Chapter 44: Confronting the queen

"Luna! Shes's there!"

A woman with blue hair is standing in the hallway surrounded by guards, it's obvious that she's the queen because of the complicated looking dress she's wearing and because she just looks like an older version of Nera.

"Nera... so you've finally decided to drop the pretense? Is that woman with you an assassin you've hired to kill me?"

"I don't want to kill you mother! I only want to put an end to your crimes"

"My crimes? Since when have you become so impudent? Perhaps you are in need of being punished"

With that, the dozen or so guards around her begin to approach us, I guess it's my turn now.

I now have an easy way to deal with a large number of enemies, I simply equip my 'Stunning vengeful gloves' and they all get paralyzed after only one attack that I can easily dodge, these gloves would feel unfair if it wasn't for the fact that I could easily defeat all these enemies easily anyway.

'Mind void'

Their inability to move makes it impossible for them to resist my spell and all of them fall asleep.

"It's over mother, we know about the magic contract you made, give us the contract crystal"

"You... were those fairies from before also with you?"

Is she talking about the same fairies I met? Did they run into her?

"Do not get ahead of yourself, I still have one last trick up my sleeve"

She takes a small stone slab with a magic circle on it from her sleeve, why do I feel like I have seen that somewhere before?

"Is that a controller for the city's mana circuit? What are you planning to do with that?"

"Just take a look outside and see for yourself"

She points to a window and we take a look outside, the water under some buildings seems to have risen and they now appear to be floating above the rest.

"That's the area where many of your friends who you have been conspiring against me with live, isn't it"

"What are you talking about? I have not been conspiring with anyone, I didn't even think of going against you until I learned about your deal with Kalroth"

"Are you really still going to keep lying like that? Fine, but if you don't surrender right now I will sink all of them deep into the sea"

"Are you crazy!? The mages will be able to tell that the controller was activated from here, they will know that it was you!"

"I'll just say that you and your friend took it from me, after all, you did knock out all of my guards"

Uh, this is bad, even if I try to take her down quickly there's a chance of her activating it, I cannot take that risk, but wait... I really think that I've seen that thing somewhere before... could it be?

"Oh, it's really the same as the one I copied earlier!"

"What!? How do you have that!?"

"Ufufu, you didn't think that I would come here without being prepared for something like this, did you?"

The truth is that I had no idea of what I was doing and this is just dumb luck, but I'll take the chance to make Nera think that I'm smart.

Now let me see... since we have the same controller and I have more mana I should be able to override her commands, but which ones of all the runes in the magic circle will make those buildings stay in place?

Maybe it is these ones? No, that was something else... maybe these ones? That did something, but I don't know what... is it this? Ah! I did it!

"How? Just who in the world are you?"

"I'm Nera's friend"

Judging by her expression it seems like the queen has finally accepted defeat.

"To think that Nera would go this far to bring me down... ever since the day she was born she's always been trying to ruin me"

"Mother, that's not true..."

"Yeah, there's just no way"

"Did she also manage to win you over with her innocent and gentle appearance? This girl has always been such a manipulative swindler..."

"No, even if I didn't know anything about Nera, I still would not believe that she was trying to ruin you when she was a newborn..."

"People had always looked down on me for being a member of the royal family who could not communicate with the spirits, and when Nera was born being able to directly talk with them, it made me look even worse, all sort of rumors about how I was going to ruin the county started to spread, and then... she... she said that the spirits hated me! In front of everybody! After that, many of this country's nobles started to see me as an enemy and conspired against me behind my back, she turned them all against me!"

"But mother... I didn't know... I just said what the spirits told me"

Uh... Nera looks like she's going to start crying at any moment.

"And then you became really popular among the demons didn't you, after all, magic creatures like them care more about the spirits, so they like you for the same reason that they dislike me. And so you made them all turn against me, but that will not work, I will get rid of all the demons in this country before they can get rid of me!"

"That's not true! People only turned against you after you started doing bad things! You need to stop this, please..."

"Why would I? If everyone is going to treat me like a villain I might as well become one!"

What did she just say?

"Wait... is THAT the reason why you tried to kill Nera and those other nobles? Because some people thought that you were a villain? Are you kidding me!?"

"Who are you to talk like that to me!? You don't know how it feels to be treated as someone evil when I didn't do anything wrong!"

This woman!!! To think that she would say that to ME.

"You... do you think that you know what being treated as a villain is like? You have no idea..."

I take off my mask so that she can look at me in the eyes.

"You... are you the 'queen of darkness'!?"

"You were lucky enough to have a family, I was abandoned when I was too young to even remember mine, just because the elves believe that the dark attribute is evil. You at least had a chance of making people like you, when I was growing up in an orphanage the other children would not even approach me because they were afraid of me, and no family would even consider adopting me"

The queen takes a step backward.

"Now that I think about it, that stupid prophecy barely changed anything, even before it came out people kept reacting to me as if they thought that I was going to kill them at any moment. And you know what... even with all of that I never even consider getting revenge on them, because I knew that doing so would only make things worse, instead, I kept doing my best to get them to accept me, I've only managed to make few friends like Nera or Arana, but even just that made it all feel worth it"

"..."

The queen's whole body is shaking as she falls to her knees.

"And you... you decided that you 'might as well become a villain' just because of a few bad rumors!? Even though it should have been so much easier for you to make people like you than it was for me, you didn't even TRY to do it. And you even went as far as to want to KILL YOUR OWN DAUGHTER!!! IS THIS SOME KIND OF JOKE!!!?"

"I... please..."

"All you did was prove that all the bad things people said about you were true! If it was this easy for you to become a villain, that just proves that you were a bad person from the start!!! You are not some good person who became evil after being mistreated, you were never anything more than a piece of trash!!!"

"Uh, Luna, she's unconscious"

"Oh..."

It seems like my 'intimidation' was too much for her, now that I look at her, even Nera seems to be a bit pale.

"Sorry, I lost my cool for a moment..."

"No, it's fine. If anything, it's impressive that it took this long for you to snap..."

"Actually, the one who should have snapped is you, how could you let her say those things about you"

"Well, the truth is... the water spirits are not as 'wise' as most people think they are, if anything, they are the opposite"

"Really?"

"Most people just assume things about them because they cannot interact with them much, but since I can talk with them, I know better. They tend to be very childish and only seem to remember what happened in the last few days"

That really is not at all how I imagined the spirits to be...

"They only disliked my mother for stupid reasons like the tone of her voice or the haircuts she wears, not because she was evil or anything... if I had been more clear on that or if I didn't say anything, perhaps she would not have ended the way she did..."

"Nera! Don't you think that this was your fault!"

"Luna..."

I try giving her a hug to make her feel better, I'm not good at comforting people...

"Now that I think about it... she is a queen and she 'submitted to you in fear', do you think that this has advanced the prophecy?"

"I don't know, she's a 'queen' and the prophecy said 'kings' so I'm not sure if it counts... hey Nera, do you know if your father is anywhere in this castle?"

"Please, leave my father out of this..."

She's giving me a bad look, I should not have said that...

"Anyway, since we're done here we should leave now"

"Eh!? Are we not going to take the 'contract crystal'?"

"What are you... oh, right! The thing we came here to look for!"

The queen should have it somewhere in her dress, I'll have to search her.

"Huh, this dress is way too complicated, I won't be able to find anything in this"

I have no choice but to rip apart her clothes if I want to search them properly, but even then, I cannot find that crystal anywhere...

"Hey! What's going on here!?"

A group of people approach as I'm looming over the queen with some pieces of her dress in my hands, this is not a good time...

forli