{You absorb: [Conquest Core]

{Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! You level up 4 times! You are now level 304.}

{You gain 48 DEX, 48 STR, 72 VIT, 56 MAG, 28 PSY, 28 DEF}

"Well that's just plain underwhelming," said Ashtoreth. "I coulda got that from eating cores when we got here."

They'd had an enormous stock of cores that were around level 300, after all. Once they'd arrived on Earth and the limits of her deal with the System were no longer in place, they'd had the option to level themselves until they were high enough that the cores no longer granted them advancement.

But they hadn't done it because it had essentially seemed useless. Level 300 was supposed to have been more than enough power to dominate Hell with. Raising their levels to 330 instead of giving them away to make even more high-powered humans had clearly been the wrong choice.

Ashtoreth had saved quite a few cores for herself just in case, of course. But without the time to choose upgrades, they were almost completely useless: most of her stats came from buffs, not levels. 30 levels mid-combat wasn't going to swing things very far.

"What'd you get?" Dazel asked.

"Four levels. Pretty high for just another level 300, but still… just four levels? For all that?"

"What'd you expect?" he said. "Special rewards because you ate an archangel?"

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, pretty much. That was the hardest fight we've ever done, and the reward is four levels." She frowned. "Not even enough for a single upgrade."

"Sorry, boss. But you don't get anything special from killing archfiends, either—and they're not much weaker than archangels."

She sighed. "Half my stats don't even come from levels."

"If it helps, I'm sure the System noticed how hard you all worked and is more amenable to giving you class upgrades sometime soon."

Ashtoreth brightened immediately. "It is?"

"Yeah, sure," said Dazel. "Maybe. I don't know."

"Not exactly reassuring," said Frost.

"Look, you fight long enough, you'll get offered upgrades. You do something big and impressive, you'll get offered upgrades."

Kylie looked up from where she was drawing a rune circle. "And our year of scenarios wasn't long enough?"

"I don't know if that counts," said Dazel. "It's got to be flashy. Risky. You guys were immortal back then. Killing archangels though, that's flashy. And if Ashtoreth wins the Monarchy—"

"Uh, when I win the Monarchy," she corrected immediately.

"—Sure," he said. "That. You'll definitely get an upgrade for that."

She frowned down at her System notifications. "And four more levels for the final round, apparently."

"The good news is, once you're the Monarch, you can get out into the inner realms and farm," said Dazel. "Farm hard."

"I'll need to, to keep the position," she said. "The challengers will get stronger and stronger as time goes by."

"I'm done over here, by the way," said Kylie. "You guys ready to get back to Earth?"

"Yep!" Ashtoreth chirped.

"Break time's over, I guess," Dazel said mournfully.

"Come on, Dazel! There's still two of my sisters, two archangels, and goodness-knows how many human cities and invading bastions to take care of!"

"Is that supposed to make me happy?" he asked. "It's really weird, but you said that as if it's supposed to make me happy."

"We've got important work to do!" she said, scooping him up and heading for the circle.

"Which, as you may recall, is basically antithetical to my entire desired existence," he said.

"How can you hate being important and doing good!" she said. "You're like Jimmy Carter. Or Bono. Or… I don't know, Santa Claus."

"No," he said. "No… I'm not like any of those."

She shook her head. "What am I gonna do with you, Dazel?" Below them, the runes of the circle began to glow. "Oh well," she said. "Time to chew out Matthews, I guess."

* * *

"Ashtoreth, I'm not sure this is a good idea," Frost said.

They'd just finished their [Runic Warp] and were back at their makeshift headquarters. Frost was by her side as she moved to find Matthews.

"I am."

"This kind of confrontation should be handled delicately," he said. "The way things are done on Hell is different than Earth. You might think you're handling the situation well, but you don't want to worsen our relationship with the high command."

"I won't be too intimidating."

"That's what I'm worried about!" He said. "Why do you need to be intimidating at all?"

"Because I'm gonna try and get him to listen," she said. "You'll see."

They rounded the corner and found Matthews speaking with some of his minions in the same room they'd left him in.

"Sir Matthews," Ashtoreth said. "I want to talk to you."

He waved away two of his minions and turned to face her. She could tell, just from the uneasy look in his eyes, that he knew where this was going. "What is it?"

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"You know," she began. "Two of those people who I forced to become Earth's defenders are young adults. Older than me, sure, but still pretty young by your standards. One of us is a cop, so that's at least closer to the mark, but none of us are ideal."

"Your point being, Ashtoreth?" Matthews asked. "You're the one who brought them into battle."

"My point," she said sternly. "Is that you've got kids out there fighting for you, and instead of supporting them… you hide behind them. They've given everything to protect you and every person you've ever met in your life, and you were going to let them die just to advantage your position." She crossed her arms. "Where's your soul, Sir Matthews?"

The room around them had suddenly gotten very quiet.

Matthews' expression darkened, and he seemed to suppress a grimace. "My soul," he said. "Will go wherever it needs to, do whatever it needs to in order to protect this planet, Your Highness."

"That's funny," she said, raising her voice a little. "Because two of them got away. If you'd passed your people on to Dazel, we could have organized. We could have stricken faster, harder—could have killed them before they had a chance to escape. With the right sort of classes, we could even have tracked them once they'd fled."

Matthews bristled. "Are you saying what I think you're saying, Ashtoreth?"

"If you think I'm accusing you of trying to get me killed, then yeah. You assembled your people and held off supporting us—and why not? You've got enough trained level 300s at this point to take on four angels, or so you can assume. If we kill the angels, that's a win. If we die to the angels… that's a win, and you can clean up when we're gone."

