Chapter 31: Arc 3 – Queen of the Monster Maze 4.1

Kikori finds a completely different environment this time.

It’s a valley – the gentle slopes of the hill falling towards a wide river. There’s a large city of tall white towers, capped by blue and gold domes. It looks almost a bit like a vision of Idira, the kingdom of Holy Corona, but that land always faces the sea, so it cannot be… besides, the sky is completely wrong.

So that must be some place in the deep south.

How large is this room? It does look like she’s outside.

As she walks towards the city, though, the environment changes. The towers fall and crumble, leaving only their ruins. The boughs and grass is swallowed by the desert. The sunlight grows harsh and overwhelming.

What is going on?

“Haaa… I’m getting thirsty…” Kikori takes a few more steps and by now she’s walking through sand. She’s now standing in the middle of the desert.

But there’s someone else with her here.

She reaches up to the figure: it looks like a woman, covered in ochre robes, the kind of clothes you would expect someone to wear in a desert.

Next to her, the sands shift to show a fountain.

Kikori’s throat is parched, but there’s just enough water to fill a glass…

The same glass that has just appeared in her hand.

Where did it come from… ?

The woman coughs. Her hand reaches for the fountain, but she falls over the sands, leans over and she feebly tries to lift herself to get the water.

Kikori needs that water. She needs it to survive. If she survives, she will become the best Knight ever.

Just like her hero, Ember Soar!

Ember helped so many people while she was still alive, before the dreaded Morningstar killed her – and she wants to do the same, so she has to survive to fight another day.

Maybe she will even manage to stand by the Herald of Corona…

The same person who seemingly has dragged Ardesia to all those years of misery…

She’s a Knight.

She’s supposed to help people.

Kikori fills her glass with the water from the fountain.

And then she crouches and she gives it to the other woman.

See-through hands, seemingly glass but warm and soft reach out to take it.

Her cover falls to reveal the body of a girl, transparent like water and yet with a clearly-visible smile on her face.

She drinks the water and once again, Kikori loses her grip on reality and falls into the darkness.

+++

But when she opens her eyes again she is not inside her inner world. The room is much, much smaller than before.

“What is this place?”

I did not expect visitors, says a woman’s voice directly inside her head.
“What… what kind of voice is this?” Some sort of psychic attack? Even though she should have known by now that these monsters do not mean harm to her, it still feels weird enough to send her defences flaring up.

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“I haven’t felt anything like this, ever…”

Some legends speak of Knights called to the service of Corona from a similar voice, booming into their head until they understood that who was gathering them was the very ruler of Holy Idira… but this is completely different.

She has entered a circular room, not any wider than ten paces, its walls arching to a masonry dome. In the middle rests an apparatus of silvery and black metal, something she has never seen before. It doesn’t exactly look like a decoration, more like some sort of… machine?

But what kind of people would build anything like that?

And inside it…

You found me. I suppose congratulations are in order.

“What… are you a slime?”

This is truly a time of legends, then. Slimes used to be a common sight, but that was before they were hunted down to extinction, especially since their goddess disappeared.

And the reason they were hunted so much was because…

Precisely. It has always been me. All the time.

“You have done all this?” Kikori holds out her hands, glancing at her metal nails. She can feel her horns sprouting out of her head, her new skin, and of course her newfound strength and resilience. She’s the strongest she has ever been, and all because this lost slime girl transformed her Haoma.

That is what I do. You did succeed after all.

“Were there others like me before?”

Very few. Most just stop at the first room – they only see a monster, but you wanted something more, something different…

“Y-Yeah, I…” her own desires mostly amounted to getting a good dicking, it seemed.

But she did not try to kill them all as a first resource, that did happen.

That is also part of the reason for your success! You have focused more on what’s inside.

“I suppose… like Sir Enceladus’ big dick… hmmm, I could use some of that right now.”

See? You are much more focused on love than on hating everything that surrounds you.

“I thought a Knight ought to protect those who would harm mankind.”

And I remember a certain Knight telling me she would do all she could to bring the world to a lasting peace. Do you want to see?

“I… was this Knight Summer Storm?”

But she already knows the answer, doesn’t she?

Does she want to see? See her hero with her own eyes?

Please come here.

Kikori reaches the room’s centre – she leans towards the silver machinery, not knowing how it might work. The slime girl looks up at her, and her movements are far more awkward than she expected. She must be so tired.

She had thought that someone like her would be able to last through centuries. Slimes were known for their durability, even though most of their gifts got lost with the departure of their Goddess.

A translucent hand raises to touch her and-

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