After listening to the queen's story, I finally understood the real problem.
Granting her wish would not be as simple as curing her.
First, I needed to understand exactly what had happened to her body.
That meant bringing her to the laboratory for a complete examination.
Pandora mapping.
Genetic analysis.
Cellular structure.
Eden compatibility.
Everything.
Unfortunately, taking their queen away was unlikely to go smoothly.
For the lamia, the queen was not merely a ruler.
She was their mother.
Not a title.
Not a position.
Their actual mother.
Without her, there would be no future generation.
I looked at the queen.
"What happens if you die?"
She immediately understood what I was asking.
"The lamia eventually disappear."
Her answer came without hesitation.
"All your daughters are female?"
"Yes."
"And the eggs they lay?"
"Infertile."
I nodded.
That confirmed it.
For over a hundred years she had observed her own species.
She already knew the facts.
The mechanism was likely a form of parthenogenesis. Several reptile species in the old world could occasionally reproduce without fertilization. If Pandora altered the process and Eden stabilized it, the result could explain the queen's condition.
More importantly, it explained why every daughter was female.
And why none of those daughters could continue the bloodline.
The entire species rested upon a single individual.
One accident.
One successful assassination.
One illness.
And the lamia would slowly vanish from the world.
Simply restoring her humanity would solve nothing.
Even if I succeeded tomorrow, her people would still be doomed.
To truly grant her wish, I needed more than a cure.
I needed to create a future.
Families.
Children.
A stable population.
Eventually, males.
A complete reproductive cycle.
Before any of that could happen, I needed to secure them.
I opened a communication channel.
"Titania."
"I'm here."
"I need Mana expansion directed toward my location."
There was a brief pause.
Then she understood.
"Migration project?"
"Likely."
"I'll begin preparations."
"Deploy construction golems. Clear a safe route between the mountain and this settlement."
"Understood."
A second channel opened.
"Yaksha."
"Awaiting orders, my lord."
"Move to the lamia settlement perimeter."
"Objective?"
"Village defense."
"Understood, my lord."
I looked back toward the queen.
"I'll have that eight-armed cyborg guard your village perimeter."
The queen blinked.
"The scary one?"
"Yes."
The queen immediately pointed at one of the two lamia beside her.
"Go tell the guards before they attack him."
The daughter nodded and quickly left the hall.
Only after she disappeared did the queen seem to remember something.
"Oh."
She sat up straighter.
"We never introduced ourselves."
That was true.
Despite everything we had discussed, neither of us had exchanged names.
The queen placed a hand on her chest.
"My name is Lizabeth Von Iceburn."
A small smile appeared.
"But just call me Liz."
The surname sounded unmistakably old-world.
Wealthy.
Possibly noble.
"The name is Oberon now."
I paused.
"But you may call me Doctor."
Liz smiled immediately.
"Doctor sounds better."
A few minutes later the daughter returned and reported that the message had been delivered.
I looked toward the two lamia standing beside Liz.
"And their names?"
Liz immediately looked embarrassed.
The two daughters sighed.
That alone worried me.
"Eleven and Twelve."
Silence.
I stared at her.
The daughters stared at her.
Liz looked away.
"I had one every month!"
She immediately defended herself.
"And they all looked exactly like me!"
I rubbed my forehead.
She quickly pointed at their necklaces.
"Look."
Sure enough.
Each wore a polished bone necklace engraved with Arabic numerals.
Simple.
Practical.
Extremely lazy.
"You can also identify rank from the trophies."
That changed the subject quickly.
Horns.
Tusks.
Claws.
Fangs.
Numerous monster trophies decorated their necklaces and bracelets.
"Horns and tusks are reserved for the greatest contributor during a hunt."
I looked more carefully.
The amount worn by Eleven and Twelve was impressive.
Considering they were among the earliest daughters, they were likely close to a century old.
Interesting.
Eden's regenerative effects were probably still active.
Combined with Mana exposure, their lifespan might become considerably longer in the future.
"I'll need to bring you to my laboratory eventually."
"Yes, Doctor."
The answer came immediately.
Far too immediately.
It was almost as if she had already decided to hand every responsibility to me the moment she learned who I was.
"First, we'll secure the route."
"Thank you, Doctor."
Then her attention shifted upward.
Toward the floating crystal.
Immediately her eyes sparkled.
"What is that crystal?"
"The one above us?"
"Yes."
"It's called Mana."
"Mana?"
I nodded.
"It isn't magic."
The queen tilted her head.
"Then what is it?"
"A self-replicating nanomachine."
That immediately got her attention.
She sat up straighter.
"A nanomachine?"
"Yes."
I removed another crystal from my backpack and handed it to her.
She accepted it carefully.
The crystal reflected the torchlight in countless colors.
"It's beautiful."
"Each particle is a machine."
Her eyes widened.
"All of them?"
"All of them."
The queen examined the crystal more closely.
"How small?"
"Microscopic."
