It’s difficult to describe the sensation I felt when the spell was ready to fire. I felt relieved, yet also filled with dread. The moment that feeling came over me, my instincts took over, and I shouted the incantation to finish the spell. “Wrath of Mother Nature” was the strongest attack spell I could cast. As it surged forward, the massive green sphere took on more of a conical shape.
From the moment I used magic for the first time, I’d noticed some differences in the ways my spells behaved in this world. For example, in the game, my “Green Nature Bullet” didn’t normally make monsters explode. After that incident, I’d looked up the spell on the help screen, and the description mentioned that using it on an entity that was already full of life could cause it to rupture at the cellular level. This battle taught me a lot more about my magic and how it worked here. In the game there was no method for parrying spells; they either hit or missed. Yet the Lake Lord had deflected one of my spells with its hide, and had been able to spread out the damage from a spell designed to penetrate enemy defenses.
But my slow-moving ultimate spell finally made contact with the Lake Lord, and plunged deep into its body.
For a moment, I held my breath, worried that the strongest spell I could muster wouldn’t be enough to kill it. In the game, Wrath of Mother Nature was the weakest spell of its kind. The reason was simple: If healers could deal huge damage, you wouldn’t need job classes that specialized in attack magic. As such, every spell of the same class that attack magic users could learn outclassed it. However, the damage output for any attack spell depended on the stats of the mage casting it. Since arriving in this world, my stats had increased far beyond what they’d been in the game. Luckily, I was already thinking about my spells and the little differences between their in-game behavior and the way they worked here. I sensed what was about to happen just in time, and deployed my wings.
I hurled myself backward as the spell buried inside of the Lake Lord expanded, then exploded. Tiny bits of giant amphibian rained everywhere. Other than the crimson rain and a few unrecognizable chunks of flesh, there was nothing left of it. There was even a small crater where it met its demise, but that quickly filled with water from the lake.
Once the deluge of amphibian chunks subsided, I returned to the shore. Apparently, everyone else was worried I’d gotten myself caught in the blast. I’d moved out of the way with my wings deployed just as the explosion happened, but to them, it must’ve looked like I disintegrated.
When I returned, my allies ran over to me frantically. Most of them had been in the splash zone, so they were covered in blood and gore. Watching them all head straight for me at once, covered in blood and monster bits, was surreal. I was prepared to deploy a barrier to protect my dress if I needed to.
“Your Majesty!” Ringo cried with tears running down his face.
“You’re all right!” wailed Mela, her face absolutely covered in a crimson mask of monster blood.
“Thank goodness!” sobbed Pomme.
Manzana didn’t say anything, but he was happy to see me as well.
“You did it!” Shildris yelled. She looked so excited.
Ringo was a blubbering mess; he couldn’t contain his tears. I was quickly surrounded by him and the rest of Team Apple, as well as Shildris and the rest of my Irregulars, all of whom had at least a little blood on them.
“I’m sorry to have worried you,” I told them, “but could you let me through for a moment? I have an injured ally over there.”
I pointed toward the giant spider. It had been wounded during the battle earlier, and was missing one of its front limbs. The crowd around me understood, and they parted to make way for me, and I walked over to our wounded ally. As I approached, the huge spider trembled. On top of the pain of its wounds, it was likely worried that I was about to dispose of it now that the lord of the lake was out of the way.
“Storere Dybo!”
This was the top class healing spell, “Restore Body,” and as the name implied, it was a spell that fully healed the target. The spider’s wounds disappeared; even the severed leg was restored, as though nothing had ever happened to it. Even my Irregulars, who normally just acted like everything I did was obviously something I should have been capable of, were awestruck at the display of miraculous healing. As for the spider itself, it was incredibly moved.
“To think you would not only honor our agreement, but even use your power to make me whole again. I swear, my children and I shall serve you for all of eternity!”
“Your Majesty,” Redimir said, “if you would accept her vow, then give her a name to seal the pact, just as you did with me.”
