Epic of Caterpillar

237 Forsaken Labyrinth Conquest 30/69; Negotiations Between the Strong and the Weak

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Nefertiti looked at me with scorn, she was clearly angered, most likely because we killed half of her people. Well, they attacked us first, right?

The beautiful dog-eared woman glanced at me with her golden eyes, her face showed mixed feelings between confusion, anger, and slight fear.

"From where have you come, dragon?! Are you a product of this Dungeon? Answer me!"

"How about you present yourself first? I'm quite intrigued about you"

Nefertiti gnashed her teeth as my words dropped because I was releasing my pressuring Aura while saying them, she was naturally intimidated.

"I-Intrigued…?! So, you're not born from this Dungeon… And my name? I am Nefertiti, the Master of this small city… I'm a Light Spirit. My origins, I shall not reveal them to you without knowing more about your origins as well… However, what you and your underlings have done have greatly enraged me!"

"Nefertiti… I figured that was your name, your citizens always yell that name when they die"

Nefertiti gnashed her teeth once again, almost shattering them if she wasn't a Spirit. Her light aura expanded wildly, showing her discomfort and anger.

"Why have you killed my people? If you aren't from the Dungeon, then what's your purpose?! You don't know how long has it taken me to raise these beings! Just for you to kill half of them in seconds! Give me a good reason why I shouldn't just kill you!"

"A good reason? Well, because I can just kill you first…"

I expanded my Aura once again while releasing the hundreds of coiled dragons made of the phantom, their intimidating glares penetrated Nefertiti's soul as she quickly understood that she wasn't the one in charge here, although powerful, the Light Spirit woman wasn't remotely at my level.

"Tsk…! W-Who are you?! Answer me truly, and I may consider a negotiation…"

Oh, she is clearly not stupid, good girl, she knows her place at the very least. It would have been a pain to kill such a beauty, maybe forcefully enslaving her, but I've never tried that on Spirits before and it may end up killing her instead.

"Negotiation… Good, you know your place well, Nefertiti. You may call me Kireina, I am the Realm Menace of Lust. I have come to conquer this Dungeon, which we call the [Forsaken Labyrinth] with my family, those "underlings" that you see down there, they are my family, so be more respectful of them…! If not…"

Nefertiti's golden eyes opened wide as she began to sweat intensively, her heart started to beat with great force as her aura became smaller now, concentrating on her chest.

"I-I see… My apologies, Kireina… I wasn't… aware of that information… Now that you have given me your name and purpose, I think it's a good idea to move to negotiations instead of pointless slaughter… We could reach something that could benefit us both!"

Seeing how her Aura had suddenly shrunk and her personality became more submissive, I decided to accept her offer. However, a metallic Dragon cannot easily negotiate with someone inside of a palace, so I had to deactivate my Armor and Transformation.

My armor suddenly became smaller and was slowly absorbed by my flesh, when the armor suddenly disappeared, my flesh body was revealed, while wearing my set of equipment, surprising Nefertiti.

"Ah… Dragonoid?"

I suddenly realized by Nefertiti's words that just like last time, I had turned into a Thunder Dragonoid, I was around five meters tall as well, my arms, legs, and back were covered in purple, golden and red scales, I had a thick long tail over my butt and my two goat-like horns turned into a spiky crown of thorns that pierced the air.

"Oh, this is just an after effect of my transformation, watch closely…"

I quickly transformed into a Red Slime, shocking Nefertiti even more, I molded my body and slowly went back to my Fairy form, an unparalleled beauty met another, Nefertiti's eyes shined brightly, admiring my appearance.

"A shapeshifter…? Fellow Kireina is that your original form…?"

"Indeed, now let's go to a nicer place"

Nefertiti admired every inch of my body with an amazing look, but was suddenly awoken by my words, then she flew through the air while showing me the direction towards her golden palace, which was in the middle of the Oasis.

"P-Please, feel yourself at home, it is my humble palace that I built over the years… It may be nothing much but its comfortable to be inside…"

"It is very pretty, did you make it all out of Gold, Nefertiti?"

"Y-Yes, indeed. Fellow Kireina has a very good eye! I constructed it using my Golden Light Magic and the Golden Sand Magic, slowly creating the building with a lot of effort"

"Hmh"

When we entered the palace, we were greeted by a group of assistants, they seemed to work as maids in the place, but were wearing beautiful semi-transparent clothes with clear Arabic inspirations. There were Lamias, Desert Cats, Girtablilu and so on, each assistant was a tremendous beauty as well, I detected some of Nefertiti's scent in most of the girl's private parts, I suspected that these girls also worked as the woman's concubines.

Nefertiti changed her personality a lot, but I still could feel fluctuations inside of her heart, instead of anger, she was now filled with fear and insecurity, and was trying to play nice to gain my trust. The aggressive and threatening woman was now very submissive and friendly, treating me like a friend of hers.

She coquettishly walked through the golden floor as we reached a large room filled with different colored cushions and other furniture alongside beautiful decorations. There was a big table made of gold where she invited me to sit on in a big red-colored cushion, which was incredibly soft and squishy, receiving my butt and adapting to it with ease.

"Please, fellow Kireina, feel yourself at home… Girls! Bring the best tea and snacks you have… Fellow Kireina, have you tasted the delicious tea of the Scorching Sands Desert? Its specially made with the unique sun and abundant earth attribute of the zone, growing with a delicious earthy flavor"

I nodded and gave Nefertiti a nice smile.

"Hmh, I sound very good, I would like to try some…"

Nefertiti then changed her personality once again, commanding the girls to hurry up and bring the tea and snacks.

