Chapter 48: Chapter 46: Puppy Mill

Eve stood in front of the entrance to a cave, staring into the darkness. There was a rather impressive rumbling coming from within, as two large beasts slumbered. This was the last stop on the monster-collecting errand, and it required she come personally. While Siph and Kirdin were enough to tackle any one of the monsters they had in mind, two at once would be dangerous.

Locating them all had been easier than expected. She had, admittedly, underestimated how powerful something “as strong as a Fenrir” would be. It would appear that there was only one Fenrir in existence, and he reigned as king of all lupine beings. That meant that something that strong would likely end up being the “ruler” of another type of creature. And those were the types of things that Kali liked to keep track of. So, three outings later and they had ended up with three wildly different types of monsters back in the dungeon, and even after she got these last two there would be only one that even vaguely resembled a dog.

That was fine. She was planning to have Carmen and Mae give the monsters some…cosmetic surgery to make whatever she brought back look like puppies anyway, so really this only meant a bit more effort was required. She was sure Mae could figure something out to make their Skills still function, and hopefully even implement a switch that could let them turn the monsters back with minimal effort.

But that was for later. Right now, she had to get these last two monsters. One of them was Fenrir himself, and the other was his mate, Sekhmet. Ironically, Sekhmet was a cat-like monster; according to Kali, the two had met by accident whilst searching for a place to live, and it had been love at first fight. They had apparently fought each other to a standstill, and when they realized they couldn’t kill the other, got to talking it out. One thing led to another, and they’d been together ever since.

There was a slight shift in the rhythm of the rumbling. Taking that as her cue, Eve stepped into the cave. “Up and at ‘em!” She yelled, leaning forward and putting her hands on her hips. “I don’t have all day, so let’s get this over with!”

The rumbling stopped. Eve waited impatiently, and she was soon greeted by the sight of two large figures, easily twice the size of a person, moving silently towards her.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, little one.” The one on the right said in a deep, masculine voice. “Do you know who you’re dealing with?”

Eve looked at her nails. “Fenrir and Sekhmet. Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Easy way you just do whatever I say, I take you home, nobody has to get hurt. Hard way, I beat the snot out of you, and then you do whatever I say.”

The one on the left chuckled. “Can we keep her as a pet, dear? She amuses me.” Her voice was smooth and melodious, calming in a way.

“Anything for you, darling.” Fenrir replied, nuzzling Sekhmet affectionately.

Eve sighed. “Fine, the hard way it is. Before we do battle, let me introduce myself; I am Eve, Queen of Monsters! Now, prepare yourselves!”

Fenrir took a step forward. “I’ll take care of this. Forgive me for being rough, child, but I can see you won’t come quietly.” He opened his mouth and let loose a cone of icy wind, which completely enveloped Eve.

She just activated Zoan’s Barrier and reflected the attack back at him. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t do much. Eve responded with a breath attack of her own, an inordinately large amount of lightning coming from her small mouth and arcing towards Fenrir.

In a flash of motion, Sekhmet was in front of Fenrir, taking the brunt of the attack. “Are you OK, honey? That one would have been dangerous.”

Fenrir grunted. “I’m fine, thanks to you.” He cautiously moved out from behind her, regarding Eve curiously. “It appears we’ll have to go all out.”

The fight was short and one-sided. Eve just kept Zoan’s Barrier up the entire time and physically beat the two into submission. It drained over fifty thousand mana, but it was a lot easier and faster than trying to fight them normally, and Eve just didn’t feel like doing that.

“H-how are you so strong?” Fenrir asked. “You’re just a little girl!”

“Appearances are deceiving.” Eve told him, drawing a large circle on the ground. “Now, get in.”

“B-but…” Sekhmet began.

“No buts.” Eve said flatly. “Get in, or I drag you in.”

The two obediently got into the circle, and Eve activated it. Carmen was waiting for them, a service-industry smile on her face. “Ah, Fenrir and Sekhmet, was it? We’ve been waiting for you.” She opened the door that was their entry to the dungeon and motioned inside. “Follow me.”

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They hesitated, and Eve prodded them forward. “Come on, I want to go to bed, and I can’t until we finish here.”

Their short trip was silent. Fenrir and Sekhmet were either too afraid to talk or just didn’t want to, Eve saw no reason to say anything, and Carmen was committed to her hostess act. Soon, they were in a large room containing Lilith, Siph, Kirdin, and three enormous beasts. Upon entering, Fenrir turned to Sekhmet and gave a small nod, then leapt towards Eve, while Sekhmet dove at Carmen.

“Don’t just stand there!” Sekhmet yelled. “If all of us fight there’s no way they can take us!”

The assembled beasts apparently decided that just standing there sheepishly was the correct option, and soon both Fenrir and Sekhmet were pinned to the ground, staring daggers at the other animals.

