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

Chapter 322: Preparation

"Esther... do you really think I’ll have to duel?" Evelyn asks me while we wait in a meeting room for Ragnar’s daughter.

"Yes, Evelyn, it’s a possibility. Beast-men are like that — they like settling these kinds of matters through fights. Apparently it’s one hundred percent Lya’s fault that the beast-men want to join the war, so we just need to settle things with her."

"And I bet you, Evelyn, don’t want me to simply destroy everything around here. So yes, you’ll probably have to duel. Normally I wouldn’t let you duel, but since your body here is just an extra, it’s not that big of a problem. Besides, you’re going to win."

"It’s also a great way to see how strong you’ve gotten. I know you’ll never really manage to be strong individually, but now you know how to do a lot of things, and you have plenty of skills, so it’s very possible you’ll win without too much trouble."

"...I’ll do whatever you think is best, Esther," Evelyn says, playing with a cube. She spins it rapidly, assembling various complex patterns of shapes and images on it.

"..." We wait for some time until Lya enters. With Lya are those two traitors. Lya sits down on the other side of the table, while Syl’Vyr and Faye stand beside her in complete silence.

"So you’re the one who’s going to talk to me? Know that I won’t abandon this idea. This war is the way to prove to arrogant people like you that our race isn’t inferior," Lya says coldly to me, putting her legs up on the table.

’What a graceless woman.’ I look at Evelyn — a composed, beautiful woman, and despite being a huge crybaby, she’s polite and maintains proper etiquette.

Lya, on the other hand, is nothing but wild, and that wildness and those muscles destroy any form of beauty she might have had.

’Well, my type of girl is definitely Evelyn, so I guess I prefer feminine girls over a girl who looks like a wall of muscle.’ I do have some muscles myself.

But they’re light, smooth muscles that only enhance my body’s definition, which came naturally from all the training I’ve done. But it makes sense — beast-men are bad at Hikishin, while demons depend on it, so we focus more on magic than on physique.

"Your gaze irritates me, you know that? You look at me like I’m inferior," Lya says without me having even said anything.

"But you are inferior. My gaze is merely honest." When I say that, she lets out a low, irritated growl.

"Be quick. I have things to do besides wasting time with two demons." She’s clearly not happy with me, but that hardly matters.

"I want you to stop inciting your people to war and abandon this suicidal idea of getting involved in something that has nothing to do with you."

"I already know how you could cross the ocean, and indeed your discovery with that new ore is impressive, but this war is no business for such small fish." The way this inferior race could participate in the war has limitations when it comes to transportation.

To take part in the war, the ability to cross the sea is essential, and there are only three options: teleportation, boats, or flight — teleportation and flight being the hardest.

In the current war, we demons use teleportation through the [Bridge] and we use boats, but beast-men are underdeveloped. They have no means of doing that.

But luckily for them, in recent years they discovered an ore where the more of it there is clustered in one spot, the more it floats — in other words, perfect for building large flying structures.

Apparently this ore only exists here, and it came about because the low concentration of Hikishin on this continent, mixed with a natural fusion of minerals, generated an ore with "negative density."

It "falls upward," going against gravity by repelling gravitational fields, and it also works in a strange way where, for example, if you threw it forward, it would come toward you.

So even stupid animals like the beast-men can build something that flies using this ore.

"..." Lya doesn’t seem surprised that I know about this ore, and honestly, I’d like to have this ore if we could work out a sale agreement.

"This war may not be our business, but we’ll do whatever we want. You think you own everything with your immense magical powers and your boats! But we are not inferior, and we’ll prove it in this war." She gives an arrogant smile as if condemning her people to a losing fight were something to be proud of.

"..." I look at Evelyn, who looks down. She knows what I’m thinking. With people this stupid in positions of power, would exterminating all life on the planet really be that hard?

With my power, I could easily make the wars even more chaotic, dragging all the races into it, and once they were all on the brink of collapse, I’d simply eliminate them.

"Esther, don’t think too much about that," Evelyn says to me as if she’s absolutely certain I’ve already formulated a way for a global genocide to happen.

"Of course, Evelyn. You’re the boss." Lya, who’s being ignored, slams her foot on the table, making it shake.

"Are you two really going to flirt right in front of me?"

"Lya, how about a duel? You choose the terms, the rules, and the location. I choose the fighters, the rewards, and the punishment. That’s more the style of a brute like you, right?" Since she’s undoubtedly going to order a fight, it’s better for me to propose a fight first and at least dictate part of it.

"...Fine. Now you’re speaking my language! We’ll fight in this kingdom’s coliseum. It’ll be a one-on-one fight, and the rules are that anything can be done to the participant inside the arena. Outside help or assistance is forbidden, and the fight only ends if one of us verbally surrenders or dies."

