The Fiend's Creation System

Dark Pool

Julius had preserved the corpses of the two human champions he killed, the church’s Tallos and Sammael, the deceased ArchBishop and Holy Knight.

With their powerful corpses, Julius was sure that he would be able to spawn a powerful unit. However, he had to pick only one since there was a restriction in the number of dark fiend champions he could create.

One Dark Pool was only capable of spawning and sustaining one Dark Fiend hero unit so, between the ArchBishop and the Holy Knight, Julius obviously chose the Holy Knight.

“Although Tallos was a much stronger opponent, Sammael obviously had the superior body quality.”

A Dark Fiend heavily relied on their physique so Sammael was the obvious choice here. Not to mention that Julius right now needed a hero unit that could soak up attacks and be on the front lines.

Eisha and Aria weren’t those types of units and although he could fulfill that role, he was also the leader of the fiends and it wasn’t wise of him, as the commander, to even move to the front of any battle.

The corpses of the two warriors had already been transported here and after a long fight with Queen Yvette, Julius had been able to secure all of the Holy Light army’s corpses while the rest from the other human armies were given to Yvette so that she could return them to the families that lost their loved ones in that war.

No one questioned why Julius wanted all those corpses and even if they did, he wouldn’t answer truthfully. His fiends need for those bodies wasn’t something anyone would look too favorably upon, even if they were his allies.

His sense of morals had very much depreciated since he became aware of his race as a fiend. The system’s values had influenced his own and he saw those acts of immorality or things that normal people saw as unbefitting for an upstanding person to be just trivialities.

He wasn’t trying to be on the good or bad side in the first place. Julius just did what he wanted for the benefit of his kind. As long as they benefited him and his fiends, the process was all just a means to an end and he didn’t care if what he did was right or wrong as long as he achieved the goal he had set out to do.

Most of the corpses he had acquired were converted into resources while a select few were used as the new forms for his mimics. Only the ones with quality far above the rest were collected by Julius in his dark sanctum so that he could convert them into dark fiends.

He didn’t rush to change any of his top-quality fiends into dark fiends because a Dark Spire could only support a few hundred at a time.

If he wanted to create more, he needed to establish even more dark sanctums but it wasn’t easy to do. The more dark sanctums he created, the more threatened the monsters in the Shifting Hallow would feel, and at some point, they might start actively attacking his fiends.

Julius already observed the behavior of some monsters when they detected his dark sanctum. They attacked it in wild abandon and if it wasn’t because of the unique protective features the dark sanctum had, it would have likely fallen even though some dark fiends were defending the place.

*****

Julius was meditating for a bit before he suddenly stopped and ordered his fiends.

“Bring me Holy Knight Sammael’s corpse!”

The corpse of the holy knight was kept within the Dark Spire so it was permeated with negative energy already. He had been doing this for a few days already because if he just tossed the corpse inside the pool, it would definitely have decomposed into negative energy right away.

The corpses he wanted to turn into dark fiends needed to be tolerant towards the energy so he had to leave them in a special room inside the Dark Spire where they would be soaked in the energy until their tolerance level was up to standards.

Thankfully, the negative energy preserved the corpses and didn’t let them rot. First, he was going to turn Sammael before he moved onto the knight’s subordinates. Julius was sure that the holy knight would be happy to work with his former subordinates.

“Hahaha, he’ll surely be surprised!”

Julius had a wicked smile on his face when he said this. The preserved corpse of the Holy Knight soon arrived and Julius kicked it into the Dark Pool.

“Now, I guess we wait…”

The conversion of the Holy Knight’s corpse into a dark fiend hero was going to take a while. The system showed that it would take at least a week or so. 

It wasn’t surprising because Sammael’s corpse was light aligned previously so the conversion would take some time. 

There was the preservation, integration, and re-implanting of the new fiend’s consciousness. This part of the conversion needed some time because Julius was using the corpse of a human that had died for a while now so their consciousness wasn’t intact but fragmented.

It wasn’t like the case of Arianrhod who was still alive when her conversion happened. Since she was still alive and her consciousness was fully intact and just needed to integrate with the fiend’s collective mind, Aria was able to function right after she was spawned, although there was some confusion at the start.

This was definitely going to happen with Sammael since his consciousness needed to be mended by integrating it with an existing fiend’s consciousness. Julius wanted to keep the faithful man’s ego intact because he saw the dedication and unyielding spirit the Holy Knight had.

He wanted this aspect of Sammael to remain when he was converted into a Dark Fiend because it was definitely going to be reassuring to have such a devoted unit at his side. Converting the man’s beliefs was going to be easy since Sammael’s mind would be connected to the fiend’s collective consciousness.

Brainwashing him was going to be a cinch. It was going to be quite hilarious to see the former Holy Knight of the Holy Light Church become an advocate of the fiends who were enemies with them.

“It might take a while until the conversion of the man’s faith is completed but I’ll have a powerful warrior under my command once the brainwashing’s over.”

