Interlude: Fuck this shit
Bob gagged for a bit, but did his best to just breathe slowly through his cloth and avoid thinking about what he was doing.
All around him, other soldiers were doing similarly. It couldn't be helped; this was disgusting work, but it had to be done, just to make sure this shit wouldn't repeat.
Well, at least this particular shit, he thought as he watched the eyes of the dead man as he burned. Corpses were truly one of the worst things one could be ordered to carry around, in his humble opinion. Especially when what you carried them to was a fire.
Nothing stinks like a fresh corpse being burned. Nothing.
Of course, all this would do was to prevent the dead from rising within their camp. He shuddered as he remembered the stories of patrols vanishing one night, only to turn up as a grotesque monster fused into one body. Rumors also had it that people could just up and die and immediately turn, or disappear and their spirits stay trapped for a night as they wander throughout the camp.
Of course, that disregarded the actualy magic being cast from the skies, or the return of the demon army. Seriously, they were told the demons had lost and all that was left was to plunder their lands. Bullshit! You don't assemble an army like this if you don't have an enemy.
Of course, Ser Phillips would never lie to the men like that, but he wasn't the king. And only the king could give orders to go to war like this, no matter what anyone said. Sure, those heroes did good work against the demon king, but a fat lot of good it did them now that they were gone!
Bob yawned, then gagged again as he fed the next corpse into the fire, this one sporting a chunk of ice through his head.
Shit. This shit stinks so much! Humans aren't meant to be burnt, or to smell a burning human.
It was just as he finished that thought that he heard a loud roar from some distance away. Turning to see what it was, he sunk to his knees when his eyes met the shining green ones of the bear that completely ignored the coat of arrows stuck in it, a strange mist flowing out of its mouth.
They were supposed to only come out in the night!
Bob remained there, kneeling, all the way until his head got torn off by a casual swipe of a paw.
Fuck this shit.
Discovering the acceleration of time within your inner palace is acceptably fast, you enter it and have the maids summon your mad doctor soul, as you decided you need more knowledge in regards to anatomy.
It's just too useful a field of knowledge to ignore, what with your little hobby of reanimating twisted corpses and all. Entertainingly enough, your minion actually has a lesson plan he put together in a fit of slight boredom, so all you need is a subject to carve apart in educational ways, which you have been gathering as you were filling your palace.
Except... The Maids. And yes, they deserve the capitalization.
Turns out that, while they don't mind being ignored when you're busy in general, if you spend time with another inhabitant of the castle without acknowledging them for too long, they get jealous. And start to grab for your dick, the, in their words, 'easiest way to grab attention'.
None of the twenty bodies involved wanted to let go.
So yeah, while you did get some learning done, you spent far too long on appeasing the maids pouting at you while sucking you off.
Coming out of your palace, you contact Sarah, telling her a bit about the progress you've been making as well as asking for any news the princess manages to pick up.
Unfortunately, the demon army is still in shambles, so there's very few messengers to go around. The most you can find out is that that scouting force is in the process of assembling an actual entrenched encampment near the royal capital, apparently gearing up for a long-term conflict.
Not too surprising, as, as the soul of that general was able to tell Sarah, they were meant to receive reinforcements from the central army currently being stopped in its' tracks by you. Their role was to establish a bridgehead near the last big demon bastion and allow the rest of the army to basically besiege it with all preparations already taken care of, reasoning that the reserve forces stationed in the city wouldn't be enough to force the scout force away.
Apart from that, all you can get are rumors and the odd squad of demon troopers returning to the capital to rejoin what's left of the army.
The rest of the day you mostly spend on training your powers, specifically your thrall power, though you do finish improving your weird eating mechanism.
Soon, however, daytime is over, and night falls. Now, what shall you do tonight? Looks like humanity has been busy elsewhere, too, so the sooner you finish up here, the better.
After shadowing out of your little cave lair, you transform into an owl and fly off towards the direction you know the supply caravan to be in, as well as the demons you sent to delay it.
