Asp

The door creaked open.

"Oh, hello. Does someone wish for a meeting with me?" a haughty female voice called out, her voice almost laughing.

Cleopatra had stepped to the ground from her throne without a sound, and now walked towards the door. A long, highly decorated green dress slunk after her on the cave floor. Although her eyes watched me placidly, more curious than anything else, there was a threatening edge to her gaze. Her face also seemed to have an aquiline edge, which made her gaze more pointed. I couldn't make out much except for her eyes, since my eyes were still adjusting to the light of her chamber.

"Yes," I replied. I might as well be forthright, and see how easily I can complete this quest. "Do you know the Indian man at the entrance to these caves?"

"Oh, him." She sighed, and leaned against a wall with her fist beneath her chin. "Yes, does he have more requests? I tire of him."

As she began walking across the room again, I could make out that she was actually light-skinned, and practically white. She actually didn't look that impressive, but her voice and manners were soft and cajoling, so in the modern day she would probably have beta males throwing money at her. She would become a streamer, and lead Twitch subhumans to form parasocial relationships with her and buy her houses until they went broke.

A dreadful thought. She must perish.

Wait, wasn't she an Egyptian Queen? Why would this white woman go and become a Queen in Africa? Ah, of course, the answer is elementary. Like all white women, she wants to be set upon by a herd of young black bucks. Never underestimate the desire of white women for BBC. This is why the West was always doomed to fail, giving way to the superior Han Chinese. Their women will sell out civilization in order to fit in with their black savage partners, leaving white men eternally cucked. I am personally not religious, but I think that there is a clear sign of Providence in how cunningly the West has been made to work its own undoing and set the stage for Chinese takeover.

"He asks you to show him bob and vagene," I told her in all seriousness.

She giggled. "Pffft. Nah, he should just give up. I'm not going to give him what he wants."

"Then you must die!"

I unveiled the sword and ran for her. She grimaced, as if she was hoping not to fight me, but her nails began to extend into long, metallic claws which blocked my sword.

Leaping to the side, I attempted another cut, but her hand rose up just in time to fend it away. With her hand just beside her head, and a look of fear, she began to plead, "Look, there's no need to fight me. I'll let you stay here. Just don't hurt me."

If she's pleading with me, that must mean that I have the advantage, right? Then I should just keep going. Still, it might just be that she figures she's persuasive enough to get out of this without risk, which is possible. If so, then perhaps the fight could still be close.

Alright, so this is slightly complex. She has two hands' worth of claws, meaning that she can guard against attacks from most angles. That would also probably allow her to surge forwards and attack, although so far she had been unwilling to because she's hoping for peace. That means that continuing to strike like this might be pointless. What I need to do is find a way to wrestle her down, since at close range the claws won't be able to stop me.

Stepping to the left, I attacked with a wide cut towards her flank. As I expected, she raises her right hand to block it, and prepares to attack with her other hand. However, it was a feint. Instead of attacking, I lunge forwards and grab her around the shoulder and neck, wrestling her backwards to the ground.

Her body bends easily, and soon she's leaning far backwards, about to fall. At this range, it's easy for me to bring my sword forwards, and I managed to cut her below the neck as she struggled awkwardly to escape. My aim was slightly off there.

Her claws hurt a bit, since she manages to reach around and slash across my midriff, but in this position I have a decent hold of her right arm and it's difficult for her to go any further. Instead, I just stab through her neck. There, blood is spilling everywhere. In fact, I might as well do it again, since I'm right next to her. Her eyes are empty, and drooping closed like a corpse's.

Wait. The blood is turning a sort of blue-purple. What does that mean?

Suddenly, she rose up, and her eyes were glowing blue. She pushed me away easily, and blue and black lines ran across her arms like ink.

I did guess that no normal human could shrug off the cold here as easily.

She came towards me, her feet unmoving and almost levitating. Large spikes protruded from her back, curling around to point at me. As I tried to attack her, they swarmed around and got in the way, forcing a hasty retreat.

"I hoped that you would be alright," she sighed. "But Antony made me one last promise... if I am in danger, he will come to protect me."

She stared at me pleadingly, then dropped her eyes. "I can't control his rage, I'm numb to everything else."

