“I can’t believe it,” Ashtoreth said weeks later. “I just… I can’t believe it! They’re still cutting me out!”

  She raised Wanderstein, sighting through the scope before firing two shots into the distant flock of massive, flying lizards. The two that she struck burst into massive explosions that bathed the rest of their fellows in hellfire.

  But the flying lizards were high-level primordial hunters, and moments later they emerged from the cloud of hellfire, each of them strong enough to treat the flames burning across their backs and wingspans as little more than a nuisance.

  Ashtoreth grinned. The pain and bodily damage of her hellfire might be trivial to the lizards, but the [Energy Drain] that came with it wasn’t. Their [Defense] was slowly depleted as they approached, the flames growing as they became more vulnerable.

  As with many of the more basic creatures on the Eldunari-controlled primeval world, just setting them on fire might have been enough to eventually kill them. Ashtoreth might have trouble with archfiends, archangels, and tier 5 dragons who’d had their wings torn out, but random, unintelligent mooks like these were perfectly trivial.

  “I mean… can you believe it? All I did was save the planet, then let them read my mind so that they could know for sure I was trustworthy.”

  Hunter floated in the air beside her, his wings flapping lazily while his magic held him aloft. Beside him was Sadie, floating in the air by virtue of her relatively new flight spell.

  “You think it’s because of everything that went down with Dazel?” Sadie asked.

  “You mean that time that I helped them root out and discover the former ruler of Earth?” Ashtoreth asked. “The guy who was definitely going to be in play no matter what I did? I sure hope I’m not being punished for getting the Earth Defense Alliance a bunch of valuable information by sticking him with a binding and then interrogating him. Because I feel like that would make no sense and be really really dumb.”

  As she spoke, she conjured a volley of [Hellfire Javelins] and launched them into the oncoming flock, picking a few of them out of the sky but not detonating their corpses. A second volley brought down all but one of the lizards.

  “All right, Sadie,” she said. “I saved you one.”

  “Just one?” she asked with mock bravado. “Pfft. Watch, uh, this.”

  She flew forward a little, but not without tilting to one side and beginning to roll before she caught herself. Sadie was using the same flight spell that Kylie used, but that meant she required an enormous amount of practice: Dazel had made Kylie’s flight spell. It was more efficient and had a higher top speed than most flight spells, but lacked some of the stabilizing effects that made flying feel easy and natural.

  Ashtoreth had forbidden her to use her lightning-magic, and so she drew the short sword at her waist as she faced down the burning lizard.

  {Silverscale Sailwing — Level 371}

  What followed almost looked like a very bizarre game of aerial chicken: the sailwing picked up speed as Sadie hung in the air before it, sword at the ready. The two met, and Sadie suddenly moved to rise into the air above it while slashing downward with her sword… and then promptly spun away into the air, her movements becoming more and more erratic as she tried to steady herself with mixed results.

  She let out a growl of frustration that seemed to warble as she spun.

  Hunter moved forward and effortlessly sheared the lizard in half.

  “Say, that wasn’t bad!” Ashtoreth said through cupped hands. “Bursts of speed are never easy—but you’ve got the first part down!”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Sadie, finally slowing herself in the air, then drifting down to float in front of Ashtoreth, squinting as she drew close. “But the stopping part is about ten times harder.”

  “Yep!” said Ashtoreth.

  “You know, it’s sort of hard to look straight at you when you’ve got your gauntlet fully charged.”

  Ashtoreth grinned. Since they’d been farming all day, there was no reason for her not to tuck a nova away just in case they needed to beat a retreat at the sight of one of the realm’s more powerful denizens. Her gauntlet blazed with power.

  “Gaze into the jewel,” Ashtoreth said.

  “What? Why?”

  She shrugged. “I’unno. I just wanted to urge someone to gaze into the jewel. Let’s head this way and find another flock while I complain some more.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  They let Sadie set the pace while they moved toward a distant mountain that rose out of the dark jungle beneath them.

  “I bet you they’ve got a city worth of people working on finding answers right now,” Ashtoreth said. “But are they going to tell me anything they learn? Nah! After all, I’m just the system-appointed Queen of Earth. The only person who the elves have determined beyond all shadow of a doubt is trustworthy.”

  “I don’t want to just say ‘I told you so,’” Hunter began.

  “Pfft,” Sadie cut in. “You love saying I told you so.”

  “Look, I did warn you that most people suck,” Hunter said. “And in big groups, the people who have a lot of weight in the decision making process are like, people who tried really hard to get to that place because the power helps them avoid the consequences of how much they suck.”

