A Shield in a World of Monarchs. Solo Leveling X Bofuri

"Rulers, huh?" Kaede said, gently patting Cinnamon's head. The Feline let out a faint growling sound, curling contentedly beside her. "That's not the first time I've heard that term. You've mentioned them before… Who, or what, are they exactly?"

Queresha nodded. "All right then."

The world seemed to ripple and tilt for a moment.

---

The Queen Of Insects. The Monarch Of Plague. Queresha, has cast the skill: The Pledge Of Trust [Exchange]

Once The Pledge Of Trust [Exchange] is accepted, the caster and the acceptor will not be able to lie to one another.

Accept The Pledge Of Trust [Exchange]?

||Y/N||

---

Kaede stared at the panel before her. "Accept."

---

The Pledge Of Trust [Exchange] has been initiated.

The Caster and the Acceptor cannot lie to one another until both parties mutually agreeable to terminate the contract.

---

Queresha stepped down from the centipede she had been perched on, her cloak fluttering slightly as she landed. "The Rulers," she began, her voice calm and distant, "are, in a sense… our opposites."

She moved to sit across from Kaede, folding her legs beneath her. The large centipede crawled under her arm, curling itself protectively around her side as she absentmindedly stroked its segmented shell.

"We Monarchs were born of chaos and darkness. It's in our nature to destroy, to disrupt, to shatter order. The Rulers, however, were born of light and structure. It's their nature to protect, to impose order, to preserve balance." She glanced down at the centipede in thought. "Two sides of the same coin... and for a time, that balance held."

Kaede tilted her head slightly. "So, what changed?"

Queresha's tone grew colder. "The Rulers never stopped attacking us. They sought not balance, but to eliminate the Monarchs. They invaded the Chaos World repeatedly, trying to wipe us out. For centuries, the war raged with no clear victor."

Her gaze darkened. "Then everything shifted. The Rulers grew stronger... suspiciously so. They captured Legia, the Monarch of Beginnings. A feat once thought impossible."

Kaede's brow furrowed. "Captured? What happened next?"

"One of the Rulers, Ashborn, appeared," Queresha said, her voice lowering. "He claimed to have become one of us. Somehow, he had acquired the power of a Monarch… without being born of Chaos."

"That shouldn't be possible, I'm guessing?" Kaede murmured.

"It wasn't. And yet, there he was." Queresha nodded. "We were desperate. With our numbers dwindling, some of us welcomed him. His strength rivaled Antares himself, and that terrified both the Rulers and the Monarchs. Baran, the Monarch of White Flame, and Rakan, the Fang Monarch, weren't so sure. They tried to ambush Ashborn…"

She paused.

"…and were swiftly defeated. Baran was killed. Rakan barely escaped with his life and vanished. Two more Monarchs gone…"

"Our losses were too great," Queresha said quietly. "With the war slipping from our grasp, we went into hiding. We found a small, densely populated world... Earth, and began rebuilding in secret."

Kaede rubbed Cinnamon's snout as the feline flicked its tongue. "And now, for some reason, I've become a Monarch Candidate. Which means the Rulers will come for me."

Queresha nodded. "They will. Without question."

Kaede stood slowly, arms folded. Her voice carried a sharper edge. "If a Ruler can become a Monarch... then they're not exactly paragons of order and protection, are they?"

She scoffed. "Fragments of Brilliant Light? What a load of bull."

Her gaze drifted upward, eyes narrowed. "So the Rulers are coming to Earth… to hunt Monarchs?"

Queresha shook her head. "No. They've already arrived."

Kaede blinked. "Already?"

"At least a decade ago," Queresha said. "The only ones not on Earth right now are Antares… and Ashborn."

Kaede stared at her, confused. "If they're already here, and stronger than you guys right now, why haven't they made their move? Wouldn't they press that advantage?"

Queresha nodded. "As a matter of fact… they did."

Kaede blinked, pausing mid-motion as she stroked Cinnamon's back. "Did? When? I don't think that's the sort of thing you can cover up."

"No, it's not," Queresha replied, her tone somber. "When I say 'did', I mean the war between the Monarchs and the Rulers has already happened… in the future."

Kaede raised an eyebrow. "Okay, you had me. And then you lost me. What do you mean, the future?"

Queresha met her gaze, deadly serious. "When the Rulers discovered we were on Earth, they immediately launched a full-scale assault on the planet. We fought back, naturally. But without Antares, we couldn't hold them off. One by one, the Monarchs fell. Antares fought alone in the end... and he, too, was eventually defeated."

Kaede was quiet for a moment.

"…And by the end, the planet was Destroyed," Queresha said simply.

Kaede let out a low whistle. "Wow. Some war, huh?"

Queresha blinked, caught off-guard. "That's… not the reaction I was expecting."

Kaede shrugged casually. "What do you want me to say? I could probably erase all of Japan if I really wanted to, and I can tank much worse. When beings as strong as you and the Rulers decide to go all out, it's obvious the battlefield isn't going to survive. I mean, Earth was never built to handle a clash like that. Compared to the Chaos World, it's basically paper."

