Chapter 21: Plotting Mariticide

She was not human.

Axel did not let the shock of her familiar features override his analytical gaze. From the moment he had ripped off her mask, he had been studying the woman’s every detail.

It was undoubtedly similar to a person’s, though perhaps too perfect in every facet. As if sculpted to life with an artisan’s touch, rather than one of nature’s make.

Axel's second thought had been that she was a gene-modified human like him. Still, even the intricacy of biological tempering could not have possibly brought forth that unholy level of mirrored flawlessness about her features.

A flawlessness now destroyed by the axe graze across her face. 

More than that, there were certain abnormalities about her. Purple eyes were not naturally occurring among eyes, and hers looked and shone too brightly to be biological. There were twin pupils in each iris, focused and hypnotically unsettling to look at. The teeth in her smile were too sharp. Her ears were also slightly pointed. 

“In my world, it is considered rude to stare without a word,” the alien woman mildly chided. “Is it not the same in yours, Demon?”

“... Only sometimes. I have been stared at enough times that I care not for its rudeness anymore,” he replied, muscles still tensed. His left arm had gone completely unresponsive, and the sensation was creeping up to his shoulders and into his neck.

If he was going to kill her, it had to be soon, before the poison reached his brain.

The woman raised her hands and unclasped the strap of her coat’s collar. The leather peeled away, exposing her pale neck. She tilted her head back, practically inviting him to decapitate her.

“If you have set your mind to kill me, you might as well do it,” she said. “I don’t think I can pull off my plan without your help, and I would much rather be slain under your blade than suffer the indignity of my circumstances any longer.”

Another two seconds passed. More numbness spread across his body. 

With a sigh, Axel dispelled his weapons back into his inventory. “Do you have anything to cure this toxin before it kills me?”

The lady immediately drew forth a potion and tossed it to him. Axel briefly pondered whether this was an elaborate play to poison him again, then shrugged when he decided he didn’t care either way.

He popped open the glass tube and drank the contents. Vile and bitter, it nonetheless stopped the creeping numbness. Sensation soon returned to his left arm.

The woman said nothing as she picked up her discarded knives. She then returned to her chemistry table, resuming her work as if nothing had happened.

Axel drank a few potions to regain his health points. He then walked over to the chemistry table, watching the strange female pull a thin line of blood off her face and added it to her hissing concoction.

“Not going to heal yourself?” he asked.

“It will close up on its own soon, though it may scar,” she replied, still focused on her work. “I have troll blood in my veins. It gives me a semblance of their ridiculous regeneration. The iron edge of your weapon works against my Fae ancestry, however, so it won’t heal as completely.”

That’s…  Do their species just all interbreed with each other? And why does she look so human?

“So, you mind telling me more about what you have in mind? Or what you are, for that matter,” Axel asked, frowning as he continued to study her. “You are not one of those heavily gene-modified freaks of the Lunar Theocracy, right? Because I have a moral obligation to kill you if you belong to that cult of obsessed superhuman supremacist.”

“Luna Theocracy?” The woman murmured. She paused in her work and looked at him, her purple eyes curious. “Your people made a civilisation on your moon?”

“Yours didn’t?”

She shrugged. “Too busy killing each other. Interspecies planetary purges are not conducive for scientific advancements.”

“Hmm. Understandable. There was only one sapient species on my planet, but it wasn’t as if we didn’t have our fair share of global conflict before… You know.”

“That would explain a few things,” she hummed. She finished her work and sealed a boiling tube away. “My name is Lune, second child of the Fae Tyrant, and Handler of the Troll forces under my Father’s command.”

“You don’t look like your bugbear brothers that I have killed,” Axel casually said. “Unless all bugbear women looked like you, in which case I have several questions.”

Lune scoffed. She didn’t look bothered by the death of her supposed siblings. “I am not a bugbear, though I do share my Fey ancestry with them. I am an Eldarin; Fae Elf. My Fey blood is purer than that of my half-siblings. We share the same Father within the Fae Tyrant, but our mothers were different. Theirs were goblins. Mine was a half-troll, half-Giant.”

“... Your species is weird. How does all of that even work?”

“Those of the Feywild can interbreed with each other, creating subspecies of different races with varying levels of Fey ancestry. The results are oftentimes erratic as well, dependent on what level of Fey ancestry the parents had rather than their sub-species,” she explained, words practised and bored. “Generally, those of greater Fey blood have improved sapience, which leads to a hierarchy amongst our people. Goblins and Trolls are at the bottom, Bugbears somewhere in the middle.”

“And I’m guessing Giants and Eldarin are higher on the totem,” Axel finished. “This is weird to wrap my head around…”

“It usually is for creatures from mono-sapient worlds, though you are adjusting well enough considering it is still the first day of your species’ assimilation. I would advise you not to think too much about it, especially if you ever reach the Hub and meet the other stranger races of the universe,” she explained, before frowning. “If you mention Giants, you must have met Ymir, then.”

“Yep. Big guy. Threatened to kill me.”