“A name, huh? Wait, are you female?!”
“Oh, er, yes, I am the mother of all of these others,” she replied. “They are essentially copies of me, born through fatherless eggs.”
“Wow, okay. In that case, I’ll name you Charlotte, after a clever spider from a book I read once.”
As soon as she received her name, Charlotte’s body began to glow, and she shrank down to Sprigian size. She was a bipedal humanoid shape now, but she had two extra pairs of arms. Basically, each shoulder had three arms attached to it. Her skin was a brown color now, instead of the rocklike gray she used to be. Instead she had hair that rock-gray color, and she only had two eyes, which were entirely red. She had six floating red orbs, though, three on either side of her head, and each one about as big as one of her eyes. She was shapely, and well proportioned too.
Fortunately, she wasn’t naked. Her outfit looked similar to her old exoskeleton, so I guessed it was more for defense than fashion.
Charlotte looked bewildered by her new appearance, but I was secretly very relieved. Having someone swear their undying loyalty to you was nice and everything, but I wasn’t super excited about a gigantic spider serving me. After her transformation, though, Charlotte was supercute, and I didn’t mind having her around at all.
Now that Charlotte took up a lot less space on the ground, Redimir landed nearby, and he shrank down too. I thought he was going to turn back into a baby dragon, but instead, he took a humanoid form.
He was Sprigian-sized too, with pale skin and pointed ears. He had silver eyes and black hair. He was essentially wearing a butler’s uniform, and he looked great in it. He adjusted his red bow tie and immaculate white gloves as he walked over to me. He and Charlotte were the only people in the area besides me that didn’t have any blood on them. Once he was close enough, I could see how gorgeous he was.
Why am I cursed to be surrounded by hot men?
I kinda thought he was going to just return to the Unseen Realm once the battle was over, but here he was, every adorable bit of him. As he walked toward me, Shildris came running over as well, blood caked all over her body. She was a bit breathless.
“That. Was. Amazing!” she managed between heaving breaths.
I laughed. “Take your time, I won’t go anywhere.”
“I never. Imagined. You’d completely. Obliterate it like that. It was insane!”
“Deep breaths, everything is fine now.” I reassured her as best I could, but she was like a fan at a concert who had just gotten to shake hands with her favorite singer. Watching the battle had really gotten her adrenaline pumping.
Shildris took a few moments to stabilize her breathing, then started reliving the battle in detail. She was still very excited. I was afraid she might have been upset that she didn’t get to finish it off, or even really participate in the battle, but apparently, watching me struggle with it really drove home just how out of her league the thing had been. She was fine just experiencing the victory vicariously through me for the moment.
“I never thought there wouldn’t be anything left of it,” she said thoughtfully, when she was finally done describing what the battle had looked like from her perspective. “It’s going to be tough to convince people that the Lord is really dead.”
“Sorry about that, I didn’t have much choice. What little it did leave behind isn’t really identifiable. I’ll save a video of the battle, though. If anyone doubts your story, tell them they can watch that. Maybe I’ll even edit in some music.”
Shildris didn’t really seem to understand, but she smiled and nodded anyway. I had the Irregulars search for anything that could be used as a trophy, but nobody found anything. That was actually fine with me, since I wasn’t really super enthusiastic about the idea of preserving a part of that thing’s body to remind everyone of the battle. So in the end, the video record of the battle was all that remained of the once feared Lord of the Lake. Well, besides all of the blood everyone was busily washing off.
Watching the cinematic version of that replay eventually became one of the favorite pastimes of my people. It was embarrassing, but I was just happy to get them to take a break once in a while.
“Now there’s nobody who contests your authority over the forest,” Shildris pointed out. “You really are the supreme ruler of the Grimwood.”
So it was. From that day onward, I was recognized as the Queen of the Grimwood. Thanks to that, my life became relatively uneventful for a while.