You and Sarah are hurtling through the void you've started to get used to, swinging this way and that, until suddenly, a rift opens in a ripple of space next to you.
Peeking through it, you see...
A fucking truck driving along a street.
Honk, hooonk
And it has it out for you. What.
You have no idea how you know this, but you do.
So as the truck changes directions and barrels past the other honking cars, it starts to race directly towards you.
And you have no way to move yourself in here. Shit.
So when the truck drives right through your not quite material forms, you're quite surprised when you're catapulted in an entirely different direction, shooting off in a straight path despite the chaotic nature of this place, eventually being subjected to the familiar feeling of re-rentry into proper, physical space.
You fucking made it.
"Gabe?"
"Yeah, Sarah?"
"Why am I fucking naked? Why are you fucking naked? And what the fuck just happened?"
"Uhm, if I may, I think I can explain?" comes a new voice. Both of you turn to face it, naturally.
"Gabe, why is there a naked woman with horns in the room?"
"I have no idea, Sarah, but hopefully this nice person over there can enlighten us." You smile at the unknown streaker.
Coughing into her hand, you note that she has taken a very straight pose before she launches into an explanation.
"My apologies, but I, Rose de Nyx Blackhorne, have summoned you to save our race from extinction in our fight against the human kingdoms."
What.
"What."
"What."
"Okay, let's take a step back here for a moment. You are going to sit down and explain what is going on, why you summoned us, who you're fighting and why we should help you. Why don't you try to explain the situation from the beginning? We don't have any context here."
"That seems prudent, yes. My apologies. It all began about two years ago..."
And there she goes. To sum up a lengthy explanation about geopolitical issues of what seems like a medieval world of some kind, there's the demon kingdom of Lanverias and the human kingdom of Hannovens, situated in the world of Thule (demons) or Gaia (humans), depending on who you ask.
Apparently, these two disparate cultures couldn't agree on a single name. Shocker.
So, the humans and demons are kind of in a perpetual war that goes from hot to cold and back again throughout all recorded history, bla bla, evil human slavers, bla bla, demons being battle-freaks, bla bla. Point is, this is a deeply divided dimension.
Until, that is, the humans had the bright idea to conduct some kind of magical ritual that summoned powerful champions from another world. In this case, powerful champions meaning a bunch of japanese kids for some reason.
And yes, magic is apparently a thing here. You and Sarah share a quick glance, but decide not to interrupt the explanation.
You're not going to go into why a bunch of schoolchildren was capable of pressing an entire race of demons this hard, but after about two years of being decimated (fucking what), the demon king went out to challenge them to a decisive battle... and promptly lost. Unfortunately, he was also the leading strategist and inspirational figure of the demon army, so with him dead, what awaits the demon race is a quick subjugation/extinction in the face of the advancing human army.
Until this girl, the demon princess, conducted another hero summoning ritual in the hopes of calling upon a way to counter the human heroes, resulting in you and Sarah being diverted into this dimension by way of interdimensional truck, from what you understand.
And seriously, what the fuck was up with that truck?!
"So this is why I did as the goddess commanded and summoned... you!"
"What? Me? But my brother is the one with all the insane powers! Also, could we all get some goddamn clothes on sometime soon?"
Aww, Sarah's blushing! You're somewhat tempted to tease her over this, but for now, you have important stuff to do. Such as stealing subtle glances over naked bodies in this room (and you're totally not the only one) and making sure your time and effort in this world, if you indeed decide to go out of your way to save these 'demons', is appropriately rewarded.
"Okay, so we have cleared up what the situation is and why we're here. Now what's in it for us? I do hope you were planning to compensate us for the inconvenience."
Sarah gapes open-mouthed at you for a moment, so you explain your rationale to her really quick.
"Just go with the flow. Really, I've found that is the best way to get through situations like these."
You are interrupted, however, when Rose throws herself at the floor, her naked ass stretching upwards. You have to engage your absolute control over yourself to not burst out laughing.
"Please save us! Most of the treasury was expended in the war effort, but we still have some equipment lying around! The soldiers you can reach will surely obey your commands so long as you offer them a way to turn this conflict around, so please! I'll do anything in my power, but save us from sure extinction!"
There is a flash in Sarah's eyes, and next thing you know, she is taking a step forward and stopping right in front of the prostrating princess.
"If we do this, my brother here gets everything. The realm, you, and all that involves."
Immediately syncing up with her, you begin to round up and come up behind the princess in a soundless walk.
"You did say you would do anything, didn't you?" You drawl as you begin to grope her naked ass. Man, this is a nice ass- you could massage it all day long.
"You see, I'm kinda new to my station as a growing evil magical overlord, but it just occurred to me I'm missing something key to the trope - my own captive princess...it does help this princess here just offered herself up to us."
She just pants, not saying anything... but she isn't moving away from your groping, either.
You look over at Sarah. Now how will you do this...
Slowly letting your hands wander, you idly keep on squeezing and stroking her behind as Sarah watches on. She swallows, but focuses on the other woman's face, downward facing as it is due to her position.
"Oh? Do you want this? To sell yourself out for your people? I wonder whether that's to save your position or just to save face as you enjoy what's about to happen to you."
Letting her eyes dart over to you, you establish a connection.
Wait for a bit longer, draw it out.
Smiling in her direction, you begin to slowly tease her pussy, drawing your fingers along her lower lips as you observe what happens next.
"But before we do this, before you get what you really want, I want you to beg. I want you to ask to be made a whore to buy our help."
Your captured princess shakes her head, but you know what to do about this. Letting yourself come to full hardness, you replace your fingers with the head of your dick, promising the prospect of penetration, but never actually thrusting forwards, all the while Sarah keeps on murmuring away at the little princess, you using your free hand to lean over and start groping her breasts.
Eventually, it all becomes too much for her.
"...Please..."
"Hm? I didn't hear you, princess. What did you say?"
"Please... please fuck me like a bitch in heat!"
"There we are, the real reason you offered 'anything'. You were hoping for this the moment we were summoned, weren't you?"
Not waiting any longer, you thrust your full length inside her, making her throw up her wide-eyed head in a wordless moan. You begin to fuck her, rail her, really, as your sister watches on.
It doesn't take long for her to come, screaming aloud and squeezing around your cock. You just keep on fucking her through her orgasm, prolonging it into several mini-orgasms and leading into the next one, and soon enough you have her cumming around you nonstop before you finally bottom out once again, filling her up with your cum.
You don't let her rest, however, dragging her, still impaled on your dick, up with you as you make your way over to the mildly decorated little throne, sitting down and carefully pulling out of her pussy by grabbing her supple thighs and lifting her upwards.
