The Fiend's Creation System

The Army's Arrival

“General, we’ve finally entered the Redgrove Region. Beyond this region is our objective,” A human soldier reported.

A middle-aged man nodded from atop his horse and grunted in response, “We’ll set up HQ at the city nearby and have the men rest there. Come tomorrow, we’ll head straight for the Shifting Hallows.”

The human General turned his head around and looked back at the massive army following behind him. This was the joint human army of the Light Alliance that was making its way to the Shifting Hallows to eliminate the fiends who the Church Of Holy Light had designated as a threat to humanity.

They were actually going to attack the dwarves first before coming here, but the national leaders of each army had received word from the beastmen and elves that if they were to attack the dwarves, then they would be making enemies with the two said races. 

Naturally, this wasn’t something that the humans wanted, and although they argued that the elves and beastmen were being narrow-minded and not looking at the bigger picture, but whose fault was it that drove the dwarves out of the Light Alliance in the first place?

The dwarves maintained their neutral stance and didn’t even look like they were going to support the fiends who were supposedly their allies. This staved off the humans from attacking so here they were now, already at the Redgrove Region, poised to attack the fiends.

The large army moved past the Ecklewood Forest and into the Redgrove Plains where they began setting up camp. Redgrove City that was nearby obviously didn’t have enough accommodations and space to fit in the million-strong army.

Only the first-ranked and secondary-ranked soldiers were given accommodations directly inside the city. Julius ordered his mimics to not antagonize the humans and instead welcome them in.

It was suicide if they did anything and Julius didn’t want anyone to know, especially those humans, that the entire city had already been taken over by him. The mimics’ abilities to transform into people weren’t known to anyone outside the fiends except for Sithaeth and a select few of his dwarves.

General Florence Atna, High Commander of the joint human army arranged a meeting with the city lord the next day and discussed his plans to turn the city into the Light Alliance’s forward base of operations for this campaign.

The city lord was obviously a fiend and that fiend was Eisha. Her normal human appearance wasn’t well known so she didn’t attract any prying eyes. They only knew that this woman was the widowed city lord that had lost her husband due to a recent monster attack and had now taken up the helm as the acting city lord of Redgrove.

From the looks of things, she was obviously doing a good job and it pained Florence to bring war to a recovering and developing city. Permission was given because this was all part of Julius’s plans.

He had predicted that the humans would turn Redgrove into their forward HQ and he was right. Thanks to her being the city lord, Eisha was permitted to attend a few meetings with the other joint army commanders.

In the week that followed after the humans arrived at Redgrove, they began turning the city into a stronghold. The normal operations of the city continued as merchants moved in and out of the city while undergoing a strict inspection procedure.

The army needed the city to still function properly because this place was going to be their primary source of food and rations. Florence and the other commanders had sent a few squads out to scout the Shifting Hallows and each day, they would bring in new information about the changes that happened to the place.

Eisha was even being ‘cooperative’, and helped provide the army with an incomplete map of the Shifting Hallows’ northern regions.

It was a map that was a few decades old that Julius had found stashed in a corner within the city lord’s treasury which was naturally outdated. Florence wasn’t stupid enough to trust that whatever was on the map was correct to the dot but it served as a good reference which allowed Eisha to gain a few points of favorability with the General.

Even a little bit of information regarding the deadly Shifting Hallows was always welcome. However, the on-site observation reports from the scout teams he had sent out greatly troubled him.

There were many significant changes to the land, especially the red miasma that was periodically mentioned in the reports. It didn’t seem deadly, but after the soldiers were exposed to the miasma for too long, they would soon turn sickly.

Once they exited the miasma and got a little bit of treatment, the ‘sickness’ would go away. However, this was wrong because once those soldiers began showing signs that they were sick, the fiend mutation process was already beginning. 

Julius smirked and laughed to himself whenever he saw the humans’ scout teams probe the different areas of the Shifting Hallows’ northern regions only to come to a dead-end that was met with the red miasma.

The miasma was obviously a no-go area so they marked those places with an ‘x’ as they continued to look for a hole that they could breach through. It would take them about another 2 weeks of scouting before they found the place that Julius had purposefully left for them.

By this time, the number of people that had returned and showed sickness was about one to two percent of the army. This number was pretty small when compared to the rest of the human army, but it was a lot in Julius’s books and it put a smile on his face because once the army commanders gave the orders for their soldiers to enter the Shifting Hallows, those unfortunate pawns were going to be put through a whole other level of hell.

