The Witch Queen
Among the handful of true powerhouses that the entire continent of Gaiarium could name, one stood near the very top: the Witch Queen.
She was the foremost mage of the Void attribute — a reputation that now thundered across the land. It had not always been so. There had been a time when she was nothing more than one more gifted mage among a desert's worth of them, a single grain of sand in an endless dune.
What turned her life inside out was a Skill Stone she claimed while clearing a dungeon. The skill engraved upon it was a Void-attribute spell called Astral Cannon.
Anyone caught in Astral Cannon's range had their attributes ignored, their defenses ignored, and the mana they possessed burned out of existence. It was, without exaggeration, an insane skill.
The Witch Queen built herself upon that spell. Her name began to travel. And then her fame curdled into infamy, and the incident that detonated that infamy still lived in too many memories, even though ten years had already gone by.
The Siege of Baidu.
She had been a 6-Star Void mage then. The woman who ruled Baidu was a 7-Star swordswoman known as the Mirage Queen.
The battle for the oasis city lasted a week. It ended when the Mirage Queen died without leaving so much as a corpse behind.
At the time, nearly everyone had bet on the Mirage Queen. She was a swordswoman; the Witch Queen was a mage. Without a tank standing close enough to shield her, a mage was a swordsman's meal. The Mirage Queen also held the higher rank. A single star of difference could still be overturned at the lower grades — but once a fighter crossed 6-Star, that kind of reversal became something close to impossible.
The Witch Queen had the larger force, yes. What she did not have was anyone capable of bringing down a monster of the Mirage Queen's caliber. That was why the smart money had all gone the same way.
The Witch Queen shattered every one of those predictions.
The Mirage Queen slipped into the enemy camp alone and came to stand before her rival. It was a trap. The fairies and Masters under the Witch Queen's command seized the Mirage Queen's ankles and bought their mistress the time she needed. Then the ultimate magic that had made the Witch Queen who she was — Astral Cannon — roared to life. The Mirage Queen was swallowed by the spell and annihilated so completely that not a scrap of her remained.
The siege broke the dogma that a gap in rank could never be overcome. It also painted the Witch Queen's infamy across the entire continent.
Why infamy?
Because the fairies and Masters who had been holding the Mirage Queen were caught in Astral Cannon as well, and they vanished with her.
People could not stop recoiling from it. To kill her own subordinates without a flicker of hesitation, so long as the enemy died with them — that was the kind of cruelty that made the continent stare. From the Witch Queen's seat it had been the only choice that would put the Mirage Queen in the ground. No one cared to see it that way. They were too busy calling her a monster.
Infamy or not, she took Baidu. She grew from it. And the moment the city was hers, she swore loyalty to the Emperor of the Ferdium Empire, checking every rival around her without spending a drop of her own strength. The Emperor's prestige was not what it had been — but an emperor was still an emperor, and the superhumans and armies beneath him were still very real.
With her grip on Baidu locked tight, the Witch Queen climbed past 6-Star to 7-Star, and past 7-Star to become an 8-Star Archmage.
In the ten years since she became Baidu's ruler, not a soul had dared to reach for the city. No one was eager to share the Mirage Queen's fate.
Then, yesterday, something happened that cracked Baidu's peace wide open.
"Is the Witch Queen inside?"
"She is. She has ordered, however, that no one be admitted until she herself comes out."
"This cannot wait. Pass word to her."
"I apologize, Prince Pazniri. Whatever may have happened, the Witch Queen's business takes precedence."
"....."
Inflexible son of a bitch.
Owen Pazniri — one of the Masters who served beneath the Witch Queen — cursed the fairy blocking his path without moving his mouth. In a situation this urgent, to plant himself in the doorway like a damned wall—
Owen would have loved nothing more than to put a spear of light magic through that face. He could not. The fairy in front of him was stronger than he was. Owen was still sitting at 4-Star. The fairy was a 6-Star, and, fatally, a fairy the Witch Queen had summoned with her own hands.
As a rule, a Master's station sat above a fairy's. That rule inverted the moment the fairy belonged to the ruler of a city — and not just any ruler, but the Witch Queen, whose name and infamy were known across the continent.
That was the shape of it, more or less.
Even if the fairy in the doorway had been a 1-Star, Owen would not have dared to treat him lightly. For a man who needed to report what had happened the night before, the whole situation was enough to make his blood boil.
In the end, Prince Pazniri decided to wait.
The door creaked open.
"....."
"You have come out, Master."
"Witch Queen!"
As if on cue, a woman stepped through the doorway.
Fine black hair, smooth as woven silk, spilled down to her chest. Her skin was so pale it seemed never to have known the sun, set in stark relief against hair that looked as though it had stolen the night sky itself. A beauty mark sat beneath one eye, and the gentle downward tilt of her lids lent her a look of meekness. A voluminous robe wrapped her figure completely from view.
And like any high-rank, high-level Master, she was breathtaking. Had Alan seen her, he would have said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on — fairies included.