It takes a bit of flying around, but soon enough, you find what you are looking for.
Well, it looks like your little helpers fucked up somewhere along the way. Taking a moment to look, you can see several trees that got knocked onto the path the caravan was taking... except they were knocked down too late to actually stop anything.
Having seen no other way to fulfill their mission, the demons just threw themself at the enemies guarding the convoy, to... mixed effects. You can see a few corpses from both sides, but at least they managed to slow the shipment down, as the humans decided to be vigilant as they marched forward, having to curb their speed so as to give their scouts time to ensure there were no further ambushes.
As a result, they're a little closer to the human camp than you'd like, but you still have a little time to ruin everyone's day.
Taking a moment to perch atop a brach a little ways off the path, you transform back, then go shadow, winding your way down the tree trunk and onto the ground.
Racing towards the caravan, you make sure to keep out of the range of any torches the guards are carrying as you consider how to proceed. Naturally, you want to pollute all this stuff, so you start at the frontmost carriage, grasping onto a turning wheel and gliding upwards until you can find a crack to wiggle through.
Unfortunately, there's very little space inside, most of it being taken up by crates presumably filled with food. Okay, now that you're in here, how are you doing this?
Okay, you don't need to overcomplicate this bit. Just move atop the crates as a shadow, the materialize atop them, lying down.
It's a little uncomfortable and very cramped, but you don't need a full rage of motion to wiggle until you can pull out of of those waterskins, whence you use your ability to control blood to have your blood slowly, but surely move through the cracks in the crates to hopefully properly coat whatever's inside.
One carriage down, far too many to go.
You work as fast as you can, but unfortunately, no matter how much you try, it just takes too long to shove blood everywhere. By the end of it, you estimate you have poisoned everything inside a good third of the carriages, but soon enough, the convoy arrives inside the human camp.
This puts you into a difficult position, as you're not sure you want to infiltrate the camp right now.
Okay, this is actually annoying you. The demons turned out to completely suck at their job and far too many of these supplies are going unpoisoned.
Time to correct that shit.
Following the trail of the caravan back to where the brief battle between the guards and your incompetent lackeys occured, you drag all the bodies together before summoning your mad doctor.
"I need you to create the most flammable liquid you can manage in a bit, once I've worked on this for a moment."
Proceeding to summarily ignore him, you start to fuse all the bodies together into a single, unshapely humanoid mass. Fuck good, precise work, you just take care to keep all the skin on the outside and save the faces for later.
Once you're done with this step, you slap the human faces on the front, do a little work to ensure the resulting abomination has impressive enough arms and add all the teeth you can't use for the faces together, fusing them into the main head's maw as devastating razor teeth.
Oh, and you strengthen the legs as you wind up the flabby skin along the body's surface, as you're planning to make this thing quite a bit heavier in a moment.
"Okay, now you just pump flammable shit right inside this thing," you say as you indicate the opening you left open along the neck.
It takes about an hour, but soon enough, you have a bulgy, wobbly abomination standing before you, filled to the brim with a disgustingly smelling green-blue fluid. Perfect.
Taking a moment to cast your collection spell, you take what you can get from the earlier battle and ponder over how to fuse it together.
Imbuing the fragment you just mashed together, your creation seems to... fade slightly, in relation to the rest of the world. It's still there and just as readily apparent as before, just lesser in a way you can't describe.
No matter, though. It will serve you just fine.
"Follow this path towards the human camp as fast as you can, once you arrive, destroy any supplies you can find, or at least spread your fluids everywhere."
Not reacting to your words for a moment, the thing just turns and starts to amble along the way, the turgid mass making it up sloshing around with every step.
Well, you can only hope this thing works out. Meanwhile, though, you still have the rest of the night to work with, so what shall you do now, your soul minion having to stay around for a while?
Interlude: In the Meantime
"Oh god! Oh god! They didn't burn the corpses!"
"Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!"
"It's coming after the food"
"Whatever it bleeds, it stinks worse than fucking shit!"
"Idiots, don't come closer!"
"UWAAAAGH!"
"Quick, kill it with fire!"
What they didn't know, though, was that it could explode, and keep on going for a few moments after most of its mass was sent in all directions in a fiery inferno to spread the flames just a bit further.
"Okay, you just climb that tree over there and wait for a while to make sure the fire really spreads while I go hunting for more animal bodies to work with."
"Sure thing, boss. Want me to do anything while you're busy?"
"Dunno, just think about horrific things to do to a big army, I guess."
With that, you ignore him and concentrate on becoming an owl again, flying off in search for anything useful to your undead creation efforts.
It takes you quite a while (you hadn't expected finding wildlife in the forest would take this long), but eventually you can make out the movement of something big down below you.
Flying towards it, you hear a weird mix of hooting and roaring. Once you settle on a branch nearby, you have a little time to actually look at what you've found.
Well, this looks nice. Not. The mix of owl and bear is currently in the process of madly slamming itself against a tree for some reason.
Okay, so you found it.
Contacting Sarah for a bit so she can help you with Coil's power, you detransform and lightly jump off the branch, using levitation to float above your target and cutting a small wound across your palm with your claws, letting a little blood flow out, but slowing its descent to the ground with your hemokinesis.
You don't have much time, but it is enough to cast Chill at the thing before letting it fall on top of it and starting on the chant for ice barrage instead.
It tries the best it can, squawking and screaming, jumping a few times, but the slowed and wounded animal just has no way to reach you up in the air.
It does take you an almost unfair amount of time, but eventually, you manage to wear the hyperaggressive animal down to the point it just lies down and dies. You do of course keep on shooting a few more shards at it just to make sure, but it really is dead.
This way of hunting is better than facing that bear in single combat, that's for sure.
Well, this thing should make for a fine undead mostly as is, you think to yourself as you set down. All you need to do is to patch up the many holes you made and it should be good to go.
Well and maybe imbue something nice while you're at it. That one fragment will do nicely.
"Okay, I want you to hunt and kill any animals you can find and bring them to... shit, you wouldn't know where my cave is. Just, bring them to this location, I can find it again."
Getting a hiss and a nod in response, you turn into your owl form and fly off towards the location you were told the demons would wait.
Arriving there in short order, you detransform and wander into the tent you remember from last time, ignoring the scrubs to the sides. Entering, the guy you spoke to last time doesn't give you time to start talking, immediately launching into his own words.
"Okay, so that raid did not go as expected, but I think it's fair to say we did the best with what we had."
"I don't give a fuck you guys fucked it up, you delayed the humans just a bit and that was enough for me to work with. Incidentally, while I didn't have time to poison all of their supplies, a decently sized area of the human camp burned down a few hours ago, with a lot of supplies being present at the time. Strange, isn't it?
But that's not why I'm here. We have a raid to plan for tomorrow night, one that I hope will be enough to decisively break enemy morale while getting most, if not all, of their leadership out of the picture."
He just sits there and stares at you. Good, you have his attention.
"Okay, first of all, this, again, is Phillip," you say as you breathe out the soul in question, having dismissed your mad doctor prior to entering the tent.
"His power allows him to perfectly coordinate his allies, and his skills and knowledge will be of great use in this endeavour. Your job prior to the battle itself is to have your men rested and gather as many demon survivors and animal carcasses as you can so I can create more abominations besides the ones I have lined up so far. Tomorrow night, we will beat back the human army. In the meantime, feel free to plan out the details with him, though I may need to desummon him midway through."
Was there anything else you wanted to say or do you leave the stunned demon commander slackjawed at this point?
Smirking, you can't help but shoot off one last remark.
"Hey, close your mouth. A beetle might fly in."
Leaving the tent, you soon turn into your owl form again and fly off. Time to return to your cave and see what tomorrow will bring.