Only to lower her again once you've slipped free of her tight confines.
"I do have to say, this is a nice ass," you ponder aloud as your tip prods her back entrance. "Be a shame not to show some love, wouldn't it?"
Your well-lubricated member has no trouble penetrating her tight ring, and soon enough, you're steadily pumping her up and down your dick, giving your little voyeur a great view of the action between her buttcheeks and her leaking pussy.
...You can sense you may be sitting here for a while yet, judging by the renewed orgasmic screams as the princess starts fondling her own breasts. Quite a while, indeed.
All fun has to end sooner or later, however, and after an hour or two of nonstop sex, even demons have trouble keeping cognizant, apparently. So you let her rest for a bit after pulling out for the last time for now and use your shadow transformation to clean yourself up real quick.
Half an hour later, the bowlegged princess is leading you and Sarah towards the inhabitated areas of what turns out to be the demon castle, the unimaginatively named castle of the demon king. Apparently most of the inhabitants fled or were drafted into the war effort at some point, so there's only really a skeleton crew of servants and officials around keeping everything operating.
This means there's fewer people seeing the trail the princess is leaking from under her dress she stashed nearby before performing the summoning ritual, but it also means there's a longer way to go before you and Sarah can obtain some clothes. Nevertheless, you are soon situated in a quaint little sitting room, with a loose outfit for you and another little dress for Sarah. You'd say it makes her look cute, but she looks too cute in general already, making it hard to say how much cuter she got.
Regardless, this isn't the time to squee over Sarah. This is the time to have your newest asset explain the current situation of the demon race to you and decide how to change it.
Interestingly enough, she actually pulls several maps from a little cart one of the servants pushed nearby, spreading them out on the table you're sitting around.
"Some of these are not quite up-to-date, but they will suffice for our purposes. So, this is the map of the lands surrounding the capital city, this are the heartlands..."
It takes her a bit to to point out all the various maps she has to show you. Soon enough, however, you have a reasonable idea of the geography of the Kingdom of Lanverias.
"So, the issue we have is that the human army split up to hunt down the demon armies that dispersed after the king's death, with some of the heroes following along, though most of them returned to the human capital. We do not know much about some of the outlying areas' situations, however.
For a start, I believe you'd best take care of..."
"...The human army advancing upon the heartlands. We cannot lose the kingdom's breadbasket, over two thirds of the food our nation has access to is produced in this region."
"Agreed. We can get rid of the scouts later, but we absolutely cannot lose a secure food supply. In fact, I'd say summoning us before the time you lost it was the one last straw in this situation."
Huh. Who'd have thought Sarah would have a head for strategy? Still, you have a few things to add to this discussion, if only so your... condition, doesn't impair the war efforts even while you make best use of your strengths.
"Okay, one thing to keep in mind, I literally burn in the sun. As in, I spend any length of time outside during the day and I'm dead. With that in mind, we'll likely go for night raids to target vital command infrastructure and sow terror, then use the day to have a wide variety of 'surprises' I can cook up do the rest."
"Just, keep in mind your goal is not to kill them all, though their deaths are certainly a good thing, but rather to force a retreat from the region post haste. It doesn't matter whether they flee due to casualties or desert due to starvation, just as long as they get away from our own food supply."
"Good point, and that brings me to the next item on our agenda. Poisoning their supplies should work wonders, and chemical weapons will be a great boon to our efforts in the field."
"Gabe... Do you really have to look at the situation and basically open the great book of warcrimes as your very first reaction?"
"Hey, if it works, it works. Also, there's no pesky Geneva Convention nor the PRT in this world, so why wouldn't I? Anyway, with that in mind..."
You breathe out two of your souls, specifically that drug mixer you ate in the same raid you picked up Cupcake, as well as your mad doctor soul.
"These two will have to find out what chemicals we have available around here and see if they can't turn that into something useable."
"We can surely have them use the servants to fetch anything they may need, but... what exactly did you just do? How did you summon them?"
"Oh, it's just one of my powers. I eat the souls of the living as I drink their blood, and enslave them in doing so, forcing them to do my bidding eternally."
"Hueh?"
You can't help yourself; you just have to laugh.
"You sure lucked out, what with humans being my favorite food, huh?"
"Hueeeh?"
After calming the princess down a little and sending your minions off with the servants on call to do your bidding, you return to the topics at hand.
"So, I hesitate to ask this, but how is the economical situation of the kingdom looking? We will need functioning infrastructure if we want to effectively fight the humans back, and no matter how good I am, I can't hold an army off indefinitely by my lonesome."
"Yes, as you have likely inferred, most of the nation is in shambles. While some parts of it were untouched by the war so far, the war effort itself left severe scars on most industry we had before.
Of note are the mines in the mountain ranges to the north-east, rich in ore mostly spent in creating weaponry, leading to depleted ore stockpiles all around, as well as the heartlands you already know about and the western coast dotted with fishing villages. Or at least it used to be, before most of them were destroyed after the human navy overwhelmed ours."
Hm... This is a good overview of the current situation, you feel, but is there anything else you'd like to know before you get to work?
"Okay, before we move on, there's a few other things I'd like to clear up."
"Please feel free to ask, I am at your service."
Sarah just smirks, but doesn't make the obvious jab. Good girl.
"First off, we have no idea how magic works in this world, but more importantly, how are our side's capabilities looking when measured up to theirs?"
Sighing, the princess puts down her teacup.
"Unfortunately, while our armies tended to incorporate more mages than the humans' army doctrine calls for, they tended to be priority targets for the enemy in this last war more than ever before, so while it holds true the demons tend to have more able practitioners as a whole, few of them are capable of warfare anymore. Any good battlemages are worth their weight in gold, these days.
That said, it remains unchanged that non-combatant mages are still vastly superior for our kind compared to their human counterparts. You'll have an easier time obtaining magic items or potions for a lower price on our markets, or what's left of them, at any rate, for a comparably lower price."
"This leads me to the next subject I wanted to address; you wouldn't happen to have any magical items lying around that protect against fire? It is one of my few remaining weaknesses in that healing burns takes me forever."
"I am afraid most magic items in stock were either sold to finance the war or used in battle and subsequently lost when their bearers fell or fled. Anything we have left is likely just minor trinkets, but I will have the servants compose a list for you later to see if there is anything left that interests you."
"Very well. If that's how it is, it can't be helped. Next off, any cultural taboos I should watch out for? I'd hate having to massacre half the population for some nonsensical reason."
"Nothing I am aware of, no. Demons value power over all else, whether it be strength in combat, economical or social power. Cowards may be looked down upon, but as long as you can prove running away was part of a superior strategy, nobody should mind."
