The Villainess and I, her Zombie

Olive was comfortably sprawled in his favorite spot – the highest branches of one of the tallest trees in the Great northern forest after completing his daily ritual of checking up on the spells he had set up for the protection of the elven village.

It was more of a ritual than any real duty because the spells were working without a hitch for many years and most of them were only getting stronger with time, but making sure that everything is in order was putting the old elf's mind at ease.

"...fuaaaah..."

Olive breathed out looking at the clear sky with only occasional poofy clouds that children liked to look at describing their shapes, here and there.

"...oh, hey, this fucker looks like a baby crib..."

The old elf sighed looking at one of the said clouds showing that not only the children liked to play the guessing game.

"I should have just fucking got together with Mirabelle, haven't I..."

He suddenly breathed out in defeat, leaning back and covering his eyes with his arms.

"Knowing our personalities, our kid would have been probably similar to that human kid... no, probably a little bit more bossy and studious. Fuck... Mirabelle would have been a great mother. I'm such a fucking idiot..."

Olive complained to himself fully aware that there was absolutely no one who could overhear him, so he could get all of his bitterness out of his system.

"I wonder how he's doing. It's been around a year, hasn't it... fuck... he definitely didn't stop leveling up – he's wasting so fucking many rewards from the quests... though... with his potential and conviction, it isn't hard to imagine him fulfilling all the conditions for ranking up overlevel and making up for it later after going above level 99..."

He muttered to himself breaking into a smile.

"Seriously, little fucker have something about him that makes me think that he really will help us with the fucking Envy debacle."

The old elf laughed and put down his hands...

"...hmmm...?"

...and furrowed his brows, looking at the sky.

There was a red dot that passed the crib-shaped cloud, and it looked like whatever it was, was approaching the forest with rather impressive flight speed.

"The fuck...?"

Olive got up, standing at one of the branches, and squinted his eyes, wondering whether or not this was worth using detection [sight] skill or not.

After all, whatever monster it might have been, there certainly were enough security measures he had put up to protect the elven territory from the sky too...

...although there were some beasts that had enough MDF to resists his illusions or were straight up unaffected by them altogether – normally Olive didn't have to worry about either since any of those would never cooperate with humans – especially ones from the Envy family, but...

"...fuck it... it probably won't even get close enough to activate the first trap anyway."

He told to himself, shrugging his shoulders while turning away, prepared to lay back down when...

*GRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARG*

...the first illusion activated and a bone-chilling roar of a gargantuan monster shattered the peace and tranquility of the forest.

"THE FUCK?!"

The old elf shouted in disbelief, turning right back, with the detection [sight] already activated.

"Actual fucking dragon?! Here?!"

With his vision enhanced, Olive easily recognized the type of monster he was dealing with – judging from its build and shape of the wings it was one of the higher-ranked dragon-types, but he could not tell exactly which one since for that he would have to see the shape of the beast's head or its back, but that was impossible because of...!

"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!"

...some strange creature with a human face but seemingly composed mostly of hair or other crimson-red appendages had completely wrapped itself over the poor creature's head, undoubtedly blocking his vision, hearing, and smell – so the senses that Olive's illusions took advantage of to fool the opponents.

The dragon seemed young so on its own it would have undoubtedly be fooled by the elf's trap – but not with that thing stuck to him!

...yes, as embarrassing it was to admit, the easiest way to bypass all of the barriers set up by Olive was to be blindfolded like that – but putting aside the blindfolded dragon...

How come that other creature didn't react to the threatening howl?!

"..."

The old elf bit his lips, peeling his eyes out, staring at the unnatural combo.

The odd hair monster was wrapped not only around the dragon's head but its neck and part of the torso to creating a rather odd shape – just as if it was hiding something else there too.

What in the world was approaching the only place in the Envy's territory where elves could feel safe?

"Go on. Make that dragon descend, let's see how you react to the next illusion – you might be blocking the dragon's vision, but you have eyes yourself, you fucking freak...!"

Olive scoffed, clenching his fists, focused solely on the unidentified monster that he had never seen before.

*GRAAAAAAAAAAAARGH*

*THUMP*

*THUMP*

With a terrifying howl that was only slightly weaker than the initial illusion, the treetops rustled once a gigantic white ape beast with crimson red eyes stood up making the earth tremble under its humongous steps.

The great ancient beast illusion – if anything with the magic defense even a single point lower than the cherubim angel-class monster would catch a glimpse of it, it would believe that it was real to the point that it could receive actual physical damage if it was hit by it.

"..."

Olive felt a bit bad for the dragon who was clearly only a means of transport for the strange human-faced monster, but it wasn't to the extent of aking the risk of allowing an unknown opponent just enter the forest from the sky!

The hidden village was only a few miles away!

*GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH*

The illusion of the great white ape howled and waved its massive hand, creating equally illusionary gusts of wind as it moved, and swung at the approaching monster aiming to swat it out of the sky.

*GRAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH*

"ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME?!"

The illusion roared again as the human-faced monster and the dragon that the monster was controlling...

...flew straight past it...!

The gigantic ape was an illusion – but it was probably the strongest illusion in the whole world!

Even with the MDF higher than a seraphim angel-class monster, it was impossible to just ignore it!

As long as the creature was alive – it should fall for it even if it KNEW BEFOREHAND that it was an illusion!

Not even that – the undead monster that Olive had the displeasure of dealing with in the past actually threatened by it!

And thar was an elder lich!

Just what was this human-faced monster?!