Human Army Morale now from 330 to 6/1000
Human Army Integrity now at 620-80 (no food or worse)-50 (The fire! It BURNS)-50 (desertions left and right)= 440/1000
Demon Food Supply now at 900/1000
Coming out of your usual walk to the tree, you mentally contact Sarah.
Hey Sarah, so I'm going to lead a raid against the human army tonight. I actually expect them to break and run once we hit them.
Of course it took you four nights to defeat an army of sixty thousand. Did you have any fun at least?
War crimes are always fun, even if they don't count due to lack of local legislation.
Alright, alright, you go get 'em and return soon. I want to see you again.
For sure.
Ending the conversation on that note, you turn to your mad doctor soul (still mentally) and ask him about anything good he came up with during the time he was just chilling out.
Well, boss, I do know a lot of cool ways to torture people, but I figured you'd know them all, anyways, so no need to count them off. Only one I could come up with you might've not thought up already would be capturing one or several of their men, then I turn 'em into women and we throw them right back in, just with a giant load of aphros to ensure all their friends rape 'em for a day or so.
Thanking him for his insight, you cut the metaphorical line and turn towards training for the day- wouldn't do to spend all day chattering in yout head, after all.
Well then now, time to go and see to the last preparations for the raid. Sliding out of your blocked cave entrance as a shadow, you use your owl form to fly towards the area you created your latest zombie in (and honestly, that thing doesn't need to be more than plainly reanimated to fit the standards of your abominations).
Well, looks like your little helper was busy over the course of the day. Carcasses of deer, rabbits, wolves, some kinda ugly small humanoids and more are arrayed onto a small mountain of corpses.
As you approach, you detransform and bid your undead to stop and guard you while you work instead of gathering more. Time to get to work!
For the most part, you just mash together enough meat to make for a decent fighter, taking a little time to form clawed arms as weapons and make the teeth suitably dangerous where necessary.
Of course, using the head of deer for the sheer intimidation factor of the antlers is a great way to round some of them off. At the end of your rushed work, you have five handsomely dangerous abominations to work with, especially with your owl monster corpse as the sixth undead under your command.
Now to go see how the demons did...
Leading your undead towards the location of the demon camp, you are mildly surprised when you find a small army instead of a few destitute fugitives. Looks like they can actually work it if they set their minds to it.
Riding into the camp atop your undead owl monster, the demons respectfully make way. Seems like they were told to expect you, at least.
You find the demon commander out in the open, coordinating the efforts of his subordinates.
"Hey boss, sorry we couldn't get much meat for you to work with, we just didn't expect we'd have to do so much organizin'. But hey, at least we got a decent army assembled. Who'da'thunk there were so many demons hiding out in the heartlands?"
"The humans, most likely, which is why they sent that big-ass army. But yeah, this will do. We can send in the undead first to take the brunt of the attack, then the demons follow through and murder everything. Sound good?"
As you speak, you walk over to the small field the demons set aside for the corpses of various animals, though most of it are more of those ugly little shits you'd noticed from your first corpse pile. Not like you care, though; as long as they're made of flesh, you can strip them down and make something of them.
A few of the demons nearby watch you work with a mix of fascination and horror, but you pay them no mind and soon you have another two of your basic animal model standing before you.
So, do you want to get any last preparations done or are you ready to lead the assault?
Taking a moment to look over your arrayed undead, you decide they could use a little extra. So you reach inside yourself and grasp all the fragments except the one that tries to give you a boner sometimes and throw them into your abominations at random.
One lets out a huff of air, one just hunkers down and the last two don't really seem to react. Regardless, you have invested all the fragments you wanted to get rid of for now, time to see to your other troops.
Homing in on your most useful commanding soul, you order your undead to obey Phillip, officially putting them under his command and successfully integrating them into his power use. He grimaces a little, but doesn't say anything.
"By the way, try to avoid killing any of the crippled and sick ones, and avoid the medical tents. I need some prisoners after the raid."
