The Fiend's Creation System

The Light and The Dark

Julius and Eisha returned to their Fiend’s Sanctum when the day was about to end. They had a few people on their trail but after arriving at the elven forest’s periphery, their trackers soon lost sight of them.

The elves had erected a nature bewildering barrier around their forest so now those without the elves’ mark won’t be able to pass through the forest. Once anyone without the marker entered, their senses would be sent into disarray by the elves’ magic and they’d get lost inside the forest.

The best-case scenario would just be the humans losing their way and wandering back outside the forest. The worst-case scenario would be the human heading deeper into the forest and eventually dying from hunger and dehydration.

“Prince, we’ve lost them…”

“Mhm, it’s because of the elves’ magic. We were warned by the Grand Elder and were given the mark earlier, remember?”

“So that’s what this is for, huh?” Eisha said as she raised the beautiful silver bracelet on her arm.

Julius had a similar bracelet except his was just plain in design unlike the one Eisha wore. He requested for it to be plain so that it wouldn’t stand out. An elegant bracelet on a woman would naturally stand out but it wouldn’t be viewed any more than an accessory.

If the humans somehow found out that the bracelets were the elves’ markers and it allowed safe passage through the forest, he didn’t want to be targeted by them. It wasn’t like he was afraid, Julius just thought that it would be a hassle to kill every human that came after him and his wife because they knew the value of owning such an item.

Relations with the elves were now irreparable for the humans so gaining an item that would allow them free passage was very important. Of course, even if they did somehow steal the two bracelets from Julius and Eisha, it was another matter altogether if the elves would allow them to pass through peacefully.

Julius and Eisha arrived back at the Fiend’s Sanctum and quickly had the homunculi unload the goods they traded with the elves and the items they bought from the humans into the storage area within Julius’s castle.

They sold some rare monster materials from the Shifting Hallows so they acquired quite a bit of human gold. Now, he and the elves didn’t need to barter items since, despite the elves’ hatred for the humans, they still used their currency which was globally accepted because it was gold.

Gold was universal in value for all the races of the world. Speaking of gold, Julius had found quite a bit of gold mines within the central areas of the Shifting Hallowings.

The place was teeming with gold and ore mines precisely because no one had the ability to mine them so they were just left sitting there. Julius thought it was a prime opportunity for him since he needed the gold to trade with the elves and humans.

Bartering goods was never profitable and he could finally say goodbye to that, however, he needed to find a place to smelt the gold ore into ingots or coins so that it could be traded. 

The only place he could think of was the Dwarven Kingdom, Aurumfaust. Most metals could be smelted there and they dealt with all sorts of currencies as well. Elven, dwarven, orc, and even the fairy’s currency could be traded or made there.

It’s why the dwarves are considered the richest race in the world. However, despite being so rich, they aren’t the strongest. This is because their population is limited.

Unlike the humans and orcs who are spread throughout the planet in large numbers, dwarves, elves, and fairies are long-lived races that have a hard time reproducing. Their limited population is what hinders them from being able to build their forces into a powerhouse.

However, their biggest advantage is the long history and foundation they’ve built over the years and because they don’t change leaders so often, their race’s sense of solidarity is strong. 

They don’t wage war against each other, unlike the humans and orcs who constantly go to war internally and externally because their leaders change.

The only race that the dwarves don’t openly deal with is the races of darkness like the demons, giants, and undead.

Julius remembered the lessons he was taught back at the Empire but now that he was looking at it from a different point of view, just what is it that determined whether a race belonged to the dark and light side?

He couldn’t help but question this bias since he knew for a fact that although the dwarves don’t deal with the dark races openly, they still do it in secret. Even the Empire does the same and often does trades in the dark with the demon race of the western continent.

He was currently on the East Continent of Harrdigor. Better yet known as the continent of light. The West Continent of Lothur is the so-called dark continent but there wasn’t any difference between the two continent’s topography.

It wasn’t like one continent was barren and the other filled with life. Each continent had its good and bad environments but for some reason, one was called the dark and the other the light.

Good and evil, but it was all just subjective. The humans had coined this term from ancient times only because the western continent’s races have invaded the eastern continent from time to time so the terms prevailed throughout the ages as the demons and ogres would occasionally send people over to the eastern continent. 

