F-Rank Puppeteer!! But I'll be Queen, and I'm not a narcissist!!!!!

Chapter 308: Queen’s Duties

"Evelyn, what do you think?" Marie asks me while I’m on top of a wooden tower that my puppets and the hundreds of "hands" built. Marie, who now seems to have accepted me a little more as queen, asks as I watch the soldiers arriving across the [Bridge].

"Looks good, though I feel a lot of magic directed at us. Probably the queen or king of the angels is debating whether or not to use a long-range attack. Not that it would work." I look toward where I sense the largest waves of magic, likely the angel kingdom.

"Do you know why they’re being so passive? Or don’t you even know that much?" Marie says with sarcasm, but obviously I know.

"Of course I know." The angels are being passive and haven’t come to attack yet simply because they have NEVER been attacked in their lives. No army has ever reached their continent before.

Because of that, they’ve never prepared their citizens for it. To the general public of angels, war is something distant, but now it’s at their doorstep, so they’re probably having to deal with the population’s fear, and fear breeds uncontrollable chaos.

While also having to deal with something they’ve never dealt with before — the possibility of severe casualties. Angels have very long lifespans just like demons, but demons reproduce at a relatively stable rate, maintaining their population average even during periods of war, whereas angels reproduce less, so they can’t afford to keep losing civilians in war.

"Great! Then see that you lead properly! If something happens to Grace, you’re screwed!!" She speaks in a very arrogant tone, undoubtedly a complete tsundere.

"I didn’t force Grace or ask for her help. If she wants to leave, she can. If not, and she dies, that’s on her." I say it quite coldly. Grace is not my problem. No one told her to come. She chose to come.

"Tsk, great argument, but she’s my wife!! And if my wife—"

"If she dies, what will you do, Marie? Leave the war? Try to kill me?" When I say that, several people below look up at us. Marie glances around and notices the hostile stares aimed at her.

"...No... I... I’m busy, I have to go." She leaves. I am still the queen. "Threatening" a demon queen, even indirectly, is a terrible thing. Even if no one likes the ruler, respect must still be shown.

I won’t be crushed by Marie’s words just because she’s too arrogant to accept that I am the queen and she lost.

"Evelyn-sama, we’ve finished building the dwellings. Only the fortifications remain, which will be done with magic." Eve leaps up here, speaking quickly as she points and circles to show the constructions. I left her in charge of observing the puppets building.

"Perfect. Eve, in the meantime, I want you to do a sweep of the area and search for anything watching, while spreading these around." I hand Eve a briefcase full of "Recorders." They’re small object puppets — discs only a few centimeters in size. They stick to surfaces in general through adhesion.

"Evelyn-sama, I’ll do it immediately, but the ship captains and some of the commanders who led different troops want to see you to discuss how to advance."

"Angelic territory has no problems with monsters, but traps have certainly been, are being, and will be set all along the way, and the closer to the angel kingdom, the more traps there will be..." She speaks, taking the briefcase and closing it.

"I’ll go soon... tell them in about three hours... r-right now I need to go." I use threads to "float" down from the tower, using them to move above the ground to get faster to the house I built for myself out of wood.

It’s easily the size of a small mansion, while the soldiers’ dwellings are also large, but they’re communal since there are far too many soldiers, and a large portion of the dwellings are simple, easily disassembled, and not that spacious, yet capable of housing up to 20 soldiers. They’re stacked, so a small area can accommodate up to 1,000 soldiers.

I quickly arrive at my mansion and enter. It’s quite empty, with only a few standard model puppets working on the finishing touches. What I do, however, is immediately run to the bedroom. It’s late at night anyway.

"Ghmm... E-Esther, n-not now..." This body of mine murmurs because of the other body. It’s still difficult to control which body moves how and which one is actually speaking, not to mention the memories from two different moments confuse me a lot.

"Ngghh." I collapse onto the bed, panting. The sensations of Esther touching my other body reach this one, making me feel strange. I throw myself onto the bed made of threads, writhing in a weird way because here there’s no one actually touching me.

"Haa..." It’s hard to concentrate with Esther touching my other body, so the sensations end up being felt too directly, as if she were really here.

"W-Why did we have to be two such depraved girls..." I murmur, biting the pillow. I didn’t want to feel this excitement out of nowhere. It’s so strange in so many ways.