Trusting your control over him to have him use his power to instruct everyone else towards doing this, you shoot off a quick message for Sarah and look at the demon commander.
"Are we ready to go?"
"We've been ready for two years now, boss."
Good enough for you. Time to end this.
Assembling with the rest of the army at the edge of the camp, mostly consisting of 500-odd demons, your undead and yourself, you look at your troops for a moment before launching into a speech.
"I won't bore you all with a long, boring speech about what is to happen now. You all know it- you know there's an army of humans camped out there, and you know we are about to crush it.
That's right, I don't care they outnumber us many times over. Their numbers mean nothing in the battle to come tonight. We will rush straight through their army, cut down anyone dumb enough to face us, and keep on going until all of them are either running, prisoners, or dead.
That's all."
Turning away from your soldiers and towards the direction you know the enemy to wait, your thoughts race about how exactly you will be doing this. Will you be leading the army from the front, letting Phillip guide you onwards? Will you infiltrate ahead of time? Will you pretend to be just another demon soldier? You need to make your choice now.
Okay, to sum up your plan, you will be riding on your owl monster, using your fear aura and any of your magic as appropriate. Mostly to take out pockets of resistance and strategically raise some corpses here and there.
The rest of the abominations you made for this will be joining you in bringing up the tip of the spear; taking the brunt of any opposition and bowling it over in your initial mad rush. The demons, meanwhile, will follow after them and add weight to the attack, making sure anyone trying to stand their ground will be dead in short order.
Mounting your undead ride, you contact Sarah to have her use Coil's power for you once again, with you acting as a connection to Phillip. You're ready.
Starting to move as one single entity, it takes you a little getting used to, but soon enough, you are all acting at ease in complete unison. It doesn't take you too long to arrive at the staging area you chose for this battle, your undead stepping into position and your demons getting ready.
Without a single sound being exchanged, you charge as one.
Your mighty army meets several patrols, but they are judged as unworthy of attention, just getting trampled by your undead, the few survivors being stabbed by your blades.
It isn't long before you reach the outermost parts of the enemy camp, their reactions slow and useless. You keep on trampling them down, your own body starting to shoot precisely aimed ice shards at targets of opportunity as you pass by, further spreading chaos as your main force rushes onwards.
You push and push, through the guards, through the sleep deprived soldiers, through the field of tents and through the first few buildings, flowing around them or smashing your way through, like water.
It is as you near the main target of your assault, the area you know the enemy elite and commanding class to reside, that you notice something interesting.
Barring your way onwards, a mage that somehow isn't sporting a variety of bloody sores is swinging her staff.
"The Goddess Protects!"
As she speaks, a translucent shield of light spreads in front of her, cutting you off from overrunning the enemy headquarters in a straight line. Well, how do you deal with this?
Casting your slowing, chilling spell, you get off your undead mount, engaging your levitation to jump towards the barrier and climbing up, dropping on her side even as the rest of you splits up and circumvents the shield on both sides, closing up with each other effortlessly on the other side.
Smiling at her, you renew your efforts to let out an intimidating aura, trusting the rest to fulfill their mission without your help while you take your time with this.
"Oh, I'm afraid that, while the godess may protect, she won't be protecting you from me enough."
She doesn't say anything, though she frowns at you as she swings her staff again, conjuring a wave of light you swiftly dodge before closing in on her.
She tries to move back, but with the way she is slowed down right now, you have an easy time reaching her and conking her over the head. Well, you now have an unconscious battle mage on your hands, in the middle of an active war zone. Most of the rest of you is currently engaging the few leftover opponents, the vast majority of the enemy army having fled already.
Well, you'd hate to miss out on the action, so you just grab her, throw her over your shoulder, pick up her staff and run after the main force.
As you arrive, you find they are being stalled by some of the human army's elites, though your demons are matching them blow for blow, and outnumbering them as they are, it is only a matter of time until this fight is won, especially as the majority of human forces is currently busy running like the devil was after them.
