After the ritual we held a great feast, on both sides of the portal. The locals had stands for food and drink prepared and some elves even wandered into hell. Maeve got a tour of Lilith's town and I had high hopes for the Dominion's relationship with the demon lord.

The next day I was taking Haruka hunting, as promised. Maeve, and her advisors, were negotiating a deal with my advisors. We had outlined the basics together and now I trusted my people to come up with the wording and numbers involved.

Our hunting party was relatively small. Just Lucy, Haruka, Shani and myself. Shani was our guide since she had spent a lot of time in hell recently. Our destination was certainly interesting.

I stared at a… plane? I was not sure if that was the right word. The area was flat, sort of. It did not have hills but it had rocks. A lot of rocks. Most of them were rather pointy and sticking from the ground. There was a river winding through the area and I could see a few geysers.

"What are we hunting here?" I asked.

"Rock salamanders! They are crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. Their blood has a slight earthy note with a bit of spice." Shani explained.

"How do they look?" Lucy asked.

"Like salamanders with black scales and about the size of a wolf. They stick to the black rocks. They like to petrify things with their spit." Shani replied.

I looked at Haruka. "Maybe some protection is needed…"

"Pfft, she will be fine! Dryads are tough." Shani said.

"I wish to test myself against those creatures." Haruka stated.

"That does seem like a needless risk." I replied.

"This is just her humanoid body. She is a tree. She will be fine! Let her do some fighting." Lucy argued.

"I suppose in the worst case I could dispel petrification…" I relented, for now.

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Well, I may have accidentally hit the first salamander we saw, before Haruka could engage it. I might even have hit the second…

"Amaya, let her kill something." Lucy said, looking unhappy with me.

"But, they were big. You know, maybe she should start with a smaller one…" I defended my actions.

Lucy looked at me, then she pounced. Suddenly we were rolling on the floor, wrestling while she was hitting me with all of her tails. It felt kind of nice. So fluffy…

"I got one!" Haruka called.

Oh no, I had been distracted! Lucy smirked as we got up. Haruka stood there, proudly holding the corpse of a lizard. It was riddled with holes and dripping blood. Shani was next to it collecting all the blood in a floating orb.

"How did you kill it?" I asked.

"I summoned electrified needles made from bark and shot them at it." She replied.

"What? You can do that?" I asked.

"You would have seen that if you had not taken her kills. Now behave, Amaya, and let her do some hunting." Lucy said.

"I will try…" I agreed.

It did take some willpower to not jump in. I had no idea why I was so protective. She was not my daughter, not really. She was a fully grown dryad I had helped awaken with a ritual. She knew how to fight, likely an inborn instinct. And she clearly had some power.

I had to admit her bark needles were strong. They pierced the scales like butter, then electrified the creature from the inside. She was also agile enough to dodge the spit. Her speed was not as impressive as mine, or Lucy's, but that was to be expected.

While our hunt continued Shani floated a ball of collected blood next to her and drank it with a straw made from lightning. It looked bizarre. It reminded me of people drinking from a fresh coconut, something I had never experienced and only seen on travel videos. Actually, did this world have fresh coconuts?

My contemplations about food were interrupted when I felt something strange. I looked around to determine what was wrong.

"Something feels wrong." I said.

"You are not trying to stop her from hunting again, are you?" Lucy asked.

"No, it feels like we are being watched." I said, while studying the area.

"There should not be anything sneaky here. Mostly just lizards and some smaller things." Shani replied.

The plane full of rocks offered a lot of places to hide. Technically something could also hide in the water or just be invisible. My Eyes of the Fey should see through most things, however we were in hell. The demon lords had access to magic I might be unfamiliar with. And I had no idea what sort of demons existed.

"Up there!" Lucy shouted and pointed at the sky, where a green tear was forming.

I positioned myself in front of Haruka and unleashed my aura. Lucy turned into a fox and covered her body in lightning. The tear burst open and monsters rained down from it. They were weird misshapen things. Like a giant ball with two legs, one arm and a big eye in the centre. All of them were various shades of green and covered in pustules.

I called lightning from the sky and started to hit them. They exploded in a lot of gore and slime. I saw the ground sizzle where some of it hit.

Lucy did not seem to care. She charged right into them and started crushing them with her paws and roasting them with lightning from her mouth.

"Weee…" Shani was slicing them with her scythe.

One of them appeared behind me and Haruka punched it. It exploded and covered us in slime. I only felt a slight itch but I saw Haruka's bark sizzle. I stared at it, immediately summoning water to wash it away.

Then I turned towards the rift, my eyes glowing. Now I was mad.

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