Chapter 33: Changing Lives
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Lilith sighed in relief as she finished the last of her preparations. It was only around fifteen minutes before her meeting with the world leaders, and to say she was nervous would be an understatement. As much as Kali tried to drill into her that she was someone really important now, it had never quite sunk in, and the prospect of basically telling so many powerful people what to do was daunting.

She settled into the chair she had made, and Mae began to snake tendrils of flesh down through it and into the floor. The room was designed on top of a large, empty space meant for storing all of Eldritch Abomination's mass, with small channels reaching through the whole room to make sure just about anything was within a couple of feet of her flesh at all times.

It was grotesque, but it was effective. It allowed her to take advantage of the massive amount of extra HP she would get from her mass, while mitigating the downside of having all that mass out, namely the fact that it would hamper movement to an extreme degree. She was basically tethered to the chair, but she shouldn’t actually need to even stand up to deal with any of problems that might arise.

For this meeting, anyway. With everyone as weak as they were at the moment, she should be able to handle them even if they all rushed her at once. The only real threats at the meeting would be the other Perfect Chimeras in attendance. Kali had informed her that the system’s ‘catch up’ experience boost scaled according to how strong one was previously, and the other Perfect Chimeras were strong. Still, Lilith had a month’s head start and several rather unfair abilities on them, so she should be fine. Probably.

It took roughly ten minutes to finish getting all her mass out. Getting the large chamber filled was the fast part. She had left a lot of wiggle room for when her stock of mass would inevitably grow further, so putting all of the few thousand kilograms she had into the chamber wasn’t a big deal. The main time-sink was filling all of the small tunnels with tendrils in a way that wasn’t massively uncomfortable. Once that was done, she nodded at satisfaction at her nearly tripled HP, and settled down to wait.

Another tense few minutes, and the mass teleport Kali set up went off, transporting a large variety of the world’s most powerful people right in front of her. And, it was at this point that Kali began her broadcast, sending a live video of the meeting to everyone not in this room, translated into their native language. And, for those that were asleep or busy, she arranged for the video to be available once they were done. She also intended to upload it to the internet by the end of the day. Kali wanted to make sure this was seen, that everyone knew what went down here.

She gave the assembled people a few moments to read the prompt they would have been given upon entering her dungeon and told them to take a seat. She wasn’t particularly surprised when several people refused. She put on her best displeased voice and asked again for them to sit. Elenoa, of course, sassed her, asking for a reason. Kali had instructed her to not take any of this sort of thing from anyone, so she decided to give threaten Elenoa.

This time, Elenoa jumped straight to violence, instructing Winston to “take her out”. Kali had briefly explained the temperaments of Winston and Isa to her before the meeting, and Winston seemed particularly troublesome. Kali had chosen him as a Perfect Chimera for his strong sense of loyalty and duty. Unfortunately, Elenoa had saved his life after a particularly nasty injury in the war, and that same sense of duty led him to devote himself to helping her and her faction out.

And the attack he let off hurt. Mae immediately clamped down control of the nerves, preventing her from flinching as the attack hit. Even with her defensive stats (which were over 20,000 thanks to Pride’s Palace), the attack did almost one hundred damage, and Winston still had a sizeable chunk of Mana left. Of course, defense had diminishing returns the larger it was than the incoming attack, but it was still impressive to deal even that much against her. Mae made sure it was a visible chunk of the body that was blown off, and then shifted some of the mass away from the lump below them and reabsorbed the pieces that fell. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t necessary, but she figured that it would work as an intimidation tactic.

As retaliation, Lilith let a non-lethal Geas loose on Winston, fueling it with her own stats instead of Worship, as she wasn’t hurting for any of them at the moment. She had some limited control over the message given as well, so he ended up receiving something like this:

The High Arbiter has commanded you sit and cease all hostile action for the duration of the meeting. If you do not, you will take 5,000 non-lethal damage, leaving you at 1 HP if it would otherwise kill you. You will also lose 5,000 Mana and Stamina.

At this point, his maximum HP was around 3,000, so it was overkill, but she felt that a show of force here was warranted. Winston, likely thinking she was using some sort of magic to trick him, chose to remain standing. The moment he did, nearly all of his HP vanished, and he received another Geas, her second for the day. She only had one left, but that was all she really needed to deal with any further trouble.

The High Arbiter once again commands you to sit and cease all hostile action for the duration of the meeting. If you do not do so, you will be dealt 5,000 lethal damage.

Winston sat. Elenoa looked like she was going to try something, but Isa wisely made her sit as well. Kali said that Isa was the most pragmatic of the other Perfect Chimeras, and was really only loosely aligned with the Protectorate. She worked for herself first, and for the time being was working with the Protectorate as it offered her the most benefits. And for her, that was stuff to fight. The defenses around Haven were weak in the beginning, so Kali had made a Perfect Chimera out of someone that would be suitable for near-constant fighting. And, it had worked. Isa was half the reason the cities of Haven hadn’t simply fallen apart by now.

