Ruthless V5Ch55-The Panther Queen Resolution

The Panther Queen’s aura spiked, and James’s body threw itself backward instinctively.

A moment later, a long claw stabbed through the space where he had been. The Queen was not truly attacking yet, though. Her body was spasming and writhing, every muscle shaking, as her flesh bulged and twisted beneath her fur.

Final form, then, James thought.

Not every monster—or even every Ruler—had it, but he had seen it before. The Spider Queen had transformed into a deadlier version of herself to try to end their duel. In his experience, this did not truly mean ascending to a new tier of power. It meant desperation, twisting one’s body to try to secure a kill.

He had pushed the Panther Queen into a corner.

She doesn’t even know the half of it yet, he thought. He could sense some of his bone shards, still embedded in her flesh, still causing her pain, still wedging themselves in further. He pushed them a little deeper inside with a mental effort, in case the writhing from the transformation she was undergoing created a possibility of shoving them out.

The Queen’s claws slashed out blindly in front of her, where James was not. He could tell she was simply trying to keep him away as her body stabilized. Her muscles gave another series of spasms and then stopped.

The transformation was already more or less over. Her body shook, but her back was no longer pulsing with motion. It was much larger, though. To James, it seemed that all that had happened was a significant growth in the size of her muscles.

Kind of underwhelming if I’m honest, he thought.

She got to her feet and let out a low roar.

“You pushed me to this,” she said, her voice an octave deeper. “Now I will give you the chance to surrender.”

James couldn’t help but crack a smile. “You’re funny,” he said. “I like that. Once you bend the knee, I really think we’ll get along.”

The Queen let out a little grunt and flung herself forward. Her meatier form was larger, almost certainly stronger, but also noticeably slower than her leaner body had been. James sensed he could probably easily evade her for the rest of the fight, wait for the bone shards to do their work. That shrapnel wasn’t going away anytime soon. He could just dodge and dance away.

Instead, James lunged onward to meet her head-on. Now that she was in her physically strongest form, he wanted to exchange at least one blow to see how well he held up. As he flew toward her, he curled the fingers of his right hand into a fist, allowing Roscuro to turn back into his bracelet form.

The claws on the Panther Queen’s right paw shrank as she drew nearer to him, until they were barely longer than the claws of a normal big cat. She balled up her paw into a fist as well, intent on meeting James with the same kind of attack that he was using. It was a simple contest of Strength, and they were both determined to meet each other with straightforward force for this single exchange. Each was too proud to do anything other than throw a straight punch.

James felt his knuckles make contact with those of the Panther Queen. He felt a crushing pressure that almost broke his fingers on contact. Then the pressure traveled up his arm, shook his elbow, and struck his shoulder.

He was sent flying backward, his body flying in the same direction the Queen’s fist had been aimed in. His shoulder felt noticeably weaker.

I probably pulled a couple of muscles, he assessed.

With True Regeneration, the weakness was only temporary, of course. He felt his arm return to normal at right around the same moment that his feet touched the ground.

But it showed that he had lost the contest of Strength—as, deep down, he had known he would. The Panther Queen was an almost purely physical beast. Her magic was half-hearted, her Skills were not especially versatile. It was all right that she could have this one thing over him.

And it was time to show her that physical Strength alone was not enough.

James launched himself toward her again, and he began fighting the Queen in close quarters combat, choosing to meet her blow for blow again, deliberately placing himself in the circumstance where she would feel she was at best advantage. He tried not to take more direct hits like the one he had endured before, though.

Now James used martial arts instead of brute force to engage her. The Queen was clearly untrained and lacked the same level of fighting Skills that the System had allowed James to acquire. She was a brawler and a predator, used to using overwhelming force or a massive attack to a weak spot to slaughter her prey, not a martial artist who knew how to sensitively direct force.

Where he could, he redirected her punches, slashes from the paw that still had its claws extended, and kicks. He landed slightly smaller blows than her, but they were much more accurate, and he struck at weak points on the body. The throat, the inside of the elbow, the backs of the knees, the sides of her stomach—though her muscles in that last area seemed too much like armor for her to take much damage.

The Panther Queen mostly missed her attacks. She landed one slash that opened his arm from wrist to shoulder, but it was a glancing cut, and it healed almost as soon as the blade had exited the wound. She landed a few punches and kicks that drove James briefly onto the defensive—every hit left broken ribs that forced him to get distance, lest he suffer more significant injuries.

