The gray-green timber wolf stood a mere dozen paces before them, baring saliva-dripping fangs, its fur standing rigidly on end.
Its muscles were taut as bowstrings, and from between the tufts of thick undercoat protruded hard, woody growths that formed a natural, rough armor along its neck and back.
The beast growled hollowly - a vibrating, low sound that carried across the forest floor, warning the intruders against violating its territory.
Elarienne took a half-step forward, raising her carved staff to chest height.
Her emerald eyes flared with a bright, glowing green for a fraction of a second as her innate talent instantly deconstructed the animal's silhouette.
"Timber wolf, level one," the blonde stated coldly, not taking her eyes off the beast. "The baseline predator of this region. Exceptionally low resistance to blunt trauma, average agility; attacks primarily by leaping for the throat or attempting to hamstring. It appears to be an ordinary wild animal posing a minimal threat level."
Liselotte, who had been hiding behind Nyssara's back until now, leaned out from behind her hip, resting her hands on her own thighs and tilting her head.
Her fluffy elven ears twitched with curiosity, and her gaze swept over the growths protruding from the beast's neck. Instead of fear, a wide, slightly amused smile blossomed on her face.
"Seriously? This is supposed to be the terrifying monster of the Green Forest?" the servant snorted quietly, her prominent bust heaving in the tight corset. "It looks like a molting mutt that fell into a pile of dry branches and couldn't untangle itself. My parents' old dog looked scarier when someone tried to take away his rubber bone!"
The wolf, as if sensing the mockery in her voice, growled louder, crouched on its hind legs, and with a savage snap of its jaws, launched itself forward, tearing up the soft underbrush with its claws.
"Stay back," Nyssara tossed out curtly.
The Empress took a single step directly into the path of the charging beast.
The Demon Queen intended to test firsthand exactly what twenty-two points of strength and thirty-eight points of agility translated to in her standard, humanoid body.
The wolf launched itself into the air with a guttural howl, aiming its yellow fangs straight for her exposed neck.
Nyssara's movement was so fast that to a normal eye, it blurred into an indistinct streak.
Before the animal could clamp its jaws shut, the Mistress's slender, black-gloved hand shot to the side, effortlessly bypassing the fangs and clamping down on the predator's throat like a steel vise.
The momentum of the several-dozen-kilogram carcass was arrested in a fraction of a second, as if the beast had slammed into a solid wall.
The Mistress didn't even flinch, her feet planted firmly on the moss.
Before the wolf could even whimper, Nyssara executed a short, ruthless twist of her wrist, driving the fist of her other hand straight into its flank, right beneath the ribs.
CRACK.
The sound of snapping bones was dry, loud, and horrifying.
The beast's ribs were pulverized, and the impact of the blow sent the limp, broken carcass flying into a nearby pine trunk.
The wolf struck the bark with a dull thud, slid down into the ferns, and ceased moving forever.
A brief, awe-filled silence fell.
Liselotte squeaked quietly with delight, clapping her hands, while Nyssara slowly lowered her arm, glancing at her fingers.
"A simple strike was sufficient, and that was even without my demonic form," the Mistress muttered with satisfaction. "I am curious to see what the disparity will be when I strike in my alternate form."
Suddenly, a brief, golden flash of light materialized above the cooling body of the wolf.
A small, luminous ray detached from the carcass and shot straight toward Nyssara's chest, vanishing beneath the fabric of her gown.
At that exact moment, a narrow notification frame unfurled before her eyes.
The Empress raised her eyebrows, staring at the text.
"What is it, my Mistress?" Liselotte asked immediately, scurrying closer and peering over her shoulder.
"The system has delivered a report," Nyssara explained, reading the lines of the notification aloud:
[You have slain: Timber Wolf (Level 1). Received: 1 Dominion Coin.]
Elarienne, who had approached them with her staff in hand, immediately furrowed her brow, and her gaze flashed.
"One coin for an ordinary wolf?" the blonde repeated. "It appears that the wild fauna and local beasts are a direct source of our currency. We do not need to search for ore mines or wait to establish trade with other players to acquire the funds necessary for our initial summons from the Sovereign Nexus. We simply need to regularly clear the forest of predators."
Liselotte scratched her chin, and the familiar, scheming glint of a gaming veteran appeared in her ruby eyes.