  Ashtoreth groaned. “Sure, but the elves have to know something about ancient humanity—and that means that high command will know now, too!”

  “But they’re not telling you?” Sadie asked.

  “Not even that!” Ashtoreth said. “Now, if that fallen angel shows up tomorrow to make crazy eyes at all their presidents and prime ministers and chairmen and chancellors, who’s going to be the first line of defense? Some unnamed human in a suit, perhaps?” She spread her arms. “No?! Well then I guess Ashtoreth will take one for the team!”

  “To be fair, you kind of told them all you’d work for them no matter what,” Hunter said.

  “So they’d trust me!” she said. “Who knew being the civil servant version of a monarch was so horrible?”

  Sadie shrugged. “You should probably ask someone other than two Americans.”

  “Yeah, yeah…” Ashtoreth said. Then, thinking of another thing to complain about, she added, “And remember how that one elf we met said that the elves were probably going to give me a bunch of chances to mess up to prove to themselves that this was never going to work?”

  “Sure,” said Sadie.

  “Well I have to say, I strongly suspect that’s why they stuck me in a realm with all these gigantic trees, then said I wasn’t allowed to just go scorched earth on the place. I mean honestly—what’s the point of gigaflora if not cracking them open for the stupendous amounts of energy they contain?”

  “Hmm,” said Sadie.

  “What?”

  “Mostly, I think you’ve got every right to be angry,” she said. “But I’m pretty sure if you asked an elf what the point of a really big tree is, they’d do better than answering ‘exclusively firewood.’”

  Hunter nodded. “Or would it be ‘hellfirewood?’”

  “Sure, sure,” said Ashtoreth. “But my point is that I hope they appreciate the restraint I’m showing, here. And all for the sake of being drip-fed a bunch of underleveled cores.”

  It had been weeks, but she was barely over level 480—and had gained only a single advancement now that they came every 25 levels. She hadn’t even chosen it, yet: they had two spells planned for her to choose already, but her last advancement had been [Spellcasting]; she needed to choose something else.

  That was the cosmos for you, though: once you started on tier 3, there really weren’t any worlds that could fully accommodate your levelling needs. Even on primordial worlds that were teeming with life, it was often only the rarer apex predators who existed within the 4th and 5th tiers. As nice as it would be to find a world where all the wolves and bears were exactly level 650, there was no chance. And since the Eldunari hadn’t volunteered up any giant stockpile of cores that would raise her to the higher tiers… this was the best she could do.

  “Check it out,” said Sadie. “I think there’s more lizards over there.”

  Ashtoreth looked. Sure enough, Sadie had spotted another flock flying out of one of the clouds that encircled the mountain.

  “Did you know that ‘dactyl’ kind of just means ‘finger?’” Hunter said suddenly. “I dunno what the ‘ptero’ part means, but probably just ‘wing’ or something.”

  “Really?” Sadie asked. “Cool. These ones feel too bulky to be pterodactyls, though.”

  “All right, same deal as before,” Ashtoreth said, conjuring a dozen javelins and launching them into the flock.

  This time, though, something strange happened once several of the burning lizard corpses fell into the forest below.

  “Hey guys,” Hunter said. “Is the forest… moving?”

  Ashtoreth looked, then did a double-take. What she’d initially taken to be just trees swaying in the breeze was actually far more momentous: the entire forest seemed to be heaving itself into the air. The process was slow, but as Ashtoreth listened, she could hear snapping branches and creaking roots.

  “You guys!” she exclaimed in an excited whisper. “I think that might be a boss!”

  A figure larger than anything she’d ever fought in her life was pulling itself away from the mountainside. Once it began to stand, she could tag it past the meters-thick layer of soil and foliage that seemed to cover its back.

  {Fungoid Titan — Level 912}

  Ashtoreth watched as it took shape: a four-legged figure whose skin was nothing but stone, soil, and the occasional bush or tree.

  And as long it wasn’t intelligent, she was allowed to kill it.

  She flew in low, then cupped her hands to her mouth to shout. “What’s up, humongous fungus? Sapient much?”

  Ashtoreth waited as the titanic creature’s head-thing turned toward her with about the speed she’d expect from a cargo ship. Once it finished moving, an alien presence filled her mind, each word seeming to press upon her with the weight of a mountain.

  Disturb. Me. Not.

  Ashtoreth hung her head and began to float away. “Okay bye…”