The Demon Queen’s Revival

Yzara was undoubtedly the most powerful Profane Magic user in the mortal realm. Her unique Dark Ruler class was unrivalled, and as the secret final boss in Arcforge, she had busted stats and skills that made her nigh-impossible to beat. During internal QA testing, some devs said her boss battle was completely unfair and that we should tone it down—but our director stood firm in his design decision to make her an “old-school” boss that would require legit teamwork and preparation to beat.

That said, although she got her class unsealed, Yzara was far from her full strength. She got all her stats back, sure, but not all her skills. In Arcforge, she spawned with every Profane Magic skill, but since those had been stolen, all she got back were the default skills you got in the main Profane Magic class branch. Those were still incredibly powerful using her busted stats—like a level 100 Arceus using Tackle.

But that wasn’t the only reason I wasn’t worried in the slightest about her prospects against Marielle. There was something else in store for the governor.

Marielle didn’t utter a word about Yzara’s return. She just fled for her life, her huge body trampling the streets as she went. But Yzara had other plans for her.

She grinned like a true demon as she uttered her newly-acquired skill.

“Annihilation Strike!”

From her priestess staff shot out a swirling mass of both light and dark energy, Holy and Profane Magic combining, right on Marielle’s monster torso. And when they met—

A black hole formed. A rip in time and space. A ball of pure energy that warped space itself, sucking all matter and even light before deleting all of it. The next moment, the monster torso had a massive chunk taken out of it, with a sort of black fluid spewing out like a geyser.

“Man, that is way more powerful than I expected! Guess ya pulled my leg before for a good reason,” she said, although she didn’t seem the least bit bothered by it.

An iron-clad rule from Arcforge was that no one—the players, NPCs, or mobs—had both Holy and Profane Magic simultaneously. Once a player obtained one type of magic, they were stuck with it forever, and could only learn skills and classes from that type. If different Holy and Profane attacks from different sources met each other, they would simply cancel each other out.

However, while I was working on the skill system, a question popped up in my mind. What if, somehow, a player managed to get one of those classes sealed, got the opposite type of magic, and then unsealed the original magic? Getting a class sealed was no easy feat in and of itself—you couldn’t just talk to an NPC and ask them to seal it for you or something. Only certain high-level bosses and special locations were able to do it, and generally, the seal would clear before you even had a chance to learn the other magic type and unseal it.

When I posed the question to the design team, we went through several ideas on what would happen. The simpler ones would be that the second magic class you got was sealed, or that the first one simply vanished, or that you couldn’t even get the second magic type in the first place.

But then I offered a much more interesting solution—what about being given a new set of skills, combining both Holy and Profane magic? The ultimate, forbidden type of magic.

Annihilation.

Yours truly got the chance to work on these skills as a side project. All related skills basically worked as an antimatter bomb, creating a sphere that consumed and deleted everything it touched. However, since it was born out of the combination of Holy and Profane Magic, its power was tied to how much EXP you had in the weakest of those two magic types.

Not that that mattered much.

Annihilation Magic was far stronger than any skill you could get from a standard class. And this was the first time I’d ever actually seen it being used outside my own testing in alpha builds of Arcforge. No player during the beta test ever discovered the esoteric way of getting Annihilation Magic, and it was purposefully not mentioned anywhere in the game’s lore. It was truly a hidden Easter egg for the craftiest of players who thought to think out of the box.

And I found it somewhat poetic that this Easter egg skill I made myself was first used in this world by the Easter egg boss herself, Yzara, to save me. I couldn’t help but grin.

“Grr… what… did you…” Marielle grunted.

“Still standing, are ya? Well, lemme fix that for ya real quick. Oh, but let’s not have ya fall into those buildings, ‘k? Shadow Force.”

From the blue mist surrounding Yzara spewed out a series of shadowy tentacles that rushed out towards Marielle. They grabbed her spider legs and yanked her back into the plaza so fast I almost couldn’t see it. Marielle tried to squirm out of their hold, but it was evident she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Let’s try somethin’ a bit more fun, shall we? Annihilation Seeker Missile,” Yzara said flatly.

Small orbs of swirling Holy and Profane Magic were created above Yzara, which shot out at the speed of light. When they hit each of the monster legs, a small localized black hole severed the lower leg from the joint, which then evaporated into a black mist.

Marielle—or what remained of her—fell with a thud, her monster body not crushing her human one because it vanished, perhaps having taken too much damage.

The governor was now grounded and unable to move.

A resounding defeat.

When I glanced at Yzara, the smile on her face was all but saintly. It was dark and twisted, just like she used to have in Arcforge.

Uh-oh. Did I make a mistake in letting her recover her class?

“Okay, next on the menu is—”

“Wait, Yzara,” the elf said severely, facing Satan herself head-on, as if she didn’t fear her at all. “I’ll take it from here.”

The Demon Queen didn’t respond for a few moments. “…Sure. Suit yourself. I don’t think I’ve enough precision to not kill her outright, anyway.”

Fianna made her way to Marielle, who was teetering on becoming a corpse by this point. The elf knelt down and held the governor in her arms.

“F-Fianna…”

“I’m sad to see you end up like this, Marielle. But you have shown yourself to be an enemy of humanity. I had no other choice.”

“Eh. An enemy, huh? I’m… sorry… for what I did. I wonder where I went wrong… if I was doing the right thing.”

I guess the grip of the White Death on her psyche isn’t foolproof, after all.

“Just tell me something, Marielle.”

“What is it… oh Hero?”

“Are you the Worldbender who brought me to this world? And why me?”

