Chapter 38: Chapter 38: The Empress' Shock
As she looked down at the human she had pinned to the ground, the Empress' expression grew colder by the second.
Originally, she wanted to use this human as a means to relieve the stress she had built up due to the bastard Wolf King's declaration of war.
Back in the nest when she had first seen the human standing in the middle of the ravine she was slightly surprised to see a lone human was the one responsible for all the trouble her Queens had been facing, moreover, she couldn't even sense a single spec of mana inside this human, meaning that he had completely turned her nest upside down without reliance on mana.
After observing the human for a short while her interest soon waned as she wanted to get this over with quickly.
With a quick leap, she dashed towards the human at full speed using most of her strength as she wanted to eliminate the pest that had been bothering her nest quickly.
However, as her attack was about to connect, she was shocked to see the human barely managed to jump out of the way.
When this had happened she was frozen solid for a bit as her gaze had turned to the human who had already scaled more than half the ravine in his attempt to escape.
After a short while, she regained her senses and decided to follow the human who had already escaped the ravine.
She gave the order to the rest of the spiders in the nest to reorganize the nest as she chased the strange human with a light leap out of the ravine.
Without much effort, she easily caught up to the escaping human as she began to observe his actions and movement which only served to further confuse the Empress.
In her eyes, although Lake's movements were intricate and masterful, allowing him to by-pass any obstacles that stood in his way, he was extremely slow in comparison to the reaction time he had shown earlier when he dodged her in the ravine.
After observing Lake for a little while longer, the Empress managed to get a solid grasp on Lake's current strength, which caused her to doubt his abilities, making her wonder if Lake had dodged her earlier attack by a fluke.
With this thought in mind, she decided to attack Lake again, this time however, more slowly in an attempt to gauge his true abilities more accurately.
When the Empress attacked this time , Lake had managed to dodge but thanks to the Empress' focus on the human, she was able to gain a far deeper understanding of Lake's abilities from that one attack causing her to murmur her thoughts out loud.
"How strange, it's as if you can sense danger approaching…"
While the Empress was mulling over her findings, she heard the human ask a brief question which caused her to smile. Since she wanted to test her theory out, she decided to play along with the human's question as she threw a swift jab at Lake causing him to jump out of the way.
When the Empress attacked she had clearly seen the human jump out of the way before she even attacked which helped prove her theory of him being able to predict danger.
After Lake had dodged the attack, the Empress answered his question due to her mood slightly improving after successfully confirming her theory.
While she was thinking about whether to destroy the human's corpse or bring it back to the nest for the spider children to feast on, she heard the human ask another question which prompted her to attack almost instinctively, as if a fly had landed on her.
When the Empress saw that the human had managed to dodge that attack as well, the Empress' was slightly surprised and decided to answer his question which related to his survival. When she heard the question, she almost found it funny that he was asking about such a thing after attacking her kingdom and decided to answer his question with a question of her own.
When she saw the human's slightly annoyed face upon hearing her reply, the Empress' mood increased greatly as she had almost forgotten about the matter of war that was going to happen in a few days.
It was at that point however, that the Empress' expression froze upon hearing the human's reply to her question, she pinned the human down to the ground as her mind was engulfed in rage. Her mood that had somewhat improved had been soured once again as she looked down at the human below her.
Almost unconsciously, a dominating aura was released from her body as she used it to suppress the human below her.
"Who are you?" She asked the human in a stern voice.
…
Lake was currently gritting his teeth as he looked at the Empress' icy face. The feeling of having his limbs penetrated hurt like hell but he was able to grit his teeth and bear through it. Lake could also feel that his King's Aura had been rampaging inside his body ever since the Empress had pinned him down.
When the Empress asked for him to identify himself, Lake had almost completely ignored it due to the pain the King's Aura generated from rampaging inside his body.
Seeing that Lake remained silent, the Empress' expression became dark as she stabbed two more of her legs into Lake, this time into his legs. Lake grunted through the pain of being stabbed as he tried to suppress the King's Aura which he had almost lost control of when the Empress' stabbed him.
"I'll ask once more. Who are you and why have you invaded my kingdom?" the Empress asked once more in a chilling tone, "This is your last chance as the next leg will be going through your heart."
Hearing the Empress' words, Lake managed to reign the King's Aura back under his control as he answered the Empress' question while panting, "You can think of me like a mercenary of sorts. I'll help your people for a price if you're willing to hire. As for the reason why I invaded your kingdom, let's just say that payment has already been covered."
Hearing Lake's reply, the Empress could already guess that Lake was lying, however decided to play along as she wanted him to answer her real question.
"How do you know about the relationship between the Wolf King and me?"
Hearing the Empress question, Lake came up with a slightly plausible reason after using information from the Empress memories to support his story, hacking and coughing as he spoke, "Lets just say that your spider nest wasn't the first place I paid a visit too. Unfortunately the wolf den was vacant when I had arrived, so negotiations didn't go as smoothly as this one. I managed to find out the details of the deal after listening in on the conversation of a little white bird."
As Lake spoke his face turned red as time went on, with beads of sweat covering his forehead. Although he was capable of holding in the King's Aura till now, he was starting to feel his grip on it slipping.
After the Empress heard Lake's story, she took a moment to mull over it in her head. After thinking about it for a bit more, she raised one of her legs prepared to stab down as she looked down at Lake.
With a slight snort, the Empress spoke as she looked down at Lake, "Thanks for the information, however, I have no use for a regular mercenary inside my kingdom, not to mention, I wasn't going to let go of the person who killed over half the population of my kingdom.
"Your Majesty, could we by chance have a redo of the negotiations?" Lake asked as he looked at the cold face of the Empress with a slight smirk.
With a soft snort, the Empress disregarded Lake's word as she stabbed her leg towards his chest.
As the leg came down and was about to stab through his chest, Lake felt the small grip he had on his King's Aura completely escape his grasp as the domineering energy was released from his body all at once, causing the Empress, who was about to stab into him to become momentarily stunned as she felt her own energy being heavily inhibited by his energy, causing her to back off.
However, when she tried to retract her own energy, she felt the control she had over her aura weaken greatly as she felt the domineering King's Aura radiating from Lake begin to resonate with her own.
When the Empress felt this, her eyes widened in shock as she looked at the body of the human on the ground.
"I-Impossible, a human possessing the mark of a True King… This is insane!" The Empress shouted in her mind as she looked at the strange human who was lying on the ground in front of her.
Soon however, the Empress realized another strange thing about the aura the human radiated before her, "T-This purity, It can't be… He's a newborn King!"
When the Empress had this realization, the way she looked at Lake had completely changed. Originally, she had wanted to kill this pesky human but after feeling the aura of a newborn king, her opinion had completely changed as an idea began to blossom in her mind.
The idea was completely insane, but the Empress felt that it was just insane enough to allow her to win the approaching war.
Soon however, the Empress realized that the domineering King's Aura had disappeared. When she looked back at the human she realized that he had passed out from all the wounds and exhaustion that she had piled up on him.
Noticing this, the Empress smiled coldly. A few minutes later, a group of spiders had arrived at the scene as they carefully picked up Lake's body, escorting it back to the nest.
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