Eve stood in front of the entrance to a cave, staring into the darkness. There was a rather impressive rumbling coming from within, as two large beasts slumbered. This was the last stop on the monster-collecting errand, and it required she come personally. While Siph and Kirdin were enough to tackle any one of the monsters they had in mind, two at once would be dangerous.

Locating them all had been easier than expected. She had, admittedly, underestimated how powerful something “as strong as a Fenrir” would be. It would appear that there was only one Fenrir in existence, and he reigned as king of all lupine beings. That meant that something that strong would likely end up being the “ruler” of another type of creature. And those were the types of things that Kali liked to keep track of. So, three outings later and they had ended up with three wildly different types of monsters back in the dungeon, and even after she got these last two there would be only one that even vaguely resembled a dog.

That was fine. She was planning to have Carmen and Mae give the monsters some…cosmetic surgery to make whatever she brought back look like puppies anyway, so really this only meant a bit more effort was required. She was sure Mae could figure something out to make their Skills still function, and hopefully even implement a switch that could let them turn the monsters back with minimal effort.

But that was for later. Right now, she had to get these last two monsters. One of them was Fenrir himself, and the other was his mate, Sekhmet. Ironically, Sekhmet was a cat-like monster; according to Kali, the two had met by accident whilst searching for a place to live, and it had been love at first fight. They had apparently fought each other to a standstill, and when they realized they couldn’t kill the other, got to talking it out. One thing led to another, and they’d been together ever since.

There was a slight shift in the rhythm of the rumbling. Taking that as her cue, Eve stepped into the cave. “Up and at ‘em!” She yelled, leaning forward and putting her hands on her hips. “I don’t have all day, so let’s get this over with!”

The rumbling stopped. Eve waited impatiently, and she was soon greeted by the sight of two large figures, easily twice the size of a person, moving silently towards her.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, little one.” The one on the right said in a deep, masculine voice. “Do you know who you’re dealing with?”

Eve looked at her nails. “Fenrir and Sekhmet. Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Easy way you just do whatever I say, I take you home, nobody has to get hurt. Hard way, I beat the snot out of you, and then you do whatever I say.”

The one on the left chuckled. “Can we keep her as a pet, dear? She amuses me.” Her voice was smooth and melodious, calming in a way.

“Anything for you, darling.” Fenrir replied, nuzzling Sekhmet affectionately.

Eve sighed. “Fine, the hard way it is. Before we do battle, let me introduce myself; I am Eve, Queen of Monsters! Now, prepare yourselves!”

Fenrir took a step forward. “I’ll take care of this. Forgive me for being rough, child, but I can see you won’t come quietly.” He opened his mouth and let loose a cone of icy wind, which completely enveloped Eve.

She just activated Zoan’s Barrier and reflected the attack back at him. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t do much. Eve responded with a breath attack of her own, an inordinately large amount of lightning coming from her small mouth and arcing towards Fenrir.

In a flash of motion, Sekhmet was in front of Fenrir, taking the brunt of the attack. “Are you OK, honey? That one would have been dangerous.”

Fenrir grunted. “I’m fine, thanks to you.” He cautiously moved out from behind her, regarding Eve curiously. “It appears we’ll have to go all out.”

The fight was short and one-sided. Eve just kept Zoan’s Barrier up the entire time and physically beat the two into submission. It drained over 50,000 mana, but it was a lot easier and faster than trying to fight them normally, and Eve just didn’t feel like doing that.

“H-how are you so strong?” Fenrir asked. “You’re just a little girl!”

“Appearances are deceiving.” Eve told him, drawing a large circle on the ground. “Now, get in.”

“B-but…” Sekhmet began.

“No buts.” Eve said flatly. “Get in, or I drag you in.”

The two obediently got into the circle, and Eve activated it. Carmen was waiting for them, a service-industry smile on her face. “Ah, Fenrir and Sekhmet, was it? We’ve been waiting for you.” She opened the door that was their entry to the dungeon and motioned inside. “Follow me.”

They hesitated, and Eve prodded them forward. “Come on, I want to go to bed, and I can’t until we finish here.”

Their short trip was silent. Fenrir and Sekhmet were either too afraid to talk or just didn’t want to, Eve saw no reason to say anything, and Carmen was committed to her hostess act. Soon, they were in a large room containing Lilith, Siph, Kirdin, and three enormous beasts. Upon entering, Fenrir turned to Sekhmet and gave a small nod, then leapt towards Eve, while Sekhmet dove at Carmen.

