Nearly a thousand fairies moved busily through the Secret Garden, burying their fallen kin in the soil and rinsing the battlefield with stream water again and again — yet the sharp, metallic reek of blood refused to leave.
Sasha stood rigid as a marionette, the captivating violet of her eyes utterly drained of light.
In her understanding of the world, a swarm of fairies overwhelming in sheer numbers was enough to drown a Sequence 8 — even certain Sequence 7 existences.
Yet one Sequence 9, loaded with top-tier equipment and thoroughly practiced in the art of one-sided slaughter, had cut through them all with a single sword — trading over two hundred corpses for this present silence. It was a blow that shattered the certainty of a queen who had been so sure of victory.
And the psychological demolition that followed had finished the job. Sasha's composure was gone — completely, irreparably gone. She no longer looked anything like the languid, imperious creature she had been. She looked instead like a proud, untouchable wife who had wandered into a succubus pleasure den by terrible accident and stumbled back out months later, belly swollen and soul hollowed — utterly, thoroughly ruined.
The Mother of Fairies surveyed her new subjects with a quiet, sweeping gaze. Wherever her eyes landed, fairies flinched. A small number buried their rage and hatred deep, deep down — but that, too, could not escape the Mother of Fairies' notice.
Homegrown fairies really are better...
Li Fei sighed inwardly, without a sound.
Comparisons made everything clearer. Her own daughters were each and every one like little angels — obedient, sharp, loyal — with only a rare few that seemed to have a succubus soul stuffed into them, whom the top courtesan had already earmarked as her chosen heirs. Nothing at all like these wild ones, who looked at her with a mixture of hatred and terror, and who, given half a chance, would gleefully turn her into a shameless brood-sow.
"You don't actually need to be afraid of me."
Only once the last corpse had been buried did Li Fei speak, her voice gentle. "After all — I can never quite help treating fairies like daughters. And I have never been cruel to my own daughters."
The fairies said nothing.
Li Fei smiled with warm benevolence and softly intoned the incantation:
"Cobalorum Ianuae."
Several fairies bearing small wooden chests materialized from within a surge of swirling mana-light.
――――
[Fairy Summons (Lv.1)]
Spell Effect: Teleports fairies who have formed a Principle Contract with the caster to the caster's side.
Mana Cost: 4
Upgrade Progress: 1/100
――――
Transcendent creatures born from [Summoning Magic] share a Principle Contract with their summoner by the nature of their birth — though the caster can also, through various means, dissolve such contracts, or establish contracts with other Transcendent beings. The bond between Beatrice and Fufu, for instance, must have been forged through some manner of Transcendent contract.
A "Summons-type" spell, by contrast, allows the caster to teleport a contracted partner to their side at a lower mana cost and with a faster casting time than standard Summoning Magic.
Fairy Summons, for example, costs only 4 mana — and randomly teleports four of her daughters, Ram and Eve among them, directly to her side. Summoning fairies the conventional way, however, costs 6 mana, produces only two or three summons at a time, and comes burdened with all the classic weaknesses of summoned units: a limited duration and vulnerability to Cleanse, Dispel, and similar counters.
Furthermore — Transcendent creatures brought over through a Summons-type spell could carry items of a certain size and weight with them.
The consequence was that virtually every mage who had mastered [Summoning Magic] devoted themselves obsessively to developing Summons-type spells and painstakingly building up a personal retinue.
In low-intensity skirmishes, these mages looked utterly useless — muttering incantations for ages while their teammates bled, only to finally produce a batch of summons that an enemy promptly wiped out with a single Cleanse or Dispel. But when it truly mattered, they could snap their fingers and call forth a fully equipped squad in an instant — an army of one, terrifying in concentrated force.
Now, Li Fei cast Fairy Summons in rapid succession, teleporting over a dozen daughters to her side in short order. Each one cradled a small chest that had been prepared in advance.
