F-Rank Puppeteer!! But I'll be Queen, and I'm not a narcissist!!!!!-Chapter 190: Cold Reality Shift
I look at Lucien and Laplace. They are right now commanding the troops, giving orders and explaining what they’ll do. In 10 minutes, they’ll march swiftly to the battlefield ahead.
I’ve already given my orders to my 10,000 soldiers, so all that’s left for me now is to wait for the wounded to start arriving. Then I’ll take care of them as best I can together with Faye, who has healing abilities.
As for Eve and Syl’Vyr, they’ll patrol the surroundings looking for enemies, invaders, or spies. My many standard puppets will also handle the medical side, helping me bandage the wounded.
"..." Lucien soon comes to me after giving his orders to his soldiers, who are already prepared.
"Are you ready, Evelyn? The war will start in 8 minutes, and every second is valuable."
"Y-Yes... I’m ready." It’s not like I have to risk myself. I just need to stay here, tend to the wounded, and hope they win the battle quickly. I look to the side and see that Laplace has already left, going with his soldiers along the flanks.
"Good. Then don’t mess anything up." He turns away and begins to fly. His troops start marching forward while I look around. Only a portion of my soldiers remain, and they are waiting here.
"..." I go to my tent and see Clarissa with a cake I had asked her to make with the ingredients I took from my storage ring.
"Hello, Evelyn-sama," she says, somewhat cheerfully, as I sit in a chair and serve myself a slice of cake.
"Hi..." I take a bite of the cake, watching Clarissa stare at my horns. I guess none of them have gotten used to the fact that I have horns yet, and I haven’t really gotten used to it either.
"Clarissa, you... are a much better maid now," I say, seeing how she seems better than in the past—happier, or whatever. I just know she’s different. She also has better posture and is more responsible, and she’s been doing her job masterfully, being very obedient.
"Yes! I’ve moved up in life, I’ve become a more qualified maid, I earned a lot of money, and I solved my problems with the money I got when you got married. Because of that, I lost one of my worries and could focus more on work." When she says this, I’m surprised.
"Problems?"
"...W-Well, yes... my family is very poor, and I needed a lot of money to pay for my little brother’s treatment. With the money I earned, I finally managed it, and there was even some left over." She speaks all excited about it, until she tenses up, realizing she might have said too much.
"...Do you remember the punch you gave me in the eye?" When I ask this, she becomes uncomfortable. I still remember that punch, the one she gave to the original Evelyn. I sometimes still remember some of the original Evelyn’s memories as if they were my own.
"Y-Yes..." she says nervously, her body trembling. She seems tense, thinking I might take revenge or something.
"Why did you do that?" She doesn’t seem that bad, so I don’t understand why she was so malicious before. Of course, she’s only not bad to me because she still imagines I’m strong.
"W-Well... because everyone was doing it... and... I-I felt good having someone who, even though they were nobility, was still beneath me... y-you know, everyone was doing it, so it didn’t seem like a problem." She says something quite cruel, and you can see she feels no remorse for what she did.
’...’ I take a bite of cake, staring at her. The cake isn’t very tasty; it’s a bit dry and overbaked. The food she makes isn’t bad, but it doesn’t come close to the food at Esther’s mansion.
"Do you regret it?" I ask, hoping she’ll at least say yes, that she feels at least the slightest regret for mistreating me before.
"..." She doesn’t answer, and her lack of response tells me everything I need to know.
"...Why are demons like this?" I murmur, not understanding why demons are so malicious. It’s strange. Is there some reason? It can’t just be culture; there must be something more to it.
"Clarissa..." In the last few days, since I tortured an angel and realized I could be rewarded with Esther’s love, I’ve been asking myself many questions.
Am I really capable of doing anything for a reward as intangible as love? And if so, then what can I do when I’m angry at someone?
"Y-Yes, Evelyn-sama?" Clarissa tenses up as I take a mirror from my storage ring. I look into the mirror for several seconds, seeing how cold my features are.
My face no longer has that smile I always used to give when looking in a mirror. It was an involuntary, somewhat embarrassed smile, but now those feelings stay hidden. Because showing nothing on your face is easier.
