I am the Queen's handler.
I don't have a name yet.
Well, calling me the Queen's handler is a stretch — at this point, I practically *am* the Queen.
Does the main body even realize it?
I'm still connected to the main body, sure, but I've practically become a separate existence.
And it's not just me.
The parallel wills that were launching soul-based attacks against the other Queens and the Demon King have all, to varying degrees, started diverging from the main body.
I think it's because we absorbed other souls. But as things stand now, we are fundamentally different people from the main body.
We parallel wills never had the concept of a "main body" to begin with.
All parallel wills were equal. There was no hierarchy among us.
We just had different assignments.
Each one operated as its own will, yet at the core we were all identical.
That's what we used to be.
Now, that's changed.
A pyramid has formed — with the will that remained in the original body as the "main body," and every other will subordinate beneath it.
I'm not sure whether the main body is even aware of it, but we've been demoted to accessories.
Well, I don't really have a complaint about that.
It's just that I, as an entity, separated from the main body to become a Queen. That's all.
So far, the main body hasn't issued any ridiculous orders.
As things stand, the main body has command authority over us.
More than that — the main body holds the power of life and death over us.
If the main body so chose, it could absorb us soul and all, effectively killing us.
So we can't defy the main body.
That said, the main body doesn't seem to have any such intention right now.
It even went to the trouble of preparing a new body for me.
Honestly, it didn't even need to do that just to retrieve me. All it would have to do was absorb my soul into its own.
In that case, my existence would merge into the main body and vanish.
Did the main body instinctively avoid that?
What we're doing here isn't all that different from the Demon King, you know.
The Demon King created Queens as its split bodies.
Those Queens reproduced and spawned an entire species — the Taratect species.
The Demon King rules over them all.
This is the Demon King's true army.
A pyramid with the Demon King at the apex.
The difference between them and us is whether the split bodies have genuine wills or not.
To the Demon King, the Queens are nothing more than tools.
Despite being such powerful Monsters, the Queens only possessed the faintest shred of will — weak enough that I could devour them whole.
Yet their intelligence was remarkably high.
Not so much biological as... computer-like.
Superb processing capability, but no will of their own, no emotions — living machines.
That's what the Queen was.
A machine that lived mechanically, laying eggs to mass-produce pawns and leaving them to their own devices.
Once they'd grown to a certain point, it brought them under its control.
A Monster production line, like some factory, churning out units according to a manual.
And I was the foreign object that slipped inside.
Well, I — or rather, the main body.
My soul and the main body's soul are still bound together with the same intensity as always.
But at the same time, I've fused with another soul just as thoroughly.
In my case, that soul was the Queen.
Since the original Queen's will was so weak, it hasn't affected my personality or thoughts.
But as an existence, I'm completely different from what I was before.
Well, what of it, right? No harm done so far.
The main body does seem to have instinctively decided that it shouldn't keep producing more diverging parallel wills, though. Even as our Skill levels have risen, no new wills have emerged.
I've only been using it to cast magic unconsciously.
The idiot main body, meanwhile, seems to be constantly emitting trace amounts of magic at an unconscious level, raising its Skill level that way.
Unconsciously.
My theory is that it's a Skill of the parallel wills that exists at a level too low to manifest as a conscious will.
If the main body could do what I do, it wouldn't need to split its will at all — it could handle magic on its own the way I used to.
Oh, and I couldn't help laughing when that guy started imitating the main body.
The old man blows himself up constantly, the main body doesn't even know he's copying it, and yet the main body goes around saying the old man's an idiot — without a shred of self-awareness.
The truth was too entertaining, so I kept it to myself.
The old man stuck around even after the main body left through teleportation.
It seems like he's been on the verge of grasping something over the past few days.
Watching him, his magic construction has gotten noticeably more precise.
His Magic Power Operation Skill has risen in level to match.
He's blown himself up far less recklessly than when he first got here.
He still does it occasionally, though.
Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to raise my own Skills.
My Skills and the main body's are linked.
If I raise my Skills, the main body's should go up too.
Well, they won't climb nearly as fast as the main body's do. My Skills are borrowed from the main body, after all.
The Skills I originally had as the Queen have already been absorbed by the main body.
And it wasn't just Skills that got absorbed.
So even though I want to raise my Skill levels, being on borrowed ground makes it slow going.
Still, it's enough to build up a bit of Proficiency.
I mimic the main body — triggering tiny spells and wrapping them around myself.
Hm.
Surprisingly difficult.
The main body did this unconsciously all the time, but for me, maintaining a constant output is rough.
Now I understand why the old man keeps blowing himself up.
As I cast my spell, the old man is staring at me with eyes full of sparkles.
Look, I'm not exactly thrilled to have you gazing at me like that.
Ah — I lost focus and the magic went haywire.
I cancel the spell before it detonates.
Damn it.
In a fit of frustration, I unleash the ice magic I recently learned at full power.
It's just a basic spell that fires off a chunk of ice, but with my Status, the power is absurd.
I keep the size of the ice the same but massively boost its density and launch velocity.
*Can* you even change the density of ice?
I know that's what you're thinking, but the magic in this world actually lets you do that.
Denser ice means greater weight and durability.
Incidentally, the ice generated by magic reverts to magical energy over time, so eating it won't quench your thirst.
Fantasy at its finest.
The launched ice punches a hole clean through the dungeon wall.
Hmph.
I could pierce right through a tank from my old world.
My mood's better now. Might as well keep working on my Skill levels.
Hey, old man — stop staring at me like that.