CHAPTER 304: THE RETURN OF THE QUEEN

Neva Starling and the kingdom’s generals watched in dread as the giant trolls advanced. Thousands of goblins and smaller trolls rushed ahead of them, but beside those colossal figures they seemed almost insignificant. The giants’ guttural war cries reverberated across the battlefield, filling the air with a suffocating sense of doom.

Behind the advancing horde, the Troll King sat upon a lavish throne borne on the shoulders of hundreds of trolls. Raised above the battlefield, he was visible from every direction. He wore no crown, yet the absence only made his massive, grotesque head appear more monstrous. His thick arms rested lazily on the throne’s armrests. His enormous body was nearly naked save for his waist, and brightly coloured stones dangled from his ears and nose, giving him a menacing, almost ceremonial air. He watched the carnage with cold disinterest, as if the slaughter before him were nothing more than a dull spectacle. The lives lost meant nothing.

The two armies clashed once more. Bodies from the earlier assault were trampled underfoot, crushed into paste. Those who still clung weakly to life but could not move were finished beneath the stampede of battling soldiers. Hundreds died every passing second. Yet neither side spared a thought for the fallen; they fought with the single-minded urge to kill.

The kingdom’s warriors knew their homes, families, and honour were at stake. Even as death loomed, each sought to drag one more monster down before their own life faded. The goblins and trolls, on the other hand, fought with ravenous fervour. They wanted new territory, new prey. To them, the defenders were nothing more than future meat. Violence was their nature; without unleashing it, they would simply turn upon one another.

The generals of the kingdom watched their numbers dwindle with every heartbeat. At the rate they were falling, it would not be long before they were completely overwhelmed by the monsters’ might. Their future seemed utterly bleak. With grim determination tightening their grip on their weapons, they prepared to join the final battle of their lives.

Just as they stepped towards the centre of the battlefield, a sky-piercing cry froze them in place. Not only them... the entire battlefield halted at once. For a moment, everyone forgot to breathe. All eyes lifted in horror to the sky, where the massive head of the Troll King was spinning upward. His body, which had sat proudly upon the throne moments ago, now stood headless upon the platform. It stumbled a few unsteady steps before collapsing from the shoulders of the trolls carrying it.

As soldiers stared at the lifeless body hitting the ground, a flash of lightning tore through the ranks of the giant trolls. Before anyone could comprehend what had happened, ten more giants toppled where they stood. The remaining trolls howled in agony and fury, frantically searching for the intruder who had slain their king and comrades.

Thunder rumbled across the clear sky. A black-clad humanoid figure wrapped in arcs of lightning hovered above the troll army. Her face was obscured by the flashing currents surrounding her, her hair drifting in the wind and electrical glow. She appeared like a deity descended from the heavens.

When she raised her sword towards the sky, the lightning gathered itself at the blade’s tip, intensifying as though preparing to unleash its full wrath upon the mortals below.

In that instant, two very different emotions swept across the battlefield. The Troll Army was gripped by dread beneath the colossal charge of lightning gathering above their heads. The kingdom’s army, however, felt hope for the first time in weeks.

They recognised the translucent green sword at once. Their Queen had returned.

What followed next was a one-sided massacre. From the sky, Eleanor unleashed the full might of thunder and lightning. Lightning projectiles rained down with unerring precision, each bolt amplified through her sword before it struck its target. She timed her Bolt Steps flawlessly. The moment she descended from the sky, she streaked across the battlefield at lightning speed. Coupled with the Thunder Style Phantom Arts, even when trolls attempted to corner her or land a hit, she was already gone—back into the sky, gathering her strength for the next strike. The cycle repeated until the last giant troll fell.

The Kingdom’s army, their morale rekindled by their queen’s arrival, surged forward with renewed ferocity. They cut down anything that stood before them.

The troll army, having just lost their king, collapsed into disarray. Even on normal days, commanding those bloodthirsty monsters was difficult; now it became impossible. They attacked blindly, without formation or strategy. The Kingdom’s forces, maintaining tight ranks, found it easy to carve through them.