"Wait..." she spoke up, swishing her demonic tail. "Since the Mistress received a coin for a personal kill, how does that work for us, Elarienne, as support units? If you or I kill something, do the coins drop too? And where do they go? Into our personal inventory, or into a communal treasury, or something like that?"
"A valid deduction," Nyssara admitted. "It is worth verifying."
Elarienne scanned the undergrowth, raising her staff. Her talent once again scanned the thicket a few dozen meters away.
"There," she pointed with the head of the staff. "Horned forest rodent, level one. Feeds on roots, zero threat."
The blonde didn't wait for the rest of the girls to comprehend what she had said.
With a fluid, elegant gesture, she raised her staff, and compressed air swirled around the carved wood, emitting a quiet, whistling sound.
"Wind Blade!"
A half-meter blade of compressed wind shot from the tip of the staff, slicing through the ferns like a razor.
A short, muffled squeak rang out, followed by an identical, golden ray of energy rising from behind a clump of grass.
Instead of flying toward Elarienne, however, the luminous point traced a wide arc in the air and unerringly shot straight into Nyssara's chest.
The Mistress immediately summoned the treasury panel.
"Another piece has been deposited," Nyssara announced, a satisfied smirk appearing on her lips. "Account balance: two coins. It appears that the entire income from kills executed by you flows directly into the Demon King's treasury, remaining under my exclusive control."
Liselotte instantly puffed her chest forward, her cheeks flooding with a blush of pride.
"Oh yes!" she cheered joyfully, resting her hands on her hips. "That means I can head out on a hunt and personally earn a massive mountain of gold for my Mistress! I'll be your own little, private money-making machine!"
Nyssara slowly turned her head and sized her up from head to toe with such venomous, dry amusement that Liselotte involuntarily fell silent.
"You?" the Empress asked, raising an eyebrow. "Liselotte, please remind me: does one of your curses not explicitly forbid you from holding any weaponry? And does your status not consist one hundred percent of healing spells, barriers, and buffs? The only thing you could possibly slaughter in this forest is someone's eyesight if you leaned too far forward in that cleavage of yours."
Liselotte froze, her mouth hanging open.
Her long elven ears drooped limply, and a profound, boundless indignation appeared in her eyes.
"That... that was mean!" the servant huffed, stomping her heel against the moss, though there was no real anger in her voice, only comical disappointment. "The worst part is that you are entirely correct! I don't have a single offensive spell! Next time I'll definitely take at least a tiny spark of fire so I can set something ablaze!"
Elarienne shook her head with a smile, heading deeper into the clearing.
For the next hour, all three moved slowly south, systematically scouting the fringes of the Green Forest.
The exploration yielded tangible results.
Thanks to Elarienne's talent, they flawlessly bypassed poisonous weeds and quagmires, zeroing in on the richest deposits of desirable resources.
In addition to logs of timber, which were abundant in this forest, Nyssara's spatial inventory now held entire baskets of ripe, energy-restoring Tricolor Berries, bundles of Silvery Herb possessing healing properties, and fresh, gutted meat from two more horned beasts that had crossed their path.
The golden counter in the Mistress's panel had increased by another few coins.
The air, however, was growing steadily thicker.
The canopies of the massive trees closed over their heads in a dense, green canopy, cutting off the majority of the sunlight and plunging the forest into a cool, greenish twilight.
Suddenly, Elarienne stopped mid-step, extending her staff across the path.
"Halt," she tossed out quietly, her voice instantly losing all casualness.
Her emerald eyes flared with intense green light, sweeping over the dense fern thickets and the uprooted trunks surrounding their small hollow.
"What do you have?" Nyssara whispered, instantly tensing her shoulder muscles.
"A pack," the blonde reported, a rare, tiny wrinkle of concentration appearing on her forehead. "Six level one timber wolves, led by one larger specimen. It appears they are flanking us."
From the thicket to their left, right, and straight ahead, a simultaneous, hollow growl erupted.
Gray shadows slowly emerged from between the trunks.
Six sinewy beasts with wooden growths on their backs circled the group slowly, baring their fangs and waiting for a signal from the largest wolf, which had positioned itself on a mossy boulder directly in front of them.
Nyssara clenched her fists as she took a step forward, ready to strike:
"I will take the leader, you handle the - "
"Mistress! Wait!" Liselotte suddenly squeaked, gently grabbing the edge of her sleeve.
The Mistress turned her head, furrowing her brow.