The Mother of Fairies snapped her fingers lightly. In unison, her daughters threw open the chests — and a honey-sweet fragrance instantly bloomed through the air.
The chests were packed with orange fruits the size of cherries, known as Fairy Fruit. The name alone made their nature clear: they were among the most beloved foods of the fairy race — sweet and delectable, rich in nutrients, and capable of extending lifespan, accelerating reproduction, and refining bloodline power. On the open market they were sold by the piece at ten silver coins each. Li Fei had acquired two thousand of them — a genuine investment of blood money.
The Secret Garden produced this fruit as well, but an ordinary fairy might go her whole life without receiving more than a handful. In part, this was due to low yields — but more fundamentally, whenever intelligent beings gathered in sufficient numbers, hierarchies inevitably formed, and the most precious things were inevitably claimed by those at the top in overwhelming proportion.
For fairies, the appeal of Fairy Fruit was immediate and visceral. It wasn't just delicious — it offered profound physical benefits, and might even trigger a bloodline transformation or evolution. Every cell in their bodies was screaming. The only thing holding them back was the memory of their companions' deaths, still vivid and raw before their eyes.
Li Fei was pleased with their restraint. She strolled forward unhurriedly, picked up one fruit, and pressed it gently between the lips of a fairy who was visibly pregnant — speaking in the coaxing, honeyed tone of a wealthy patroness luring a naive young commoner girl with money:
"My daughters get to enjoy these every single day."
"As long as you behave, I will treat you exactly as I treat my own."
They were lies, of course — but her flawless performance, her devastatingly beautiful face, and the remaining 1,999 Fairy Fruits lent the words a very convincing weight.
Seeing the fairies begin to stir with temptation, the Mother of Fairies continued to dangle the carrot:
"You should know that Loxibrook recently captured a batch of Sirens and Sea Folk. Behave yourselves, and I can bring some over for your… breeding needs."
"Beyond that — humans, elves, succubi… all possibilities. Oh, and have you ever heard of Fairy Mint? Now that's something special…"
Under the Mother of Fairies' honeyed persuasion, the fairies' expressions began to loosen.
Li Fei considered a moment, then abandoned the idea of having her daughters distribute the Fairy Fruit. Keeping her warm smile in place, she turned and beckoned the nearest fairy with a gentle wave of her hand.
"Come here."
The fairy approached with cautious, tiny steps, her body slightly curled — like a middle-school girl who had gotten pregnant and was now facing her furious parents, arms half-raised and ready at any moment to shield her own head from a beating.
"Say 'Mama' once, and this is yours."
Li Fei stroked her forehead with fond indulgence, the oval fruit rolling back and forth between her fingertips.
Her smile was gentle — but Li Fei's face was still spattered with fairy blood, and the little fairy was in no position to refuse.
She swallowed hard, voice trembling: "M-... Mama..."
"Good girl."
Li Fei ruffled her blue-black hair and pressed a small kiss to her forehead. "Go play now."
Then she swept her gaze across the rest of them and called out cheerfully: "Everyone line up to collect yours."
Gaining the genuine loyalty of these wild fairies in such a short time was, frankly, impossible. The carrot-and-stick approach was simply meant to keep them in line and out of her hair.
But there were always a few who refused to be tamed.
Li Fei rubbed her lips — slightly numb from having delivered 1,043 kisses in succession — and narrowed her eyes, looking down at the roughly fifteen fairies who still stood rigid with defiance.
"You all…" she said, with an air of genuine puzzlement. "…want to die that badly?"
"You killed my mother. My wife. My daughter!"
A chestnut-haired fairy bared her teeth, tear-tracks still wet on her face.
"I was just killing indiscriminately — nothing personal." Li Fei gave a short, derisive laugh. "You're just unlucky."
A Morality score of -17 was an average. When it came to those who were loyal, beautiful, useful, or simply people she cared about, Li Fei's Morality could float anywhere between -1 and -17. Just yesterday, she had been willing to forfeit a wedding ceremony and betrothal gifts entirely to spare Eve's feelings — a truly breathtaking display of selfless maternal love.
