Chapter 78: Chapter 76: An Expedition

Eve kept a careful eye on the group of heroes in the following weeks. They were progressing at a speed incomparable to their previous progress; yes, their experience gains were doubled by their Blessings, but even more than that their combat capabilities had been augmented and, most importantly, their mindset had changed.

They weren’t satisfied by training on monsters weaker than they were. While that was a relatively safe way of leveling up, it also wouldn’t be able to get them strong enough to push back the hordes Eve would be sending their way. They had no choice but to throw themselves into danger if they wanted to have any hope of protecting their land.

During that time, Eve made sure her party racked up achievement after achievement, always in close proximity to the heroes. Purposefully showing Jameson’s magic had just been the start – she’d place her party in situations where the heroes would stumble upon them, usually when Eve’s party was in the middle of fighting tough monsters or had just finished defeating them.

It appeared that the heroes were beginning to assume that Eve’s party was a group of heroes given Blessings by Lilith, kept secret from the others in case a hero was captured by the Queen of Monsters and forced to reveal their secrets. Eve couldn’t help but smirk when she thought about it; the heroes weren’t necessarily wrong about what her party was, but they were right in ways that they had no way of knowing.

Things outside of the heroes were progressing according to plan, too. The general populace was growing ever more restless as Eve’s deadline approached, and the governments had, predictably, turned to the other Perfect Chimeras.

Winston was living in solitude still, and though he had left ways to contact him, Lilith had assured him that the situation was under control. He had been skeptical at first, but after some convincing and a fight to prove that Lilith hadn’t lost her edge, he had agreed to stay out of it.

Isa had, predictably, been rather easy to placate. Once she knew what was going on, she was more than happy to stand back and let it happen; after all, stronger people would eventually lead to better fights for Isa, and that was something she could really get behind. She had wanted to spar with Eve in her Queen of Monsters persona just to see what she was potentially missing, but that was to be expected.

Mai and Aria were, of course, not people any of the governments thought about. Well…not thought about in terms of help. Many harbored suspicions that the Queen of Monsters was actually Mai in disguise, ready for another attempt at dominating the world. She had been inactive for a few thousand years, but few were of the opinion that she was dead.

Perfect Chimeras didn’t just die like that. Yes, she had been fighting Errus, but everyone knew that Mai had been the stronger of the two. And if Mai had died, it would be incredibly strange for Errus to flee with her body. He was someone who, apparently, had strong feelings about the war and was more than willing to lay his life down for the cause.

Aria was…neutral on the topic. She didn’t remember the war that well right now, and much of who she originally was had been lost when Mai had made her part of her flock the first time. She actually preferred to stay as far away from conflict as she could, retreating to go play with Carmen or read a book whenever it looked like things might get even a little intense, and Eve couldn’t blame her for that. Aria had lived a long life, filled with responsibility and fighting. She deserved a break from it all.

Eve sighed. She hadn’t fully made her mind up when it came to how she felt about Aria. She loved her to bits, but that love also made her feel guilty. Aria wasn’t…herself, really. She had been Errus before, and even though Mai had essentially erased Errus long ago, Eve couldn’t help but feel like maybe she should be trying to get Errus back.

She had broached the subject with Aria once, but Aria had vehemently objected. She was happy with where she was, and, more importantly, who she was. She was terrified of losing her new family, and she didn’t want to go back to someone she barely even remembered being.

Eve had spent many sleepless nights wrestling with the idea. Kali had said that it was theoretically doable to get the old Errus back, but it wasn’t something that would be easy, even for her. But, even if they did bring the old Errus back, what would happen to Aria? As she was, she was essentially a complete person, so to bring the old Errus back felt like…killing Aria, and the very thought made Eve’s stomach turn.

In the end, it had actually been Carmen who thought of what Eve and Lilith were planning on. They had been discussing Aria with Anna and Jameson when Carmen had wandered in, looking to ask for her dad to tuck her in for bed. She had apparently listened to the conversation for longer than Eve had thought, for when she piped up, instead of requesting her father to take her to bed like she had been planning, she asked a simple question.

“Why don’t you just do it like you guys?” Carmen had said, frowning. “Just make this Errus guy a body and have him talk with Aria.”

Eve was embarrassed to admit she hadn’t thought about having Aria and Errus talk, not seriously. It was well within her power to grant Aria a degraded version of Parallel Processing that would allow her to speak with Errus. They just needed Kali to be able to reconstruct the old Errus, and then they could do it.

When asked if that was something she would be ready for, Aria said that she wasn’t sure. She wanted time to think about it, but she had promised that she would be ready within a few months.

