Nyssara didn't push Liselotte away immediately.
Instead, she allowed her newly acquired, shameless maid to continue rubbing her face against her ample cleavage with impunity, purring with lewd bliss like a contented cat.
The Mistress stood motionless, her hands resting casually at her sides, while her eyes remained fixed on the status window levitating before her.
Analytical thoughts regarding her bloodline and strength swirled in her head.
Infernal Demon Empress...
The name itself sounded mighty, but it wasn't the words that left the greatest impression. The true proof of this Bloodline's rarity was the fact that, right from the very beginning, she had received two subordinate slots. If the system granted her the right to possess two support units at level one, her stats had to place her in the absolute top tier.
Two hundred and twenty health points, three hundred and eighty mana, agility and spirit hovering near forty points... For a character taking their first steps in a new world, this was a monstrous foundation.
Nyssara glanced out of the corner of her eye at the statuses of her companions levitating nearby. They didn't look like weaklings either. Elarienne possessed a balanced, stable body with a massive energy reserve, and Liselotte - despite her fragile health - carried an astronomical five hundred mana points and a gigantic arsenal of support skills.
A spark of excitement ignited in the Empress's chest. Such a start gave them a powerful, downright brazen advantage over the vast majority of the Demon King competition.
However, she knew all too well that complacency was the fastest route to the grave.
In her previous life, she had commanded armies and managed a state; she had seen dozens of arrogant lords perish simply because they believed in their own invincibility. The fact that they currently stood at the top of the starting bracket meant absolutely nothing in the context of a prolonged war. The path to conquering the continent was murderous, and a first-day advantage could evaporate in the blink of an eye.
Especially when factoring in the Support class mechanics.
Elarienne and Liselotte were inextricably bound to her fate - their level only increased when Nyssara's power grew. If she stagnated, her servants also lost any chance for further development.
And more importantly... Demon Kings possessed one fundamental gift that drastically differentiated them from all other beings inhabiting this world.
Shattering racial limits.
An ordinary goblin in this world was born and died as a weak, green freak. However, a player who landed in the body of a Goblin Demon King was not bound by those same laws of nature. Given enough time, resources, skill points, and slain enemies, even the most pathetic race could evolve into an entity capable of tearing mountains to shreds and grinding kingdoms to dust.
Therefore, the moment Nyssara allowed herself even a fraction of laziness, complacency, or pride, the other Rulers would begin to catch up. And if they overtook her, she would drag not only herself down to the bottom, but also both women standing at her side.
However, she was abruptly snapped out of these strategic musings by a sudden, highly specific touch.
She felt Liselotte's delicate hand slowly sliding down her waist, passing her hip, and beginning to wander shamelessly, dangerously low, straight toward the curve of her buttock.
A thick, pulsing vein instantly popped on Nyssara's temple.
The Mistress slowly lowered her head, bringing her lips directly to Liselotte's long, pointed ear. Her breath was hot, and her voice sounded quiet, soft, and almost seductive:
"If that little hand does not disappear from my body within the next second... I will personally track down the nearest forest goblin encampment and throw you straight into the very center of their burrow."
Liselotte stiffened in a fraction of a fraction of a second at those ruthless words.
A shiver so violent and icy ran through her body that her lace garters literally trembled. She jumped back from Nyssara as if burned, retreating three huge, wobbly steps on her twelve-centimeter stilettos and nearly losing her balance on the uneven cobblestones.
"L-Let's pass on the goblins!" she squeaked in panic, waving her arms and pointing a finger at the Empress. "No goblins! I beg you, my Mistress, just not those little, stinking, green freaks! That doesn't match my beautiful body at all!"
Suddenly, however, the words died in her throat.
Liselotte blinked her large, ruby eyes, and in her head - like a malfunctioning film projector - a completely new, alternative vision materialized.
Her cheeks flooded with a violent blush, and her fluffy elven ears twitched with unbridled excitement.
"But... on the other hand..." she began with a quiet, dreamy sigh, pressing her hands to her flushed cheeks. "A village of wood elves hidden deep in the thicket... or a succubus settlement... now that would be an entirely different fairy tale!"
The maid's eyes blazed with a wild, perverse gleam. She took a step forward, completely forgetting her earlier fear:
"Mistress! We have our first objective! Forget the ruins! We must immediately find a village of wild succubi! Imagine it: hundreds of thirsty, sadistic women with gigantic tits, horns, and whips! They'd tie me up, throw me on an altar, and I could finally experience my first, dream gangbang for real! I beg you, Mistress, let's go hunting!"
