Monster Girl Uprising

About half an hour after they started eating, it seemed like everyone had finished. And, as their conversation wound down, Lilith turned to Maia, giving her a warm smile. “So, have you given any further thought to what kind of hunts you want to be doing?”

“A little.” Maia said. “But I keep running against the issue of strength. I know you said it can be adjusted, but doing that is going to result in an awkward experience; if we bring me up to your levels, then I’m not going to be able to use that strength with any sort of proficiency. If we bring you down to mine, then you run a real risk of overestimating your abilities and getting yourself hurt.”

“Don’t worry about that.” Eve said. “Most of us are familiar with fighting while our strength is lowered, and even if we do make a mistake, we can’t actually get hurt. The worst that happens is we ‘lose’ and get kicked out of that simulation or something.”

“Maybe we should start with a warm-up?” Lia suggested. “Something easy, to get us used to fighting at whatever level Maia wants us to fight at.”

“I don’t suppose any of you have a way for me to watch from afar while you hunt?” Maia asked. “I’d like to be able to get a feel for how you all fight so I can lead us properly. Um…I was leading, right?”

“However you want to do it will work.” Maven said. “And yes, there are ways for you to watch us. We can even split into individual groups and you can watch each of us in sequence. Time flows strangely here, it won’t feel like it takes any longer for us even if it takes you twice as long to watch them all than it did for us to do the hunts.”

“I think it would be better if you all work as one unit.” Maia said. “I want to see how you work as a team. We’ll have you hunt…uh, I guess a bear monster or something? They’re usually pretty durable and that should give me plenty of opportunity for me to see you in action.”

“Do you regularly hunt bears?” Ellie asked. “I thought their meat wasn’t very tasty, and you hunt mainly for food, right?”

“Food and occasionally trade.” Maia replied. “And I hunt whatever I can get. Monsters in the Deepwood are a lot more dangerous than monsters outside of it, so if I find something that doesn’t use poison or venom, and is relatively easy to kill, then I hunt it. And, yes, I am increasingly coming to realize that living there is something most people would consider insane, but…well, it’s where the people in my village were born, and we don’t really have anywhere else to go.”

“And I thought I had come from the poorest background of us…” Lia muttered.

“Aren’t you some sort of queen or empress or something?” Maia pointed out.

“I was born a commoner and put into this situation by a cosmic coincidence.” Lia replied. “My family was pretty poor, especially after my mom died and my dad turned to drinking.”

“Well, I’ve really felt poor, I never struggled for food and had everything I wanted.” Maia said. “Life was just…dangerous. While I don’t know enough details to say for sure, I think I would prefer my life to yours.”

“Come to think of it…what is the status of your parents, all of you?” Tess asked. “I realized I don’t even know even though we’ve talked…I guess not a lot, but it feels like it.”

“My parents died years ago, as did about half of the older population in the village.” Maia said. “There was a particularly bad monster attack and they didn’t make it.”

“Mine are both alive.” Lia volunteered. “We resurrected my mom, and my dad never died.”

“I didn’t have any, unless you count Jerry.” Connie said. “So, I guess alive?”

“Mine are alive but they’re not family.” Amelia said. “I’ve cut ties.”

“And I was reincarnated directly, so I don’t have parents as such this time around.” Rose replied. “The ones from my first life are long dead.”

“And ours are alive.” Eve said. “So…there you have it, I guess.”

“Sorry to derail things a bit, I was just curious.” Tess replied. “Anyway, why don’t we walk while we talk? Then by the time we’ve finished talking we can get started.”

“Yes, let’s do that.” Maia said. “Where do we go?”

“Just walk in any direction and we’ll find wherever we need to go.” Lilith replied, striding off.

Maia hurried to catch up, but that turned out to not be necessary; only a few short moments after they had started walking, they reached a wall that Maia was sure hadn’t been there before, a door with the words “hunting simulator” written above it standing invitingly before them.

“See?” Lilith said. “This place is nothing if not convenient.”

“Creepily so.” Maia said.

“Can’t deny that.” Tess said. “Anyway, you said you wanted to watch us first, right?”

“If you would. It sounds like some of you can cast tomeless magic, so those who can, will you cast all the spells you can? I’d like to be able to take them into account.”