That was fine. It was an issue that could wait for a few months. Aria was still relatively mentally unstable, so it was probably for the best anyway…or so Eve told herself. It didn’t do a lot to prevent that feeling of guilt and the desire to do what was best for her daughter, even if “the best” was cutting ties with her so she could go back to her old life.

Eve shook her head, dispelling the thoughts. She couldn’t allow herself to keep worrying about it, she knew that it would just end with her thinking in circles, and she couldn’t afford that right now. She was training with her party, and even if the monsters weren’t anything that could threaten her, she still needed to pretend they were giving her a good fight.

She allowed the weird badger-lion hybrid she was fighting to scratch her arm before shoving it back with a kick and decapitating it with her sword. She gave the body another disinterested kick, widened the wound on her arm with Eldritch Abomination, then turned back to her party.

“You good, Eve?” Jameson asked, giving her a worried look. “You seem…distracted.”

Eve sighed. She was hoping Anna and Jameson wouldn’t notice, but they had become annoyingly perceptive when it came to her moods. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just…thinking about Aria, you know.”

Anna nodded knowingly. “I understand how you feel,” she began, “but didn’t we decide this would have to wait until Aria was ready?”

“I know, I know.” Eve groaned. “But it doesn’t make it any easier. I really, really want to just…resolve this one way or the other, so I can stop worrying, but I know that’ll just make it worse. It really doesn’t help that I don’t really know anything about Errus’s personality, so I don’t know what’s gonna happen. Are his past deeds exaggerated by history to make him seem better? Is he gonna yell and scream and demand his life back? I just…”

Jameson laid a comforting hand on Eve’s shoulder. “You know Kali said he’s not like that.” He soothed. “It’s all going to work out, one way or the other. For now, all you can do is just love Aria and keep her safe, so you should focus on that. There’s no use worrying about something you can’t do anything about.”

“Logically, I know that, but I still can’t help but worry. I just have to force myself to stop thinking about it whenever it comes up and wait.” Eve walked away from Jameson and back towards the monster she had been fighting. “But we’ll talk about it later. The heroes are almost here.”

Jameson gave her a reluctant nod, and moved to begin dissecting the monster for its valuable parts such as the fangs and claws. Anna began looking over the dogs, cleaning them up and pretending to patch wounds they might have taken during the battle.

For her part, Eve was keeping watch while they did these things. It wasn’t safe to stay at the site of a kill like this for long periods of time; other monsters would come, drawn by the scent of blood, so any after-battle work needed to be done swiftly while also keeping an eye out for approaching threats.

In this case, however, the approaching “threat” would be the party of heroes. By Eve’s estimation, they were about five minutes away, and were on track to “randomly” stumble upon Eve’s party.

And, as expected, just over four minutes later, Eve heard Ava sneaking through the surrounding area. To her credit, it was pretty stealthy, but it wasn’t anything Eve wouldn’t be able to pick up. Eve had many different sensory organs hidden inside her body, and even more than that, she had placed a Watch on each of the heroes, and since they had her Blessing, they counted as being ‘under Eve’s rule’. There was no way they could hide from Eve, no matter how they tried.

“Stop skulking about.” Eve called out. “I know you’re there, Ava. What do you want?”

Ava sighed, stepping out from behind a tree thirty or so meters away from Eve. “How do you always know?” She asked. “I swear I’m getting better at this, but you seem to find me earlier every time.”

Eve shrugged. “I’m getting used to your antics.” She said. “Anyone would start picking up on your presence earlier.”

“No one else seems to.” Ava muttered, quiet enough that most people wouldn’t be able to hear it. “Are you guys leveling again?” She asked, speaking up once more. “Get anything good?”

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Eve shook her head. “Just that weird badger thing.” She said, jerking a thumb at the monster Jameson was dismantling. “Hardly worth the effort, to tell you the truth.”

“That wound on your arm tells a different story.” Anala said, walking up behind Ava. “Looks like it got you pretty good. Raesn’s made some potions that’ll get you all healed up, if you’d like.”

Eve shot a disinterested glance at her arm. “This? Honestly, didn’t even notice, it barely touched me. Jameson will have it patched up in no time, no need to burn through your potions for me. Besides, you know as well as I that that monster is nothing compared to some of the ones the Queen of Monsters showed us. If we keep training on small fry like this, we’re never going to be able to take on her army.”

“No, I’m pretty sure that monster would slaughter most adventuring parties with barely a thought.” Bruce said. “And it’s getting harder to find anything stronger in the wild.”

“Well, the Queen of Monsters got her army from somewhere.” Eve pointed out. “We’ll probably just need to go deeper into unexplored territory. The three of us are already heading out on a little expedition, would you care to join us? We could probably make it further if we went as a team.”

Anala frowned. “Give us a moment to talk about it.” She said, turning to her companions.