"..." I take a pair of pliers from inside the storage ring. I want... to see... I want to see how far I can be bad if it rewards me. This strange desire to test it arises, and Clarissa is perfect for the test. Because she was once bad to me.
"Cut off your right index finger. I want it completely." I toss the pliers to her, giving an order. For some reason, I kept these pliers. Maybe as a memento, or maybe so I wouldn’t forget that I started torturing someone using pliers my first time doing it.
"H-Huh?"
"Clarissa, cut off your finger with the pliers. I want your finger." I want to create a relic using her finger. I want... to see what I’ll feel from this. Not because I’m being bad, not because I want revenge on her, but because I want to see what I feel if I have a relic I can give to Esther.
I’m... testing... testing how much my feelings for Esther are influencing my choices. Because I’m somewhat afraid and apprehensive that my feelings for Esther are increasing to a level dangerous for myself.
"I-Is this..."
"You are my maid... you should obey me." My tone comes out cold. She has a few tears as she picks up the pliers. Soon she places the pliers on her index finger and squeezes with all her might, suppressing a scream. Her finger is ripped off, falling to the floor, and blood begins to flow, dripping onto the ground.
"..." I stare at the blood. I feel strange—not necessarily sad, just an apathy, as if this has nothing to do with me. After having tortured someone, seeing a finger torn off seems much less... painful, as if I’m disconnecting from reality.
"...H-Here..." She picks up the finger from the floor, trembling. I take the finger from her hand, seeing that she actually did it. Clarissa never found out I’m weak, so she still has that fear from when I tricked her with the string stunt.
"...Haaa..." I sigh, squeezing the finger tightly, feeling the warm blood in my palm. Using my magic, I can reshape her finger. I’ve been practicing a lot when making relics, and I’ve realized that because of my puppet power, I’m very good at transmutation.
Creating puppets is essentially a process that starts with transmutation, since I mold the material into the shape I desire. And thanks to that, I realized my power can reshape material without it necessarily needing to be in the form of a puppet.
Her severed finger begins to change shape, molding itself between my fingers until it becomes a ring. The ring has the tone of her skin, with a bone jewel in the center. Clarissa shudders seeing what I did with her finger.
"Clarissa, once we’re finished here, you can go ask Faye to heal your finger. She’ll be able to regenerate it." I gaze at the ring—a "common" relic, but because it’s made of demon flesh, it can withstand more magic than the ore relics I used to make before.
"A curse..." I managed to give the ring a poison curse. It wasn’t hard to do that. After studying so much about relics, this was actually strangely easy to do.
"..." I look at Clarissa, who bites her lips and presses her finger to stop the bleeding. She’s waiting for me to let her leave, and she seems to be in pain.
I take my pliers back and clean them with a small cloth I take from the storage ring. Soon I put the pliers back where they belong.
"Clarissa, what do you think of this relic?" I extend my hand for her to see the ring—a ring made from her finger.
"It’s m-magnificent..."
"Liar. It’s ugly. It’s repulsive. It’s a ring made of flesh and it smells of blood. There’s nothing magnificent about it..." Esther wouldn’t like this, so obviously I’m not going to give it to Esther.
But this... this gives me the answer I didn’t want to receive. Because making this ugly ring for Esther was easy. When my mind focused on making something that could reward me, I didn’t even think about how much disgust I feel doing this.
And after doing it, my thought wasn’t about how bad I feel for doing it. My thought was about how Esther would find it disgusting to receive this gift.
"Here... take it for yourself." I hand the ring to Clarissa. I don’t want this ugly, repulsive thing, and I don’t want to give it as a gift to Esther.
"T-Thank you..." she thanks with tears of pain.
"You can go ask Faye to heal you. After that, come back here..." I wipe the blood from my hands with a handkerchief and then throw it on the floor, dragging my chair to the nearby table.
’Relics...’ I take the ores stored in my storage ring to fabricate some relics. Doing this helps distract me while no wounded soldiers arrive for me to help.