The only concern at this point was how many soldiers were the army commanders going to send into the Shifting Hallows to search for his base. It was quite obvious that the humans didn’t know the exact location of any of Julius’s Fiend Sanctums so they needed to send out a reconnaissance team first to ascertain the location before launching an attack. Julius only hoped that the numbers sent for reconnaissance would be at least in the range of a few thousands or tens of thousands.

Back at the Arachne Sanctum, Julius was watching in amusement as he ‘played’ with his ‘food’. Julius had a new type of fiend that was called the scryer fiend display what he was seeing onto a wall so that the demons could also watch along with him.

“They can’t find this place without going through the red miasma…but if they stepped into the miasma, they’d get sick...” Cali said with a bright look of amusement on her face.

Bael was also watching this spectacle of the humans running around like headless chickens but he wasn’t interested in what he was seeing. Instead, he was interested in how Julius was able to attain this footage and the secret method behind this scouting technique.

It was obvious that whatever was surveilling the humans was close to them but how was it that the humans didn’t even notice this.

They had been watching the humans struggle for a week or two now but Bael wasn’t able to understand how Julius was able to maintain that dangerously close-distance surveillance of their actions without getting caught or nearly noticed even once.

It was like the humans were oblivious to whatever magic had been cast on them or whatever creature Julius used to keep an eye on them. They went about their activities normally without being none the wiser that their every action was being monitored and laughed at.

“Brother, isn’t this amusing? Watching those humans squirm in confusion like this...I could do it all day!”

“...Stay focused, remember that our objective now is to learn more about the fiends. Don’t you find it more intriguing how King Julius is able to monitor those humans so closely without them being none the wiser?”

“That is...interesting… Why don’t we just ask him?”

“Do you honestly think that he’d give away such valuable information?”

“No?”

“Exactly. Now, focus a bit and try to find clues as to how he’s doing this. If we can replicate this technique, we’d be able to hold an advantage over those humans like he’s doing now.”

“Right…”

Their conversation didn’t escape Julius’s ears but he didn’t even have any intention to hide this surveillance technique from them. He was going to show the demons what they would gain if they entered a partnership with him.

This was just one of the many things he was going to show. The main course was still yet to come since he was saving that for when the humans launched a large-scale attack once they found the mock sanctum he had placed above the Arachne Sanctum.

This mock sanctum was naturally the castle that he and the demons were staying in right now. The demons didn’t know this yet but that was fine. Even if they did attack this place, the humans wouldn’t be able to break it because once the final part of his plan was put into motion, those humans would be too busy fighting amongst themselves.

Bael continued watching the scryer fiend’s images before noticing Eisha suddenly appeared in one of them. He frowned at first before something finally clicked in his head.

“King Julius...Your fiends’ uncanny transformation abilities...do the humans know of it?”

Julius smiled meaningfully at him and didn’t bother saying anything. However, this response was already enough to give Bael the answer he was looking for. Bael sighed heavily at Julius’s silent confirmation.

“What is it, brother?” Cali asked.

“I don’t know how, but King Julius managed to plant some of his fiends into the human army…”

“So that’s why he’s able to monitor them this closely without getting caught! But wait a minute―how do the humans not notice the fiends?”

“Isn’t it obvious? They can transform into them…”

“...Okay? But isn’t there a magic spell that could detect and dispel that?”

“Of course there is, [Dispel] and [Origin Wind] would definitely expose them but the humans don’t even know about the fiends’ abilities to transform.”

“But even then―”

“Yes, I know, but I doubt that the fiends’ transformation abilities would be easily broken or dispelled by those two techniques. Why would King Julius take the risk of his fiends’ abilities being exposed if he wasn’t confident? There’s definitely more to them than that,” Bael said cutting off his sister who was expressing her doubt.

This much made a little bit of sense to her so Cali nodded but this raised another question that needed to be answered.

 “No wonder he doesn’t look worried… but when did he even plant those fiends inside the human army?” Cali asked.

This was something that even Bael still wasn’t able to figure out the answer to despite Julius constantly giving out subtle hints to it even before he showed them the scryer fiend’s images. 

“...That...I don’t know.”

“...”

“Looks like we can only continue watching.”

“Well, at least we’re taking it easy here. Free food and accommodations.”

“...I thought you were supposed to be the demon of suffering, madness, and chaos...are you trying to copy Belphegor?”

“Well...Belphegor died, remember? Someone needs to take his place.”

“...”