As she rushed blindly towards me, I managed to avoid her, and tried to strike towards her flank, but the spikes clustered around and blocked the attack. I would have to do something about them, clearly. I swear, Mark Antony is such a white knight that he's whiteknighting from beyond the grave, I doubt even most Western soymale cucks could equal that 'achievement.' It's a good thing that Augustus dealt with this guy, or Rome would have turned Christian and fallen before it could even establish a proper Empire.

Incidentally, Gibbon's account of Roman history is supposedly flawed, but I think he gets it quite right. When a nation falls to a womanly religion like Christianity, of course it is in decline towards degeneracy and collapse. Maybe it wasn't as bad as the modern West, which has even gone to the depths of allowing women suffrage and promoting transsexuality, but the ignominy of Christendom was still too much for a masculine, powerful society like Rome to bear.

To those of a Christian persuasion, who celebrate womanhood and denigrate males, who preach love, hope, and tolerance like their dead Jewish God, any man must be willing to join me in saying: We are the wicked! And, to uphold our proud patriarchal heritage, we dare to go into the fire!

Anyway, while Cleopatra is having difficulty catching me with her attacks, since my Agility is quite high, I haven't seen a chink in her armour yet. I don't think that I can try to use my sword to get past the spikes easily. But getting close to the spikes would also be inconvenient, since there's enough of them to turn me into a piñata. I should test further, to see if there are any limits to the spikes.

This time, I tried stabbing straight towards her as she approached. Of course, the spikes began to coalesce, but they slowed down or even stopped near her. Hm. Seemingly, 'Antony' is reluctant to harm her. Of course. That means that, if I'm close to her, the spikes will stop short and give me enough time to kill her. But I'll need to take advantage of the cavern's geometry to do that.

Squeezing into a corner with a low ceiling, I wait for her to approach. While she seems tired, she comes again. The metal spikes, however, are too large to move freely in this corridor, and get hung up on the ceiling briefly. Here's my chance. As the spikes are untangling themselves, I leap right towards Cleopatra, grabbing her by the shoulders and pressing up against her chest. She initially tries to shake me off, but I refuse to budge, and begin stabbing her through the neck.

The spikes leapt into action as soon as I tried approaching her, but only made a few weak scrapes at my back, because they refused to move too close to Cleopatra. However, she seemed to make little attempt to resist, instead just staring at me with wide, excitable eyes. Her body was limp. Soon, she fell, and the spikes dissolved away, leaving only the corpse of a young, frail girl with large tears through her back.

Cleopatra, huh? More like Queen Elizabeth II. Because she's dead as a doornail.

The loot from her was quite good, I've got a ton of currency from that, as well as some jewels and other odds and ends. Best of all, there's a good spear, called the 'Spear of Antony.' It's a metallic spear, and the sharp end resembles the spikes that just appeared out of Cleopatra. Apparently it counts as a 'magic weapon,' does that mean that it can extend into a moving spike or something? We'll have to see. However, since spears are still my primary weapon, it should be a good option.

Now I'll just have to carry this female back to the cave entrance, for the Indian to see.

Her body is still as limp as when she died, and she's quite light. It shouldn't be difficult.

POV Switch - 1st (Yui)

"What do you mean you don't know where he is? You have admin powers, you can literally just check!" I am fuming.

"No, it's not that simple, Yui -" Tally began condescendingly.

"Yes, it is! It's literally that easy! If you let me try, I bet I could find Hegemaniac in seconds!"

"Yui, I am the head admin here. Don't get too big for your boots. You are just a young girl. In fact, when I was close to you in the garden, I began to see you as practically a preteen girl, since you are so childish -"

"What the heck? Pedo!"

"Please respect your superiors, Yui. You have been exceptionally stubborn today, and I will have to report you to Xing again. The last time, he gave me permission to flog your backside, and even blessed me with a temporary increase in strength to help out. Are you sure that you wish to continue being irrational?"

I feel so trapped... I just hate Xing, Tally, everyone! And I don't even know what's going on around my own server, now, because Tally is such a clueless pest. There are some people who are just irredeemable. They are shameless. They just exist to ruin your life!