By the time the sun climbed overhead, the remnants of the troll army had fled into the mountains within their territory, leaving behind a battlefield destined to be remembered for generations.

After pursuing the trolls out of the Kingdom, Eleanor returned to the army’s base. From a distance, she noticed a large tent already set behind the battlefield. As she approached, soldiers knelt and erupted into unified cheers. Neva Starling and the generals were kneeling before the tent as well, smiling from ear to ear as they joined the soldiers’ shout.

"Long live the Queen! Long live the Queen!!"

Eleanor slowly walked to the front of the tent and said, "Generals, you’ve worked hard. This victory is yours and yours alone. Let the soldiers rest. Then gather the bodies of our fallen and bury them here, in lines. After that, pile every monster corpse together and burn them to ash. I don’t want a single trace of monsters left in my kingdom."

All the generals responded in unison, "Yes, Your Majesty."

She turned to Neva Starling. "Neva, build a memorial tablet here as soon as possible, and inscribe the names of every soldier who fell in this war. I want our history preserved perfectly for the heroes who gave their lives for the kingdom."

Then, for a moment, Eleanor realized she had gotten carried away by the scene. She had watched too many war movies in her entire life... it felt almost like she was slipping into a role. Internally shaking her head, she forced herself to stay composed. In truth, she desperately needed rest. After racing across the kingdom and fighting two battles back to back, her body was reaching its limit. Since waking up in this strange world, she hadn’t had a single proper moment of rest.

And using so much lightning at full force had drained her more than she liked to admit.

She exhaled and said quietly, "Neva, come inside."

As the two of them entered the tent, Eleanor spotted a large bed... soft, wide, and impossibly inviting. "Neva, send scouts to check on the spiders. I hope they won’t be attacking anytime soon. And... I need rest. Don’t disturb me unless it’s an emergency."

Neva bowed deeply and slipped out of the tent.

Eleanor lay back on the bed. The moment her body touched the mattress, she sank into it... her muscles loosening, her mind fogging. Within seconds, she drifted into sleep.

***

Eleanor jolted awake to the familiar, impassive voice of the Tower of Legends.

"Congratulations. You have successfully cleared the Trial Story: Kingdom’s Survival. You have learned the Thunder Style Phantom Arts to complete the trial. As a reward, this battle technique will be yours. However, under the rules of Lord Yggdrasil, you are forbidden from passing this technique to others. A contract has already been formed between you and the academy. You are now being transported to the next level."

Eleanor shot upright, tense and wary... only to realise she was no longer in her tent. Instead, she stood in a vast white chamber. Apart from herself and her clothes, everything was an unbroken expanse of white. The only contrast was the glowing archway ahead of her... the door to the next level.

"So, this is level eighty-four of the tower. What’s waiting for me in all this nothingness?" she murmured, turning slowly. Her senses, sharpened by the brutal trials she had endured, strained against the absolute void. No sound. No scent. Not even the hint of air brushing against her skin. It didn’t feel like a room at all... more like the idea of emptiness given form.

She stepped forward cautiously. Then again. Her footsteps made no sound.

She counted them. One... two... three... four...

By her estimate, she should have reached the halfway point. She glanced back... only to find the door behind her had completely dissolved into the featureless white.

A chill crept up her spine.

She quickened her pace, boots tapping out a silent, frantic rhythm. By now, she should have reached the archway. Yet it remained exactly where it had always been... unchanged, unmoved, impossibly distant.

Only then did she realise something else was missing. The ever-present tracker the tower enforced on every challenger had vanished. Even her own sense of time felt unreliable, muddled, slipping away from her grasp. She could no longer guess how much time had passed.

Surrounded by endless white, her only point of reference was the glowing door ahead. But no matter how far or how fast she walked, it never seemed to draw any closer.

It was as if she had made no progress at all.