’...’ I think about the information Evelyn gathered while controlling all the "dolls" on the continent. Lya always proposes these rules in the duels she has. She does it to crush her targets’ tracheas so they can’t surrender.

And then she does whatever she wants — tortures, abuses, psychologically wounds, or anything else that strikes her fancy. Since the person can no longer say they’ve given up, the only option left is to die. It’s quite cruel and unfair to those who are weaker.

"Of course. That sounds fair to me. So now it’s my turn to define the rest, right? The fighters will be you and Evelyn. The rewards... if you win, Evelyn becomes your slave. If I win, you become our slave." Having her as a slave would allow me to control the beast-men she incited to war, and even if she dies, the contract is still valid and I can control some of her affairs.

"And the punishment... if you lose, I’ll brand your entire body with hot iron. I’ll burn every part of your body to make it clear that you’re nothing but an animal lacking proper training." When I say that, she stands up, slamming the table, which cracks.

"You think you can come here, to my continent, and call me an animal lacking training?"

"Why the anger? You think you’re going to lose?"

"Me? LOSE?! To that weakling over there? NEVER." She reacts exactly as I expected. She underestimates Evelyn, and it makes sense. Take away magic, and everything about Evelyn screams "Fragile Girl" — her body, her posture, her scent. Even her immense amount of magic is soft and light, rather than dense and heavy like mine.

For members of the beast-man race, who rely on smell and instincts to determine a target’s danger level, Evelyn is simply an anomaly who is "strong" in her own way but appears weak.

"Great. If you think you’re going to win, then there’s no reason to back down. Sign it." I toss her a soul contract already marked with my blood. It’s similar to the contract I engraved on Evelyn’s body, the difference being that this one is far less restrictive.

Evelyn, who already knew the plan, just stays quiet. I even wanted to put myself forward as the fighter, but this clone of mine only simulates my power — it doesn’t have real powers, so this clone would lose to a single punch from Lya.

If it were my real body, I’d undoubtedly fight, but since the only one here with powers is Evelyn, she’s the one who must fight.

"I’ll smash your wife’s face into the mud." She bites her own finger and signs after reading the contract. Immediately, the contract catches fire, releasing blue and black flames before turning to ashes, showing that neither of us can break the contract or we’ll be punished.

And punishments for soul contracts are severe, ranging from instant death, destruction of the soul, and permanent loss of limbs to complete loss of all Hikishin in the body and restrictions on basic things like voice, hearing, and sight.

It all depends on the contract’s seriousness, and this contract is very serious, so the chances of death by breaking it are high.

"You have three days to prepare. I’ll see you at the coliseum, bitches. And when I’m done, I’ll make a point of turning your wife into my personal sex slave and raping her in front of you and making her beg to call me mistress while I make her forget you ever existed." She threatens me, clearly holding a grudge against me for the insults.

’What a vulgar and repulsive woman.’ Saying that kind of thing in this situation — she could only be a mangy bitch from this underdeveloped continent.

Syl’Vyr looks at me with disgust, probably because I put Evelyn up as a reward, and Faye looks at Evelyn with pity. It seems both of them still think Evelyn is the same weakling from the past.

But no. As much as I hate to admit it, Nerina trained Evelyn very well. Evelyn’s nymph powers, combined with her Puppet powers and Demon King powers, have put her far above what she was in the past. She’s still "weak," but she’s already much stronger than many enemies.

As they leave, Evelyn looks at me with a strange smile on her face, as if she wants to say something but holds back a little.

"Would you be mad if what she said happened?" she questions.

"Very. You’re mine alone. But it doesn’t matter — that idiot didn’t even discuss the contract. Even if you lose, all that will happen is that this extra body of yours becomes a slave." Stupid woman. She didn’t even try to check what her reward was. She just gave in to rage.

Obviously, I would NEVER risk losing Evelyn. Even if the chances of Evelyn winning are high, she’s still inexperienced, and honestly, sometimes she’s a bit foolish and could easily lose because of that stupidity.

So I only risked losing an extra body. What I offered was Evelyn’s body as a slave, not her soul. It was more or less what Evelyn tried to do to me.

Evelyn tried to make me enslave only her body — a body she can discard. I was smarter and enslaved her soul, something she can’t discard and that affects even her soul backups.

"Esther, you are truly despicable... I’ll do my best to win... but if I lose, don’t be mad at me. I’m not a fighter... and I hate feeling pain, even though I’ve gotten a lot more tolerant."

"If you lose, it’s my fault. It means I miscalculated your chances of victory. Don’t worry, love." I stand up and give her a little kiss.

"You’ll win. For me."