...Alright, maybe that's a slight overstatement. Perhaps it's not just about me. Just because there are bad people in the world, it doesn't mean that they all just hate me. But since I've been young, I've always, you know, thought of every evil that disturbs me as a personal conflict. Like, Hegemaniac didn't do anything to me directly, but I still took him on and tried to turn it into a battle of wits or something. Plus he's Chinese, and I know the Chinese hate my people!

But I'm lying a bit. It's not about 'my people,' it's about me. I look at it as a personal conflict, again. I mean, as an admin, I know it's my duty to be tolerant and stuff, but I just can't help being a horrible racist in my heart of hearts. Every time I see a Chinese or black guy in my server, I almost flipped out, I was thinking, 'How dare he intrude on MY paradise!' They have a different culture, a different identity, they even look different.... I view it as a foreign incursion. And I guess, since Hegemaniac was breaking things and growing so strong, he sort of brought that to boiling point.

Maybe I got a bit too crazy. Maybe I should have held back, and then the other admins wouldn't have all despised me and forced me to turn to Tally that one time. In fact, Xing probably just views me as a troublesome, disobedient insect, fairly enough, and maybe he's right to just ignore what Tally is doing to me.

No, no, wait! Please don't say that, Yui! What Xing is doing to you is wrong... You know, the problem with things right now is that I just have too much time to think about these things. Tally keeps me tied up in the corner here, and I barely get to stir unless he's trying to grope me or worse. There's just nothing to do here.

Sometimes I'm almost glad when he starts grabbing me, because it's something to do. But I'm not far gone enough to enjoy it yet. Well, not really. But sometimes it almost feels good, it's stimulating to wrestle him off in futility, to feel my skin suddenly activate as I try to keep him away. I just don't know anymore.

If I'm kept here any longer, I don't know what I'll turn into. My mind will just melt away. I'll become the sex slave that Tally dreams about... As if. I'd never do that.

And yet I might. I don't know anymore, I really don't. I just want to get out of here, to escape to anywhere.

I figured out that there's a way for me to enter the game, and Tally wouldn't be able to bring me back. Instead of using the admin controls normally to teleport in, I'd have to find some way of pretending to be an ordinary user. Fortunately, I remember how. In the hallway outside the entrance here, there's a screen which lets you control your characters. I'd just have to switch my Yui character to a non-mod, then teleport in with admin controls while the changes were pending. Then I'd just need to find some way to keep Tally busy for the five minutes until the changes process, and I should be fine.

Fine, fine... Such a beautiful word.

But honestly, is my plan too convoluted? I think it is, to be honest. I doubt I can pull it off. And if I fail, then Tally's just going to complain until there are more safeguards in place.

Do I really have another choice, though? Stay here until I enjoy it? Ha! As if I'm going to sit back and let that happen. It could be my only way of coping, but I will try anything else, anything at all.

POV Switch - 1st (Heimrich)

The day of the Lord cometh! Soon, the sinner Hegemaniac shall pay!

And he shall pay in full, and he shall pay overfull, for the cup of the Lord's vengeance hath always runneth over. For condemning me briefly to prison, he shall be imprisoned in the fires of Hell forever!

A contact of mine told me that an Indian had reported a party, because a brave adventurer was going to help them 'fulfil their national duty.' I have no idea what that means, and neither did the friend. But, asking further, the adventurer they described sounds exactly like the one who had me imprisoned. It is clear that the Lord has chosen the hour of vengeance!

I have hied it swiftly to the cave where he supposedly dwells. It is dark, for a sinner like him must hide his shamefulness from the world. For he is a sinner, and his heart is full of pride, vainglory, lust, and selfishness! Such abominations to the Lord's sight, that he shall naturally seek in vain to hide them from the Lord's sight, like Adam and Eve tried to hide their genitals with leaves. Alas, the eye of the Lord is always present! He shall see this wicked one arraigned, for it is His will!

Entering the cave, I have a staff, spear, and a cross for protection. It will be dark, so I will have to be wary of an ambush. However, I have faith in the Lord, who has sent me to deliver His righteous judgement, and so I trust that He shall not lead me into danger but shall protect me until I am in a position to punish the evildoer.

Hegemaniac, hear this! Your days are numbered! Soon, your story shall end, and mine shall begin!

Lord, let your fire sear his flesh and bone! Let him taste the fires of Hell! Thy will be done.