“Don’t just stand there!” Sekhmet yelled. “If all of us fight there’s no way they can take us!”

The assembled beasts apparently decided that just standing there sheepishly was the correct option, and soon both Fenrir and Sekhmet were pinned to the ground, staring daggers at the other animals.

“We already tried that.” One of them, a large boar, said. “When the one who led you here left. The dragons didn’t even need to get involved; the other one was able to deal with all three of us without even breaking a sweat. And, apparently, the two with you are her other bodies and just as strong as she is, so there really wasn’t a chance.”

“Right, right, whatever. Doesn’t matter.” Eve said dismissively. “Now that you’re all here, it’s time for introductions and instructions. I’m Eve, Queen of Monsters. While I haven’t received any of the official abilities or anything yet, I’m going to be your boss. From this point forward, I will tolerate no dissent, got it? Your first infraction I’ll just take one of your limbs. I’ll be putting it back afterwards, but that’s not important. What is important is that it’ll hurt. Further infractions I’ll start taking off more limbs, and if I eventually decide you’re more trouble than you’re worth…”

She trailed off, looking at each of the assembled monsters to make sure they got the message. “Any questions?” She paused for a moment, then added. “And no, questions do not count as dissent. You are fully welcome to question my decisions, so long as you don’t disobey me. If I’m being stupid, I expect you to tell me. That being said, you need to be respectful about it. I’m not going to allow any verbal abuse disguised as criticism.”

There was silence, so she continued. “The one pinning down the cat is named Carmen, and the one who beat up the three of you,” she motioned to the still-standing beasts, “is Lilith. Carmen and I are her alternate personalities, and she’s the one who’s actually in charge around here. If she tells you to do something, you do it, even if it contradicts something I told you to do. And don’t even think about lying about her giving you an order, because we share senses at all times, so it’ll be found out immediately.”

She let Fenrir up, and Carmen did the same for Sekhmet. “You’ll see other people around here, and I expect you to listen to them as well. You’re the bottom of the pecking order around here, so get used to it.”

She patted Fenrir’s back, earning an unhappy look. “In case you don’t know, this guy’s named Fenrir, and the cat over there is his mate, Sekhmet.”

She pointed to the other three. “The boar’s Erymanthos, the bird’s Fenghuang, and the stag’s Cernunnos. Got it?”

There was, once again, silence. “So, now that everyone’s been introduced, it’s time to get to the reason you’re all here. One of my friends has recently become a Beast Tamer, and she’s in need of some beasts that can fight.”

“I see no reason we should have to be under the thumb of–” Cernunnos began but was silenced as Eve was suddenly right in front of him, holding one of his legs. He toppled over unceremoniously, groaning.

“Any other objections?” Eve asked, jamming the leg back onto its stump and applying Kindness’ Kiss to get it back into working order. Once none of the others spoke up, she continued. “As I was saying, she needs beasts that can fight. But, she’s also pretty new to this and unable to handle anything scarier than dogs. Unfortunately, Fenrir over here was the only doggish monster that was strong enough to meet my approval, so I’ve rounded up you all as well. In a few moments here, Carmen, Lilith, and I, will work on making you all look like cute little puppies, so she won’t freak out.”

“Absolutely not!” Fenghuang exclaimed.

She was soon missing a wing. “Look, I can do this all night.” Eve said. “I don’t want to, but I can. And if you keep me from getting sleep because you’re too stubborn to realize you don’t have any choice but to do what I say, then I’m going to get annoyed. And I don’t think any of you really want me to be annoyed. Besides, it’s not like any of you will have any real differences to how strong you are. You’ll get to keep all your old abilities, and for Fenghuang we’ll work out an alternate form of flight. This just means that people will be underestimating you more, and that’s an advantage, got it?”

Eve stopped talking momentarily to reattach the wing before resuming her speech. “Not that you’re allowed to use any of those outside of emergency situations. You have to limit yourself to what a normal adolescent monster wolf thing would be able to do. Otherwise, your cover would be blown almost immediately and that’s my hard work down the drain. Before any of that, though, you all have to officially become my subordinates. I’m going to be giving you a benefits package that’ll help keep your true nature under wraps. So, line up, and don’t make me take any more of your limbs.”

