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

Chapter 325: New Paths

"Evelyn-sama, thank you so much for inviting me!!" Eve says as we eat together. My other body at the castle is having dinner with Esther, while my body on the beastmen continent is next to Esther’s clone, working things out with Ragnar.

Since no one remembers that "Lya" ever existed, Ragnar feels no "hatred" or "rage" over losing his daughter, so the negotiations with Esther are going well, even if Ragnar is a little confused about what incited the beastmen to want war.

Of course, Esther looks at me as if she suspects I did something, but she doesn’t question it, so her suspicion isn’t a problem. I really don’t want to talk about erasing someone’s existence.

"...It was nothing, Eve. I just wanted to discuss something with you... I... I’m thinking about doing something terrible... somewhat cruel, but honestly, as someone tired of dealing with conflicts, I could come out of it with some advantage..."

"What is it, Evelyn-sama? I’ll do anything for you!! It doesn’t matter if it’s something evil, or if it brings about my death, your wish will be done!!" Eve speaks with absolute loyalty. I slide a plate I cooked myself over to her.

"It’s about an ability of mine. I’m thinking of making an apprentice for you. You’d be kind of like her tutor..." I’m not going to get into the full details with Eve.

"Of course, Evelyn-sama!! I can do that, though it’s a bit difficult right now with the war... wait, Evelyn-sama, what’s wrong with that?" She’s very observant and knows me well, so she figures out immediately that there’s an extra catch.

"...Eve, if it meant ending a war, do you believe it would be right to condemn a single soul in exchange for saving thousands of random, innocent lives? BUT with a big extra, that being a little bit of help for that soul..."

"...I suppose it wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t the soul of someone important to me, but morally, it’s wrong. However, morality doesn’t save lives when it comes to war," Eve gives an answer I didn’t expect.

"Final Act Maximum Release (Description = In the end, what matters most in the theater isn’t the beautiful scene, the initial outcome, or the objectives; what matters is the finale and the tragedy. By using the maximum release, the stage master decides to bring an end to his theater, unleashing the most powerful marionette to bring the play to a close. When used, the user has no control over the marionette, not knowing its powers, appearance, or even what it will do, running a high risk of being killed by the marionette in question. An ending that bets everything on luck, because destiny is a gamble, and only those who risk everything get the best show.)" I say this to Eve.

Deciding to be honest about this part, Eve listens as I say the ability’s name and its description, and immediately her eyes widen.

"Evelyn-sama, are you planning to use that?"

"Yes... I plan to, but with restrictions, and I’ll probably have to place curses on this marionette so it becomes something that helps. So I thought I’d make her your disciple." I’m going to pull a soul from another world.

I think I’ve figured out how the "Original Evelyn" took my soul. She used the [Tragedy’s Little Toy Box] to pull my soul. I’m almost certain she had this power, and she probably used the powers of the marionette from Esther’s corpse to locate the soul she needed.

I don’t have a way to locate a specific soul, but if I use my nymph powers well, I can probably find a suitable one, and what I’m looking for isn’t necessarily a human soul.

What I’m looking for is a "broken" female soul—a woman who is depressed, sad, and just looking for something to bring light into her life. I will restrict and curse the soul while placing it inside the marionette that I cannot control.

This will create a marionette I have partial control over, and making Eve the tutor of this marionette is a way to form a bond I can’t manage myself. Besides, of course, giving Eve someone she can like who isn’t me.

I’m doing this to create a weapon, a weapon so strong and dangerous it will make it clear to the angels that after their queen’s defeat, if they don’t surrender, this weapon will lay waste to the continent. I’ll also use this "weapon" to fight the angel queen alongside Eve. The two of them against the angel queen seems sufficient. The angel king is strong, but we can leave him to Marie and Lucien.

"I will do whatever you wish, Evelyn... but wouldn’t that require a lot of magic?"

"...I... will sacrifice all the lives of the next three cities." I studied a lot of magic with Esther and combined that with the knowledge Nerina taught me. With that, I believe I can temporarily detach and send my consciousness to another world to search for a soul myself.

Just like the "Original Evelyn" did by forcing me to truly see my past world, I can do it if I’m careful, even though I won’t be choosing which world I go to. I might end up on some empty planet.