The others shared a glance. “About that…we all can, and for some of us it’d be easier to list things we couldn’t do than list things we can.” Lilith said. “That being said, I think if we stick with just our preferred toolset, you can figure out how to use us from there.”

“All of you can, and that much?” Maia asked, dumbfounded. “How much time did that take?”

“For most magic, next to none.” Maven said. “It is a matter of how magic in our universes is structured; the system we talk about is in place to allow people to use magic much easier, whereas magic in your world doesn’t have that guiderail. I assume you learn magic without a tome by way of using tome magic until the sensation is familiar enough to do it unaided?”

“More or less.” Maia replied. “How do we start this?”

Lilith opened the door then stepped aside and ushered them in. “Just step in, it’ll either take us where we need to go, or there’ll be a very obvious label or button for it.”

Everyone began to file into the room, and Maia followed nervously. The moment she crossed the threshold, she found herself in a room full of flat panels that displayed all sorts of images, with a comfortable-looking chair situated so that it could easily see all the panels. Maia turned to look behind her, but the door was far behind her, easily over twenty feet away.

Trusting that the others were right and she was safe, not that she could do anything if this place intended to harm her anyway, she sat down in the chair and began to study the panels. Each of the panels showed one of the others, seemingly frozen in time. They were in some sort of wooded area, seemingly grouped together judging by how she could catch glimpses of other people on each of the panels.

The panels weren’t just showing the others, though; there was also one that had a map, one that showed potential targets to hunt, and many others that showed different parts of the woods they were in.

To Maia’s alarm, the potential targets all looked far stronger than she had expected. She recognized a few as some of the most powerful she had seen in the Deepwood, and while she didn’t recognize the others, they looked just as impressive and were likely of similar ability. Maia worried that this would turn into a heated battle for survival instead of a routine hunt, even with there being nine of them versus one of their prey, but…she couldn’t really do anything about it from here, could she?

Suddenly, a small box with text appeared on each of the screens containing an image of one of the others, and, lacking anything else to do, Maia leaned in and read. They turned out to be small descriptions of each of the others, how they fought, and some other notes that could be useful. Starting with the top left, she began to work her way through each of them.

Lilith was listed as an all-rounder, able to perform in any role admirably. In this form, she preferred to use “guns”, which the box helpfully described as similar in concept to crossbows, but much more powerful. Eve was the same, but instead used swords, wielding a sword that was able to pierce any sort of resistance and deal crippling wounds with even the smallest of nicks.

Tess was a budding generalist much like Lilith, but was currently only truly proficient in hand-to-hand combat. She mainly utilized the Blessing of the Goddess of Fortune to stack a number of nasty status effects on her enemies while dealing respectable damage even without.

Ellie was a frontliner built to absorb damage and dish out pain in return. She could heal all her allies and restore their stamina with the Blessing of Life, and the Blessing of Death granted her the “Swords of Death” which, as the name suggested, were powerful weapons made for efficient killing.

Maven was slightly less impressive than her wives, at least at face value. She was an archer and mage listed as being mostly of average strength outside of “dungeons”, but in return had near-total control over dungeons and was much, much stronger within them. Still, a footnote indicated that, for the sake of this hunt, the area would be considered a dungeon for her stat boosts, but she would be unable to use other effects of her Blessing.

Lia was similar to Tess in that she had the potential to be a generalist, but simply didn’t have the training to utilize them all. She had a significant number of abilities, but only knew how to effectively use a few of them. Unlike Tess, however, her current skills skewed towards ranged combat using magic, and often used a substance called “modeling wax” to instantly end fights by making her opponent unconscious.

Rose had exceptional skill in healing and nature magic, but was also highly trained in combat, be it physical or magical. She preferred to use a variety of weapons and get up close and personal with her enemies, and was likewise capable of using modeling wax to incapacitate her enemies.

Amelia, on the other hand, was pure magic; she was apparently on par with even the gods in terms of her proficiency with magic, and used it to great effect in combat. She was capable in physical engagements as well, but only as a side effect of the immense amount of Mana she had, which strengthened her body to the extreme. And, like the other two, she too could utilize modeling wax.

Which just left Connie, who was…not like the others. She had combat training, but hadn’t been in an actual battle for hundreds of years, and the box noted that, were it not for the fact that she was a Higher Being, Maia would be able to easily defeat her in combat. And, even with that, Connie would still be hard-pressed to win without using Higher Being abilities. She couldn’t even use modeling wax like the rest of her lovers.

