Fairies had always been the most active members of the Nature alignment — whether toiling away at various jobs or serving in the military, nearly all of them traced their ancestry back to fairies summoned forth through Summoning Magic.
From an occult perspective, they could be considered the daughters of mages (male mages' summons tended to produce Children of the Jungle instead), born with a greater degree of innate "humanity." After generations of domestication, the rules of their alignment were practically encoded in their very DNA — and yet even so, the last time Li Fei had freeloaded her way through another family's Secret Garden and its Fairy Ring, there had been no shortage of small fairies who, having reverted somewhat to their primal nature in a free-range environment, had gotten thoroughly handsy with her.
Wild fairies, however, were an entirely different matter — completely unrestrained, far more primitive and savage in their habits. There was no law to hold them accountable, after all. Pillaging and burning, violating the will of women — all of it was simply the natural order of things.
The textbooks covered all of this. But nothing drove the lesson home quite like confronting reality face-to-face.
Stretched across an enormous leaf lay a woman covered head to toe in blood.
Her body was criss-crossed with long, deep lacerations — the kind torn open by sharp fingernails. Horrifying bruises and bloody bite marks were densely layered across her skin, nearly obscuring what had once been fair, pale flesh.
She strained to keep her eyes open, her pupils already beginning to lose focus — and yet several sweet-faced little fairies were still draped over her body, rocking back and forth like children on a hobbyhorse, their vivid butterfly wings fluttering in rhythmic little spasms, emitting soft, lisping cries. Together they formed a tableau that was at once morbid and eerily beautiful — twisted and grotesque, yet possessed of a strange, sickly allure.
"Oh, her? She was our last guest," said the blue-haired fairy still looped around Li Fei's arm. Her smile had taken on a thread of wickedness now, her mouth splitting wide to reveal sharp, pointed teeth. "By our rules, you'll want to drop everything unnecessary you're carrying. Don't worry — we'll take very good care of you."
"Oh? And what if I don't?"
Li Fei stifled a yawn and turned her head with complete indifference.
At some point, a dense swarm of fairies had closed in around her — more than she could count, their gazes sharp with unmistakable hostility, reminding her of the wolf pack back at the Moonlight Wolf Den. Their eyes blazed with naked, unsubtle possessiveness, distorting their exquisite faces into something feral and menacing. Crystal-clear fingernails extended outward — the telltale sign that fairies were about to attack.
"I don't think you quite understand your situation," the blue-haired fairy tittered, dragging her pointed nails across Li Fei's mage robe with a piercing, scraping screech.
"In elven terms — you're going to be turned into a shameless brood-sow and made to bear our young."
"My, my, but what a gorgeous brood-sow you'd make. I'm sure the offspring would be absolutely top-quality… hehehe…"
When you put it that way, I almost don't want to resist…
Li Fei sighed.
She had anticipated this before she'd even arrived — when Leona had gifted her this place, she had asked whether Li Fei wanted someone sent along to assist with the "handover" process. Li Fei had declined.
The reason was simple.
A pale, flawless hand reached out and gently stroked the blue-haired fairy's slender, snow-white throat — and then the fingers closed together.
Snap.
A single crisp sound. The blue-haired fairy's head, wings, and limbs all drooped at once.
Li Fei glanced at the experience notification — a measly 7 points. She made a swift and pragmatic calculation between labor value and experience yield, then tossed the limp little corpse aside and called out in a clear, carrying voice:
"Under the ordinances of Loxibrook, I am now your lord."
"Send your leader out to speak with me."
Silence was all that answered her.
The fairies bared their teeth and hissed, surging in from every direction. Li Fei let out a disappointed sigh and closed her hand around her sword hilt.
"Wait."
A voice rang out — sweet as honeyed sugar.
The airtight circle of bodies parted, opening a gap, and Li Fei turned her gaze toward it. What she saw was a magnificent, stately bloom — its stem perfectly straight, its petals an extravagant cascade of deep violet.
At the very center of those layered purple petals, reclining languidly within the flower's heart, was a fairy of exceptional beauty.
She wore nothing at all. Her compact yet exquisitely sculpted figure lay draped across the blossom, her skin a luminous, jade-like white. Her expression suggested a mild sort of boredom — eyes half-lidded, she allowed several fairy attendants to fuss with the long violet hair cascading behind her, radiating an air of effortless, imperious grace.
"I admire your courage, human woman," the fairy who appeared to be their leader said at last, her voice honeyed and intoxicating, laced with just a touch of arrogance.
With a light wave of her hand, a fairy immediately flew forward bearing a rolled sheet of parchment, presenting it to Li Fei.
"From our last guest, I learned something of Loxibrook — and I spent the past few days making certain preparations."
The fairy tilted her chin up to regard her. "Do you know — I had no intention of showing myself at all. I had already reached an arrangement with a certain lady: in exchange for the wealth of the Secret Garden, she would secure legal status within Loxibrook for me and my people. Even if we lost everything, it would still be better than slavery."