A short couple of contracts later and Eve was ready to begin handing out her “benefits packages”. They each took a hefty sum of mana, but Eve took the excuse to draw Mana from the beasts themselves to fuel it. She hadn’t used any of her subordinate’s Mana in a while, having not needed to since she got the system, but it brought her back to the distant past that was a couple of months ago, when she depended on that Mana just to get by.

Ruminations on Mana aside, she was rather proud of the little Skill she had been able to put together. Aside from the identification obscuring effects, she was able to put some extras in there. And those extras came courtesy of Fluffy; it seemed that the dog Racial Class got a lot of Skills that increased the comfort of its life as a pet, and Fluffy apparently had chosen quite a few of those.

After she had given all the animals that Skill, she set to work making them look like puppies. She had to remove a few more limbs before they all got the point and let it happen, but aside from that it went smoothly. Erymanthos and Cernunnos both ended up with golden coats, Fenghuang got a brown one, and Sekhmet received a black to compliment Fenrir’s white.

After everyone else left, Eve surveyed the humiliated beasts. “Alright, I’m going to bed. You all stay here; if you leave, I’ll have to give you an extra harsh punishment for waking me up. So, take some time to perfect your act, because if any of you end up scaring Anna, you’ll be due for some…re-education. And if you thought what I did now was bad, just you wait.” And with that she too left the room, leaving the animals alone.

She did, however, make sure to catch Lilith on her way to bed. “I’m going to extend your time limit for deciding on the new Parallel, given we’ve had a busy night. This is a one-time thing, though, got it? I’ll need an answer before you go to bed tomorrow, and don’t think you’ll be able to worm your way out of giving one, because you won’t, got it?”

Lilith nodded. “Yeah, I got it.”

Anna wasn’t sure quite what to expect when she got back to Lilith’s place, but five completely harmless-looking puppies certainly wasn’t it. They were just…sitting obediently in a line, regarding her with a curious expression. Still, she wasn’t going to let her guard down yet; Fluffy was shaking, hiding behind her legs as best he could, and that could only really mean that these weren’t normal puppies.

“Let me introduce you to your new minions!” Eve said happily, walking over to the puppies. They all stiffened slightly at her approach, but she didn’t seem to take notice. “They’re weak monsters, yes, but they’re smart ones and I’ve made sure they know not to give you any trouble. If they do, tell me and I’ll make sure they’re properly disciplined.”

One of the puppies visibly flinched at that. Did she want to know why?

Eve continued, pretending not to notice the dog’s distress. “They’re smart enough to understand whatever you say, and once you get to a high enough level, you’ll probably be able to communicate telepathically with them, and they’ll be able to hold full conversations with you. The downside of this is that they already have names, so you can’t pick new ones, but that’s a minor thing.”

She patted a golden dog at the end of the line. “This is Erymanthos, and the guy next to him is Cernunnos. The pretty little lady with the brown fur is Fenghuang, and the tough guy in white is Fenrir. Finally, the classy girl in black is Sekhmet. She and Fenrir are a couple and this species mates for life, so don’t let Fluffy get any ideas about her.”

Anna doubted he would. He seemed too scared out of his mind to be romantically interested in any of these “dogs”. Also, what was up with those names? That really wasn’t a point in favor of them being “weak” monsters, but she supposed monster naming culture wouldn’t adhere to her expectations.

“So, go ahead and contract them!” Eve said. “They won’t try to fight back at all, so you shouldn’t have to worry about your two-monster limit. Heck, just go ahead and contract them all at once. Won’t make a difference.”

Anna hesitantly walked over to the puppies and activated her Skill. Almost immediately, even faster than it had been with Fluffy, she was notified that the five of them were under her control.

And then she hit max level in her Class. And her Skill hit max level too. Fluffy had given her maybe 30 experience in the Skill, and barely 70 in the Class. These were definitely not “weak” monsters.

“Eve.” She said flatly.

“Y-yes?” Eve asked nervously.

“Why did I get so much experience when I tamed them?”

“Uh…they’re higher level than you, and you did a bunch at once?”

“I had a total level of 52, Eve. Are you saying that “weak” monsters are that strong?”

Eve’s eyes darted around. “Well, monster levels are different than people levels, since they don’t have Classes or anything…”

“I’m not buying it, Eve.”