The moment Maia had finished reading, the images on the panels began to move, and the sound of that area was transmitted to her. “Okay, so…we don’t know where the thing we’re hunting is, I propose we split into two groups to find it; Eve and I can act as our communicators.” Lilith said.

“Seems sensible enough.” Tess said. “Who’s going to be with who? Do we just want to divide it by universe?”

“Let’s do that.” Amelia said.

“Just so long as you have good enough detection capabilities in your group.” Rose said. “Amelia and I can easily handle ours, but what about you?”

“I’m our scout, I’ve got a few hundred feet of range where I know absolutely everything.” Tess said. “I’m not sure what your ranges are, but that should be enough, right?”

“Yeah, and Lilith and I can make up for anything beyond that.” Eve said, walking over to her. “Shall we?”

The two groups split up and began to search for a target. They were…remarkably efficient, and within only a few minutes Lilith and Lia’s group had found a wyvern. Or…Maia was pretty sure it was a wyvern? It had the same basic build, but was bigger and the armored scales looked much thicker.

They called for the other group, and once everyone was together again, then took a quick moment to discuss strategy. The plan they landed on was simple; Amelia and Rose would keep it from flying away, and everyone else would deal with it from there. Maia wasn’t so sure that would work; at their regular strengths, sure, but right now they were being brought down to her level, and she worried that they still hadn’t fully comprehended what that meant.

So she watched anxiously as they moved towards the wyvern and engaged it in combat. And then it happened; Amelia and Rose shared a glance, then the wyvern was caught in ropes of vine and chains of darkness. No tomes, no chanting, no visible concentration or the like, just a couple of hand motions and the beast was caught. It struggled fiercely against its restraints, but, miraculously, they held.

Lilith was next, holding up a tube of some sort and aiming it at the thrashing wyvern. There was a loud boom, then a large…something hit one of the wyvern’s wings, digging into the flesh before wriggling and expanding within.

The wyvern roared in pain, but Ellie was already on it, four flying swords swirling around her head before burying themselves in the wyvern’s chest. A few more shots of magic from Maven, Lia, and Connie hit it before Tess and Eve slashed into it with a pair of claws and a sword respectively, then…it was still.

Maia didn’t even have time to process before the rest of the group were suddenly in the room with her. “Well, that was interesting.” Connie said. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“That was…I thought you were really going to struggle with that.” Maia said weakly. “We did bring you down to my level, right?”

“In terms of raw power, yes.” Rose said. “In terms of skill? No. Amelia is the most naturally gifted mage any of us have ever heard of, and her spell construction is enough to bring her up a notch in terms of actual threat. Likewise, the rest of us are very skilled in our own right and the diversity of our abilities make up for a lack of power.”

“If that’s not accounted for.” Eve said. “I think it’s more likely that Maia is underestimating herself; it would seem she’s yet to push herself to the limit, and I think she’d be surprised with what she’s capable of if it really came down to it. Regardless, we just need to bump up the difficulty of our foes a notch and that should make it a bit more engaging. That or limit a few more of our abilities. What do you think, Maia?”

“Me?” Maia asked. “Um…let’s limit ourselves a bit more. I think if we just refrain from completely locking it down like that then it’ll be fairer. Unless you all think differently?”

The others didn’t have any objections, and once the last of them had said so, the room around them melted away and they were in the woods again. “Alright, Maia, you’re in charge this time.” Lilith said. “How are we doing this?”

“Let’s split up to find it, like you did before.” Maia said. “I’ll go with Tess’s group so that the numbers are even.”

So they did. They moved through the forest stealthily, Maia straining her eyes and ears to try and catch a hint of anything out there in the gloom. A few minutes later, Tess held out a hand. “I hear something.” She said. “It’s moving due north of us, I think.”

Maia tried her best to hear what Tess was, but just couldn’t. “I don’t hear it, are you sure?” She asked.

“My hearing is magically enhanced.” Tess replied. “I’d be surprised if you could.”

“Calling in the others now.” Eve said. “Tess, Maia, you’re the stealthy ones, why don’t you go take a peek at this thing while the others get here?”

Maia nodded. “Tess, lead the way.”

