Ryou Shiramine is a fairly ordinary Japanese high school student. One day, he's summoned to another world, a world with magic and inhuman races. He's greeted by three representatives of humanity—Diedhauser, Amelia and Emilia—who explain the situation to him. They tell him that the inhumans are enemies of humanity and were driven back in a war ten years ago, with the inhumans' Dark Queen Fleonell being sealed using the power of the Holy Sword.
That leads to the present: Ryou has been summoned here because he has the rare ability to wield the Holy Sword. Diedhauser and the others want him to retrieve the Holy Sword to secure humanity's future (since if a suitable wielder were to appear amongst the inhumans, they could unseal Fleonell and then keep the Holy Sword).
But when Ryou participates in a human expedition to retrieve the Holy Sword, he sees the humans brutally slaughter the inhumans living nearby. And when he retrieves the Holy Sword, the humans plan to execute Fleonell (despite her having lost her power) to break the inhumans' spirit.
So Ryou switches sides and decides to fight for the inhumans instead. Now, he helps the Dark Queen and the inhumans strike back against humanity.
The Dark Queen and I Strike Back contains examples of:
- After the End: The setting is actually a future Earth. A mysterious disaster, the Schwarz Katastrophe, drove humanity to the brink of extinction. Then the inhumans invaded and brought Techniques with them, and historical records have been changed so that everyone thinks they've been here all along instead of being relative newcomers.
- Alphabetical Theme Naming: The Perfect Works all have a name taken from a letter of the alphabet:
- A - Amelia
- E - Emilia
- J - Jack
- K - Katalina
- P - Pesty
- V - Violet (now Sumire)
- W - (Unknown, now Tsukumo)
- Bathos: Leona's omakes make morbid humor about her past in a concentration camp, especially the sex slavery. Mostly by obliviously practicing what she learned on her own father, who reacts with appropriate rage.
- Body Backup Drive: The reason Seed Eight and Diedhauser keep coming back after they are killed, as their minds are transferred to a backup body in storage. Later in the series the storage is destroyed, leading to them being more cautious.
- Boxing Lessons for Superman: After the Artralia battle, Ryou undergoes training with Liott to improve his skills and not have to rely on the Holy Sword.
- Casting a Shadow: Tsukumo's Divine Craft creates clones of himself from shadows.
- The Chosen One: Ryou is summoned because of his suitability to wield the Holy Sword, and thus allow the humans to finish their victory over the inhumans. However, he ends up turning against the very humans who summoned him and sides with the inhumans.
- Cloning Gambit: Of the Body Backup Drive type. This is how Diedhauser and Seed Eight come back from the dead.
- Defector from Decadence: After getting separated from his landing party, Seed Eight was taken in by a loving Inhuman family that melted any hatred he had for them. After his party found him they Kill Sat the family he was with, causing him to realize he could not let the True Humans take over the world and has been working to destroy them.
- Deflector Shields:
- Barriers are an important part of combat in the setting. They're the reason why guns aren't commonly used as weapons: only Techniques can penetrate barriers, and individual bullets are too small to have the devices needed for this.
- One of Fleonell's Arcana can create a barrier capable of covering an entire city and blocking even the shots from Artralia.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: Fleonell has two: her power has been taken by the Holy Sword and she can only temporarily regain it by touching the Holy Sword's wielder; and she can only use her powerful Arcana techniques three times a day.
- Driving Question: Where did the Inhumans come from in the first place?
- Earth All Along: It is revealed by Diehauser that this isn't another world, but Earth in the future.
- Eldritch Abomination: Anomaly, a pair of twins who were Seed Eight's experimental specimens. They were given a Divine Craft that allowed them to shapeshift, but lost their minds as a result. When Seed Eight decided to dispose of them along with many others, the twins absorbed the other specimens and became an enormous, grotesque monster with a potent Healing Factor. Notably, Anomaly seems to no longer be a living thing in the conventional sense, as Fleonell's first Arcana (which affects living things) is unable to revert its body.
- Fantastic Racism: There's a widespread hatred of inhumans by humans, which led to a war ten years before the present. The inhumans lost and were driven back, and the humans are looking to finish the job. However, humans and inhumans actually coexisted peacefully before that.
- Fantastic Slurs: Humans will often refer to Inhumans as "invasive species".
- Gambit Pileup: As the story progresses, the major players have their own agenda which vary greatly in details.
- Shiramine and Fleonell, and by extension the inhumans, just want to defeat the humans so they can live in peace.
- The true humans want to exterminate the inhumans, and sent Diedhauser and Seed Eight as their agents. They're also considering to exterminate the non-true humans just because it's more convenient.
- Diedhauser wants to defeat the inhumans and will stoop to underhanded, bloody tactics, but he disagrees with his superiors' plan to eradicate non-true humans, and is trying to end the war quickly so they won't need to do that.
- Seed Eight is trying to harness the power of Schwarz Catastrophe for his own ends, which is striking back against the true humans, as an inhuman family took him in and dispelled all fantastic racism drilled into him by the true humans.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The humans living at the moon in orbit of the planet earth, and specifically, their congress chairwoman, Nabeia.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Humans and inhumans can interbreed to produce offspring, who look like humans with animal features and are often referred to as "Four-Ears" because they have both human and inhuman ears.