"If you had arrived two days later, this place would have been completely empty…"
Who has the nerve to swoop in and steal my pot right off the stove?
That was Li Fei's first thought.
Under the agreement, this Secret Garden and everything it produced belonged to Li Fei. Anyone bold enough to take it by force didn't even need her to call in favors — she only had to say the word to her daughter-in-law currently serving on the city watch, and whoever dared reach out of turn would find themselves in a world of pain they couldn't crawl out of.
The trouble lay in the definition of "produce."
The top courtesan — who spent her shifts at the tavern listening to sisters and guests debate current affairs — knew perfectly well what had happened: ever since Bai Mengtian had slapped together a new body of law on a whim, City Hall was obligated to recognize something called "Sapient Creature Rights." The practical consequence was that the fairies living inside the Secret Garden could no longer be classified as part of its "produce." In principle, even after Li Fei took ownership of the land, they were entirely within their rights to take their personal belongings and leave.
Of course, in actual enforcement, there was always a certain degree of flexibility. The esteemed residents of Loxibrook, in the process of developing new territory, might accidentally injure the odd native — and a failed rescue attempt was entirely understandable. If any native felt aggrieved by this, they were of course welcome to file a complaint at City Hall — provided they could produce a soul-bound entry-and-exit pass, make it past the heavily guarded checkpoints, and slip through a teleportation route watched over by high-Sequence powerhouses.
Translated into plain language:
No one could directly plunder the Secret Garden's contents, and within Turtle Island's boundaries, its owner could do as she pleased. But anyone who wished to could offer the native fairies a paid smuggling service — and the moment a fairy set foot in Loxibrook, the Secret Garden's owner had absolutely no recourse.
Once the fairies were gone, all Li Fei would be left with was an empty shell. An empty shell still had value, certainly — but the loss would be devastating.
Fairies' mouths — full of nothing but lies.
That was Li Fei's second thought.
Offer up all the wealth and smuggle every fairy across?
Please. If smugglers charged by the head, why wouldn't you keep the bulk of the wealth for yourself and only take your closest favorites when you ran? Judging others by her own standards, Li Fei suspected the fairy queen's talk of "taking everyone" was a smokescreen — she'd probably already sold off most of her subjects at a tidy price.
While Li Fei's mind churned through the calculations, the fairy leader spoke again.
"But then I saw you — and I changed my mind."
"Human woman, sign this contract, and the wealth and beauty of this place will all be yours."
As she spoke, the fairy leader stretched lazily — her petite yet obscenely well-formed figure put on full and shameless display — then narrowed her blue-violet eyes, one fingertip grazing her lips, her voice dropping to a breath-warm murmur:
"Including me."
Tch. The honeytrap gambit?
Send more. I like it.
Li Fei thought this privately as she accepted the contract and skimmed it. The gist was that Li Fei was to marry the fairy leader — one "Sasha" — and after producing a daughter, she would be granted equal authority to the fairy leader herself…
"Miss Sasha, I won't deny your terms are… compelling. But the problem is —"
Li Fei smiled pleasantly. "Everything here was already mine to begin with."
"The soil here is very fertile," Sasha replied, her voice still honeyed — though a dangerous undertone had crept in. "Bury a human in it, and within a few days the bones will have rotted down to feed the roots."
The moment she finished speaking, the ring of fairies began to tighten. Countless burning gazes latched onto Li Fei's body and refused to let go.
"If the person who comes to claim this place is beautiful but weak, use marriage to secure your position. If not, take the money and run." Li Fei applauded with genuine admiration. "I've learned something today."
Sasha ignored the sarcasm — which had, in truth, been sincere admiration — and held her languid pose. The corners of her violet-red lips curved upward in a warm, arrogant arc, eyes glinting with provocation: This queen is banking on sheer numbers to walk all over you, little Sequence 9 mage-girl. What exactly are you going to do about it?
What answered her was the clear, resonant ring of a blade leaving its scabbard.
"So," Li Fei asked, sword in hand, "you intend to use numbers to bully the lone?"
"Take her."
Sasha let out a contemptuous snort, not deigning to answer such a naive question, silently judging this human woman for her complete failure to read the room.
"Keeee—!"
A green-haired fairy reacted first. She threw her eyes wide open and let out an ecstatic shriek, a savage grin splitting her pure, pretty face with the certainty of a predator who has already counted her kill. She beat her wings with all her might and hurtled straight toward Li Fei.
Hmmm…
With a clear, sustained hum, the small fairy hit the ground in two pieces. Her delicate snow-white legs twitched twice and went still; the upper half rolled for several long seconds before it stopped.
