Chapter Text
“Natural Enemies.”
These are creatures that specialize in hunting certain other species. To their prey…they are the ultimate predators. Just as birds prey on insects, or snakes prey on frogs…
████ prey on Mamono.
“HOLD THE LINE!”
The sound of gunfire echoed across the trenches, acrid smoke singing the wyvern’s nose. It was the burning base, the server building recaptured by the United Front. Wireless signals were down. No comms until the end. Her heart raced as the weight of a locket in her uniform tore at her mind.
Jeremiah…I-I’m sorry. I didn’t want all of this to end this way…j-just five more minutes. Five more minutes, and there’ll be somewhere safe for you…
“ARTILLERY, FIRE!”
Sounds like wind whistling flew away from the front lines, towards the enemy. They’d run out of the plundered shells. Only the weaker mana ones were left. No lethality. It put her heart at ease, but her mind on full alert.
“FRONT LINE, RETREAT! SUPPORT LINE, FORWARD!”
Sh-shit…
Almost involuntarily, her foot went forward. Her nerves screamed in an empty pain. “Trench foot”, it was a strange condition only brought about by this unnatural warfare. At first, it was no issue for Mamono. But the United Front released their bio-engineered fungi, and they were safe no longer. One more step forward, less painful than the last.
Just…one at a time…
“GET MOVING! GO, GO! FOUR MINUTES LEFT! DON’T GIVE THOSE DOGS ROOM TO BREATHE!”
As she moved towards the front, she noticed another sight, one she felt as though she would never get used to. A crying man, dragging the rotted corpse of a wyrm Mamono towards the back lines. No necromancy would work on a soul damaged by the Front’s ammunition.
He turned to face her, his feet still forcing him backwards.
Oh gods…
“K-keep fighting, kid! DON’T LET MY WIFE DIE IN VAIN!”
“Just keep going, honey.”
Without hesitation, her legs forced her body forward.
“ASSUME POSITIONS! PATTERN 1-4-3, LEAD & MANA! THREE MINUTES UNTIL RIFT EVACUATION!”
From the peaks of the trenches, weapons raised. Varied weapons, all pointed forward, many pilfered from the battlefield. Only few true staves were held, and they were all handling the artillery. Mages were powerful, but anyone could pick up a gun. She took her own rifle, one called the “M1 Garand”. It was already loaded, clean as she could keep it. The only thing keeping her alive in this hellscape. She raised it over the trench.
“FIRE!”
Guns cracked, staves cracked, arrows whistled. Screams from the enemy filled the air, but their silhouettes approached. Combat wasn’t sacred any longer. It was an eternity of suffering, brought about by the humans they treasured. A flurry of rounds flew towards them, striking some of her comrades. They fell back, no one left to pull them to the back lines. Good as dead, regardless.
“TWO MINUTES! HOLD THE LINE!”
The Front’s soldiers fast approached. The Third Battalion fired arrows, bullets, spells, but their numbers were decreasing. She was alive, somehow. But even if they held the line, there was no one left to save them.
G-gods…let us rest with our husbands, I beg you!
“HAAAAAAAAH!”
A gunshot cracked nearby, and a succubus fell to the ground. She couldn’t bear it. Having her soul destroyed, dragged into oblivion, so she took her own life…the fate of many soldiers earlier in the war. Hel intervened, though; the cowards who fled the battle would be cast back down to their bodies. It was cruel, but necessary. The first sacrifice their gods had to make in the war. She woke screaming moments later, her body forced forward into the front line.
“NEXT LINE, FORWARD! ONE MORE MINUTE!”
The Front was at their doorstep. A steady march, gunfire increasing,. Artillery raining down at the other trenches. The wyvern shot one more time, striking a soldier in the foot. They stumbled for a moment, replaced in an instant by the ones behind them.
“LAST STAND! KILL…KILL THEM! KILL OR BE KILLED!”
She went to duck down, to reload her relic. Something tore through her head. Too late to think of another way forward. There may have been no way to begin with.
These were their predators. The humans on the other side, who united to destroy all that stood in the way of their conquest. The United Front, the Natural Enemy of monsterkind.
The women were dressed chastely, much left to the imagination. They were all Mamono, stripped of everything they knew. Their homes, their friends, their husbands. All to be subsumed by the region’s Superior, the Fourth Great Emperor, Owen of Tragedy.
The succubus took deep breaths, trying to come to terms with her new fate. He had taken her from her husband. He was a man, no, a monster, who not even the Mamono Lord could stop. News spread from the Fifth Emperor’s ray-dee-oes, of Royal Makai’s army obliterated by the Triumvirate. They had seemingly endless power at their disposal. Magic that could turn men inside out with a touch, freeze over cities in an eternal blizzard, an encompassing field which rendered all others inside catatonic, and that wasn’t to mention their uses for these. It all came from the Celestials, they said. Beings outside of reality, patrons who gave them powers from across worlds. Before she could continue her train of thought, a telepathic voice whispered to her.
“F:103, you are to approach the Splendid, Great, Imaginative, Powerful Owen of Tragedy and 104 other titles immediately.”
It was something that she had grown used to. To be violated in body and mind, to see everything torn from you one by one, it was as if such a thing was natural for the Superiors. Just as mice ate wheat, and cats ate mice, Superiors ate suffering.
Silently, she stood, dressed in the chaste maid’s uniform. It was part of the excitement for her master, and so she could only disrobe…
I-I don’t want to think about it…
As she began to walk, the space around her warped. Moments later, she was in Emperor Owen’s chamber, teleported by one of his skills. Immediately, she bowed.
“M…milord…wh-what do you ask of me?”
The nasally man in robes of gold and obsidian fabric sighed. “Well, now’s not the time to bang. Not yet, anyways. But…we’ve got an issue, little miss.”
She froze.
“Emotions running hot? Don’t worry, it’s not about you. S’about the…what was it…Mamono Lord, right. Lilith, or something.”
I…is she freeing us…!? O-oh, n-no! No, milord, I beg you, forgive my insolence! I BEG-
Her flesh began to feel as though it was searing, tearing itself apart, He vocal cords were phased into another dimension, not allowing her to make a sound. Her mind screamed in pain, before returning to reality. She was left whimpering, but her Superior’s strings puppeteer her upright.
“I though you would’ve learned to think right after I raped your husband…after using 113, of course. Because it would be gay if she was still a guy. Anyways…I’ve got to consult you on something. Since you’re familiar with…F:25, right? Druella?”
“Y-YES! M-MILORD, PLEASE F-FORGIVE ME!”
“Yeah, yeah, I forgive you. But what I’m saying, is that Druella was planning on invading other worlds back when I first was in Lescatie, right?”
“I…yes, sh-F:25 had been.”
“Alright. So do you know if she got those methods back to her parents? The Mamono Lord and her husband, yes?”
“N-no, my emperor, she has not, t-to my knowledge.”
“…ah.”
O-oh, g-my emperor, I beg you! P-please, don’t-
“No, not that. Then that rift…must be the will of the Celestials.”
…mind still, mind still, who-mind still…
“…yes, yes. I must alert the rest of our kind immediately.”
In a blink, Owen disappeared from the room, and her constraints were released. Finally, the succubus was left to collapse, sobbing for as long as she could assume was safe. These Superiors were cruel, wrathful, lustful in a way even the Mamono could not comprehend. If someone had tried to stop them when they first emerged, something could have been done. But now…
…these were their predators. The beings from far beyond, powered by the strength of countless worlds, free to act on any of their desires. The Superior Individuals, the Natural Enemy of monsterkind.