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

Chapter 324: A Scary Power

"..." Lya’s hair stirs, floating gently from the ripple of Hikishin, but her Hikishin is disturbed by mine because I’m the demon queen. Lya reaches for her arm, grabbing it and setting it back into place.

Her flesh moves as if contracting and writhing, then the meat connects, firmly securing the arm. The hundreds of beast-men watching stay silent.

The atmosphere grows "heavy" as she cracks her fingers. Her muscles return to normal and she seems less imposing, yet somehow more lethal.

’She doesn’t seem to have much talent for magic, but her Hikishin reinforcement... is insane.’ She’s focusing one hundred percent on reinforcing her body, and her physical reinforcement proves superior to Esther’s physical reinforcement.

"..." Lya charges in with everything she has, but her attack is blocked by a puppet that is an exact copy of me. The puppet spins her body and vanishes. This is a "temporary manifestation" of my power in a physical form.

Lya recovers from the spin by using the arena wall to leap at high speed. I’m cautious, because even if I can’t move, I can still be wounded. Another "phantasmagoric puppet" appears, defends the attack, and disappears.

’This burns through a lot of magic.’ Forming a puppet that strong so quickly, even temporarily, costs an immense amount of magic. It’s like trying to generate an Eve from scratch or even more. I need to make a gamble, a childish game that brings about Lya’s defeat.

At this point I’m only hearing Lya and sensing the displacement of Hikishin in the area, which is what I use to defend myself, because I can no longer see her moving. Even the spectators can only see the cracks appearing in the ground.

’She’s even faster than Esther...’ Not being able to move is genuinely far more limiting than I imagined.

"Is that all you’ve got, Lya? You’re so slow and weak that I still haven’t moved a single inch from this spot." I provoke her, and the attacks grow more aggressive. My Hikishin starts draining like water from the sheer number of defenses I’m forced to make.

It’s disturbing to imagine that despite all these physical capabilities, this woman would lose easily to Esther, who is extremely strong.

"[Continental Devastator]" I hear Lya using magic. Suddenly everything shakes. Something generates a violent impact before it seems like everything vanishes. I look to the side and see a kind of "abyss" below where everything is dark.

"...N-No way?" I look up and see the impact was so violent that Lya literally forced the entire continent to be hurled upward, and I only stayed because I can’t move from this spot.

Literally the entire expanse of land all the way to the sea was ripped from its place. The Hikishin stabilized the earth enough to keep everything from collapsing. The continent begins to fall back to the ground.

But the rules of my power are absolute. The continent falls exactly where it should. Maybe not a perfect fit, but my position still falls in the same place. There’s no one left in the stands except Esther, because everyone else was launched far away.

"..." Lya, with her leg bleeding, looks at me as if she can’t believe that even after lifting the entire continent from its place, she was still unable to move me from my spot.

’I doubt she had the capability for an attack of that scale... what did she do?’ She cheated somehow. Not because it’s unrealistic for someone to do that — many demon kings could lift a continent from the ground with a powerful blow.

But for beast-men it’s impossible, and I know this because Esther explained that Ragnar is currently the strongest beast-man, and Lya can’t defeat him. But Ragnar is at the level of destroying cities to kingdoms easily, yet he doesn’t even come close to destroying a continent.

I look at Esther, who is staring at Lya trying to decipher something. I maintain the "act," giving Lya a smile.

"Is that really all you have, Lya? I still haven’t taken a single step." I didn’t feel the impact of that, but looking at Esther who is shaken by the blow, that attack would have destroyed my body completely. It was used far too close to me.

All the dolls across the continent are my eyes. I see the damage she caused — cracks, earthquakes, and countless cities destroyed. She caused unnecessary chaos.

It seems more like a childish tantrum than something a rational person should do, since she affected so many innocents.

"T-Tsk..." She tries to hide the bleeding on her lips, but with that I think I know what she did.

"It was the angels, wasn’t it? You’re making a deal with them in exchange for power to kill your father and become the new ruler of the continent. It’s so obvious. After all, why else would you want to join this war? You don’t seem like the honorable type who wants her people to be respected the way you implied." When I say this, her tail shrinks back.