"I think you should be careful with these kind of accusations," Matthews said. "You don't know how long it takes us to assemble a squad of fighters, and none of our soldiers are trained to fight alongside you and your people."

But Ashtoreth was shaking her head. "Do you understand that there's two archangels out there somewhere who are almost certainly going to be present for the monarch election, where our advantage in numbers doesn't mean anything? None of the fighters you've trained can beat them. My people can't beat them. I might not be able to beat them—not unless I can think of something."

"Ashtoreth—"

"You go ahead and you tell them," she said, her voice rising in volume. "You tell the people who made this decision that they just handed Earth to its enemies with a pretty little bow on it because they had to take advantage of the circumstances and try to get me killed!"

"You're assuming too much," said Matthews, his own voice rising. "And damn it, girl, you don't know half of what you'd need to in order to figure this out."

"Oh?"

Matthews exhaled, shaking his head. "Ashtoreth, I want you to try and see this from my perspective."

She put a hand on her hip. "Don't I, though?"

"I don't know you at all. Nobody here knows you. Nobody except the people you brought with you, and they're obviously a security risk themselves."

"Come on, Sir Matthews. You probably started figuring out exactly who all my companions were as soon as you met them."

"That may be," he said. "But that doesn't change the fact that everyone in high command will be exploring every possible alternative to having you as the so-called Monarch of Earth. That's just sane, Ashtoreth. You'd be blind if you didn't see it."

She shrugged. "I just wish our relationship didn't have to start off so contentiously," she said.

Matthews let out a humorless laugh. "How's this, then? You let high command knock you out until after the Monarchy is decided. They'll put you to sleep somehow, and you can wake up and keep helping us out once everything is settled."

Ashtoreth cocked her head. "Knock me out? Not a chance. Never."

"Of course not," said Matthews. "Because this is how you do things, right? It's what you did to your companions, and if we don't figure out some alternative it'll be what you do to Earth. You think you know what's best, and so you force your outcome. You locked those people in constant combat for a year because you saw cause to, their will on the matter be damned."

"Uh-huh!" she said. "And I was right!"

"And now you want to dictate terms to humanity," said Matthews. "You're the strongest, you know best, and so your way is what goes."

"Only for a little while!" she said. Then she shrugged. "But yeah, pretty much. And I mean, don't pretend you don't get it—the results speak for themselves! And hey—wait just a second here." She put her free hand on her other hip. "Aren't you part of the US Military? You should know all about imposing yourself with force!"

"There's a difference between kidnapping three people and kidnapping the whole Earth," said Matthews. "The Monarch needs to be human. It needs to be one of us."

"But it won't be," she said. "Your choices now are an archangel or an archfiend, and you'd better hope you get the latter."

Matthews raised an eyebrow. "Ashtoreth, I appreciate all you've done for us. But I think you're underestimating the skill and ingenuity of the human species."

Ashtoreth laughed, but it was unlike her usual laugh. It was a cruel, mocking laugh. "Sir Matthews, it doesn't matter if you manage to give some of your people a lead in levels. It doesn't matter if you build them specifically to take me out. None of them will stand a chance against me."

"We'll see about that," said Matthews.

"Oh, absolutely we will," said Ashtoreth, smiling. "We can do it during the election, when they show up to compete. Or we can do it before the election, if you decide to be treacherous and stab me in the back when you think I'm not looking. The best time, if you care to know, is when I've just come out of a teleport—you'd think it would be when I'm sleeping, but trust me… it's not."

Matthews glared at her. "You may hate the way we do things, Ashtoreth. But we're not like that. Nobody's going to stab you in the back."

"Great!" she said. "I'm just letting you know that it doesn't matter. No matter what you choose, I'm saving you." She wound her tail around a hand, then ran her thumb along the barb. "I was saving you yesterday when I killed my sister, and I was saving you today when I killed two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Once we're done here, I'm going to go and keep on saving you, and tomorrow? I'm going to save you some more."

She spread her arms. "And if you say you don't want to be saved, I'll say that you're wrong and save you anyway. And if I've gotta squeeze to save you, I'll squeeze. If I've gotta fight, I'll fight."

"Ashtoreth," Matthews said, his voice softening. "I don't know you, but I know you're just a kid underneath all of that. Please… don't do this like this."

"I'm going to become the Monarch," she said, her voice darkening. "And when I do, I'll let the human bossmen make all the decisions they like with power I'm granted. Then, when the challengers from Hell come knocking, I'm going to kill them all." Then she smiled. "Anyway, just letting you know where we stand after you left me and my people to die. Imma go burn out some bastions, now—feel free to give me some targets."

She wheeled and walked out of the room, ignoring his and Frost's pleas for her to return before finding a stairwell and floating up toward the roof. "Okay, Dazel. Ready to take us out?"

Dazel rose out of her arms to float beside her. "Sure, I guess? Look, boss, I second-guess a lot of your decisions…."

"Uh-huh!"

"But that one was awful. I hope you know that."

"Dazel," she chided.

"There's nothing you could possibly want that warrants giving the human commanders that kind of attitude."

She broke out into the air above the headquarters, rising up before giving her wings a shake and then landing on the roof. "Strong disagree," she said. "I want them to see how hopeless it is to win the election on their own."

"Oh. Oh."

"We understand each other," Ashtoreth said. "I hate doing things this way, but the worst that'll happen is that I accidentally kill some of them and gain some free levels. Best case, they'll figure out the skill gap and back off."

"I… yeah. I get it."

"Please don't tell the others."

"I won't boss. Like you said, we understand each other."

"Good," she said. "Great." She frowned. "Now let's get to work on giving them a good opening."

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