For everyone else? -30 was the floor. Not even adorable, charming fairies could stir a flicker of conscience in her without the prerequisite of loyalty — in fact, back when her Morality hadn't yet sunk to its current depths, she had already been the sort of person who could slaughter a Moonlight Wolf pup's father, mother, brothers, sisters, grandparents, and every last elder of the family, mutter "still not enough EXP" to herself, and cheerfully convert the fluffy, whimpering little pups into experience points without a second thought.
"You. You. You…"
Li Fei's eyes swept the group, and she casually pointed out thirty-odd fairies.
The ones she selected were either wearing expressions of fawning, besotted eagerness — or else looked malnourished: thin frames, dull hair, the unmistakable look of lives not well-lived under the existing order.
The Mother of Fairies smiled at the corner of her mouth and gave her instructions:
"Kill them, and I will appoint you to manage the rest of your sisters. Fairy Fruit — and females of other races — will be supplied to you first… Of course, you're also welcome to die alongside them. Your choice."
After she drew her blade and cut down one fairy whose resistance burned brightest, the killing began.
In barely five minutes, the fifteen-odd fairies who had refused to yield lay at permanent rest in the homeland they would never leave — with a handful of double-crossers dragged along with them for company.
"Well done."
Li Fei reached down and scooped up a handful of Fairy Fruit, pressing the bundle into one fairy's arms. The others who had pledged their allegiance received the same in turn.
Under the fruit's restorative properties, their wounds would close quickly, and they would emerge stronger than before.
"These two — kill them as well."
The moment Li Fei's words landed, the turncoats who had already burned their bridges swarmed forward and tore apart the two fairies the Mother of Fairies had designated — the ones who had been selected but had hesitated too long to raise a hand against their kin.
"Excellent. You are all my good daughters."
"You've worked hard. You may let the other sisters handle the bodies now. Anyone who dares disobey — tell me."
The little fairies departed in a state of anxious, trembling excitement. It wasn't hard to foresee that in the days ahead, the Secret Garden would see no small amount of internal bullying and petty tyranny.
Once the others had been dismissed and only Sasha and her own true daughters remained at her side, Li Fei let the smile drop from her face. She stroked Ram's head in thoughtful silence.
Kill a batch, pull a batch. Reward and threaten what remains. Barring the unexpected, this Secret Garden should stay quiet for a while… If anything does come up, she'd just have to pay a professional to sort it out. Not everyone could be a straight-A student who never even finished high school, after all.
As for the long term…
Li Fei tilted up the pink-haired fairy's chin, a mischievous glint in her eyes:
"Ram — do you want a wife?"
"I… I only want to stay by Mother's side…"
Ram's face went red.
"M-me, me, I want one!"
Eve, who had been non-stop sneaking Fairy Fruit this entire time, hastily shoved the fruit into her mouth, cheeks puffed out, and mumbled thickly through the mouthful.
"Hopeless." Li Fei gave her a flat look.
Eve was the top courtesan's chosen heir — she was supposed to stay close, receive daily instruction, and be groomed as a tool for reeling in wealthy patrons. One day, Eve might even work alongside her mother as a colleague, the two of them united and topping every performance chart. What was the point of wasting time and energy on wild fairies?
The Mother of Fairies waved her hand and gathered her true daughters — those properly born of [Summoning Magic] — close, speaking in a warm and straightforward tone:
"We are the only real family here. So I'll be direct."
"Is there anyone among you who wants to stay?"
Despite the Secret Garden's environment holding an instinctive allure for fairies — and despite the fact that staying here meant being a bride day and night with none of the early-morning maidservant drudgery — when Li Fei posed the question, every fairy shook her head. Not a single exception.
The reason was loyalty.