- Hot as Hell: Fleonell is a subversion. Despite her demonic appearance and voluptuous figure, she's actually a virgin with an incredibly innocent outlook on sex.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: As Ryou learns early in the story, it's the humans that persecute and force segregation on the inhumans.
- Hybrid-Overkill Avoidance:
- Different kinds of inhumans can interbreed, but the resulting mixed-blood offspring will only show traits of one inhuman type (and will look closer to humans than pureblood inhumans).
- Glorya (and apparently other Arborian Dryads) is an exception to the general rule. She can produce offspring with traits of other inhumans, though so far these are all shown to be non-sentient.
- Tsukumo and Sumire are exceptions, but they were the result of experimentation rather than natural birth.
- King of Beasts: Liott, a lion inhuman, is one of the top-ranking members of the inhuman army.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: Shockingly enough, Diehauser is this. The True Humans are debating whether to side with the humans on earth to wipe out the Inhumans and rebuilt, or just wipe them both out and rebuild it themselves. Diehauser is on the former side and is trying to prevent the latter from happening by stopping Humans and Inhumans from getting along again.
- Mad Scientist: Seed Eight, the director of the human's Engineering Bureau and the main reason for their advanced technology. His work includes experimentation on people, and he has no problems with disposing of anyone who doesn't meet his standards.
- Magitek: The technology in the setting (up to and including advanced aircraft) is all powered by Techniques.
- Mini-Mecha: Kriegers, large suits of armor used in combat.
- Monster Lord: Fleonell is the leader of the inhumans and the Dark Queen mentioned in the title.
- Morph Weapon: Diedhauser's guns can transform into a range of different guns for different purposes.
- My Greatest Failure: The Emperor sees himself not defending the Inhumans from Diehauser and the start of the war as this.
- Our Monsters Are Different: The inhumans, a group of races who range widely in appearance. They're stronger and better with Techniques than humans, and can interbreed with each other and with humans.
- Beast Man: Most of the male inhumans.
- Cute Monster Girl: The female inhumans are generally more humanoid compared to the males.
- Plant Person: Arborian Dryads. They have a wide range of appearances, ranging from trees with faces to humans with plant features (e.g. Glorya). They have the ability to analyze techniques and give birth to unique plants with the traits of other inhumans.
- Nanomachines: Diedhauser has nanomachines which give him a potent Healing Factor and the ability to self-destruct.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: Artralia is powered using the severed (but still living) heads of inhumans. The recoil of using Artralia kills the heads after a few shots, so they need constant replacement.
- Puppy Love: Liona and Tsukumo.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking:
- Fleonell, Liott and Glorya are much stronger than the rank-and-file inhumans. Fleonell in particular can use the incredibly powerful Arcana (with effects like blowing away thousands of soldiers or reshaping a city), albeit only three times a day.
- Diedhauser, one of the highest-ranking humans, is capable of effortlessly killing an army of inhumans and going toe-to-toe with Ryou.
- Really Gets Around: Glorya. The narrative is very clear that she has sex with lots of men, and one of her abilities even involves her giving birth to (apparently non-sentient) offspring with traits of other inhuman types.
- Resurrective Immortality: Diedhauser apparently has this, having died multiple times yet still coming back.
- Sleep-Mode Size: After being unsealed, Fleonell is stuck in a childish and weak form due to her power being taken by the Holy Sword. However, she can revert to her true form and power by touching Ryou, the Holy Sword's wielder.
- Sole Survivor: Glorya is the only Arborian Dryad left, the rest of her race having been wiped out by the humans. She survived because she was outside her village when this happened.
- Superior Species: Inhumans are both stronger and better with Techniques than humans. However, they're not shown to be superior on a moral level: the previous war was an inhuman loss partly because of some inhumans who sabotaged the war effort, and on a smaller scale, they have the same vices as humans (like indulging in pornography).
- Taken for Granite: Fleonell has spent ten years sealed as a stone statue.
- That's No Moon: It is revealed that the Second Moon is actually the Base of the "True Humans", the humans who escaped during the Schwarz Katastrophe.
- Time Master: Sumire's Divine Craft, Time Axis, lets her shoot arrows that explode to create zones of altered time. She can stop, accelerate or rewind time within these zones.
- Vancian Magic: Fleonell's Arcana are extremely powerful, but she can only use them three times a day.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Artralia, a massive railgun that can hit anywhere on the continent with enough power to reshape the landscape.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Diedhauser's true goal is to restore Earth to what it was before the Schwarz Katastrophe. When Ryou learns the truth, he even privately admits that if he had known all of this from the start, he would have helped Diedhauser.
- World of Buxom: Pretty much all of the female characters, human and inhuman alike, have large breasts.
- Wrong Context Magic: Most of the world uses Techniques, which can only modify existing aspects of reality and are divided into the three categories of Creation, Destruction and Restoration. However, some people are capable of using Divine Crafts, abilities of unknown origin that can alter reality in ways that surpass common sense. One example is a Divine Craft that creates clones from shadows.