"Very good; that should be all. Do you have any additional questions, Sarah?"
"None, I just wanted to ask about magic, too."
"Oh, right, one last thing. How many heroes are there? Just something I want to keep in mind going forwards."
"All in all, there are seventeen different heroes confirmed so far."
"Alright, we can work with this. For now, let us adjourn and prepare for the traveling we'll need to do while my minions see about doing their duties. Do remember that list of trinkets."
"Please do not worry, I'll have it delivered to you post-haste."
It is not long after you and Sarah have been ushered into a room prepared specifically for the summoned hero- nevermind two people came through. The two of you spend some idle time chatting away before a polite knock announces a butler coming through and handing you that promised list.
Looking things over, it seems Rose wasn't kidding when she described the state of the armory or wherever people keep things like this. It seems most of it is just various rings with small effects such as resistance against 'elemental influences', though anything that protects against the cold is gone, a few amulets with anything from a feeble light shining from it in the dark to letting the wearer smell the last thing they ate for an hour after the meal and other minor crap like that.
At least there's a few rings with minor resistance against fire and heat, one of the last three in the castle about to wander onto your finger. Sarah looks over it, too, but declines getting anything for herself, reasoning you can probably get vastly better stuff by plundering your enemies. Which is fair, you suppose.
Leaning back with the plain band of coppery metal on your finger, you think about what to do now that all you need is to wait for nightfall to move out and get acting.
You spend the rest of the day fiddling with your magic, specifically your ability to raise corpses to do your bidding, practicing on the corpse of a dead rat one of the servants procured for you.
Enentually, however, it is time. Time to go out and ensure what you've decided is your kingdom doesn't starve. While you can work with corpses, your abilities are limited, and a wasteland filled with the dead and dying isn't too appealing to rule over.
"Alright, Sarah, before I forget it," you say, breathing out Coil, "he will follow your orders. You can have him use his power to support me while I do stuff via telepathy."
"Got it."
Mentally contacting your minion, you order the one you left out to take what they managed so far to you, receiving an affirmative answer and waiting for a few minutes while they're brought to you.
The wait is worth it, certainly, as you receive several small containers from him.
"Mustard gas bombs. Just damage the shell, and the gas spurts out. May be less useful in open areas, but really works to make some nice corpses when used right."
Good enough, you suppose.
Making sure the gas canisters are sitting tight, you tell Sarah you're off and to tell the princess before coming into a room with a window, opening it and transforming into an owl.
And off you are.
Flying through the night sky, you observe the land beneath you as you compare it with the maps Rose showed you to orient yourself. Heartlands, here you come!
Now, once you arrive, you'll be quite busy, you reckon, thinking through your objectives once you arrive.
First, you'll need a temporary lair to spend the days in. That's just a necessity, full stop. You'll need to make sure it is well-defended and/or hidden enough it will actually keep you safe, though.
Next off, you'll need to find and force back your enemies. This will be quite the task, too, what with the sheer size of their army. Your best bet will be to commit all the warcrimes, you reckon, along with inventing a few new ones with your magic and powers.
You may as well keep an eye out for any dispersed demons, too- Rose mentioned the army was being hunted down by the humans. You may be able to make them work with you if you do it right, in addition to your secondary objective of keeping the humans from plundering and burning down the farms spread across the entire area.
In fact, the irony of starving them out by annihilating their supply trains while ensuring they can't keep their bellies full through plunder (which you'd bet they were expecting to be able to, thus less supplies being planned for them in the first place) would be making you smile if your mouth wasn't a beak right now.
Nearing the area you're targeting, you start to see the odd flames shining in the distance. That has to be the human army, you bet.
Not wasting time on investigating it further for the moment, you swoop towards a nearby forested area. You don't really want to demand much, just a place to stay during the day is all you need for the moment.
Luckily, your enhanced senses combined with your perfect vision allow you to spot a dark, shadowy hole... too dark and shadowy, in fact. Investigating closer, you find that it actually leads into a small cave, smack dab in the middle of the forest.
Nature just always finds a way to surprise you in the oddest of ways, doesn't it?
So, here you are. It's not much, but it's deep enough to keep you secure from the sunshine, while close enough to the human army to let you access them for raids thanks to your transformative powers.
Next off, you suppose the natural next step is to scout out the enemy forces, figure out central locations with leadership, all that good stuff. But before you fly off... you take a moment to look over the entrance of your new temporary lair.
With all of these rocks... you may as well collappse the entrance a bit, right? Not like you need a human-sized one, anyway, and if it looks impossible to use as a lair, that means the enemy won't suspect it of being one if they ever find it.
So you spend a good ten minutes trying to figure out how to do this, before you just shrug, pull out your claws and get get a good grip.
And pull.
The end result is a bunch of crumbled rocks that do a pretty good job of blocking the entrance. A determined group of attackers could move them aside with a few hours' work, but the entire point of this is to buy those few hours for you just in case.
Satisfied with your work for now, you once more transform into an owl and fly off. Time to see how this human army is organized, you suppose.
You take a decent amount of time to fly above their camp, just leisurely looking over how everything is set up. It doesn't seem like a permanent camp, for once, with no real fixtures or anything you can make out.
They're pretty much just using a few houses that used to belong to a small farming community as temporary barracks and for storage, with most of the army still camping out due to space concerns. You're not going to try to gauge the amounts of humans in this army, that's doomed to failure anyways, but you'd expect something in the mid-five digits, possibly higher if they have a lot of their men spread out further.
Flying closer, but still far up enough to avoid any possible attacks, you see several patrols entering and leaving the camp, most of them made of five men. That looks like a good starting point.
Taking a bit longer to see if you can spy any funny hats, you eventually find what you're looking for in some guy exiting one of the more intact looking buildings. Looks like the higher commanders got themselves a building or two as nightquarters.
Just letting that information sit for a while, you randomly pick one of the leaving patrols just exiting the camp and follow them into the surrounding area.
Most of this is flat farmland, but they soon move out far enough they're unlikely to be heard from the camp. Now the only question is how you are going to do this...
Well time to do this. Telepathically contacting Sarah and the minion you left with her, telling them you're about to start murdering your way through your first enemy patrol and asking them how to use his power for proper effect.
Basically, from what I got out of him so far, it is for the best if you just do your usual thing while he uses his power to advise you in case you would report anything during the operation you're about to start.
You can work with this. Okay, landing somewhat nearby the patrol, you breathe out your shockwave guy and have him follow you. Once you have your targets in sight, you chant Freeze water and shoot at my enemy in a glorious barrage!, promptly shooting out three ice shards while your summon propels himself towards them by triggering shockwaves through his feet, landing fist first on his first opponent.
