The Fiend's Creation System

To Level 3

Julius led his large army of fiends towards the undead graveyard that was nearby. The fiends moved in uniform ranks as they rushed towards the site.

All of his fiends from his primary sanctum were on the move and they devoured any monster that unfortunately got in their way.

Once they arrived at the graveyard, Julius was able to feel the presence of a negative energy that disgusted him.

“...Damn… No wonder the system labeled this area as an extreme danger zone.”

Julius took in his surroundings and began adjusting his fiends’ formations accordingly. The dense amount of red dots that practically turned into a wriggling mass on his map caused Julius to rethink this again before going through with it.

“It’s now or never.”

Julius had his vanguards move into the undead’s territory. Once they stepped on the blight, there was a visible impact on his units. They slowed down and moved as if they were carrying 10-ton weights on their backs.

“Get back.”

A frontal assault was not going to work. He didn’t think the undead’s blight would affect his fiends to such a degree where they weren’t even combat effective. If they continued forward in that state, he would just lose his units needlessly.

Flying in the air wasn’t a problem, however. Julius had sent a few aerial-transformed mimics in the undead’s airspace and saw that they didn’t experience any adverse effects.

Only if they made contact with the blight would the fiend’s experience a significant downgrade in their combat ability.

Julius sent his flying mimics into the undead’s graveyard and tried attracting some skeletons out of the blighted area. Thankfully, there was one aspect of the undead Julius was able to take advantage of and that was their loathing towards anything alive or possessed life energy within them.

The undeads’ attention was drawn by the life energy of the flying mimics and their heads turned to look up at the sky. The soul fires in their eyes began to blaze wildly as they raised soundless roars into the air.

Through his connection with his fiends, Julius was able to see that his mimics had caught the undeads’ attention so he quickly had them pull back. What he didn’t expect, however, was the sheer amount of undead that would follow his flying mimics.

“...Hehe, the more the merrier.”

Julius landed on the ground and stood in front of his army as he waited. The ground began to rumble and the rattling of bones and the eerie moans of the undead was finally heard. 

Luckily, the undead didn’t stop at the boundaries of the blight-filled lands and continued to charge out after detecting the presence of the fiends that weren’t too far out. 

Julius raised a loud roar before he jumped into the air and slammed his fist back down on the ground, a compacted Wind Arrow within his grasp. The arrow exploded and it blasted away the undead that was within close proximity of Julius.

“Attack!”

Julius’s fiends began charging into the crowd of undead and ripped them apart. The majority of the undead present were just low-ranked ones so Julius and his fiends were able to make easy work of them.

Their numbers were endless and they didn’t tire, but although Julius’s fiends were smaller in number, they too wouldn’t tire. By consuming the undead, the fiends were able to sustain themselves. 

Just about anything could provide the fiends with energy. Even the earth on the ground, if consumed by a fiend, could turn into energy. This was just one of the unique features of the Fallen that the Fiends were derived from.

They had an endless amount of stamina and energy precisely because they could turn anything, living, dead, and inorganic, into sustenance. As long as they could consume it then it was naturally just food.

Julius continued to mow down the low-ranked undead and watched as his EXP climb up. It took around 15 low-ranked undead kills for his EXP to climb 1 point but that was all progress.

A few minutes into the battle, a loud ear-splitting shriek rang through the battlefield. Julius turned his attention towards the source of the shriek before he rushed over to attack the undead monster that raised the irritating shout. 

“A mid-ranked monster like you―” Julius appeared in front of the undead horsemen that was trying to rally the lower-ranked undead and plunged his fist inside the monster’s skull, “―has no right to raise a ruckus!”

Julius’s strong punch cracked open the monster’s skull and he detonated a Wind Arrow inside the monster’s head, snuffing out the soul fire and killing it on the spot. 

Julius’s attacks were just his physical blows and the variations of his Wind Arrow spell, the only one he had in his magical repertoire. He had no martial arts background so he just mindlessly swung his arms around and attacked his enemies with every part of his body.

It was a messy and graceless form of combat but it got things done. Whenever a mid or high-ranked Undead appeared, Julius would immediately move to deal with it. It was hard for him to face a high-ranked undead head-on so he would literally catch the monsters unawares by swooping in from the skies and carrying them up for as high as he could before dropping them.

Sometimes, the fall wouldn’t kill the undead but it was enough to break and destroy their bones which made it easier for Julius to clean them up by stomping on their skulls and dispersing their soul fires before they could get up and start healing themselves.

This was a glaring weakness of the undead. Once their soul fires were destroyed, they would immediately die. Julius took note of this weakness and ordered his fiends to destroy the undead’s soul fires or devour them. 

When he issued this order, all the fiends began jumping at the undead and swallowing their skulls whole. Julius noticed something when his fiends began eating the undead’s soul fires. Their abilities, ranks, and stats would randomly be boosted while the luckier ones would gain a skill. This was a remarkable discovery.

[Alert: Soul fires are the essences of the undead where all their memories are stored. Devouring and processing these soul fires will randomly grant the fiend a skill or raise the fiend’s stats.] 

Some of his luckier fiend soldiers were able to acquire random weapon skills associated with the weapons their hands transformed into while others would only get some stats. This was definitely a worthwhile venture since his fiends were empowering themselves not only by leveling up but also through devouring the undead soul fires.

The undead were practically the fiends’ banes when they fought in their home environment which was the blighted lands but when they were outside of the blight, the undead was nothing more than sources of EXP, stats, and skills just like every other race out there.

“Devouring the undead is more efficient than devouring humans...”

His fiends could gain abilities from devouring just about anything, but eating the undead seemed more efficient. If a homunculus or a fiend soldier ate a human or any other race, they would only have a small chance of acquiring a skill after they experienced a minor evolution.

The undead, however, provided them with random skills or stats after their soul fires were consumed.

Julius wanted to see if it could work on him so he tried consuming one. However, nothing happened and all he experienced was the odd feeling of eating a cold fire.

“Tsk, I’m the only fiend that doesn’t have those cheat-like advantages!”

The battle continued for hours but just like his fiends, Julius didn’t tire. Whenever he was feeling like he had slowed down, Julius would harden his mind and stomach before devouring one of the undead he killed.

It was not a pleasant experience but he had to persevere until he reached level 3. 

“Just a few hundred more. Keep em coming!”