“I am not. I’m just one part of a whole… As for the why… it was an accident.”

“An… accident?”

“We needed a player… any player would suffice. You just so happened to have been the first one who answered the calling. We did not know you had a previous involvement in this world’s creation.”

But what Marielle said triggered warning bells in my mind.

“Wait, did you just say ‘player’?”

“That’s… what Master called you.”

Player. That is the correct name for what I am.

But an NPC shouldn’t know that. No, it couldn’t know that. The true nature of the Arcforge world was forbidden knowledge to the NPCs, and their minds refused to acknowledge it. Even if NPCs had broken through that restriction, they couldn’t have possibility figured that out by themselves. Whatever this White Death source was—whatever its origin—it figured out its true nature, and even managed to force me into coming to this world.

This is bad.

The glitch, or whatever it was, was self-aware. I—no, this entire world—wasn’t safe anymore

However, I never managed to clear those doubts.

“I will leave you with a hint, though… The Worldbender who brought you here is one of the former Dark Generals.”

“One of my generals, eh?” Yzara said with a smirk. “Go figures. Only one of ‘em would have powerful enough Profane Magic to bring someone over from another world.”

“That… is all I know.”

As if her strength decided to leave her right there and then, Marielle closed her eyes and let her body go limp in Fianna’s arms.

“Alrighty then. Now’s time to start the real interrogation.” Yzara cracked her knuckles, as if ready for a fight. “Ya can reset her too, right? Do that, and leave her with me. I’ll keep her contained and extract all the info we can before—”

“Yzara,” I said firmly.

I locked eyes with her—with those yellow, goat-like, demonic eyes that pierced your soul. But I stood my ground.

Marielle might have been our enemy, yes, but resetting her just to then torture her for information felt wrong. No, it was wrong. She was on the verge of death already—the least we could do was to give her some dignity in death. She wasn’t just some NPC we could exploit for information.

And that’s when I noticed how much my thinking had changed. How that contradicted an action I had taken once before.

Give her dignity in death… but I didn’t do that before, did I? Fucking hypocrite.

“Takashi?”

“Sorry. I’m… fine.” I looked up at Yzara again, who still had her eyes firmly on me. “Anyway, you can’t just—”

“No need. I get it,” she said, with a pause leaving her words hanging. “I… let my anger get the better of me for a second there. I’m sorry. To ya too, Fianna.”

“…It’s okay. She… has already passed on.”

Marielle looked peaceful, almost as if she was sleeping. It was a far cry from the maniacal look she had before.

That was probably the best end we could have given her.

* * *

“Fianna! Takashi! Chloe! Are you all okay?!”

“We couldn’t see what was happening with all the mist… what’s going on here?!”

Kiel and Tanney plunged through the mist that still filled the plaza in our direction. When they got to us, they looked around the ridiculous commotion that had happened on the plaza.

A few of the nuns from the Temple of the Seven—those covered head to toe in white robes— came rushing out after the battle was over and were busy assisting the fallen soldiers. Fianna had covered Marielle’s body with a piece of cloth one of the nuns had given her, who then carried her away. I was still recovering from that blow Marielle inflicted on me. And Yzara, well—

“W-Wait, who are y-you?” Tanney asked as soon as she got her eyes on Yzara.

“Ah, well. Cat’s outta bag. I’m the Demon Queen.”

“T-t-t-t-t-the DEMON QUEEN?!” Tanney screamed so loud I couldn’t believe that much sound could come out of such a tiny body. Apparently, the shock was too much for her—she began swaying as if her soul was leaving her body.

“Woah there!” Kiel said as he grabbed Tanney before she collapsed to the ground. “You’re kidding right?”

“No, I really am the Demon Queen.”

“If so, then… you’re our enemy!!”

Kiel seemed about ready for a fight against the Demon Queen one-on-one, but his boss’ voice stopped him.

“Stand down, Keil. She’s… not our enemy.”

“But boss…”

“No buts, Keil. She helped us against Marielle. That’s the end of that.”

“I’m so confused. Where did she come from? Where’s Chloe disappeared to?”

Wait, is this guy… actually that dim?

“Before I forget,” Fianna said, apparently ignoring him. “Here, Takashi.”

Fianna tossed me something that had been in Marielle’s possession.

“My Hero’s Bag…”

“You’ll need that gun, won’t you? Its power is something that can change the world, but… I don’t think anyone else should have it.”

No one else, huh?

“That’s all well and good, but I think we should deal with this mess first.”

Yzara was right. The commotion had finished, and we surely were going to attract curious onlookers to the plaza.

“The plaza and the surrounding area has been totally destroyed. This will take years to rebuild,” Fianna said. “Not to mention whatever lives were lost in the crossfire.”

I instinctively led my hand to my waist. “I can use the Debuggun to restore the buildings. But the lost lives… that’s something I can’t do.”

“I understand. That’s regrettable. I don’t think we can get out of this without revealing Marielle was infected, nor that Yzara was reborn.”

We both glanced at the Demon Queen. “I want to kick the White Death’s butt and restore my throne. But I definitely can’t do that while being chased by both it and humans, too. I can’t let Chloe’s real identity be known. It’s still…convenient,” Yzara said with a wry smirk.

“So, what do you suggest? I’m not about to reset everyone’s memories…”

“Nah, there’s no need.” She showed me a wide grin, one truly befitting the moniker of ‘Demon Queen’. “Guess it’s time I flex my Profane Magic muscle after one hundred years on the run. Time to do some memory wipin’ of my own.”