You projectiles spread along their line, wounding two and glancing off of the armor of the last one. No matter. You extend your claws and throw yourself into the melee after your soul, the trigger to your electric hands on the ready.
What follows is a chaotic melee fight, with your enemies being literally pasted by your shockwave dude when he isn't blowing their weapons or limbs away and yourself smashing and slamming your claws into any available vulnerability when you aren't just ripping through their armor wholesale.
Of course, both of you take some minor nicks on occasion, but nothing to write home about, and once you start to really get into it and just rip one of their heads off, the last two survivors seem... shaken.
Ordering your minion to hold one of them still for a moment, you slap the other one's spear out of his hands before you tear the armor from his arm with your claws and sink your teeth into it deeply, drinking most of his blood in seconds.
It still takes longer and feels a little weird when compared to biting into necks, or at least shoulders, so you take your time to disarm the other one and removing his armor.
Yum.
Markus was always just the regular village son; bit bigger than most, bit stronger than most, but nothing interesting about him aside from that. All that he wanted from life was to find a good woman and raise a family.
When the conscription for the war came around, his build alone more than qualified him for being conscripted, and so he had to go off to serve in the army. It wasn't all bad; he could go and cut down a few monsters to earn himself a little nest egg for when his term ended, with minimal danger, what with the enemy army having already given up.
He'd never have expected his term would end just so abruptly, though.
Brady always wanted to go out there and see the world, maybe do some real good with his life, so when the war came around and they wanted able-bodied men, he didn't hesitate to join up.
Well, they didn't see too much of the world, but hey, it was something! Most of the people he knew never went past the horizon visible from their front lawns, after all, and he stil got to actually learn something from the instructors and veterans all around him.
Just too bad none of what he learned ended up saving him. The realities of war, really.
Letting the corpse fall away, your thoughts are racing about your next action. You got a dead patrol, what now?
You don't know how much time you have, so you drag the corpses together and begin to Twist them into one single, much sturdier body.
Luckily enough, while their equipment was standardized, they each had some of their own gear on them, likely as backup weapons, so you can get... creative with your work.
Tearing off most of their armor, you start by fusing all of them together wherever you can. You don't care about how horribly mismatched the end result will look like, in fact, that is a feature in this case.
So, all the guts into the central body, most of the lower bodies fused into the main body while the torsos protrude from it to swing weapons or claws around. Bits and pieces added to the main body's legs and lower body so it can properly walk, aaand you've run out of skin.
No matter. No time to go over stuff again, may as well just leave the main part torn open, not like those guts were ever necessary to begin with. Mhm, best use a few bone spurs and add a few weapon parts to keep this thing together.
You're running out of space, you you just re-use the left arm by adding it to the right arm that already got reinforced with one lower body, and fuck this guy's jaw, it won't fit where it is, you're adding it to the main head's jaw.
The end result is something you can be proud of, given the little time you had to work on it. You think you may decide to use this as a standard abomination for rush jobs like these, in fact.
In fact, their faces are still somewhat recognizable, so...
"Once I tell you to, you will head in this direction, slowly, and once you see humans, you will beg for release and wheeze like crazy as you kill them all. Did you get that?"
The thing starts wheezing and choking. Eh, good enough. Deciding to really do the best you can with this, you then imbue one of those fragmentary thingies you fused together into it, giving the sounds it makes an eerie echo, but not giving any indications as to what else it may have done.
With that taken care of for now, you breathe out one of the souls you acquired earlier after dismissing shockwave man, handing it the clothes and armor you took off its corpse as well as one of your little containers.
"You, are going to come back into your camp and enter the largest of the buildings being used as a barrack, then break this thing here once I tell you to. Go."
With that done, you start to transform into your shadow form. Time to see if you can't get a few more meals done before the festivities start. As your abomination begins to move and you 'fall' into flat ground, you can't help but want to lick your lips as you telepathically update Sarah on your progress so far.
Infiltrating the camp on ground level this time, you think quickly about where to head, even as you have your fresh minion keep you updated on the progress he is making against his will.
You could do a few different things now, the question is whether you can get away with them undiscovered.
No good, you get discovered if you go left.
Thanks.
Coming out of the telepathic conversation, you proceed towards the right, carefully keeping out of the sparse light around you. Man, medieval cultures are sure nice for your shadow form.
However, you see a somewhat brighter light coming from underneath one of the doors you pass. Your curiosity piqued, you slide under it and find yourself in a small room with an elderly person hunched over a desk, carefully using the light of what you assume is a magical lightsourse to his side to write something, regularly dipping his pen in the inkwell to his other side.
Well now... this guy looks important. Incidentally, your minion has managed to arrive inside the barracks without arousing too much attention by now.
Everything seems to be lining up...
Telling your minion to go ahead and tear apart the canister you gave him, you materialize and instantly jump onto the old man, slamming his head against the table and keeping him still.
He's surprisingly strong for an old fucker like this, nearly managing to buck you off, but in short order, you have your teeth buried in his neck, having already unsummoned your mustard gas minion by this point.
Phillip, just Phillip, thanks, always was a humble man. Born to a minor aristocratic household, he soon found that he had a great talent as a strategical and philosophical mind. His true, passion, however, was and would remain, peace.
Peace, after all, allowed the peasants to till the fields without interruption; it allowed the knights to train and defend them from monsters and it allowed the nobles to focus on their administrative duties, as they should.
However, when the call to war once more came, the third his tired old bones had to hear, both of the first ones being swift occurences that came as fast as they went, this one was different. For a start, these 'heroes' being summoned by the royal family, powerful champions meant to break the deadlock splitting the continent in two.
Pfah. Sending children to die. Truly one of the more abominable things a lord could do, and one that was supposed to be a last resort, but Phillip, in no position to argue against the king, decided to at least prepare them the best he could.
So the old soldier and general once more picked up his sword, first to teach, then to lead. Both of which were old, old hats to him by now, but still one of his best qualities.
How he hated them.
Nevertheless, he did his best to educate the young minds dropped into their lap, and when they eventually defeated the demon king, the undisputably strongest organism on the face of world, his heart, too, swelled with pride.
It brought him sadness that the next thing he had to do was to eradicate demonkind wherever possible, but this war... this conflict... had ended too many lifes, on both sides. There was no other option than the complete end of one side, and no matter how much it pained him, he refused to let it be humanity.
And so he led the army into the heartlands of the Kingdom of Lanverias, hoping to cut off the demons' food supplies and force a complete surrender in short order.
Oh, how could he know things would end like this?
