The Fiend's Creation System

Pale Demons 2

Bael was already getting close to the Shifting Hallows. He had just passed through the south-central regions where the dwarves were located and had a brief meeting with them.

The dwarves had split off from the light alliance and he thought that he could try to rope them in but unfortunately, despite the dwarves now willing to openly conduct trade with them, they didn’t take too well on actively aiding their continent’s invaders so they kept their interactions with the demons strictly for business.

It was a shame, but Bael found out that the dwarves had formed a new coalition with the fiends and the united human kingdom surrounding them that was separate from the dark and light alliances.

This was seemingly bad news for him since the fiends were the ones that were spearheading this coalition. He might have come all the way out here for nothing, however, the humans were making their moves right now and a large force had gathered and was marching towards the Shifting Hallows.

His best bet was to pray that Julius was seeking out reinforcements somewhere. From the looks of things, there was no way the humans that he was in a coalition with would help him fight their own race while the dwarves were far too little in number.

The army which had formed and was moving to the Shifting Hallows easily numbered in the hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions. It was the first time within the last century that the light alliance humans had mustered up such a large force and it was not something a single race of people could possibly contend against.

From everyone’s estimates, the number of fiends, at most, was probably around one hundred thousand. Of course, they weren’t too far off but that was the number around a month ago. 

Julius’s Sanctums had been churning out many fiends and the plasm-infected lands had been contaminating the monsters and gradually started changing them into fiends. The plasm spread like wildfire and after a month, it had infected so many monsters that there were around 400,000 fiends now. To be precise, there were 408,759 fiends now and that number was climbing day by day.

Thankfully, Julius had established the control pecking order so he didn’t have to bust his brains out whenever he wanted to manually control all of his fiends or monitor their work.

Of course, this was all just numbers since Julius’s true forces were only around 80,000 to 100,000 strong and these were only the fiends that had evolved once after they were transformed from a homunculus to a Fiend Soldier or mimic.

These numbers weren’t known to anyone outside of the Shifting Hallows, but against the hundreds of thousands or possibly even a million strong human army that was coming for him, it was truly a bad situation for Julius and his fiends.

The humans didn’t even care that the demons and giants from the dark alliance would come to invade since all of their armies had already gathered, it wouldn’t even take long for the soldiers to turn around and postpone their attack on the fiends to come and deal with their true enemies.

Bael wasn’t aware of his people amassing their forces for an invasion so the humans didn’t need to worry about them attacking. 

Right now, Bael was caught in a dilemma. Should he continue to go south and try to meet up with Julius...or should he go back since the prospects of Julius joining the dark alliance was most likely nil and their seemingly set-in-stone demise.

“...Damn… those stupid humans mustered up a force this big for just a race that’s living out in the middle of a perilous wasteland whose numbers are probably only a tenth of the soldiers that are attacking. They’re so overdramatic!”

Bael had to think this through because if he did go to the Shifting Hallows to meet with Julius, he’d be trapped in there since, by the time he arrived, the human army would have probably already arrived at the Redgrove area.

“Sir, the men have finished resting and are ready to march!”

Bael turned to his squad’s vice-captain and nodded. 

“Good, let’s get going then.”

“Where to sir? Are we heading back or―”

“We’ll see this through the end. Keep marching southward!”

“Yessir!”

Turning back now was also already too late. The humans were probably already swarming down to the south right now so there was a chance that Bael might bump into a squadron or company of them. 

He didn’t know what would happen if they were to encounter them, but fighting or an inspection would definitely reveal their true identities and then, they would be the ones being hunted down.

“The Shifting Hallows is new territory even for the humans. Those fiends are clever and I don’t see the Fiend Lord being an i***t at all. He’s bound to have a trick up his sleeve or maybe, his entire base is hidden and that’s why he’s not worried!”

The humans had been on the move and their activity had been so blatant and obvious that the continent and practically the world knew what they were doing. Yet, there had been no signs of activity from the fiends.

At the very least, there should have been some kind of movement going on at the Shifting Hallows’ borders, but there wasn’t any. 

This could only mean that Julius was stupid...or he just wasn’t afraid. Bael naturally believed that it was the latter because there was no way the Fiend Lord would be stupid because of their previous victory. Killing two human champions and defeating the rest of the human army wasn’t something a stupid leader would be able to pull off.

The victory also wasn’t a fluke because it became known to the world that a m******e had ensued after the humans had lost and only the Auxpex Kingdom’s army had made it out alive because their commander, Queen Yvette, had been spared after making a deal with the dwarves and fiends.

Many people saw this act as atrocious so the humans had placed the fiends on their blacklist along with the dwarves while the Auxpex Kingdom was labeled as traitorous for yielding to an enemy.

The light alliance army had planned to attack the Auxpex Kingdom and the dwarves but if they did attack, there was no way the two kingdoms would just take it lying down. With the dwarves putting up a resistance, there were bound to be casualties―casualties that they couldn’t afford to have.

If they lost a few soldiers from attacking the dwarves and the traitors, then lost more from the war against the fiends, the alliance would then be vulnerable to a demon invasion.

“We should be able to make it to the Shifting Hallows in a few days if we travel nonstop. Everyone’s rested so we should be able to pull it off. Let’s try to get there before the humans arrive!”

What Bael didn’t know was that it wasn’t just him from the Lothur Continent that was planning to meet up with Julius.

In the Ecklewood Forest, where the reports of the pale demons' sightings had originated from, Julius’s scout fiends had actually found that there were literal pale demons hiding in it.

“Lady Cali, shouldn’t we get going by now?”

A tall pale demon with horns and wings asked a similarly shaped woman that was sleeping under the shade of a large tree. 

This woman had the same physical features as the pale demon that had just addressed her except she had the tail of a lion, the claws of a dragon, the legs of a goat, and the wings of an eagle. Instead of a demon, this woman seemed more like a chimera instead.

When she opened her eyes, her golden slitted pupils stared back at the pale demon as if it was looking deep into his soul. The demon’s face quickly turned purple after a few seconds as if he was suffocating before the demon named Cali closed her eyes and said, “There’s no rush. We’re waiting for my brother, remember? I’m sure he’s close by.”

“Y-Yes, Lady Cali!”

The demon began coughing and taking in deep breaths. This woman named Cali was one of the 66 Grand Demons which technically made Bael the ‘brother’ she was referring to.

“It’s such a shame that Father had to assign the two of us to negotiate with those fiends. It’ll definitely be fun to see Bael’s face contort in displeasure when he sees me here~”