Fragnts of the atmosphere peeled away, absorbed into its swirling chaos.
She hovered just beside the phenonon. There the air itself trembled.
Anyone weaker than an Awakened Demon Lord wouldn’t even survive near this anomaly. They would be unraveled at the atomic level, peeled off from reality and spun into the abyss like at in a cosmic blender.
Kaede stared into it, unbothered by the subtle pull at her body.
“Hey, Artificia,” she said aloud, “can I actually fix this?”
"Ehh? But why?" Kaede asked.
"Well, can't we replace what was erased?" Kaede asked.
“What!? That sounds bad." Kaede placed a hand on her chin. "But I have to do sothing at least. If I leave this unchecked, Guy might find out. He's so weird. Can't I just devour it?"
"I an, if the sphere is obliterating reality and stuff, I could just get rid of it. Even though that leaves a gap in reality, at least that feels fixable." Kaede placed a hand on her hip.
Kaede shrugged. "At best, I get a new skill, and at worst, I get an indigestion or sothing."
"Alright then!" Kaede extended her arm. "[Devour]!"
From her palm, a roiling, purple pixelated vortex erupted, silent at first, then howling with an otherworldly hunger. The edges of the annihilated sphere, once impossibly still, began to unravel as if the universe itself was reluctant to let go.
Sothing scread.
Winds surged. The skies buckled. The boundary of the sphere trembled, then cracked with a sharp pop, like glass under pressure. Bolts of energy lashed out randomly, frying clouds, searing through empty air, and vanishing just as fast.
Kaede braced herself, her hair and jacket flailing wildly in the turbulence. "Hngh... this thing's really stubborn, huh?"
Her skill began converting null-space into wisps of raw energy, filtered through her core, tad by her ridiculous constitution.
The sphere pulsed. Shrieked. Then...
BOOM.
A silent shockwave radiated in every direction, flattening clouds and cracking the firmant in invisible rings. The void spasd once more… and began collapsing in on itself. The unmaking of unmaking.
Kaede grunted as her arm went numb from the elbow down. "Ugh... ok that stings."
Now the hole in reality that was previously black was now white, as reality registered the wound.
Kaede smiled. "Alright, with that dangerous sphere gone, we can try to..."
The sky, still torn in so places, slowly began nding. Blue bled back into it, shaky but real. The toxic ocean beneath shimred with scattered light again, no longer drained of color.
"...Or it'll fix itself."
Kaede lowered her hand. Her arm stead. That part of her jacket was gone, completely erased, like it had never existed.
She stared at the stump of fabric and flexed her fingers. They still moved, albeit slowly.
"I feel like I've been way too reckless lately." She mused.
Kaede hovered for a mont, then shot down toward the beach with a triumphant grin. "Told you so."
Ari and Glenda were waiting for her near the shoreline as she landed, the wind from her descent kicking up sand and salt.
Glenda looked like she was about to explode with excitent, practically bouncing on her heels. Her eyes sparkled like stars. "That was so next-level manga shit, Boss! You ate a black hole... whole!"
Ari stood proudly beside her, chest puffed out as if she'd been the one to do it. "Such a feat is paltry for Mother. Not even worth ntioning."
Kaede gave her a deadpan stare. "Ari, I’m going to ignore you for the next few minutes."
Ari collapsed dramatically into the sand, legs kicking up in the air. "H-Huh? But Mother!"
Kaede turned her attention to the roiling, toxic waves lapping at the shore. The ocean was still corrupted, dark and swirling with poison.
"Now," she said, stepping closer, "to fix the ocean."
"Ooh!" Glenda clapped her hands. "Are you gonna devour the ocean too, Boss?"
Kaede shook her head with a small smirk. "Nope. I’ve got a cooler idea." She knelt and dipped her fingers into the water, her eyes narrowing in focus. "Even in New World Online, I hardly ever use this skill..."
---
[Ultimate Skill: Persophone, Lord of Abyssal Rebirth.]
Subskills:
Inversion Sovereignty:
"All that is holy may beco unholy, and all that is cursed may be sanctified."
You may invert any skill or spell you possess or are targeted by.
Light becos dark, healing becos corrosion, destruction becos protection, and vice versa.
Works even on enemy skills, once per target per battle.
Inverted skills gain a 20% power boost for 60 seconds after inversion.
---
Soul Entropy:
"The soul rembers every shape it has worn."
Tap into the mory of a soul (enemy or ally)
---
Requiem: Dual Throne Ascension:
"As above, so below."
Temporarily splits into two avatars:
The Radiant Queen: angelic, defense/healing-focused, celestial skills.
The Abyssal Empress: demonic, offense/control-focused, infernal skills.
Both forms can act independently but share the sa HP pool.
---
"Inversion Sovereignty," Kaede murmured, placing a hand gently against the water's surface.
A soft golden glow radiated from her palm, blooming outward like sunlight through murky depths. The corrupted ocean shimred, its sickly hues purged and replaced by vibrant gold. Waves rippled with warmth as the entire sea was infused with restorative energy.
"There," she said with a satisfied nod, lifting a handful of the golden water to her lips and taking a sip. "The poisonous ocean has been converted into a healing ocean... at least for the next few days."
Behind her, Glenda stood frozen, running out of emotions to display how she was feeling.
'How can one person hold this much power?' she thought, awe mixing with a hint of excitent.
Ari, sulking nearby with her antennae drooping, looked up with glassy eyes.
"As expected of Mother... sniff."
Kaede turned with an exasperated sigh. "Oh, co on, Ari. Don't start pouting like a kid."
With that, she stepped away from the now-purified shore, reaching out to take Glenda’s hand.
"Co on. Let's go. I’ll take you to Kirara, right away."
Together, they moved toward the shimring portal that pulsed quietly at the edge of the transford sea.
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