Lysandra looked at Lilith, her blue eyes flashing with amusement mixed with a touch of superiority as she watched her Monarch feast on the fruit with such human joy.
"You forget who we are, Lilith," Lysandra said, stepping toward a bush and plucking a fruit with slow grace before sliding it between her lips. "As Succubi, we do not need traditional food to sustain our lives. Our true fuel - the essence that drives our bodies and our magic - is the energy of desire. Fruits are merely... a pleasant addition of flavor."
Lilith felt the blood rush to her cheeks. The mention of "feeding on essence" once again made her feel uneasy in her new body. She opened her mouth to snap back, perhaps to toss a witty retort to hide her embarrassment, but suddenly both of them froze.
From a thick patch of berry bushes just a few meters ahead, a strange, tall shape emerged. It was a bird, its silhouette resembling an ostrich but with a much more powerful build. Its most striking features were its unnaturally large, muscular feet ending in thick talons, and a short, hooked beak that looked like a tool for tearing through tough stalks.
[BIG-FOOT BIRD]
Level 1: Normal Creature
Characteristics: A specialist runner, capable of overtaking a human master in short bursts.
Weapon: Sharp beak and powerful kicks.
Threat: Lacks special skills. No threat to the Host.
Before Lilith could even think of issuing a command, a white blur cut through the air. Lysandra moved with a speed the human eye couldn't register. There was a short, dry whistle of sliced air, followed by a wet crunch.
Lysandra's white talons passed through the bird's neck like a hot knife through butter. The creature's head, severed with a single precise cut, fell and rolled across the moss. A fountain of dark blood erupted from the limp torso, staining the green leaves scarlet.
[ NOTIFICATION: YOU HAVE KILLED A BIG-FOOT BIRD. GOLD +1! ]
Lilith stared at the twitching carcass with wide eyes. She saw the blood, smelled its metallic tang, and saw the dead, glassy eye of the bird lying in the mud. Lysandra stood calmly beside it, flicking the remnants of gore from her snow-white talons with a flick of her wrist, as if she had just performed the most routine task in the world.
Why? flashed through Lilith's mind, her pupils dilating in sudden shock. Why do I feel absolutely nothing at such a macabre sight? As a human, I'd probably be vomiting in terror, screaming, running... but now?
She looked at the dead ostrich-thing, and the only thing she felt was a cold, almost predatory contempt for such a weak creature. It was a terrifying discovery. The transformation into the Primordial Succubus Monarch wasn't just physical; the system had scraped her soul, adjusting her mentality to a new, higher form of being.
Her human empathy had been shoved into the furthest corner, replaced by the instinct of an apex predator. Lilith felt no disgust toward killing because, to her new nature, the death of the weak was the natural order of things - as obvious as breathing.
While other Demon King races, like orcs or trolls, felt an almost physical need for constant combat and bloodshed, Lilith's race was programmed differently. She didn't feel a bloodlust, but she felt a growing, subconscious hunger of another kind - an instinctive need for dominance and the acquisition of the energy of desire, which in this new reality was the only thing truly worth craving.
"That was... fast," Lilith said, her voice unnaturally steady, devoid of a tremor.
Lysandra glanced at her, wiping the last drop of blood on a leaf. "It is merely game, Lilith. It exists to feed us and provide the means for our growth. Do not waste energy on pity for something that has less wit than the stone it tripped over."
Lilith nodded, accepting this new, brutal part of herself. She looked at the gold notification. One coin. It was little, but it was a start.
"If this gives gold, it means this whole forest is a mine," Lilith muttered, her red eyes igniting. "Lysandra, call Kala and Mina. Since we're here anyway, let's turn this forest into our first larder and treasury."
Over the next two hours, the Darkness Woods became an arena of methodical slaughter. Lilith's field of vision was repeatedly flooded by cascades of system notifications that, in this new reality, sounded almost like the soothing music of progress.
[ YOU HAVE KILLED A BIG-FOOT BIRD. GOLD +1! ]
[ YOU HAVE KILLED A BIG-FOOT BIRD. GOLD +1! ]
[ YOU HAVE KILLED A UNICORN-DEER. GOLD +2! ]
[ YOU HAVE KILLED A FOREST WOLF. GOLD +4! ]
Everything that moved in the thicket fell under the Succubi's strikes. Even the Forest Wolves - which were larger than Earth's greatest predators and possessed teeth that could crush boulders - couldn't even scratch Lilith's marbled skin, let alone Kala's or Mina's. Lilith paused for a moment, leaning her hand against a tree trunk, and looked to her right.
Kala, in her full, predatory form with her chest proudly thrust out and her massive wings flared, was currently chasing a strange, terrified forest ape. The warrior bared her fangs in a wild grin, her eyes burning with excitement. "Run, little snack! I love it when my gold tries to resist!" she shouted hoarsely, lunging forward with a speed that turned her into a red blur.