I continued.
"Mana is primarily composed of iron, silicon, aluminum, and oxygen."
"Earth crust materials..."
"Exactly."
The engineering logic clicked immediately.
Abundant materials.
Easy replication.
Scalable manufacturing.
"It can reproduce itself?"
"Given enough energy and raw material."
I nodded.
"It gathers resources, stores data, stores energy, assembles structures, and can form larger systems."
The queen looked down at the crystal.
Then back at me.
"So that's what powered all those lighting crystals lamps"
Liz laughed softly.
"When I was young people dreamed about technology like this."
She looked at the crystal in wonder.
"Self-replicating machines."
"Universal fabrication."
Then she smiled.
"And now I'm holding it. Indeed the Miracle doctor has become a god like being now"
For a moment she wasn't a queen.
She wasn't a lamia.
She was simply a girl from the old world seeing the future she never got the chance to grow up in.
Then curiosity won again.
"What else can it do?"
She ask excitingly and ask me like a child asking to see some magic trick
A moment later she realized how eager she sounded.
Her face immediately reddened.
"Ah!"
"Forget my rudeness, Doctor."
"It's fine."
I couldn't help smiling slightly.
"I find it rather endearing."
The queen's face became even redder.
I smiled slightly.
That curiosity had survived the apocalypse.
I dissolved the crystal.
Countless sparkling particles filled the hall.
The queen gasped.
The particles gathered together.
A salamander.
An undine.
A sylph.
A gnome.
Four elemental spirits floated around the stage.
The two daughters instantly moved in front of their mother.
Protective.
Reasonable.
"Don't worry."
I waved a hand.
"They're only projections."
"Simple AI interfaces."
The daughters slowly relaxed.
Meanwhile, Liz was already trying to touch the salamander's burning tail.
Her hand passed through it.
She blinked.
Then tried again.
And again.
"Doctor!"
"What?"
"It's not real!"
"That is what I said."
"It's amazing!"
She immediately started following the spirits around the stage.
I looked toward the daughters.
Neither seemed surprised.
That told me everything I needed to know.
"Shouldn't you inform your people about what's happening?"
I pointed toward the tunnels.
Numerous lamia heads were now peeking from nearby passages, watching their queen chase glowing projections.
Liz froze.
Then looked around.
"Oh."
A pause.
"Oh!"
She slapped her forehead.
"I forgot!"
For a moment I considered that perhaps the greatest threat to the lamia race was not the forest.
Finally, I asked one last question.
"What's your current population?"
Liz suddenly became quiet.
"Around three hundred."
I frowned.
Three hundred.
Far too few.
With twelve daughters every year for over a century, the number should have been far higher.
The implication was obvious.
Humans.
Predators.
Starvation.
Disease.
The forest itself.
Generation after generation had been lost.
Until only three hundred remained.
I released a long sigh.
A habit my body no longer required.
The forest was more unforgiving than I imagined.
For someone whose duty had always been saving lives, that number left much to be desired.
Still.
Looking at the excited queen.
Looking at her daughters.
Looking at the curious lamia peeking from every tunnel.
I reached a different conclusion.
It was not my luck that I found them.
It was theirs.
Because if I had arrived a few decades later...
There might not have been any lamia left to save.
The migration would take time.
Even with Mana expansion, route clearing, construction golems, and Yaksha guarding the settlement perimeter, moving three hundred lamia safely through the forest was not something that could be done overnight.
For the time being, I decided to stay with the lamia.
After informing her daughters about the future plan, the queen returned shortly afterward and approached me with a smile.
"Doctor."
"Yes?"
"You'll stay in my quarters."
I blinked.
"I don't think that's appropriate."
The queen tilted her head.
"Appropriate?"
"A man and woman alone inside a private room."
The queen stared at me for several seconds.
Then burst out laughing.
"Doctor."
She pointed at herself.
"I'm over a hundred years old with thousand of daughters"
Then she pointed at her tail.
"I'm a snake girl."
Then she pointed at me.
"You're an android."
The queen crossed her arms.
"What exactly could go wrong?"
Before I could answer, she slithered closer.
"And even if something did happen..."
A teasing smile appeared.
"I don't think I'd mind at this point."
Her split tongue flicked out playfully.
I immediately grabbed it and pulled lightly.
The queen squeaked and jumped backward.
Her eyes immediately became watery.
"Doctor!"
"Have you completely abandoned the image of a proper lady?"
The queen rubbed her tongue dramatically.
"That's what they call gap moe, right?"
I sighed.
She was impossible.
"Follow me."
She turned and disappeared behind the stage.
The two eldest daughters remained outside while I followed their mother into a smaller room.
It appeared to have once been a backstage resting area.
The original furnishings were long gone.
Everything inside had been replaced with crude wooden furniture designed for lamia anatomy and covered with animal fur and pelts.
The room was dimly lit by torches.
Humid.
And honestly rather uncomfortable.