"Liselotte, this is not the time to - "
"Give me three seconds! Just three seconds!" a wild, fanatical fervor ignited in the servant's eyes. "The moment has finally arrived! We must test my build under combat conditions! I beg you, trust me!"
Nyssara hesitated for a fraction of a second, then nodded.
Liselotte immediately brought her slender hands together in front of her. Dense, ruby-gold streams of pure, flawless energy swirled around her fingers.
Her elven ears stood straight up, and a short, clear incantation flowed from her lips:
"Empower!"
A golden ray of light shot from her hand and struck straight into Nyssara's chest.
The Empress felt a wave of heat wash through her body.
Her muscles tensed, and her physical strength increased by exactly ten percent. A pleasant, solid enhancement - exactly what one would expect from a foundational first-level spell.
Nyssara was just about to launch her attack when Liselotte, bearing a brazen smirk, kept her hands raised.
Her ruby eyes flared even brighter, and another beam of light shot from her fingers:
"Empower!"
A second golden ray struck Nyssara.
Instead of simply resetting the duration of the previous spell or slightly refreshing it, the new spell caused the golden aura around the Demon Queen's silhouette to explode with double the brilliance!
The wave of energy in her veins did not reset, it doubled its potency!
Her muscular strength spiked by another ten percent!
"What the..." Nyssara let out.
"Once more!" Liselotte screamed in ecstasy, pouring out another portion of mana.
"Empower!"
A third wave struck the Empress.
The golden glare around Nyssara became so powerful it illuminated the dark forest like the midday sun.
Three identical layers of the exact same spell overlapped in perfect, flawless harmony.
Thirty percent additional physical strength was pumped into her body in a matter of seconds!
Elarienne literally dropped her staff, her jaw falling open in absolute, paralyzing stupefaction.
"Damn it... you really can cast buffs by stacking them?!" the blonde choked out, boundless disbelief ringing in her voice.
Liselotte shot her a cheeky wink, fanning herself with her hand.
"Of course I can, I am exceptional after all, my dear!" the servant giggled. "My unique talent is [Amplification]. I ignore the stacking restriction for all buffs I cast upon my allies! I can apply the exact same spell for as long as my mana holds out!"
Nyssara looked at her hands.
She felt monstrous, pulsating power threatening to burst her tendons.
Her base twenty-two points of strength, augmented by nearly a third, now yielded a value approaching nearly thirty points - and that was without assuming her demonic form!
The Mistress slowly turned her gaze to the servant in the sex maid outfit.
It was the pure, cold admiration of a commander who had just realized, firsthand, that she held a weapon capable of shaking the very foundations of this entire world.
"Liselotte..." the Empress muttered quietly, a dangerous, predatory note sounding in her voice. "You are an absolute monster."
"Thank you, my Mistress!" the girl chirped proudly, immediately retreating to a safe distance behind the trunk of an oak tree.
At that exact moment, the pack launched its attack.
The wolves realized they were losing the element of surprise as their prey stood in place for an extended period, their eyes constantly darting toward the girl in the maid outfit.
However, sensing the escalating threat radiating from the woman before them, the six beasts let out a guttural roar and shot from the brush simultaneously, slicing the air with their fangs.
Seeing them, Nyssara smiled as she launched herself forward with the velocity of a projectile.
Her feet tore up the forest floor as she reached the pack leader in a fraction of a second.
The massive wolf only had time to widen its yellow eyes before the Empress's triple-buffed fist descended on its head like an anvil dropped from a tower.
BOOM!
The boulder beneath the beast's paws cracked in half, and the alpha male's skull was literally driven into the earth, killing it on the spot before blood could even spray onto the moss.
Two more wolves leaped at her flanks.
Nyssara, with a fluid, devastating spin, grabbed the first by the scruff of the neck and, with inhuman strength, hurled it into the second.
The collision of the two bodies sounded like the impact of two sacks of wet sand - shattered spines and crushed ribs sent both animals convulsing to the ground.
The remaining three wolves hesitated, witnessing the carnage, and attempted to leap toward the girls hiding in the rear.
"Not so fast," came Elarienne's cold, composed voice.
The elf raised her staff, and compressed air hissed in a hollow tone.
Two lightning-fast, precise [Wind Blade] strikes sliced through space, cutting off their escape route and decapitating two beasts mid-leap with clean wounds across their throats.
The final, lone wolf tucked its tail and bolted in a panicked retreat into the thicket. Before it could manage ten paces, however, Nyssara closed the distance from behind.
