{You cannot consume any more of your held cores. Their power is too low to advance you.}

{DING! You gain 95 levels. You are now level 447.}

{You gain 1140 DEX, 1140 STR, 1710 VIT, 1330 MAG, 665 PSY, 665 DEF}

{Reaching level 360 has granted you advancement. Choose one of your progression paths other than [Hellfire].}

"Well I don't know where you guys landed, but I'm at 447," Ashtoreth said.

"Six advancements," she said. "A race upgrade, and a class upgrade. I've got more goodies to pick now than I ever have… and we're going to a meeting."

"That was at your insistence, if you'll recall," said Frost.

"I know."

"And you were right. We should probably do this first."

She sighed. "I know. But it just feels so wrong not to greedily sift through the goodies as soon as I've got them."

"The Monarchy's not a goodie?" Kylie asked from where she was standing with her stylus and inscribing a runic circle onto the metal rooftop.

"The Monarchy might be," she said. "But the meeting isn't."

Kylie shrugged. "You gonna change?" she asked.

Ashtoreth looked down and noticed that she was still dressed like she belonged in the imagined past, feather headband and all. "Well," she said, "I pretty much always want to pick a new outfit, but what I do I use for this?"

"Your usual shirt with 'I heart Earth' would probably be fine," said Frost, suddenly sounding a little nervous.

"Definitely," Ashtoreth said. "Or I could glamour up a majestic crown and a cloak trimmed with ermine fur."

She wove her claw through the air, shaping her clothing's glamour to become an ostentatious outfit of lush furs and a cross-topped crown. "All I need now is a bent-backed servile minion to follow me around and respond to everything I say with 'Well said, Your Eminence,' and, 'Good show, Your Eminence.'"

"I don't really know what impression you're going for with that, exactly," said Frost. "But it's the wrong one. Don't talk to Matthews dressed like a playing card."

"Say, I do look like a playing card!" Ashtoreth said, straightening and raising her chin as she fanned her cloak out behind her with her tail. "Which card do you think I'd be?"

"Is that a serious question?" Dazel asked as he floated down through the air to land in her arms.

Ashtoreth laughed. "No. Anyway—" She wove a claw through the air once more, changing her glamoured outfit into in the shirt and cargo pants that she usually wore, though now with one exception: her shirt had changed to depict Che Guevara. "How's this?"

"I love it," Dazel said. "Perfect choice. Wear that."

"No, Ashtoreth," Frost said, trying to scowl at her as a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "Not that. Not with the bossmen."

"Come on," she said. "How do you think they'll take it? If they get that it's ironic, they'll see that I like to joke around, sometimes."

"But not share power," Dazel said.

"The point is that I'm a fun monarch," she said. "It'll be disarming."

"Just wear your normal clothes," said Frost. "Please. And try to be… I don't know, cooperative."

"I will," she said. "To a point."

"You don't have to be subservient to be cooperative."

"I know," she said, laughing. "Say, you think this will be a long meeting? I'm kind of hungry after all the exertion, and eating around Sir Matthews is probably not a good idea."

"It's probably going to be a long meeting, Ashtoreth," said Frost.

She sighed.

A moment later Kylie warped them both to Earth.

As soon as they had materialized, Ashtoreth saw a new system message, and by its contents she guessed that the system had sent it to a great many people—potentially everyone on Earth.

{An election has been held to determine Earth's first system-recognized monarch. The victory has been awarded to Vampiric Archfiend Ashtoreth.}

{Vampiric Archfiend Ashtoreth is now Monarch of Earth.}

"Well if they didn't know, then they do now," said Frost.

Ashtoreth nodded, as she read the message, then looked down at the office interior around them to see a number of uniformed men and women staring at her.

"Ma'am," someone told her. "General Matthews would like to see you as soon as possible."

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

She glanced over at Frost. "Here we go!" she said.

Rather than lead them to the large meeting room that Matthews was normally stationed in, the soldier brought them up a flight of stairs to a small office that contained just Matthews and a single aide.

The general seemed tired to Ashtoreth as she tucked her wings to make it through the doorway.

"Well," said Matthews. "Given what I've been told, you've probably surmised that this wasn't the ideal outcome for me and my people."

"Yup!"

"I don't know how 'monarch' is going to be translated into other languages, but it's looking like everyone on Earth just got told that a vampiric archfiend is in charge. I don't think they're going to interpret that as a good thing."

"Sorry," she said. "Hopefully you guys can get the news out quick, though, right?"

"We'll try," he said, looking more tired. "As for now, it looks like everything has gone as you predicted it would when your people first contacted us. The system called an election and you became the monarch." He pursed his lips as he looked from her to Frost. "And gained a hundred levels for it, it seems."

"Uh, sort of," Ashtoreth said. "After we met the horsemen, we figured some more levels were a necessity for victory in the election, so I hatched a plan to steal some from a bastion that was far enough away that it couldn't invade Earth—the levels were higher, there."

"Cores can be stolen?" Matthews asked. "How?"