And she landed one massive punch that, partially through luck—James had planted his feet for a heavy punch of his own, so he could not easily divert her force—she snapped his left arm, bending it backward at the elbow. That brought a wince to his face, but it did not change the direction of the fight at all. It seemed the Queen did not have any ability that could do that.

James simply had to evade her frenzied attacks for a few minutes and keep his arm as steady as he could until True Regeneration reset the bone and repaired the ruined muscle, and his arm was as good as new.

Then he was back in the fight, perhaps with a slightly renewed respect for the Queen’s brutal force.

But especially after that, most of her hits struck the air or the ground, opening up new, smaller sinkholes that led into the big conjoined one James had hidden under a thin layer of earth. The martial artist inside James refused to let him tank any further big hits that he didn’t need to, even if all indications were that he could heal from them.

The Panther Queen was locked in a pattern already. There was no need for any further risks.

“Stand still already!” the Queen hissed after James dodged another haymaker.

“Or you could fight more carefully,” James retorted.

Lightning Strike!

He threw a punch into her armpit that produced a yowl of discomfort—and the result he had actually been aiming for. He could feel it had accelerated her heart rate, already fast, by just a few more beats per minute.

Good, good, he thought. We’re just about there.

It was only a matter of time, he hoped and expected.

Sure enough, a few seconds later, the Queen slashed at him once more, but rather than James needing to dodge, she stumbled forward, unable to control the momentum of her attack.

“What?” she said to herself quietly. She put a paw to her chest and felt her heartbeat. “I do not—this feels wrong.”

“Finally,” James said, standing just out of range of a sudden attack. “I’ve been waiting for what feels like forever.”

“What? What is happening to me?”

“Venom,” James said. “My body produces it. Those bone shards inside of you are coated in deadly venom. They have been penetrating deeper into you as our fight went on, and the venom has had the chance to circulate through your bloodstream.”

“Toying with me?” she muttered. “Were you just playing around with me all this time? You could have just sat back and—”

“I don’t do wasteful things in a fight,” James said, though that wasn’t strictly true. “I wasn’t toying with you. I was keeping your body moving so that your heart would pump blood faster. Spread the venom more quickly. Give your body less of a chance of fighting it off. It was tactical.”

The Queen snorted and spoke again, in short, choppy sentences. James could tell she was growing short of breath. “So it wasn’t a game. More of a distraction. Keep me from noticing the venom. Spread it more quickly.”

“Well, it was also fun exchanging blows with you,” James replied. The sheer pleasure of battle came through in his voice. He could hear it. An emotion that he didn’t know how to fake.

She gave him a small nod, allowed her body to relax, and took deep breaths as if each one was precious—which James supposed they were for her. He had never killed anyone as powerful as her with venom, but he imagined that in time, she would go into cardiac arrest and die. These could well be among the last minutes of her life, though he could not put an exact clock on time of death, especially not for someone as powerful and physically vital as her.

“How long do I have before the end?” she asked. “Will you spare my people? I have tried to honor surrenders in my own battles.”

He had mixed views of her record on honoring surrenders. But he supposed the Queen had behaved roughly as honorably as he himself in most circumstances. She had often been provoked into the more rash actions she had occasionally taken.

More sinned against than sinning, he thought.

“You don’t have to die,” James reminded her. “Remember what I said earlier. I meant it. I was and am happy to make you one of my subordinates. If you surrender to me, I’m happy to heal you up. I can easily extract the bone shards, and the venom will work its way out of your system more easily after that.”

The Panther Queen shook her head forcefully. “Thank you for the offer, but I have good reasons for wishing to remain independent, Fisher King. If subservience is the condition of my survival, you should kill me now.” She lifted her chin slightly to bare her throat for his blade.

But James just shook his head and left Roscuro where he was, in bracelet form. “I never particularly wanted you dead. If you’re not willing to submit to my rule, I guess that’s understandable. There’s no one I’m willing to surrender to either, honestly. I like my independence too much. Swear that you and your followers will never take up arms against me again, and—” James hesitated. No, wait, I need more than just that… “I’ll bless you and make a condition of the blessing that you can never break your deal with me. If you do, the blessing will turn into a curse and probably kill you.” James did not know for certain whether his blessings could actually be fatal in the event of betrayal, but he had already heard that they could have a terrible effect in the event that someone betrayed him. He was willing to bet that the Panther Queen would not be willing to take that risk.