"Hahaha, you’re completely insane, demon queen." She stands up, disguising something that can no longer be hidden. My body back at the castle gets chills from the eerie, empty look Esther has. She seems incredibly irritated by this meddling of the angels on another continent.

’If it’s an angelic artifact capable of lifting a continent from the ground across several kilometers in a stable manner... then it could only be something made by the queen of the angels...’ In the game, the angel queen was excellent at forging ridiculously powerful weapons.

Called the [Collapse Series], although most of the Collapse Series weapons were destroyed by the queen herself, three weapons were still kept. One of them was the spear that the queen herself possesses and uses, and the other two were unknown.

But what all these weapons had in common was that they were made to cause the maximum amount of destruction possible. If that blow Lya used had been deployed on the demon continent, the chaos it would have generated would have been absurd.

Because so much earth was lifted at once, the destruction isn’t total, but the outermost areas suffer heavy damage, as was the case just now.

"Crazy, right... maybe I am. And do you know what I’ll do now, Lya? I will erase your existence. You will vanish. It will be as if you were never born, while this continent will look like it simply suffered a structural collapse due to the sea."

"Your parents, friends, relatives, servants, and enemies — you will cease to exist in everyone’s memory. The moment I take the first step out of here, your life will cease to exist. Your body, your souls, and any memory of you will scatter like dust in the wind from the minds of all but me."

"Y-You’re bluffing." She hesitates, a hesitation that comes from the fact that I withstood her "powerful blow," but her pride speaks louder.

"Do you doubt me?"

"...I-I doubt it!! I doubt it!! Are you insane? Do you think you’re some kind of god to say you can erase my existence? You arrogant bitch." She accepts the wager, and the moment she does, I feel something rather strange. My movements return, but the reality around me somehow reminds me of a theater play, like a little toy box.

Lya is the toy that has reached its limit. I take the first step out of the spot where I stood. Immediately, Lya’s body begins to turn into white dust, like fragments resembling flower petals, and even those petals begin to vanish.

"..." Lya tries to move, but her body falls to the ground, shattering into white particles, her existence completely consumed by the wager she made by doubting, just like a child might say, "I doubt you can do X," and then the other creation indirectly accepts.

"..." And the strangest thing is that I feel no magic. She just vanished. No effects on the Hikishin, no alterations, nothing. It was as if she was never supposed to be here.

"Evelyn, what are you doing over there? We need to talk to Ragnar about the war!" Esther calls out from the stands, not remembering the duel, the agreement, any of it.

’...’ I think of Syl’Vyr and Faye. I observe their memories and there’s a ’gap’ in them. For them, it’s as if they arrived on this continent and spent some time working. They’re a bit confused and are talking about looking for some work to earn money.

It seems both have regained their freedom now that Lya no longer exists. But this makes me question something.

’The Original Evelyn... did she have this power?’ It would make sense. The "Original Evelyn" didn’t explain how she ceased to exist. She only partially explained how she replaced her existence with mine, but that’s not enough for me to know how it was done. Maybe it was using this power.

"Sorry, Esther... I was just enjoying the beauty of the coliseum... what an intense earthquake, right?" I say to Esther, who leaps over to me.

"Yeah, a really strong earthquake. Anyway, did you like this primitive construction? If you want, we can build one for you." Esther speaks clearly, remembering nothing.

"No need... let’s just settle things with the beast-men chief. I bet he’ll give up on the war."

"Yes, I think so too. Once we finish here, we can focus exclusively on the angels." Esther starts to lead me away. I take one last look at where Lya was.

’...’ I feel nothing. Not joy, not sadness. Maybe I should feel bad for erasing someone from existence, but strangely, I don’t. It’s like stepping on an insect and crushing it.

It’s a shame, but no one stops their journey to lament the life of an insect that was abruptly taken. The only thing that comes to mind is how disturbing this ability is.

Why is it so strong? And stranger still, why doesn’t it use Hikishin? And does it have any limits? Because if it’s capable of erasing someone from everyone’s memories, then its range is simply absurd, and its power is simply monstrous.

"You seem distracted, Evelyn."

"...It’s nothing. Really... I-I just think that... I’m finally strong." I say to her with a smile. Esther doesn’t understand, so she just shrugs, gently pulling me along with her.