Lilith smiled crookedly, remembering Lysandra's words. Indeed, they can be serious in their own way... if absolute joy in the hunt counts as seriousness. She shifted her gaze to Mina. The small Succubus, despite her apparent sweetness and petite frame, moved between the branches with terrifying agility. She used her green wings for short, violent leaps, striking her talons into the necks of the ostrich-like birds with surgical precision.
We are incredibly strong... Lilith thought, furrowing her brow. We're mowing down this forest like common grass, and we just got here.
The explanation was simple: Lilith was a Rare Demon King. Even without her Talents unlocked, her very bloodline - despite being a Succubus, which wasn't a combat class - and her base stats meant that her strength, and the strength of her direct subordinates, rivaled monsters of Lord-class or higher at the same level. For such beings, a mere forest wolf was just a statistic in the menu.
After two hours of intense exploration, Lilith reviewed the summary. Even after accounting for the space taken by gathered herbs and fruits, her counter showed 240 gold pieces. She smiled slightly, feeling a genuine sense of satisfaction - the fact that kills made by her girls also fueled her treasury was a massive help. She glanced at her inventory window, which was bursting at the seams with exotic meat and strange raw materials.
"It's just a shame only I have access to this 'storage space'," she sighed, looking at her hands. "Poor Monarch... instead of fighting, I acted as a porter and scavenger for everything they killed. Well, you can't have everything."
When they returned to the Altar, Lilith felt a sting of hope despite the previous warnings. Since she had gold now, maybe the system would "unlock" the summoning option? She approached the obsidian construct and placed her hand on it, but the same hated message about her racial lock immediately bloomed before her eyes.
"So I really won't be able to use it..." she whispered to herself, feeling a sudden drop in mood. "These three lunatics really are my entire starting legion."
She looked at Lysandra, Kala, and Mina, who stood around the altar breathing heavily after the hunt. Lilith still felt the cold of the obsidian on her palm and the satisfaction of the earned gold, but the moment of peace shattered faster than a soap bubble the moment her subordinates felt their "shift" was over.
Mina, who just moments ago had been ripping out bird throats with lethal precision, dropped her demonic form in a split second. In her human, filigree form, with a joyful yet predatory glint in her green eyes, she took a short run-up and leaped onto Kala's back. The warrior, also back in human form, wobbled slightly, instinctively grabbing Mina by her smooth, delicate thighs so she wouldn't fall. But the little Succubus wasted no time on pleasantries.
Without a shadow of hesitation, Mina slid her small hands under Kala's armpits and greedily grabbed her gigantic, heavy breasts. Kala arched her back, letting out a low, throaty groan as she felt Mina's fingers dig into her soft flesh.
The smaller girl began to aggressively knead and tug at her bust, but her hands were simply too small - despite desperate attempts and squashing the skin, she couldn't even encompass half of those massive curves.
"Fuck, these dairies of yours are so big it makes me want to puke just watching them jiggle with every step!" Mina hissed, her voice dripping with the vulgar malice characteristic of her hidden nature. "But the essence is practically boiling out of them, you horny cow!"
Kala let out a loud moan and clenched her teeth as Mina, losing patience with the size of her companion's breasts, brutally grabbed a protruding, hard nipple and twisted it hard.
"Dammit, Mina... slow down!" Kala rasped, feeling a wave of heat spread through her lower abdomen, her own desire beginning to pulse in response to the assault.
Mina only snorted, pressing her small chest against Kala's back and ignoring the protests. "Shut up. I'm exhausted after all that running through the bushes. Instead of waiting hours for this damn fatigue to pass on its own, I'd rather regenerate here and now by squeezing the desire energy out of you while you're still warmed up from the fight!"
Kala spat out a string of words so humiliating and filthy that even the dead columns of the ruins seemed to blush, calling Mina a "tiny, underdeveloped leech" who could only parasite on others' greatness. In response, Mina smiled venomously and squeezed her breast even harder, eliciting another loud moan, before throwing a biting remark about the only thing larger than Kala's bust being her lack of a brain.
Lilith stared at the scene in absolute disbelief, feeling her face burn with living fire. She stood there, still holding monster carcasses and herbs in her inventory, completely disoriented by how a brutal hunt had turned into a provocative, erotic display of power and regeneration between her servants in just a matter of seconds.
Is... is this my legion? she thought, covering her eyes with her hand, though she couldn't help but peek through her fingers at the entwined bodies of her subordinates.
Two hours ago we were killing monsters for gold, and now they... they're literally putting on some sick, public show right in front of me to get their mana back?
She felt incredibly ashamed, seeing how naturally this exchange of energy came to them, and how much she - despite being their Succubus Monarch - still felt in this situation like an intruder from a different, more prudish world.