Chapter 1220: Monster Above Paradise and the Decorative Rabbit

In all the wild possibilities Lucienne had imagined when Eira came asking for a "favor", somehow babysitting had never survived the first round of consideration.

She had imagined some forbidden errands.

Perhaps the little fairy would ask her to lend Anahita for some delicate problem now that the Fallen Angel had become one of Lucienne’s more entertaining little acquisitions. Perhaps Eira would need an ancient seal broken, a hidden thing found or a troublesome cultivator quietly removed from history, or some shameless favor involving the Young Dragon that would make the fairy regret possessing ears afterward.

Lucienne had entertained possibilities ranging from the reasonable to the wonderfully indecent with increasing amusement.

Instead, Eira had effectively said:

"Please watch my Master’s women, I am going to be away."

Lucienne had nearly laughed in her face; it really did sound cute of Eira asking her to watch them instead of being wary of Lucienne hurting them, Eira had entrusted their safety them with her.

’She really is smart.’ Eira knew Lucienne found no interest in hurting Phei’s women or anyone close to him.

Now, several hours later, she floated high above Hell’s Paradise Island and was forced to confront the humiliating reality that the little fairy had somehow succeeded.

’I am babysitting?’

The thought offended several thousand years of dignity.

Below her, Hell’s Paradise glittered beneath a sky that had forgotten how to shine.

There was no stars and moon tonight or lend its silver celestial mercy pouring over the mountains or glittering across Hell’s Paradise Lake:

The heavens stretched above the island as one immense field of black, so deep and unbroken that the city beneath seemed to exist at the bottom of an ocean without water. Only mortal lights remained, towers glowing in gold, white and muted violet.

The island had lit itself because heaven had declined the assignment.

Lucienne belonged beautifully to that darkness.

She floated thousands of feet above the city with her body held against the night with such effortless defiance while her hair drifted slowly behind her despite the savage winds at that altitude.

The dark strands moved around a face almost offensively beautiful, framing features delicate enough to belong in paintings and eyes that held far too much age behind their amusement. Her clothing clung elegantly to the shape of her body whenever the high winds pressed against it, revealing a figure whose softness and dangerous curves made the truth of her identity almost laughable.

No mortal looking upward would have believed that woman was the Monster.

The Monster whose proximity to Phei had made one of the most powerful Dragon families in existence spend years sharpening themselves in paranoia and they had tried to drive away, threaten, observe and occasionally convince themselves they understood.

Lucienne smiled faintly at that last thought.

Understand her?

Cute.

The family could scarcely keep track of her when she allowed them to.

Their treasures and carefully positioned watchers were all impressive little things until Lucienne decided she no longer wished to be found.

Then she would simply disappear from every sense they possessed while remaining exactly where she had been, watching them search for her with the patient fascination of a woman observing ants debate astronomy.

Eventually, even the Ryujin Tiamats had understood the unpleasant truth:

Lucienne was too powerful to remove unless the Matriarch herself were to step out.

So they watched.

Or tried to.

Tonight, that unfortunate responsibility belonged largely to Yuzuki Hayashi.

Far below Lucienne, hidden on the uppermost roof of a neighboring tower, Yuzuki stood beneath a veil of shadow with one hand resting near the weapon at her side.

Her eyes had not left Lucienne for several minutes.

Neither had the tremors left her legs.

Yuzuki hate she feared the Monster.

She had pride and enough killing instinct to turn most cultivators her age into fertilizer before they finished introducing themselves and had endured brutal training and missions from the First Princess that considered fear something to be beaten into usefulness, and she had met monsters who could kill ordinary people merely by allowing their aura to breathe.

Lucienne was different.

Whenever the woman above moved, Yuzuki’s entire body reacted before thought arrived.

Lucienne tilted her head; Yuzuki’s heart kicked.

Lucienne lifted one hand to brush hair away from her cheek; Yuzuki’s fingers tightened.

Lucienne glanced vaguely in her direction and every survival instinct Yuzuki possessed began screaming so loudly that she briefly wondered whether death might actually be quieter.

And Lucienne had known Yuzuki’s exact position from the moment the younger woman had arrived since she hadn’t even bothered to hide.