Eve groaned. “Ok, fine, they’re actually a little tougher than you. I just wanted to make sure you were safe if you ran into any other monsters. But they won’t cause any trouble, right, Fenrir?” She glared at Fenrir, who paused, then rolled onto his back in a pose of submission.

Anna absentmindedly bent down and started scratching his belly, and he nearly melted underneath her touch, a blissful expression creeping across his face. “No need to be so harsh with them, Eve. They didn’t do anything.”

Sekhmet was giving Fenrir a very disapproving look. Was she upset that he was getting attention when she wasn’t? Anna started scratching behind Sekhmet’s ears as well, and the disapproving expression went away, replaced with one of pure pleasure.

She shouldn’t be able to get such clear readings on the expressions of dogs she just met, right? Did that also have to do with her Class?

“Well, at least you can talk with them now.” Eve said, obviously trying to change the subject.

“What?” Anna asked, turning to look at Eve.

“I told you you’d get the ability to do so once you leveled up, and I just got that Skill out of nowhere, so it must’ve been from you.”

Anna checked and, sure enough, she had just gotten a Skill that would allow her to communicate telepathically with tamed beasts that were within 50 feet of her.

Fluffy? She ventured, looking at the dog.

Mistress! Scary! Help!

Poor guy. She’d have to properly introduce him to the other “dogs” later and see if she couldn’t get him to calm down.

Can the rest of you hear me?

Loud and clear, boss. Erymanthos said. She wasn’t sure how she knew it was Erymanthos, but she had to guess that was the Skill doing its work.

No problems here. Fenghuang added.

Yeah, I hear you. Cernunnos replied.

A-a little to the left, mistress! Fenrir cried. No, not my left, your left! Y-yeah, that’s the spot. His leg started kicking wildly as she scratched the indicated area.

And all she got from Sekhmet was a contented sigh.

“Excellent work, you’ll get the hang of them in no time!” Eve said, “Now, as their master, you should be able to view their status, so go try that out.”

When Anna did, there were a couple of things she wanted to comment on. First, the animals just had the “dog” Racial Class, which she didn’t buy for a second. Then, the “dogs” were all lower-leveled than her, which was obviously false considering Eve had already told Anna otherwise. And to top it all off, their stats were roughly similar to Fluffy’s, despite being, apparently, tougher than she was.

But she chose to let it go. She probably wouldn’t get more from Eve, and more importantly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know more. “Alright, done.”

“So, um, that’s all I need you for right this second.” Eve said, awkwardly glancing around. “Carmen wants to see you in her room, though, so just leave the dogs with me. I’ll make sure to get Fluffy all introduced.”

That…would be fine, right? Ah well, if things got out of hand, she was sure Lilith would step in. Well, Eve was Lilith, so didn’t that mean she had already stepped in to help? The rest of her short walk was spent trying to puzzle out that little conundrum, and the conclusion she came to was that it would be more akin to paying only partial attention to something and then choosing to give full attention to it than it would be to stepping in to help someone else.

She hesitated a moment before knocking on Carmen’s door.

“Come in!” Carmen said.

Anna let herself in and closed the door behind her. “So, I’m assuming this is about the whole sheep girl thing?”

Carmen nodded. “Now that you’ve had some time to think about it, what are you going to do?”

Anna gulped. “I…I’m going to go through with it. I feel like with all the crazy things going on that if I want it to be overlooked, now would be the best time. Some people might make a bit of a fuss, but I think overall it’ll just sorta fade into the background.”

“That’s fair enough. What requests do you have for your appearance? Even aside from sheep girl traits, you’ve basically got free, riskless cosmetic surgery at your disposal right now.”

“Not going to lie, that’s pretty tempting, but I think I prefer to keep the rest of me as-is. It doesn’t really sit right – like I’m cheating or something. But, um, I think I’d like wool around my ankles and wrists, and then decently long, curly horns. Oh, and the tail too, I guess. White if possible, because that’s…I dunno, the most iconic?”

“Got it. Now, come over here. I’ll do your tail and then let you sit while I do the rest.”

Anna complied. It felt…tingly. But not in a bad way; the areas Carmen passed over felt energized, like just those parts had received a good night’s rest. And, when Carmen finished, the effect spread out to the rest of her body. She was surprised with how fast the process had been, having taken at most five minutes.