The Blade of Joy, with its Grade IV Sharpness, was grotesque overkill against a Sequence 9 fairy. Li Fei cut her down without effort — the blade sheared through skin, muscle, bone, and organs in one fluid motion — and the palm gripping the hilt felt almost no resistance at all.
In truth, even without the Ogre Mage Staff, Li Fei now had enough mana to cast Dragon's Might on herself — but in this moment she suddenly realized: with the Blade of Joy in hand and the Sword Mastery Proficiency (Lv.1) she'd picked up from the System, she might not even need Dragon's Might at all…
The clean, effortless kill made the fairies falter for half a second — and then Sasha's cool, impatient voice cut through:
"She's only Sequence 9. What are you afraid of?"
"Whoever captures her alive gets to skip the queue for a full month — and second dibs on her womb."
At that, the fairies erupted. A continuous chorus of shrill screams tore through the air as the swarm surged toward Li Fei in a torrent, like a sudden storm breaking overhead.
"Hah."
Li Fei — Wolf Den Mage Goddess, veteran of the many-against-one — kept her face perfectly calm, tongue sweeping across the corner of her mouth:
"Fighting a crowd? That's my absolute favorite."
The lush, vibrant forest — all deep greens and vivid crimson blossoms — had fallen completely silent. The sweet singing of birds and the hum of insects were gone, smothered under the rising stench of blood, thick enough to drown out even the intoxicating floral perfume.
Fairies of breathtaking beauty lay scattered across the ground in every direction, their bright eyes wide and staring, their jade-like bodies strewn where they had fallen — warmth and blood leaving them together. The shattered remains of their iridescent wings drifted down like feathers, settling over faces that would not close their eyes again.
"An obedient fairy is a good fairy. And a bad fairy gets punished — wouldn't you agree?"
Her boot sole resting on Sasha's face, the Mother of Fairies posed the question in a soft, gentle voice, while gradually increasing the pressure, grinding slowly back and forth across her delicate features.
Then the blood-soaked black-haired witch raised her voice, and her tone turned to ice:
"Anyone who wants to run is welcome to try. See whether you'll be cut down on the roadside or swallowed whole by an ogre once you leave my territory."
She lowered her gaze again. One leg straightened; the leg pressing on Sasha's face bent at the knee, dropping her into a wide, powerful lunge. She propped her elbow on her raised knee and let her eyes go deep and still:
"Submit. Or die."
Even as she spoke, she kept adding pressure — slowly, steadily. Perhaps ten seconds. Perhaps twenty. And then something like a watermelon was going to burst open beneath her foot.
Sasha clawed at the boot with both hands and shoved upward with all her strength, fingers scrabbling to hook under the sole and drag it away — her fingernails cracked and split. Her slender legs kicked frantically against the ground, snow-white feet smearing through the dirt.
But the gap in power was simply too vast. Within seconds, Sasha's eyes had gone completely bloodshot. A piercing ringing filled her ears, and from deep within her skull came the low, dull creak of bone under strain.
Clearly, not everyone could hold onto their pride when death was looking them in the face.
The bloodied little hands that had been struggling to push the boot away finally went slack. A palm began slapping frantically against the leather instead — and from below came a sound twisted with pain:
"Let — let me go…"
"Sorry, I didn't catch that?"
Li Fei eased off by a fraction, the corner of her mouth curving up.
"Please — let me go — spare me, I beg you, spare my life…"
The fairy leader who had been so imperious and languid, so utterly above it all, was curled on the ground now, her face drained to ash. Her eyes — veins burst red from the pressure — were wide with pleading and terror, her whole body shaking without stop, small and pitiable.
"There. Was that so hard?"
Li Fei's expression shifted from stern to sunny in an instant, her face breaking into a warm smile.
Then she bent down, scooped Sasha into her arms, and carried her to the bank of a nearby stream. With gentle, careful hands — every inch the devoted, maternal figure — she washed the grime from her, a vision of tender domesticity straight out of a certain novel.①
"Try to squirm and I'll drown you," she added, voice still soft and sweet.
With that fond little warning delivered, Li Fei activated the Tier-I Healing Spell from her [Bronze Honor Medal — Nature], letting it ease away some of the red from Sasha's burst capillaries.
"Now then — call all the fairies over."
The Mother of Fairies gave the instruction in a warm, amiable tone, one hand stroking Sasha's throat — while the ashen-faced fairy queen's body continued to tremble.
Two seconds passed.
Li Fei's hand shot out and clamped around her throat. Arm fully extended, she hoisted Sasha clean off the ground, smile never once wavering:
"Did you not hear what I just said?"
"A disobedient little brat has no right to waste food or air."
Had Irena been present, she might have noticed that the expression on Li Fei's face had begun to take on a distinctly familiar quality — something not entirely unlike Nicole-mama's.
①[Translator's Note: The text compares Li Fei's expression to that of Mori-i Ayako, one of the two female leads of the work "One and a Half" — who is simultaneously the mother of the other female lead.]
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