That was perhaps the most humiliating part.

Yuzuki was not watching Lucienne:

But instead Lucienne was allowing Yuzuki to believe the activity deserved that name.

The Monster could vanish whenever she pleased and, appear inside their rooms, stand behind their strongest shadows and probably correct their reports before disappearing again.

Yet Yuzuki remained alive.

There were several possible reasons for that.

The first was Phei!

Yuzuki was not completely certain how much that protected her, and she had no intention of conducting experiments, but the Young Dragon had taken an interest in her on the birthday out of curiosity seeing her with Hayashi and of course her arresting beauty.

Lucienne and everyone with functioning eyes knew it.

And whatever else could be said about the Monster’s obsession, she understood better than most that antagonizing the center of one’s obsession by casually murdering people he found interesting was poor long-term strategy for her.

It was demeaning when Yuzuki thought about it too deeply.

Her continued life and why she was kept arrive while spying on the Monster partly depended upon some absurd calculation inside Lucienne’s head that went something like; {The Young Dragon likes this one, therefore I shall refrain from breaking her.}

But Yuzuki possessed enough honesty to know she would have done the same thing from the opposite side.

That was the world they lived in.

Dog ate dog.

Wolf ate dog.

And a Dragon ate the wolf.

That simple!

And somewhere far above all three stood a beautiful woman capable of erasing the entire city with a blink of her eyes while everyone politely pretended civilization had rules.

There was no shame in yielding to overwhelming strength.

Courtesy itself changed when the person you were speaking to could erase your bloodline because she disliked your tone.

Yuzuki’s second suspected second reason for survival was somehow worse.

Lucienne found her cute.

That particular realization had stolen sleep from Yuzuki more efficiently than death threats ever had.

Being considered harmless by someone stronger was survivable...

...being considered adorable by Lucienne felt like being selected by a tiger as its favorite decorative rabbit.

Still, alive was alive.

Yuzuki could work with that.

Lucienne’s amusement deepened slightly as she felt the younger woman staring from below.

"Still there," she murmured.

The wind stole the words before they travelled ten meters.

She could have disappeared and appeared behind Yuzuki before rested her chin upon the girl’s shoulder and asked whether the view was satisfactory.

’Tempting. Very tempting.’

But Eira had given her a job.

Although the sentence alone nearly made Lucienne laugh again.

Eira?

The tiny creature possessed considerably more courage than good health required.

Where the Ryujin Tiamats had spent years trying to hunt Lucienne down, observe her, plan around her and occasionally glare at the ocean while holding what amounted to a glass of water against a continent of flame, Eira had taken an entirely different approach.

The fairy had looked at the Monster haunting her Master’s life and apparently thought:

"Well, she is already here."

Then followed it with the far more dangerous thought:

"So why waste her?"

Lucienne had respected that immediately.

Eira had understood something the older Dragons stubbornly refused to accept:

If Lucienne enjoyed watching Phei, interfering around him, arranging little pieces of his life and observing what happened when those pieces collided, then fighting her presence accomplished nothing.

Why not make that interest useful?

Why not point the Monster toward threats of the dragon she enjoyed watching and let her obsession for Phei become another weapon in Phei’s hands, even if the Young Dragon himself did not yet understand that weapon existed?

Dangerous thinking.

Bold and potentially suicidal thinking but Lucienne approved.

The fairy was courting fate itself with both hands and smiling while doing it.

Lucienne had seen civilizations ruined by less ambition but at least Eira was intelligent enough to understand whom she was playing with. That alone placed her several mountains above the old Dragon who kept approaching an endless sea of fire with his precious little glass and looking offended when the ocean of flames refused to drown.

"You really are an interesting little thing," Lucienne murmured.

Her gaze lowered toward the island; from this altitude, she could see far more than city lights.

She could see people.

Presences and Destinies!

The tiny movements of lives intersecting around Phei without most of them understanding what they had become part of. On one side of the island rested several of the Young Dragon’s women and with them was Sienna.

Lucienne’s smile became thinner.

The Nether Goddess and the Empress of Death.