Dropping the corpse of the strangely fruity tasting old man on his writing desk, you consider your next step. The mustard gas should be properly done by now, and your abomination is still on the way, judging by the lack of screams.
You have a possible time window here, but you'll have to act quick.
Okay, so naturally, this guy is important for the humans. May as well use his corpse as a trap for the eventuality of someone checking up on him.
Raising him as an undead, you just order him to attack anyone that tries to investigate his body and just pretend to be dead/sleeping otherwise. And in order to give it just that little kick, you proceed to merge some of those fragemts you have hanging around and imbue the denser one into him.
Now, time to aaand you can start to hear panicked screaming. Looks like your abomination has been sighted, then. Good.
How will you use the great distraction this offers you?
Okay, no idea how the humans will react to this, but still, no point in delaying things any further than necessary. Pulling out one of the gas containers, you pull it apart with minimal effort and wave the two halves around the room, really letting the mustard gas circulate, before you go shadow again, entirely getting rid of any of it that clung to you.
Now, time to slink out of here while everyone is distracted and go take a look at their supplies, medicinal or otherwise.
They won't know what hit 'em.
Well, you're fairly sure they actually do have several areas they store supplies in, kind of a necessity with an army this size, but still, this should be the central stockpile used as a waystation for other areas in this enormous camp.
Good enough for you.
Summoning your Discount Militia, you take a moment to ask him if he has anything that can spread fire.
He just grins and raises two molotovs. That will work.
"Okay, so you start to burn all of this shit down while I go poison those barrels of water. And try to be quiet- the longer my distraction works, the more time we have to be thorough with this."
And so the two of you set to work, you using your claws to open a small wound along your wrist and bleed into the water while your minion uses his unending molotovs to make sure everything gets turned to ash.
Unfortunately, no matter how much fun you have, it will inevitably come to an end- in this case, that end being the flames licking along the building, well visible from the outside.
Naturally, you did make sure to keep yourself near a window, so once you decide your work here is done, you reabsorb your minion and throw yourself outside, turning into a shadow in short order.
Looking up at the sky, you frown. Shit, you may need to hurry if you want to be back to your lair in time. Ah well, at least you had lots of fun tonight. You can hardly wait until the next one, really.
You move along the dark ground at top speed, your perfect memory letting you home in on the lair you picked out. In short order, you're securely tucked away in the dark confines of your little cave.
Interlude: Looking On From Above
She normally wasn't one to gloat, but this time, this time she truly couldn't help herself.
While the summoning didn't quite go as planned, which honestly couldn't be helped, considering her sister likely spent centuries on making hers one perfect move while she had two years to figure out how to do it, the end results could speak for themselves.
While the 'hero' the summoning latched onto wasn't too impressive, her 'brother', if that thing ever truly was related to her, was a most impressive specimen.
Strange magic she honestly couldn't wrap her head around, not that she cared all that much exactly how it worked, charisma in spades, enough she imagined even a far less desperate princess would have written over her kingdom in short order, and a plethora of nightmarish fates in store for any enemies lying in wait inside a dark, hostile mind.
Honestly, if she wasn't loyal to her sister, she might even have to get him in bed at this rate, but alas, she spent the last twenty millenia on this stupid bet, she wasn't going to ruin it at the last moment.
Making her way over to her sister's rooms, she took a seat next to her bright sibling's still form, casually slinging an arm over her shoulder.
"Would you look at that. My 'insolent knockoff crapjob' managed to summon a champion great enough to single-handedly beat back your children's army. Sooner or later, this ass will be mine!"
As she spoke, her hand slowly crept lower until it was groping the sublime behind she had been after for longer than the mortals both of them reigned over existed.
"Stop that. Both of that. Honestly, you speak as though you'd won already. Yes, the dragalong you managed to fish out is mighty, but it will not be capable of winning you the bet. It may have defeated a rook, but I have several queens still in play, whereas you happen to have run all out of pawns, no?"
"Oh, surely enough, your pesky 'heroes' will be a nuisance, but as I have only one card left, why wouldn't I place all my chips on it? Besides, need I remind you how easily your pawns can fall against a superior foe? I would think a few centuries of repeated lessons towards that end would hammer it in, and what are your 'queens' but pawns for us players?"
"And yet those 'pawns' were enough to take down your king piece. Accept it, you have lost, and all you managed to do by stealing my work was to delay my victory."
On and on they argued, back and forth. Truly, just for this alone, she was thankful to her inadvertent little pawn- he'd not only turned the situation from a sure loss towards a possible one singlehandedly, he managed to freshen up their discussions quite nicely.
Then again, who was she, if not the lucky sibling?
Taking a moment after your usual morning ritual, you proceed to merge the fragments in your possession so as to save some 'space', despite how no actual storage limitations should apply to this as far as your knowledge goes.
So anyway, you just throw together a few random fragments to see what happens, along with the ones that seem similar enough to each other, naturally gravitating together anyway.
Getting done with your little cleanup (and suppressing your weird boner out of nowhere), you proceed onto your next order of business, namely, abusing the powers of the people you ate.
Man, you love that part of your powers.
So, anyway, you telepathically contact Sarah and have her order Coil to use his power, in such a fashion that he precogs a reality where you actually go out of your way to interrogate that important-looking old guy you ate and convey his answers to him and Sarah, as well as their questions you make him answer, leading to Coil knowing the results of your interrogation and giving the information to Sarah, who can then give you the info you hypothetically extracted as it becomes convenient.
All without you having to actually do much of anything, or, in short, you abuse Coil's power to interrogate this dude's soul without ever having to actually go through the trouble.
Phew.
With that piece of mental gymnastics out of the way and Coil beginning to sing sweet, sweet info, you turn towards training your internal metaphysical eating mechanisms.
Well, that old dude you ate had a very peculiar taste... fruity and refreshing, hitting you just right. You can't help but compare it to the way some of the worst monsters you ate tasted, their hearty, full blood filling you far longer than they really should.
Could it be that you can literally taste morality like this, and that the more extreme their morality leaned in either direction, the deeper their taste? This would also add up with how some of the objectively worst (best-tasting) people you ate got power, as well as the ones that tasted nearly as good that you then threw into your refinery mechanism.
So, one way to find out would be to try it on the old man. Thus, you summon him up and try it out.
After the usual spiel of the silent cries of pain and all, he gets up and suddenly... you can feel what he perceives. It is pretty weird.
So, apparently, after some further testing, it seems like he can share the perception and, to a lesser degree, reaction time, of allies nearby. Seems like it could be nifty in larger battles, certainly.