“We already tried that.” One of them, a large boar, said. “When the one who led you here left. The dragons didn’t even need to get involved; the other one was able to deal with all three of us without even breaking a sweat. And, apparently, the two with you are her other bodies and just as strong as she is, so there really wasn’t a chance.”

“Right, right, whatever. Doesn’t matter.” Eve said dismissively. “Now that you’re all here, it’s time for introductions and instructions. I’m Eve, Queen of Monsters. While I haven’t received any of the official abilities or anything yet, I’m going to be your boss. From this point forward, I will tolerate no dissent, got it? Your first infraction I’ll just take one of your limbs. I’ll be putting it back afterwards, but that’s not important. What is important is that it’ll hurt. Further infractions I’ll start taking off more limbs, and if I eventually decide you’re more trouble than you’re worth…”

She trailed off, looking at each of the assembled monsters to make sure they got the message. “Any questions?” She paused for a moment, then added. “And no, questions do not count as dissent. You are fully welcome to question my decisions, so long as you don’t disobey me. If I’m being stupid, I expect you to tell me. That being said, you need to be respectful about it. I’m not going to allow any verbal abuse disguised as criticism.”

There was silence, so she continued. “The one pinning down the cat is named Carmen, and the one who beat up the three of you,” she motioned to the still-standing beasts, “is Lilith. Carmen and I are her alternate personalities, and she’s the one who’s actually in charge around here. If she tells you to do something, you do it, even if it contradicts something I told you to do. And don’t even think about lying about her giving you an order, because we share senses at all times, so it’ll be found out immediately.”

She let Fenrir up, and Carmen did the same for Sekhmet. “You’ll see other people around here, and I expect you to listen to them as well. You’re the bottom of the pecking order around here, so get used to it.”

She patted Fenrir’s back, earning an unhappy look. “In case you don’t know, this guy’s named Fenrir, and the cat over there is his mate, Sekhmet.”

She pointed to the other three. “The boar’s Erymanthos, the bird’s Fenghuang, and the stag’s Cernunnos. Got it?”

There was, once again, silence. “So, now that everyone’s been introduced, it’s time to get to the reason you’re all here. One of my friends has recently become a Beast Tamer, and she’s in need of some beasts that can fight.”

“I see no reason we should have to be under the thumb of–” Cernunnos began but was silenced as Eve was suddenly right in front of him, holding one of his legs. He toppled over unceremoniously, groaning.

“Any other objections?” Eve asked, jamming the leg back onto its stump and applying Kindness’ Kiss to get it back into working order. Once none of the others spoke up, she continued. “As I was saying, she needs beasts that can fight. But, she’s also pretty new to this and unable to handle anything scarier than dogs. Unfortunately, Fenrir over here was the only doggish monster that was strong enough to meet my approval, so I’ve rounded up you all as well. In a few moments here, Carmen, Lilith, and I will work on making you all look like cute little puppies so she won’t freak out.”

“Absolutely not!” Fenghuang exclaimed.

She was soon missing a wing. “Look, I can do this all night.” Eve said. “I don’t want to, but I can. And if you keep me from getting sleep because you’re too stubborn to realize you don’t have any choice but to do what I say, then I’m going to get annoyed. And I don’t think any of you really want me to be annoyed. Besides, it’s not like any of you will have any real differences to how strong you are. You’ll get to keep all your old abilities, and for Fenghuang we’ll work out an alternate form of flight. This just means that people will be underestimating you more, and that’s an advantage, got it?”

Eve stopped talking momentarily to reattach the wing before resuming her speech. “Not that you’re allowed to use any of those outside of emergency situations. You have to limit yourself to what a normal adolescent monster wolf thing would be able to do. Otherwise, your cover would be blown almost immediately and that’s my hard work down the drain. Before any of that, though, you all have to officially become my subordinates. I’m going to be giving you a benefits package that’ll help keep your true nature under wraps. So, line up, and don’t make me take any more of your limbs.”

A short couple of contracts later and Eve was ready to begin handing out her “benefits packages”. They each took a hefty sum of Mana, but Eve took the excuse to draw Mana from the beasts themselves to fuel it. She hadn’t used any of her subordinate’s Mana in…ever, really, as she had never needed to, but she preferred to keep as much of her Mana as possible dedicated to DP, so she figured she might as well use their own Mana for this.

Ruminations on Mana aside, she was rather proud of the little Skill she had been able to put together. Aside from the identification obscuring effects, she was able to put some extras in there. And those extras came courtesy of Fluffy; it seemed that the dog Racial Class got a lot of Skills that increased the comfort of its life as a pet, and Fluffy apparently had chosen quite a few of those.

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