A deafening, ghostly silence fell over the valley.
Elarienne stood leaning on her carved staff, slowly raising her white-gloved hand and, with a loud smack, covering her entire face.
She stood like that for several seconds, taking a deep, calming breath, then lowered her hand and looked at Liselotte with absolute, deadly seriousness.
"For now, we are completely passing on any succubi," the blonde cut in coldly. "Our priority right now is to thoroughly investigate the place where we have landed. We must check the condition of these ruins and find out what predators hunt in the immediate vicinity."
Liselotte immediately pushed her lips out in a gigantic, demonstrative pout, stomping her heel against the stone.
"But that's boring!" she whined pitifully, swishing her demonic tail. "Terribly boring! I know exactly how this goes! I know these formulas by heart from hundreds of games! First you'll make me gather ten dry sticks, then we'll look for healing herbs in a clearing, and finally we'll have to kill three mutated rats! I beg you! I didn't give up being a boring guy, spend a hundred points on a bombshell body, and squeeze myself into a latex corset just to play through some pathetic tutorial quests for novices!"
Elarienne narrowed her emerald eyes slightly, maintaining an impeccable, cold posture, even though she didn't comprehend the vast majority of what the maid had just said.
"Liselotte. This is a matter of whether, in three days, we get eaten alive by wild beasts, or if we have something to take shelter behind. If we do not secure the area, no spell or succubus of yours will save you."
"But succubi would help us so much more!" Liselotte shot forward, stopping a mere half-step from the elf and waving her hands in front of her nose. "Succubi are pure mana! They're allies! They're pleasure! We could create a harem!"
"Succubi are unpredictable, dangerous demons, who - if they truly exist somewhere in this wild forest - would tear you to pieces for pure amusement before you could utter a single word."
"They wouldn't tear me apart at all! I know their nature, I'm half one of them!"
"You are someone who cannot even stand on her own shoes!"
"My shoes are perfect! It's about passion, about style, about breaking the boredom and fucking hard!"
"It is about elementary survival instinct, which you clearly lack entirely!"
The argument flared up in full swing.
They stood facing each other - the haughty blonde with aristocratic features, buttoned up to her neck, and the stripped-down maid in a too-small skirt, waving her bust around. Both babbled simultaneously, completely ignoring each other and talking about two entirely different things.
Finally, after several exchanges, Liselotte couldn't take it anymore.
Pure, hysterical frustration took over as she stomped her foot with all her might, throwing her arms wide and screaming at the top of her lungs:
"If you're so prudish and won't look for succubi for us for anything in the world... THEN FUCK ME YOURSELF!"
The words echoed powerfully through the empty valley, bouncing off the black cliffs.
Even the wind died down for a moment.
Elarienne fell silent at those words, her emerald irises dilating minimally, but not a single muscle twitched on her pale, flawless face. After a moment, the blonde sighed heavily, then slowly, with a fluid motion, pulled the white glove off her right hand.
"I will shove my fingers down your throat if you don't shut up for a moment and let me focus on important matters," she said in a cold, matter-of-fact tone that held not a shred of a joke.
Liselotte's eyes flared like two headlights in a fraction of a second. All her feigned anger and desire to argue evaporated in an instant.
Without a shadow of hesitation, the girl let out a quiet, joyful squeal, lunged forward, and leaped with full momentum straight onto the standing elf's hips!
She wrapped her slender arms around her neck, opened her mouth wide, sticking out her wet, pink tongue, and stared at her with wild, almost reverent anticipation.
Elarienne froze for a fraction of a second, holding this shaking, latex-clad little body on her hips. Through her mind flashed one brief, exhausted thought:
I really am dealing with a degenerate...
The elf exhaled through her nose, however, and without further hesitation, slipped two long, smooth fingers straight into Liselotte's wet mouth.
The maid's reaction was instantaneous.
A muffled, shameless moan of pleasure escaped her throat. Instead of gagging, Liselotte immediately tightened her lips around her hand. Her agile but inexperienced tongue began to relentlessly slide, writhe, and wrap between the blonde's fingers, licking the skin with the ravenous, wet passion of a novice.
The girl closed her eyelids blissfully, a scarlet blush flooding her cheeks, while her small teeth gently, almost affectionately nibbled on the fingertips.
For the first time, a faint, barely perceptible shadow of pink appeared on Elarienne's pale face.