Once more telepathically contacting your sister, you ask about any information regarding enemy patrols you should be aware of.
No patrol routes or anything if that's what you mean, but... let me look through my notes... here, standard doctrine in case of unexpected attacks is to increase the size of patrols where possible and to have patrols go out in random intervals, but close enough to each other they can support each other in case of attacks.
Thanking Sarah for the help, you proceed to explain the power you unlocked in the guy.
...Holy hell, didn't you have enough bullshit on your side already?
Why Sarah, you can't ever have enough bullshit. But enough chitchat, I have horrific war crimes to commit! Though I don't think they actually count as war crimes, given there aren't any laws of war commonly accepted in this world...
Regardless, you playfully excuse yourself from the conversation and ponder over how to deal with this.
Well, first of all, time to go shadow again, then you can see about asking for more info on the move. Racing along the night, you mentally ask your newest 'recruit' about any vulnerabilities of the human army you could target.
Unfortunately, while assassinating mages is a time-honored tradition in warfare in this world, the mages inside the camp will have been moved by now, as is standard procedure after any major attack. Annoying, but you'll just have to find them yourself.
Anyways, so, supplies, which you already targeted... oh, in a day or two, they were apparently expecting a delivery of supplies from the homeland, likely the last one for some time, as they were expecting to be able to plunder what they needed from the surrounding areas in addition to their supplies.
Well now... too bad someone may decide to have a little fun with those incoming supplies, huh?
Regardless, for now, eyes on the current prize... which just so happens to be a great, but limping beast.
The human army likely expected a lot of things, but not what you subjected it to. The men seem to be rather spooked, with fearful whispers making the rounds. Apparently, the abomination you threw at them did great work.
In fact, as you look around, you soon find the pit they threw the thing into before burning it. Didn't want to risk it standing up again, apparently. Not too far away, you find the bodies of the men it killed lined up and covered in cloth. A quick investigation (still as a shadow, of course) confirms they were killed by a variety of weapons and blunt force smashing into them, telltale signs of your abomination mowing them down.
All in all, you count 34 dead soldiers, more than you thought there would be. Perhaps the fragment you imbued it with played a role in that? Filled them with fear, made them hesitate? No matter. All that does matter is that it worked out nicely.
Further scouting out the camp, you note one area is seeing more activity than you see elsewhere, so naturally you go forth to take a closer look... while hiding inside the shadows, of course.
Well, seems you found the healers' tents, as well as the soldiers affected by the mustard gas you used. Some are merely complaining about itchy skin, but others have already started breaking out into ugly boils. Hoo boy, you can't wait for them to find out the worst is yet to come.
As you keep on looking around and covertly casting your spell to raise the corpses of last night's distraction, you soon realize you, for some reason, can just decide your casting is... muffled, to an extreme.
You don't speak quieter or modulate your voice or anything, you just flip a switch and the sounds come out quieter. Weird, but welcome.
You have acquired the trait Muffled Casting
Anyways, with an even ten of the corpses reanimated, you quietly give them the order to stay unmoving until humans draw near, at which point they are to get up and kill any humans they can find.
Now all you need to do is to find an isolated target to eat and use as an infiltrator, then you can begin with the next step of your plan.
It takes a bit of doing, as well as the assistance of Sarah using Coil, but soon enough, you're looking at a slightly swaying soldier taking a piss a little ways off from anyone else.
Most of these guys seem to be on high guard, but you'll always have at least a few that use alcohol to deal with stress, and you try to keep an army from smuggling some hard drinks along. Works for you, anyways.
Sliding up to him as a shadow from behind, you rematerialize, grab him and drive your teeth into his neck. You've done it often enough by now the motion has become familiar to you.
Dave was just your typical peasant, all in all. Sure, he may come across as a bit of an asshole and a drunkard to boot, but hey, it's not like most people were that much better than him, anyways.
What this meant was that, when the recruiters rolled around, he was too drunk to hack of a finger like anyone else that wanted to stay had done, and nobody wasted any time to help him hide quick enough. In short order, he was carted off to join the army.
Now, while he managed to muddle his way through well enough, discovering he had an actual talent for archery during basic training, even, and the march through demonlands wasn't too bad by the time he had to participate, none of that prepared him in any way for facing the stitched-together bodies of his comrades and having to shoot arrows at all of their heads.
Repeatedly.
So when he just gave in the next day, having had shit sleep with nightmares all the damn time, and took the edge off with some of the homebrew he managed to acquire, he never would've expected to meet the guy who stitched the object of his fears together.
Taking a look around, you quickly drag the corpse over to behind a tent, using the cloth to obscure there is anything here. Summoning the soul of the sucker you just ate, you order him to take off and put on the uniform his corpse is wearing.
Keeping watch while he does so, you quickly hide the corpse again the best you can before giving him his instructions.
"So, here is what you will do," you begin, ignoring the horror on his face, "First, take this and keep it on you. You will break the container when I give you the signal to. In the meantime, you will blend in and go about your business as though nothing happened, got it?"
Not waiting for him to respond (not like what he has to say matters), you proceed on.
"Before I forget, what can you tell me about the locations of any mages, commanding officers or other important leadership?"
Well, turns out this little worm knew more than you gave him credit for. Not only did he receive commendations by the higher-ups for his performance against your abomination yesterday night, he then had to spend all day in their part of the camp because military ceremonies take forever, apparently.
This means that not only does he know they decided to move their command center towards another building, away from the area you were active in so far, as well as how the mages were moved closer towards that same location, both to keep them moving and as to better guard command.
While he isn't completely certain they didn't already start moving everything about again, or at least the mages, you do somewhat doubt they'd force important personnel to move quite that often. They should be in the area he is describing to you. The honestly largest obstacle to your inevitable raid will be how everything in the area is well-guarded by elite soldiers by now, them not wanting to risk a repeat of you secretly eating their highest officer and leaving a reanimated corpse in his place.
Oh, did you not mention that? Because yeah, it turns out soldiers, even high ranking ones, like to gossip, and apparently you turned the general of this army into a slavering monstrosity that murdered half of high command and had to be put down by a dozen mages working in concert.
You gotta say, for a simple zombie, the guy's corpse sure did leave an impression, for rumors to blow up like this.
Well, for now you just order him to go nearby the area high command and the mages are stationed and wait for further instructions while looking like he belongs in the area.
You yourself first take a moment to sneak a little closer to the area your abomination fought in, using your new talent for staying quite while casting magic to collect more of those fragments you have started to have a use for.
With that out of the way, you once more go shadow and use your telepathy to keep in contact with Sarah, narrating what you see and are about to do so as to have her help you by using Coil.
Time to give the mages of this army some love.