The only issue is, the leaders of the army are also evacuating while your men are being stalled out. You don't care about them as such, but they do make for a tempting target.
Querying the rest of your attack force, you have one of the demon soldiers that took a heavy blow to the leg keep watch over her while you go off in the direction the enemy leadership was seen last.
Meeting up with your mount, you get on and off the two of you go, hunting through the night filled with sscreams and death calls.
Among the throng of people running towards the area you remember the horses to be kept, you spot one person sticking out from the rest like a sore thumb.
You don't recall seeing that halfhearted armor on anyone else, but now that you look at her... she kinda reminds you of Phillip. A relative, perhaps?
That would at least explain the sheer face the girl is making. Sheesh, you'd think someone just murdered her puppy... though, given the situation she's in, you suppose it is appropriate.
So anyways, do you go after her, maybe capture another new toy, or do you concentrate on the other suckers? Either way, whoever you don't grab is likely to escape, though you could try to follow them thanks to your inexhaustible mount.
Well, no reason you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Wordlessly urging on your mount, you fire off the wordy chant to coat something in ice, stopping short most of the bulk of fleeing rats by making the tumble on their faces.
Your chosen victim, though, just jumps to the side and turns around, glaring at you as you come riding towards her.
"YOU!"
Grinning, you answer with a hearty "ME!" as you jump off of your ride, crashing right into her and making the two of you roll across the ground for a moment.
It is a short, but brutal fight later that you finally get her into a chokehold, having taken some annoying scrapes as she tried to get the upper hand, but eventually, letting out one last gasp before slumping over, trying to scratch and pull your arms off her all the way.
Finally, though, you have your captive number two of the night, and the other fodder is only now getting onto the horses, though the faster ones managed to ride off already.
Well, you didn't try out your domination power yet, so may as well give it a field trial at this point.
Neighing your head off to a human observer, you order any of the horses you estimate to be close enough to hear you to "Throw off your rider," hopefully managing to command them.
As a result of your action (that would certainly leave a living person with a seriously sore throat), six of the horses start to buck like mad, doing anything in their might to throw off their riders.
The other four escape, same as the ones that managed to ride off fast enough to get some decent distance between you and them, but still, you got a decent catch this time. Now what shall you do with them?
Sizing up the array of befuddled cowards before you, you turn to your mount for the night for a moment.
"Hunt down and kill the ones that got away, but return by tomorrow night at latest."
Immediately bounding off, your owl monster zombie follows the path your escaped prey took, hopefully using the fact that it doesn't tire to great effect in a few hours.
You, in the meantime, stalk towards the last commanding officers left, the horses having run off as soon as they could. They start up a short clamor of pleading and offers of bribery to save their lifes, not that you bother paying attention. You just pick up the first one and feed.
And again. And again.
You actually have to chase the last one down for about half a minute, but at the end, they all go where they belong; your belly.
6 officers of the human army, all of them at least minor nobility.
Glenn, average officer
Terence, fat ugly bastard that loved to use his position to force himself on soldiers' wifes
Harun, soldier with a heart of gold that got promoted up the ranks; hated Terence and tried his best to obstruct him wherever possible
Conor, again, average officer of some description
Osian, right asshole, but good at his job; several confirmed personal demon kills
Anas, professional background character and logistics officer
Letting the corpses rest where they fell, you wander over towards your little captive and return towards where the fighting raged last, soon coming upon a scene of carnage. Looks like the human elites fought to the very last to delay your troop, not that it saved them in any way.
Finding the demon commander inside one of the more intact buildings the humans previously took over, you join the impromptu war council being held after handing off your prisoner to the same demon you had watch over the first one, funnily enough.
"Okay, so the humans are in full retreat across the area. How are our casualties looking?"
"Light. Not too many dead, quite some wounded, though most will recover within a few days. We made sure to avoid the medical tents and tried to take some prisoners, but... well, the humans refused to be caught. Quite a few suicides once we had them on the ropes."