Still, Kali had made it known that there was almost no chance Lilith would get out of this without at least having a friendly match with her, and Isa didn’t look like she was about to disappoint. Despite her words to Elenoa, Lilith could tell that she was already excited.

And so, the meeting continued. Elenoa, of course, tried to make trouble the moment she opened the floor for questions. It was nothing too upsetting or even anything that bad or unreasonable until she tried to threaten Lilith.

“Need I remind you that your family and friends are currently under our protection? Surely something could be done to make them…more comfortable.”

Lilith was expecting this, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. Still, this was an opportunity for her. She let her eyes rest on Gabriel for a moment and let some of the rage she was feeling show in her disposition.

And, to her slight surprise, she was mad. She hadn’t been really angry in…a long time, but this did the trick. She hated the fact that her loved ones were being used against her, people who were uninvolved in all of this until Elenoa decided that their rights were invalid, simply because they were close to Lilith.

As expected, Elenoa picked up on her movement and had Winston look into it. Winston had the ability to rip open just about anything, so opening up Gabriel’s pocket dimension should…probably be within his skillset.

“It does not need to be a threat if you care enough about them.” Elenoa said, altogether too smug for Lilith’s liking.

“That is extortion.” Lilith replied. “I will give you lenience now, as I had not yet explained, but be warned that attempting to bribe me, blackmail me, or otherwise unethically influence my judgement is a capital offense. My word is considered law.” She hoped Elenoa wouldn't press her any further; she really didn't want to kill anyone if she didn't have to, and that would make for bad press after having just revealed herself to the world.

And then, just as she’d hoped, Winston forced Gabriel’s space open, depositing the hostages unceremoniously on the ground. Lilith waved her hand for effect, activating a teleporter trap she had designed for the occasion. It was connected to one of her flesh tendrils, and she was able to manipulate it to catch only the people she wanted. It deposited them in a room deep within the dungeon, where a powerful sleep trap instantly activated, putting them out of commission for the next few hours, giving her more than enough time to deal with the situation at hand.

The rest of the meeting went about as smoothly as Lilith could have hoped for. She made sure to place a Watch on any potential troublemakers, including Elenoa, anyone from the Society, a few of the less scrupulous leaders from Earth, and Winston.

Isa waited until Lilith had finished talking with everyone, and then approached. She was a tall woman, just over seven feet tall, every inch of her seemed as packed with muscle as it could get. Her skin was tanned, and she kept her black hair short. Lilith couldn’t quite place what species she was originally, but that didn’t really matter to Lilith anyway.

“Hey, newbie.” Isa said casually. “Name’s Isa, heard of me?”

Lilith nodded. “Of course.”

Isa looked past Lilith, locking eyes with Kali. “And I suppose you were the old lady who changed me, right?” She snorted. “Funny to think that you’ve been right there all this time and I didn’t even know.” She didn’t wait for Kali to answer, focusing on Lilith again. “I’m going to cut to the chase. I want a fight. Nothing major, just a friendly bout to test your mettle.”

She looked over to Kali again. “You’ll be the judge. Make sure I don’t kill her, alright?”

Lilith sighed internally, putting on her best tough front. She snorted, cracking her knuckles. “I don’t think it’s me dying you should be worried about. Besides, you presume a lot when I haven’t formally accepted. I suppose I’ll need to teach you some manners.”

Isa grinned. “Ooh, feisty. I like it. When we doing this?”

Lilith surveyed the assembled people. “Any further discussion is finished. You’re dismissed.”

On cue, Kali teleported them all, save Isa, away.

“Right now.” Lilith said, standing up. “But, first, how much would you like me to go easy? You couldn’t touch me at full strength.”

Isa rolled her eyes. “Kid, I’ve been fighting for centuries. Don’t get cocky, you’ll need that “full strength” to even get close to beating me.”

Lilith shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She said, using her last Geas.

The High Arbiter demands you concede victory to her. If you do not, you will take 7,500 non-lethal damage, leaving you at 1 HP if it would otherwise kill you.

“Look, I don’t concede to anyone. If you think–“ Isa cut off, dropping down to a knee as all her HP vanished in an instant. The 5,000 HP Geas she had used on Winston wouldn’t have worked here, as Isa’s HP maximum was already pushing 7,000. Her stamina and mana weren’t as high as Winston, but if you compared the overall size of the health, mana, and stamina of the two, Isa would probably win out.

“Fine. I’ll give you that. Let’s do a real fight. No cheap instant-kills. Just…give me a minute to regenerate.” She panted.

“No need for that.” Lilith said, healing her back to her full capacity with Kindness’ Kiss. It barely even dented her mana pool now, so she doubted it would have an impact on the fight.

