CHAPTER 96: A QUEEN’S GAMBIT

Yori’s voice, usually a calm, reedy sound, was a frantic, high-pitched shriek of pure terror.

"Yori, calm down," I commanded, my good mood evaporating like a puddle in a heatwave. "What is it? Did Kevin try to redecorate the throne room with black velvet again?"

"WORSE, MY LORD! FAR WORSE!" he wailed. "A new Demon King! An invader! From Oyabe! They appeared without warning, right on our southern border! They have already breached the first two sectors!"

A cold knot of dread formed in my stomach.

Oyabe. That was a major prefecture. A different league.

"What are we dealing with, Yori?" I asked, my voice now sharp, focused. "What’s their strength?"

There was a sound of shuffling papers, and then Pixia’s voice, tight with academic panic, came over the line.

"My Lord, the energy readings are... off the charts! We are estimating the invader to be at least Level 10! Possibly higher! Their forces are a legion of Dark Elves, led by a Dark High Elf commander! They move with a speed and precision we have never seen before! They are... they are professionals!"

Isabelle and Chloe both stiffened at the mention of Dark High Elves.

That was Chloe’s own, evolved race.

This wasn’t just some random brute. This was a mirror image of our own elite forces.

"Who is leading them?" I demanded. "Who is this new player?"

"We do not have a name, my Lord," Yori stammered. "But the scouts who survived the initial assault... they described her. A woman. A Dark High Elf of impossible beauty and terrifying power. They say her eyes... they glow like cold, dead stars."

I looked at my team. At the easy victory we had just achieved.

The appetizer was finished.

The main course, it seemed, had just arrived at my front door with a battering ram.

And she sounded very, very hungry.

The journey back was a blur.

The Transfer Array, a technology I was quickly coming to appreciate, ripped a hole in reality, and we stepped from a muddy, defeated swamp into the cool, crystalline heart of my fortress.

The atmosphere in the Crystal Spire was thick with a tension so profound it was almost a physical presence.

Goblins and Orcs scurried through the halls, carrying weapons and reinforcing barricades.

The usual, chaotic noise of my domain had been replaced by a grim, focused silence.

This was an army preparing for war.

"Report," I commanded, my voice echoing in the vast throne room.

Yori and Pixia were waiting for us, their faces pale with a mixture of fear and adrenaline.

A massive, holographic map of my kingdom dominated the center of the room, a angry, pulsating red infection spreading across its southern border.

"She has taken five sectors, my Lord," Pixia squeaked, her tiny wings a blur of frantic energy. "Her advance is... terrifyingly fast. She is not conquering. She is cleansing. She leaves nothing but shattered crystal and silence in her wake."

Yori, my new Head of Defense, looked like he had aged ten years in the last hour.

"Her forces are a mirror of our own, my Lord," he said, his voice a dry, reedy whisper. "Elite Dark Elf archers. Hulking, magically-shielded Golems that look like they’re carved from solidified night. And at their head... her."

He brought up a grainy, corrupted image file on the main screen.

It was a still from a destroyed defensive turret, taken moments before its annihilation.

It showed a woman.

A Dark High Elf, her skin the color of a moonless twilight, her silver hair a cascade of starlight.

She was beautiful.

She was terrifying.

And she radiated an aura of power so immense, so cold, that it seemed to leak out of the two-dimensional image and chill the very air in the throne room.

Her name, according to the panicked reports from the few survivors, was Sarah.

And she was a Demon Queen.

"A Queen," I murmured, my eyes narrowing. "So, another one of the high-rollers from {Laplace} has decided to pay me a visit."

"Her strategy is flawless, my Lord," Yori continued, his voice laced with a grudging, professional respect. "She is not attacking our strongest points. She is flowing around them, exploiting the weakest links in our defensive chain. She is a master of maneuver warfare."

"She’s a scalpel," Isabelle said, her hand resting on the hilt of Dáinsleif. "And she’s cutting out the heart of our kingdom."