Queresha nodded. "Exactly. That was a problem even the Rulers came to acknowledge. They seem to have some kind of fetish of a clean victory, one where they win without the loss of the planet. Their solution was drastic… they rewound time. Repeatedly. Trying to win the war and preserve the Earth."

Kaede's expression shifted to something between curiosity and disbelief. "…Hold up. You're telling me the Rulers can rewind time?"

"Yes," Queresha confirmed. "I don't know the exact method, but it's clear they have some means of temporal manipulation. However, it seems to be limited. They've never been able to go back more than ten years."

Kaede narrowed her eyes. "And they've done this more than once?"

Queresha nodded. "Many times. Each attempt, the timeline loops back ten years. But it never matters who wins, the Rulers or us. The result is always the same. Earth is destroyed."

She paused, then added, "And each time, we Monarchs remember. The war, the fall, the death. It returns to us as fragmented memories of a past that technically hasn't happened yet."

"That is so cool," Kaede said, grinning as she walked ahead, her footsteps light despite the weight of their conversation. "Monarchs are awesome. The Rulers are cool too, I guess, but they're jerks."

Cinnamon ambled beside her, his massive form matching her pace effortlessly.

"My senses say the Demon Realm ends in this direction," she added, glancing toward the horizon.

Behind her, Queresha rose and followed, her long centipede slithering silently at her heels. Her tone shifted, quiet but serious. "This time, though… the Rulers did something very different. They opened the gates to their ancient prisons. The ones they've used to seal away our kind for millennia."

Kaede slowed her pace slightly, glancing back.

"You humans know them," Queresha continued, "as dungeons."

Kaede froze mid-step.

She turned slowly, her expression unreadable. "...What did you just say?"

Queresha blinked at her in confusion, until realization dawned in her eyes. "Oh. The dungeons."

"Yes! The dungeons!" Kaede shouted, her voice rising with disbelief. "They did that? The Rulers are responsible for the dungeons!?"

Queresha nodded. "Yes. I take it… you've lost people to them?"

Kaede stomped toward her, fury etched into her face. Her eyes locked with Queresha's, burning with emotion. "Are you telling me the truth right now?"

Queresha took a step back, unflinching but calm. "I am. You took the Pledge, did you not? I cannot lie to you."

Kaede clenched her fists tightly, her whole body trembling. "So many of my friends…" she whispered, teeth grit. "Why would they do that?"

There was a pause as Queresha considered how best to respond.

"At first, we didn't understand either," she admitted. "We assumed they released the prisoners as a psychological tactic, to break our spirits, to show us our own people twisted into madness by millennia of isolation."

She walked a few steps closer, her voice quieter now. "But then the dungeons started empowering humans. Hunters were born. And that's when we saw the truth behind it."

Kaede looked up, her gaze sharp. "What truth?"

"Their plan is to use the war to transform Earth itself," Queresha said. "Each time a being from the Chaos World dies, the mana within their lifeblood seeps into the land. That energy will feed the planet, forcing it to evolve, becoming a stronger, more resilient world."

Kaede's breath hitched.

"When the war begins again," Queresha continued, "when Monarchs and Rulers clash one final time… Earth will be ready. Most of humanity will perish. But a fraction, the strongest, will survive."

She narrowed her eyes. "The hunters."

"I don't much care for humanity," Queresha stated with a shrug, her voice smooth and detached. "And for all the effort the Fragments of Brilliant Light are willing to expend, they don't care much either. It's not compassion that drives them. It's simply their nature… to impose order on anything that falls within their sight."

She let her gaze drift ahead, cold, calm, and utterly unimpressed.

"But order," Kaede murmured, cutting in as she turned to face Queresha.

Her eyes had changed.

A whirlpool of colors swam across her irises, violet, crimson, silver, abyssal blue, churning as if in a violent contest for dominance. A quiet pressure settled across the demon realm, subtle at first, then rising with palpable intensity. The wind stilled. The ground trembled softly. Even the trees leaned inward, as if listening.

Queresha stiffened.

Then it spoke.

"IS BUT A MERE CHILD BIRTHED FROM CHAOS."

The voice came not from Kaede's mouth, but from the world itself. From the soil, the sky, the stone. Multitudes of voices echoed in unison, layered over one another: male, female, ancient, monstrous, divine. It was not a statement, but nonetheless a proclamation. A law, one far too old for language.

Queresha took a step back instinctively.

Her centipede hissed beneath her arm, body curling tighter.

Then she felt it, sweat, forming not on her brow, but on her wrist. An oddity. Her body was not supposed to react that way anymore.

She didn't like it.

Kaede blinked, and the world relaxed. The colors in her eyes receded, vanishing like mist before dawn. Her usual expression returned, calm, casual, as if nothing had happened.

"So," Kaede said, her voice light again, "I guess I have two choices in front of me."

"Either join the Monarchs, and doom humanity, or join the Rulers, and work towards an already rigged ending." Kaede sighed. "And that's if they don't kill me first. I'm not Ashborn, who was a Ruler before falling."

Kaede laughed, head tilted back as she stared into the fractured sky above them. Shards of cloud twisted unnaturally across the heavens, like a shattered mirror held together by tension and time.