It doesn't take you long to find the area your minion told you about, though you have to take things slowly and carefully. There are more lights lit throughout the area, and you still don't have any real idea how mages might target you in this form.
Luckily, you don't have to enter any tents or buildings for the most part, lit or not, thanks to your ability to perceive blood even through walls. Using it, you trace along the area, avoiding the regular patrols of well-armored soldiers.
Soon enough, you can see one of the mages, sleeping in a relatively isolated room, easily for you to reach. Perfect.
Slipping through a crack or two, you find a voluptuous woman, still clothed in what you assume is a mage's uniform, sleeping soundly in a small room. Alright.
Quickly concentrating and fusing a few of your fragments after rematerializing, you creep over towards the bed, grpping a hand over your victim's mouth and using the other one to press down her arm, feeding upon her before she has time to scream or otherwise interrupt your time together.
Verra was always pretty normal, as far as mages went. No weird idiosyncracies, no maniacal goals to follow, just a woman that knew what she wanted and got it more often than not.
Of course, it DID help she was a mage, making it much easier to get what she wanted. When the call to arms called out, she decided she may as well, being qualified enough as a warmage and important enough she would be kept safe under most circumstances.
How was she supposed to know the true enemy would only creep out after they all but defeated the demons already?
Letting go of the now still body, you rise and take a look around using your bloodsight, but nobody seems to be nearby. Good.
Well, it worked on the last one, may as well do it again. Raising her body, you imbue it with the same type of fragment and give it orders to lie still until someone draws near, then kill any humans it can find.
With that taken care of, you mentally question archer boy on how things are going for him. He tells you he's currently hiding out near the command post, avoiding any questions as to what he's doing there. Good enough.
You do wonder exactly how long it is until your other zombie trap is sprung. You can hardly afford to stick around once the camp is in full alarm, or at least this area of it, but you also don't have any real ways to check up with them.
Going shadow once your trap is appropriately armed, you go to seek out another victim, finding that, while a sizeable amount of people in this building are asleep (makes sense, it being night and all), quite a few are awake, with several soldiers patrolling through the hallways.
The individual rooms, however, just contain one mage each, and make for tempting targets. While you can't find any truly isolated rooms like the last one, with empty neighboring rooms, you should be able to stealthily nab a few mages before the alarm is raised.
Slipping into one of the occupied rooms, you prepare to get into action.
Jumping atop his body, you drive your teeth into the mage's throat before he can react. Really, these guys make it entirely too easy for you.
Ricard was never supposed to be doing great things. Born as the fourth son to a knight, while he technically was a noble, the difference between him and a peasant was academic at best.
Ironic, considering academics would turn out to be his lot in life. Possessing talent for the art, he was naturally pressed to become a mage. While he wasn't too great at it, he worked hard enough to be recognized for his skill, at least.
Of course, that same skill led to him being thrown at the army, but at least mages enjoyed privilege here, greater privilige than his 'rank' ever allowed him. Too bad then, that none of his meagre skill in magic ended up saving him, eh?
Raising his body as an udead once you've climbed off of it, you imbue it with the more erratic fragment you managed to throw together, causing it to jerkily raise its head at you, going completely still in between movements.
Giving it the same orders as the last one, you think about your next move.
Alright, your traps are armed, your minion is in position. Time to fly up and get to work.
Shadowing out of the camp, you turn back, then turn your arms into an owl's wings. Time to rain some death from above, heh.
Establishing contact, you tell your soul minion to wait until the mages come to fend me off, then open the container near them.
That done, you engage your levitation and fly. This is your first time doing this with most of your body still human, and you have to take a few minutes to figure out how to do this without ending up upside down all the time, but soon enough, you flap your wings and occasionally let gravity affect you just a little bit, letting you expertly fly in a straight line.
Getting a good sightline established with the current central command area, you begin to chant for your ice shard spell, aiming for a moving person.
And again.
And again.
And again and again and again.
Honestly, it's kind of embarrassing just how long it takes them to muster a response, but eventually a bunch of archers try to take shots at you. Fruitlessly, of course, with you being far out of range. You make it a point to target them, of course, putting paid to that notion in short order.
You note your little infiltrator is amongst them. Good.
It is around this time that screams arise from other areas of the camp. Looks like your little zombies have decided to get up and join in on the fun. You can also see flashes of light from the mages' residence, so you guess your other traps have also been sprung.
Except... you can hear screams from elsewhere, too. Looking towards an area you didn't yet meddle with, you see groups of men cutting down the distracted human soldiers. It's hard to make out, but it seems a few remnants of the demon army saw what you did yesterday and decided to see if you wouldn't give a repeat performance.
Seems not all of them are still running with their tails between their legs. Okay, so they're also attacking the human army before promptly retreating to avoid being overwhelmed by sheer numbers when the confusion wears off.
And now finally the mages step out of their residence, only for your minion to run into their bulk and obediently break the bomb of mustard gas you gave him. Heh.
Okay, so most of your objectives for today have been met. What will you do now? Better think fast before those mages recover from their part of the confusion as you reabsorb your minion.
Honestly, while you would like to stay a bit longer, or maybe collect some fragments, you are too far out of reach, and you'd rather not stick around to let the mages pepper you with spells, so you regretfully fly off in the last direction you saw the demons run.
Flying closer to the ground so as to make spotting you harder from afar, you follow up on any tracks you see, eventually leading you to a small campsite filled with demons currently in the process of taking it down. Looks like they're smart enough to get the fuck out of there after doing some damage to the humans.
Alright, time to do this. Detransforming your arms, you begin to slowly float down towards the camp, using your intimidation aura at full blast.
"Hello there, future subjects! You are witnessing the new consort of the Demon Princess and future King of this land, now which of you is in charge?"
Well, you, uh, you didn't expect this.
You kinda expected them to be awestruck for a bit, maybe have one or two of them be unable to move due to your aura.
What happened instead was half of them locking up while pissing themselves while the other half immediately prostrates themselves. Maybe you made a deeper impression through your actions so far than you thought?
Still, this is kind of troubling. You need at least one of them functional enough to lead you to their commanding officer. For now, though, you gently set down onto the ground, idly tapping your foot as you wait for one of them to unfreeze.
It takes a minute or two, but soon enough, they manage to pull themselves together well enough to point you towards the tent containing their leader.
Telling them to get the fuck back to packing up, you enter the tent to see a muscular, barechested horned dude frowning over a map before looking up at you.
"So you're the fucker my men told me about. I'll be honest, I thought my men were fucking drunk when they told me about the things fighting the humans.
So, you got any business with the cowards that ran instead of fighting to the last?"