Chloe stood silent, a shadow in the corner, but I could feel the waves of cold, possessive fury radiating from her.

Another Dark High Elf. Another female commander.

Another potential rival.

Her fanatical devotion was a beautiful, terrifying thing.

"She’s a scalpel," I repeated, a slow, predatory smile touching my lips. "And I’m a sledgehammer. Let’s see which one breaks first."

I looked at the map, at the relentless, bloody advance of the red icons.

"We can’t fight her on her terms," I said, my mind racing, calculating, formulating the counter-attack. "She wants a war of maneuver. She wants to bleed us dry. We’re not going to play that game."

I stabbed a long, pale finger at a specific point on the map.

Sector 42.

The twelfth floor of Pixia’s old, conquered library.

A place of towering bookshelves, narrow corridors, and a single, massive, open atrium.

"We make our stand here," I declared. "We will let her advance. We will let her think she is winning. We will funnel her entire army into this single, perfect kill box."

"An ambush, my Lord?" Yori asked, a flicker of his old, cunning self returning to his eyes.

"A statement," I corrected. "We will concentrate all of our forces. The Wrecking Crew. The Shadow Strikers. Every Orc, every Ogre, every goblin with a pointy stick. We will turn the twelfth floor of that library into a meat grinder."

The plan was set.

The trap was laid.

We spent the next hour in a frantic, controlled chaos, moving our armies through the Transfer Arrays, setting up barricades, positioning my new goblin snipers on the highest bookshelves.

I stood on a makeshift command platform overlooking the main atrium, a balcony that had once been a quiet reading nook.

My commanders were arrayed around me.

Isabelle, a pillar of cold, professional competence.

Chloe, a silent, coiled spring of lethal intent.

Setanta, a cocky, arrogant demigod, bouncing on the balls of his feet, his spear humming with a barely contained energy.

"This is going to be a good fight," he said, a wide, bloodthirsty grin on his face.

I looked out at the silent, empty atrium, at the single, massive entrance at the far end.

Any moment now.

The silence was broken by a soft, almost delicate sound.

The whisper of a thousand silent footsteps.

From the entrance, they emerged.

A river of black and silver.

The armies of the Demon Queen Sarah.

They flowed into the room with a chilling, disciplined grace, their dark armor absorbing the dim light, their silver weapons gleaming with a cold, holy fire.

And at their head, she appeared.

Sarah.

She glided into the room, her silver hair flowing behind her, her eyes, the color of cold, dead stars, sweeping across the empty space.

She stopped in the center of the atrium, a queen surveying her new, conquered territory.

She looked up, her gaze meeting mine from across the hundred-foot expanse.

A slow, condescending smile touched her lips.

"So," her voice echoed in the sudden, ringing silence, a sound like the cracking of ancient ice. "You are the Tyrant of Aethelburg. The upstart brute who has been making so much noise."

She raised a single, elegant hand, a ball of swirling, chaotic shadow magic already forming in her palm.

"I am unimpressed," she said.

The ambush had begun.

But as I looked into her cold, powerful eyes, a sliver of genuine, cold fear, a feeling I had not truly felt since my first days as a Demon King, pricked at my soul.

This was not a brute like Gorgon.

This was not a schemer like Alyssa.

This was something else entirely.

This was a predator.

And she was looking at me like I was her next meal.

The air in the twelfth-floor library atrium crackled.

The air in the twelfth-floor library atrium crackled.

It was a silence so profound it felt louder than any scream.

My army, my glorious, monstrous meat-grinder, waited in the shadows of the towering bookshelves.

At the far end of the vast, open space, they appeared.

A river of black and silver, pouring from the grand entrance with a chilling, disciplined grace.

The armies of the Demon Queen Sarah.

They flowed into the room, their dark armor seeming to drink the dim light, their silver weapons gleaming with a cold, holy fire that made my fangs ache.

And at their head, she glided forward.

Sarah.

Her silver hair flowed behind her like a comet’s tail.

Her eyes, the color of cold, dead stars, swept across the empty space, missing nothing.