The new dark fiend’s mind was definitely going to be volatile for a few days. Until the new Sammael could come to terms with his new reality, Julius was probably going to have to deal with a rather rebellious hero unit for some time.

After kicking the Holy Knight’s corpse into the Dark Pool, Julius just sat on a nearby rock while thinking about what to do next. He didn’t like it whenever he remained idle. This meant that he wasn’t doing anything. 

It wasn’t his style to just wait around doing nothing, however, he had just finished his training and since his energies were at equilibrium in his body, there was no need to continue training and ruin that balance.

“Eisha’s busy with the alliance and Aria’s doing a good job expanding our forces… I guess I should go around the other floating islands and look for a new spot for another Dark Spire.”

Julius got up from his seat as he ordered a few dark fiends to follow him. He and his fiends quickly arrived at the bottom end of the Dark Spire and flew out.

The great part of these dark fiends was not only their battle prowess but their ability to transform parts of their bodies into appendages that they needed.

Like right now, the dark fiends had sprouted wings on their backs and followed after Julius who was already in his dark [Metamorphosis] form. Julius’s [Metamorphosis] had two types now after he equalized his positive and negative energies.

The normal [Metamorphosis] was his usual transformed form while the dark [Metamorphosis] added on a dark-purple carapace armor on his body with the addition of 2 pairs of arms sprouting under and above his original pair.

This new and powerful transformation was more battle-oriented. With the additional arms and carapace, the dark transformation geared more towards close-combat while his other form was more all-round but unlike his normal Metamorphosis, this dark transformation ate at his mentality but Julius found a bypass to that. 

He just needed to have multiple consciousnesses take turns in controlling his body while he was in this state.

When one part of his mind was at the brink of losing it, Julius would immediately switch to another part and let the previous one rest. This way, he was able to maintain clarity of mind while staying in this new form.

He only wanted to test things out so after a few seconds flying through the air in this form, he quickly reverted to his normal form before assuming his normal [Metamorphosis] form a few seconds later.

If there was a downside to having 2 forms of [Metamorphosis], it would definitely be this part where he needed to revert to his normal form before using [Metamorphosis] again.

It was inefficient and consumed a lot of energy. Maintaining the dark [Metamorphosis] also took a lot of energy on top of the slow mind corruption so he needed to get used to it so that he’d consume less energy maintaining that form while also finding a better way to deal with the mental corruption.

It wasn’t just his internal and external training, Julius had to touch upon many of his skills. The merging of [Weave] and [Cause and Effect] was close at hand since he was able to gain a few enlightenments from equalizing his body’s energies.

He just needed a little something to push the fusion of the two techniques but he just didn’t know what it was. 

[Notice: Practical training is essential to raising the proficiency of skills and the key to fusing the two techniques may also be found through combat.]

“Yes, thanks for stating the obvious,” Julius shook his head and shot towards a nearby floating island.

Julius and his dark fiends hovered above the island and were met with a few aerial-type monsters that were nesting on the island.

“Make short work of these Man-eating Crows, they’ve been pestering us for the past few days so it’s time for revenge!”

Julius’s fiends swooped in to attack while he maintained a distance. He materialized his bow and began shooting down the crows that were flying up to them from the island after they took notice of his and his fiends’ presence.

“Heh, we’ll be having roast crow tonight!”

Julius released a barrage of negative energy bolts at the monsters and shot down a few of them while his dark fiends quickly took care of the ones that were already in the air.

They brutally ripped the monsters apart with their claws, fangs, and weapon-transformed limbs. The dark fiends were a versatile unit that was capable of fulfilling any type of role due to their ability to freely transform their bodies.

Seeing their prowess, Julius was excited. It was a pity that the number of dark sanctums he could build was limited. In fact, this may as well be the only dark sanctum he could build.

“A pity indeed. These fiends are much more handy and powerful than the ordinary ones.”

[Alert: To create more, Creator must provide a higher quality source of negative energy. The Undead King within the Shifting Hallows will allow the host to build 1 more Dark Spires. Any other undead will not allow the host to create a new Dark Spire.]

As usual, the first Dark Spire was special since it was built by only using the Undead Chimera’s soul fire which was a mediocre source of negative energy compared to the Undead King’s soul fire.

“...well, that’s gonna take a long time. Those undead are pretty tenacious and their numbers are…”

Julius shook his head after remembering the previous clash he had with the undead. It was only the peripheral area of the graveyard that he invaded but the number of undead that spawned was at least ten times or more the number of fiends he brought.

Killing the Undead King was going to be impossible for now. He needed to focus on expanding his army at least 3 times the size it was now after his level had risen to 3 before he could even think about tackling the undead again.

“Let’s take it slow and steady.”

Julius continued to shoot down the Man-eating Crows flying towards him while he bought time for his fiends to finish off the last few crows that were already in the air. Once they finished dealing with them, the dark fiends immediately swooped down and attacked the other monsters that were flying up to meet them.