*WITH THE MONSTER EMPRESS*

Monster Empress was getting ready to set out after a week of training her minions and setting up her little village even more. She had to expand the village after the snowmen and deer kept making more of themselves. She still doesn't understand how the snowmen monsters make themselves even if she watches them. They just build a regular snowman and it all of a sudden came to life! There was no magic involved from what she could feel but how in the world does a snowman just come to life!?

The Empress even tried building multiple snowmen in the exact same way as they did, but the only thing she managed to do was decorate her village with non-living masses of snow. The snowmen monsters always destroy her snowmen unless she forcible orders them otherwise. Eventually she gave up 3 days afterwards once she figured that she wouldn't succeed unless she herself turned into a snowman monster. She was glad that the snowmen could rebuild their numbers easily but she wished there was a way to increase their intelligence. She tried to get them to evolve by introducing different types of materials and elements but they refused to change no matter what.

She hoped that they would have more branching paths to take for evolution in the future though. The deer were coming along nicely as mounts. They listened to her and the kobolds she put under her control a week ago. She would be able to enhance the deer's strengths even further than simple mounts once she gets some evil inside them just like she did for some of the snowmen and the three kobolds.

The three kobolds have shown huge progress from a week ago. The three of them combined couldn't even take out a single snowman a week ago but now even if the entire snowmen attacked them together they wouldn't be able to take them out. The kobolds were named Ichi, Ni, and San. Ichi was the small kobold she decided to be her warrior. Ni was the mage of the kobolds and San was the support. At first she had no idea what type of direction she wanted the three to go because if her hope that evolution is something that continues as long as you live, fight, and experience, it wouldn't matter what they have.

So, she let them decide for themselves. Mostly.

Ichi was really sad that he couldn't use the large sword gift the Empress gave him while Ni and San were playing with theirs joyously, but it turns out that all he had to do was use a little magic and he could lift the sword. While he struggled hard and his knees were constantly buckling whenever he lifted it, he eventually managed to wield and use the sword. But just being able to wield the sword was the first step for the little monster. The Empress forced him to practice swinging it for 5 days straight without any breaks and occasionally creating illusionary enemies for him to face against, but these aren't just any illusions.

Any time the illusion would have gotten a clean or small hit on the kobold, the Empress made the kobold feel the exact same pain he would have got if the illusion was a real enemy, forcing him to learn how to fight. Even if his arm was severed, eyes were blinded, or had his legs chopped off, she had him continue until he learned how to fight despite these conditions and hopefully avoid them in the first place.

She wouldn't say that he was strong enough to combat a troll warrior on his own but who said he was going to be fighting alone in the first place? The kobolds began using the deer as mounts and Ichi got attached to a certain deer much more than Ni and San. So for the last two days Ichi and his mount Li have been fighting against illusionary enemies to gain combat experience.

Monster Empress originally had no idea what type of magic Ni could use. Ni is the only female of the three and her elemental talent was blood magic. She only found out after forcing a small stream of her infinite mana supply into the kobold and having her nearly explode from being unable to house that much mana with her weak physical body. But before she was close to dying, her element showed itself by spurting from her back in the form of a spiked tail that skewered right through the Empress's chest. The Empress was reasonably surprised and very happy at this situation. She pulled the blood tail from her chest and continued to watch. During this "awakening", she told Ni to go wild and large number of blood tendrils shot from her tiny body and sliced, whacked, pierced, and grabbed anything that was near Ni.

The Empress blocked any attacks that came near her until Ni drained her mana supply and returned to normal. She saw Ni trying to apologize for hurting her and just patted her head and smiled at her.

"It was just a mistake. I know you didn't mean to try to hurt me. It's okay."

Tears threatened to flow down the reptilian creature's eyes.

'I didn't know reptiles could cry. Cool.' The Empress thought as she rubbed Ni's head.

She comforted the creature until it calmed down and then began her magical training. Ni didn't need to learn how to control her mana or learn how to sense and feel it like any other creature starting out with magic should because she had the Empress's mind control mark, the pink M! She could control her mana and element perfectly thanks to it. The only things that Ni needed to worry about was running out of mana. So, the Empress only had to teach her the capabilities of her magic and limitations of it. She did this for 5 days and for the 6th day how to ride a deer. Ni was by far the easiest of the kobolds to teach while the last one, San, was something else.

Monster Empress decided on having San be the support of her three kobolds but didn't know what kind of support he should be. An alchemist who gives potion buffs to allies and debuffs to enemies? A weaponsmith/armorsmith that will eventually create legendary weapons on par with the gods? A tamer or some sort of defensive support? But eventually she just decided on something easy and didn't require much for materials. Runes!

The Empress taught San about runes for 5 days straight. But if you want to be honest, she was only teaching him how to draw. He had no trouble remembering the runes but it turns out that monsters have terrible penmanship, absolutely horrible penmanship. She was so confused on how he could remember the complex and confusing runes so easily but not learn how to write neatly. She guessed that maybe kobolds just have terrible dexterity. By the 6th day, San could finally draw the runes in a way that allowed them to manifest and work while she also had to teach him how to ride the deer. The bad thing is that… Drawing while on a moving deer is impossible for San at this stage..

So, when they come into combat today, San will have to dismount to use his runes. But besides his penmanship, he easily learned how to give his runes the intention he desires and the mana output most of the runes require. To put his knowledge to the test, the Empress gave San the task of buffing the group before they set out to raid a small troll village for it's food and people. The deer aren't going to feed themselves.

San was putting various runes on our army and had to take a 2 hour break after successfully drawing 5 runes. He placed a rune that increased the sharpness of his horned deer's horns and a rune that increased the agility of his and Ni's deer. For the fourth rune, he drew a regeneration rune into Ni's back that would increase her the time it would take for her to regenerate mana and for the final rune a physical buff for Ichi.

It was time for them to set out as the sun began to fall. Their assault will start now.

"Charge!" Monster Empress yelled while taking off on Minion #2, a deer that hasn't evolved yet but shows great promise despite her tiny size.

Ichi wielded his sword that probably weighed more than both he and his mount did together on his shoulder. His deer evolved into the fur type and had large fur all over its body, looking more like a puff ball than an actual animal. He had an excited look on his face and tongue waggling out of his mouth as they rode. Ni rode on her fiery stead that evolved into a fire deer from eating one of the Empress's fruits a while back while her metal staff was across her back. Ni was just as excited as Ichi was but was much more contained than he was. She had a big smile on her face and was slightly shaking. San however, had his reptilian snout inside his large book that the Empress gave him and was trying to draw while they rode. He had a serious expression on his face even though he was making 0 progress at his task.

Monster Empress couldn't bring along many of the snowmen or they would have been slowed down, so she had to bring the best of the best. The Empress froze the two snowmen marked by her spell and dragged them behind her attached to her antenna.

*NIGHT TIME*

Monster Empress and her little group reached the small troll settlement and it was mostly dark with the exceptions of a few torches here and there. Empress had the kobolds split off into different directions and had the two snowmen follow Ni and San.

'All the players are in position and there should be no issues with this attack.. Just one more thing though.'

Monster Empress began to draw multiple runes over her unevolved deer's body while giggling at the chaos this little bugger should be able to make.

'It might be overkill for a tiny village like this but who knows what might happen. Gotta be careful.'