This was the mage counted among the greatest on the continent, the ruler of Baidu: the Witch Queen, Oscal Goldenheire.
"Witch Queen! Something terrible has happened!"
"Something terrible? What is it?"
Prince Pazniri was all urgency. The Witch Queen was not. The eyes she turned on him were as still as a lake, and for a moment they looked like the eyes of a sage who had already grasped the shape of the world.
"The bandits— the bandits have bared their fangs!"
"....."
She looked at him the way a person looks when they are waiting for the rest of the story.
"The clock towers around the oasis have been inscribed. And in District 2, the head of the Rifflin Trading Company and several other prominent figures were bitten by vipers — some are dead, others have fallen into a coma. Given the method, this has the Snake Bandits written all over it!"
"The serpent shall devour magic!"
"....."
Prince Pazniri laid out everything that had happened the night before. Perhaps because the murders had taken place in the city she ruled, the droop of her eyes lifted, just slightly.
The report was not finished.
"And the Request Office was attacked. My fairy… lost her life. They had posted a bandit-suppression commission there for the unaffiliated Masters. The office was the obvious target!"
"....."
Prince Pazniri reported that his fairy at the Request Office — Oralisa — was dead. In truth, he was not certain she had died at all.
What is this filthy feeling?
The night before, while he had been enjoying himself with his beloved fairies in his chambers, something strange had suddenly crawled through him. The soul bond connecting him to Oralisa had felt as though someone were tearing it out of his chest by the roots. Prince Pazniri had never lost a fairy before. He could not tell whether that sensation was the feeling of Oralisa dying.
One thing was certain. The connection had been severed completely. Oralisa was no longer Prince Pazniri's fairy.
When Hwaryongwang, the former ruler of Indigo, had his ownership of Aquaril stolen by Alan, he had known at once that she was still alive — and that she was no longer his. Unlike Prince Pazniri, Hwaryongwang had already felt a fairy die. The feeling of a fairy's death and the feeling of a fairy being taken were nothing alike.
That was why Prince Pazniri had mistaken the loss for death.
"Have the bandits been captured?"
"That is… not yet. But immediately after the incident, Prince Aztec — who held the previous day's duty — sealed the city gates. The bastards are still inside the walls. I will have every last one of them in custody shortly."
Afraid of being blamed, he rushed to promise a swift arrest. All he managed to do was put the noose around his own neck.
"Is that so? Then Prince Pazniri, you will take responsibility for capturing them."
"…Pardon?"
"I will also lend you my fairy, Plasma. Take a force and suppress the Snake Bandits as well."
"....."
Prince Pazniri stared at her, blank.
He was a 4-Star mage who had never once stood in a real fight — had never even cleared a dungeon. The only reason he had climbed as high as he had was that his fairies had gone into the dungeons and brought him back Growth Stones.
The Witch Queen knew that. And she was handing him this anyway. He could not quite believe it.
"W-Witch Queen!"
"You cannot do it? Then I shall leave it to Prince Aztec."
"…No. I will take responsibility. I will suppress the Snake Bandits."
"I will trust you."
The mention of Prince Aztec made Pazniri bite down on his lip and accept the charge. Aztec was his political rival in Baidu. If that man were the one to crush the Snake Bandits, his standing would vault over Pazniri's in a single stroke. That, at least, was something Pazniri could not endure. He nodded.
"Where shall we go, Master?"
"To the Tower of Stars, Kid."
"I shall escort you."
Kid, the Witch Queen's fairy, turned with his mistress and started toward the Tower of Stars.
"....."
Prince Pazniri watched their receding backs and bit his lip until it hurt.
On the road to the Tower of Stars, Kid spoke.
"Master. Prince Pazniri is a man with no combat experience."
"I know, Kid."
"Then why have you entrusted the suppression of the Snake Bandits to him?"
"Because there is no one else worth using."
One peculiarity: the Witch Queen used honorifics even with her own fairy.
She let out a quiet breath and went on.
"If Baidu is to grow beyond what it is now, we will need more capable people than we have. And we cannot go on forever huddled in this desert."
The Witch Queen's fairies and the Masters beneath her had been considerable talents — each of them the kind of person who, left alive, would have worn a king's title or a queen's. Those talents had all died ten years ago in the battle against the Mirage Queen. Some had been run through by the Mirage Queen's blade. Others had been swallowed by Astral Cannon.
The people she had lost that day had still not been replaced.
In the ten years of her rule, a fair number of Masters had come to serve her. Among them, the ones who could fill the seats of the dead could be counted on one hand.
"Does Master intend to promote Prince Pazniri?"
"Promote him… I would not go that far. I am simply giving him a chance. If he takes it, then I will make use of him. If he does not, the chance will have to go to someone else."
"....."
Kid looked down at his Master. The crown of her head was in plain view. Kid stood a hundred and eighty-five centimeters tall; the Witch Queen was a small woman, a little over a hundred and sixty.
In Kid's eyes, she was larger than anyone. And inside her, he could see a dream larger and more magnificent still.
The Witch Queen had no intention of remaining the ruler of a single city.