Chapter 112: Elizabeth's First Trial

I expected some bad blood to still remain between the girls and the Demon Queen after what went down during her Invasion, but it seems that I underestimated the girl's resolve quite a bit.

Elizabeth behaved politely, and while not at all meek, she stayed very quiet and showed a lot of modesty, only speaking when asked or when she felt necessary. It's very different from how she behaved when she first showed up, but it shows that she put in the effort to restrain her prideful nature and demonstrated her intent on fitting in and not causing trouble to anyone, which we all appreciated.

There were a few bumps in her way though... As was the case with the girls, this world was too different from what she was used to, which led to her being quite troubled by it. Still, I could tell that she was willing to try to follow and obey as she almost listened to Claire's unreasonable orders.

Overall, the day off allowed me to get a good reading on her, and as long as she kept such behavior, I thought there weren't going to be any problems between us. Of course, the real test would be in a dungeon raid, as it would show us how much we could count on her and whether or not we worked well as a team.

As we entered the dungeon, she didn't show to struggle much against the monsters, which was to be expected since even after her level gets capped by the dungeon, at max it would be able to limit her skills level to 42 too, which is already absurd considering the amount of them she has above that level.

It should be obvious but... a level 269 prodigy will not have trouble facing most monsters on a floor with a level cap of 42.

This meant that each of her attacks was deadly, and most monsters weren't able to survive even her low-tier spells, but it would be a stretch to say that she was doing a great job in her role.

As a mage, having her on the front wouldn't be too good... Were she to spam her magic, the frontline would simply have to deal with one more hazard, effectively making our jobs much more difficult. Even Licia and Claire, who use a mix of physical attacks and magic, often look for situations in which they know that their magic won't get in the way of the others.

It's also necessary to have good positioning and physical ability to quickly and precisely move around in the frontline to not become a burden to others, but as her physical ability is non-existent, she'd have to make up for it with even more magic, thus troubling the frontline even more.

With this in consideration, I assigned her a position on the backline, where she was supposed to provide support to us. At the very least, she seemed to understand what the position entails, and she did her best to keep precision with her magic in order to not disrupt the rest of us.

But while she was being mindful and I could tell that there was genuine effort on her part, it was undeniable that she was falling behind Bea and Ellie quite a bit. It was mostly a matter of harmony and experience between them as the Demon Queen that fought armies by herself clearly wasn't used to fighting in a group, so she would often be slightly late in her attacks due to hesitation.

Since we are quite used to fighting together, we often don't have many gaps, so understandably she's having trouble finding opportunities and the right timing to take her shots before someone else covers it anyway.

It wasn't enough to create any big problems, but it was, by itself, a problem. To make adjustments and prevent anything from happening, I decided to see more of her fighting style.

Miwen: "...We'll be running a test. For now, you take priority in every encounter. We'll only act if you fail to deal with all the enemies, in which case, you are to wait until we finish before taking further action."

Elizabeth: "Sure..."

I thought this was the easiest way to solve the problem. She's incredibly capable, but while we did fight against each other, the girls only got to know her abilities as an opponent, so they don't know what she can do on their side, and thus, don't rely on her support as much as they do Ellie and Bea's.

This means that they understand the situation that Ellie and Bea can handle, so they purposefully leave openings for them to exploit while focusing on other tasks that they normally wouldn't prioritize without their support.

For Elizabeth to work well in her role, the girls had to develop a feeling for the things they could safely leave in her hands in a fight, which wasn't happening due to her missing her timing and underperforming when compared to the rest of the backline.

As such, it was going to be useful for them to learn how the Demon Queen likes to fight and what her patterns are so that they can make better use of her.

At the same time, Elizabeth would have a chance to see how we fight and analyze our flaws, making her able to more easily predict when she would have to interfere.

It's just a good use of the outside perspective, which I thought would allow us to better notice each other's strengths and weaknesses... but that might've been over-optimistic of me.

I had greatly underestimated Elizabeth's power. There wasn't a situation where she wasn't capable of dealing with everything in her way.

It wasn't just a matter of power alone, thanks to her Gift, she can maintain her magic activated indefinitely, and with her incredible prowess, she can have multiple elements and spells active at once, so any enemy that appears is quickly the target of a barrage.

She's also quite quick, and before an attack lands, she already has another ready to replace it, making her look more like a magic automatic rifle than an actual mage.

Our fight against her was the perfect example. If we had relied completely on Mia after she joined us, we would have given the Demon Queen absolutely no trouble at all, as Mia would have been defeated and we wouldn't be able to work together well enough to put up a decent challenge.