"Ah well, can't be helped. At least I got to eat my fill on what few of the fleeing commanders I could catch. How about pursuit?"
"We sent a few men to chase the humans deeper into the forest, where the monsters will hopefully do the rest. This isn't the first time we're dealing with shit like this, you know. I'd estimate about half of them will survive the coming week or two."
"Very well then, I will go eat everyone in the medical tents before the sun comes up. Do feel free to have a runner sent for me if you need something."
Leisurely exiting the building, you take a little time to cast your collection spell on the way to the tents you know to contain a veritable feast in the form of all the men you mustard gas'd over the last couple nights.
Unfortunately, you're running low on time, so you just smash together any fragments that feel similar enough as you move on.
And once you arrive at your destination, you indeed feast on the poor fucks that didn't manage to die before you came.
After your little feeding frenzy, you take a few minutes just organizing the new fragmentary information and little tricks your power drew from your victims as they went down your gullet. Normally, it's just a small things here and there you hardly notice, but the sheer amount of people you ate at once means the effect has become rather very noticeable indeed.
Regardless, though, as you slowly sort through the information, you simultaneously think about your next step. The humans have been driven from the heartlands, a few disparate bands likely remaining, but not a major issue, entirely undeserving of your personal attention.
That still leaves the rest of the human armies taking root elsewhere across the realm, however, something you should work on with all haste, and yet... your attack here has not only driven the humans off, it has also left a lot of corpses. Possibly enough to make something really big out of, in fact. This is an opportunity, yet you also can't help but consider the opportunity cost that staying here longer than necessary might incur.
Decisions, decisions...
Well, you can always ask Sarah for her opinion. Contacting her, what follows is about half an hour of back-and-forth messages about how the war is going and how to proceed.
Ultimately, you, her and the princess (who was added to the conversation midway when you and Sarah decided you needed her opinion on some stuff) agree that, while swift action would be preferrable, none of the fires around the kingdom need your absolutely immediate attention, so if you manage to create a suitably impressive undead to use elsewhere within a day or two, doing so would be quite worthwhile.
You look up to the sky, noting it is getting just a little bit brighter. Well, looks like you're running out of time over here. If you want to get anything done real quick, best do it now and then barricade a room inside one of the houses to weather the daylight.
Power walking back to the building serving as your command post, you find the demon commander and rattle off the things you need him to do or know.
"Okay, so first," you say as you breathe in Phillip, "I put the animal abominations under your command, so feel free to use them as you see fit. Second," as you breathe out one of the mages you ate at random, "have this guy here look over any of the more severe injuries around our camp, he should have basic healing magic.
Beyond that, just the usual stuff, have those two I took prisoner under guard, and... ah, yes. So, I spread a lot of poison around the human camp, and the stuff tends to linger. If anyone smells the scent of garlic, they should immediately get out of wherever they are and notify everyone else; and no matter what, don't touch anything in those places. Also keep in mind I poisoned just about all the water and foodstuff I could find, so, again, be careful with that shit.
One last thing, have the men gather up all the corpses they can in one location. Once the sun goes down, I'll set to work on giving the humans a good reason to never return to these lands."
Your demon commander, having taken a piece of paper, looks up from his notes.
"Alright, got it. I'll have someone sent around to tell the men everything they need to know."
Good. Now to see whether this little place has a cellar or something of the like...
Interlude: The Lesser Of Two Evils
Rakul wiped his forehead, the sweat he'd been accumulating becoming uncomfortable.
It couldn't be helped; while he did manage to keep a straight face in the face of his new boss more often than not, he still broke out in a cold sweat occasionally. The worse-than-normal-undead undead he made them use were bad enough, but the casual stealing of souls and lingering poison underlined just how fucking dangerous this fucker was.