The two crept through the woods, and after a bit Maia was able to faintly make out the noise Tess had described; it was big, by the sound of it, crashing through the brush in such a way that it clearly didn’t care who heard it. A short while after Maia was first able to hear the noise, Tess stopped her.

“I can feel it.” Tess said. “Big, a boar, if the shape of it is any indicator. And, if you’re wondering, I have an ability that lets me sense things through the vibrations of the ground, it’s a little outside of visual range, behind those trees over there.” She finished, pointing off in the direction they had been moving.

“I’m going to go take a look.” Maia said.

“Got it. Let me know what you think of it.”

Maia headed off towards the beast, stopping once she was able to catch a glimpse of it. Like Tess had said, it did appear to be a boar of some sort, but this one was absolutely massive, at least three times Maia’s height. It was rooting around near a tree, doing…whatever it is that boars were doing when digging.

She watched it for a few moments more before sneaking back to Tess. “It’s distracted digging around for something.” She said. “Now’s a good opportunity to take it out, we should hurry.”

“Do you mean just the two of us?” Tess asked.

“Oh, no, I just meant in general.” Maia said. “It’s really big and probably tough, I don’t think the two of us would be able to kill it before it got in position to do some real damage to us. I’ll go let the others know, you stay here and make sure it doesn’t get away.”

“Got it.” Tess replied. “I’ll let you know if something happens.”

Maia nodded and returned to the rest of the group, throwing away some of her usual stealth for speed. When she got back to Eve and the others, the other group had met up with them. “It’s a really big boar.” Maia informed. “It’s distracted right now, so we should hurry, Tess is keeping an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t get away or anything.”

“Lead the way.” Rose said.

Maia led them back through the woods to Tess. “Is is still there?” She asked.

“Yeah, still digging.” Tess confirmed. “How do you want to do this?”

“We all attack at once.” Maia instructed. “The idea is to kill it before it knows what’s happened and can start attacking us. These types of monsters tend to get really, really angry and will fight even when most other monsters would flee.”

“What about us frontliners?” Ellie asked. “I mean, I guess we all have ranged attacks too, but…”

“Use your ranged attacks, then I need you to be ready for if it gets close.” Maia said. “I’ll need you to try and keep its attention so the others don’t get targeted.”

“I can handle that no sweat.” Ellie said, thumping her chest proudly. “Alright, let’s go.”

Tess and Maia led the way to the boar, which was still rooting around the trees. They carefully got into position, then, on Maia’s signal, fired their attacks. The volley hit the boar, which let out a squeal of anger as it whirled unsteadily to face them. Ellie rushed forward to take its attacks, but that proved to be unnecessary; a second round of fire stopped the boar in its tracks, and a third caused the already wobbling boar to fall to the ground, dead.

“And so the tribe fells its prey, and food for the coming week is secured.” Eve said, putting on an odd, slightly deeper voice.

“What?” Lia asked.

“Sorry, just making a joke.” Eve said. “There’s a style of show in my world that would talk like that, usually educational content about animals or history. Don’t worry about it too much.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been on a hunt that went quite like this.” Maia admitted. “It was only ever me and maybe a mentor, it was just too dangerous to go in a group.”

“We’ve got a pretty stacked team here, too.” Ellie said. “We’d probably have to really crank up the difficulty to make it anything like what you’re used to. Do you want to try that?”

Maia paused. “No, that’s too stressful, I think. I’ve got an idea of what it’d be like, and that’s good enough for me. What do you all usually do for fun at these things? I’d like to try that.”

They ended up trying a few others things, “miniature golf”, some sort of game where you would hit a ball into a hole using a club, “laser tag”, which appeared to be a sort of combat simulator for civilians, and various other games Maia had never heard of. Then, after they had finished with those, they sat and talked for a while more. It was mostly them trading stories about what their lives were like, but it was pleasant enough conversation.

Or was until the moment where Lia and her group just abruptly vanished. Maia stood in shock, but Lilith just laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “They’ve just gone back home.” She said. “The party does that, it’s nothing to be worried about. It’s abrupt, but not dangerous. You’ll get used to it.”

“Oh.” Maia said. “Um, what’s the–”

Maia paused in front of her food, frowning. She had spaced out for a moment, but it was probably just the stress of the last few days getting to her. But…there was no cure for fatigue quite like good food, so she tucked in and let herself relax.