Zalga looked down upon the diminutive, little beastman as she towered high above her. She was slightly concerned about her ‘daughter’, but it would take more than a half-hour of torment to kill or even mildly inconvenience C’thylla. Hell, Zalga was pretty sure that you could reduce her to disparate and scattered cells, only to have her reform in no time. C’thylla was, when she was The Beast, impossible for Zalga to kill. As she was now? Well, if Zalga couldn’t kill when she was still ‘human’, then she would be unable to kill her now, that was for sure.

Still, C’thylla was her ‘daughter’, so it was natural to be absolutely fucking livid at the multi-tailed bitch that was staring her down from beneath her height. How dare this whore treat her precious C’thylla in such a way?! How dare she refuse to let this place be ravaged?! This was why she hated anyone and everyone that stood against her darling Kain’s ambitions and desires. They never knew their place until it was forced down their throats and -!

Zalga didn’t get to finish her internal rant, as she was snapped out of her mental monologue by a blow to the face. There did not seem to be a fist or foot attached, and it did not seem to do much, but the shock of… something striking her cheek and slightly pushing her head in one direction was more than enough to piss the nautical leviathan off even more. Zalga responded to the strike with one of her own, but the nimble little skank dodged and weaved like a pro. With every attempt Zalga made to smack the annoying, furry fly from the sky, another invisible object struck her body. The hits were coming faster and harder, and Zalga was beginning to feel something she thought only Kain had the ability to instill within her.

Fear.

The primal fear of facing a being that was powerful enough to toy with you. Any blow that landed on them was shrugged off like a light drizzle, and they treated their fight with you as if it were nothing but a game. Worse still, you would not be able to run unless they let you, and odds are, you wouldn’t be given that luxury.

That was the sensation creeping into Zalga, and along with it came the outrage that anyone aside from Kain would be able to inflict such a mental blow to her. This ended up acting as a kind of blinder, making her strikes, both physical and magical, ever sloppier as the cocktail of fear and indignation grew and churned inside her. Eventually, there came a phantom impact strong enough to shove her off the coast and out to sea. Zalga wanted to scream and destroy the monster in front of her, but even her rage regarding her current feelings was, at this point, not overshadowed by her ever-growing desire to flee.

She hoped that she could avoid the monster by going as deep as possible, and so she ordered her ‘daughter’, who was heading back to try another round with the nine-tailed freak of nature, to follow her into the deepest part of the Shadow Sea. Hopefully, this would either slow the abomination that they had been forcing themselves to deal with or, better yet, deny that creature its chance to take either of them down. Zalga may not have been able to kill C’thylla, but she was now positively certain that if C’thylla went to battle she would be permanently put down.

So, as the two swam deeper into the abyssal waters, at least one of them beseeched her unrequited love for divine protection and luck.

…

Da Ji, the malevolent and twisted super-beastman from the far east, sensed the massive punching bag fade from her senses. She could not tell if this was due to the being running like a coward or due to it dying, but it did not matter either way. She would have given chase, but there was something far more important for her to do.

No, this was not the act of going to the Sultanate and making sure the descendants of her servants/ slaves obeyed her will. No, this issue was, in her eyes, far more pressing. She had let Zalga go, forcing her out to sea more than a few tens of miles from the edge of the coast not purely due to anger, but due to her own dismay.

She had forgotten that the waters around these parts had so many contaminants! Worse than the battle and the sprays of water merely irreversibly damaging her clothes, she had somehow managed to chip the nail polish on one of her fingernails! This would not do; it would not do at all! To hell with dealing with those lowlifes in the Sultanate, she absolutely needed to get back and reapply the mixture to every single one of her nails!

As she flew off into the eastern sky, Da Ji ranted in rage. This was no victory for her, at least according to her own standards. At best this was a draw, and at worst she had been so thoroughly humiliated that is counted as a loss. That would make that horrible, oversized octo-bitch the only other kind of being in her entire history on this whole world to ever make her lose face. Tracking such a beast would be nigh impossible, even for her, but she swore that if she ever saw that gigantic slut ever again, she would crush it utterly and without remorse!

…

Zalga stayed in the deepest part of the Shadow Sea until she was sure that the nine-tailed monster had left before crossing back into the Alforican Sea. She was thoroughly demoralized, but she now had a new goal beyond simply gathering wealth, territory, and subjects. She did not think that she would ever be forced to do what she was going to, but she made a choice that would change everything in the future.

She contacted Alexis, filled her in on what the fuck had just happened, and the two of them decided that it was time for a good old-fashioned training montage. They would let the other people deal with the Arbianans. The Sultanate could wait. For now, they needed to get stronger if they ever hoped to defeat something like that foxy fiend. There was only one place where they both could truly cut loose and push their capabilities beyond what they currently were without inadvertently destroying a large swathe of territory in the process.

Zero Noir was going to have quite a task on his giant metal hands.