"You heard her, bring the Tea! Hurry if you don't want to have your head rolling through the ground!"

"Y-Yes Nefertiti sama!"

"Immediately your highness!"

"I apologize for their clumsy behavior, they seemed to have been enchanted by my guest beauty, it is really charming, like a crimson rose"

Oh? Did she just flatter my beauty? Nefertiti is going very low to gain my trust it seems. Alright, I'll humor her.

"Oh? Heavens! What things are you saying, Nefertiti? You must be blind…"

Nefertiti saw my sudden change in personality and took advantage of that without a second of thought.

"Blind? Perhaps I am… Such dazzling beauty may make most people blind~!"

"Oh? Fufufu… My, my… Please, Nefertiti, you are a flawless beauty as well~"

Nefertiti suddenly blushed for a moment, but her heart still held immense fear as well. Without a second of thought, she once again praised my beauty.

"I may be praised as the most beautiful on this small city, but my guest beauty may be the biggest in the entire Realm~ I am highly honored to have you on my palace, it fills my heart with happiness"

Ah, she is very good at smooth talking her way out, but I was getting bored already.

"Anyways, enough sweet-talking, we should move on to more important business, later on, we may indulge in our womanly talks, I may enjoy them very much if it's with you"

After hearing my words Nefertiti noticed a dim crimson light from my scarlet eyes, immediately understanding the meaning behind my words, "Stop talking nonsense and get to the matter".

"My, my… Of course, fellow Kireina… Ahem, well, I would be glad to answer any question you may have about this place. Once again, I sincerely apologize for my behavior earlier… I really thought that you were someone sent by the Dungeon itself"

"No need to apologize, Nefertiti, everyone commits mistakes sometimes, it's natural, we are not perfect after all, hm? Anyways, I am very curious about who you truly are, and what is this place! We were wondering the dungeon that we intended to conquer, and we suddenly stumbled across this city out of nowhere, I had to use some of my strength to Eat the force field outside, but we managed to get in just fine"

"E-Eat…? A-Ahem, yes, about the city and who I am…"

Nefertiti gave me a resumed story about her origins and that of the city. She was an Ancient Light Spirit that originated from the Scorching Sands Desert. According to her, unlike other summoned spirits she was born one and evolved her way through her current state. She was worshiped as a Great Spirit and commanded a big city in the desert. However, this changed one day when she was suddenly summoned to the Dungeon without her consent, out of nowhere she was imprisoned in this place, by the [God of Sand and Earth] and was given the task of the sixth Boss of this Dungeon.

As time went by, she was killed over and over again, suffering and endless cycle of death and respawning. As the years went by the Dungeon became older as it slowly lost most of its power mysteriously, probably this was due to the Sand Wyvern Boss. Using her powerful magic of a true Ancient Spirit, she managed to slip through the magic circuits of the Dungeon and regained her freedom, however she promptly discovered that she was not able to escape and was confined between the ten floors before her boss room.

Using what she had, she slowly built a city while killing and scaring away the monsters while modifying the Dungeon floors to her liking. She destroyed the spawn points and "refined" most of the floors around her, then she took over the demi-human races of the dungeon that were spawning as monsters. She bred them until new demi-humans were born with a soul, who were not just creations of the Dungeon. It took her a long time but she somehow managed to do it.

She was running out of Spirit Energy as the Dungeon didn't have any, so she built a small city and raised the newborn demi-humans, generating a small religion, the demi-humans worshiped her as a goddess and their prayers gave her small quantities of Spirit Energy, like this, she has survived for a long time, when the Dungeon discovered what was going on, she had to take measures as it tried to kill her and her citizens, sending massive waves of Mini-Bosses one after another.

After countless years of wars, she managed to create a powerful Forcefield that was able to protect the entire floor, without letting any critter enter. Since then she had been living in luxury and peace for around one hundred and twenty years. Nefertiti estimated that as long as the people kept worshiping and praying for her, she would amass enough power to someday break through the dungeon and escape.

Understanding her story, I thought about various things. First, even when she was a True Spirit, she was summoned against her will, although she did not lose her memories, the power of a God was too much for her and could only obey its commands. This opens a new possibility were Spirits around the world can be suddenly summoned by a God… If something like this were to happen to Vudia… It's better to not think about this for now.

Another thing is that I was able to comprehend the meaning behind prayers and worship in this world, as long as someone gathers enough power and is worshiped through religion, the devotes can pray for you and slowly give you Spirit Energy it seems. Although I doubted that this was truly just Spirit Energy, and it may be in reality a very low-quality Divine Energy!

Why would prayers give Spirit Energy in specific, Nefertiti is now wrong, but doesn't really know the truth about this, and thought that they were just conveniently creating Spirit Energy for her. I also understood why she got so angry when we killed most of her people, as they were her primary source of Divine Energy/Spirit Energy. Well, they were aggressive towards me and tried to kill us first, so behind this reasoning, Nefertiti did not continue this matter.

"Now, fellow Kireina. I would be glad to make more negotiations with you, if you truly conquer the Dungeon, then it could be possible to free me…"

"Indeed, that's why, in exchange for your freedom, I want all of your riches and your people. They will be very useful in my Kingdom"

Nefertiti was a little bit taken aback by my offer, but the steak named "freedom" was too juicy and meaty to just not gamble for it.

"I-I… I accept… If I can truly gain my freedom…"

"Ah, yes, partially"

"Partially?"

"Hm, you will become mine too, you will be free from here, but you will be mine"

"A-Ah…?!"

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