Isa raised an eyebrow. “Well color me impressed. You might actually be able to walk the walk.”

Lilith stood up, stretching a little. “Are you sure you don’t want me to hold back? I’m telling you now that in this place I’m close to invincible. I’m reasonably sure any one of my attacks would end the fight immediately.”

“I just don’t have to get hit then. Now, come on! I’ll let you have the first move!”

Just a flick with intent to fight should do the trick, mistress. Mae said. When she ignored your Geas, Righteous Indignation activated, so we effectively have 49,632 Power right now. I’d be surprised if she could dodge, given our speed is totaling 35,662 against her. Really, any more than this would probably kill her, so be gentle.

Lilith nodded. “Alright. Go ahead and move to the center of the room, we’ll get started.” The layout of the room shifted, desks and benches folding into the ground and leaving small holes while the elevated area they were standing on made itself level with the rest of the room. It had cost a small chunk of Mana and DP to set the room up so it could do this, but Lilith had decided it was worth it. Cover benefited her opponents more than her, as it provided ways to dodge, or at least soften the impact of, her attacks.

Isa smirked, heading over to the center of the room. “Neat trick. Alright, ready?”

“Yup. Here I come!” And, in a blur, she was at Isa’s side, a fleshy tendril connecting her to the ground where her chair originally was. Isa was unable to react as Lilith flicked her, sending her skidding back a few yards, subtracting over 4,000 HP in the process. “Look, the fact of the matter is, I’ve got way higher stats than you in this place. It's not even a contest. If you want a real fight, you’ll need me to deactivate some of my abilities. That’ll put me at the level I would be at if I was somewhere random. It’ll be more fair that way.”

Isa grunted. “Point taken. I’m not an idiot, so we’ll call it a do-over. This isn’t satisfying for either of us.”

Lilith healed her back up with Kindness’ Kiss. “Would you like me to fight with the terrain advantage like I currently have, or would you prefer it was really like we just met in a random field somewhere?” She asked.

“Provided it’s not some instant-kill crap, I’d like the challenge.”

“That’s doable.” Lilith said, returning to her original position. “Mind giving me a moment to prepare, then? If you want me to have the terrain advantage, I’d like you to have the full experience.”

Isa raised an eyebrow. “I’ll wait.”

The holes in the floor widened, and Lilith’s flesh burbled out, spreading across the ground and hardening into carapace. In the process, she picked up several guns she left in the large chamber below, creating small pockets of flesh to hold them where the holes originally were. Soon, the process was finished, and the floor was coated in a thin layer of unbroken black carapace.

Isa knelt down and knocked on the ground, nodding in approval. Unable to resist, Lilith formed a small fist from the ground near Isa and knocked on her shoes. Isa chuckled, straightening up. “Well, you ready?”

Lilith activated Advanced Suppression, targeting Pride’s Palace, Humble Abode, and Righteous Indignation. “Yes. Since you let me move first last time, I suppose it’s only fair that you go first now.”

Isa smiled. “Very well then.” Suddenly, she was in the middle of a swirling vortex of dust and small rocks, obscuring her from vision.

But not touch. A multitude of grasping hands reached up from the floor, attempting to grab onto Isa, who jumped into the air. Lilith left control of her mass of flesh to Mae, who immediately brought up the guns from their hiding place, taking only a moment to aim before snapping a few shots off into the air.

They missed. Mae hadn’t missed in weeks, even in worse conditions than this. She was usually able to use Eye of Laplace to figure out where a target would be with near-perfect accuracy, and she was even better at aiming at targets who weren’t on the ground.

And she missed. Lilith prepared a homing spell, creating several heat-seeking organs to better locate her in the cloud of debris that seemed to be growing larger, in both the size of the cloud and the size of the debris contained within. Lilith could only guess that Isa was somehow making the debris herself, as none of the floor or walls had been damaged enough to produce this much stuff.

The heat in the cloud was all over the place. Patches of cold and hot popping up at seemingly random spots with no gradient between; one moment it was burning, the next it was freezing. There were several vaguely humanoid spots in the cloud that Lilith could sense, moving around at random.

Unable to find a decent target, she canceled the homing spell, opting for a wide-area breath attack courtesy of a gaping maw she opened beneath the cloud. Acid sprayed out, dissolving much of the debris and clipping Isa as she hurtled out of the cloud, coming out at a steep downwards angle. Just before she fell into the waiting hands below, a half-melted rock careened out of the cloud, slamming into Isa and sending her flying off sideways.

Despite the battering, Isa’s HP had only dipped down by 400 or so points, and she let off a barrage of spells, each flying in a seemingly random direction. They careened off of any available surface, including each other, bouncing around unpredictably, but always in a way that sent them closer to Lilith.