"Urgh... b-bite me softer... hmm..." I bite the thread pillow, drooling on it while I feel her fingers. The sensation is maddening, even more so because although I feel it, my body here doesn’t register anything, so I keep craving a real touch.

"C-Calm down, take a deep breath..." My other body talks to Esther to get them to stop. Esther seems dissatisfied and frustrated. She rolls her eyes at me but ends up accepting.

"Hey Evelyn, are you in here?" I hear someone knocking on the mansion door. From the voice, I know it’s Grace, so I send a puppet to bring her here while I check my clothes to see if I ended up getting too aroused and leaving the dress damp.

’Okay... I’m fine...’ I take a deep breath, flip the pillow to the other side, and sit on the bed with my legs crossed. Then the door opens, and I soon see Grace. It’s been a while since we talked directly.

"Evelyn..." She murmurs my name as I gesture with my hand for her to grab the chair and sit. She looks around the room for too long before taking the chair and sitting near me.

"Your room is really big... and this dwelling seems kind of... too complex for a war." With that being the first thing she says, we’re already off to a bad start.

"I’m not a humble heroine. I’m a self-centered, narcissistic queen, so I need a house at least suitable for me to stay in. So if you’re not here to complain about my aesthetic choices, proceed with the reason you came." She doesn’t seem very happy with my way of talking to her.

"I just wanted to know about how the war is going to go. Have you tried to start a peace treaty yet, or... is it still going to take a while?"

"Peace treaty? Grace, what are you talking about?"

"...?"

"It’s a fight until one side surrenders. Didn’t you understand? There won’t be peace." When I say that, she seems disappointed, but it looks like she already expected it.

"Okay... so what about the civilians?"

"We’re going to kill them all. Well, most of them. Some will become slaves."

"What!!?" She jumps out of the chair when I say that, but the reality is I have no control. The demons won’t just obey if I order them not to kill civilians. In fact, it will only make them more rebellious and disobedient.

Because it’s an almost biological hatred that demons have for angels, so it’s genuinely not my choice to save, make deals or treaties, much less help civilians among the angels.

"Evelyn, are you seriously planning a genocide!!? You think I’m going to condone this? You think humanity will stand by your side to massacre a race?" She speaks in a very cold tone and an extremely irritated expression.

’Me?’ I didn’t start this war. I’m just continuing it. In truth, I didn’t even change the demon king’s orders. The battle orders remain the same as before, so I have nothing to do with it beyond leading troops.

Besides, apparently this is the endgame war, which would always happen anyway, and there’s no way to stop it or make agreements with the angels. The angels themselves wouldn’t accept it.

’If I try to convince Grace, she’ll never accept it with her heroine mentality...’ Grace may be a bit perverted and flirty, but she’s still a good and kind heroine.

"That’s right, I’m going to commit genocide, and it doesn’t depend on you, Grace. You think your king will abandon our alliance just because he knows we’re going to massacre another race? I can just offer him 30–50% of the angelic continent’s resources and he’d accept with a smile."

"That’s the reality of war. Resources are worth more than lives, and your king doesn’t care about lives if he can get resources, especially lives of a race that isn’t his." It’s ironic for her to call me genocidal.

I’m not the one who wants genocide. It’s Esther. She’s the true genocidal one who wants to end the world.

"You disgust me, Evelyn. I really had doubts about whether you actually killed your father. I gave you a vote of confidence by questioning the truth."

"But seeing you now, you’re exactly the monster who would kill her own father that I thought you weren’t. I can’t believe I was foolish enough to trust that you were innocent." The look of disgust on her face hurts me a little.

"Is that all? You came to talk to me about civilians? Well then, why don’t you talk to Marie? See if she’ll be merciful and save the angels." When I say that, she freezes.

"You know, Marie doesn’t care about angels either. That’s how demons are. So if we’re done here, I ask that you leave. It’s not courteous to call a queen genocidal, even if it were the truth."

"...I hope the weight of the crown crushes you someday." She leaves through the door in anger after saying that horrible phrase.

"H-Hahaha... the crown crush me... what a joke." The one who carries the crown is Esther. Everything goes through her, and she’s the one who gives the orders. I’m just a puppet queen with no real control over anything if Esther doesn’t allow it.

"..." I lie down on the bed with an exhausted sigh. That conversation was strangely draining.