“Of course.” Eve said. “I’ll step back a bit to give you some privacy.” She retreated over to where Jameson was dismantling the monster, and began to listen in on the heroes’ conversation via her Watch.

“Can we trust them?” Anala asked. “I don’t want them asking any pointed questions.”

“It’ll probably be fine.” Raesn mused. “They’ve got their own share of secrets, we’ve figured that much. If we don’t pry into their circumstances, they probably won’t pry into ours.”

“They’re not the type to ask too many questions.” Bruce added. “And Eve’s right. At this rate, we’re barely going to make a difference in the war. We have to go out further if we want to continue our growth.”

“They’re pretty easy to work with.” Ava said. “We barely had to look after them when they were just starting, and they’re way stronger than they were back then. They’re basically the only people who can keep up with us right now. I say this is an opportunity we can’t afford to pass up.”

“I…suppose if they are other heroes, there would be no harm in tagging along with them. And if they’re not, then we can keep an eye on their activities.” Anala mused. “So…are we in agreement, then?”

The group nodded, and, led by Anala, walked over to where Eve was waiting. “We’ll go with you.” Anala said. “Where are we headed?”

Eve shrugged. “We’re just wandering north, to tell you the truth. My impression was that this area was originally the domain of a dragon, so I’m hoping we can get out of this area if we keep heading north. Hopefully we should start seeing stronger stuff as we do.”

They would, of course, be seeing stronger stuff if they kept heading north. Eve had scouted the area, and, more importantly, had introduced several strong monsters into the area just days prior, with instructions to wait for people to come through and then attack. As much as the progress the heroes were making was incomparable to their previous progress, it still wasn’t satisfactory to Eve.

She was forced to admit that, perhaps, she had shown monsters a bit too strong in her video. In doing so, she had locked herself into using monsters that strong; people would begin to ask questions if she didn’t use those monsters, and she couldn’t afford that. And six weeks had been a rather optimistic timeframe to raise the heroes up, too. She had wanted to give a sense of urgency, but the monsters near the frontier towns just weren’t strong enough to raise people up to the needed levels in time.

So, she had concocted this expedition as a way to get the heroes some better training. She had been reasonably sure they would take the opportunity to go with her, but she was glad that they had accepted. It saved her the trouble of figuring out some other inconspicuous way to raise their levels.

Anala, unaware of Eve’s inner monologue, nodded. “I suppose that makes sense. We’ll need to keep our eyes peeled for any monsters that look like the ones from the declaration of war, though. We don’t want the Queen of Monsters catching on to the fact that we’re getting stronger.”

Eve had to hold back a snort. She briefly wondered what Anala would say if she knew that, not only was she talking to the Queen of Monsters, but that each new ability they got was given to the Queen of Monsters as well. The poor thing was blissfully unaware that, by accepting Lilith’s Blessing, she had effectively guaranteed that she would be unable to beat Eve if Eve went all out.

“That’s a good idea.” Eve said. “As soon as Jameson finishes dismantling the monster and Anna finishes patching up the dogs, we’ll be on our way.”

“I’m almost done.” Jameson called out. “Just a couple more things to remove.”

“As am I.” Anna added. “The dogs didn’t take too much of a beating, so I’m really just double checking while Jameson finishes his work.”

“You really should take one of our potions, then.” Ava said. “It’ll save a bit of time and we honestly have more than enough to go around.”

“That’s right.” Raesn confirmed. “I’ve been making plenty every chance I get, just for situations like this. If we’re going to be working together, then we might as well pool resources.”

Eve pretended to hesitate for a few moments, then nodded. “You’re right.” She said. “Might as well.”

Raesn handed her a potion, which Eve drank. She let it do its work, surreptitiously stitching herself back up with Eldritch Abomination as she did. A minute or so later, Jameson stood up, giving the corpse an appraising look. “Do you all need extra food?” He said. “These things are edible. Don’t taste the best, but it’s better than starving.”

“I can conjure food.” Bruce said. “We should be fine.”

Jameson raised an eyebrow. “Impressive.” He said. “You’ll have to teach me how. I’ve been trying to learn the technique, and haven’t really gotten the hang of it as well as I’d like.”

“I’ll, uh…see what I can do.” Bruce said. “I can’t promise I’ll be of much help, though. I’m a bit more of an…instinctual learner than anything.”

“That’s fine.” Jameson replied. “I can work with that. At the very least, you might be able to tell me where I’m going wrong.”

“Dogs are good.” Anna interjected, standing up as well. “Shall we be going?”

“Yes.” Bruce said quickly. “No time to waste, let’s be off.”

And so, the two parties began a trek north, preparing themselves for what would surely be some of their toughest fights yet.