Of course, it was never them who started the fighting, and throughout the ages, the people sent over were only a ragtag bunch of demons and ogres that seem to be outcasts who ran away from their homes most likely in search of a better place to live. 

There was only one time in history where the demons waged a large-scale and decades-long battle against the humans, the Great Dawn War. It probably started from here that the humans began referring to the western continent’s races as an evil race. 

The demons and ogres themselves had enough to worry about since the undead were hostile to all the living which included them who were staying on the continent. The cause of the great war was left to mystery but most of human history said that the demons started it with their first invasion of the eastern continent.

Now that Julius was thinking of this from a Fiend’s perspective, he couldn’t help but think that the humans twisted history and maybe it wasn’t even the demons who started the war but instead, something else. Then begets the question that he couldn’t help wondering about.

“What category would our race fall into then?”

“What’s that, honey?”

Julius thought hard for a moment before tossing his entire train of thought out the window. He didn’t need to worry about that. For him, there should only be two categories, ally or foe. 

The dark and the light were only subjective to a human’s perspective and he wasn’t a human. 

“Never mind...let’s just get some sleep. I was just thinking about some stupid nonsense.”

“Okay~”

*****

A month later, a group of mercenaries and adventurers led by a small retinue of knights and priests arrived at Redgrove City.

“Is this the place where the Saintess’s oracle directed us?” Balt, a holy knight of the church, asked the high priest who was the leader of this scouting team.

“Yes, it was quite the journey, but we made it,” Quint, the high priest leading the team, replied.

“We should report to the local Church then and get our accommodations sorted. Give the mercenaries and adventurers their dues and have them wait on standby for when we call them,” Balt said to his squire.

The knight’s squire bowed and quickly left to relay his orders. 

“I hear that the city lord was replaced just a few weeks ago. The previous one apparently had a falling out with the elves and now they are hostile with all the humans.”

“Those long-eared heathens will have their dues paid one day. The ocean, the sky, the trees, the land...everything belongs to our Lord and in turn, it belongs to us who were tasked with keeping the world clean! They have no right to keep us, humans, out of the forest as if they own them!”

Balt nodded and said, “Then how about we perform god’s will and punish the elves while we look for the calamity that will bring ruin to our lands?”

“It’d be best if we could do it in passing. We’re to look everywhere, including the Shifting Hallows, for this threat and naturally, we have to pass through that forest.”

“When should we begin?”

“Patience, my friend. We’ll start after we’ve received the Lord’s will!”

******

In the Fiend’s Sanctum at the Shifting Hallows, Julius was sitting on his throne inside his castle with his wife accompanying him. In the past month, he had been doing nothing but training himself and completing his personal quests and the system’s daily quest.

The rise in his stats empowered him and the frequent level-ups also unlocked many new system features. 

There had been many major developments on his end. The Fiend’s Sanctum which he first planned to build outwards he instead expanded downwards into the ground and made a sort of dungeon-like structure.

There are 5 levels to this dungeon, each level had a specific use, and he was located on the very top floor where his castle was present. The outcrop had been transformed and expanded to look like a majestic castle and it was his new home.

It stood out like a sore thumb in the middle of the barren lands but over the past month, Julius finally found out why the Shifting Hallows was called, the Shifting Hallows.

The barren land he was on would experience mysterious quakes that would cause the land to actually move and shift to different locations magically. His Fiend’s Sanctum was located at the northern parts of the Shifting Hallows but now, it was located near the center to the west. 

He was at a location farther away from the elven town and Redgrove City so it was a big hassle for him to trade with them since he would have to go through a few monster dens and a large area of empty land. 

Julius noticed that the shifting would only happen once every month so he could only hope that next month his Sanctum’s location would be shifted to a location closer to the elven town.

For now, he would have to lose contact with the elven town and Redgrove City but he did place some ‘mimics’ at the elven town.

Mimics were evolved homunculi that could shapeshift. These new units could shapeshift into anything that they killed and ate, including monsters and people. Depending on the rank of the mimic, they would be able to retain a percentage of the original body’s abilities.

They were rather convenient since he could now trade with the humans and elves more efficiently by sending out his human-form mimics instead of going there himself.

Thanks to them, Julius and Eisha had more spare time and they used it to hunt, train, or get intimate with each other.