Lilith activated Zoan’s Barrier, a sheet of magic covering all her exposed flesh, including the floor. The spells were immediately reflected back towards Isa, sent back in a straight line towards her position.

Instead of bouncing off of each other like before, the spells merged into a large blob, and Isa easily dodged, pulled upwards by some unseen force. Lilith hastily swapped Zoan’s Barrier from reflection to absorption, restoring a not inconsiderable portion of mana as the spell-ball was absorbed.

Belatedly, Lilith activated Horrid Fascination and Aura of the Arbiter. It didn’t seem to do much, and Lilith wasn’t particularly surprised. Isa almost certainly had something that let her resist mental effects.

Mae, look through her Skills and nab us something using Envious Elevation. Copy, don’t steal, just get us the two most useful. Lilith instructed, letting loose a volley of homing spells, each faithfully following Isa as she swerved unpredictably through the air.

Isa plunged back into the cloud, which had stabilized in size following the blast of acid and her exit. Moments later, she re-emerged, trailed by only one or two spells. They hit her (dealing another few hundred damage), and instead of falling or changing direction, the impact seemed to make her speed up, hurtling towards Lilith, a large rock in hand. More spells flew out from Isa, and Lilith responded by just throwing up Zoan’s Barrier again, reflecting the spells.

Got them! Mae said. I got the one that lets her bounce her spells off of each other, as well as proficiency in gravity manipulation.

Gunshots rang out as Isa dodged her own spells, and she was the recipient of four or five square hits, deducting twenty-five hundred HP as the shots landed. Undeterred, she brought the rock down hard on Lilith.

Who hadn’t yet dropped Zoan’s Barrier. The rock shattered as the impact was transferred back to Isa, and she flew backwards, another thousand or so HP lost. Lilith then used Kindness Kiss’ ability to absorb HP, drawing a last 1,000 HP from Isa and leaving her with only around 150 left.

“That’s enough.” Kali said. Lilith walked forwards, the floor covering flooding back into the holes as she did. She grasped Isa’s hand and pulled her up, healing her once again with Kindness’ Kiss.

“Well, kid, you got me.” She said, grinning. “I want a rematch when I’m at full strength, though. How can I get in contact with you?”

Lilith shrugged. “Well, if you’re all right with it, I could hook you up as one of my Champions, which would give me the ability to hear your thoughts that are directed at me, as well as allow me to make a telepathic link with you whenever I want. I’d be able to give you some extra abilities, too.”

“And the catch?” Isa asked warily.

“I get a copy of all your abilities, save Unique or Exclusive ones.”

Isa shook her head. “No offense, but I don’t want to give my hard work away like that. Any other way?”

“Here, put in your phone number.” Kali said, handing her phone over to Isa. “Give me a text and I’ll get the two of you in contact. Oh, and feel free to just text me whenever. I’m always up for a chat.”

Isa raised an eyebrow but entered her number anyway. “Alright then. Don’t expect much random chatting, though.”

“Yeah, I figured, just thought I’d put that out there.” Kali said, taking her phone back and sending Isa a text. “Anyway, you need anything else or can we send you home now?”

“Yeah, I’m good. I’m itching to go level up anyway, so go ahead. Later!”

Lilith and Kali said goodbye, and then Kali sent Isa back, before turning to Lilith. “Alright, you wanna go wake everyone up?”

Lilith nodded. “Yup. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go keep watch over things. Come say hi when you’re done, alright?”

“Can do.” Lilith replied, and went to go reunite with her family and friends.

Hey hey, it's me! So, in the poll it was pretty clear that people want me to keep doing author's notes, so here we are!

I'm...less happy with this chapter than I thought I would be. As I was posting, I realized that it seemed really choppy and it just didn't really flow right. I blame part of that on trying to skip past events that would be redundant while trying to make it clear they happened, but it still seems a little off. I fixed it up a bit, but it's still...iffy. Let me know what you all think, it might just be me - I'm kind of out of it, had a long day at work and then just did like 4 hours of homework, so I'm a little fried lol.

I've also got to apologize somewhat for the combat scene. It's one of my first tries really writing combat, so I'm not 100% sure how well it turned out. I chose to keep damage values outside of windows, since a window doesn't actually appear when dealing or taking damage, any of that seen is from Lilith's analysis type abilities or checking her own status.

Still, I think I'm happy with the broad strokes of how Isa fights. Anyone have any guesses what her main tactic is? Hopefully I gave enough hints without being too explicit, but it's easier to see things when you know what's happening so they could be pretty obscure for all I can tell.

Anyway, not much more to say on this chapter. Next chapter is going to be almost completely new content, so I'm hoping it won't have the choppiness issue I had with this chapter. We'll be looking more at the facilities Lilith's set up, as well as Lilith and Kali's conversation about their relationship, so look forward to it!

As always, thanks for reading!

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