After mastering Summoning Magic, the top courtesan — prone to a certain degree of persecution anxiety — had asked her sisters, guests, and teachers about the loyalty of summoned creatures on more than one occasion. Every answer she received was consistent: the loyalty granted by Summoning Magic was essentially absolute. Short of mental-type spell control, or years upon years of daily abuse — a decade of sustained torment — there had never been a recorded case of betrayal.
According to Nicole-mama, a friend of hers had once run an experiment: one hundred Children of the Jungle born from Summoning Magic were used as test subjects, given the standing order "do not kill yourself," and then subjected to brutal torture every single day.
It wasn't until the sixth year that the first act of defiance appeared among the thirty-one surviving Children — it violated the order not to kill itself.
As a side note: female mages summoned fairies; only male mages summoned Children of the Jungle. This detail conveniently erased Li Fei's suspicion that "your friend" might have been Nicole herself.
"In that case…"
Li Fei rubbed her chin, a trace of hesitation crossing her face.
Ram's competence was the one she trusted most — but the top courtesan was the kind of person who loved new things yet couldn't let go of old ones. The thought of Ram being posted here on a long-term "business trip" genuinely stung.
"Let Li Yue manage this place going forward."
At last, Li Fei snapped her fingers and made the call.
Li Yue had merit to her name, but wasn't the one who had been with her the longest — that was Ram — and she didn't share that inexplicable natural chemistry Li Fei had with Eve. The arrangement sat easier emotionally. And after Li Yue's transformation into a wraith, she could take on ten fairies single-handedly without breaking a sweat. "Enfeoffing" this treasure of a Secret Garden to her was, really, the most fitting choice imaginable.
Of course, the loyalty of a fairy converted into a wraith would remain intact — Nicole-mama also had a friend who had confirmed this through experiment. This time, Li Fei was deeply, deeply suspicious that the friend in question was Nicole herself, even without a shred of evidence.
"Sasha — this is the spot."
As she spoke, Li Fei strolled over to the enormous bloom where Sasha had been reclining so languidly when she first appeared. She touched the new ring on her finger — purchased with a hundred academic credits — and a beam of vivid green light shot forward, striking the heart of the flower and crystallizing into a small emblem shaped like a fairy.
――――
[Fairy Honeytongue]
Equipment Rating: Starlight
Attributes: Charisma +1, Intelligence +3
Enchantment Effects: Fairy Honeytongue, Fairy Mark
Fairy Honeytongue: Creatures born from [Summoning Magic] are fixed as "fairies," and summoning quantity +2.
Fairy Mark: A fairy mark can be generated at a designated location. After the mark is placed, fairies born from [Summoning Magic] will enter the world at the marked location.
――――
The Mother of Fairies let the corner of her mouth curl upward in satisfaction.
You wanted to turn me into a brood-sow?
Ha.
[Summoning Magic] raised to its base tier, combined with the Fairy Honeytongue — at minimum, four fairy daughters would be born in this Secret Garden every single day.
Before long, every last wild fairy in the Secret Garden would have to become a brood-s— ahem. A daughter-in-law of the Li household.
"Ram — starting now, come out here for a day or two each week and take shifts with Li Yue so she can come back and spend time with me."
Once the mark had taken shape, Li Fei turned to Ram with her instructions: "When you're here, keep a close eye on your sisters. Any who show exceptional talent — bring them to me."
"Understood."
Ram received the instruction with her customary absolute seriousness.
"Honey — starting from now, purchase some Fairy Fruit every day."
Li Fei ran through her income figures in her head, then turned to address the fairy who had developed "those shockingly good Fairy-Brand Cakes" and been named by Ram accordingly:
"Every daughter I give birth to gets at least one a day. Buy a good stock — I'll work out the proper distribution when I have time."
Amid the chorus of her daughters' cheers, Li Fei turned her gaze toward Sasha — whose eyes had gone completely hollow and empty.
"Alright then. Tell me — where is the wealth of the Secret Garden?"
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