By fighting together, we are able to challenge forces stronger than us up to a certain level, and that will be true even with the addition of Elizabeth. I don't want to entertain the idea of someone stronger than her though, since the only example I can think of right now is the Merchant, and that guy is not something we can challenge even with 10 Elizabeths on our side.

Elizabeth: "A fair point... I don't believe there's many capable of defeating me but I'm certainly not invincible either, as you can attest to... as such working to prepare yourself for such a situation is a wise decision."

Miwen: "Right... Let's do the inverse this time then. You get to watch and only intervene if we call for you, alright?"

Elizabeth: "Agreed."

With her back to her initial position, we started raiding the eighth-floor, this way. We were going to fight like she wasn't here to begin with. At least, that was the plan, but I soon found out that some of the girls had a bit of a problem following this simple instruction.

Now that Mia and Claire could fight monsters again, their competition was back, and Claire must've used a hundred percent of her brain power, because she remembered that the Demon Queen didn't actually follow her command last time, and started using her as a fucking battery, enabling our little pyromaniac to wreak havoc everywhere.

In every single room we entered, every monster that appeared would be met with a wall of flames without question, even Mia couldn't charge without risking getting caught in the flames, so she had no choice but to rely on her magic too, which quickly dried up due to this reckless usage.

Once she noticed how Claire was cheating, instead of making her stop, she actually joined in, and together they reduced my assistant to a portable charger.

Of course, this did nothing to show Elizabeth how we normally operate, so I had to cut in on their fun, which apparently makes me a "killjoy" now.

Anyway, after this one incident, we proceeded like we usually do, and I slowly enabled the demon queen to take action. First, I allowed her to use at max one attack every encounter, thus, she had to carefully consider when she should use it.

After a while, I increased the quantity and allowed her two attacks, and now that she was quite good at identifying the target she should aim for amidst the chaos of a battle, she used her first shot quite proactively, only to then repeat the initial process for the second attack.

With this method, she was slowly understanding the openings she could take advantage of, as well as becoming good at predicting them. Thus, her timing became way better, and in turn, the girls started relying more on her. It was a snowball effect, and while it was going to take time to reach the same level as Ellie and Bea, at least she was on the right path now.

Miwen: "...In a real battle, this is what we expect I expect of you, once you get used to it, you'll be able to use all of your power to help us. Try to keep limiting yourself for now, and slowly increase your output and amount, it will make it easier for you to learn and the others will naturally develop a pattern that considers you."

Elizabeth: "Very unorthodox, but props to you... I cannot deny its effectiveness."

It should just be a matter of time for all of us to harmonize, but for that, we need the experience of fighting together. It's a shame that we can't have her going all out, but we stood to gain more this way.

And while I say that, the day did end up with us at level 47 since I also wanted to experience a bit of what's like to have infinite mana and went all out too... As for the loot... we cashed in $2534. It should be noted that I wouldn't even consider that we were that lucky with drops either, it's just the result of how many monsters we killed today by making an absolutely irresponsible use of magic.

After going back home, I had one last job for Elizabeth.

I used 100 kingdom points in a [Order] to block Beatrice's usage of Arcanum. Now she's only able to use it after I give her permission.

Ever since our night together, she's become way more submissive, but I feel like she needs to be reminded of who holds the reins quite often, or else she'll start getting funny ideas again. As such, I felt necessary to make this investment to prevent her from damaging her own mind.

I'm quite sure she's going to keep trying to earn favor from me in order to gain permission to use it, and frankly, after tasting her plump body once, I don't feel like holding back anymore, so I'll have the Demon Queen teach Arcanum to the both of us.

I don't plan on using it myself, not unless I get Demonic Power to trade for it, but it would be useful to at least become able to develop a sense to detect when someone is using it, and if I can, it would also be nice to acquire more resistance to it, as Erika's words imbued with Arcanum from last time would have been enough to get me out of a fight.

As for Bea, she would be learning from someone who is probably one of the best in the field, so this should satiate her desire for research quite a bit, and I'm hoping it also lessens the effects it has on her mind whenever she gets to actually make use of it.

In any case, if I contact the Merchant, I might be able to ask Priscilla to help treat her, but I'd rather avoid that. They are both busy people, and the last time I asked the Merchant for help he decided to turn my kingdom into a daycare for his bratty niece.

I suspect if I keep counting on him, not only will that unreliable man become even more unreliable, but his price might also start going up due to the demand.