Thinking back on the last few days, he couldn't help but shiver, though he quickly suppressed his instinctual fear and started ordering around that poor fuck he got to boss around while their tentative new king was busy hiding from the sunlight. Four days. That wasn't that long, when you thought about it.
Four days, and the gargantuan army that seemed to spell the sure doom of all demonkind was reduced to wailing children and disfigured cripples. He'd seen the medical tents, taken a look inside, and he was sure he'd have nightmares about the husks of people lining the beds.
Not to mention it turned out the madman orchestrating all of this turned out to eat people. While humans, as he himself would jokingly say sometimes, hardly qualified as such, it still weighed on his mind the way he completely disregarded them as nothing more than either food or toys to torment.
Of course, he could afford to do so, right of the strong and all, no question about it. He'd just prefer if he could, y'know, be less of an absolute monster, if only so he'd have less worries about him turning on demonkind... and to reduce the amount of nightmare fodder he had to deal with.
Fuck it, may as well get to helping the others work. Leaving the building to get away from the subtle presence of his boss, he went on ahead and coordinated the transport of corpses, and if that wasn't a sentence he'd never have thought he'd have to think... Still, this was just the price they all had to pay for their weakness. They couldn't defeat or even hold back the humans by themselves, so it was only natural they had to follow the lead of the one that could.
He still had to bite down to avoid retching in front of his subordinates as they started to carry out the piles of visibly bitten and drained disfigured corpses, but as far as prices to pay went, this was... acceptable. He could live with it.
You spend pretty much the entire day on improving your ability to handle the soul fragments, as you have decided to call them, into even denser forms. Both to let you do more with them and to save more storage space when gathering new ones.
In fact, you then proceed to fuse the fragments you already have, resulting in two fragments that feel distinctly different compared to before... yes, these aren't fragments anymore. They are shards.
Now, the sun's gone down.
Shooting off a quick message to Sarah as to your plans, you emerge from your erstwhile refuge from the sun and go to find the small mountain of corpses the demons threw together for you.
Meeting the demon commander, you have him order a few of them to help you as you work, mostly by handing you corpses and anything else you need.
Over the course of the next several hours, most of the night, really, you keep the hair to make into fur, fusing legs into legs and arms into arms, creating a giant humanoid abomination, with scaled up everything, taking some special care to fashion leftover bones into antlers and taking literally everything you have left to make into a gargantuan left arm.
While your creation is a bit too heavy than it should be able to bear, the left arm functions as a decent enough third leg for now... and it can certainly still use it as a weapon, just not for long before it topples over.
At the end of several hours of nonstop work (and man, casting that spell over and over gets mentally exhausting), your completed creation lies before you, ready to rise at your command.
Only, what, if anything, do you imbue into it?
Casting the spell and imbuing what you have taken to calling the angry shard, you take a step back as your new undead pulls itself up with its heavy arm, causing slight tremors as it moves the weight of its bulk.
Then it rears back and screams. Holy fuck, maybe you shouldn't have taken the time to stitch together all the lungs. On the bright side, maybe this will work nicely as a way to demoralize enemies?
Anyways, you tell it to obey the demon commander (who is actually present, as he was watching you work for a bit) and tell him to take all the undead you put under his command and all the men he can gather, then march towards the capital and hit the human army detachment currently bunkering down as it waits for reinforcements.
So, you think that should be all you wanted to do here for the time being...
Just as you're about to transform and fly off, your owl monster zombie returns, head and front legs bloody. Seems it got a few of them, then.
Adding it to the command of the demon commander, you turn to fly off again, making good time towards the demon capital. You actually spot the human encampment hunkering down, digging trenches and using logs to build up walls. Good luck on keeping your forces occupied with that, suckers.
While you'd like to stay a bit to scout them out, you're short on time; assembling your big undead took most of the night, so you just keep on going towards your destination.
Swooping down onto a courtyard once you've passed the city walls and the outer palace, you transform back, announcing your presence to Sarah as you start walking inside. Time to find your rooms so you can stay for the day and plan out the next step.