“But he didn’t. And I’m glad for it,” she replied. “Having a Demon on my side makes the plan easier.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything,” he said. “In fact, I’m still thinking about killing you.”

“Your Zone requirements state that you are only to eliminate the Zone bosses, not their Leaders. Killing me would not advance your objective.”

“It would give me Experience points.”

“You would be depriving yourself of an ally.”

He shrugged. “Been doing well enough on my own so far.”

She sighed. “Then just kill me and get it over with already. Why are you even talking to me? Unless…”

She scowled, her face turning disgusted. “Oh, that’s why you looked at me like that earlier. You males are all the same…”

The soldier realised what she was implying and burst out laughing.

“Oh, no. None of that,” he said between fits of uncontrolled cackles. “I’m not interested in any of that.”

Lune raised an eyebrow. “Your kind doesn’t enjoy intercourse?” 

“We do, very much,” he coughed out, still chuckling. “I’m simply not the type of man who enjoys sleeping with women liable to slit my throat. I had quite enough of that.”

Being within the cadre didn’t give him many good options for pleasurable bedmates. Half of them had required violent spars and bloodletting as foreplay to get in the mood. The other half, well…

Best to think as little of them as possible.

Axel sighed, his stance much more relaxed. “Alright, I’ll hear you out. Truth be told, I came here planning to poison your still and feed it to the trolls. Either that, or to lure them to your brewing station and blow them all up.”

“Both of those plans are shit,” Lune bluntly said. “Troll regeneration is absurd. It would overcome whatever feeble poison you can cook up, and any explosion you plan to create with my distilleries would at best kill off only the closest few. The Troll King himself would be up again in seconds, even if he were at the heart of the detonation.”

“Hmm. The Troll King… Your husband, you say?” Axel asked. “I’m going to go on a guess and say it wasn’t your choice. You have my sympathies.”

“It was arranged. Force upon me by my Father to secure the troll’s vassalage,” Lune spat out. Her purple eyes were furious. “Though before you assume the worst, I have been feeding that shit-stained swine with my drugged brews to keep his hands off me since our… union.”

“You can’t simply poison him that way?”

“I have been trying,” she admitted in frustration. “Every night, I poison the brew he drinks. It barely affects him. His Endurance is stupidly high, bolstered even more by his natural Troll regeneration, Titles, and Advanced Class. Even the suppressants I’ve been using to keep that bastard’s lust in check are losing their effectiveness.”

“How strong is his regeneration? I’ve killed trolls before. So long as you cut off their heads, they seem to go down.”

“Not for him. If it were that easy, I would have just decapitated him in bed long ago,” she huffed. “His Class will keep him alive even without a head or vital organs. One of his traits ensures his regeneration continues so long as at least 60% of his overall body mass is intact. It only stops beyond that or when his Health reaches zero. ”

That’s… really bad. And ridiculously overpowered.

[You are hardly the sole powerful participant in the Zone. Given how strong your Advanced Class and Titles have made you, is it a surprise that it would do the same for others?]

“So both poison and direct combat are off the table,” he murmured. His brilliant plan to kill off the entire camp in one stroke is off the table, then.

“Not entirely. Certain reagents still affect them if they are beneficial or harmless. The brew they regularly drink, for instance. Trolls can still get drunk because their biology does not treat alcohol as a toxin or foreign substance.”

Lune lifted a vial. “I have created a poison powerful enough to slow the Troll King’s regeneration. It will last only ten minutes, and I only have one vial, but it should give us an opening to kill him. If we can inflict enough damage during this time to get his Health to zero, he will die.”

“There’s more than just the Troll King there. You can’t synthesise more to poison the entire camp?”

She grimaced. “This vial alone took me months to create and required valuable ingredients sourced from the Auction. I cannot make more, and especially not in such quantity with so little time.”

Auction?

[It’s irrelevant to your current problems. Focus on the task at hand.]

Axel tapped his hand against the table. “We need to deal with the rest of the army if we are to stand a chance. The Troll’s regeneration. You mentioned it is selective?”

“Selective is too strong a word,” Lune corrected. “So long as they are not suffering Health damage, it generally does not take action to purge the imbued substance. They can still drink potions and such as well. I can prepare a general poison that might slow the lesser trolls down, but nothing that could kill them outright.”

“What about a soporific agent? You mentioned before you have been using suppressants on the Troll King.”

“A sedative?” she considered. “It would work to isolate the Troll King by getting the rest to sleep, and I do have a vast quantity available. But such a plan will not last. Once the combat starts and their King calls for aid, their bodies would be alert for battle, instantly purging their sleepiness.”

Axel grinned. “But it would help to gather all of them into one location.”

“I suppose if the sedative is strong enough, I could get them to collapse near the drinking point,” Lune frowned. “But why would that help? All it would do is ensure the Troll King could gather his entire force together when we try to kill him.”

The soldier chuckled evilly. “Oh, you are going to love this part. You see, the Giant I so kindly freed has offered his support for my cause…”