"...Won’t you feel bad about this, Evelyn-sama?"

"Maybe... but it’s the best choice." Eve is strong, but not strong enough to defeat the angel queen. The angel queen is almost as strong as my father was as the demon king. Even with me strengthening Eve, she won’t have enough power to kill the angel queen before we get to the fight against her.

And Esther still doesn’t have that strength either, because she didn’t gain the title of Demon Queen. It’s ironic that in the past, I thought I’d never do what the Original Evelyn did to me, and now I’m thinking about condemning someone’s soul to be a cursed marionette.

However, I won’t be as cruel. I’m looking for a broken woman, first for compatibility. If the soul is female, the body will definitely follow that metric, and I can force a humanoid body.

Being a woman is easier to deal with than a man who could have more difficult traits to handle, and being "broken" means she’ll have a certain degree of loyalty to the one who brings light into her life.

I’m condemning a soul as much as I’m saving it. Of course, it will only work if I find a compatible soul, and for that, I’ll need the Tragedy’s Little Toy Box to work the way I hope.

Thanks to the fight against Lya, I understand this power better, and I think using it to do this is quite possible.

"Evelyn-sama, I will do whatever you wish, but please think carefully if this is what you really want—"

"..." Eve falls silent when she sees my gaze.

"...Eve, do you know why I thought of making this marionette?"

"No... I regret to say I don’t know. Even though it would be strong, the fact that it wouldn’t obey you makes it nothing more than a risk, so I don’t understand why you would make it when you can create many living marionettes and strengthen them..."

"Eve, if you were a Goddess, what would you do to change the world?"

"...I’d probably use my powers to try and change the world, right? I think that’s the logical answer to that question." She tilts her head, answering the question but with a touch of doubt.

"...Okay, a consistent answer with what most good people would think. Now, Eve, what if that same world is so fragile that your touch would break it, your power wouldn’t just destroy the world?"

"..."

"You destroyed what you tried to change. That seems terrible, doesn’t it? I’m not a Goddess, but to change, to become a better person, my past self was broken again and again until I became what I am today."

"Because I was fragile. The current angel queen is easily the strongest being in the world aside from the monsters, because the only being who should rival her is me, and I’m far too weak for that."

"Do you understand?" Eve doesn’t seem to understand, but I understood something very dark when I erased Lya—something about why destiny hates me, why it does idiotic things like making me trip on the floor.

Destiny is like me with my marionettes. I control my marionettes, I dictate what they do, but how they do it is their choice. They can choose to go against what I dictated.

It’s the same with living beings. Destiny might hate me not because of what the "Original Evelyn" did, but because I am not the being who should be here, doing these things.

Demon King and Angel Queen, two beings with almost equivalent powers, maintain a certain degree of balance. That is "destiny" at work. Now we have me, a weak Demon Queen who can barely do anything against Esther, let alone against the angel queen.

I am a "flaw," and the way to fix that flaw isn’t by letting others resolve it. It’s simply my powers being what allow me to fulfill my function. I think that’s why the "Original Evelyn" left those "things" ready.

Those other Evelyns who appear to say things I don’t want to hear—they are ways of indicating that I’m not doing what I’m supposed to do. So, creating the marionette that comes from the [Final Act Maximum Release] is the correct way to equalize my power with the angel queen’s.

"Look, Eve, I’m going to strengthen you a lot in the coming days, to ensure that this new marionette will be very strong... but if everything goes wrong... maybe I’ll end up creating an even worse problem than the one we have on our hands right now... so please stay alert, okay?"

"...I will always be by your side, Evelyn-sama, even if everything goes wrong!! I will do my best to protect you in case of failure." While Eve says this, my other body that’s with Esther tells her all of this. Not because I wanted to reveal it, but because maybe she can help me with the magic I’ll use to try and find an external soul to put inside the marionette, and of course, to help me with curse magic.

I don’t need anyone to understand my choice, and I don’t need anyone to approve of it or even try to think about why this choice makes sense to me. What matters are the chances of success, and if there’s one thing I learned from Esther, it was how to see if something will fail or not, and how to take advantage of it.