Carmen offered a hand to Anna, helping pull her off the bed. “How do you feel?” She asked, giving Anna an appraising look. Seemingly satisfied, she nodded to herself.

“Great, actually.” Anna said. “Better than before I started, anyway. Is there a mirror or something around? I want to see my new look.”

Carmen snapped her fingers, and a mirror with a sheet covering it appeared in front of them. “Two reasons for that.” She said, swatting Anna’s hand when she reached to take off the sheet. “First, getting a second Racial Class bumped your stats slightly. Second, when I finished the transformation, your cells were reinvigorated as a side-effect of adjusting to fit the new you. Perk of the process.”

Anna withdrew her hand, pouting. “Why all the theatrics? You didn’t have to snap to make the mirror either, did you? You’re just having fun teasing me, aren’t you!”

Carmen chuckled, raising her hands. “Guilty as charged.” Then, before Anna could move to take the sheet off, Carmen yanked it off herself, leaving Anna to look at the new her.

And she had to admit, Carmen did a fantastic job. There was enough wool to be noticeable, but not enough to really get in the way of her clothes, and even her regular hair had been made ever so slightly fluffier. The horns, too, were big enough to be eye catching, but small enough that they wouldn’t get in the way of her day-to-day life.

In short, it was everything she had hoped for. “Wow.” She breathed, looking herself over again in the mirror. “Just…wow.”

Carmen smirked. “Another satisfied customer. You want to check yourself out longer or go back to the dogs? Eve’s finished getting them introduced to Fluffy, so she’s ready whenever.”

Well, at least everything seemed to have gone fine on that end. Probably. There was still a chance Fluffy had some permanent mental scars after the encounter. “Yeah, I better go check in on that. Thanks a million, Carmen!”

“Don’t mention it. Have fun with your new pets.”

And with that, Anna left Carmen to do…whatever Carmen had been doing before Anna came up. She made sure to be as speedy as possible on her way back; she had to tell herself that if anything really bad had happened, Carmen probably would have mentioned it. But there was always the “what if”.

When she got back, she saw Fluffy interacting with the dogs like he’d never been afraid of them. And, for their part, the dogs seemed to do whatever Fluffy wanted. At this point, Fluffy noticed her and bounded over, licking her new wool happily.

But…was that blood on the floor? Eve stepped over it, cutting off her line of sight. “You look like a proper minion of the Queen of Monsters now!” She said, eyes twinkling. “I approve wholeheartedly!” She had paused for a moment before continuing on towards Anna, leaving behind a completely clean spot.

Yeah, there had totally been blood there. It was…probably best not to comment. “So…what now?” She asked, tearing her eyes away from the clean floor.

“Until Jameson’s ready to come over, it’s just going to be bonding time with the dogs. Might as well make sure everyone’s all nice and used to each other before we get into any fights together.”

And so, they spent a relatively peaceful half-hour just playing with the dogs. Perhaps this wouldn’t be too bad after all.

Fighterman481

Hey it's me, posting early today because...well, today's been busy and I felt like posting now instead of later. Anyway, I'm not sure how well-known of a term it is, but, for people who don't know, puppy mills are a place where people just breed dogs as fast as possible to sell the puppies. The term also implies poor treatment of the dogs in general, so it's pretty negative.

So, Anna is now unknowingly carrying around enough firepower to destroy a small country at almost all times. Was this Eve's intention? No. Is Eve going to stubbornly stick to her original "on the power level of a fenrir"? You better believe it.

The names are all mythologically based, if people were wondering. Fenrir is a staple in a lot of fantasy novels, originally coming from norse mythology. Sekhmet is the name of an Egyptian goddess, often depicted as a lioness and closely associated with cats. Erymanthos is based off of the Erymanthian Boar that Heracles captured in his twelve labors, and because Erymanthian seems like a lame name I just named it Erymanthos, coming from the name of the mountain it lived on (and also where the name Erymanthian comes from, if you hadn't guessed). Fenghuang are a type of mythological bird from China, known as the ruler of all birds (according to wikipedia, anyway). Cernunnos was a god in Celtic mythology, strongly associated with stags.

This is going to be the last of our sort of focus chapters on Eve, next chapter we're going to have some other characters tackle some other problems, including the long-awaited question of "will we have a new Parallel?", so that's going to be exciting!

Anyway, have a happy whatever holiday you choose to celebrate, stay safe, and, as always, thanks for reading!