The Fiend's Creation System

Victory

Julius, Sithaeth, and Yvette spent the next few hours meshing up the conditions they wanted for this new three-way alliance. Naturally, it was more of a two-way alliance between the dwarves and the humans since Julius didn’t want any part of it except for maybe the tributes the new Auxpex Kingdom would offer to his fiends.

Since Julius’s fiends were so adept at battle, he decided that he would place a few fiends around the Auxpex Kingdom’s lands to clean up Queen Yvette’s new lands of any bandits, highwaymen, and spies.

They were also there to supposedly keep order, but Julius was going to use the fiends he placed within the new Auxpex Kingdom as his race’s informants and use them to spy on the other human kingdoms.

A few of his mimics had already stationed themselves within some human kingdoms and were slowly gathering information for Julius, whether it was big or small. However, with the number of mimics he had mobilized at the present, the information he acquired was rather negligible.

However, now that he had a human ‘partner’, Julius was now going to use the Auxpex Kingdom as a central hub for his mimics to scatter around into the rest of the humans’ lands.

Julius still didn’t know why he needed to do this, but acquiring a strong information network was always good. He just couldn’t understand what drove him to do this when he never would have thought of it before.

Was it the influence of the system―the manifestation of the fiends’ collective consciousness―or was it due to his own ambition? His own nature that was slowly surfacing itself from deep within him after he acquired his powers as a fiend?

Julius couldn’t answer that because every day, a split consciousness of his would always be second-guessing himself. Asking constantly, why did this happen, or why he acted in this way.

Even now, that piece of his mind was questioning his decision to establish this intelligence network and why he massacred every last human on the battlefield without mercy.

Julius understood that ever since he became a fiend, it was like the previous 15 years of his life was but a dream and the few months he spent as a fiend felt more like a lifetime to him.

The things he did, the adventures he went through, and the ups and downs he experienced to get to where he was today...Julius had a hard time believing that it was only a few months since his brother betrayed him.

“King Julius!”

“Hm?”

“Is your disregard of us humans so severe that you stopped paying attention to everything we discussed earlier?” Queen Yvette remarked harshly. She had been calling out to him since a while ago, but he was deep in thought earlier.

Of course, his mind had been processing everything Sithaeth and Yvette had discussed earlier. It was just his main consciousness that was late in responding.

Julius shrugged and replied, “I may look deep in thought but my mind is processing everything. It’s a...fiend thing. It’s not something a human like you would understand.”

The concept of 1 consciousness being split into many and being able to process different things in tandem wasn’t something that Julius believed anyone, aside from people of his race, could understand.

After all the discussions had finished properly, the doors to the great hall were swung open. Julius turned to look and saw his wife walk in alongside Proto who had reverted to his child-like form, all prim and proper.

Apparently, the battle had finished a few hours ago and Eisha had already assigned Aria to finish the post-battle arrangements of collecting the fallen human armies’ gear and corpses to one spot and separating them.

Eisha would deal with them later after she met up with Julius. Naturally, she hoped that her husband would help to deal with the corpses since his rate of conversion from bodies to resources was much higher than hers.

“Honey!”

“Ah, Eisha, my love.”

Julius stood up and quickly took the woman into his arms. After his evolution, his body had experienced quite a few changes. He looked more robust and masculine with his hair now much longer than before. 

Eisha’s eyes sparkled when she looked up at Julius’s face. Her husband’s body had changed in a good way and she felt a little bit ‘thirsty’ from just looking at him. However, she didn’t show it because it was hardly the time and place for that.

“Honey, we’ve successfully eradicated all of the human forces. Aria is doing the clean-up now but we’ll need your help later once it’s all over.”

“Sure.”

Brunhilda, who was on the side, stepped forward and ‘re-introduced’ herself to Julius.

“Hello, KING Julius, I believe this is the first time we’ve met, no? I am Brunhilda, Aurumfaust’s Princess,” she said with a polite, yet rather superficial, bow.

“Mhm, seems like you know me.”

“Tch, do you always go around with a body-double?”

Julius shrugged and replied, “This time was a bit special. I just came out of secluded training.”

“...?”

“Never mind, it’s not something you would know about.”

“Hmph.”

Sithaeth clapped his hands and quickly got everyone’s attention, “Daughter, I’m sure you’ve tasked someone with the post-battle cleanup?”

“Yes, father. Commander L'usine is already on it.”

“Good, then we can start the celebration now. Guards!”

Two dwarven guards came in and they knelt and asked, “Yes, Your Majesty?”

“Send out the word of our victory. Let everyone in the undercity and overcity know that we’ve won and it’s now time to celebrate and rejoice!”

“Yes, Your Majesty!”

With that being said, Sithaeth ordered the castle’s servants to prepare a banquet of their own right away. Everyone of most importance had gathered, minus the Aurumfaust’s city’s nobles, but it was good as any time to start the celebration since from the looks of it, Julius and his fiends were going to leave immediately after they had finished with their post-war arrangements.

Sithaeth and Yvette had already heard about Julius’s requirements for the human corpses from this battle―and any future battles―to be left for him to take care of. They didn’t question the motives behind this odd requirement since Julius only said that it was a ‘fiend’ thing. 

He wasn’t going into a long or detailed explanation of how his fiends grew and developed and why he needed all of those corpses. He obviously wasn’t going to explain that he also needed them for his mimics.

Sithaeth only saw one part of the mimic’s abilities which was to shapeshift, but Julius didn’t show the Mountain King the part where he needed a corpse in order to do this.

He only had the mimic consume a corpse it was going to transform into but delayed the transformation up until he was able to show it to the dwarves.

“The food will be served shortly. I know that this isn’t going to be much of a celebration for you, Yvette, but feel free to stay if you don’t mind it.”

“...Well, I won’t say no to free food…”

Yvette had a rather somber and helpless look on her face but this was now going to be her new reality. Receiving confirmation earlier from both Eisha and Brunhilda about the complete annihilation of the humans’ armies other than her own had somehow saddened her.

Naturally, the feeling of defeat kicked in despite Yvette having survived all of that. She wasn’t made into a slave or commanded to do something unreasonable, but she still felt aggrieved that she and her people―the humans―lost this great battle which will probably go down in history for its infamy.