"I have business with your Princess. I'm the consort and future King, here to unfuck your failures. Got it?"
"Well then, oh 'future king', how do you plan to do that? I don't know if you've noticed, but that's a pretty fuckhuge army camped out there, and despite your night raids, they're still there. We've been trying to evacuate the farmers and any supplies we can before the humans get at them, but we've been somewhat limited ever since the bulk of our army ran off in all directions."
"Well, so far, I have been poisoning and sabotaging everything they have, including burning down their central supply depot, last night I Killed Phillips, tonight I killed a bunch of their other commanders, and most if not all of their mages are now infected with a disease that will kill them painfully and slowly over the next couple days.
I also happen to know about about a big delivery of fresh supplies I may need robbed, which is why I went out of my way to come contact you. As to the further 'how', a good leader would naturally know about their subjects' talents, so why not ask him?"
As you finish up your little spiel, you breathe out the guy in question, a 'Ser Phillips', as you understand. Listening in on all that gossiping inside the human army's camp was surely worth it on some end, at least.
"Well, well, well. Now we're talking. Looks like we may just turn this little war around yet if what you say is true. Those mages may just be able to heal themselves, but it'll still take time and mana, both of which they'll be short on soon enough.
Okay, you got my attention, and I'll work with you for the time being. What do you need me and my men to do?"
"I can poison the supply train pretty thoroughly, but I need it delayed at least a couple hours to do so. I burn under the sunlight so I can only work at night. If you give me a destination I can also send any other army remnants there for you, or I could leave one of the souls I ate with you and coordinate through them."
"No offense, but I'd like to avoid any creepy undead shit like that. But sure, give us a route and we can see what we can do. Much easier to just delay and trouble them than robbing the supplies for ourselves outright, though it's kind of a waste to pass them on to the humans, even if tainted."
"We still need to drive them out, and the poison really helps on that. Beyond that, though, it'd be great if your men could hold onto any corpses you don't use, human, animal, whatever. I still need material to work with to create undead."
"Well, shit, sure. We'll see what we can do, just don't expect too much. There's a reason we're traveling light; keeping away from human scouts is troublesome enough as it is."
Well, that's good. You think that should be all for now.
"Alright, just remember the humans increased the sizes of their patrols and are trying to keep them within hearing distance from each other, in exchange for reduced coverage further out. May as well use that against them."
Continuing to talk on, you use the small map (it's not accurate, but accurate enough) to point out the exact route the supply train is taking. During the following short discussion, you find out that demons actually have a somewhat better night vision than humans, a minor ability they used to great advantage throughout the ages.
Regardless, soon enough, the demon commander knows what's going on and what he has to do.
Exiting the camp after asking around for any empty waterskins they don't need anymore (they have a few, seems soldiers make it a point to bring extra water), you summon your compass soul and ask it to look for the nearest wildlife large enough to be a threat to a grown man.
He points you in a direction, and off you go, using your owl form to move around quicker.
It doesn't take long for your keen senses to pick up movement in the underbrush, so you land on a tree and take a look.
A decently sized brown bear, though the fur is quite dark. It is currently eating some random roots it just dug up. Well, alright. How shall you do this?
Well, time to murder this animal. Detransforming atop your tree branch, you breathe out your Painfire minion, placing him a little ways off from your target.
Telling him what to do mentally, you watch as the spectral fire envelops the bear and it roars.
Using your animal empathy power, you can hear it scream FUCKFUCKFUCKDIEYOUSHITFUCK. Seems like someone made an impression.
Okay, time to desummon your minion really quick, and just as the bear passes near the branch you're squatting on, you throw yourself down, driving your claws as deep into its furred hide as you can manage and immediately have to hold on with all your might, lest you be thrown off.
You scrabble for a hold, but your claws can't find purchase in all this fur, and the bear soon rams its backside against a tree, not really managing to hurt you, but rattle you enough it can throw you off.
You immediately rise to your feet, but the bear has had enough time to turn towards where you fell and is charging right at you!
It tries to just rush you down, opening its mouth to take a chunk out of you, but you jump to the side just as it is about to hit you. Turning to face each other, you and the bear stare at one another for a moment.
Okay, new try. Summoning your weakening minion, you have him direct his aura at the bear even as you let your claws spark with the electricity you have stored up.
Time to fucking eat this bitch.
This time, it is you who moves first. Rushing towards the bear, you feint an overhead claws swing, following up with a grab for the head that lets you leverage your momentum to swing yourself towards holding the back again.
As you do so, your claws unload a somewhat decent shock right through the side of its face, but it seems to have withstood the worst of it. No matter.
Time to end this.
Leaning forwards a little, you rear back before slamming your teeth into the side of the bear's face, where the fur is thinner and easier to penetrate.
It still tries to shake you off, but the struggles get weaker in short order as you insistently drink.
Haah... alright, finally this thing is dead.
Okay, with the bear of terror dead, it's about time you use it as an undead for yourself. But first...
Well, you still have these improvised mustard containers, and this looks like a great delivery mechanism right here. So you open the corpse's maw and take a closer look at the insides of the mouth and throat... before shaking your head and just summoning your mad doctor minion, dismissing the weakening one beforehand in exchange.
Just a few discussions later, you have sufficiently integrated the container inside a fleshy pouch inside the bear's throat, made of muscles that allow it to squeeze down on and break said container as it roars. Simple, effective, and a nice way to spread mustard gas around a bit.
Afterwards, you just clean it up a little here and there and repair some of tne damage you did to the head (though not all of it, of course).
Casting your Raise spell, you ponder for a moment before imbuing the most tempestuous of the fragments into the undead, resulting in the eyes coming aglow and the teeth growing in jagged, uneven ways.
Overall, you gotta say you like it, though it is currently looking around with what you'd describe as anger if you didn't know it can't actually feel anything.
"Alright, I want you to go into this direction," you say as you point towards the human army's camp, "and kill any humans that get in your way. Once you arrive at the big place full of humans, crush that thing in your throat and make sure to roar a lot while you kill them all."
The bear zombie just nods and gets on the way. Probably for the best, too, the sun will rise soon, and you'd best be on your way back to your lair. Luckily it isn't too far from your current location, at least.
Turning into your owl form, you fly off towards secure drakness, turning into a shadow once you've arrived to slither through the cracks in the rocks.
Human Army Morale now at 719-389=330/1000
Human Army Integrity now at 880-100 (various undead attacks)-50 (Ice Shards on elite units combined with demon attacks)-50 (mustard gas sent people out of commission)-60 (deserters saying fuck this shit)=620/1000
Demon Food Supply now at 930/1000