“Done,” she said instantly.

“And you have to let the humans you’ve subjugated go,” James added.

“They surrendered to me willingly,” the Panther Queen grumbled.

“You lost to me unwillingly,” James replied. “I’m morally opposed to forcing anyone into service against their will. I don’t think you can object to that principle.”

She shook her head, lowering her eyes.

No, she could not object to James being against forced bondage, because if he wasn’t, she would be either enslaved or dead.

“I kept them safe,” she muttered. “I did not allow them to come to any harm. None of them will say otherwise.”

“Good,” James said. “And I’ll give them all a choice whether they want to stay with you.”

“Thank you,” the Panther Queen said. She hesitated a moment.

“What is it?” James asked. “You need some healing?”

“I think I will recover on my own,” the Queen replied. “As long as you do not finish me off.”

Weren’t we already past that? he thought. But he shook his head anyway.

“Are you… interested in a mate?” the Panther Queen asked. “I have been giving a great deal of thought to choosing a partner with the greatest strengths I could find, and you are frankly rather exquisite.”

“Umm…”

We’re not even the same species, was his first thought. But somehow it felt rude to say.

He heard a throat clear from behind him, and both James and the Panther Queen turned to see Mina standing there.

“Oh,” James said. “Meet my wife, Mina. Wife is another word for mate.”

“I see,” the Queen said. Her body was slow to adjust, but she nevertheless pulled herself to a seated position. She managed to begin shrinking her inflated bulk down into something closer to her normal form. Mina approached more closely, and then the Panther Queen extended her paw—the one with the claws retracted already—and shook hands with James’s Queen.

“A pleasure to meet you,” Mina said in a neutral tone. “Now that I understand you will not be fighting us any further?”

The Panther Queen shook her head slowly, as if the gesture made her dizzy.

“If your mate does not save me from his venom, I will not have the opportunity to fight anyone ever again,” she said.

“That would make us much safer,” Mina replied bluntly. “Wouldn’t it?”

James raised an eyebrow but then made his expression carefully neutral again. Mina interfering in the negotiation between Rulers had not been on his bingo card when he started this conversation, but it was not unwelcome. She was clearly angling to get something that James had not recognized he needed.

The Panther Queen swallowed. “It would,” she admitted, “but you are safe from me now.”

“Not as safe as we would be from the absence of you, though,” Mina said. “So, why should James save you?”

Her husband restrained himself from smiling.

“I have agreed to take my people away from his territory and never to take up arms against him again, and he will liberate any humans who do not wish to live under my rule,” the Queen said.

“Not to belabor the point, but wouldn’t he get all the same results by just allowing you to pass on?” Mina asked gently. “Plus, James would obtain control of your army.”

Mina has turned rather ruthless while I wasn’t looking, James thought admiringly. I was mostly fighting the Panther Queen to show off, but she’s turning this into a genuinely beneficial arrangement. And she’s showing off something too.

Rotter was still there, James sensed, recording—and therefore probably also live streaming—everything to the Council. It would be good for them to see Mina in action, behaving decisively.

“What else should I offer him?” the Panther Queen asked. Her tone was one of submission, as if she would take whatever suggestion Mina gave her.

“Just the same that he would receive from your death, plus a little extra,” Mina said. “I overheard you say that you are insistent on remaining a Ruler. But my husband has told me much about the politics of this world, and its long history predating the System. He told me about a concept called a ‘client state.’ Do you know what that is?”

The Panther Queen simply shook her head.

“It means a country that exists independently but gives in to the authority of another state,” Mina said. She looked at James, checking to make certain that she had given a correct definition, and he simply nodded. “There have been many one-sided alliances in the history of the word. You would place yourself at James’s service for the future. He will not call on you often, I expect, but he should be able to rely upon your friendship. If there is conflict between his interests and those of someone on your side, you will resolve it in his favor. If there is a fight in which James needs to marshal all his forces, you will be there standing beside him.”

“Humiliating terms,” the Queen muttered.

No, these are the right terms, James thought. I was being a little too lenient before, but these are the correct conditions for me to accept her surrender on. Total victory is what I achieved. Total submission is what I should receive in turn.

“I accept,” the Panther Queen said after a long moment.