She felt the hot, slick tongue sliding over her hand, felt the burning breath on her wrist, and the trembling of the servant's entire body on her hips. Though she felt a mounting, strange confusion inside, she maintained a perfect mask of seriousness, simply looking away from the slurping maid and gazing toward the altar.
And at the altar...
Nyssara didn't give a single damn about any of this.
The Demon Empress had completely tuned out the circus taking place two meters away. Her attention was one hundred percent absorbed by the second tab in the interface - the window of her own skills.
She ran her nail over the successive entries:
[True Demon Empress], [Infernal Flame], [Imperial Dread], [Chains of Dominion], [Lesser Arcane Immunity].
She clicked on each of them, hoping to learn the details, but the system was mercilessly frugal. Not a single skill possessed even one sentence of description. They were all grayed out, locked, and marked with an inactive status.
It was only at the very bottom of the frame that Nyssara noticed a small, flickering footnote:
[Ascension Condition: Unlocking all skills results in the immediate advancement of the Demon King to Level 2.]
The Mistress arched an eyebrow at this system notification and looked at her point counter, which displayed the number 10. Her gaze slid back to the very top of the list, stopping at the first, most fundamental entry:
[True Demon Empress].
She tapped it with her fingertip.
[Do you wish to spend 10 Skill Points to unlock the skill: True Demon Empress?]
[ YES ] / [ NO ]
Nyssara did not hesitate for a moment.
She clicked [ YES ].
[Congratulations! Skill unlocked: True Demon Empress!]
[Ability permanently activated in the Soul Record.]
The Empress felt a dormant, primal power awaken in her veins. Out of pure curiosity, not waiting for any opportune moment, she decided to test what this ability actually was in practice.
In her mind, she issued one short command:
Activate.
And in that exact fraction of a second, reality around the altar shattered.
BOOM!
A massive, soundless blast of black-and-crimson fire erupted from the ground beneath Nyssara's feet.
A shockwave of pure, infernal magic rolled through the ruin, kicking up clouds of dust. The air in the gorge hissed, violently heating up to the temperature of a blast furnace.
The glare was so blinding, and the roar of unleashed power so terrifying, that Liselotte instantly froze. With a quiet smack, she let Elarienne's fingers slip from her mouth, all her saliva and perverse play momentarily pushed to the background.
Both girls - the elf with her hand still raised in the air, and the maid sitting on her hips - stared toward the altar with wide-open eyes.
What emerged from the fire left them speechless.
Nyssara's humanoid, slender form ceased to exist.
In place of the aristocratic monarch now stood a gigantic, over three-meter-tall monster of unbelievable, predatory majesty. Her figure had nearly doubled in size, literally casting a massive, oppressive shadow over the entire altar.
Her physique was distinctly muscular - broad, powerful shoulders, arms capable of crushing boulders, a hard, sculpted abdomen, and massive thighs. However, she was not a shapeless mass of a bodybuilder; she was a perfect, predatory warrior who retained all her feminine attributes. Her bust was still gigantic, and her hips wide, but they now radiated pure, crushing dominance instead of softness.
Nyssara's skin had changed color to a deep, saturated dark red - the classic, terrifying hue of an infernal ruler!
From her back shot out two gigantic, broad wings. However, these wings possessed nothing of angelic lightness; they were massive, membranous wings of a dragon-demon, dark red and black, stretched over thick bones ending in sharp, armored talons.
From the Empress's forehead, her two black obsidian horns had expanded and grown - curving backward with a subtle, serrated ridge, forming a natural, terrifying crown above her head.
Her face, though still unbelievably beautiful, had become ruthlessly predatory.
Her cheekbones sharpened, slightly elongated, sharp fangs protruded from behind her crimson lips, and her eyes glowed with a blinding, intense red, in which the vertical pupils burned like two glowing coals. Her long, thick black hair moved on its own accord, and the Mistress's hands had grown larger, her fingers crowned with long, razor-sharp black claws.
From the base of her spine grew a massive, sleek tail, weaving slowly through the air, ending in a heavy, triangular blade.
An overwhelming Demon King pressure radiated from her massive body.
Before the ruined altar in Gloamreach Vale, a true Demon King had been born.
And at her feet, in absolute silence broken only by the hiss of the dying fire, stood a tall blonde in an elegant robe, holding a half-succubus in a stripped-down latex uniform on her hips - both frozen with stunned expressions, fingers freshly slipped from a drool-soaked mouth, staring in mute awe at the demon towering above them.