Ashtoreth paused. "Well. Okay, we just killed a bunch of infernals, but the way we did it was, in my opinion, quite heist-like."

"We should probably also mention that it didn't work," Frost said. "The election was triggered literally seconds before an explosion would have killed a legion of infernals and gotten us the cores. Ashtoreth just won the monarchy at level 352, not 447."

"And from your tone, I'm guessing this wasn't a coincidence?" Matthews asked.

"We don't know," Ashtoreth said. "But I doubt it. Somehow, it looks like Heaven is bending and breaking rules. Maybe with antithesis shards, maybe with some other kind of magic or power that I don't know about—but they're a wild card. I don't even know what they want."

Matthews sat on the edge of the table, his expression darkening as he took in Ashtoreth's words. "Not good news. Even if you did beat them in the election."

"It's unfortunate," Frost said. "If Ashtoreth could have subdued one of the horsemen, we could have more or less interrogated them. But without the bonus levels from our successful raid, it was too much of a risk. If Ashtoreth had fallen to one of the horsemen, they'd have taken the monarchy."

"And hopefully we can all agree that someone whose title is 'Horseman of the Apocalypse' should probably not be the monarch of Earth!" said Ashtoreth.

Matthews cocked his head at her, his face a mask of cold amusement. "As opposed to a vampiric archfiend who happens to be royalty from Hell?"

"Okay, sure, point taken," she said. "But you're deliberately framing it to sound bad. You could maybe call me, 'The good archfiend.'"

Matthews looked nonplussed.

"Or how about, 'Protector of Earth.'"

"Ashtoreth."

"Or how about, 'Humanity's num—'"

"Look, Ashtoreth," Matthews said, raising a hand to cut her off. "I want to make something clear. Earth is humanity's home. The system might be some kind of all-powerful entity, but that doesn't mean it can decide who rules Earth—not in the eyes of humans. This will go a lot easier if we all just refer to your monarchy as a system appointment."

She shrugged. "Look, I think I get it."

"You do?" Matthews said sceptically.

"Sure," she said. "I figure that it's like when the invasion first began and I trapped my humans in an endless succession of scenarios for a year. Even though it made perfect sense that I did it, and even though I probably saved some of their lives and their loved ones, I wasn't exactly feeling a lot of love from the people I basically kidnapped."

"Go figure," said Matthews.

"I get it!" she said. "Nobody wants to have their whole life upended, to know that people they care about have been killed, to know that the whole world they once knew is forever changed, but somehow be grateful because they still wound up with a better option than they otherwise might have. A bad day's a bad day."

"If you're suggesting that anyone in high command is going to warm up to calling you our monarch—"

"Nah," she said. "Call me what you like, Sir Matthews. The important part is that we save as much of Earth as we can—and for that purpose, you can think of me as your loyal helper!"

"And if I ask you to cede your power to one of the humans?"

"I won't," she said, flashing him a smile. "Ask anyone who was at the election—they can explain why."

Matthews seemed to look even more tired. He sighed.

"Like I said, I get why you don't like the situation," she said, shrugging again. "But you want a real fighter in the spot, not someone who has less than a week's experience fighting with the system. My sisters and I were created so that one of us could fight to gain the monarchy and then hold it against threats both from Hell and from other realms—I was trained with exactly this job in mind."

Matthews eyed her for a moment. "I know," he said at last. "And you're mostly right. I don't like it, but it's also clear, given what we know, that this is the best short and medium-term outcome. I trust you more than you might think, right now—we've interviewed many of the humans who were sent to tutorials containing members of the Eldunar Alliance. What the elves told them—about the system, about the monarchy, about Hell. All of it."

Ashtoreth blinked, then grinned. True, there was no way the Eldunar would ever endorse her to humanity—too many archfiends had skinned too many elves for that to be realistic expectation.

But humanity couldn't talk to the Eldunar right now. Earth was too far from the inner realms. All high command could do was assemble a collage of all the intel that the Eldunar in the tutorials had provided—a collage that would match her own descriptions of the system and the cosmos perfectly, given that she'd told the truth.

"What the elves say corroborates everything you gave us in your pamphlets," he said. "Given that it's becoming more and more clear that they protected a great deal of human children from harm while preparing their parents for the invasion, we're a little happier to trust them."

"You know, I bet I've also saved some kids, in a butterfly effect sort of way."

"I'm sure you have," said Matthews. "But let's not lose focus. The Eldunar Alliance tell us that their monarchs are essentially just military assets, and that a civilian government has them under their control."

"Sounds about right."

"You promised us to do as much if you won the monarchy," said Matthews. "I'd like to hold you to that, now."

"'Course!" she said. "Here's what I'm thinking, and let me know if it works for you. I'll be like a figurehead when it comes to the travel settings, which you can pick, but I'll still fight off the challengers."

"Let's figure out what that means," said Matthews. "In as exact a sense as you can. I'd like you to glamour me your new menus. We'll take it slow so that we can relay everything to my bosses. Sound good?"

"Sounds good!"

"Good," he said. "Let's get started, then. Time to see exactly how this monarchy works."

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