The Fiend's Creation System

Underhanded Methods

Julius was rather startled when he heard the messenger who had appeared and barged into the great hall during his farewells.

“The humans are attacking!”

The dwarves in the room began moving as if they expected this. The King didn’t even need to send out orders and no chaos ensued.

“...Did you perhaps already know about this, King Sithaeth?”

“We received news about their impending attack from our elven friends.”

“The elves, huh?”

“Mhm… their eyes are spread throughout the world because of Yggdrasil, the tree they protect and worship.”

Julius nodded and saw this as an opportunity.

“Since we’re now in an alliance, would you like to receive our help in fending the humans off?”

“...We’ll appreciate all the help we can get. Apparently, the humans were agitated by something just recently so their attack is slightly ahead of what we had predicted. We thought that you’d be able to return to your kingdom before they attacked so I didn’t deem it necessary to tell you.”

“That’s fine. My people and I were getting a bit restless so this is some good timing.”

Julius left the great hall with his wife and Aria in tow. Sithaeth went to prepare himself while Brunhilda also did the same.

“What are you doing, little one?” King Sithaeth asked as he finally noticed that his daughter was following him to the armory.

“Getting ready for war, father.”

“What? No! Your existence was a tightly guarded secret! Now that the world knows that you are dead, we should leave it that way!”

Brunhilda frowned before arguing back, “And how long will it take before they figure out that I’m alive? The humans for some reason or another found out about my existence and bewitched my mother into killing me! My own mother and now, she’s locked up in the dungeons of our castle because she’s now gone insane! I won’t take this offense lying down!”

“...”

“I’m going whether you want me to or not. What’s the point in keeping me locked away from the world in the first place?”

Sithaeth couldn’t stop his daughter from doing what she wanted. Unfortunately for him, she was her only successor. He decided to assign his royal guards to her to keep her safe. Losing her once was enough. He didn’t want to lose her again. 

*****

Julius rounded up his fiends together after they unloaded all the ores, minerals, and monster materials they brought here. The dwarven king had already agreed to process those materials into weapons, armor, and other goods that would then be shipped to Redgrove City.

The gold ores that he didn’t use to bribe the dwarves were given as p*****t for the crafting of the items and the processing of the goods. He wanted to bring a few kilos of ingots back to his sanctum to let his fiends experiment with blacksmithing and crafting.

He didn’t want to have his people be overly reliant on the dwarves for everything. One day, if the alliance between them falls apart, they’d be losing quite a lot because they weren’t able to stand independent and relied on the dwarves too much. 

Their numbers were small, but Julius already ordered the fiends from his sanctum to begin moving. The assault on the Aurumfaust Kingdom wasn’t going to finish in just one or two days.

From the report he received just earlier from King Sithaeth, the humans were ready for a long siege. 

Their objective was naturally to coerce the dwarves into restarting their services for the alliance but instead of a member of the alliance, they would become subordinates. Or in harsher terms, slaves. 

The humans were digging a grave and they were determined to dig even deeper. Now, there was no hope for reconciliation for a few generation’s time between the humans and the dwarves.

Not when the next heir to the dwarven kingdom absolutely abhorred the humans for killing her and trying to enslave her race.

Julius was smiling inside as all of this happened. This was something he had planned out long before he made the journey to Aurumfaust. 

When he had learned of what the church had done to the dwarves and what the dwarves’ response to the humans’ transgression, Julius immediately ordered his mimics to begin inciting the humans to attack the dwarves.

He was only able to send his mimics to the nearby human kingdoms around the dwarven kingdom because they were the ones most impacted by the dwarves leaving the alliance and refusing to do any business with the humans.

It was quite easy to incite those foolish humans. All his mimics needed to do was kill a high-ranked official or noble of those nearby human kingdoms and transform into them. After that, they would need to do their best to entice the figureheads of said kingdoms into attacking the dwarves.

He had his mimics feed the humans facts and false information about the dwarves. Of course, he didn’t think things would proceed so smoothly. Julius underestimated the dependency the humans had on dwarven technology.

It hadn’t been a month since the dwarves had announced their verdict but the nearby human kingdoms were already displeased since the profits their territories were accruing, especially the human nobles and prominent businessmen who used to have direct business deals with the dwarves, had experienced a major decline.

Aggravating them a little was enough to unite the humans into waging war against the dwarves. Their greed was going to be their undoing but Julius had to say that his efforts didn’t go to waste. 

Now he could further solidify his alliance with the dwarves and it was all thanks to the humans. He didn’t know whether he should call them his enemies or allies because lately, they’ve only been handing him benefits left and right.

Even though he was technically trapped inside Aurumfaust with no way out, all of this worked to Julius’s advantage because his fiends would soon come to pick the humans apart from their rear. He wouldn’t have dared to enact this vicious plan if it was a few days ago but since his Sanctum had leveled up to level 3 even before his evolution was completed, Julius’s wariness towards the humans had lessened.

A proper human kingdom’s army consisted of many high-leveled and high-classed personnel. It wasn’t like the haphazard gathering of men and soldiers of the Redgrove Army he had fought with before nor was it the same with the church’s ragtag scouting force. 

Clashing with a proper army was something that Julius was certain he wouldn’t come out on top of before reaching level 3, his fiends would likely be picked apart from the higher-leveled humans. 

Now that his fiends had experienced an evolution or a major upgrade to their stats, he was naturally more confident.

A large majority of his Fiend Soldiers had evolved into their stronger variants, Fiend Champions, Nightwalkers, and Deadeyes. The weapons they created from their bodies had become more specialized to their previous build as a Fiend Soldier while their stats experienced a large increase which made them even deadlier than before.

Unlike when his homunculi evolved into Fiend Soldiers, not all of his Fiend Soldiers were able to take the next step to their evolutions. A few of them weren’t able to take that step and instead only received a large increase in stats. Julius was still trying to find the exact conditions that let a Fiend Soldier advance because having his fiends remain at a low level was not ideal for the future.

His mimics hadn’t experienced any changes to their class, only a major increase in stats, but the negative energy evolved fiends had opened up a new branch of units that he could create as well as a new technology tree of buildings. 

It was separate from the initial tech tree of buildings and units. Unfortunately, his main body was still in hibernation so Julius couldn’t check out the new branch of buildings and units he could create just yet.

He might have to create a new Sanctum because he could instinctively tell that the fiend’s plasm formed from the new buildings wouldn’t be the same as the plasm formed from the normal buildings.

The two plasms would most likely conflict with each other but that was alright. He already had plans to build a third sanctum anyway. His fiends were opening up the area further south on his map and more new materials and monsters had presented themselves to him. 

He needed a hub down south so that it would be easier for maneuvering around the Shifting Hallows. Julius could feel his original body slowly get stronger as his evolved mind was developing.

“My main body’s almost finished with evolution. I should be waking up soon.”

“You’re about to awaken, honey?” Eisha asked when she heard Julius mumbling.

Julius looked towards his wife and nodded, “Yes, I can feel myself waking up. It should be soon. My main body will be able to participate in this war.”

“How long will the first wave of reinforcements arrive from the sanctums?”

“It’ll take a few days. I don’t plan to have them attack the humans from the rear. That plan will be reserved for when my main body attacks or when the humans decide to do an all-out assault on the city.”

“Mhm, so for now, we’ll only help the dwarves defend the city?”

“Yes.”