"It's kinda obvious what Maple would do," she said, a crooked grin spreading across her lips. "What 'I' would do. No half measures. It's all or nothing… and I want it all."

Her voice resonated with growing certainty. "Maple Tree was a place of GLORIOUS CHAOS. Kuromu, Iz, Mai and Yui, Kanade, Risa, Kasumi… and me. We've never been one for rules, just ask the devs. Order is overrated."

As she spoke, her irises shimmered, shifting from soft amber to an eerie kaleidoscope of hues, each color rippling like oil on water. Her words echoed faintly, not just across the cracked earth, but within the very fabric of the Demon Realm.

Queresha watched, expression unreadable, a faint twitch of antennae the only sign of unease. "You would doom humanity?" she asked, uncertain. 'Maybe… she's not human after all.'

Kaede turned her gaze to the Monarch of Plague, eyes once again their usual warm shade, and beamed with disarming brightness. "Hell no," she said. "I choose the third option."

As if the world itself acknowledged her declaration, a blue panel bloomed into existence before her eyes, suspended in the air with a faint hum of power.

---

The Path of a Monarch(Absolute _ part 1)

Integrate Monarchs into your banner and change the game.

"I'll be waiting… Maple."

---

Kaede blinked as a soft, childlike voice whispered within her mind. It was gentle, but layered, too deep, too wide, as if a thousand echoes were playing at once.

Then another panel appeared.

---

Integrate Queresha, The Queen of Insects, The Monarch of Plague, into your banner?

|| Y/N ||

---

Kaede didn't answer immediately. She walked ahead, the cracked and scorched soil crunching beneath her boots. Cinnamon followed, tail flicking lazily, as though none of this bothered him in the slightest.

"I don't like being lied to," Kaede said at last, her tone soft, but heavy. "And I don't like having my choices taken from me. They've reset time how many times now? Hundreds? Thousands? And all that just to get a 'perfect result' where humanity survives just enough."

She glanced over her shoulder.

"The Gaming community has a word for that. They're farmers."

Queresha let that settle. The girl wasn't wrong. The Fragments of Brilliant Light never wept for the dead. In her opinion, they only counted the living. "So what is your plan really?"

Kaede turned to her, slowly coming to a halt. She extended a hand to Queresha, her voice light with anticipation.

"Fun," she said simply.

Queresha blinked. A green panel appeared before her eyes, its glow reflecting faintly across her pale features.

"…What is this?" she muttered, eyes scanning the text. Slowly, she looked up, locking eyes with Kaede. The girl's gaze shimmered like a living oil spill, rainbow hues battling for dominance, chaotic and unnatural.

"This timeline… it's definitely different," Queresha said, her voice laced with something between wariness and wonder. "You're going to clash with Ashborn. And especially Antares."

She raised her hand to the panel, hesitation giving way to resolve.

"Tell me, Maple… would you lose?"

Kaede's grin stretched wider. Her eyes sparkled with certainty. "Nah," she said. "I'd win."

Queresha let out a short, quiet breath. "How did that human saying go?" She tilted her head slightly. "I made the bed, so now I have to lie in it."

She touched the panel.

She chose.

Kaede turned to her own screen as a deep blue panel unfolded before her.

---

The Monarch of Plagues has agreed to join your Pantheon.

Pantheon LV1: 001 / XXX

---

Kaede cringed internally. 'Pantheon?' she thought. 'What am I, a god now? This system gets weirder every day.'

Another screen followed immediately after, golden borders pulsing faintly with power.

---

Congratulations. You have created a new Function within the System.

Rewards:

+100 to all stats

+1000 to Vitality

+1 Shard of Chaos (Merge with two more to form Chaos Key and unlock access to the Job Trial Tower)

Shards: 2 / 3

> The Demon Realm currently lacks a recognized leader.

Until a Monarch is officially chosen, the Demon Realm will fall under your authority.

The Demon Realm will now rejoin the Chaos World.

> High-ranking Demon Realm entities detected in another dimension.

Retrieval in progress...

---

Kaede raised her hand slowly, letting the small crystal shimmer in her palm. It pulsed faintly with unstable energy.

"If this isn't a sign," she murmured, "then I don't know what is."

Queresha stepped closer, her expression uncharacteristically serious. "A Shard of Chaos," she whispered. "I haven't seen one in millennia. Even though they don't affect Monarchs directly, I can use them to evolve my subordinates beyond their limits."

Kaede turned to the horizon, her eyes steady. "Then let's head to your realm. We can't have you missing your army, now can we?"

She raised her hand with a snap.

"Cinnamon!"

The great lion let out a mighty roar as his body surged in size, towering and massive, until he stood hundreds of meters tall. Kaede leapt onto his back with a single, fluid motion.

She turned to Queresha with a grin. "Shall we?"

Queresha smiled faintly, eyes glinting with something ancient and amused. Her centipede began to grow as well, long and monstrous, its limbs clicking as it expanded beside Cinnamon.

Side by side, the lion and the centipede thundered across the scarred realm.

.

.

.

Far behind them, a voice echoed faintly through the thread of reality.

"I'll be waiting... Maple."