A simple kick with a heavy boot sent the animal crashing into a tree trunk with the force of a battering ram, extinguishing its life in a fraction of a second.
The entire skirmish had lasted less than twenty seconds.
Deep, ear-ringing silence fell over the forest once again, broken only by the quiet, wet dripping of blood onto the ferns.
Golden sparks danced over the bodies.
Six luminous streaks shot straight into Nyssara's chest, and the quiet chime of system notifications clearly indicated that for the entire pack, including the larger leader, an impressive thirty-five coins had been deposited.
Adding in their earlier game, their total stood at nearly forty Dominion Coins.
The Mistress dusted off her gloves, and the golden glow of the three layers of [Empower] slowly faded from her body, leaving a pleasant, lingering tingle.
She turned toward her companions.
Elarienne leaned on her staff, still surveying the battlefield and shaking her head in mute awe.
As for Liselotte...
The servant stood barely three steps away, staring at Nyssara with such boundless, feverish anticipation that she was practically trembling on her lacquered stilettos.
Her large ruby eyes were wide open, shining with tears of excitement, full of shameless, begging adoration.
Her lips were slightly parted, her monstrous bust heaving violently in the corset, and her demonic tail wagged behind her with such fury it practically whistled in the air.
She looked exactly like a small, fiercely loyal puppy that had just brought its master a hunted prize and was begging with its entire body for even a single word of praise.
Nyssara saw this perfectly.
As an experienced monarch and a sophisticated sadist, she deliberately decided to draw the moment out.
Instead of speaking immediately, she slowly stepped closer, calmly circled Liselotte, adjusted the cuff of her own gown, and looked up at the sky, as if appraising the weather.
Liselotte nearly exploded with impatience.
A quiet, pitiful squeak tore from her throat, and her pointed ears fluttered in a begging gesture. She literally tracked every single movement of the Demon Queen with her eyes.
Finally, Nyssara stopped right in front of her.
She raised her black-gloved hand and, with a slow, soft motion, rested it on the top of the servant's head, slipping her fingers between her silvery hair and affectionately stroking the sensitive base of her elven ear.
"Good girl," the Empress said quietly, her low, velvety voice dripping with pure approval. "You performed exceptionally well."
For Liselotte, those two simple words acted like the detonation of the most potent aphrodisiac.
"Aaaahhhnnn...!" a loud, shameless moan of pleasure escaped her chest.
Her knees instantly went weak, buckling so violently that had it not been for Nyssara's hand holding her head, she would have slumped limply to the forest floor.
A wave of searing, paralyzing heat rushed through her entire body. Her cheeks burned deep scarlet, her eyelids fluttered shut in a dreamy trance, and, with a quiet purr, she nuzzled her cheek against her Mistress's forearm, absorbing her touch with almost religious reverence.
The sensation of being validated by someone so powerful and dominant caused her mind to literally drown in the ecstasy of absolute submission.
Elarienne stood to the side, leaning on her staff, attentively observing the scene. A new, intriguing gleam appeared in the corners of her emerald eyes.
Unbelievable... the blonde thought, raising an eyebrow slightly. It took a mere two words and a simple pat on the head to transform this hyperactive girl into a completely will-less, obedient creature. Controlling her is vastly simpler than anyone could have anticipated.
Nyssara withdrew her hand, and Liselotte struggled to regain her balance, panting heavily and smiling with goofy, boundless bliss.
"That is enough for today," the Empress ordered authoritatively, cutting through the atmosphere of elation. "We have timber, we have food reserves from the bodies of the animals and monsters we have slain, medicinal flora, and nearly forty coins. Venturing further deep without proper reconnaissance would be pure foolishness. We return to the ruins to secure the altar."
"Yes, my Mistress!" Liselotte straightened up proudly, although her legs still trembled with emotion.
As Nyssara and Elarienne took the lead toward the forest's edge, Liselotte trotted behind them on her clicking stilettos.
Her hand unwittingly drifted to her inventory, brushing against the smooth, soft cover of the pink notebook.
In her head, amidst the chaos of pleasure and submission, one absolutely triumphant thought flared as she recalled her little pink logbook:
Point five in the Quest Log officially completed:
"Earn genuine praise from my Mistress and be told that I am her good girl."
With a wide, indecent smile on her face and a happily wagging tail, the little servant followed her Empress.