The queen immediately stretched out on a sofa.
"Make yourself comfortable, darling."
My eyebrow twitched.
"Darling?"
"Of course."
She looked genuinely confused.
"A man and woman alone inside a room?"
She shrugged.
"That's already an established fact."
"It is not."
"It is."
She grinned.
"Even if you say that,nothing actually happened."
Her smile widened.
"What if I say otherwise?"
I looked toward the ceiling.
I was beginning to understand why her daughters looked perpetually exhausted.
The queen giggled.
"Relax, Doctor."
She waved dismissively.
"I told my daughters you were bewitched by my beauty, wanted to marry me, and invited us to live at your place."
I stared.
"You what?"
"Otherwise they'll think you're forcing us to leave our home."
The explanation was somehow logical and completely ridiculous at the same time.
"Alright."
There were too many problems with that statement to address individually.
I sat down and placed my backpack beside me.
The time would be better spent gathering information about lamia biology.
Venom.
Metabolism.
Body temperature.
Growth rates.
Lifespan.
I had barely started organizing questions when the queen interrupted again.
"What are you doing?"
"Asking questions."
"No."
She pointed around the room.
"Look at this place."
I did.
Wood.
Fur.
Torchlight.
Stone.
The queen crossed her arms.
"It's terrible. Nothing here is comfortable"
I blinked.
"But You live here."
"Exactly."
She pointed directly at me.
"And now you're here too."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
The queen frowned.
"Shouldn't you make yourself comfortable?"
I looked around again.
The room was indeed damp.
Humid.
Poorly ventilated.
And unpleasant by modern standards.
The queen spread her arms dramatically.
"Look at it."
"It's damp."
"It's humid."
"It's dark."
She pointed at the torches.
"Shouldn't you do something about it with your magic?"
Then she added,
"My husband."
I pointed at myself.
"Me?"
"Of course."
The queen covered her face and pretended to cry.
"Or are you refusing to take responsibility?"
A long sigh escaped me.
"Haaa..."
The queen immediately smiled.
"So this was your goal all along."
"Maybe."
I opened my backpack.
Several Mana crystals floated into the air.
The queen immediately sat upright.
Lighting crystals assembled themselves along the walls.
The room gradually filled with soft white illumination.
The torches suddenly looked primitive by comparison.
Next came environmental controls.
Mana assembled thermoelectric structures inside the walls.
Heat was moved away from one side and released elsewhere.
The room became cooler.
Moisture condensed from the air and gathered into a wooden container on a nearby table.
Finally, controlled airflow began circulating throughout the room.
The stagnant air disappeared.
The entire room felt transformed.
The queen looked around in amazement.
"Wow."
She took a deep breath.
"That's much more bearable."
Then she smiled.
"Thank you, my husband."
"Don't mention it."
I walked over and pinched her cheek.
"You're quite something yourself."
The queen laughed.
"Of course."
Then, before I could react, she wrapped her tail around my legs.
My eyebrows twitched.
"Queen."
"Yes?"
"What are you doing?"
"Rewarding you."
The answer came instantly.
The queen tightened her tail slightly and rested her head against my shoulder and tipping my leg so we're now laying together on her sofa
For the first time since I met her, there was no teasing in her voice.
No joking.
No playful smile.
Only exhaustion.
A hundred years of it.
she then remove all of her clothing showing her bare skin that look just like normal woman with long black hair and green eyes
She has delicate body build and moderate breasts untill the area below her private part before it becomes snake tail which make her anus goes way down till the end of her tail.
"Am I pretty?" She ask and guide his hand to her chest. Her eye look desperate with tear in her eye.
"Of course you are" Oberon said and use his hand to hug her back.
they ended up on the sofa while she still coiling her tail around his leg and their upper body is hugging.
"Please comfort me just like this"
The question caught me off guard.
Not because of the words.
Because of the desperation behind them.
The need for reassurance.
The need to be seen as more than a monster.
More than a queen.
More than the mother of a dying species.
The queen smiled weakly.
Then she moved closer and wrapped both arms around me.
Nothing more.
Just a tired woman seeking comfort.
A few minutes passed in silence.
Then her breathing gradually became slower.
Steadier.
Her body relaxed.
The queen had fallen asleep.
Just like that.
I looked down at her sleeping face.
She had endured more than a century of suffering.
Lost her parents.
Lost her humanity.
Lost countless daughters.
Lost her home.
Lost her future.
And yet she continued moving forward.
Perhaps for the first time in a hundred years, she finally felt safe enough to stop.
At least for a little while.
Carefully, I shifted part of my consciousness back to the laboratory.
Construction reports immediately appeared.
Route clearing.
Housing construction.
Supply estimates.
Golem deployment.
The work had already begun.
While the queen slept peacefully against me, I began overseeing the preparations for the lamia migration.
For the first time since finding them, I felt cautiously optimistic.
The lamia might actually survive.
And perhaps one day...
They might finally do more than merely survive.